The Economy of Nothing Podcast

Episode | 220

The American Nightmare. They think you're real dumb. Go to alien.gov and see for yourself.

Episode | 219

The Romans Had No Word for Zero. Someone should really report this. The robot does not care.

Episode | 218

The Minimum Viable Future. The job was never real. You were training their AI.

Episode | 217

Ads on Your Eyelids. The extraction economy doesn't clock out. Neither do we.

Episode | 216

The robot has a lunch break. And a second lunch break. The box is right there.

Episode | 215

My Coworker Is a Telepath. He developed the ability out of boredom somewhere around the third floor. The elevator hasn't moved. We're still going up.

Episode | 214

Parking Lot Depression. The Skull Pirates are watching the dispatch, the Captain wants to finish his beer before clocking in, and somehow we end up knee-deep in medieval sewage. We're not going in yet.

Episode | 213

Brace Yourself. The 2026 Zelda Triforce Grift, nostalgia as a product they sell you, and why modern actors just stare at things. Welcome to Griff City. Fundamentals don't matter here.

Episode | 212

Last Vacation Ever. Envy runs the stock market, unions fell for a reason, and Hollywood is culturally fracking your nostalgia. Enjoy the beach while you can afford one.

Episode | 211

Your Price May Vary. Bitcoin is just a Pokemon card, Walmart patented your grocery bill, and the kids in Zimbabwe already warned us. The grift has a face and it's charging you more while you're standing in the aisle.

Episode | 210

Die Hard in an Economy. Hollywood runs a soup kitchen line for celebrities, AI gets worse on purpose, and the Captain hides in the vents while everyone cuts corners until everything they create are round boring spheres of nothing.

Episode | 209

Monetary Relativism. Alexa refuses to play DMX, AI assistants get suspicious, and the conversation spirals into algorithmic control, Big Tech monopolies, stablecoins, and the strange economics of whoever has the most money deciding reality.

Episode | 208

Social Media Is Dead, Long Live Social Media. Pirate camera cannons, high-school internet, lo-fi phone fantasies, tokenized money, automation anxiety, and a Scrubs revival in the middle of it all. Platforms collapse. The structure remains.

Episode | 207

Everything Is Here Except the Point. Sacred geometry, phone addiction, digital town squares, currency debasement, and the feeling that modern life is satire without a punchline.

Episode | 206

Subscription to Subjugation. Streaming became rent. Auto-pay became obedience. A revolt against recurring revenue, AI creep, corporate consolidation, and the quiet expectation that you'll just keep paying.

Episode | 205

Attention as currency, platforms as conditioning, and the subtle training of the mind. A discussion about short-form loops, subconscious reinforcement, and why participation feels mandatory even when it produces nothing.

Episode | 204

Sequel culture, corporate loops, layoffs, ads, and the illusion of progress. A conversation about how systems recycle content, recycle labor, and call it growth — while the individual is left trying to extract meaning from repetition.

Episode | 203

Why Nothing Feels Real — wokeness as a scare word, artificial scarcity, hollow awards, celebrity sellouts, phones as extraction devices, and a generation that slipped through the data net. A conversation about manufactured reality, empathy as a liability, and why modern life feels increasingly fake by design.

Episode | 202

You’re Still Expected to Participate — Gambling apps, passive income schemes, work culture, platforms, and the normalization of showing up without payoff. A conversation about systems that keep running, engagement without resolution, and the quiet pressure to stay involved even when nothing is happening.

Episode | 201

Movie Magic, People — Stranger Things Season 5, mystery boxes, bird flu vampires, speculative labor, Pokémon market manipulation, and the slow collapse of modern TV. A breakdown of how streaming, franchise safety, and overlong runtimes drained the magic out of storytelling — and how little it would actually take to get it back.

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Episode | 123

All Systems Nominal — A “quick” warm-up spirals into platform anxiety, YouTube and AI rollouts, VR consciousness, celebrity noise, and the unsettling realization that modern systems function perfectly while meaning remains optional. Everything works. Nothing resolves.

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Episode | 122

Stranger Things Have Happened — Stranger Things, safe horror, vampire movies without stakes, Netflix IP fatigue, and why nothing is allowed to end anymore. From ship-in-distress cold opens to nostalgic franchises that forgot how to be scary.

