Multiplications of Effect: Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket feat. Devin Thomas O’ Shea (Premium E321)
Added 2026-02-01 06:28:31 +0000 UTCDevin Thomas O’Shea transports Travis to Milwaukee, 1932, where Thomas Pynchon’s newest novel Shadow Ticket kicks off with speakeasy intrigue, Depression misery, and a precision-engineered car bomb. Devin unpacks Pynchon’s characteristic hinge-of-history setting, when everyone’s forced to pick sides, as the book’s reluctant bruiser-turned-investigator Hicks McTaggart gets thrashed around by forces he can’t (and won’t) understand.
Shadow Ticket’s paranoia, occult object-mysticism, and explosive politics connect to the real history of American labor violence: the Haymarket bombing and riot, the Bay View massacre, and the 1932 Ford hunger march. What can the novel, probably Pynchon’s last, teach us about our current strange moment in history?
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Devin O’Shea
https://devinoshea.wordpress.com/
https://bsky.app/profile/devintoshea.bsky.social
The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis by Devin Thomas O'Shea — Coming June 2026
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2770-the-veiled-prophet
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QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Comments
Smedley Butler was a real man. He was a Marine general. He wrote a book called "War is a Racket". His story is told in the book "Gangsters of Capitalism" by Johnathan M. Katz.
Lori Frederick
2026-02-10 20:42:42 +0000 UTCThe voice I can stomach but the pronunciations are like nails on a chalkboard for me.
Charles Copeland
2026-02-05 20:20:14 +0000 UTCMore like catching non-sequiturs, Chomsky's Epstein connection stemming from his identification as anarchist is certainly an opinion but I'm gonna need more than an implied "because I say so" to take it seriously. Given the novel pronunciation of "syndicalism" (among other things) I'm going to assume the guest hasn't ever really interfaced much with the history or theory of the anarchist movement and probably makes the common error of confusing it with right-libertarianism.
Charles Copeland
2026-02-05 20:19:05 +0000 UTChttps://open.spotify.com/episode/1ynXapWs6kNRnJVfI7TaDF?si=wSQHlMERSzuohSxO8BbxYA&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A05t3t83NDiCPwbo5OPM2hn This has some great info on Henry Bennett (like he did have lions and tigers and a tunnels from his castle he had built on his property and he would let them out in the tunnels when guests where in them and turn out the lights to scare them as a prank) lots of interesting info about how racist michigan was
Deli Outlaw
2026-02-05 19:14:52 +0000 UTCI wanna like Devin but his voice…
Stephen Sullivan
2026-02-05 04:03:04 +0000 UTCDevin is such a killer guest, love his episodes
Taylorfrom5to7
2026-02-04 23:08:48 +0000 UTCJeez, anarchism catching strays. Fun ep
Donald W Pratt
2026-02-04 22:47:36 +0000 UTCThanks for your work! Here's another novel that might be worth looking at: "It Can't Happen Here" by Nobel laureate Sinclair Lewis. Published in 1935, it fits all too well. Worth an episode? Wanted to post this under the previous instalment of the show, but I suppose it works here, too.
Fabian Habsch
2026-02-03 13:03:48 +0000 UTCThe "communists" in russia bought everything they needed from the west, amerikan government never joined no communism cause honestly.. And i would say atm its us europeans who are wishing we could disconnect from the american bs that is going on. Maybe this guy was just to weird for me but he comes off as extremely arrogant.
Toadwine
2026-02-03 08:25:36 +0000 UTCCatharsis.
Jeremy Olivier
2026-02-03 03:07:15 +0000 UTCWe should all email that nazi fuck from two episodes and call him a nazi fuck
Ross Moore
2026-02-03 00:48:55 +0000 UTCMilwaukee and West Allis mentioned? Is this podcast trying to appeal to me specifically?
Sean Sullivan
2026-02-02 21:22:31 +0000 UTC
