Wetwired

Sean & Jules
  • 4.7 (13)
  • SOCIETY & CULTURE
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

Podcast about culture, control, and empire

  1. Episode 90: Law and Order / I Always Wanted To Be a Groyper, Part 2

    1D AGO

    Episode 90: Law and Order / I Always Wanted To Be a Groyper, Part 2

    Last episode, we talked about the brewing conflict between what currently passes for mainstream conservatism and the schizophrenic reactionary Groyper politics of Nick Fuentes. Subscribe on Patreon to support making this show, get premium only episodes, and listen to our entire back catalog. patreon.com/wetwired We wrapped things up with the idea that conservatism has never really bothered to conserve anything. Aside from a few exceptions, most of the time they keep themselves busy fighting culture wars about immigration, civil rights, women’s rights, Christianity, and demonizing organized labor. What they keep trying to “conserve” is whatever the status quo power dynamic was when their grandad was a kid.  After the Civil War, they wanted slavery back. Women’s suffrage, desegregation—they wanted to get rid of all those things. This isn’t the first fight inside conservatism. As part of its periodic reinvention of itself, conservatives have gone back to the political well and dredged up the same slogans more than once. We tied this malleable idea of conservatism in with the evolution of the field of unashamed ideological political economists into what we now think of as the pseudoscience of Economics. At least the political economists were up front about whatever ideological bent they had. If you were a socialist, you’d start with your convictions about socialism being the absolute best way of running society on offer, and they work to come up with an economic theory or plan that made it seem possible. It was honest. By the time the 1800s were wrapping up, that wasn’t good enough. Economists wanted to be taken more seriously, so they started dressing the whole thing up like they were doing physics or pure math. They could talk about whatever economic system as if they were describing the laws of nature. That didn’t get rid of the ideology, though. It just buried it under metric tons of academic jargon and complicated formulas. After all, what’s the difference between modeling a tsunami and a stock market crash? The answer is that the tsunami wasn’t caused by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. That all brings us around to FDR’s New Deal and the era of John Maynard Keynes and what Matt Christman has called his "Keynesian machine for dispensing treats". As many contradictions as Keynes gathered into his economic model, it remains the only proven way to maintain capitalism. To set the tone, David Talbot has a quote in his book The Devil’s Chessboard about Bertie Pell, a friend of FDR’s who Talbot described as a “full-on traitor to his class”. “I am almost the last capitalist who is willing to be saved by you,” Pell wrote Roosevelt in 1936 in a letter beseeching the president to draft him for the New Deal cause. The following year, Pell wrote again, praising FDR’s accomplishments: “Your administration has made possible the continuance of American institutions for at least fifty years. You have done for the government what St. Francis did for the Catholic Church. You have brought it back to the people.” It turns out Pell was eerily correct. Those institutions managed to last just a little longer than 50 years. They are about gone now, though. Our long promised merch is here!! Fly your crypto-leftist flag with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. wetwired.printful.me/ Subscribe on Patreon to support making this show, get premium only episodes, and listen to our entire back catalog. patreon.com/wetwired Music:Airglow - Spliff and Wesson (CC-BY)

    1h 5m
  2. Premium Episode 67: Wordsmithing and Workshopping / I Always Wanted To Be a Groyper, part 1 (Sample)

    FEB 2

    Premium Episode 67: Wordsmithing and Workshopping / I Always Wanted To Be a Groyper, part 1 (Sample)

    The ground is definitely shifting in the conservative base. From the Republican staffers who had their private texts between each other leaked revealing A LOT of racist messages to Nick Fuentes showing up on one mainstream conservative show after another, it's obvious that many Republicans are becoming more openly sympathetic to the racist Groyper ideas. This is a sample of a premium episode. Sign up to listen to the entire episode. patreon.com/wetwired We're going to do a couple of episodes talking about conservatism in the US, how things are changing for the Republicans, what's happening with the old conservatives, and the Groypers who are trying to take their place. In this episode, we talk about the fallout at the Heritage Foundation after Kevin Roberts' weak defense of Tucker Carlson for having Fuentes on his show, followed by an even weaker apology for defending him. Check out our first merch offering! Now you can fly your crypto-leftist flag and still be completely under the radar with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. wetwired.printful.me/

    9 min
  3. Episode 89: The Veiled Prophet Secret Society feat Devin Thomas O'Shea

