Premium 229: Chicken Soup for the Mom and Pop Parasite

Also, for the morally flexible looking to make a buck, consider looking at PBR, the Brazilian fuel company. Lula got elected and the share price plummeted due to right-wing pearl clutching. The dividend is absurd, the company's fundamentals strong, and the Worker's Party has historically been pretty good at managing that company. Im kinda a dummy when it comes to stocks so take that with some grains of salt, but that's my take on the company. And if you are buying, buy PBR.A. Those shares are cheaper and still pay a dividend, but you dont get voting rights (which dont matter, its a multibillion dollar company and none of us are billionaires)

A Guy

I am very impressed (and equally horrified) by the 'perpetual motion machine' of capitalism. I'm not deeply opposed to markets, I think they're an interesting and often effective way of price setting. And I wonder if a future socialism would utilize markets, but internalize the environmental and social costs of production into them.

A Guy

Only Tarence would call a key change dialectical lol amazing

not to put my social theory hat on but there's actually a word for that feeling of sociality and connectedness you get from things like key changes and karaoke and being at concerts and idk i guess burning man??? Collective effervescence! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_effervescence

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/holes/

Cole Heideman

Yeah agreed, key changes can be just as predictable and phoned in as songs without them. Bo Burnham makes fun of this in his country song Pandering saying "you dumb mother fuckers want a key change?" as he goes into it.

Cole Heideman

Okay, have to comment on all the musical discussion. First, you can think of music as a balance of various components: rhythm, melody, harmony, lyrics (if there are words), timbre, volume, space(surround sound), etc. (I'd say those are the major components.) Those components can be of varying complexity and ALL of them can be used to build tension and excitement within a piece of music. Historically, "Western music", has favored harmonic complexity and used harmony as the main component of dramatic tension. I'm generalizing somewhat, of course. Composers also used melody, rhythm, timbre, etc., of course, but to a much lesser--and simpler--extent to structure their pieces. If you compare Western composers to classical Indian music, you can see this pretty easily. African music is also MUCH more rhythmically complex and often uses rhythm as the fundamental structural building block. The "key change" of popular music, is typically of the most simplistic type of harmonic change and is often used to create a dramatic high point that Tarrence is referring to. It can be used well! But A) I would argue that it was WAY overdone in that time period. To the point that it felt cheap. I think there's an argument to be made that it was just a kind of fad in pop music, like auto-tune was in the 2000s. (Obviously, folks are still using auto-tune but I think it's used a little more subtly now than it was.) And B) there are other ways of creating that drama in pop music! Including with all those other components. I would argue that hip hop favors rhythm and lyrics to create those kinds of build ups but it can be no less exciting. Obviously some artists do it better than others. But also C) Not all music aims to have that kind of dramatic arc (a lot of dance music, for instance). Anyways, I think seeing the pop "key change" as something signifying a high point (or something more complex or creative or interesting than music not employing that device), is a kind of Western-focused favoritism. Ha. (Not that that was the intention, obviously.) But it's also weak evidence to support arguing that there's been a qualitative decline of popular music. Not that I disagree entirely, but that's just not the evidence to use. Fun discussion!

Denise Fillion

Love a Tarrence and Aaron episode getting deep into the political economy and class struggle in AI.

Jordan Scheibel

Whitney Houston is buried one row away from my mom. I used to have to deal with cemetery security to see my mom for a while after Whitney passed.

Mark Hardgrove

https://thenewinquiry.com/manifesto-of-the-committee-to-abolish-outer-space/

That key change in "Islands in the Stream" though.

the transition beats are kicking ass! great addition to the show. put em on youtube!

dylan4prez