Episode 189 - Dead Man Talking
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Jen and Noam discuss the new(ish) information about the seedy world of Jeffrey Epstein, his qualifications for judging evil, the MAGA breakup nobody saw coming, and what’s going to happen this week when the House finally votes on releasing the full Epstein files. We also travel to China - well, actually, Hasan travelled to China, and we make fun of him for it. Plus, we touch on the end of the government shutdown and how Democrats completely botched the messaging on both the shutdown and the re-opening. To finish, we talk some more about our new favorite show, Pluribus, and how...
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Episode 188 - Shabbat Dinner Theater
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Noam and Jen discuss attending Shabbat dinner at the Mandels, who declined to attend, the ongoing situation at both the Heritage Foundation and the conservative movement as a whole, how Kevin Roberts and Megyn Kelly are liars, weird Israeli drama, and other ephemera. We also discuss the new Apple TV Pluribus, which is shaping up to be the next big show to watch. Bonus - quite possibly the greatest video you will see this year, or at least the most satisfying -
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Episode 187 - No Enemies To Your Right
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Jen and Noam discuss the Great Reckoning taking place in conservative circles due to the Carlson-Fuentes interview, the fallout from that, Heritage Foundation president (for now) Kevin Roberts’ defense of Carlson, and the fallout from that. Also, is acknowledging antisemitism the new land acknowledgement? Are all opinions equally valid and worthy of debate? Is MAGA speedrunning its own version of wokeness?
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Episode 186 - Ballroom Blitz
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Noam and Jen discuss the practice of eating food with your hands, if a ballroom is a good idea, if this ballroom in particular is a good idea, Nazi tattoos, extrajudicial executions on the high seas, the rule of law, and if we are doing a regime change in Venezuela.
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Episode 185 - Your Mom
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Jen and Noam have a nice chat about how your mom jokes only work when deployed correctly, why young conservatives can’t act normal in group chats, are young conservatives even normal anymore, the very normie No Kings protest where nothing bad happened, the situation in Gaza and how nobody really knows what is happening, Hasan’s continued crashout and how young people are not equipped to deal with the internet.
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Episode 184 - Coming Home
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Noam and Jen discuss the most obvious thing for them to discuss this week; the return of the living hostages from Gaza and the possible end to the Israel-Gaza war. We discuss the reactions to the news, and our own personal feelings about seeing the hostages come home. To lighten the mood, we wrap up with a little talk about Hasan Piker using a shock collar on his dog and how it may be his ultimate downfall.
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Episode 183 - Riyadh-politik
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Jen and Noam discuss the comedians who attended the Riyadh Comedy Festival for the money that they didn’t need, what happened to the food on the Global Sumud Flotilla, the chances of Trump’s ambitious plan to end the war in Gaza gaining legs, the people who don’t seem to want to end the war in Gaza, and the increasingly awful deployments of ICE / National Guard in US cities. We wrap up the episode with some recommendations. Noam’s favorite guilty pleasure, Love Is Blind, is starting its Denver season, and Jen recommends Perfect Blue for the 167th time in this podcast’s...
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Episode 182 - The Agony Of Now
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Noam and Jen discuss…well how everything sucks right now. From the shooting at a Dallas ICE facility, nihilism, how political affiliation doesn’t explain much anymore, online brainrot, Tylenol, and the Comey indictment, things aren’t looking so great. But in an effort to cheer ourselves up, we talk about two things that don’t suck: the long-awaited Silksong drop and the manga / Netflix anime The Summer Hikaru Died.
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Episode 181 - Kimmel Culture
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Jen and Noam manage to get past their (technical) issues and record an episode on the Jimmy Kimmel Saga now that it’s over (?), the memorial service for Charlie Kirk, and news of a shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas that we don’t have any details on yet so it’s best to just wait for details instead of speculating.
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Episode 180 - Turning Point?
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Noam and Jen finally return from their hiatus (it’s all Noam’s fault; he moved) just in time to discuss the murder of Charlie Kirk. While there is still a lot to unpack, we give our thoughts on the immediate aftermath of the shooting, focusing on the online reactions to the news. We spend some time discussing how internet culture is starting to seep into the real world and the consequences that have brought, from political violence to people who view internet famous people as characters in a show, to the inability to tell when someone is being serious.
info_outlineNoam and Jen did an extra long episode, because it was an extra long week. We start by discussing the tea on Tea, the vibe-coded app that was long on 2018 nostalgia but short on information security. Aside from the irony of repeating past mistakes, we discuss the shortfalls of relying on LLMs to do your heavy lifting for you, especially if you don’t have the knowledge needed to check the outcome.
We move on to discussing the Macrons suing Candace Owens over the flagrantly insane (but also defamatory) things she has said about Brigitte. While the Macrons are completely within their rights to sue Owens and are justified in doing so, it also gives her more material for her content mill. So what to do? We also take a brief detour into the Mehdi Hasan vs MAGA trainwreck that demonstrated how siloing can rot your sense of reality.
Gaza is back in the news again, over an impending famine, and whose fault is it anyway? Also, the NYT published a piece citing one anonymous IDF source saying that they have no proof that Hamas has stolen humanitarian aid regularly, which is all some folks needed to blame Israel. Does it make sense? No, but when has that ever mattered.
The Trump-Epstein story keeps getting further off the rails, this week with the news that Bondi informed Trump he is mentioned in the DOJ’s investigation files. And maybe Ghislaine Maxwell is getting a deal to testify that Trump did nothing wrong? Or maybe Obama will be arrested?
Finally, we get to the movie part of the pod because we saw two movies this week, Eddington and Fantastic Four - First Steps. There is a lot to unpack with Eddington, but not as much with Fantastic Four.