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Episode | 121

Stuff We Shouldn’t Say Out Loud — What began as a pre-show warmup spiraled into the real episode: JJ Abrams’ Mystery Box, a full Tarantino meltdown, Bitcoin skepticism, AI chip-war paranoia, and Mr. Green’s portfolio confessions. Pure, unfiltered chaos from the Nothing Corp crew.

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Episode | 120

My First Day of Pilot School — Mike & Mike break down the Scrubs pilot (“My First Day”) while accidentally inventing Nothing Corp’s official orientation program. From JD’s moral crisis to abandoned hospitals, Turkish castle disasters, and Mississippi the Dog’s hostile takeover… this episode is pure chaos in the best way.

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Episode | 119

The Blandtastic Bore — Marvel’s Fantastic Four (2025) takes its “First Steps,” and somehow every single one is a misstep. Mike & Mike break down the pacing, the team dynamics, the Galactus confusion, and the now-infamous car-seat scene while charting the MCU’s increasingly wobbly future.

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Episode | 118

Trillion Is the New Billion — Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar payday, government shutdowns as content, and the rise of the Dark Orbit. The Captain and Mr. Green follow the money through Nothing Corp’s villain economy — where evil scales faster than empathy.

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Episode | 117

Circle Jerk Economics — quantum computing hype, AI feedback loops, divine grifts, and the illusion of value. Mike & Mike trace the great American feedback loop where capitalism, technology, and faith all fund each other in one glorious circle.

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Episode | 116

Optimized Capitalism — planned obsolescence, streaming monopolies, AI content factories, and the great corporate heist of modern entertainment. Mike & Mike discuss the five-year washer, the Warner–Paramount bidding war, and why every product (and movie) is built to break on schedule.

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Episode | 115

The Jared Leto Problem — Pokémon logic, Tron: Ares, cult fandoms, and why Hollywood keeps rewarding failure. Mike & Mike unpack how fame sustains itself, how the Oscars became a credibility loop, and why even sincerity turns into a business model.

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Episode | 114

Only Forget Freddy Krueger — Bill Burr performs in Saudi Arabia, Freddy vs Jason makes less sense than ever, and HBO Max keeps charging for nothing. The Mikes follow the blood money through horror nostalgia, billion-dollar hypocrisy, and the price of attention.

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Episode | 113

The Man of Still — Superman in the Age of Content. Mike and Mike dissect James Gunn’s Superman reboot, comparing it to Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel and debating whether modern heroism has become just another algorithmic product.

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Episode | 112

Did the rapture already happen without us? Why is Christmas here in October? And is America just Idiocracy year-round now? Episode 112 spirals through fake rapture infomercials, Andrew Jackson’s White House fight club, Netflix bumps, nepo babies, and the void that is the modern algorithm.

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Episode | 111

Cash never has an outage, Bitcoin might be a glittery coupon book, and nobody wants a TV strapped to their eyeballs. Episode 111 takes a hard turn into Fight Club (1999) — abs, chaos, and the unreliable narrator problem.

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Episode | 110

Alien Earths, Mario Galaxy worlds, simulation theory spirals, and the chaos of cosmic capitalism. Dogs chasing mailmen, squirrels, and whatever else comes next. It’s pure Economy of Nothing energy — everything you didn’t ask for, everywhere at once.

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Episode | 109

$98 gambling wins vs. lifeguard wages, AI hype that feels like Clippy 2.0, football officiating disasters, Austin Butler as “the next Brad Pitt,” Dave Franco’s Together movie review, Brendan Fraser vs. The Rock, and even Taylor Swift’s NFL crossover. It’s everything and nothing all at once.

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Episode | 108

Missionary misunderstandings, Mass Effect TV speculation, a 28 Years Later zombie rant, unreliable people, bureaucracy headaches, and the rise of diabetes. Plus: advertising, video games, and business fundamentals gone wrong.

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Episode | 107

Tom Cruise still won’t go to space, Rick & Morty isn’t the same without Roiland, and the Streaming Wars keep burning bad money after bad money. In this Visual Radio cut of The Economy of Nothing, Mike and Captain Tracy dive into Mission Impossible stunts, Rick & Morty’s future, the collapse of Netflix and Disney, and why every system seems broken.

