David Herod's Improvidence is an 'overnight novel', a brisk novella combining adventure, a dash of weird fiction, and some truly beautiful descriptions of a post-collapse West Virginian and Ohioan landscape. We talked about Improvidence, didactic fiction, fictional relationships and more. Improvidence: https://www.amazon.com/Improvidence-David-Hero…

David McGowan's Programmed to Kill (2004) is a seminal work of conspiratorial thinking, well-regarded among members of the online commentariat on parapolitics, as well among conspiracy theory aficionados generally. Paedophile rings, satanic cults, the Phoenix Program, mind control, psychiatric induction of alternate personalities for the purposes o…

Caleb Caudell is an American author who has recently released 'Hardly Working'. Described as 'semi-auto fiction', Hardly Working uses Caudell's experiences working in the service industry, dating, writing, and living in terrible apartments to explore our deracinated moment. Caleb is an outrageously erudite man, and I had a lot of fun hearing him ta…

Vladimir Nabokov finished writing Lolita in 1953. It took him, an established author, until 1955 to have it published. Why? It's a book about a middle-aged man who has a sexual relationship with a twelve-year-old girl. Publishers were uncomfortable, etc. The thing is, it's also a phenomenally well-written book. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has p…

Among other things, Abbie Lucas is a filmmaker, and Kevin Kautzman is a playwright and podcaster (shout out to The Art of Darkness podcast). They've co-written a play, Basilisk, about spooky internet AI horror story Roko's Basilisk. We talked to them about their play, about AI, about crypto, about film versus theatre, and more. Basilisk radio play …

The Accursed Share (vol. 1 published in 1941) lays out Bataille's concept of general economy. What do Aztec human sacrifice, potlach, Islamic conquest, Calvinism and the rise of capitalism, the Marshall Plan and avoiding World War III all have in common? Bataille has the answers. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https:…

I (Jack) talk to Dan Baltic about his book, Nutcrankr. To quote the blurb of Nutcrankr, "NUTCRANKR is a comic examination of fringe ideology, social atomisation, and sexual dysfunction in modern America. Dan Baltic's debut novel is a sardonic look at a certain type of Extremely Online character we're all too familiar with and what happens when thei…

Ernst Jünger, a man who fought in two World Wars, was an entomologist, award-winning author, philosopher, traveller, psychonaut and much more, wrote The Forest Passage (1951), a book which explores how one can retain freedom in a time of mass ideology and titanic technological change. It's a really, really good book. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack…

Justin Murphy joins us to talk about 'Simulacra and Simulation' (1981), a book by French philosopher and cultural critic Jean Baudrillard. What happens when a society schematises too much, copies copies of copies and loses touch with 'reality'? Hyperreality. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Other Life (probably the best place to see what Justin Murphy is…

The A above middle C is often tuned to 440Hz. Why? Because of a multi-decade conspiracy to degrade the spiritual connection of the human race, involving Joseph Goebbels, John Deagan, the Frankfurt School, sacred numerology, and a very wealthy American dynasty. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tow…

Jack talks to ARX-Han, author of Incel (2023), about the process of writing Incel, as well as the thought behind it. Rather than sum up Incel myself, I'll quote ARX-Han: "Savage, hilarious, and everything in between , INCEL is a pitch-dark comedy about one man's harrowing quest to ascend. Suicidally depressed, twenty-two year old anon has settled o…

We reflect on 100 episodes of the Book Club from Hell (or on the 99 prior to this one, if you want to be pedantic). Big shout out to moog for the intro music, and to Alex from Masticate (https://masticate.bandcamp.com) for the outro music. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B…

We were joined by Kevin Kautzman and Brad Kelly from the Art of Darkness podcast for this episode! We talked about Point Omega, by Don DeLillo, a short, mysterious novel published in 2010. If you haven't listened to Art of Darkness, we highly, highly recommend you do. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION https://artofdarkpod.com/ If you ever cared about us, …

Paul R Ehrlich is the Bing Professor Emeritus of Population Studies at Stanford University. In 1968 he published The Population Bomb, co-authored with his wife Anne Ehrlich. In it were predicted, among other catastrophes, famines in the 1970s which would kill hundreds of millions. The cause? Human overpopulation. The optimal solution? A trans-natio…

Paladin Press (rest in peace) liked to court controversy. So when a mother of two approached them with a manuscript for a crime novel, they asked her to write something spicier. The result? Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, a step-by-step guide on how to work as a contract killer. The power of marketing was so strong that thi…

James Burnham, a Trotskyite-turned-conservative, wrote The Managerial Revolution in 1941. In it, he describes the processes by which capitalist societies become managerial, and by which capitalists are displaced by managers as those who control the means of production. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https://www.amazo…

