Underpants Gnome is pretty mainstream in my age bracket (late thirties/early forties) imo. Been referenced a lot irl.

It's bad, but it's a unique sort of bad I don't think I've ever witnessed. They almost literally mentioned everything, so the listener is exposed often heard and rarely heard info, both correct and incorrect. The tip off is that much of it contradicts something else said, so even if a listener knew absolutely nothing they'd be able to piece together that a good portion of it must be incorrect by default. I'm like 4/5 finished and it's stunning.

The episode is based on an article by the same podcaster,

https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/...sity-is-wrong/

with the cliched title 'Everything you know about ____ is wrong'. Which, like, is bizarre, because if it's anything like the podcast episode it mentions everything anybody knows both right and wrong with no discernment or context.

p.s. I mean, there is some excellent stuff about how fat people should not be shamed for many reasons, one being how the shame itself causes stress that compounds the thing being shamed ("Well I didn't need any comfort food until you called me a disgusting fatass"). I cosign 100%.

But then, multiple times, he trots out that stupid nonsense about how cola beverages and twinkies are nebulously "bad". Not "bad" as in eating 50 twinkies a drinking a gallon of soda per day, and nothing else, is bad but just somehow, in some way "bad". Like a cyanide pill, considering he also calls some food poisonous.

So how is the modestly overweight person enjoying a tasty cold cola beverage supposed to react to that? Now they're not only stressed and afraid they're going to die from something as innocuous as a pepsi, they're ashamed that they have so little self control that they'll still drink that tasty, brown, liquid poison.

Are there any podcasts that combine discussion about the causes of obesity, when to go for it on 4th down and ranking seasons of The Wire? Because I would be all over that.

Would be amazing if sklansky had been doing a weekly podcast this whole time.

Planet Money has a solid episode on Rutheford B Hayes (Ohio's greatest president!) and the first ever government shutdown.

****ing ohio thinking they're all high and mighty having presidents when every other state has a governor

Regarding Chapo being funny - the last premium episode where they talk about Trump and the White House burgers was hilarious.

Apropos of nothing, but a few weeks ago I got to visit Rutheford B Hayes's birthplace in Delaware Ohio, which is literally a now a gas station. I bought a Snapple.

Chapo-bait:

Highly recommend the Slow Burn podcast on Watergate. It's a deep dive into aspects of Watergate that were widely discussed in the popular press at the time but largely forgotten today.

And the parallels to the current political environment of course are striking.

+1 for slow burn, Leon Neyfakh is hyperelite

Don't overlook the second season on the Monica Lewinsky affair. Also great and really tweaked the way I look at things 20 years later.

Tried to introduce flatmate to Chapo Trap House. He didn't find it funny, partly due to not having enough knowledge to fully grasp the humor as it is very heavily entrenched in internet goings-on and nerd culture which he knows little about. I can understand as I would probably not find something on politics from his country (Poland) funny either due to a lack of knowledge.

Bad news is that he's been listening to Jordan Peterson. God if he goes down the JBP cult of personality route, I'm gonna lose my ****. Guy's a pedantic right-wing grifter and a **** influence on people.

Nathan Robinson and Current Affairs may be a good route. Robinson wrote this on Peterson and more recently Dear Lobsters: There is a Better Way which addresses the fans directly I guess. I haven't yet read either because I prefer to read in print; the first is in The Current Affairs Rules for Life book, which I just bought. After reading the Peterson article I'll probably send a copy of the book to my cousin, in a similar situation as your flatmate.

CA also has a podcast that is more newb-friendly and less mean than Chapo.

The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder does lots on Peterson, lots of videos.

What's the second one in? I'm pretty sure CA does not follow the "online first, magazine second" model - I've noticed stuff from the magazine tends to get sporadically published online months after the magazine comes out, but not the other way around.

Yea the second one won't be in anything probably. They do magazine first, online second I think generally if at all. It's the third book that I held off on some articles for because they'd announced it was going to contain the Peterson, Sam Harris, etc. articles.

I absolutely love The Rewatchables. Bill Simmons is so much better at movies than sports.

I'd say he's just good at hiring talented people. Grantland/the ringer have very good staff.

Incredible amounts of Chapo-bait in the last 24 hours or so:

1) That Cindy McCain story where she reported a woman to the police for having a child with her

2) Foreign Policy magazine names Mohammed bin Salman one of 2019's "Global Thinkers"

3)



That was a real claim that Pompeo really made (and he went on, ominously, to say that "We have an obligation to take down that risk [Iranian meddling] for America"

I mean the episode basically writes itself in my brain now.

I'm having trouble escaping an infinite loop of "HOLY ****" from Felix and "Shut up shut up shut up!" from Matt. We'll see.

Disappointed (but not surprised) to learn that Preet is doing what so many others are doing: He's segmented his cast into standard and premium buckets and now charges for the premium content. A few others I listen to, all Stitcher-based, have done this as well. The day is coming very soon where the only free or even ad-based podcasts we will get are the ones that suck and we don't want to hear anyway.

IDK if you've listened to it yet but they mentioned the Hezbollah thing because that was on topic. The ep was all about Elliott Abrams getting appointed Special Envoy to Venezuela, something Matt suggested as a joke a couple weeks ago. Abrams was found guilty of lying to Congress during Iran-Contra and repeatedly oversaw war crimes and genocide in Central America.

Interesting ep to me, being very unfamiliar with the history of the region. Depressing stuff though. We are going to get the Idiocracy version of the US installing a client government, with claims that they have to do it because of ****ing Hezbollah. Every time you think things can't get any dumber...

Latest You're Wrong About was not terribly exciting - main subject was Gary Hart and the 1988 election - but it veered into some interesting context about the Willie Horton ad that I never knew, such as...
- his name was William Horton, he never went by "Willie" in his life, even the name the ad gave him was a dogwhistle
- furlough programs were actually very popular in the mid 80s and many (all?) states had them; Reagan had them in California and defended them when he was governor, even when convicts on furlough committed crimes

Started listening to You're Wrong About, 1.5 eps in. Like it so far. Preferred it when the woman was doing the explaining. The first ep I listened to was Satanic Panic, it rehashed some stuff I knew of course, but it did a nice job of placing it in a social context. One little bit of info that blew my mind: I'm not sure on exactly the timing, but I think this was prior to child abuse research kicking off in the 70s - prior to that the estimate of how many children were sexually abused within their homes was one in a MILLION. What the ****.