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Episode | 106

Mr. Green’s “Totally Real Stock Tips™” (not financial advice), streaming “subtracts,” HOAs vs. fruit trees, AI nostalgia, and car trouble chaos.

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Episode | 105

From $10 ice cream conspiracies to streaming ads and pop culture crimes — Mike and Mike go all in.

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Episode | 104

The pirates are bloated, the billionaires are rebooted, and Four Loko is banned — but not forgotten. .

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Episode | 103

Sarah shows up on time. Nothing else goes well, there are some funny bits.

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Episode | 102

It’s the Star Wars Special. Andor, Clone Wars, nostalgia, rebellion, and algorithms. David channels Draven. Brent explains why Clone Wars hits harder now. Mike B has a theory about content... and the Empire.

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Episode | 101

The podcast reboot begins with a recliner, some lightning, and a dream. Mr. Green lays down lore from his orbital man cave. Bedont tries to do math. The crew debates capitalism, cartoon logic, and how much a Patreon tier should cost. Welcome to The Sheep of Wall Street.

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Episode | 015

Burnout culture meets corporate satire as Mike returns, Dispatch spirals, and Cheyenne pitches a collectible card game to solve the economy. Mr. Green reviews movies on the moon. Ryan builds an attention meter. It’s a permanent vacation — in the most dystopian way possible.

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Episode | 014

We try to structure the fake TV show we’ve been improvising for 14 episodes. It doesn’t go well. Cheyenne sells out, Dispatch collapses, and The Accountant 2 somehow gets rebooted.

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Episode | XIII

A tank full of sharks. A truck with no brakes. Lance is immortal. Ryan pitches a utopia. The Captain spirals. Corporate fiction breaks down in real time—and Mr. Green gets a theme song.

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Episode | Twelve

Waffles. Castrati. The Captain's breaking down. Mr. Green's got thoughts on brunch. Also: a failed improv, a Batman takedown, and corporate gaslighting across the stars.

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Episode | XI

Mike, Ryan, and Alex enter a metaphor too surreal to escape. Emotional spirals, broken friendships, and podcasting meta-crises collide in this unexpectedly raw episode. Nothing is real, but the hurt is corporate-approved™.

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Episode | X

Dispatch bureaucracy. Moral Kombat. Queer seance. Magical enforcement. Mississippi leads a labor strike. Captain Tracy refuses to sign basketballs. Sailor Moon saves the economy.

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Episode | 009

The crew gets stuck in Dispatch. Leaderboards update. Elevators jam. The jingle plays again. And again. And again. Also: Mr. Green fights She-Rogan in the octagon.

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Episode | 008.html

Cheyenne becomes Bob Kelso. Captain Tracy walks like an overly sexy Moses. Mr. Green brands the ship and burns the kitchen down. Ryan tries to cook… metaphorically. Mike Allen gets cold medicine. And a trophy.

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Episode | 007

What if capitalism was a board game? The crew invents Monopoly Squid Game™, gets distracted by TV shows, and attempts to understand what “winning” even means.

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Episode | 006

Magic, monarchy, and multi-threaded mayhem. The Moonshine crew investigates a missing egg on the world of Dracronaria. Cheyenne attempts to do things by the book. Mr. Green brings a whip.

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Episode | 005

Deep space scurvy. Secret orphanages. Cogs in a galactic machine. Mr. Green confronts the true cost of survival in a universe where dinner doesn't come cheap.

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Episode | 004

Who's really the hero? The captain, the strategist, or the system itself? In this episode, we break the fourth wall, the fifth rule, and the sixth commandment.

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Episode | 003

Glitter, interns, corporate ambition, and one golden Russian nesting doll of a ship. Is Cheyenne the most competent person in space?

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Episode | 002

Mike, Ryan, and Mike Allen try to untangle Episode 1 of the show. There are pirates. There are cowboys. There are robots. But are there sandwiches?

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Episode | 001

Michael and Ryan go way too deep into the show’s theme song. Spoilers, satire, and existential dread included.

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