Robert and Rabbit’s recent trip to Las Vegas
How Las Vegas epitomizes capitalism and commercialism at it’s fullest
How Las Vegas demonstrates how capitalism is both a force for creation and destruction
How Las Vegas lacks any historic preservation
How despite it’s flaws Las Vegas offers an otherworldly fantasy experience
The Resort Fees
The ethics of Gambling
The political and demographic landscape of Las Vegas and Nevada
How Las Vegas lacks any significant SWPL presence
How Las Vegas attracts the trashiest of pop culture
Douche Bag culture, it’s different subsets, and how it’s absorbing hipster culture
The Aesthetics of Las Vegas Casinos, Robert and Rabbit’s favorites, and conceptual casino designs
The different era’s of Las Vegas, including Vintage Las Vegas, the themed resorts of the 90’s, and the newer casinos
The Las Vegas monorail
Whether Las Vegas resorts are a model for urban living
How Robert and Ray both have personal connections to Santa Barbara and how the city is almost too idyllic
Crime Fiction Novelist Ross Macdonald who’s work captures Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara as a place with strict zoning laws that was modeled after Andalusia in Spain
The contrast between life in Santa Barbara and New York City
How New York City has changed in Ray’s time there in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s
How Cuisine is the one area that has seen increased innovation in New York
Ray’s cameo in the film Exposed set in New York in 1983 staring Nastassja Kinski
How films such as Exposed and Taxi Driver are documentaries for New York in that era
The new peculiarly shaped skyscrapers going up in New York today “See through buildings” where wealthy Foreigners are buying up real estate in New York and leaving them empty
How Ray is drawn to architecture because it is art you can experience and changes the world in a way that regular art doesn’t
How most of the general public has little input and interest in architecture
How places without zoning laws tend to lack any aesthetic value
How the main rule in urbanism is not to do anything that harms the city Art Deco and how it succeeds in bringing tradition and modernity into one Architectual Revivalism which seeks to recreate older forms of architecture Robert Stark’s Artwork
Ray’s work at Newsweek as a reporters covering art, culture, literature, film, and theatre
How Ray’s most significant interviews were with Writers Philip, Roth, and John Updike, filmmakers Francis Coppola, and Robert Altman and Architect Christopher Alexander
How conservatives tend to avoid culture and leave that domain to the left
English Philosopher Roger Scruton as a model for a cultured conservative
Front Porch Anarchist Bill Kauffman New Urbanism
The The Retro Cocktail and Locavore movements James Howard Kunstler
Ray’s involvement with Environmentalism and Bioregional Anarchism
How the environmental movement abandoned the overpopulation issue due to political correctness and mass immigration
The Alternative Right
How the real political divide is between globalism and decentralization
Cultural trends and how Ray views himself as a cultural radar
The trend towards a focus on muscles for young men and men are more self-conscious about their bodies
The value of pleasure and leisure
Erotica and the debate about what’s art and what’s pornography
Controversial nude photographer Jock Sturges, who Ray interviewed
How society is a taking contradictory paths towards lewdness and prudishness Students Still Sweat, They Just Don’t Shower
How having taste and style has become equated with homosexuality
Young women moving to New York City because of Sex and the City “Sex Scenes” which is a raunchy, satirical audio entertainment that Ray created with his wife playwright Polly Frost. Check it out.
Matt’s experience at the recent National Policy Institute’s Conference in Washington DC
How the theme of the conference Become Who We Are was about creating a new identity How Left-Wing Activists Tried to Shut Down This Year’s NPI Conference”
Matt take on Washington DC, and how it would be a great city if it weren’t for it’s people
How transplants tend to fulfill the obnoxious stereotypes of cities(ex. DC, NY, LA, Portland)
Obnoxious broke hipsters in Portland vs. obnoxious trust fund hipster in NYC
How NY hipster transplants benefited from the same Police enforcement and gentrification which they agitate against
How New York’s gentrification has made the city sterile and killed it’s creative energy Kill Your Idols documentary about the punk scene in NY in the early 80’s
Matt’s life in Chicago, and how despite it’s crime it has a cohesive culture and affordable living
How Chicago shutting down it’s public housing projects such as Cabrini–Green dispersed crime over a larger area
Matt experience living in Portland, Oregon, and how Portlandia is so accurate it’s not even funny
Why Matt favors urban living over suburban or rural living
Why Matt views the suburbs as an unfortunate social development but they developed because the left destroyed cities and forced out the middle class
How major cities such as NY once had vibrant urban middle classes
E. Michael Jones’s The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal As Ethnic Cleansing
How the further away we get from nature the greater increase in social dysfunction we see Matt’s trip to Las Vegas and how his friend Davis Aurini describes the city as an “honest whore”
Anti-Natalism and how it’s an interesting philosophical question but attempts to apply reason to interfere with nature
How Anti-Natalism appeals to the most thoughtful and intelligent individuals thus removing them from the gene pool
Michel Houellebecq The Father Of The Term “Sexual Marketplace” Houellebecq’s Whatever which is about people who lost out on the sexual revolution
Houellebecq’s Submission which is about an Islamist takeover of France and whether that scenario is likely Louis-Ferdinand Céline The recent terrorist attack in Paris and future scenarios in Europe