'There's a Man Crying in the Street and Other Stories' is a short story collection by James De Llis, of the Hermitix podcast and author of 'Exiting Modernity', 'Only Ever Freedom' and 'Be Not Afraid'. In this episode, I (Jack) had a chat to James about the process of writing, the thematic and aesthetic inspirations for this collection, and more. VE…

Costin Alamariu, who may or may not be Bronze Age Pervert, completed his doctoral thesis in political philosophy at Yale in 2015. This thesis was re-published in 2023 under the title 'Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy'. There's a lot to this book, but it's mostly about the relationship between philosophy, heritability, aristocracy and …

Meltdown (1994) sees Nick Land dissolve the posthuman future in a solvent of technocapital, continental philosophy, cyberpunk, bacterial warfare and retrotemporal attraction, all dressed up in implanted mirrorshades with a highly-cinematic 9mm. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook…

Miyamoto Musashi is Japan's most famous swordsman, a ronin in the 17th century who was victorious in over 60 duels, founded a famed swordfighting school, and achieved such a level of combat mastery that he learned the essential nature of mastery itself. The Book of Five Rings (1645) was written by Musashi in a cave, towards the end of his life. It …

Story of the Eye (1928) is a classic of French coom-lit. In it, teenagers engage in a series of sex acts involving ovular and liquid symbols, demonstrating why everyone thinks the French are perverts. It's also a really good book. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M…

The Turner Diaries (1978) is a notorious work of white nationalist and white supremacist fiction. It is reputed to have influenced a number of terrorist acts, including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings. Surprisingly for such a work, the spelling and formatting are mostly fine. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https://ww…

Esoteric Trumpism (2024) promises to provide a Spenglerian reading of Donald Trump's life and leadership. Instead, it reads as a collection of strange Trump fanfics. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch_sidesheet Apple Books: http://books.apple.com/us/boo…

Prominent Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong wrote On Guerrilla Warfare in 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. This series of pamphlets was intended to persuade Chinese leaders to also pursue a guerrilla campaign against the invading Japanese military. Full of practical advice on how to conduct guerrilla operations, this book has a little some…

Frantz Fanon was an anticolonial theorist and psychiatrist from Martinique, who wrote The Wretched of the Earth (1961) as an account of colonialism in Algeria. In it, he describes the therapeutic potential of violence and the psychology of the colonisers and colonised. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https://www.amazo…

Chuck Tingle is a pseudonymous author of (mostly) gay erotic literature and, occasionally, non erotic literature. In a rare occurrence, Levi and Jack are in the same room for this episode. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch_sidesheet Apple Books: http:/…

Mark Fisher, an English philosopher, teacher, blogger and co-founder of the CCRU, published Capitalist Realism in 2009. A work of more accessible anti-capitalism, Fisher hoped to sell 500 copies. Capitalist Realism went on to sell over 100,000 copies, and became an important work in 21st-century anti-capitalist thought. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION J…

The Breatharian Institute of America was founded by Wiley Brooks. You might be familiar with boring breatharianism, where people don't need to eat in order to survive. Brooks' breatharianism, on the other hand, is dense, complex and exciting. It involves fixing the global matrix with urine, giving birth to super galaxies, avoiding three-dimensional…

Comrade Kim Goes Flying (2012) is a North Korean romantic comedy, described as "a girl-power fairy tale about dreaming to fly," by one of its co-directors, Nicholas Bonner. The film follows Kim Yong Mi, a plucky coal miner from rural North Korea, who dreams of becoming a trapeze artist in Pyongyang. The film is as odd, but not in the ways you would…

The Tate Bible is a compilation of former kickboxer and social media influencer Andrew Tate's online footprint, put together by G Slim during the covid lockdowns. If, for some perverse reason, you'd prefer to read Andrew Tate's views rather than consume them in a more high-stimulus format, then this is the book for you. Camgirls, Bugattis and the N…

Triumph of the Will is a Nazi propaganda film, documenting the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, and released in 1935. Directed, edited, produced and co-written by Leni Riefenstahl, the film remains highly influential due to Riefenstahl's innovative approach to film-making. It also stars Adolf Hitler as himself. Most importantly, this episode …

Effective accelerationism ('e/acc') is a largely online movement seeking to promote technological optimism. Their evangelism mostly takes the form of shitposting and memes, but something more substantial will occasionally appear. Two such pieces of more substantial e/acc thought are 'What the f* is e/acc?' (authorship unclear) and 'Notes on e/acc p…

Terry Davis was a schizophrenic computer programmer who wrote an operating system by himself. TempleOS, as this creation came to be known, was intended to be the Third Temple, with which Davis could talk to God. Davis achieved a degree of obscure internet fame from, among other things, his streams, where he would show off features of TempleOS, talk…

