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Behind the paywall the rats discussed the importance of Journeying, and this side, where the freebies never cease, they discuss Learning, a symptom of journeying, but also not a given. The lessons must be EARNED. Like, realising ‘things’ in your thirties, which some (meaning anyone in their early twenties) might compare to going roughly into that good night, without realising that later life isn’t just an extended tragedy when your proximity to adolescence can no longer be pretended, like most American media would have you believe (because the teenage brain makes for better consumers). Also on the minutes this week; Ken Russels The Devils which gets a 4k remaster this year and which both rats are VERY excited for, the discrete charm of a Hessian slip (somewhere between Courtney Love and a North Korean internment camp), the various obsessions and peculiarities of Mossad, and a real argument for the posthumous canonisation of one Aileen Wuornos. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this dystopian fever dream we call reality, with everything worsening apace (faster than a forgotten cube of Colby in the back of the fridge) it’s easy to forget that we once had different aspirations, that we once expected a rising gradient of liveability from our world, and not the agonisingly slow decline we all know and loathe. And yet the punch might be in really rubbing our faces in the muck, and NOT in fey delusions of well meaning individuals with authority and resources suddenly remembering they have a conscience and choosing to do things differently. Because if the room’s filling with smoke, then we may as well get high on the fumes of a dying world, rather than strain for a vanishing high ground that’s only going to be rubbed out by fracking or data-centre related erosion anyway. Or something. Also, Taylor Swift is a caucasian anti-christ and her musical offerings are more harmful to culture than the loss of our enlightened gay elders during the AIDS pandemic. Charli forever. What is the connection between Epstein and the manosphere? Patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Because this is nothing if not a searing political podcast holding power to account with a smorgasbord of stolid sources and bonafide facts, the rats would be remiss not to mention Nicky Hager’s latest blockbuster Dirty Work, in which a concerned citizen (aren’t we all) finally takes down The Ugly Bitch Forum, FKA The Tax Payers Union. In a turn of events shocking to absolutely no one with more than three braincells left, it turns out the Tax Payers Union (who are most certainly NOT an actual union) are pretty much American flavoured lobbyists of supreme evil and networked corruption. Because undermining public spending on things like, idk, health education and the arts, is not something an organisation that’s allegedly ‘for the people’ spends its time doing. Good on you Nicky, from us to you. Behind the paywall the rats unpack the parallels between Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire and Salo Patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

to ask the question is AI art even art, a working definition of art itself has to be established. Which is far too labour intensive a task for the rats this week, who are battling their own personal demons, none of which have anything to do with the ongoing culture wars lol. On the table for the non-paying customer this week; dramatic readings, the dismal stylings of cultural theorist and proto Marxist Mark Fisher, Pink again (because like a shit stain she takes more than one rinse cycle to be gotten rid of), and finally the ancient battle between the working poor and the professional class. Desperate to hear the Rats perform buttrock karaoke? Find that and more at Patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are haunted. Haunted by futures that never happened. So says mark Fisher, of Capitalist Realism fame. This week, the rats get critical and robustly discuss Fisher’s Hauntological musings, in which the despair of cancelled utopian futures filters down into production choices in popular music. Also on the minutes of this penitently delayed but hopefully well received gas session; the lows and lows of online hate, cookie sacks, and the unbearable lightness of jokes at the expense of is men. What recent film has Samuel contemplating his sexuality? Find out at Patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The rats are beleaguered besieged and generally against it but defy some very material odds and physically reunite in Big Daddy’s studio for much delayed session of grievance airing. Which this week includes; a generational loss of moral objectivity, taking things in good faith (cough), the myriad charms of Ninajirachi, the fetid horrors of an executive government, and mushrooms again (see behind the paywall for yet more mushrooms content). