Podcast Summary: TRASHFUTURE — "Into the Bariverse" feat. Josh Boerman

Date: March 10, 2026
Hosts: Riley (@raaleh), Hussein (@HKesvani), Milo (@milo_edwards), Alice (aka November/@inthesedeserts), Nova (@postoctobrist)
Special Guest: Josh Boerman (@boshj), The Worst of All Possible Worlds

Episode Overview

In this episode, the TRASHFUTURE crew is joined by podcast media maven Josh Boerman for a wide-ranging discussion using the lens of media consolidation, British politics, and the increasingly bizarre psychic fallout from late capitalism. The team opens with personal nostalgia and sardonic school stories, moves into a bleakly comedic breakdown of the recent megamerger in the American entertainment industry—culminating in the so-called "Bariverse" (a reference to cultural commentator Bari Weiss suddenly being everywhere)—and places it all within the context of British political decline, economic anxiety, and the global energy crisis.

The conversation weaves together trenchant commentary, absurd hypotheticals, and historical parallels, keeping TRASHFUTURE’s signature irreverence and dark humor front and center.

Key Segments & Discussion Points

1. School Nostalgia, Emo Wars, and the Mick Jagger Center

[00:16–07:07]

• Nova’s morning Wikipedia spiral leads to discovering the austere "Mick Jagger Center" in Dartford.
• Hussein describes its function as part-school, part-private music rental venue, and "nondescript... but a particular boring thing place."
• The legendary "Battle of the Bands" is remembered as a collision between Kent's attempt at Midwestern emo and a crowd of tracksuit-clad, alcopop-drinking locals, ending in a surreal, factional brawl.
• Joke debates ensue: was Hussein an emo or neutral? (“I was neutral because I couldn't afford any of the emo stuff.” – Hussein [03:47])
• Off-color local legends: "I knew four guys who got jacked off in the music rooms here." – Hussein [05:13]
• British culture: “A lot of British politics...is really about who was jerking off who.” – Hussein [07:22]
• Connection between adolescent ridiculousness and the sorry state of UK public life.

2. Global Chaos, European Decline, and the New “Bariverse”

[09:00–15:32]

• Josh recounts globe-trotting just as the "start of the big war" hits, prompting ironic “Where were you when World War 3 started?” jokes.
• The crew pivots to the megamerger of media giants (Skydance/Paramount/Warner Bros.), laying out a landscape in which "Bari Weiss is on everything," even joking that she's an Avenger (“They're making Bari Weiss an avenger” – Riley [10:22]).
• The "Bariverse" is conceived as an absurdist metafiction: anime Bari Weiss, Miles Morales Bari Weiss, and “cel-shaded Barry Weiss” [10:39].
• Nova articulates the forced ubiquity and cultural fatigue of being compelled not just to watch, but "like and be friends with" media personalities like Weiss [11:02].
• The economic backdrop looms—energy price spikes, severed UK transport, and "ambient warming via student flats" all contribute to a mounting sense of end-of-empire absurdity.

3. British Political and Economic Doomscroll

[11:44–23:31]

• Nova, November, and the rest bemoan the repeat cycle of energy shocks:
  • The UK is woefully unprepared; living standards are more precarious than ever (“There’s no reason for UK living standards...to be that exposed.” – Nova [25:57])
  • The inability/unwillingness of Labour to do anything structural is foregrounded, with dark jokes about four-day work weeks and “PVP enabled” notifications for real life [18:25].
• Starmer’s Labour is lampooned for being “the most captured by commercial landlords, Labour Party there has been” [18:02].
• On immigration/asylum: a rundown of increasingly draconian, Kafkaesque policies and the bipartisan arms race to be tougher on asylum seekers.
  • “Their response...We’re having this economic shock...think the solution is to say we’re going to send people to like worse Rwanda.” – Nova [23:00]
• A first-past-the-post system runs into a “European-style” multiparty split, producing “a government that people are going to have like 3% confidence in.” – Riley [24:06]
• The overall mood: a political order doing the things “they always wanted to do,” regardless of public want or economic reality [29:29].

