Dazed and Discoursed

• Are we all severed?

  Dan Erickson’s critically acclaimed Apple TV+ series Severance has returned for its second season. The show centres on Lumon, a mysterious corporation that has developed a novel medical procedure known as ‘severance’. This process allows employees to split their professional (“innie”) and personal (“outie”) identities via a microchip implanted in their brains. The chip activates when descending to the eerie severed floor, erasing all memories of their outside lives. Conversely, once they leave the office, they have no recollection of what they do from nine to five.Severance is a brilliant and complex exploration of late-stage capitalism, identity, loss, and belonging. While often described as a dystopian sci-fi series, our deputy editor, Serena Smith, argues in her latest essay, “Are we all severed?” that its world is eerily similar to our own. “How many of us contain parts of our identities just to get through the day? How many of us have gone to work while depressed, brokenhearted or grieving? On a macro level: how many of us have gone to work knowing that wars, famines, and genocides are happening? Arguably, under late capitalism – which prioritises work over all else – we’re all kind of severed.”This week on the podcast, Smith joins Halima Jibril to explore how capitalism forces us to split our identities, the consequences of ignoring pain and suffering and why the fragmentation of the self is such a compelling theme in popular culture.This episode contains spoilers for Severance seasons one and two. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Kendrick Lamar and the politics of hate

  Since the Super Bowl, Kendrick Lamar has been all we’ve been able to think about. From his effortlessly cool bootcut jeans, his reimagining of Uncle Sam as the incomparable Samuel L. Jackson to the continuous jabs he made at Drake throughout his 13-minute performance – Lamar has been crowned by the public as thee professional hater. He even says it himself on Euphoria, his first full diss track aimed at Drake, calling himself “the biggest hater.” Over the last year, the general public has revelled in Lamar’s pettiness, celebrating his commitment to the art of the grudge. For many, Lamar inspires them to be better haters. But what kinds of hate are most celebrated in our society, and what depictions are condemned? In this episode, host Halima Jibril and Elliot Hoste are joined by music writer Solomon Pace-McCarrick to discuss the Lamar-Drake beef, the kinds of hate that are the most acceptable in society today and how their feud reflects a deeper battle over Black masculinity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Is everyone horny again?

  From Halina Reijn’s Babygirl and Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu to FKA twigs’ EUSEXUA and Ethel Cain’s Perverts, sex is back in the mainstream. And it’s not just any kind of sex — as Emma Garland argues in her latest essay, “Everyone is Horny Now”, “there has been a pendulum swing not just towards sex, but towards deviance.”With Nicole Kidman being dog-walked by her twenty-something-year-old male intern, Nosferatu elevating the conflict between repression and liberation to Biblical proportions and FKA twigs referring to the softer edges of her music as “the pussy,” music and media are depicting sex in ways that challenge socially accepted norms.But what makes these depictions so deviant? And eight years on from the height of the #MeToo movement, how has the cultural conversation around sex evolved and what impact has it had on how sex is portrayed?In this episode, hosts Halima Jibril and Elliot Hoste are joined by Garland to unpack the latest and most provocative depictions of sex in popular culture, explore why pleasurable sex is often framed as transgressive, and argue why everyone needs to let go and just be gross. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Are we in a relationship recession?

  Dating is in the pits – everyone says so. In England and Wales, fertility rates are at an all-time low, with the US similarly reaching its lowest rate in 2023. Last week, our deputy editor, Serena Smith, wrote about how “the dating crisis is going global.” From the US to Finland, South Korea, Turkey, Tunisia, and Thailand, birth rates are falling, and it’s likely that part of this decline can be attributed to a corresponding drop in the number of couples. When relationships do form, they’re more fragile than they were in the past – but how did we get here?Has the internet made us more antisocial and more prone to discarding people? Are the apps really ruining dating, or are they a scapegoat for a larger and more deeply entrenched set of problems?In our second episode of the year, hosts Halima Jibril and Elliot Hoste are joined by Smith to explore the ‘relationship recession’, the crisis in heterosexual dating and how conservative modern dating shows have become. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Is the age of hedonistic hyper-consumption over?

  In July 2024, writer and artist August Lamm shared her prediction for the future on X: “I’m calling it right now: abstention is the next big thing. Sobriety, celibacy, digital minimalism, dumb phones, religion. The age of hedonistic hyper-consumption is over. We’re moving into a new peaceful age marked by moderation and self-discipline. I can’t wait.”Lamm, who has been without an iPhone for two and a half years, wasn’t basing her prediction on trends she’d seen online (she doesn’t have a phone, remember?). Instead, she expressed her desire for a shift in culture, grounded in the belief that we have reached peak hyper-consumption. From Brat being synonymous with hedonistic indulgence, to Stanley cup fads and excessive skincare hauls, to Oxford’s Word of the Year, “brain rot”, a term describing the negative effects of consuming low-quality or trivial online content, 2024 was undeniably a year of excess.As we enter the new year, however, a cultural shift seems to be emerging. People are challenging their consumption habits by participating in low-buy or no-buy years, where they refrain from shopping for an entire year. Others are turning to digital detoxes in an effort to rebuild their attention spans, productivity and overall well-being.In this episode, hosts Halima Jibril and Elliot Hoste are joined by Lamm to unpack our addiction to consumption, our scarcity mentality, and whether we’re simply swinging from one extreme to another – from hedonistic hyper-consumption to complete restriction. Is this the beginning of a world without pleasure, or could moderation finally offer the balance we’ve been craving?Featured articles: No-buy 2025: So you want to try a year without shopping?How to avoid ‘lifestyle creep’You Don't Need a Smartphone: A Practical Guide to Downgrading & Reclaiming Your Life by August Lamm Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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