New Models

This is an unlocked episode of New Models (originally released 01/31/2026) — to access all our content & to join the NM Discordd, subscribe: https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com
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Gideon Jacobs returns to NM with his third essay in a trilogy for the LA Review of Books that tracks, in real-time, the American Political machine’s delamination from everyday life through runaway story-drive. In “MAGA as Fan Fiction,” Gideon shows US politics both left and right as having become a read-write medium for collective creative expression more than material governance—a kind of kayfabe where ‘democracy’ takes the form of citizens co-creating storyline with their elected officials and everyone in office has an IMDB profile. Carly & Lil Internet intro this ep with a short conversation drawing out themes across this trilogy that feel particularly NM Canon.

“Of course, long before any advanced communication technologies, humans had been drawn not just to stories but also to the possibility of living as characters within them. Story’s appeal had always been precisely that it’s not like reality. […] a dream of existing free from the pesky flaws intrinsic to reality: uncontrollability, unpredictability, vulnerability, mundanity, complexity, incoherence, confusion, pain.”

Audio production: Lil Internet

For more:
https://gideon.works/
Gideon Jacobs, “MAGA as Fan Fiction,” (Jan 2026)
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/trump-elon-musk-image-patel-maga-reality/
Gideon Jacobs, “Player One and Main Character,” (Apr 2025)
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/player-one-and-main-character/
Gideon Jacobs, “Trump l’Oeil,” (Nov 2024) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/trump-loeil/

This is preview (full ep released to subscribers 03/02/2026) — to access all our content & to join the NM Discord, subscribe: patreon.com/newmodels & newmodels.substack.com
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We speak often in the New Model sphere about scanning and sensing rather than reading—communication through vibes. Peli Grietzer is a comparative literature PhD (Harvard) who has spent over a decade developing a rigorous theory of what a “vibe" actually is, how we increasingly follow ineffable cues to navigate our world and these, taken together, in fact exist as empirical objects in mathematical space. On this episode, Peli joins NM to talk about his work for a more general audience.

For more: @peligrietzer (X & IG)

Substack: Second Balcony
(https://peligrietzer.substack.com/)
Theory of a Vibe (https://www.glass-bead.org/wp-content/uploads/GB_Site-1_Peli-Grietzer_Eng.pdf)
Theory of a Vibe ’25 (https://peligrietzer.substack.com/p/theory-of-vibe-25)

This is preview (full ep released to subscribers 02/15/2026) — to access all our content & to join the NM Discord, subscribe: https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com
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Back in Berlin to show their new film work “The End of Theater” at Isabella Bortolozzi Gallery, artists Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff drop by New Models to chat about that film’s primary set: New Theater Hollywood, the DIY theater they opened on Santa Monica Boulevard after decamping to LA in 2023. We discuss their layered process — creating a space that generates a scene, which produces its own art and dedicated star-system while also serving as source material, location, and cast for all that Max and Calla make in parallel — as a distinctly contemporary protocol for artmaking today. We also talk about the return of theater itself at a time when every physical place now feels like a potential set, whether for a vlog or an ICE raid, and performance online is constant? Does theater hit different in our neo-oral era? Does LA?

For more: www.newtheaterhollywood.com & @newtheaterhollywood

See also: 

Mike Davis, "City of Quartz" (Verso, 1990)
Thom Anderson, "LA Plays Itself" (2003)
NM Podcast | Mise-en-TV w/ Calla Henkel (2022)
NM 77 | Calla Henkel on Art, Industry, and “Scrap” (2024)

This is an unlocked episode of New Models (originally released 01/31/2026) — to access all our content & to join the NM Discord, subscribe: patreon.com/newmodels newmodels.substack.com
--
Gideon Jacobs returns to NM with his third essay in a trilogy for the LA Review of Books that tracks, in real-time, the American Political machine’s delamination from everyday life through runaway story-drive. In “MAGA as Fan Fiction,” Gideon shows US politics both left and right as having become a read-write medium for collective creative expression more than material governance—a kind of kayfabe where ‘democracy’ takes the form of citizens co-creating storyline with their elected officials and everyone in office has an IMDB profile. Carly & Lil Internet intro this ep with a short conversation drawing out themes across this trilogy that feel particularly NM Canon.

“Of course, long before any advanced communication technologies, humans had been drawn not just to stories but also to the possibility of living as characters within them. Story’s appeal had always been precisely that it’s not like reality. […] a dream of existing free from the pesky flaws intrinsic to reality: uncontrollability, unpredictability, vulnerability, mundanity, complexity, incoherence, confusion, pain.”

Audio production: Lil Internet

For more:
gideon.works/
Gideon Jacobs, “MAGA as Fan Fiction,” (Jan 2026)
lareviewofbooks.org/article/trump-e…l-maga-reality/
Gideon Jacobs, “Player One and Main Character,” (Apr 2025)
lareviewofbooks.org/article/player-…main-character/
Gideon Jacobs, “Trump l’Oeil,” (Nov 2024) lareviewofbooks.org/article/trump-loeil/

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com

A psyche-delic meditation by Lil Internet on what it means to live among multiple competing intelligences—and the urgent need to develop new rituals for engaging with them before capital-mind fentafies us all into extinction.

"I no longer saw the highway, I felt it, viscerally, overwhelmed by the colossal, conquering thrust of capital. The velocity of the vehicles became tangible, massive aggregations of steel, plastic, glass, rubber, precision electronics, combustion engines and gasoline in violently accelerating streams of headlights and taillights..."