Episode 29: Culture Industry, Media Fuel, and Celebrity Privacy

Happy New Year, everyone! 

Derek and I are excited to bring you our first episode of 2020. Today's chat is a follow-up to the last episode of 2019. If you haven't heard it yet, you'll want to go back and check it out or this episode will leave you feeling as confused as Tommy was after Episode 28: Kawhi Leonard and the Expectation of Privacy in the Public Sphere.

Over the break, Tommy felt Episode 28 should be continued as a discussion about culture industry: the production of psychological need, desire, and interest through the mass production of capital goods - like sports, like social media, like the celebrity. Tommy entered the break unsettled with the idea that sports fans simply enjoy sports because they choose to - a notion that Tommy felt Derek was endorsing in the previous episode. As it turns out, this was not the case. Nonetheless, chatting about what was meant launches into a fascinating chat about how and whether we can think of celebrities as products versus drivers of culture industry. Their debate leads to an important and perhaps forever unsettle-able question: do we fuel the media, or does the media fuel us? Perhaps the question itself is misleading? Tune in the find out!

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