Episode 205 - Dire Strait
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Noam and Jen return to the war in Iran, after a detour into discussing if Tucker is lying or telling the truth about the CIA getting ready to bring a case against him. This of curse leads to a conversation about foreign influence in the right wing griftosphere, how Twitter isn’t a reliable place to make a living, and how those two things intersect. Moving back to Iran, we discuss the reporting that the Trump administration did not plan for Iran to shut down the Strait of Hormuz. We agree that there is a distinction to be made between if the closure was unexpected, or was assumed to...
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Episode 204 - Hit The BRICS
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Jen and Noam return to the war (it’s a war now, the president said so) in Iran, including the additional strikes completed by Israel on the Assembly of Experts. What they are experts in we’re not sure, obviously not in Zoom. We also talk about how we still don’t have an explanation for why the US attacked Iran, let alone an idea of what all of this is supposed to accomplish or what the endpoint is. Not ideal for a situation where the president is flippantly discussing how people die in war. Speaking of war, TwitX has decided to declare war on AI slop war videos. Naturally, some...
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Episode 203 - Bye-atollah
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Noam and Jen discuss a little attack on Iran you might have heard about over the weekend, now that Noam is not on Emergency Pod duty for Commentary. Much like our discussion in the wake of the Maduro extraction, we talk about how you can be happy that something happened but have concerns about how it happened and what exactly will happen next. Obviously, this situation is both more extreme and more volatile than Venezuela, so we really hope someone knows what they’re doing (we don’t have much hope of that however) We also talk about the fight between the DOD and Anthropic over the DOD...
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Episode 202 - An Idiot Abroad
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Jen and Noam return to discuss the Supreme Court shooting down Trump’s “national emergency” tariffs, Jen’s hope for a restructuring of executive power, Tucker lying about his trip to Israel (well at least to the airport), lying for clout, America’s new figure skating darling Alysa Liu, journalists asking athletes dumb political questions, and being proud to be an American. For our WAWC, Jen recommends the new Sam Raimi film Send Help, and Noam (probably because he got tired of Jen badgering him to watch more anime) starts watching Hell’s Paradise.
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Episode 201 - White Culture War
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Noam and Jen record a special Presidents’ Day episode where we discuss important things, like Olympic controversies around fingering and penile enhancements. OK, we also discuss actual important things, like the fact that Jeremy Carl is for some reason nominated to a position in the State Department and how he can’t define white culture despite having written a whole book on the topic. This of course kicked off a whole debate on the internet about “white culture”, which in Carl’s defense nobody else can define either. At any rate, it’s a dumb concept that makes no...
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Episode 200 - Superbol
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Jen and Noam made it to episode 200! Hooray! We have another Super Bowl to talk about, one in which people are angry at the halftime show. Again. Certain people just really like to be angry at halftime shows. We also go over the Trump tweet - y’know, THAT tweet - and when does it all become too much to gloss over. And why does Trump get a pass at all, seeing as he’s the president. For our WAWC, Jen went and saw the Melania documentary. Yeah, that was an adventure. A weirdly foot focused view of the leadup to the second inauguration of Trump. Make of that what you will.
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Episode 199 - Everyone Emailed Epstein
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Jen and Noam discuss a little bit of everything, since we recorded later than usual last week. We got another Epstein files drop, unqualified people in the Trump administration, Pretti’s prior run in with ICE / Border Patrol, Don Lemon getting arrested over the protest at a Minneapolis church, revelations about how Twitter works, and other random topics that come up as they do. For our WAWC, Jen contemplates seeing the Melania movie, and Noam recommends MIO: Memories in Orbit.
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Episode 198 - ICE Storm
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Noam and Jen discuss another shooting death in Minneapolis at the hands of ICE / Border Patrol (we can’t tell the difference anymore), the intense fallout from both the shooting itself and the Trump administration's reaction to it, who will or will not keep their job, does it even matter, bringing a gun to a protest, and how bragging about lying can backfire. We also discuss what we know about the situation in Iran, since it is still hard to get information on what is happening inside the country with protests and how many have been killed. However many it is, it is too many for the...
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Episode 197 - Give Me Greenland
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Jen and Noam return to some of the topics from last week, since things keep going from bad to worse. The situation in Iran has gotten worse, Trump seems really insistent that the US should own Greenland, and ICE is ramping up in Minneapolis for no good reason. And so we wonder, where the hell is Congress and is anyone going to stop the insanity. For our What Are We Consuming, Noam explains how playing The Roottrees Are Dead made his online investigative skills better and Jen explains why you should watch Gachiakuta.
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Episode 196 - ICE And Fire
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Noam and Jen…well they try to keep this pod from going on for hours, so they had to be a little selective with there was a baker’s dozen topics to discuss from the past week. We start by checking in on Iran and the latest series of uprisings taking place. While this is certainly not the first time we’ve discussed an uprising in Iran, this one feels a little different. Then we have to move on to the ICE shooting that took place in Minneapolis this past week. There is quite a lot to discuss, from the legality of the shooting itself to the reactions, which we both agree are the worst...
info_outlineJen and Noam return to discuss the Supreme Court shooting down Trump’s “national emergency” tariffs, Jen’s hope for a restructuring of executive power, Tucker lying about his trip to Israel (well at least to the airport), lying for clout, America’s new figure skating darling Alysa Liu, journalists asking athletes dumb political questions, and being proud to be an American.
For our WAWC, Jen recommends the new Sam Raimi film Send Help, and Noam (probably because he got tired of Jen badgering him to watch more anime) starts watching Hell’s Paradise.