Skip to content

Integral [+] Facticity

Last entry 2 November 2026

Podcast57 min

Douglas Lain on Michael Brooks, the Next Left & the Future of Left Media

Integral [+] Facticity, episode 6 of 21, with Douglas Lain

First published on Acast, 20 April 2022, with show notes on Medium. All 21 episodes

Appearance
Text size
Episode details
Date
Length
57 min
Type
PodcastIntegral [+] Facticity, episode 6 of 21
People
Contents
  1. Overview
  2. Description
  3. Original episode
  4. References & Further Reading
Listen to episode 6, 57 min. The recording is served by Acast.

Overview

A historical and political discussion of independent left-wing publishing and media, centred on Douglas Lain’s work with Zero Books and the development of Sublation Media. Topics include Michael Brooks’s publishing legacy, differences among generations of left politics, postwar Marxism, the Sanders campaigns and the challenges of sustaining critical media.

Description

Before Sublation Media, there was Zero Books—and before that, Doug Lain's Diet Soap zine and the post-2009 turn toward podcasting. Doug recounts this history, including Tariq Goddard's founding of Zero Books under John Hunt Publishing, the publication of Michael Brooks's Against the Web, and his own encounters with Brooks and Ben Burgis around the Jordan Peterson conference in Boise. These are also stories about the changing relationship between left-wing publishing, political argument and online media.

Where did the energy of millennial socialism go after Bernie Sanders? Our conversation compares the boomer New Left, Generation X and the Sanders generation. Doug responds to Burgis's description of him as more hippie than socialist, examines the postwar turn away from Marxism, and explains why he saw the left-media landscape as being in crisis when he left Zero Books to launch Sublation.

Original episode

Title as published
Douglas Lain on Michael Brooks, the Next Left & the Future of Left Media
Published
Length
57 min
Guest
Douglas Lain
Series
Integral [+] Facticity, episode 6 of 21

References & Further Reading