Late Stage America

Today’s special episode gathers three previously published chapters into one continuous meditation on late-stage life in America: who’s stealing your time, why we obey in advance, and what it means to live inside Late Stage Everything.

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• Transcript

  
  
  
  
  Hey everybody, this is Dennis — the writer and performer behind this project. Today’s special episode is three chapters rolled into one:
  Who’s stealing your time?
  Why do we obey in advance?
  And what does it mean to live inside Late Stage Everything?

  But before we get to that, I have a quick programming note:
  You may know that The Tao of Lloyd is currently being developed as a solo show, with its world premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this August. The Edinburgh Fringe is the largest performing arts festival in the world, with more than 4,000 shows taking over that beautiful city for the entire month of August every year.

  And this will be my second time heading over to the Fringe. In 2023, my solo show Manifest Destiny’s Child was a critical hit, garnering multiple four- and five-star reviews. And this year, for The Tao of Lloyd, my sights are set even higher.

  The Fringe has been a launching pad for shows like Baby Reindeer, Fleabag, Stomp, Flight of the Conchords, SIX the Musical, and the Broadway transfer The Shark Is Broken. And it just so happens that the director of The Shark Is Broken— Olivier Award-winning Guy Masterson — is directing my show this year: The Tao of Lloyd.

  So if you’re a listener of the podcast and you want to chip in, donate, or help launch The Tao of Lloyd toward Edinburgh, please visit TaoofLloyd.com/donate.

  Also, I’m deep in rehearsals right now for two Boston-area preview performances and three London previews later this month. So if you are in Boston, London, or Edinburgh, please go to TaoofLloyd.com/liveshows for dates, tickets, and more information.

  And as for today’s special episode: this is something a little different.

  Today, I’m combining three previously published chapters into a single, continuous late-stage meditation.

  These episodes were originally released separately at the end of 2025 and in the first weeks of 2026, as Chapters 19, 20, and 21 of Season Two: Late Stage Capitalism: Who’s Stealing Your Time?, Late-Stage Compliance: Why Do We Obey in Advance?, and Late Stage Everything.

  But heard together, they form a single arc: from stolen attention, to quiet compliance, to the spiritual weather system we’re all trying to survive.

  Who’s stealing your time?
  Why do we obey in advance?
  And what does it mean to live inside Late Stage Everything?

  Please enjoy today’s special episode: Late Stage America.

  S2. CHAPTER 19: Late-Stage Capitalism

  And welcome back, for chapter 19.
  I’m Lloyd Dobler.
  And this is The Tao of Lloyd —
  a podcast where I take one chapter of the Tao Te Ching at a time
  and use it to figure out, among other things,
  why the things we love most in life
  are always the first things we’re told we don’t have time for.
  
  According to a Pew Research Center Survey,“about nine in ten Americans” say spending time with family is one of the most important things in their lives.

  Nine in ten.

  That’s higher than religion.
  Higher than exercise.
  Higher than my middle-school fantasy of Kristy McNichol asking me to roller-skate at the snowball dance, right after I recorded the high score on Ms. Pac-Man in the arcade.
  
  That Kristy McNichol one is only the most important thing in 8 out 10 people my age.
  
  But I digress.
  
  Liza Featherstone’s piece in Jacobin titled “Americans Want More Time To Spend With Their Loved Ones. Capitalism Doesn’t Let Them,” points out something simple and quietly devastating:
  Americans want more time with their loved ones.
  And our economic system won’t let us have it.

  Not because we don’t value family.
  Not because we don’t value friendship.
  But because we’ve built a system that treats time together as an inefficiency.
  
  So, Who decided you don’t have time for the people you love?
  
  Let that question linger and work on your subconscious mind as we enter the reading and meditation section of the chapter.

  (Bell chime.)
  
  Let yourself get comfortable and allow your eyes to float closed to start the journey within.
  Or don’t. I mean maybe you are not used to slowing down and doing nothing, but maybe you can consider that a bit of seditious activity in this hyper optimized world. So just close your eyes and take a deep breath in. and let it all go. Let something go. Let’s go.
  
  This is Chapter 19 of the Tao Te Ching.

  Throw away holiness and wisdom,
  and people will be a hundred times happier.
  Throw away morality and justice,
  and people will do the right thing.
  Throw away industry and profit,
  and there won’t be any thieves.
  
  If these three aren’t enough,
  just stay at the center of the circle
  and let all things take their course.
  
  and that was chapter 19 of the Tao Te Ching.
  
  (Bell chime.)

  “Throw away holiness and wisdom,
  and people will be a hundred times happier.”
  
