Free preview cross-over with the Bang-Bang Podcast. Van and Lyle kick off their Andor series with Slate culture editor Jenny G. Zhang, diving into the show’s slow-burn opening arc where imperial bootlickers, jealous love interests, and rebels in the making collide on the Outer Rim. They discuss what makes Andor—a property of the Star Wars universe—feel different than its franchise kin, from its social realism to its psychological bite. If The Battle of Algiers looms large, so does Parable of the Sower, especially the show’s landscape of authoritarian company towns and the simmering hints of a revolutionary break.

They talk about the Preox-Morlana security force as East India Company meets Blackwater, and Deputy Inspector Syril Karn as the story’s omnipresent archetype—the insecure man desperate to matter. Just like the pathetic rent-a-cops Andor is forced to kill, and the equally envious Timm Karlo, another tragic loser who dies trying to make up for his fateful angst.

History appears to turn not so much on generals and emperors, but on the choices and contradictions of broken men. Men stuck in systems they didn’t build, and whose real breaking is yet to come.

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Jenny’s website

Jenny on Bluesky

Jenny on Twitter

“The Andor Dilemma: Pop Culture’s Place in Leftist Strategy,” by Van Jackson

“Introducing Andor Analysed, Part 1,” by Jamie Woodcock

The Battle of Algiers Episode

Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, by Rashid Khalidi

What's wrong with trying to be a Washington insider these days? How different is nuclear thinking under Trump compared to previous Democratic and Republican presidencies? Is Trump's "golden dome" idea just a grift (yes)? What's the best way to raise public consciousness about the danger of nuclear weapons? And what role could film and pop culture play in building mass support for arms control and nuclear disarmament? Dr. Van Jackson sits down with Emma Claire Foley--an anti-nuclear expert--to discuss her new essay in The Baffler magazine, "Probably Oblivion."

Emma Claire's piece in The Baffler: https://thebaffler.com/latest/probably-oblivion-foley

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Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the individuals and not of any institutions.

Free preview cross-over with the Bang-Bang Podcast. Long before the Patriot Act, long before “See Something, Say Something,” long before 9/11—there was The Siege. Released in 1998, this Bruce Willis–Denzel Washington vehicle depicts a post–terror attack New York placed under martial law. The city is bombed, neighborhoods are surveilled, and Arab and Muslim men are rounded up en masse, held indefinitely in cages under the Brooklyn Bridge. And yet, in perhaps the most jarring twist of all, the whole thing was co-written by Lawrence Wright, the celebrated journalist behind the GWOT-era classic, The Looming Tower.

In this episode, Van and Lyle are joined once again by screenwriter Kevin Fox to revisit The Siege, not just as an artifact of pre-9/11 paranoia, but as an uncanny rehearsal for everything that would come after. Together they break down the film’s oscillation between prescience and myopia, from Bruce Willis as cartoonish generalissimo to Denzel Washington as constitutionalist good cop. The story’s themes of blowback, anti-Muslim hysteria, and civil-military overreach may come off as heavy-handed or superficial, but there are so many moments that still hit disturbingly close to home.

Van, Lyle, and Kevin ask: What can a work like The Siege tell us about liberal complicity in the War on Terror? What happens when a film simultaneously warns of repression while making its own contribution to the atmosphere of fear? And what’s with the horny thermal cam surveillance scene?

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