Feral Historian
Published 27 Mar 2026Equilibrium (2002) is a curious mix of early-aughts action movie and mid-20th Century dystopia. While it does feel a bit overwrought and derivative at times, it ends up being more than the sum of its parts.
00:00 Intro
03:17 Gun Kata
04:44 198451
06:45 Endings
07:07 Anti-Human Systems
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July 30, 2026
Equilibrium: 198451 with Gun-Fu Fighting
July 16, 2026
How Few Remain: The Second War Between the States
Feral Historian
Published 13 Mar 2026Let’s take a look at Harry Turtledove’s How Few Remain and its many themes and historical extrapolations. And probably argue about the Civil War a little along the way.
If there’s enough interest, this may be the start of a dive into the entire sprawling series that follows.
00:00 Intro
01:37 A War Unfinished
07:09 Adapting and Evolving
10:12 Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass
13:15 The Horace Greeley Letter
15:40 Freddie’s Louisville Adventure
18:07 Turtledove, Lost Cause, and Spoilers
(more…)
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July 13, 2026
A Fair Reading of The Camp of the Saints
Feral Historian
Published 10 Jul 2026Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints has gone from obscurity to infamy in recent years, drawing condemnation for its highly … unflattering depiction of third-worlders. Much of this condemnation comes from people who haven’t read it, or gave it only a shallow and cursory read. But if we let the book speak for itself it can be quite insightful at times, and the true target of its scorn becomes brutally evident.
Rather than use politically-charged b-roll, it’s all hiking shots this time. Mostly to cover some edits. This is a great one for those who listen to these on the commute. Or the commode as the case may be.
00:00 Intro
01:03 The Story
14:22 Escalation Curve
17:38 Hamadura and “Whiteness”
22:05 Culture and Ethnicity
26:33 Why so Serious?
30:09 The End of a World
34:14 Your Virtual Right-Wing Uncle
35:48 A “Martian” Perspective🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian
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🔹 Oh, and book 2 of Stellar Drift is out. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GTVXK4CN
July 1, 2026
Elleander Morning: Causes vs Catalysts
Feral Historian
Published 6 Mar 2026Elleander Morning (Jerry Yulsman) is a peculiar bit of alt-history, brilliant in some ways and immensely clunky in others. It’s a story of a war averted, or perhaps only postponed, and it plays with some fundamental questions of history.
00:00 Intro
02:30 Implications left hanging
03:29 The Books
06:15 The New Catalyst
12:06 Gaming the Past
13:04 Concluding Musings
(more…)
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June 23, 2026
American Gods: Land and Egregores
Feral Historian
Published 20 Feb 2026American Gods (Neil Gaiman, 2001) is, among other things, a layered examination of the role of mythologies, religion, national identities, and some underlying “American-ness” that bends them all into something new. By necessity this meanders a bit (I’m not going to get into Gaiman’s failings as a human being much) but it gives us a lot to think about.
I mention a couple outside references in here, links below if you want to dig into it.
Lilly Wachowski on the role of the Red Pill in The Matrix: https://screenrant.com/the-matrix-mov…
George Lucas on the Rebellion, and Viet Cong (people often quote the line but miss the context) : • JAMES CAMERON’S STORY OF SCIENCE FICTION |…
00:00 Intro
01:56 The Setup
04:48 Spirit of America
07:57 White and Red
10:50 New Gods and the State
12:51 Author, Intent, and Meaning
(more…)
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June 15, 2026
Elysium: Greed and the Crab Trap
Feral Historian
Published 23 Jan 2026Elysium is one of those films I like more for the world it presents than the story it tells. It’s a tale of two worlds, a wealthy break-away civilization in orbit and a slowly dying civilization on Earth. On the surface it’s simplistic, preachy even, but underneath it posits some important questions both by what it tries to do and what it doesn’t even attempt to address.
00:00 Intro
01:18 Healing Magic and Healthcare Access
03:22 Overpopulation and Automation
04:18 Technology in Layers
07:50 Easy Answers to Hard Problems🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian
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Ninti’s Gate – the prologue to Stellar Drift, coming later this year.
🔹 amazon.com/dp/B0CYXH9BWD
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June 4, 2026
Sci-Fi and the WWII Mythos Part II : The Political Element
Feral Historian
Published 16 Jan 2026Last time I was focused on cultural aspects, but what about the direct political manifestations today? Is there a resurgence of neo-nazi attitudes or is just an artifact of the ubiquity of digital media preserving everything? Why might those ideas resonate with the young, and how does it fit with my argument that the old myths are breaking down?
00:00 Intro
01:42 Right, Left, and Gen-Z
02:56 Patterns of Force
04:25 Rambling about Economics
05:48 Efficient? No.
06:39 Bifurcation
08:00 Loss of PerspectiveThis one is a direct result of a conversation on the Talking History program on KSMU (I’ll link the episode when goes up) and covers something that came up but wasn’t really addressed well.