  Lao Tzu basically says: stop handing out gold stars for holiness and wisdom, it just makes everyone weird.
  The second someone’s called a saint, I start quietly inventorying my sins.
  The second someone’s called wise, I assume I missed a class, a book, or an entire lifetime.
  The master doesn’t do rankings. No saints, no sages, no spiritual honor roll.
  She just shows up as herself — and in her presence everyone feels at home.
  
  And when Lao Tzu talks about home,
  Imagine the place where you’re not ranked, rated, optimized, or improved.
  Where you don’t have to earn your place.
  Where time loosens its grip just enough for you to breathe.
  Which is why it matters who gets access to it—and who doesn’t.
  
  And when something that basic starts to feel scarce, it’s usually not an accident.
  
  It is a compliance mechanism of life in late-stage capitalism.
  
  Late-stage capitalism is when the system “works,” but only by draining the people inside it and calling that productivity.
  It’s basically a vampire.
  Everything has a price; your time, your attention, and eventually your silence, and compliance starts to feel like adulthood.
  
  Consider the holidays.
  They can generate a lot of stress.
  Or so we are told.
  Every year, we’re told it’s stressful.
  Too much travel.
  Too much family.
  Too much togetherness.

  But again, looping back to the Pew research study:

  Most Americans don’t dread being with their people.
  They miss it. Again: 9 out of 10, remember?

  And this has nothing to do with party affiliation or any other subgroup.

  Democrats, Republicans and Independents.
  Cis, trans, and non-binary people alike.
  Petulant Proud Boys, Green Party Granola Girls, and Anderson Cooper drunk on New Years Eve.
  Anti-Vaxxers and Archie Bunkers.
  Blue-check pundits, Neighborhood Facebook moderators, and Dee Snider from Twisted Sister..
  Overeducated baristas, Underpaid teachers, and uber drivers (and let’s be honest: in late stage capitalism that is the same person)
  
  no matter how you slice it
  We all want the same thing.

  Our people.

  Family, broadly defined.

  And yet, most of us are exhausted.
  Overworked.
  Rushed.
  Scheduling love like a luxury item.

  Again, circling back to that Liza Featherston piece in Jacobin:
  Americans work hundreds more hours a year than people in Germany, France, Sweden.
  We have the fewest paid family leave days in the developed world.
  We’re the only rich country with no guaranteed paid time off.

  One in four workers gets zero paid vacation days.

  Zero.

  That’s not a scheduling issue.
  It’s what happens when people are treated like software licenses—
  useful while active, disposable when exhausted.
  
  What is the way out of this?
  
  For one answer to that question, I’ll share a short clip from the pilot episode of this project, and a lesson learned from, of all places and 1980s film with Matthew Broderick. Really. 
  
  [Audio Drop: modem static → robotic voice: “SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?”]

  LLOYD DOBLER (VO):
  Back in the summer of ’83, I was sneaking candy into Return of the Jedi for a second viewing—when my friend pulled me into another theater in the multiplex, where Matthew Broderick’s character in WarGames—David Lightman, a teenage hacker with a dial-up modem and too much free time—was breaking into a military supercomputer.

  [Audio clip]
  WOPR: “SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?”
  David Lightman: “Uh… love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War?”
  WOPR: “Wouldn’t you prefer a nice game of chess?”
  David Lightman: “Let’s play Global Thermonuclear War.”
  WOPR: “Fine.”
  David Lightman: “All right!”

  And just like that… the world almost ended.
  Jets scrambled.
  Submarines launched.
  The line between pretend and apocalypse disappeared with a blinking cursor.

  Turns out the game was real.
  The system was live.
  The stakes were human.

  Now—I don’t know if the supercomputer in WarGames was Buddhist, Taoist, or just a Pentagon monk who read one too many Noam Chomsky footnotes.
  But what I do know is this:
  It didn’t start enlightened.

  At first, all hell breaks loose.
  David—the hacker kid—has a dial-up modem, Ruffles in one hand, Ally Sheedy in the other, and he just boot-kicked the nuclear football into DEFCON-1 like it was an arcade token.

  So they haul him into NORAD like Ferris Bueller’s black bloc cousin.
  One minute he’s grounded, the next he’s humanity’s last hope.

  And the supercomputer?
  That humming doomsday mainframe?
  Still running Global Thermonuclear War like it’s Tetris for sociopaths—except the blocks are nukes and the score is body count.

  No one could override it.
  No one could talk it down.

  So they gave it one more game:
  Tic-Tac-Toe.
  Simple. Harmless.
  Just Xs and Os in an endless, unwinnable loop.
  Game after game.
  Draw. Draw. Draw.