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anti bullying doesn’t sound like something the rats would be into. And it isn’t. But for a brief moment, one of the rats was poised to be its spokesperson in an already saturated market of travelling virtue signallers; like troubadours but more patronising. Also on the agenda; the gung-ho mentality of Sylvia Plath (who didn’t let two failed suicide attempts stop her from eventually knocking it out of the park), the strange beauty of intentional absences, the art of scamming, the endless hospo horror of Mothers Day, and the uncanny freedom of F**k It. Unconventional cooking tips like substituting kewpie mayo with jif and more over at Patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is nepotism? Is it something the rats should feel sore about being born without, or can they live and die without it? It looks like a sweet enough ride from the outside looking in, but in all seriousness, what’s in a name? Also on the agenda for our freeloaders this week; how Charli XCX’s pending album is already hella Skins coded (Skins > Euphoria obvi), how tax and civics are complete mysteries to anyone under the age of fifty (and even then), the financial pipe dream of ever being in Edinburgh Fringe again, and why our love of Tamatha Paul is the reason we will continue to keep our distance from her (it’s for her own good). If you benefit from nepotism, help out some beneficiaries at Patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy Fourth of July! Just kidding. There’s no way either rat would ever attach positive affect to a day celebrating the most obnoxious landmass this side of Pangea (and wasn’t SHE a bitch). But the rats WILL settle for shitting on its golden child Taylor Swift whose wedding, despite being a BIG SECRET, we can practically remote-view with full accuracy for the Shein-flavoured polyester nightmare that it most definitely was; and, not to be bested (and certainly testifying to the spiritual pettiness of the whole American race) Beyonce’s surprise release of new music to pull focus from the White Devil (quote Ivy Wolk) probably landed as well as Lena Dunham’s awkward speech about all football players being secretly gay. The rats LOVE a wild and unfounded speculation about a male celeb’s secret fruitiness. However, the gays probably don’t want to be tarnished with that big white brush, except for the beige gays who already worship Taylor (and to be clear, Taylor gays are the ones that think salt is a spice and consider Twilight ‘literature’). But enough about an empire in decline; this week the rats also discuss contemporary NZ art. Specifically, is Dick Frizelle’s Mickey to Tiki a problematic faux pas, a benign piece of pop history, or a prescient foreshadowing of our inexplicably deepening relationship with a neo-colonizer? Okay yeah the rats can’t stop themselves from harping on about America. But that’s like, only because their new ambassador here wishes we’d renege our stance on nuclear power/weaponry and like, this is pretty much the beginning of an ugly and drawn out end of American hegemony, which if we had any sense as a country at all we’d get well clear of; just like you’d get clear of the smelly drunk guy at a house party who no one can remember inviting, but that everyone’s afraid of because he seems totally volatile. Yeah. Merika. Where do the rats fit on the spectrum of Kats Mansfield to Bonnie Blue? Find out at Patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Holy mackerel, what the effing eff is wrong with this country? Referring of course to the vermin issue NZ is currently facing. The vermin in question? Not your usual bright eyed fluffy tailed hosts, but one neoconservative Christian a*****e, a reverend (is he?) B. Tamaki whose recent vitriol—a literal call to exterminate immigrants/muslims—is being met with the kind of infuriating lassez faire that, where D Church and related parties is concerned, we’ve unfortunately come to expect. As if this sort of ideological tarnish was something that just goes away by itself; like an STD you’re too embarrassed to acknowledge, so you start rinsing with apple cider vinegar and stop looking down when you pee and hope for the best rather than go to the Puhutukawa Clinic where you just KNOW the nurse will guilt you into starting the humiliating text chain of notifying potential exposures (say goodbye to your situationship lol). But seriously, between Brian and One Nation across the ditch, and NZ high schoolers denying the Holocaust in class (a real thing) you start to wonder if the conspiracy theorists who revile CERN for jumping us around timelines might actually be on to something. Like, who could’ve predicted back in the innocence of the early 2000s that THIS is where we’d end up. Oh, did we say innocence? We forgot that America killed like a million people in the Middle East. I mean, that was the decade Britney’s Black Out was released, so pardon us for being distracted. Oh yes, then there was that big September thing at the beginning of the decade. So…maybe we’ve only imagined this time of innocence and actually we’ve been languishing in American-stoked geopolitical chaos since, well, forever. So if anything’s truly changed maybe it’s just our perception and we’ve actually been living in hell this whole time. Who can say. Also this week; the oddity of Madonna, the ever-loving lure and hype of