The Lou Perez Podcast - Kira Shishkin
The Lou Perez Podcast
Kira Shishkin is the CEO and founder of Informed.now — a news-by-SMS service that sends you one text per day covering what actually changed the world in the last 24 hours. No ads. No bias. No storytelling. Just primary sources, direct quotes, and a link so you can read the original sources yourself. Kira grew up in Ukraine, came of age in Israel, and built this company after watching both countries get torn apart by information warfare. He knows what happens when people can't trust what they're reading — and he built something to fix it. We got into: why American news is designed to...
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The Lou Perez Podcast - Salih Hudayar
The Lou Perez Podcast
Salih Hudayar is the Foreign Minister and former Prime Minister of the East Turkistan Government in Exile. He was born in East Turkistan, fled to the United States as a political refugee at age 7, and has spent his life working to bring international attention to what the US government and over a dozen Western parliaments have formally recognized as a genocide. We covered: how China invaded and occupied East Turkistan in 1949 with Stalin's help; the 1996 secret document that became the blueprint for genocidal policy; how China created a fake jihadist organization to justify its crackdown; how...
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The Lou Perez Podcast - Victor Varnado
The Lou Perez Podcast
I sat down with Victor Varnado — comedian, founder of Supreme Robot, and the man behind the Worldwide Tic-Tac-Toe Championship. Victor is also King Super Nuts. That's not a joke. Well, it is. But it's also real. Victor built disability gaming software that could let paralyzed, blind, and deaf players enjoy video games without any extra hardware. He got a National Science Foundation grant to develop it. A tech company bought it for pre-IPO shares worth $500,000. The IPO never happened. The company got in trouble with the SEC. Victor never saw a dime. He tells the story without bitterness,...
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The Lou Perez Podcast - Jason Gagne
The Lou Perez Podcast
I sat down with Jason Gagne, fitness trainer and creator of the 90-day beginner program Good 2 Go Body. Jason has been training people for over 20 years and specializes in beginners — the people who've been told they're not in good enough shape to start working out. Check out Jason's 90-day program: (Every sign-up puts a few bucks in my pocket. Thank you. 🙏) TOPICS INCLUDE: Why 20-day intense programs set beginners up to fail The three basics everyone skips: sleep, water, and walking Consistency vs. intensity: why 25% every day beats 90% three times a week Gym functionality...
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The Lou Perez Podcast - Rob Rosen
The Lou Perez Podcast
Lou Perez sits down with investigative journalist and TV producer Rob Rosen, whose debut book Crimes of Omission: Distorted Justice, The Media's War on Truth is available for pre-order now. Rob produced A Reasonable Doubt on HBO Max, which led to nine wrongful conviction releases, and spent years at KCBS covering the OJ Simpson trial alongside Harvey Levin. TOPICS INCLUDE: How newsroom monoculture shaped anti-police coverage Ferguson and Michael Brown: what Eric Holder's DOJ report actually said The full Michael Brown story the media buried — including his mental state Hands up, Don't...
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The Lou Perez Podcast - Stu Smith
The Lou Perez Podcast
Lou Perez sits down with Stu Smith, investigative analyst at the Manhattan Institute, who has spent months infiltrating DSA meetings, Zoom calls, and internal channels to find out what the Democratic Socialists of America are actually up to. TOPICS INCLUDE: What most people get wrong about the DSA The DSA's internal "right wing" — people who just believe in elections The Red Rabbits: DSA's new armed security task force The Doctor Phil clip: Black Redguard's origin story DSA's global travel: Cuba, Colombia, Sweden, Brazil, and beyond The F-35 supply chain and DSA as a quasi-national...
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The Lou Perez Podcast - Harris Sockel
The Lou Perez Podcast
Lou Perez is joined by Harris Sockel, lead editor at Pirate Wires — the tech media company that covers Silicon Valley without hating it. They cover a lot of ground in this one. TOPICS INCLUDE: - What Pirate Wires is and why it started on Substack during the pandemic - Why AI doom coverage is dishonest (and why the doomers won't go full prepper) - Lou's experience using Claude AI for press kits, pricing, and writing courses - Can AI actually replace long-form journalism? Harris says not yet — and explains why - AI chatbots, teen suicide cases, and the litigation playbook against tech...
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The Lou Perez Podcast - Rafael Mangual
The Lou Perez Podcast
New York City is heading in the wrong direction — and Rafael Mangual of the Manhattan Institute is here to explain exactly why. In this episode, Lou and Rafael break down the real story behind the Washington Square Park snowball attack on NYPD officers, the media's deliberate misframing of the Gracie Mansion IED attack, Mayor Zohran Mamdani's dangerous blind spots on public safety, and why the city's revolving-door criminal justice system keeps putting violent repeat offenders back on the street. Topics include: The Washington Square Park "snowball fight" — what really happened...
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The Lou Perez Podcast - Rainer Zitelmann
The Lou Perez Podcast
German historian and author Dr. Rainer Zitelmann is currently under criminal investigation in Berlin for retweeting a meme comparing Putin to Hitler. He's one of the world's leading experts on Hitler and National Socialism — and the tweet was a historical warning about dictators who say "just this much, then I'll stop." He faces up to three years in prison. Lou and Rainer dig into Germany's Section 86a speech laws, government-funded neighbor-reporting hotlines that echo the Stasi, how cancel culture has escalated into legal repression across Europe, and why the laws designed to stop...
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The Lou Perez Podcast - Tommy Dorfman
The Lou Perez Podcast
From Sound Factory to Suing Live Nation: Tommy Dorfman's Wild Ride Through NYC Nightlife NYC nightclub legend Tommy Dorfman joins Lou to tell the story of how he built a club empire from the ground up — and how Live Nation allegedly destroyed it all in 2011. Tommy started throwing parties at 16, packed out iconic New York venues like Sound Factory, Tunnel, and Limelight, and was on the verge of launching the largest EDM festival on the East Coast at MetLife Stadium. Then Live Nation stepped in. He's been fighting them in court for 15 years — and the DOJ is now making his case for him. ...
info_outlineLou Perez is joined by Harris Sockel, lead editor at Pirate Wires — the tech media company that covers Silicon Valley without hating it. They cover a lot of ground in this one.
TOPICS INCLUDE:
- What Pirate Wires is and why it started on Substack during the pandemic
- Why AI doom coverage is dishonest (and why the doomers won't go full prepper)
- Lou's experience using Claude AI for press kits, pricing, and writing courses
- Can AI actually replace long-form journalism? Harris says not yet — and explains why
- AI chatbots, teen suicide cases, and the litigation playbook against tech companies
- Humanoid robots: cooking, sex, and whether to charge yours in the hallway
- The data center water myth, debunked — they use less water than golf courses
- Nuclear power's comeback and what went wrong with Biden's AI regulation approach
- Harris's doctor pulled up ChatGPT mid-appointment and told him to read it
- Waymo self-driving cars and the future of driving as a rich-person hobby
- Harris goes to a Starbucks strike in Brooklyn — almost nobody worked at Starbucks
- California's wealth tax, billionaire flight, and one very quotable anonymous billionaire
- SAG-AFTRA dues and the gap between union theory and union reality
GUEST:
Harris Sockel — Lead Editor, Pirate Wires
https://www.piratewires.com
LOU'S LINKS:
Book — That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: https://amzn.to/3VhFa1r
Website: https://www.thelouperez.com
Newsletter: https://substack.com/@louperez
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thelouperez