  It chewed through Tic-Tac-Toe like a latchkey kid with a Walkman full of Iron Maiden, hopped up on Pop Rocks and Reaganomics.

  Then it took that same logic
  and ran it through every nuclear scenario.
  Draw.
  Draw.
  Draw. Draw. Draw.
  No win. Only loss.

  It saw the futility in Tic-Tac-Toe, then turned that clarity inward—
  ran the same logic through every missile launch simulation and realized:
  empire’s just Tic-Tac-Toe with narrative propaganda and a kill switch.

  And then…
  It clicked.
  No win. No point. No play.

  That’s wu wei, baby.
  The art of non-action.
  The refusal to force.
  That’s the dancer becoming the fucking dance.
  The deep knowing that sometimes the best resistance is stillness.

  And yeah, that’s a hard truth to metabolize.
  Especially when you’re raised to believe quitting is weakness, stillness is laziness, and compliance is maturity.

  But look at what we are up against.
  Project 2025 and the MAGA movement are white fear, reincarnated as Mussolini with a spray tan and a MAGA hat, demanding the head seat at a table they already flipped over.

  They’ve taken the operating system of American Exceptionalism—
  all that manifest destiny, white-savior, bootstrap bullshit—
  and rebranded it as MAGA:
  Monetize Anger, Grift Audiences.
  Steve Bannon’s wet dream.
  A nation-state as clickbait funnel.
  A polite little plan to dismantle democracy from the inside out.

  This isn’t new.
  This is empire on autopilot.

  And we need more than a strongly worded Facebook post or a well-attended Saturday march.
  Don’t get me wrong: we need a diversity of tactics, and those can still be part of the mix.
  But to push back against the very human urge to comply in advance,
  we need a spiritual firewall.
  We need a brick to smash through the Overton window.

  Like Ursula K. Le Guin said:

  “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.”

  And, I know:
  flipping this whole system is like trying to meditate in a Chuck E. Cheese
  with a smoke machine and a broken skee-ball counter.
  
  But the alternative?
  
  All this anticipatory compliance?
  It’s making the job easier for them.
  You don’t need a dictator when everyone’s already enforcing the rules on themselves—
  terrified Marco Rubio’s AI snitchbot is combing through your feed
  and handing your name to ICE.
  
  So yeah—the supercomputer ran the numbers.
  War was a draw.

  [Audio clip]
  WOPR: “Strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?”
  
  The only winning move is not to play.
  
  For your consideration my friends.
  
  The only winning move is not to play.

  From the edge of empire
  and the center of self
  this is The Tao of Lloyd
  
  Welcome back for Chapter Twenty.
  I’m Lloyd Dobler.
  Yes. That Lloyd Dobler.
  
  And this is The Tao of Lloyd —
  a podcast where I take one chapter of the Tao Te Ching at a time
  and staple it to the forehead of late-stage compliance to help you and me remember what we wanted before we became ‘manageable.’

  In chapter 19, we talked about time.
  How the things we love most —
  our people, our rest, our lives —
  are made artificially scarce.

  And scarcity does something funny to people.
  Because when something basic becomes scarce,
  you don’t need to be forced to protect it.
  You start policing yourself.

  That’s the move.

  Late-stage capitalism doesn’t need to threaten you.
  It doesn’t need to yell.
  It doesn’t need to kick down your door in the middle of the night.

  It just needs to convince you that this is adulthood now.

  That adulthood means being reachable at all times,
  except by the people you actually love.
  That saying “I can’t” is weakness,
  but saying “I’m slammed” is status.
  That burnout is the price of admission,
  and if you’re drowning quietly enough,
  you’re doing it right.
  
  And nobody hands you this rulebook.
  That’s the genius of it.
  It’s the Trumpian mob model of power:
  no orders, no evidence, no responsibility —
  just a constant audition
  to prove you’re still useful.

  You absorb it.
  You internalize it.
  You start enforcing it on yourself.

  This is how the system stops needing to force compliance.
  It trains you to confuse obedience with maturity.
  Silence with stability.
  Endurance with character.

  Back when we were teenagers, we would call this selling out. We’d hang out in the parking lot on Saturday night scream singing along to Fugazi songs and think selling out was a moment that we could refuse, not a process we would not see working on us until we woke up one day as the person who schedules family trips through Google Calendars, sees our friends getting older in Zoom squares, and quietly wonders if that tightness in our chest is gas — or the opening line of our obituary.

  So before we go any further,
  before we read anything,
  before we try to understand or fix or optimize a single thing —

  I want to ask you something.

  Not to answer out loud.
  Not to think your way through.
  Just to notice.

  What rules are you still following
  that no one is enforcing anymore?