    JAN 28

    Episode 89: The Veiled Prophet Secret Society feat Devin Thomas O'Shea

    We're with Devin Thomas O'Shea, author of The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis. Most of Devin's book surrounds a Gilded Age secret society founded in St. Louis in the late 19th century. The story would probably begin and end in St. Louis if that little group for racist businessmen and politicians who liked to throw parties had fizzled out like most secret societies do. This one didn't. Founded in 1897, the Veiled Prophet Society exists to this day. Over the course of its life, it's had bank presidents, captains of industry, judges, at least one police chief, and more than one US presidential advisor as members. As Devin tells us, the organization was purposely conceived to create a venue for money to mix with politics. This makes the story of the Veiled Prophet Society also the story of how power is captured and wielded. Find Devin online: linktr.ee/devintoshea The book will be available on June 23, 2026. Preorder the book: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2770-the-veiled-prophet Our long promised merch is here!! Fly your crypto-leftist flag with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. wetwired.printful.me/ Subscribe on Patreon to support making this show, get premium only episodes, and listen to our entire back catalog. patreon.com/wetwired Music:Airglow - Spliff and Wesson (CC-BY)

    1h 52m
  4. It's in a Book! 01: Illuminatus Trilogy feat Gabriel Kennedy

    JAN 20

    It's in a Book! 01: Illuminatus Trilogy feat Gabriel Kennedy

    Welcome, everyone, to the inaugural episode of It’s in a Book! “Take a look, it’s in a book…” This is our new on again, off again podcast within a podcast.  Instead of goofing off with the news and making fun of the public figures who’re trying to make life unlivable for the rest of us, we’re going to be taking a more serious (well, at least, a somewhat more serious). I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep. These episodes will be a somewhat more serious look at some books and authors that change how people think, or at least have changed how we think. The books we’ll be checking out tell stories about the often unseen machinations that shape the world. These are books that might make us rethink society, power, and conflict and how we relate to them. We’re not trying to put together some kind of great books canon here. We’d barely know where to start. Which is why a lot of the books we’ll be talking about are chosen by our guests. For this first episode, we're joined by Gabriel Kennedy. The book he chose for us was The Illuminatus! Trilogy, an 800-page exploration of political paranoia, both a parody of it and a meditation on it, lampooning right-wing conspiracy culture while also destabilizing the reader’s sense of certainty itself. The book is inexhaustible. Every reread reveals something new. It offers sharp insights into “deep politics,” especially in its treatment of the JFK assassination. Rather than arguing a single conspiracy, it presents multiple overlapping assassination attempts, redundancies layered on redundancies, mirroring the confusion and contradictions of the official narratives. One scene places a hired assassin in Dealey Plaza who suddenly realizes there are multiple shooters. His reaction: “How many of us are there here?” captures the essence of the book’s approach: uncertainty as a feature, not a flaw. Once you push through the first hundred or so pages, the book really opens up. It becomes an education in anarchism, political paranoia, and intellectual curiosity. It inspires readers to look things up, to chase references, to question assumptions. Authors Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea blend high philosophy with pulp fiction and pornography, real historical events with slight distortions, and truthful fictions. Find Gabriel online and buy his book: https://chapelperilous.us/ Merch: Fly your crypto-leftist flag and still be completely under the radar with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. wetwired.printful.me/ Subscribe on Patreon to support making this show, get premium only episodes, and listen to our entire back catalog. patreon.com/wetwired Music: Lester James Woodward - 1984 VHS Ident Lester James Woodward - Be Kind Please Rewind https://BlueFoxMusic.com

    1h 53m
  5. Premium Episode 66: Donroe Doctrine (Sample)

    JAN 7

    Premium Episode 66: Donroe Doctrine (Sample)

    We get into the media coverage of Venezuela, hot takes on Maduro’s kidnapping, Denmark's getting nervous as Trump eyes Greenland, 19th century style US imperialism, and the breakdown of all the international norms we all love. This is a sample of a premium episode. Sign up to listen to the entire episode. patreon.com/wetwired No holds barred is the defining feature of politics of the 21st century. We're witnessing the abandonment of even the pretense of propriety. It used to be that politicians did the hard work of lying to the public for weeks or months before taking us into military conflicts. There were Congressional hearings and presentations in front of the UN General Assembly with stacks of spiral bound books. They used to drag out charts and boxes of evidence. Colin Powell did one. Around 50 years earlier, then Vice President Richard Nixon made the case to the public for removing Arbenz in Guatemala. It all amounted to what looked like serious evidence that important matters were being weighed with the seriousness they deserved. Of course, those were all also largely fictions. Iraq didn't have WMDs. There was no yellow cake uranium. Arbenz wasn't a communist puppet of the Soviets (FDR was his ideological hero). It's time we acknowledged that the rules have changed. It's not even the case that they've changed entirely for the worse. No one is interested in making us feel good about the US kidnapping the president of Venezuela. That could be a good thing. Or at least some good may come from it. The baldness of it is refreshing in a way. We've all grown so used to living in a muck of deceptions that it might be hard to recognize the obviousness of all the motives on display. It's past time we sharpened those senses. Music: HoliznaCC0 - Hard Mode HoliznaCC0 - Down In The Basement Check out our first merch offering! Now you can fly your crypto-leftist flag and still be completely under the radar with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. wetwired.printful.me/

