973 - Cross on the Moon feat. Brendan James (9/29/25)

All I wanna be is a jungle.

All I wanna be is a jungle.

Bringing me down to pesos.

All I wanna be is a

Hello, everybody.

It's Monday, September 29th, and we've got some shoppa for you.

We've got some special shoppa for you because we've got three of the OGs in the same room.

That's right.

It's in my apartment.

And here we are, back at it again.

Me, Philip.

Robbie Soap.

Matthew Walther.

Matthew Walther is back.

What a time.

It's Brendan James in the house, everybody.

Hey, and I'm also also kind of producing because we're using my Zoom and I'm looking at the levels to make sure I don't fuck it up.

So

it's all back.

Guest, producer.

Guest, producer.

We got some calves.

Maybe one of them can take a huge shit on the floor.

Vomit on one of us.

You can stop recording because it smells so bad.

Yeah.

But this is original Chapo Stylings here today.

Yep.

Well, gentlemen, it's great to have you back in my house, back on the mic.

You two gentlemen

collaborated recently as well.

So congratulations on that.

You've been killing it with the Players Club.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah.

It's been, I mean,

it really dovetailed nicely.

It's been now exactly 12 years since the game Heavy Rain came out.

We've produced six 12-hour long episodes about Heavy Rain.

It is strange to be in a room with Felix now not being expected to talk for about nine hours about Metal Gear.

I feel like

Homie the Clown when all Homer can see is

everyone's a clown and there's clown music playing.

You guys will be talking to me about PHEXF and I'll just be going on about jeans.

I've noticed that on recent episodes, the percentage of Metal Gear Solid references has jumped 1,000% over the last couple episodes.

Well,

we just finally recorded the last bit of anything we needed to record.

But it took us

a combined 20 days to do the Phantom Pain.

Yeah, it was, I mean, don't get me wrong, part of it was I was busy with blowback, and I just wanted to make sure that we had a nice clear time, but we did three sessions on the Phantom Pain.

And each, each session was pretty long.

Like that, the last one was the shortest one, and it was still like five or six fucking hours.

It was like three, so you know, can't wait to edit that, that episode, but it was, it was a very rewarding experience, and we, I think we had a lot of fun with it, and I, uh, it seems like people like it.

So, yeah, yeah.

No, I have been pleasantly surprised by, um, how much people enjoy it.

Uh, it's always I don't know, it's always like a minefield putting out anything where you, you give your opinion about like any video game.

Even like the most bullshit game that you think everyone forgot, if you do a piece of like a video or like even like a short podcast segment about like the game Breakdown,

people will be like, he didn't understand that game at all.

Eating cheeseburgers to restore your health was actually symbolic.

Well, also, I know you guys just made fun of the

that Star Wars book that that man who asked those things.

That's Samantha Powers.

Yeah, Samantha Powers.

I almost said his wife, her wife.

Yeah,

he's did that Star Wars book, and I bet you had people being like, oh, so you're going to talk about Star Wars, even though Felix and Brennan are talking about Metal Gear solid.

Yeah,

Metal Gear is better than good.

It's objectively a better piece of it.

It's a better lens, a heuristic to understand the contemporary world and American politics than Star Wars.

I certainly, look, you can say we recorded too long of an episode here or there, but we never wrote an actual book, and we certainly didn't try to say it explains the child tax credit or whatever, you know, which I'm assuming is what his book was about.

And

you never wrote the sentence, my father was healthy as a Wookiee until he died of brain cancer in 61.

I have not yet.

I'm sorry.

I keep thinking about that.

It's so funny.

I keep thinking about that.

It is, yeah, we haven't gotten there yet.

My family has been texting me about healthy as a Wookiee a lot.

Everyone is just, because like no one knows what the fuck he means.

Like, is it like ironic, like, oh, as healthy as a Wookiee?

Like, it's an old phrase everyone knows.

Like, you know, like, sober as a sailor.

