To access the full episode — subscribe to our Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod]. 

In the first of DPP's special book episodes, Sam interviews Oxford politics lecturer and NYT contributing writer Anton Jäger [https://x.com/AntonJaegermm] on his new book: Hyperpolitics (2026, Verso) [https://www.versobooks.com/products/3460-hyperpolitics?srsltid=AfmBOopYUZB5Wc4sLyLqyXbVWML5kkZobmawbVshSiSdz8dIcBMCWFJZ].

Jäger's text is an expansion of two essays: 'From Bowling Alone to Posting Alone [https://jacobin.com/2022/12/from-bowling-alone-to-posting-alone]' (2022) and 'Everything is Hyperpolitical [https://thepointmag.com/politics/everything-is-hyperpolitical/]' (2023).

Through an analysis of political change in the late 20th and 21st centuries and the curation of various cultural objects: the novels of Michel Houellebecq and Annie Ernaux, plus the photos of Wolfgang Tillmans, Jäger makes the case for five types of politics immediately before, and after, the 'end of history.'

These sequential stages are 1920s-1940s mass politics (high politicisation and high institutionalisation), 1950s institutional politics (medium politicisation and high institutionalisation), 1990s and 2000s post-politics (low politicisation and low institutionalisation), 2010s anti-politics (medium politicisation and low institutionalisation), and, finally, 2020s hyperpolitics (high politicisation and low institutionalisation).

Has the 'end of history' really ended — or are the 2020s just a continuation of 1990s deinstitutionalisation with more posting?

Find out in today's episode.

Special Episode – Hyperpolitics (2026) w/Anton Jäger

Patreon is here.  [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod]

Today's DPP episode explores the little-known 1994 feature by multi-media artist Jessica Hagedorn – Fresh Kill.

Recycling, sushi, yuppies, toxic waste, nameless megacorporations, ethical hacking – Staten Island – Fresh Kill has it all, wrapped up in a dissonant prose-poem of a script.

But did the world really turn into the endlessly diffused and globalised set of networks that Hagedorn predicts?

Find out in today's episode.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 25 — Fresh Kill (1994)

Find our patreon here [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod]. 

The DPP boys were picking through the flea markets of Berlin — looking for Trabant car parts and old jars of Spreewaldgurken. In amongst the clutter, we came across a dusty videotape — Goodbye, Lenin! (2003).

Wolfgang Becker's breakout hit — a deep dive into Ostalgie — only a few years after German reunification — asks the question: what if you could keep living in a dead political system and world? How possible is it to protect ourselves from the shocks of capitalism, to retreat into nostalgia?

Find out in today's episode.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 24 — Goodbye, Lenin! (2003)

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This week, DPP delve into the high school comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). The film, directed by Amy Heckerling and based on the gonzo reporting of Cameron Crowe, is a vignette of teenage life in suburban southern California in the 1980s.

With Reagan in power, plentiful jobs, and easy credit, what did adolescence look like for a broad swathe of the American population not normally depicted in films, for lack of interest and dramatic effect? (i.e the Californian middle class). And what was the texture of life like in the early 1980s, before the neoliberal turn had had its full effect on the same group of people?

Find out in today's episode.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 23 — Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

Chase is solo on this episode with guest Andrew Young to discuss i ♥ huckabees, an under-the-radar feature film by early Gen-X wunderkind David O. Russell.

NIMBYism, environmentalism, cod-psychology, adolescent existentialism, self-help, the fear of suburbia, ecological doom, space-hoppers – i ♥ huckabees has it all.

Where does a generation go when questions of material survival have been answered?

Find out in today's episode.

Patreon, as always, is here. [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod] 

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 22 —  i ♥ huckabees (2004) w/Andrew Young

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This week, DPP takes on Gen X myth-making about the city of Manchester – namely, through Michael Winterbottom's 2002 film 24 Hour Party People.

Why did Manchester explode as a Gen X-era subcultural and music mecca in the 1980s and 1990s, overtaking places more central to the boomer consciousness like Liverpool? And how did those involved in the post-punk and acid-house scenes of the era understand the sociology and economics of the epoch in retrospect?

Find out in today's episode. 

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 21 — 24 Hour Party People (2002)

Connect with us on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod]. 

DPP journeys to the Garden State, and Chase's political domain, this week — that's right, we're covering slacker favourites Clerks (1994) and Clerks II (2006).

Directed by Kevin Smith, these films explore what it's like to spend a decade working marginal, dead-end jobs, without actively identifying oneself as marginal or a failure, because you've got your friends, pop culture, and ever-present escape routes.

Were the lifestyles exhibited in Smith’s oeuvre only possible during a brief period at the end of history?

Find out in today’s episode.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 20 — Clerks (1994) + Clerks II (2006)

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The DPP boys head back up to Scotland (we can't keep away), in search of meaning in deindustrialised hellscapes — that's right, we're doing Trainspotting (1996) and Danny Boyle's lesser-known follow-up: T2 (2017).

Is there any compensation for the full-scale loss of meaning, association and community brought about by the offshoring of manufacturing and the rise of finance? Individualism, punk rock, raves, heroin — EU redevelopment funds?

Listen to this week's episode to find out.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 19 — Trainspotting (1996) + T2 (2017)

Subscribe on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod]. 

In the first of our solo episodes this season, the DPP boys sit down, shut their asses up, and listen to Gen X women in the workplace, specifically Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow and Alanna Ubach in Jill Sprecher's 1997 office comedy Clockwatchers [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clockwatchers].

If Office Space, Fight Club and Falling Down express a male rage at deindustrialisation, the meaninglessness of white collar work, and arbitrary hierarchies — that is very much still with us — what does Clockwatchers have to say about the first generation of women (1965-1980) partaking equally (at least formally and legally) in the professional labour market?

Interestingly, Sprecher's female leads couldn't be further from the 'Lean In' feminism of Sheryl Sandberg that came to dominate the 2010s — and in many ways they share more with their Gen X male analogues (Tyler Durden, Peter Gibbons) than might, at first, be expected. Because, of course, everyone (no matter your identity marker) can agree that "work sucks."

Find out in today's episode.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 18 — Clockwatchers (1997)

This week, the DPP lads are joined by David Jamieson [https://x.com/David_Jamieson7], journalist and editor of Conter Scot [https://www.conter.scot/] to discuss Mel Gibson's 1995 epic Braveheart.

What does a botched historical drama about Scotland's First War of Independence (1296-1328) by an American-Australian traditionalist Catholic tell us about the political conscioussness of Gen X and the contemporary American right? What does, and did, freedom mean to those born in the 1960s and 1970s?

Find out in today's episode.

Like, subscribe, rate, and connect with us on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod]. 

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 17 — Braveheart (1995) w/David Jamieson

Culture at the End of History 

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Chase Padusniak

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