Mechanical Freak
Mechanical Freak
Recent Episodes
Friends of the show Ryan Archibald and Brendan McElmeel are back to finish our discussion of the Byzantine structure of higher education institutions. We uncover the rot at that core of higher education and, guess what, it’s the same rot that is hollowing out everything in America!
Want to learn more about the onset of neoliberalism? Check out Ending the Myth!
https://www.mechanicalfreak.website/podcast/episodes/ending-the-myth-ep-23-rollback-pt-2-neoliberalism
Want to learn more about the way that neoliberalism has hollowed out higher education, see the work of Chris Newfield: https://chrisnewfield.org/?page_id=93
For more on the Byzantine funding of the university system, see The Dig podcast’s interview with Dennis Hogan: https://thedigradio.com/podcast/higher-ed-crisis-w-dennis-hogan/
Get more Mechanical Freak content by becoming a Patron!
https://www.patreon.com/mechanicalfreak
Brian is joined by old friend of the show Ryan Archibald and new friend of the show Brendan McElmeel for an exploration of higher education’s Byzantine labor system. Will we find light at the end of the maze or will we be killed by the Minotaur of adjunctification and budget cuts on the way? Only one way to find out!
Read more about the CSU contract debacle here:
https://truthout.org/articles/my-faculty-union-leadership-claims-a-win-but-their-compromise-eroded-our-wages/
Check out our interview with Ryan on Ending the Myth here:
https://www.mechanicalfreak.website/podcast/episodes/ending-the-myth-ep-12-the-politics-of-travel-w-ryan-archibald
Become a Patron and get all the extra Freak content here:
https://www.patreon.com/mechanicalfreak
The boys take a look into the future of high tech, literally! Then they discuss the JET taskforce’s raid of four Seattle gay bars over the weekend. Does the arrow of progress always bend toward justice? Or is reality more complicated than a story you tell children?
Follow Vivian McCall’s reporting on the JET raids at The Stranger here:
https://www.thestranger.com/authors/78925422/-vivian-mccall
For more on the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights in Seattle, check out our 2019 interview with Dr. Kevin at:
https://www.mechanicalfreak.website/podcast/episodes/dr-kevin-s-feel-good-rainbow-power-hour-pt-i
Become a Patron and get all the extra Freak content here:
https://www.patreon.com/mechanicalfreak
Greg and Brian catch up on some stories that we have been covering on the show. Tanya Woo, elected! (kind-of). Alec Baldwin, indicted! Boeing, the struggle continues! All that and more!
If you never want to fly on a plane again, check out this breakdown of the lawsuit against Spirit Aerosystems made by a plane-crank:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSGujNq4bVM
For more on the bipartisan effort to turn the US-Mexico border into a charnel house, see Brian’s article “A War in the Desert” here:
https://jacobin.com/2018/05/united-states-mexico-border-immigration-deportation-military
Become a Patron and get all the extra Freak content here:
https://www.patreon.com/mechanicalfreak
This week on Mechanical Freak we’ve got Hannah Krieg from The Stranger to help us say our farewells to Andrew Lewis, the wettest council member ever to lose reelection.
Check out Hannah’s city reporting in The Stranger and her Lewis retrospective in particular: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2024/01/08/79333251/drugs-hotel-workers-waffles-what-happened-to-council-member-andrew-j-lewis