Or, or is it, or is it like, he was healthy as a Wookiee until this happened?

Yeah, it's a very confusing and maddening.

I mean,

if I had to guess, I think it's just because Wookiees appeal, they appear very...

sort of hail and hearty robust they're very large and hairy yeah and they they're always sort of growling which is a sign of health i would imagine.

I get, but no one says, like, oh, he's as healthy as a bear.

You know, it's like, it's so fucking dumb.

I, um,

I didn't bring up uh, my personal cast unseen lore on that episode, though, but I

think I, I, I mentioned Chicago guy, right?

Yeah, well, he used to live in my exact neighborhood, uh, and I think I told this story on the show before, but like,

I,

in so much as like two four-year-olds can go on a date

like I like went on a like chaperoned like dinner play date with his daughter when we were both like four or five wow that that is lore yeah no I don't I vary the Peterman son sustain they were trying to like meld two great dynasties together yeah bring peace to high power

well this is this is like before I was excised for the University of Chicago laboratory system

For,

you know, making

your grandparents stole Einstein's brain slices.

Well, no, I was making maps of the school in

the game Myst.

In the game Mist.

No, no, no, not a violent game.

I was like, wouldn't it be fun if there were like puzzles in the school?

But this was around Columbine.

Well, actually,

before you guys came over, I saw a bit of video game news that touches touches on global international politics, and I wanted to get your reaction to this here.

EA has announced it plans to be acquired for $55 billion by a consortium of investors led by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.

I knew you were going to say that.

I knew you were going to say Saudi Arabia.

So, what do we think?

Saudi Arabia, SA, EA?

It's in the game.

It does, like,

I mean, EA was already like the most Saudi Arabian main, main like big video game publishing company.

They do all like the the sports games and like

flight simulators will be good for this now

it makes sense

well yeah it's like uh because they already have golf right there they've they're they're yeah they got the live golf core they have to now now they have uh the madden franchise i assume the other the other electronic arts games but then they also have the uh uh the the comedy festival who's been getting a lot of

press lately they're really like every quadrant right now.

They're hitting it.

Soft power.

I think so.

I think so.

But

that was a weird one with all the comedy

Kings of Comedy.

Yeah.

It's like

everyone seems fine just being like, yeah, put my face on it.

Feels like

you wouldn't be so out and about about it even a couple years ago.

Do you know that they took Aziz Ansari's passport?

I thought that was fucked up.

But like, is this comedy festival

is like, is like, you know, Bill Burr or Kevin Hart or whoever's doing this, are they going to be performing for Saudis?

I don't know much.

Who else would they perform?

Like, would they, like, if Matt Reif was performing it, they might fly in a normal, like a normal Matt Reif audience.

But, like, what is Matt Reif going to do?

What is any, what are any of those guys going to do in Saudi Arabia for Crowdhorror?

Crowdwarr?

Yeah, yeah.

And also, we don't, there's no history in Saudi Arabia of,

you know, taking people from other places and forcing them to be inside of Saudi Arabia to do any kind of task.

You know, that's not something that they tend to do.

So I'm sure it's all on the up and up.

I would love to see.

I mean, Matt Reif, to his credit, was not on this.

Yeah, no, he was not.

I think he should be on the next one.

Yo, what your job is, folk?

Executioner?

Damn, bro.

That's serious.

I love Matt Reif.

It's hard to do crowd work because, like, most crowd work is based on a guy and his girlfriend, but like, there's going to be no women in the audience.

So, it's going to be like, I mean, yo, how many of y'all here don't have a beard?

I see this one guy here.

He's got a beard, but it seems like everyone does.

Okay, move on to the next one.

Bill Burr was like the weirdest.

That's the shocking one to me.

Yeah, that's that kind of sucks.

With his season, sorry.

It's like not justified, but it does kind of like make sense because it's like, okay, you got

they wrote that article about how you're really you're so bad at finger banging that it like caused debates in newsrooms across America.

