27 Comments
Sep 23Liked by Dudley Newright, Astral

Astral Flight Simulator: One man’s quest to find friends who aren’t gay and retarded. Follow his adventures through the digital wilderness.

Expand full comment
author

I’ve accomplished my goal!

Expand full comment

My favorite podcast of 2024. I was born in 73. What they are saying about the difference of the 90's compared to the all-digital now is true. How to best navigate that is the true question of the times. Very glad to hear people talking about it.

Expand full comment
Sep 27Liked by Astral, Dudley Newright

Man that list of stuff that's changed is depressing. I was there in the 90s, too. But I have to say that I noticed a big change *in* the 90s. The '94 crime bill made a big difference. So did Ticketmaster getting into everything. I'm from Seattle and I remember festivals suddenly being fenced off and getting A LOT more expensive and commercialized.

The loss of freedom and increased control and surveillance were definitely noticeable by '96, before the Internet really took off.

While I'm sure the online culture has exacerbated this stuff, I don't think it's causal. Seems more to me that another generation took over and started aggressively imposing their vision around that time.

Expand full comment
author

The crime bill was one of the best policies of the last 50 years, we need another one

Expand full comment

How do you feel about VAWA?

Expand full comment
Sep 28Liked by Astral

Always spell out you acronyms, communication 101. What is vawa?

Expand full comment
author

Yes please tell us I have no clue

Expand full comment
Sep 24Liked by Astral

I wish those white-girl dreads would come back into style, so dang sexy!

Expand full comment

I can smell her through my computer.

Expand full comment
Sep 30Liked by Astral

Mmmm, female B.O. and patchouli: the best combo ever!

Expand full comment
author

Need

Expand full comment
Oct 1Liked by Astral

Got dose-raped by a wook during the phish 3.0 era. Was spun for 2 days straight. MAGA

Expand full comment
author

Lfg

Expand full comment

Really liked this one man.

Expand full comment
author

Thank you! I didn’t know you were on here

Expand full comment
Sep 27Liked by Astral

Got this post in my email, Amy is amazing, I absolutely love her. I enjoyed the podcast, 2x speed helped & the song at the end was awesome and sounds great at 2 X too.

Probably going to stick around and see what else you are putting out. Good stuff!

Expand full comment
author

Please do man, hopefully theres some stuff in the catalog you like. More to come tho not on this topic again for a while

Expand full comment

Great podcast. If you're GenX I would think that you know that "Nova Festival" in Israel was NOT the target of the Hamas army. Their targeta were near by army bases. Hamas could not know where the festival is going to be held (as it was not announced until it the day before) and they run into those crowds incidentally, and kidnapped a bunch of them. What the Israeli did was run all of them over with their "they will take no prisoners" doctrine, killing all that were exposed.

And btw the people that go to those festivals were literally coming from all over, one kid that was killed was from Serbia (where I live). That kid regularly went to Israel for a little bit of fun over the weekend, despite the fact that we have several large festivals just like that in Europe and Eastern European block. So, it's kind of insane to talk about Nova festival and compare that to anything that's going on Out Of The War Zone, even with US where civilian guns are pervasive and legal.

Expand full comment

Such a great discussion. I think the really insidious thing about “ironic distance” is that the alternative is non-existence. If you don’t participate, you are basically invisible.

Expand full comment

Really dig the outro music on this, does anyone know who it is?

Expand full comment
author

Yeah, I do

Expand full comment
Oct 2Liked by Astral

Prick

Expand full comment
author

I sent you a DM, but here it is:

https://youtu.be/C2v7uny47Ek?si=ICe7zpl4eqeU_i3F

Expand full comment

Got it, thank you. Didn't realize it was the same artist as the intro.

Expand full comment

No way! I’ve listened to your podcasts. Now on substack. Sweet.

Also, there’s several people on here that think any 90’s nostalgia is grossly misplaced. They think the 90’s is when we were pruned and programmed for failure, mostly with porn and such. They think 90’s is the worst music.

Good luck when some of those people find this post. Good to have you here regardless!

Expand full comment

That digital social pressure is real. I work for UPS, and if I mess something up and someone talks to me in person I don’t feel any anxiety. If someone posts something on line about it, I have a completely different reaction to it.

Expand full comment