2024: A Year in Exile
A roundup of 2024, including highlights from the show, essays, and some of my cultural picks.
It’s been another long, strange trip around the sun. Three years into my journey with this podcast and newsletter, things have changed beyond recognition. I have so much in the planning stages for 2025 and beyond, but that won’t be the focus of today’s post.
For now, let me take this chance to thank you for reading, listening, subscribing, sharing, arguing and debating with me, both here and elsewhere. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride! Please let me know what you’d like to see next year, and I’ll do my best to deliver.
Let’s do a quick recap. My guests in 2024 were:
Johnny Cypher, Glasgow-based climate activist, educator and hip-hop artist.
Ewan Morrison, award-winning novelist and essayist, author of UNTOPIA.
David McKerracher of Theory Underground, with Mikey Downs aka The Dangerous Maybe, DIY philosophers on a mission to bring theory to the people.
Kieran Hurley, acclaimed playwright and screenwriter, voice of the Ecstasy generation.
Roy Christopher, media theorist and author of Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future (and some damn fine essays on Substack).
Mike Watson, cultural critic and philosopher, and my colleague over at Revol Press (we also started co-hosting Theorize And Be Damned together this year, more on that below).
Cadell Last, philosopher and founder of the internet academy Philosophy Portal.
Julie Reshe, maverick philosopher and practitioner of ‘negative psychoanalysis’.
I have two more episodes in the bag, you’ll hear at least one of them before the year is up. To drop a hint or two, one touches on the horrors unearthed by archaeologists, the other sees the return of an old friend of the pod, from one of our most popular Season 1 episodes.
The podcast functionality on Substack is so good, I’m going to bring over all 24 of the early episodes of the show over as Substack exclusives in January and February. As well as new episodes, you’ll see these ‘Redux’ episodes appear in the feed, and in your inbox. I’m excited (and a little nervous) to revisit some of these early episodes.
2024 essays and writing
This year’s big milestone was the publication of The Darkest Timeline: Living in a World With No Future, my first collection of non-fiction essays. This book represents the culmination of years of work. More importantly, 2024 was the year I truly found my voice as a writer.
The response — critically, and in terms of sales — massively exceeded my expectations. I’d like to personally thank each subscriber that bought a copy, posted about the book online, or recommended it to a friend.
You can find a post here about the book and its genesis. I recorded an episode with an audio extract, featuring an essay on ‘liminal cities’, and the corporate capture of city centres.
I was also blessed to appear on a whole host of podcasts to promote the book. These were all excellent conversations, each unpacking different aspects of the apocalyptic themes the essays explore. I’ve listed them all over here, but some undoubted highlights were my conversations with C. Derick Varn, with Jason Myles of This Is Revolution, with Cadell Last, and with Ewan Morrison for Clair’s excellent experimental ambient show Sonic Book Club.
In a last-minute twist, The Darkest Timeline was also named one of the best Scottish non-fiction books of 2024 by Product Magazine. This was an amazing way to finish the year. This has been an intense, rewarding process, from working with Mike Watson to shape, edit and elevate the writing, to my self-funded mini-tour, to the confidence-boosting effects of being a good way through writing my second collection.
Essays and solo episodes
Solo episodes of Strange Exiles begin life as long-form essays. This year, one of them was taken from my next collection, which I’ll talk more about in the new year. I’m very proud of this one, which saw me collaborate with an actor and producer to bring to life the words of Valerie Solanas, and discuss her revolutionary politics alongside the work of playwright Sarah Kane. If you check out one 2024 episode, make it this one!
I published a few essays elsewhere in 2024, and a couple of Substack exclusives. Hopefully I’ll have time for a few more of both of these in the new year.
For Sublation Magazine, I wrote a piece on ‘Wonkagate’ and the Baudrillardian nightmare of AI entertainment.
I wrote a ‘list’ article on some of my favourite cyberpunk classics, including a few I reference in the book.
I wrote a paper for a Philosophy Portal conference, on AI in fiction, and our faith in the singularity.
I wrote about the films Joker and Midsommar for the Revol Press Patreon, speculating on the gender politics of folk horror, superheroes and supervillains.
Theorize And Be Damned
I’m working with Revol now as an editor, and as mentioned above, co-hosting the Revol podcast. There’s lots of exciting news coming up about new books, collections and authors, including the compendium What’s Left Of Metal. Watch the latest Theorize And Be Damned above for more on that one.
This year, Mike and I had chats with the following authors… check out the TABD channel on YouTube for more.
Matt McManus, critical theorist and writer on liberal socialism.
Eliot Rosenstock, psychiatrist and author of Žižek in the Clinic.
Rob Faure-Walker, author of Love and the Market.