And there was no way like you should have made an extra like seven million dollars from a Netflix show that no one liked.

Like there should have been more Master of None.

And you have to like get your nut back.

But Bill Burr is in like everything.

Like Bill Burr is in like every show and movie and fucking everything.

It's either you would expect like down on your luck or Kevin Hart where you are preeminent, but in the way that doesn't preclude you from going to Saudi Arabia.

This motherfucker right here, he's probably like goddamn falcon to a comedy show.

Being in the middle of it.

Does the bird count towards the two drink minimum?

That's good.

See, you should be on the poster.

Forget Patreon.

Well, that's news in comedy and video games, but just one more quick thing here at the top of the show.

It's September 29th.

You know, the leaves begin to change.

A chill enters the air.

Well,

no,

not here in New York, obviously.

But

the fall is here.

And what is anonymous with the fall?

That's right, Halloween, spooky season.

Brendan and I's favorite time of year.

Hess and I just recorded episode one of this season of Goolvy Scream Set, horror movie mindset.

But every year around this time, I enjoy like the resurgence of a new kind of discourse that I see cropping up again.

And that is, are Halloween decorations too scary?

And are they really demonic?

I saw that.

This comes courtesy of the post.

I guess this Fukuyamo is the first guy to do this.

He did.

He did.

How did he get it?

He had a post about how Halloween decorations are too grisly and ghoulish.

Yeah, yeah.

This was in like 2014, 2015.

This is like back when you would like this wasn't like a respectable opinion to have.

Now, like, if you, if you say this now, like, your, your job has to do like

a sensitivity training about not putting up like cartoon skeletons on the company portal.

That's so funny bulletin board.

I mean, I guess when you predict the end of history, there's not a lot to worry about except

Halloween decorations at that point.

So maybe it makes sense that he would focus on that.

This entry into the discourse comes courtesy of CJ Engel, who writes, The problem with evil Halloween decorations is that they are real.

They summon real monsters.

They bring forth real beings.

It's not a game.

Festivities matter.

It used to be like embarrassing to be like an asshole.

It used to be like, I feel like if Susan Smith happened now,

she would be given a TV show.

She would be like the new host of the view.

They'd be like, what?

Sometimes you just get a calling that you have to kill your kids because revelation is going to happen.

Is this an article you're reading?

No, this is just a tweet.

Okay, but you know, like

he did, he did reply, like, you know, some people were replying and they were like, Are pumpkins evil?

And he was like, No, pumpkins are fine.

What's the criteria here?

He does skeletons, ghouls, you know, like they, they, uh, depictions of real monsters.

Bats, I think, those are evil.

God invented uh bats, yeah, but like, you know, like part of nature, but to be evil, I guess.

No, he made them to be part of soup.

Yeah, I don't see.

This is like, this is shaky to me you know don't don't get too don't don't get too afraid of of of things like skeletons and bats you know because they're part of our natural world but what about werewolves and mummies okay now you're getting into yeah

yeah

stuff that that i can see but yeah pumpkins on one side of the spectrum and then you get into demonic stuff on the other i don't know i don't really tend to see as like like Halloween decorations the way I used to either.

I don't know.

Like, maybe my neighborhood just doesn't get into the mood, but it doesn't seem like a huge problem to me that things are getting scarier.

Well, you'd be wrong.

Okay.

Things are getting scarier every day.

Well, that's true enough.

Things are getting frightening.

An alarming rate.

I guess so.

You're right.

We'll probably talk about a bit of it.

Yeah.

I just feel like I don't.

I usually hate the thing that people go to of like, they don't even believe this.

But this just feels so like

it feels like every year you get like a new crazy Christian guy who says this like always a guy who converted like four years ago because they think they're like supposed to say this I saw like someone compared this to a woe vicky tweet which is like dead on but that's like wovicky

she's the she is so funny because she is one of those people who like found out about Christianity in like 2022.

