Hosted by Joshua Citarella, Interdependence, New Models · EN

If the stats are correct, 3,733 registered journalists attended the preopening of this year’s Venice Art Biennale, a group that is projected to produce some 2500 pieces of legacy media style coverage. It just so happens that we, too, were in Venice — there to install our work with Joshua Citarella, The Online Marketplace of Ideas, at the Palazzo Diedo for the “Strange Rules” exhibition curated by Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Adriana Rispoli. (Stay tuned for an ep next week with Josh discussing the collab in detail). And so here we are with our unaccredited, unsolicited content about Venice, alongside a bonus travel special featuring a visit to the Lake Garda home of Italian decadent poet Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938). | Channel subscribers, please DM for access to image content and we'll send U pdf.

Abby and I analyze the new Manosphere doc by Louis Theroux, college campus politics, elite formation, legacy vs alt media, and explore some deeper themes from her new film.

My guest is Abby Martin, a journalist and documentarian. We explore the early years of internet culture (before big platforms and algorithms) back when Occupy Wall Street and 4chan were on the same side. This formative period gave birth to the first wave of an anti-establishment alternative media, where conspiracy theorists and radical anti-capitalists shared a similar online sphere.

We dive deeper into Natalie’s thinking on Anti-Zionism. Later, we discuss the decade long arc and development of her creative practice; from concept to writing to film-making. We explore the shifting role of cultural institutions in a world of platforms and user generated content, cancel culture and activist blow-back.

We discuss the distinct but overlapping value systems of art and entertainment. Is an online view count more democratic than an elite institutions? Do we lose a humanistic, intangible quality of art when we begin to put quantitative metrics onto it? Should the museum become another streaming platform?

"Anyone that claims they understand the world — this immediately marks them out as a fraud." — Kevin Lee KharasAfter the imperial collapse (40 global offices, thousands of employees, bankruptcy), VICE magazine is now run by a lean, London-based team — and it is making one of the best culture publications currently in circulation. Ben Ditto (Vice global editorial director; founder of Ditto Nation; creative dir. Yaya Labs; founding creative dir. Dazed Beauty) and Kevin Lee Kharas (Vice editor-in-chief and co-founder of the electronic duo Real Lies) come on New Models to discuss their current “Not The Photo Issue” (feat. Dean Kissick x Adam Curtis, Bertie Brandes, Mat Dryhurst, Günseli Yalcinkaya, Duncan Wilson, and others) and their media philosophy at large. Subscribe to VICE: “Not The Photo Issue”For more: NM49 | GPT Ditto w/ Ben Ditto

My guest is John Wilson, a film maker and documentarian. He is the director of a new movie “The History of Concrete.” Today’s program is part of the 82nd Whitney Biennial, curated by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer at the Whitney Museum in New York City.We discuss the urban environment, themes of material and spiritual renewal, city infrastructure and affordable housing -- alongside a cast of surreal, comedic and heart breaking characters. This is the first of several Doomscroll episodes to be recorded live during the 2026 Whitney Biennial.

We’re joined by media scholars Daniël de Zeeuw & Sal Hagen, who have been closely tracking the weirder end of the internet for over a decade—their research and analysis of 4chan has made them low-key legends within internet studies. As 4chan’s logic is now pervasive across the social web, Daniël and Sal, together with their colleagues at the Amsterdam-based OILab, have been modeling novel ways of thinking about our current communication space that travel well beyond the network media / public sphere template to something far stranger — and more accurate. For more: Hagen, S., de Zeeuw, D., & Venturini, T. (2025). Digital Rhythmanalysis: Studying Memetic and Affective Rhythms on the Post-Viral Web. Platforms & Society, 2.de Zeeuw, D., Birchall, C., & Knight, P. (2025). On Psyop Realism. Cultural Politics, 21(2), 240-257Hagen, S. (2024) Reactionary Rhythm: Quali-quantitative studies of 4chan/pol/. PhD thesis, University of AmsterdamHagen, S., & de Zeeuw, D. (2023). Based and confused: Tracing the political connotations of a memetic phrase across the web. Big Data & Society, 10(1)

We explore “the Democratic penalty”, new research from the Center for Working Class Politics, my weird media analysis drawn from porn and the furry community (real), the Europhile vision of socialism and the on-going crisis at the southern border. Is AOC the successor to Bernie Sanders?

My guest is Dustin “Dino” Guastella, the Director of Operations at Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia, a monthly columnist at Damage Magazine, and a board member at the Center for Working-Class Politics.We discuss woke ideology, the elite capture of the Democratic party, working class voters moving to the right, failures in left-wing messaging and the legacy of civil rights leader Bayard Rustin.