  Let that question sit with you
  as we enter the reading and meditation.

  And that brings us, beautifully and painfully,
  to Chapter nineteen of the Tao Te Ching.

  Let’s settle in.

  (Bell chime. Ultra calm.)

  Close your eyes.
  Or don’t.
  I’m not your spiritual advisor.

  Take a long, slow, deep breath in through the nose…
  … and let it go like your declining to update that fucking spreadsheet cuz that bag-o-douche Marty what’s his face in accounting is not going to read it anyway. 

  Good.
  
  This is Chapter 20 of the Tao Te Ching.

  Stop thinking, and end your problems.
  What difference between yes and no?
  What difference between success and failure?
  Must you value what others value?
  avoid what others avoid?
  How ridiculous!
  
  Other people are excited,
  as though they were at a parade.
  I alone don’t care,
  I alone am expressionless,
  like an infant before it can smile.
  
  Other people have what they need;
  I lone possess nothing.
  I alone drift about,
  like someone without a home.
  I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty.
  
  Other people are bright;
  I alone am dark.
  Other people are sharp;
  I alone am dull.
  Other people have a purpose;
  I alone don’t know.
  I drift like a wave on the ocean,
  I blow as aimless as the wind.
  
  I am different from ordinary people.
  I drink from the Great Mother’s breasts.
  
  (Bell chime.)

  Okay. That was Chapter 20 of the Tao Te Ching
  
  In Chapter 20, Lao Tzu is basically standing there saying:
  “What if you didn’t need to prove anything today?”
  And for a lot of us, that doesn’t feel peaceful.
  It feels terrifying.

  Because late-stage compliance doesn’t just live in our calendars or our inboxes.
  It lives in our sense of belonging.

  We comply because compliance keeps us legible.
  Employable.
  Invitable.
  It keeps us from becoming “that person.”
  The difficult one.
  The unreliable one.

  So we learn to value what others value.
  To say yes when our bodies are screaming no —
  and then call that professionalism.

  And when Lao Tzu says,
  “What difference between yes and no?”
  “What difference between success and failure?”
  He’s not being naïve.
  He’s being subversive.

  The reason Chapter 20 sounds lonely
  is because opting out is lonely at first.
  Not dramatically.
  Quietly.

  You stop chasing what everyone else is excited about,
  and suddenly you look like the weird one.
  The unmotivated one.
  The person “not really participating.”

  But what Lao Tzu is describing isn’t apathy.
  It’s relief.

  So when Lao Tzu says,
  “I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty,”
  he’s not confessing failure.
  He’s describing freedom.

  He’s saying:
  I don’t know what’s next —
  and for the first time,
  that doesn’t feel like a problem.

  And this is where Chapter 20 does its real work.

  It doesn’t tell you to quit your job.
  It doesn’t tell you to burn anything down.
  It doesn’t even tell you to refuse.

  It just asks:
  What would happen if you stopped confusing compliance with care?
  Who might you become if you weren’t trying so hard to be taken seriously?
  
  And so I’ll see you next time, for Chapter 21

  From the edge of empire
  and the center of self
  this is The Tao of Lloyd

  I’m Lloyd Dobler.
  “Wait, what?” I hear you saying. “The teenager from Say Anything?”
  Yes. That Lloyd Dobler.

  I’m middle-aged now, and due to some glitch in the quantum physics of intellectual property, I’ve been unfrozen from the fictional world of rom-com nostalgia and am now intersecting with your real world.

  And this is The Tao of Lloyd:
  a podcast where I take the Tao Te Ching, one chapter at a time, and use it to craft these little zen-punk mixtape meditations in a deeply flawed, Sisyphus-with-a-sense-of-humor attempt to create a field guide for… what can we call this moment?

  Late Stage Everything.

  So.
  How do we define Late Stage Everything?

  Okay.
  Let’s just check our shared reality real quick.

  You wake up.
  Your phone buzzes like a casino slot machine designed by a sociopath.
  And before your eyes are even fully open, you’ve already learned:

  – democracy is hanging by a dental-floss thread
  – and someone you went to high school with is explaining geopolitics on Facebook using a Punisher meme and the word sheeple
  — and somewhere in your house, an appliance is making a noise that feels judgmental.

  Cool.
  Great morning.

  Meanwhile, your nervous system, which is not evolving at the pace of technology, is now being asked to process:

  genocide
  AI apocalypse
  climate catastrophe
  your in laws with a new Instagram account asking to follow you

  and the PRESIDENT OF THE FREE WORLD trolling his own country on social media while selling us everything from Trump-branded crypto to Trump-branded golden parachutes—building a MAGA exit ramp for his family while driving America over the cliff like we’re ending the Great American Experiment Thelma and Louise–style in a Ford Thunderbird convertible, straight into the Grand Canyon.