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May 28, 2026
The Day The Earth Stood Still: a Post-WWII War of the Worlds
Feral Historian
Published Jan 9, 2026The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) is in some ways the most successful translation of the alien invasion story from 19th Century colonial assumptions to those of the post-WWII world. They no longer come to take our land and plunder our resources, but to keep us from threatening their “Rules Based Order” and turn us into a low-fidelity copy of themselves.
00:00 Intro
02:46 Nukes and Norms
06:48 Ultimatum
09:00 Farewell to the Master
11:08 Hello Remake
(more…)
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May 8, 2026
The Strugatskys’ The Doomed City and the Soviet Experiment
Feral Historian
Published 12 Dec 2025While The Doomed City isn’t the last book Boris and Arkady Strugatsky wrote, it is arguably the end of their journey from idealism to cynicism with regards to the whole Soviet project and serves as an almost spiritual history of the period. Let’s meander through it to look at some things not covered in a literary review.
00:00 Intro
03:12 New Jobs
04:45 Aside – Facts and Theory
05:42 Laws and Mentors
09:36 The Experiment
10:50 Regime Change
13:25 Aside – Maps
15:45 Status and Power
18:22 The Ground Beneath Our Feet
(more…)
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May 1, 2026
“Second Dawn”, Childhood’s End, and the Nuclear Age
Feral Historian
Published 5 Dec 2025A quick look at two Arthur C. Clarke stories from the early 1950s that pair well as allegories for the still-new Cold War fears of the time.
00:00 Intro
03:03 Psychics and Nukes
03:37 “Second Dawn”
09:13 The Phileni
11:50 New World, New DangersAudio note: On the previous vid (Riddick) I used some new tools for post-processing the audio. It was much cleaner, removed almost all the noise … and the response has been entirely negative. It seems people don’t miss the wind and the birds until they’re gone. So I’m back to the old approach of using essentially raw sound.
EDIT: If you’re not seeing a link to the old Childhood’s End video on the pop-up card or the end screen, here’s the link. • Childhood’s End (Youtube Copyright Edit)
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Still plugging Ninti’s Gate
🔹 amazon.com/dp/B0CYXH9BWD
April 17, 2026
The Chronicles of Riddick: a Treatise on Political Machinery
Feral Historian
Published 28 Nov 2025The Chronicles of Riddick probably isn’t on anyone’s “top 10 science fiction” list, but it’s a remarkably astute study of how ideologies lead to systems, and how those systems co-opt people within them.
And of course it has a great cast that seems to have had fun with their roles.
00:00 Intro
01:04 Perception of Enemies
03:12 The Underverse
04:59 Plotting and Scheming
07:47 Superposition
08:20 Institutional Inertia
(more…)
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March 26, 2026
Plur1bus: First Impressions
Feral Historian
Published 21 Nov 2025EDIT: The sound is bad. I should have known better than to edit it on a laptop in-transit, but here we are.
After a few recommendations I started watching Plur1bus, and a few things strike me two episodes in. Let’s see how off-base I end up looking when the season is done.
Also I bounce off a few points raised by Damien Walter in his recent video on the show, which you can find here: • So. What’s PLUR1BUS all about then?
00:00 Intro
00:45 Mind Virus
02:28 Mrs. Davis and the End of the World
04:18 Mandatory Happiness and Self-Delusion
07:08 Commodification
09:02 Stopping the Machine
(more…)
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March 19, 2026
District 9 and the Story of “Race”
Feral Historian
Published 14 Nov 2025Modern society has become a bit obsessed with the idea of race. District 9 subverts some of these assumptions and points at some of the ways that the entire concept of race is a product of the modern era. This one meanders a bit, but I suppose there’s no way around that.
00:00 Intro
02:45 Meet Wikus
05:42 Subverting Race
08:35 Bacon’s Rebellion and Trans-Racial Wikus
12:32 Let’s Talk About Rhodesia
14:48 Perspectives and Narratives
(more…)
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March 8, 2026
Star Trek – Section 31
Feral Historian
Published 7 Nov 2025Star Trek: Deep Space Nine introduced a dark undertone to the optimistic vision of the Federation with Section 31, a secretive organization doing dirty deeds behind the scenes. For some its a much-needed dose of Realpolitik to Trek, for others its a cynical ploy that has no place in Roddenberry’s vision. Either way, Section 31 is one of the most interesting pieces of Star Trek lore.
00:00 Intro
02:20 Backstories
04:09 DS9
06:30 Existential Threats
08:08 In The Pale Moonlight
10:43 Limits of Idealism
12:54 Enterprise
March 2, 2026
Ghostbusters: Ignore the Rules, Save the World
Feral Historian
Published 31 Oct 2025It’s a comedy classic, and even funnier when you realize that it’s about shady small-businessmen saving the world by ignoring government regulations.
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