And because like because she filtered it through her brain, she's like,

witches touch on people to make them gay.

Yeah.

But that's like, but that's like all of them now.

Like, they're all like that now.

Like, Woe Vicki, Woe Vicki wouldn't even, like, Wo Vicki should probably be a senator.

He should.

I'm looking at a Wo Vicki tweet right here that just says, My own family forsaken me.

How did she learn that word?

Well, the Bible, probably.

Oh, yeah.

So, yeah, everyone stay safe out there in this Halloween season.

Any sort of monster style decorations, there's a good chance you could summon real monsters and, you know, stock up on silver bullets.

That's all I've got to say.

All right.

Moving on.

I know it's more sad news here in New York City.

Unfortunately, Eric Adams

has

departed our mayor's race.

He has crossed.

the political rainbow bridge to live on a farm in Turkey.

And I just got to say, I know this is tough right now.

It's a difficult moment given the commitments that we've made on this show and all that I've invested into Eric Adams' candidacy for mayor.

But I'm here to tell you, he can still win if you vote for him.

Stay in line.

That's true.

Stay in line and vote Eric Adams.

We all still believe he can still be mayor if you vote for him.

Yeah, I mean.

He dropped out, frankly, because he didn't think anyone liked him.

So let's do a real,

it's a wonderful life thing and I'll write him in.

I'm just looking here at one of my favorite Eric Adams headlines.

Mayor Adams admits to jumping subway turnstile to visit a shorty.

This is the kind of thing that we're not getting.

We're not going to get any of this kind of stuff anymore.

And I'm not trying to be funny.

It does bum me out.

Like, I do get something from this, from him being our mayor.

There's a lot of stuff that, you know, we don't get because he is our mayor because money is.

allocated elsewhere or things are corrupted, but this is an important part of being a New Yorker for for the past X amount of years, and it's going to go away.

And that does bum me out.

Do you remember when he was like, this was a really recent one, when he was like,

he was trying to like, I think he's trying to like juice his polling like with black voters to sort of like prove that, prove to donors that he was the better foiled as Oron than Cuomo.

And he went, I, you, after, after work is done, you'll find me in a closed barbershop drinking Hennessey.

and it's like you implied it strongly implied that that's like that's it black people did every oh they all do that we all do that me i'm including myself this hypothetical but not like i didn't i've never fucking heard of that stereotype like ever it's so specific it also maybe it kind of implies he broke in like it's an empty barbershop no one's with him He's just inside of it because he broke in in order to do that and sit alone.

My favorite thing that I ever heard was that there was like a cop who was shot and killed, and he said something like, I love that man.

And I, I care, I actually have a photo with them in my wallet at all times.

And then they were like, May we see it?

The press or whatever.

And he said, just, well, I'm just, I'm just out the door.

And then he like tried to get his staff to print out a photo and laminate it and crinkle it up.

And then he showed up.

Like, you know, I just,

I found it.

I mean, that is like a

David Brent level lie to sustain over days on end.

And I don't think we're going to get that again anytime soon.

Yeah, every day he created his own like steamed hams catastrophic.

Exactly.

It was very Skinnerian.

Yeah.

His life and his reign.

We've had Black Flanders.

He was our last Skinnerian.

Really have.

Yeah.

I just, it was so funny when he won, and he won by like 0.003%

against like, the shittiest candidates.

Like, who is the one who like put out an official press release where she's, like, yelling at Ross Barkin?

I don't remember.

I barely, was it Morales?

I honestly, I really don't remember.

It was the one, it was like the Warren, the like, Rad Lib Warren one who

her

campaign workers did one of those like 2019 style unions where like a union is just like a club for good people

where they're just like we declare unions

yes yes and i guess morales was like okay like what the fuck what do you want from me yeah and barkin reported on it and she just like spent all day like calling him like a stupid

like like a privileged white boy anti-barkonite yeah i though and that like that's who he was running against and he won by like like uh a comical percentage of fair like yeah the margin of error but um

for like a month, like every all the like Ezra Klein, all the all those people were like,

yeah, like this is an off-ramp from like the 2016 Hillary style idpaul.

