Fantasmas: Julio Torres on Art Surviving in Late-Stage Capitalism

Hi all! We're taking a break from our usual episodes of Creative Spark this week to share a podcast from our friends at The Peabody Awards and the Center for Media and Social Impact. Their show is called We Disrupt This Broadcast. Host Gabe Gonzalez introduces us to the brilliant, absurdist, hilarious Peabody Award-winning HBO series Fantasmas. In a funny, enlivening conversation with creator, writer, and comedian Julio Torres, they explore how Torres uses humor to uncover the real absurdity of our immigration, healthcare, and economic systems. They discuss how creating fiction – like the “proof of existence” that the fictional Julio is so desperate to avoid – can expose our even stranger realities, like the “aliens of extraordinary abilities” visa that real Julio applied for when immigrating to the U.S. In the second half, Gabe speaks with Andrew DeWaard, author of Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture. Andrew’s work focuses on the cultural cost of the financialization of media. And don’t worry, he also explains what the word “financialization” means.

You can listen to Fantasmas: Julio Torres on Art Surviving in Late-Stage Capitalism online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Fantasmas: Julio Torres on Art Surviving in Late-Stage Capitalism is an episode from American Masters Podcast by American Masters | PBS.

This episode is 34:20 long.

This episode was published on Oct 3, 2025.

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