Oh my god this CTH on Eric Trump. Absolutely hilarious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUtEB5vgXoY

I really hate live podcasts. The crowd ****ing cheers/boos every little thing.

How about sitting still and listening?

Binged serial season 2. Michael Flynn was interviewed in the last episode. Spoiler alert, he was a dick.

Started listening to The Intercept's "Murderville." Only two episodes in but it's basically a carbon copy of season one of Serial, only ****tier. I'll keep listening because I'm a sucker for true crime. The narrators aren't the greatest although they seem like decent investigated reporters.

Bag Man is A++++

People comparing Trump to Nixon have it all wrong. Trump is 100% Spiro Agnew

Agreed, this was excellent. I enjoyed The Dream as well, but also agree that the ending was a bit abrupt.

You're Wrong About has been quite good with the exception of the one about obesity, which was chock full nigh unlistenable broscience (though it did jog my memory that I'd actually read the article upon which that podcast is based when it first came out). Other than that one, the twelve or so I've listened to have been well worth it.

American Scandal, Standoff, and Slow Burn are all in a somewhat similar vein, and all are quite good. AS has covered BALCO and the NY State Assembly (general corruption both before and after Spitzer) and is now on Iran Contra, Standoff is about Ruby Ridge, and Slow Burn has done Watergate and the Clinton impeachment. All well worth it.

For people on the fence regarding You're Wrong About, the most recent ep on the 2000 election recount was really fantastic and eye-opening on a subject that I was a little too young to follow closely and understand at the time.

The Sitdown w/ Mike Recine is loosely about organized crime, but they crossover with Chapo, The Majority Report, and other left pods. I've only listened to a few so far but I'm about to Patreon them. They fill a spot where they could get schmucky alt-right type dudes who are into the mafia interested for that content, while also feeding them left politics.

They're a bit "problematic" for my tastes, not sure yet how to calibrate their irony level. The best episode I listened to was with Matt Christman of Chapo, about Fidel Castro assassination attempts and then into JFK/RFK/9-11 conspiracy theories (with interesting takes): https://sitdownpod.libsyn.com/ep-35-...matt-christman

They talk about Sopranos a lot, it's kinda cool cause they were actively avoiding spoiling something for one of the guys who is still watching (but they say more than you'd want to hear if you're trying to keep clear on Sopranos spoilers).

this is what i mentioned earlier; absolutely worth your time if you've never listened to chapo.

I like true crime stuff as well and respect The Intercept so I gave this one a shot. For it being such a slam dunk that this dude didn't commit the murder it's not overly compelling so far. It doesn't help that they kinda make him out to be a piece of **** and everybody they interview is super shady. Doubt I'll finish it.

Getting some good belly laughs out of today's Christmas Chapo.

I recently stumbled across the Chapo about the right wing idiots buying Iraqi Dinars because Trump, laughed so hard:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O7DtZceEzGI

Christmas Chapo was incredible. A perfect satire of It's A Wonderful Life.

Iraqi dinar scam was one of the best recent episodes. That and 'Hot Couch Guy' which was way too relatable.

Holy ****, I'm about 25 minutes into the obesity one and it is dreadful. Other episodes have been great, but this one casts some serious doubt on whether you should take everything they say at face value.

I thought the same, actually skipped that one about halfway through because I couldn't take it anymore

The first 10 mins of the latest Chapo was almost too on point. They so accurately captured how ****ed everything is and how little chance there is of any real change.

You're wrong about is definitely hit or miss to some extent--that's probably inevitable when it's just a couple people making a podcast in their spare time with no producers managing the content, and there's no linear narrative to build off of for each episode.

I listened to the Bush v. Gore one and about half of the Duke Lacrosse episode. Is every episode the guy explaining and the girl pretending to have like an 80 IQ and having over the top reactions to everything? It's just really annoying to hear like:

"Republicans mobilized their campaign staffs to challenge every ballot in heavily D leaning districts"
"Uhhhhhhhh here's an idea, what if we just have FAIR elections??"
"They even staged fake protests outside of election offices in Miami Dade county. It was reported as grassroots protests, but all of the people there now work for Heritage foundation"
"Oh my goddddd, why can't you guys just like do things the right way"

I'd enjoy the podcast a lot more if both of them prepared and studied for the topic and just bounced ideas and facts off of each other. As it is, I can't see myself listening to any more of it.

They take turns, generally. So one of them is researching the topic super in-depth, the other is the everyday person with more of a "so here's the narrative I remember about this thing from 20 years ago" thing.

In any case, if you didn't like Bush v Gore, it's probably not for you.

Agree with goofy - Bush v. Gore was a good example of what they do. (I liked it.)

Unrelated, I'm about 5 episodes into Rachel Maddow's "Bag Man" and have very mixed feelings. On one hand, it's a fascinating story that I hadn't previously known anything about. On the other hand, it seems like they could have told this story in about 45 minutes rather than several hours. Seems like they are just constantly summarizing and repeating the same information. "Here's the shocking information that we're about to tell you." "This is what happened." "This is the shocking information that we just told you." "The prosecutors involved at the time just found out about this information - let's listen to them express their shock as we revisit this shocking information."

That kind of sums up how I feel about her TV show. She really belabors the point, and really relishes in rehashing details. It's probably a fantastic strategy to reach out to old people and casual news viewers, as it provides a much clearer picture and more information than most other nighttime news programs. For me, I find it unbearably slow.

Having finished the series now, I should add that the story is completely bonkers and everyone should listen to it or read about it. Here's a 1973 NY Times article that summarizes the (to me) most interesting part - about how and why the Attorney General basically negotiated Agnew to immediately resign:
https://www.nytimes.com/1973/10/23/a...how-spiro.html

Kind of reminds me of Radiolab. Jad Abrumrad represented the typical listener and Robert Krulwich was the guy who did a lot of the explaining.

Of course Radiolab had way better production value and more interesting topics. Probably still does.

Current Affairs had an interesting discussion with Corey Robin (I think it's a subscribers only ep so can't link it), particularly towards the end about Clarence Thomas and how everyone's takes about him are wrong. He goes into detail about how Thomas was a black nationalist earlier in his life and how that continues to inform his jurisprudence in a very strong way today, just not in the way everyone would expect: he believes that because racism is such a strong force and because white people will never be rid of it, black people have to turn to markets and capitalism for freedom. (I am paraphrasing and hopefully did not **** that up too badly)

He wrote an article along those lines for Jacobin in 2014 articulating some of this, and is currently writing a book on Thomas: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/05/c...terrevolution/

Anyway, it was a very interesting listen. And to make this a crossover, Opening Arguments covered his Thomas writings this week and while I haven't listened to the episode, it appears they bungled it badly:


https://twitter.com/CoreyRobin/statu...57916070277121

(this goes on in a thread)

Anyone else here listen to Chapo? I have been listening for about 2 months now and I’m still not sure if I’m enjoying myself.


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