This is perfect.

This will play everywhere.

And all he had to do was just like engage in the normal, acceptable, like corruption that happens in democratic politics.

And instead, he did like, he engaged in the most easily traceable and low, like low cash value corruption ever.

Like he was, he fucked himself for like $3,000 worth of airline tickets.

It was Looney Tune style corruption.

It was like, there was like a black and white photo of him with Judge Doom making a deal to like, you know, I don't know, just destroy half of the city to run his whatever railroad through.

And again,

I guess this is just a way to clear, I mean, is this, is this him like bowing out for the sake of, I don't know, the

Trump or like anti-Mamdani coalition behind the scenes?

Or is it actually him exhausted?

I can't imagine him wanting to drop out.

What if it's a legal ploy?

What if it's like, oh, you indicted the mayor of New York, huh?

Like, that's how he thinks it works.

That's brilliant.

And it could work.

I would say a handball lecter level deception.

Yeah.

I'm having an old friend for Hennessy in the barbershop.

I'm in your barbershop now drinking Hennessy.

Call me.

Well, actually, like, this is a good segue because, you know, Eric Adams

wants the future of the Democratic Party.

Perhaps still the future of the Democratic Party.

Like, possibly, yeah, he can still.

2028 is right there.

Yeah.

National office.

But I've been meaning to bring up this one for a couple of weeks now, but, you know, this is like

ringing the dinner bell for this show.

Our good friend Adam Gentleson has a new pack, a new think tank out called the Searchlight Institute.

And like, you know, now that Eric Adams, you know, his brand has been slightly damaged.

Is it a searchlight looking for his boss at this, wherever he is right now?

We can't find him.

He's escaped again.

We need an institute to try to handle this.

But, you know, like they're casting around for like, you know, what's the future of the Democratic Party going to be now that Eric Adams isn't around anymore and now that literally everyone associated with this think tank

is perhaps tainted by their association with the genocide ogre who they all previously worked for.

Yeah.

But yeah, it's called it's called the Searchlight Pack.

And there's just a sort of right up here on the Times that I want to dip into for a second.

It says here,

As Democrats search for their way out of the political wilderness,

a new think tank introduced on Wednesday has some ideas about where the party went wrong.

Among them, too much emphasis on issues like climate change and LGBTQ rights, and far too much deference to the powerful liberal organizations championing those causes at the expense, some argue, of appealing to voters in battleground states.

The think tank, the Searchlight Institute, was started by Adam Gentelson, a veteran Democratic operative.

He knows that his effort intended to minimize the sway that left-leaning groups have over candidates before what is expected to be a crowded 2028 presidential primary, will infuriate almost everyone, activists, organizations, and the party's liberal base, which is urging Democrats to fight President Trump.

The folks who are most to blame about Trump are the ones who pushed Democrats to take indefensible positions, Mr.

Gentleson said in an interview on Thursday, citing a series of positions Kamala Harris took in 2019 before walking back many of them once she became the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024.

Right now, we're pursuing every tactic imaginable, except for the obvious one, which is taking positions that are more in line with the people we are trying to win over, he added.

Why does there need to be another think tank that suggests this in democratic politics?

Isn't there, aren't there like 50 that already do this?

Like this is, this is the center, the centrist equivalent of like in 2018 being like, actually me and my friends have a podcast where we talk about the news.

And we actually had the idea for it in 2015.

We just got to start it now.

Yeah, we have 17 different hosts.

I did like this post from Gentleson from this week.

He writes here, we have been fighting oligarchy for several months now, and economic populism alone is going to fix our problems.

Why do Americans still resoundingly prefer Republicans on the economy?

I just like the line that we've been fighting oligarchy for several months now.

Yeah.

You've had a good start of it, but like, you know, hopefully we'll make it to next week.