This episode isn't on a particular book, but is on a movement: furries. For the few of you who aren't aware, furries are those who appreciate depictions of anthropomorphic animals. From this central point, furdom has generated a huge amount of culture - and not simply the furry porn that I'm sure you've accidentally stumbled upon on the internet. G…

This week's episode is on the Female Dating Strategy Handbook, a collection of the best, highest-value posts from the Female Dating Strategy subreddit and website. Female Dating Strategy is a movement aiming to improve the dating market, by teaching women how to distinguish low- and high-value men, how to cultivate queen energy (that is, how to hav…

Lord Timothy Dexter was an 18th century American businessman, who made a great deal of money through a series of bizarre, lucky and, probably, stupid ventures. Shipping coal to Newcastle, selling hot water bottles in the West Indies, speculating on Continental Currency at the end of the American Civil War: Dexter managed to keep turning profits, de…

Marvin Heemeyer was a resident of Grand Lake, Colorado. After a series of planning disputes with his neighbours, as well as arguments with the administration in the nearby town of Granby, he took the only reasonable course of action: armour-plating a Komatsu D355A bulldozer, and destroying the property of those he disagreed with. VERY IMPORTANT INF…

You've heard of Donald Trump, I don't need to introduce him. In 1987, 'Trump: The Art of the Deal' was released, apparently co-written by Donald Trump and journalist Tony Schwartz; part autobiography, part business advice, The Art of the Deal details several of Trump's favourite deals. Schwartz would later claim that Trump contributed nothing to th…

This is the third episode on the first volume of The Decline of the West, by Oswald Spengler. We cover chapters six and seven, called 'Music and Plastic (I) - The Arts of Form' and 'Music and Plastic (II), Act and Portrait,' respectively. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0…

Rhonda Byrne, in her 2006 book 'The Secret,' promises to teach you a method to get literally anything. All you have to do is ask the universe (sorry, capital-U Universe) in a special way, and the Universe will deliver. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch…

Filippo Tomasso Marinetti was a 20th-Century Italian poet who founded the Futurist movement. In The Futurist Manifesto (1909), Marinetti lays out the tenants of Futurism: a complete rejection of the past, nationalism, contempt for women, veneration of technology and a love of speed. In his endless quest to go fast, Marinetti comes to resemble the a…

Jack has published a novel called 'Tower.' As such, this is a very special episode, wherein Jack hawks his book and talks to Levi about it. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch_sidesheet Apple Books: http://books.apple.com/us/book/id6466733671 Jack's webs…

The Water of Life (a Treatise on Urine Therapy) is, expectedly, a treatise on urine therapy, published by John W Armstrong in 1944. In it, he traces his journey in Biblically-inspired urine therapy, offering advice on how to make women more beautiful and fertile, how to make farm animals healthier, how to cure every disease (except 'mechanical dise…

This week, we cover chapters four, five and six of Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West, Volume I. Spengler has mindbroken Jack into understanding him; Levi remains intact. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch_sidesheet Apple Books: http://books.appl…

Christopher Dorner was an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department. He was fired from the LAPD after a workplace dispute in 2008, and in 2013 he declared war on his former employer, vowing to hunt down and kill police officers and their families. In the course of his brief war, he killed five people: two officers, two civilians, and himself. As…

This week, we answer pressing questions from our Patreon subscribers. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch_sidesheet Apple Books: http://books.apple.com/us/book/id6466733671 Jack's website: www.jackbc.me Levi's website: www.levioutloud.com Our Patreon: ww…

Oswald Spengler's 'The Decline of the West' is a two-volume work, which lays out a model of morphological history, whereby each culture is the result of the actualisation of its own great soul. These souls have their own life cycles, their own youth, adulthood, decline and death, which can be compared and predicted using Spengler's model. This week…

This week's episode is on 'Anatomy of the State,' a primer on anarcho-capitalism by Murray Rothbard, published in 1974. If you're interested in selling heroin and human organs to 12-year-olds outside of their workplaces (child labour laws are no longer cool), then this is your ideology. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon:…

Nick Land is an English philosopher who smashes together Deleuze, Guattari, Kant, Nietzsche, William Gibson's cyberpunk, HP Lovecraft's cosmic horror, and much, much more. Out of this collision has arisen Land's particular brand of accelerationism, as well as his contributions to the neo-reactionary movement. The subject of this episode, Land's 201…

In 1936, Peter Kemp, a recent graduate of Cambridge University, decided to fight for the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. In 1957, he published 'Mine Were of Trouble,' an account of his wartime experiences. VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION Jack has published a novel! Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch_sides…