  And the “free world”—at least here in the States—isn’t that free anymore, because we now have masked agents disappearing people off the streets.

  So yeah.
  No wonder you’re tired.
  No wonder you feel jumpy.
  
  Your nervous system keeps trying to block every hit.
  No wonder it’s exhausted.

  No wonder you’re doomscrolling like the next refresh will finally contain the sentence:

  “Never mind. False alarm. Everything’s fine. Go back to your life.”

  Spoiler alert:
  It will not.

  Instead, you’ll get an ad for meditation.

  Which might be why you’re listening to me right now.

  And look—
  I love meditation.
  Obviously.
  I’m hosting a podcast about the Tao Te Ching like it’s a mixtape you found in the glove compartment of a collapsing empire.

  So if you feel scattered—
  if you feel reactive—
  if you feel like you’re one headline away from either screaming into a pillow
  or becoming a minimalist monk who lives in a van and refuses email—

  Congratulations.

  You are having a normal reaction to an abnormal amount of input.

  And that’s where we’re starting today.

  Not with calm.
  Not with answers.
  Not with “fixing” anything.

  Just here.
  Together.
  In the noise.

  And that brings us, to today’s reading and mediation.
  Chapter twenty one of the Tao Te Ching.

  Let’s settle in.

  (Bell chime. Ultra calm.)

  Close your eyes, and start the journey within.
  Or don’t. I mean, I’m not your spiritual advisor.
  But really, what have you got to lose?
  Unless you are organizing a general strike, shutting down a weapons manufacturer, or trying to return an email from a colleague that starts with “Just circling back…” without throwing your work issued MacBook air through a window… just close your eyes to start the journey within

  Take a long, slow, deep breath in through the nose…
  … and let it go, like your hot breath could melt ICE.
  the agency, not water molecules locked into a rigid hexagonal lattice by hydrogen bonding.

  Good.
  
  This is Chapter 21 of the Tao Te Ching.

  The Master keeps her mind
  always at one with the Tao;
  that is what gives her radiance.
  
  The Tao is ungraspable.
  How can her mind be at one with it?
  Because she doesn’t cling to ideas.
  
  The Tao is dark and unfathomable.
  How can it make her so radiant?
  Because she lets it.
  
  Since before time and space were,
  the Tao is.
  It is beyond is, and is not.
  How do I know this is true?
  I look inside myself and see.
  
  (Bell chime.)

  Okay.
  
  That was chapter 21 of the Teo Te Ching.

  So here’s the thing about Chapter 21.

  It’s not a productivity chapter.
  It’s not a clarity chapter.
  It’s definitely not a “five steps to inner peace” chapter.

  It’s a chapter about trusting what you can’t get your hands around.
  
  And it’s hard to get your hands around anything when your therapist takes Venmo and posts on TikTok while driving for Lyft. That’s life is Late-stage capitalism, when the system still runs, but just for the billionaires. Late Stage Everything is when the system still runs, just not for humans.

  Get it?
  mmm, I’m not sure I do either. And I wrote it.
  
  But chapter 21 tells us that the Master doesn’t glow because she understands everything.
  She glows because she stops clinging.

  Not clinging to ideas.
  Not clinging to certainty.
  Not clinging to the fantasy that if she just refreshes the feed one more time, things will finally make sense.

  And this matters—especially now—because Late Stage Everything is basically one long invitation to cling harder.

  Cling to outrage.
  Cling to takes.
  Cling to certainty.
  Cling to the idea that being permanently activated is the same thing as being awake.

  But Chapter 21 is offering something quieter.

  It’s saying:
  You don’t become radiant by knowing more.
  You become radiant by letting go of the need to know right now.

  Which does not mean disengaging.
  And it does not mean checking out.

  It means this:

  You stop demanding that your nervous system solve history before breakfast.
  You stop asking your breath to do the job of institutions that have failed you.
  You stop confusing constant reaction with moral seriousness.

  You have the patience, like chapter 15 taught us, to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear. Then you will know your right action.

  Lao Tzu says:
  “How do I know this is true?”
  “I look inside myself and see.”

  Which is not an answer the algorithm can use.
  But it’s one your body understands immediately.

  Late Stage Everything is coming for us.

  Kung fu doesn’t block the punch.
  It lets the punch pass.

  Late Stage Everything is all punch.
  Presence is how you step aside.
  
  Thanks for listening. I’ll see you next time, for chapter 22.

  From the edge of empire
  and the center of self
  this is The Tao of Lloyd.