drink driving (caveat, neither rat has ever done this), the unshakeable feeling that it’s all for nothing, the creeping dread of a dying world, the niggling regret of knowing you don’t really love your partner and maybe wanna go gay, the REAL reason Rihanna hasn’t released music since 2015 (Gen Z says who?) and, finally, a sample of Susan Boyle’s leaked EDM single ‘Unpasteurised’ off her forthcoming new album Twin Peaks; Ballads about my Big Juicy Naturals. Fund our adrenochrome aspirations at Patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well holly friggin moly if the apocalypse train hasn’t already left the station, which it has, and gosh darn it don’t we have whip lash. And to think, we’re BARELY into phase one of the reptilian terraforming procedure, and the rats already feel like calling parley with the overlords; if only because the high cortisol environment of collapse is actually very bad for gut health (and everything else). And yet the rats are choosing discourse over despair (this week anyway). And in doing so, conversations ensue in which intellectual grandstanding stops being the purview of book-tokers who need us to know they’ve adopted Landian Accelerationism as a personality, and starts being the giddy flex of two dopamine-deficient optimists who at the end of the day (and just like YOU) only want to have a good time. For example, the need for a system that won’t gleefully march us into miserable omnicide of every life form on the planet goes beyond some cuddly-feely world-spirit. Rather, it’s completely aesthetic! To take a quote from Oscar Wilde; “I’m pro socialism because I don’t wanna leave my house and see a bunch of poor people, it’s a total bummer”. Okay we’re paraphrasing. But seriously, wanting to make the world a better place doesn’t need to get much more complicated than that. Unless you’re Elon Musk and you somehow think your asset list magically translates into utopia, the same way we’ve been taught to believe in ‘trickle down’. Well I guess trickle down does exist, but it must be a burst sewer pipe over our heads because what’s reaching us down here in the fetid gutters of late stage capitalism is swill and shit. And not even fresh shit. It’s the backed up shit of a world that’s been dying for decades, maybe for the better part of a century. Sorry, we mentioned we were trying to have a good time. But maybe having a good time also means trying to do something about the bad time. Because like, call me crazy, but an open air prison piled thick with corpses and human misery isn’t exactly a party venue. It’s a mass grave honey. Also, the rats provide an update on Nicola Willis’s clearly embattled Ozempic journey. Stay tuned. Venture into our Backrooms at Patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Johanna describes the best live performance she’s ever seen in her life—which is saying something, as a seasoned performer herself, and someone very much in the world. It’s a piece called A Year Without Summer by a recently internet-famous artist, thanks to a performance at the Venice Biennial in which she played a human dongle inside a giant bell (and so, The Bell Woman). Summer takes her out of the bell jar and into a long wet orgiastic bacchanal of carnal delight and mayhem. If Caligula had more of an eye for stage production, basically. And dear god is it heartening to know that enormous, antagonistic, unsafe unfiltered work is still being funded SOMEWHERE, and that there are artists still willing and capable of pulling off extremism without settling for Tumblr-friendly provocation (cough, Sam Levinson). Also on the agenda this week, we reel like the rest of the country as our government stops even pretending like they don’t want us all to die, and aren’t actively taking steps to make this happen (because they are). I mean, cutting public servant roles and replacing them with literal SkyNet is, um, maybe not the buzz; and yet here we are anyway, getting ready to feel the inevitable shit wave once it’s CoPilot calling the shots (and, being Nicola Willis’s preferred AI module, why not?). Lord knows we’ll REALLY be feeling that mythical trickle-down once the binary-bot that usually walks you through your spreadsheets is deciding which families are worthy of financial support, and which should be street-walking in Dickensian rags holding a tin cup out for shrapnel from strangers. Yeah, so cool and normal aye. Also also, the rats take back their previous stance on Fritter Fest and wonder if they have the combined culinary prowess to have their own truck at the next inaugural event—whether sweet or savoury offerings is something undecided as yet, but nothing they can’t figure out over a weekend vision board. Finally, the rats mourn the loss of one of the Topp Twins, and tend to agree with the surviving twin’s AMA speech in which Ole Paul Goldstein (sorry, Goldsmith) and his pie-loving cuck-party had their 2-billion dollar defence-slice questioned. I mean, we’re not actively trying to start a war with anyone are we? Is that something we’re into, as a country? Like, there are easier more fun ways to nosedive into the abyss than friggin war (and they all involve