Adam Turl, philosopher and author of the forthcoming Gothic Capitalism.
Strange Exiles cultural highlights
Here are a few things I read, watched, listened to and enjoyed this year. Tell me in the comments if I missed anything!
Books
I read a lot of great writing on Substack this year, maybe more than I read in books. I'll come back before new year with a separate post recommending some of my favourite newsletters and essays. Here are a few excellent things I had the pleasure of reading in print.
For Emma by Ewan Morrison is a heartbreaking and scarily relevant novel about the radicalisation of a grieving father in the face of technological surveillance and corporate medical malpractice. It’s out in March, but I got the chance to read it early. Look out for a review next year. Ewan’s last book, the equally remarkable Nina X, is out now. We discussed both in Episode 22.
Clown World: Four Years Inside Andrew Tate’s Manosphere by Matt Shea and Jamie Tahsin was the most essential read of the year. To understand the crisis in masculinity and the awful appeal of Tate and other demagogues, read this book. I’ve got a review coming on this one in Glasgow Review of Books soon.
Slavoj Žižek wrote several books this year. I’m in the process of reading both Against Progress and Too Late to Awaken. I’ve been saving them until after my book was published, because the themes are so close. I’m glad I waited, and I’ll have more to say about each of these next year.
I have to recommend Mike Watson’s Hungry Ghosts in the Machine: Digital Capitalism and the Search for Self too. I’m a huge admirer of Mike’s work, which is what led me to working with Revol. This slim volume has lots to say about the capture of our imaginations by online culture and media, and how this relates to addiction and recovery.
I also enjoyed about two thirds of Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, and every syllable of Werner Herzog’s wild autobiography Every Man For Himself And God Against All. I read precious little fiction in 2024, but have thoroughly enjoyed the SF collection Nova Scotia Volume 2, which features a few of my old Writers Bloc comrades, AND other Scottish luminaries like Neil Williamson, Ken MacLeod and Grant Morrison.
A final shout out for Hounded by my good friend Jenny Lindsay. What Jenny endured at the hands of the mob, driven by a small clique of activists bent on ruining her reputation was completely unacceptable. The attempted suppression of her views is an affront to principles of free speech —no matter where you stand on incendiary culture war issues.
The stories she tells in Hounded, of women who went through the same thing, should give us pause. Hopefully they serve as a full stop in the story of a censorious, moralistic turn in culture and the arts whose end is in sight, and long overdue. I understand completely why some people might take issue with Jenny’s views, or the platforms she’s had to speak on to share her story — but a culture that tries to silence writers is in serious trouble. I’m glad Jenny is back in the public conversation.
Film and TV
Peak TV delivered this year. I enjoyed Fallout, The Acolyte, X-Men ‘97, Shogun and a bunch of other genre stuff. The absolute standouts have to be Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, which was masterfully shot, directed and acted; and the sublime high weirdness of Scavengers Reign, a Moebius-like, Ghibli-esque animation that unfortunately won’t be getting a second season.
Documentary highlights included Mr, McMahon and Kings of Tupelo, and The Dangerous Rise of Andrew Tate, also made by Matt Shea and Jamie Tahsin. Darren McGarvey’s latest bombshell documentary on class, The State We’re In, is also appointment viewing for anyone interested in class politics in the UK.
Good films were thin on the ground this year, everything I had looked forward to, from Longlegs to Dune II to Deadpool & Wolverine was, let’s be honest, totally mid. While it only had to clear a low bar, I thought Civil War was probably the best of the year. It’s an excellent, nuanced exploration of the role photojournalists play in creating the symbolic weight of a conflict, documenting it from the inside, but always outsiders. It had more to say on this than the slightly hagiographic bio-pic Lee.
Music
I didn’t listen to a ton of new music this year, but a few highlights came from friends in the underground Glasgow music scene, such as The Girobabies, Supermann On Da Beat, Loki, Solareye and Conscious Route. Album of the year from that scene has to go to Scotland’s two most out-there, psychedelic, technically devastating, calculatedly offensive lyricists, Tzusan and Shogun.
When these two get together, expect trouble (and a whole host of amazing guest emceees). Go check out Dr. Dunbar’s Travelling Taxidermy Service immediately.
One of my old faves Heems, from NYC legends Das Racist and Swet Shop Boys, released two dope albums this year. I’ve also listened to a lot of philomenah, Lo Rays, Sev Ka and Somnia, all in the Glasgow orbit.
Thank you
As we approach 400 subscribers, I’d like to thank each of you again for your support and engagement throughout 2024. I hope we get to talk more in the new year. I’ll be back soon with one more episode in the next week or so. Until then… have a wonderful holiday, and take care of each other.
-Bram, Glasgow, December 2024
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