    8 min
  6. Episode 88: Hyper Exploiting Paradise

    12/26/2025

    Episode 88: Hyper Exploiting Paradise

    We're with Anthony Banua-Simon, director of the documentary Cane Fire, to talk about the colonization and exploitation of the Hawai'ian people first by corporations, then by the US military, followed by Hollywood, and finally by tourism. Few places hold as large a place in the American imagination as Hawaiʻi. For many people, Hawai'i represents paradise. It is the exotic. But maybe above all the other ideas about Hawaiʻi, it’s at the center of so many fantasies of escape.  In order to sustain any fantasy, we have to perfect it in our minds and turn it into a curated object. Part of doing that is learning to ignore any complications or contradictions that could break the spell. In the case of Hawai'i, those complications are the people—those pesky people, always getting in the way when capitalism is trying to have a good time. Watch Cane Fire: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/cane-fire/umc.cmc.77a7aja56b4olltstnkm3ts21  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zI6-HX8P9k  https://means.tv/programs/cane-fire  https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/cane-fire?frontend=kui Learn about Anthony's other projects: https://anthonysimon.net/ https://anthonysimon.net/The-Experiment-Station We're also excited to announce that our long promised merch is here!! We know it's tough sometimes to express your leftist feelings in public. Your ratty Che Guevara and CCCP t-shirts are better left at home. Now you can fly your crypto-leftist flag and still be completely under the radar with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. wetwired.printful.me/ Subscribe on Patreon to support making this show, get premium only episodes, and listen to our entire back catalog. patreon.com/wetwired Music: Airglow - Spliff and Wesson (CC-BY)

    1h 12m
  7. Premium Episode 65: They Fought the Law (Sample)

    12/13/2025

    Premium Episode 65: They Fought the Law (Sample)

    We hope everyone is having a good holiday season and you’re all getting ready for the solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, the date of the Buddha’s enlightenment (some time last week), or whatever dates you mark. This is a sample of a premium episode. Sign up to listen to the entire episode. patreon.com/wetwired We’ve been slowing down for the holiday season ourselves but we’ve also been working on a miniseries that we’ll release sometime in the next month or so. We’re not going to talk about it much. I can hint that it’s centered on the ground shift in longstanding Republican institutions as all the old timers figure out how to deal with all the youths raised by Discord and Pepe memes. But we’re taking a break from that today to talk about something else we’ve been enjoying for the past year, the coverage of the convicted Jan 6 rioters who got pardoned by Trump and then almost immediately committed new crimes.

    9 min
  8. Premium Episode 36: Trust No One feat Bradley Plaisier and Robert Skvarla (Unlocked)

    11/07/2025

    Premium Episode 36: Trust No One feat Bradley Plaisier and Robert Skvarla (Unlocked)

    We're teaming up with Bradley Plaisier and Robert Skvarla to talk about the show that 30 years ago introduced the normies to alien abductions, secret government programs, and global conspiracies. Somehow, the X-Files was exactly the right show for its time. It harnessed the untapped cynicism and suspicion of the 1990s and assured us that there really might be answers out there if you know where to look and who not to trust. This is an unlocked premium episode. Get extra episodes every month, and get access to all of our past subscriber only episodes for $5 a month. patreon.com/wetwired More from Bradley: https://x.com/bpleasies https://bwp.threadless.com More from Robert: https://x.com/RobertSkvarla The Endangered Alphabets Projecthttps://www.endangeredalphabets.net/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/1529408245 We're also excited to announce that our long promised merch is here!! We know it's tough sometimes to express your leftist feelings in public. Your ratty Che Guevara and CCCP t-shirts seem better left at home. Now you can fly your crypto-leftist flag and still be completely under the radar with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. wetwired.printful.me/ This is an unlocked premium episode. Get extra episodes every month, and get access to all of our past subscriber only episodes for $5 a month. patreon.com/wetwired Music: Airglow - Spliff and Wesson (CC BY 4.0)

    1h 60m
See All (173)

4.7
out of 5
13 Ratings

About

Podcast about culture, control, and empire

Information

  • Creator
    Sean & Jules
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    173
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    Wetwired

You Might Also Like