orgies at crack dens, just saying). patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well, as winter descends and New Zealanders retreat into Bronte flavoured gothic doldrums, some turn to the familiar for comfort, the known, the whimsical. And for the rats, this can sometimes mean indulging in a slightly embarrassing but mostly innocuous nostalgia watch of Adventure Time, which should actually have its roses as a forward-thinking animation that still smacks of post-modern vitalities and contemporary myth making in a media landscape that is annoyingly obsessed with (still, if you can believe it) teenagers having sex. I mean, at the very least it seems like Sam Levinson’s third season of Euphoria is pissing people off intentionally, making them feel icky enough they regret ever citing the first two seasons as quote-unquote ‘quality’. Which anyone who grew up on Skins could already plainly see was a complete ruse. Also; the rats comprehensively tackle (cough) the cultural weirdness of gooning and maxxing, which currently exist as a sort-of binary of optimisation and its opposite. Basically, the maxxer games the system like a chaos magician, working advantages and discarding anything that impedes upward mobility; while the gooner intentionally casts his time and energy on the fire, wasting himself into oblivion through porn-flavoured idles in an attempt to wrangle some agency back from the hampster wheel of late-stage capitalism. Which is the better method? More importantly, what kind of material conditions could create something like the dedicated gooner, a wastrel as committed to the bit of passive self destruction as a performance artist from the late seventies, or a sixteenth century martyr. There is so much of Bartleby the Scrivener in gooning, Herman Melville’s short story in which Bartleby—a words man—passively refuses the mundane tasks of his position (“I would prefer not to”) with such radical consistency that he is eventually locked up for it. All because he refuses to participate and lend his energies to a system of bureaucratic lashes and genocidal vim. The gooner is essentially Bartleby with wifi. Looking for more goon material? patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jesus H Christ is it a crime to be messy these days or what? Seriously, the optimisation metrics, this ideology of converting every micro-event into revenue is becoming very effing suffocating. Like seriously, is there no inch on god’s green (ish) earth safe from the parasitic reach of The Economic Incentive? In this vacuum packed cat suit of a social climate the rats wonder about the true value of performative politeness, and whether we might be better off showing each other our teeth every once in a while; especially seeing as the edicts of politeness are rooted in maintaining bourgeois orders, vertically stacked ones of the haves and have nots etcetera. This is obviously not licence to treat other people badly, but it is something of a call to consider the essential mysteries of being human and act accordingly, to treat each other as the exhaustive evolutionary miracles we are rather than a collection of standardised pathologies and KPIs, with trackable social-media interfaces. God forbid we should try to confuse the lines drawn for us by acting outside of them, however this might look . Something of a necessity, actually, when those lines are put in place by a sprawling network of genocidal imperialism. Anyway The Devil Wears Prada 2 is out! While one rat feels meh about it the other is candidly surprised by how not shit it is. Obviously things could’ve gone either way. While Sam hasn’t seen it (on principle) Johanna breaks down all the ways it tries (we’ll assume limply) to lambast the vacuity of fashion under late stage capitalism, which is as far away from being art as Christopher Luxon is from being a competent prime minister. But just like Luxon, Prada 2s more cutting critique’s of capitalism overall are…absent. But I guess you’ve gotta give it its chops, that a film about fashion coming out in a world where luxury consumerism is provenly anything but benign (this isn’t 2006 anymore) could even attempt to have some acumen, some awareness, even though it clearly doesn’t reach Sontag levels of criticism. I guess it’s sort of like watching a criminal lawyer (maybe Epstein’s?) monologue about the evils of lying. Or watching an evangelical christian pastor with a DL Grindr account lecture a room of depressed normies about the sanctity of marriage. In a nut shell, the call is coming from inside the house. Do you remember Hopoating your friends on the playground? Playing Buck Buck with the hopes of grinding on the jock? Join us at patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In honour of Tāmaki Noir tonight being hosted by Emma and featuring Samuel here's an episode from the back catalogue. a refined and amiable guest - this week we talk to journalist Emma Gleason about life, love, and the dystopian abolishment of truth in a media landscape that has no center. Delve into our back catalogue, bonus episodes and video content at patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.