I mean, it's hard not to glaze over with the,

I didn't hear anything that you described about that, Pat, because like you said, it's just, this is, I guess, what you do when

you leave politics technically and become part of the consultant class, you have to say all these words, but uh, does anyone expect this guy to be the one who figures it out?

Uh, probably not.

Um, he seems not very well liked or doesn't seem trustworthy even to his own sort of his own cohort.

Um, but I don't know him that well, obviously.

Maybe he is, but well, yeah, look,

they have a really cool squad photo to go with the new, the new think tank.

So, here, check that out: liberal mythbusters.

I mean, it's like, it's a, it's,

it's a pretty hard

squad pick.

It sort of reminds me of, I mean, I'm sort of casting about for what this reminds me of.

And like, all I can think of is like album cover.

And

the only album cover that's coming to mind when I think of this is, do you remember the documentary overnight about the guy who directed Blue Doc Sands?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Fuck, what was his name again?

Troy Duffy.

Troy Duffy.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's an astonishing documentary about like,

it's like, what if Harvey Weinstein gave the keys to like all of Hollywood independent filmmaking to like the most detestable alcoholic from Boston?

Okay, I'm starting to see this and okay, so like as part of the deal that Harvey Weinstein gave him to like do boondock stance and basically like run independent cinema, he also had to give him and his brother a record deal for their band called The Brood.

And in the movie,

there's a hilarious scene of them taking, like, uh, doing like, uh, doing like a photo session to do, like, the album cover for the brood.

And it's, like, like I said, six guys who look like Adam Gentleston holding Rottweiler isn't, like, shot through a chain link fence.

The brood, like, it always makes me, like, cry with laughter.

It's so fucking funny.

He's, that movie's so good.

Like, Troy Duffy is such an asshole that, like, I wouldn't say Harvey Weinstein is, like, the protagonist of the game, but he's sort of like an anti-hero in that movie.

You're like, yeah, good, fuck this guy.

Yeah.

But

I just want to talk a little bit about it.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

Do you think in 2017, Troy Duffy was like, I was also a victim of Von Tain in the ones.

I mean, he literally was.

Like, it kind of.

Well, you know, maybe not in the sense that other people were victimized by him.

But

I was going to say that the picture that they that the New York Times took, it for me, it has anime club vibes.

Like true to anime club, like

a very anime club, like male-to-female ratio.

Gentle son would definitely be like the chair of anime club.

He's making them watch a shitload of bleach.

Well,

there's one thing I want to highlight here where he says here, like, like, what do you say?

It's like, he's going after the groups that he holds responsible for Democrats' continued struggles.

That's a ballot box.

Yeah.

That's just the thing I can't get over.

A year ago.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know how many times we can really react this way because they just keep making you say it, but I cannot believe that this

supposed switcheroo here of the exact people who you're yelling at who used to call the problem.

Or they're the people rather that you're yelling at now, you know, you used to work with and the people who you say you need, you used to say were degenerates and ruining the party.

Look at any of Anda Jenlinson's tweets from like until like 2022.

Like

again,

he was such like

anti-bro like

lib type.

He was an Elizabeth Warren guy.

I've talked about this before, but he like

I quote tweeted some like Warren staffer.

I was arguing with them in like March of 2020.

And he was like, you're such a piece of shit for quote tweeting a 22-year-old.

And it's like, oh, is this an age gap?

It's like age gap thing.

It took me a while to forgive you for doing that but i'm glad we're back being friends again

well okay so like and just the fact that like it's like him trey easton another bunch of you know like democratic ramora fish um but like they're like okay like the problem is like

Democratic voters are at odds with Democratic leadership because they like Democratic leadership pays fealty to these like nefarious groups that force them to take policy positions that are anathema to the majority of Democratic voters, i.e.,

climate change or trans people existing, things like that.

