In this special edition of Culture & Barbarism, titled "Shakespeare's Language As Social Barometer," culture critic Dennis Broe talks about Shakespeare's contribution to the language, his critique of power and incorporation of ordinary language, the imperial use of his work as colonial soft power and its contestation and, finally, how one phrase "Unsex Me Here" by Lady Macbeth echoes across not just generations but centuries.

This talk was a keynote given in India on the occasion of Shakespeare's birthday for a conference titled "Shakespeare as Architect of the English Language."

He is joined here by Shakespeare aficionado and musical comedy lyricist Ed Levy.

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In this interview with Pacifica Radio and WBAI's Jack Shalom, Dennis Broe takes us into the world of Pornocopia in the latest Harry Palmer LA Mystery Thriller. We talk about how that world intersects with Iran in a blowback onto Harry's case, the way the porn and gambling industries have now seeped into every aspect of American life and about the false intimacy porn promises and the false profits gambling serves up as everywhere ordinary people in the country grow more desperate.

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In Culture and Barbarism 10 Dennis Broe and Toby Miller discuss Broe's new Harry Palmer novel Pornocopia while Toby recounts the atmosphere in Mexico in the wake of the American-gun-fueled narco attacks. We recount the many similarities between the above ground Hollywood industry and the now more popular porn industry and we look at the beginnings of Vegas, fueled by mob drug money, the Hoover Dam and Air Conditioning. Finally, we look at why Ian Fleming and Arthur Conan Doyle wanted to abandon their characters and why flawed characters are more fun to write.

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