The Epiphany: What Joyce, the Dead, Musk and Twitter Teach Us About Economic Power

The David McWilliams Podcast

David McWilliams

News & Politics

4.6 • 643 Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We explore today's seismic changes in media and society, by tracing historical parallels between James Joyce’s The Dead (1907) and today’s digital age. Joyce’s observations on in The Dead about generational divides, the rise of newspapers, and societal shifts echo loudly in 2025, as new gatekeepers like Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos wield unprecedented influence over the flow of information. How did media transform from a tool of advertisement to the battleground for ideas? What can we learn from Joyce’s depiction of societal upheaval in 1907 as we navigate the tribalism and cultural revolutions of today? Join us from a snowy Ireland - as it was in The Dead - while we unpack history’s lessons, from the industrial age’s middle-class explosion to the rise of modernism and today’s chaotic digital landscape. Are we witnessing a similar hinge moment, and what does it mean for the future?

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Transcript

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1:39.9	A few light taps upon the pain made him turn to the window.
1:42.4	It had begun to snow again.
1:50.1	He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight.
1:54.5	The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward.
1:57.3	Yes, the newspapers were right.
2:00.4	Snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central
2:04.7	plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the bog of Alan, and farther westward,
2:12.6	softly falling into the dark, mutinous Shannon waves.
	...

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