Multiplications of Effect: Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket feat. Devin Thomas O’ Shea (Premium E321)
Devin Thomas O’Shea transports Travis to Milwaukee, 1932, where Thomas Pynchon’s newest novel Shadow Ticket kicks off with speakeasy intrigue, Depression misery, and a precision-engineered car bomb. Devin unpacks Pynchon’s characteristic hinge-of-history setting, when everyone’s forced to pick sides, as the book’s reluctant bruiser-turned-investigator Hicks McTaggart gets thrashed around by forces he can’t (and won’t) understand.
Shadow Ticket’s paranoia, occult object-mysticism, and explosive politics connect to the real history of American labor violence: the Haymarket bombing and riot, the Bay View massacre, and the 1932 Ford hunger march. What can the novel, probably Pynchon’s last, teach us about our current strange moment in history?
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Devin O’Shea
https://devinoshea.wordpress.com/
https://bsky.app/profile/devintoshea.bsky.social
The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis by Devin Thomas O'Shea — Coming June 2026
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2770-the-veiled-prophet
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Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme
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QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Comments (49)
Smedley Butler was a real man. He was a Marine general. He wrote a book called "War is a Racket". His story is told in the book "Gangsters of Capitalism" by Johnathan M. Katz.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ynXapWs6kNRnJVfI7TaDF?si=wSQHlMERSzuohSxO8BbxYA&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A05t3t83NDiCPwbo5OPM2hn This has some great info on Henry Bennett (like he did have lions and tigers and a tunnels from his castle he had built on his property and he would let them out in the tunnels when guests where in them and turn out the lights to scare them as a prank) lots of interesting info about how racist michigan was
I wanna like Devin but his voice…
The voice I can stomach but the pronunciations are like nails on a chalkboard for me.
Devin is such a killer guest, love his episodes
Jeez, anarchism catching strays. Fun ep
More like catching non-sequiturs, Chomsky's Epstein connection stemming from his identification as anarchist is certainly an opinion but I'm gonna need more than an implied "because I say so" to take it seriously. Given the novel pronunciation of "syndicalism" (among other things) I'm going to assume the guest hasn't ever really interfaced much with the history or theory of the anarchist movement and probably makes the common error of confusing it with right-libertarianism.
Thanks for your work! Here's another novel that might be worth looking at: "It Can't Happen Here" by Nobel laureate Sinclair Lewis. Published in 1935, it fits all too well. Worth an episode? Wanted to post this under the previous instalment of the show, but I suppose it works here, too.
Catharsis.
We should all email that nazi fuck from two episodes and call him a nazi fuck
Milwaukee and West Allis mentioned? Is this podcast trying to appeal to me specifically?
Laurie Anderson makes her QAA debut (I think?)!
Good episode. A nice breather, as it were.
Para power mapping also did a great episode on Shadow Ticket, well worth a listen. https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Rr0ZUuNMT5sjHHLbYfBFc
Fantastic episode. Love Travis solo shows when he’s super excited about the material. Devin is my favorite QAA guest.
Smedley Butler was a bad ass. Also a true patriot.
I had to go back and relisten to the business plot episode of behind the insurrection series. They don't make them like old Smedley any more.
Devin rocks.
Loved this, and all you hogs complaining it’s not about the News get back to your troughs!
Really enjoyed this episode, Devin and Travis both bounce off each other in a very easy and insightful way and made me want to check this book out
Smelly Butler thin is true as far as can be proven. According to Butler he was approached. But Congress swept it under the rug.
Love a Devin Oshea episode
Give us right wing conspiracy you fucks
Its gonna be lit tho. Bc moot is in the files.
A book episode, huh? Well, I suppose it WAS a slow news week
Punching is always relevant.
This was a good episode, really calming, had a nice drive to work while listening to this
love devins episodes! i relisten to them a lot!
I actually keep the saved to a hard drive for repeated listening.
Hell yeah Devin O’Shea eps are my favorite!
Hey all, does this ep spoil the book? Or just like some of the book? :)
Now, there's quite a bit more to it. For Pynchon it's quiet a quick read.
Dear God. Not another Pynchon episode.
Really enjoyed this, been meaning to try Pynchon's work for a while now, but it seemed daunting. This gave me the right context and background info to try it.
Work your way to GR. It's amazing. But I was disappointed O'Shea didn't mention that the subject of his upcoming book, the Veiled Prophet is referenced (as is seemingly everything) in "Gravity's Rainbow".
General Smedley Butler is an American hero, he turned against the business plot and tried to get congress to hold those bastards accountable.
I really don't want to be an asshole about this, but I just don't vibe with Devin's voice. The last Pynchon episode remains the only QAA episode ever I couldn't get myself to finish because the narration is just so entirely monotone and I found myself drifting off constantly. Maybe I'm just too poisoned by the scrolling economy destroying my attention span.
Devin's concept of Pynchon intervening to save his character sort of gave me a flashback to the old Looney Tunes cartoonist erasing and altering the animation in real time.
Punching is reportedly a huge Bigs Bunny fan. He'll. GR has a pie fight between a guy in a hot air balloon and a guy in an airplane.
Based TDoS ep
Milwaukee mentioned
Drink
While Zen Buddhism was popularized in the west by D.T. Suzuki in the 60's, the post-Meiji Japanese government DID try to popularize "Eastern philosophy" in the west during the early 20th century, especially as a form of propaganda after the Russo-Japanese war. " The writer itobe Inazô published "Bushido: The Soul of Japan" in 1905 and not only did this contribute to stereotypes during WWII and beyond, it was also "reimported" back to Japan by the military government. It's almost like the war cabinet was determined to make the Orientalist stereotypes real. https://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/chushinguranew/Bushido/reinvention.htm https://www.buddhistdoor.net/features/daisetsu-teitaro-suzuki-zen/
Pynchon 💗
I love this guy’s voice. He sounds like the “Sleep with Me” podcaster!
That podcast has the catchiest intro
First lol
Good hustle out there
Forst