Notable Quotes:

• “I think an independent, alarmingly Mediterranean climated Glaswegian socialist republic might be the way.” – November [13:16]
• "It’s a labor story as much as it’s an AI story, as much as it’s a debt financing story." – Riley [51:06]

4. Media Merger Mania: Into the Bariverse

[32:26–47:31]

• In-depth on the Ellison family’s Skydance buying Paramount, then Warner Brothers—creating a near-monopoly in English-language cultural production.
  • “The people who do the deal...it’s about getting a deal done that’s favorable to the administration.” – Josh [33:56]
  • “The entertainment administration.” – Riley [34:23]
• The role of Trump administration in pressuring favorable outcomes, and the openly transactional language of “the art of the deal.”
• Bari Weiss (and her conservative cohort) take center stage in this new media world: “Bari Weiss is kind of like Spiderman and they have the rights to her, but she’s only in like some of the timelines.” – November [10:31]
• The financial engine driving consolidation: Ellison personally guarantees $45B on $111B deal; $79B in total debt, credit status “junk.”
  • “Paramount’s acquisition...will leave the combined company carrying $79 billion in financial constraints. That will shape everything from what gets made to how risk is tolerated.” – Cited from Indiewire [44:06]
  • “They become like news sites...you can see maybe 20% of what you’re actually trying to read.” – Riley [41:23]
• AI takeover of the Hollywood studios: “All of this library of content is for sale. Guess what? We can train a generative AI algorithm with it.” – Riley [45:34]
• Satirical vision of the future: Bari Weiss, AI-generated, on every screen; Trump’s culture war lever is pushed, but "nobody watches TV" anymore, making the effort an "end-stage death spasm" [47:00].
  • “The only place this logic gets you to is...one company, one state, inextricably interlinked...art, media, and commerce all dictated from up top.” – Josh [51:06]

Notable Quotes:

• “They’re making Barry Weiss an Avenger.” – Riley [10:22]
• “If you lose the emo Battle of the Bands, they throw you into the crematorium.” – Josh [07:57]
• “This is a project with diminishing returns to further radicalize the last remaining boomers to the right. Everyone is on TikTok now.” – November [47:04]
• “The future of the film industry...is independent.co.uk anytime you click on it.” – Nova [41:47]

5. Satirical Scenarios: Chud Titanic & the Death of Narrative

[52:12–56:34]

• Bizarre hypothetical films: “Islamophobic Titanic” and “CHUD transphobic Titanic”; Bari Weiss captains the doomed ship due to DEI, “draw me like one of your French girls, did you just assume my gender?” [53:26]
• Conservative content creation fever dream: “Balloonie Tunes join the IDF,” Mumsnet AI runs Pinewood, Ben Shapiro’s big screenwriting break.
• The pod concludes by circling back, with the joke that all critique has been balanced by allowing Barry Weiss her (theoretical) “right of reply.”
• Calls to seize the means of cultural production: “What I need you to do is start encouraging an aligned takeover of Pinewood Studios because we have the first hit, which is transphobic Titanic in the bag.” – Riley [55:53]

Memorable Moments & Quotes

• “You have to fight guys in tracksuits...like Final Fantasy, and you have to fight guys in tracksuits.” – Nova [03:32]
• “Getting jacked off is not in conformance with Mick Jagger’s values.” – November [06:37]
• “Nobody watches tv. What this is trying to do is...radicalize the last remaining boomers to the right.” – November [47:03]
• “The only place that this line of logic can get you to is...one company, one state, inextricably interlinked with each other, where everything in terms of art, media and commerce is all dictated from up top.” – Josh [51:06]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:16–07:07] — School nostalgia, Battle of the Bands, Mick Jagger Center lore
• [09:00–15:32] — War, world-historic chaos, media consolidation, Bariverse riff
• [11:44–23:31] — British energy/wage crises, immigration clampdowns, Starmer's Labour prognosis
• [32:26–47:31] — The Ellison media merger, AI takeover, debt as cultural determinant
• [52:12–56:34] — Absurd “Chud Titanic” scenarios, narrative collapse, pop culture as death spasm

Tone & Takeaways

Staying true to TRASHFUTURE’s style, the episode fuses gallows humor with incisive criticism of late capitalism, media conglomeration, and incompetent/hostile governance. The Bariverse/megamerger plotline and British politics are treated not as distant phenomena but as part of an interconnected system where psychic, economic, and social dissolution are both joked about and taken deadly seriously.

The guest cross-pollination between US media analysis (via Josh) and the UK political malaise creates a layered conversation about power, narrative, debt, and the future of what we see and believe.

If there’s a message, it’s that the future—of art, politics, and daily life—is being written by people whose vision is both horrifyingly coherent in service of capital, and staggeringly unserious on the human details...with the rest of us forced to find solidarity (and laughter) in the ruins.

Further Listening:

• The Worst of All Possible Worlds (Josh’s podcast): Weekly deep dives into media & pop culture.
• Ill Conceived: Analysing natalism and its place in the culture wars.

Endnote:
"You know what? We had a whole segment about why all this chuted out media consolidation is probably bad and incredibly financially risky. Now I think we can say that we've brought a balanced perspective." – Riley [56:34]