But it's just like all of these guys used to work for John Fetterman, who is currently most well known for his association with probably the most unpopular position as it regards Democratic politicians and the voters who they seek to, you know, cajole into supporting them.

And that would be Israel and Palestine.

And for a period, they did defend him on that position, you know, publicly in the capacity capacity as a person in politics.

So I don't know what the track record here is supposed to be that's so impressive.

That is the other thing.

If we're taking them at face value, that like that they've, after all these years, they've cracked the code.

They figured out exactly what to do.

We'll just pretend that all those shitty blue dogs at Ram Emanuel got elected for one term, that none of that.

They didn't get cashed out immediately.

All these people, like

just last after Kamala losing, that was enough for them to go, all right, I'm taking down my profile picture where I'm wearing a dashiki.

I figured out that people don't like this.

And I was only going along with it for 10 years of my life

because I was afraid of getting yelled at.

But now I offer the bold leadership.

He more or less is on record with that big Fetterman piece where he ratted on his old bars.

He's more or less on record by saying, I had to get out of this.

It was embarrassing.

It wasn't like he figured out politics works a different way and he got his own ideas.

And he would have stayed there if Federman had been, you know,

more successfully hidden from the wider public.

So

you're already known to be someone who abandoned a sinking ship anyway.

You don't have this instinct of the future that you can now enlighten others about.

especially this guy.

Well, Dave Weigel interviewed him for Semaphore, and Dave asked him, can you tell me about the origins of this?

A lot of the ideas you blame for dragging down Democrats came from 2019 in the presidential primary.

And at that time, you were supporting Elizabeth Warren.

He says, I think that 2016 broke a lot of people's brains and rightfully upended a lot of the assumptions we had about how politics worked.

Wow.

That was definitely true for me.

For the first 15 years of my career, it was working for people whose issue positions were further to the right than my own.

I just took it as a given that that's what people needed to do to win elections.

After 2016, watching the rise of Bernie, it was like, wait a minute, what if you could spark massive grassroots energy and turn out different kinds of voters by moving to the left?

What caused that theory to be untrue was that there was never any evidence that moving to the left was what sparked additional energy among the grassroots.

Bernie 2016 was

a pretty darn heterodox candidate, a classic populist who was left on economic issues, but further to the right than a lot of Democrats on cultural issues, whether it was guns, immigration, or crime.

He was rejected by the groups in 2016 and called them the establishment.

I learned a lot after that.

Clearly.

Clearly, you did not like why.

I mean again taken on face value obviously the reason you give a group like this money is because

i don't like you you you want to you want access to fettermen for some reason or or just whatever piece of shit but again at face value

we people are supposed to give you money and let you steer the direction of the entire party and your excuse is like hey it was a fucked up emotional time.

Like, I just realized that I was wrong.

Well, it's just like, okay, and Waggle asked him, like, the last question he asked him, he says, where does foreign policy fit into this?

Democrats are getting pulled in different directions on Gaza.

Groups that had access to funding are losing it over that issue.

His response to this is, this is all I will say about that for now.

APAC is a group too.

Okay.

Very brave.

Profile and courage here from the gentle son.

Oh, man.

Maybe a little too gentle on this issue.

But like,

this is what I mean.

It's just like, they're like, oh, like identity politics, like, we're off that.

We're no longer alienating people with like, you know, like stupid positions on like, saying Latinx or whatever.

But the undivided, you know, the state of Israel, Judea and Samaria is the traditional home of Israel and like, and should be part of the Israeli state.

It's really, it's really weird how there's only one thing.

There's only one ethnicity where if you make people watch a sensitivity video about them and their issue, that's fine.

Yeah.

All the other, everything else was

bullshit bullshit.

Yeah, it's yeah, yeah,

with with

probably like easily, I would say

the systematic oppression of Jewish college students is easily in like the top 100,000 most pressing issues in America.

Easily,

you should absolutely, like, you should get expelled from your university if you do not go to that sensitivity training.

All the other ones, though, stupid, get like, don't, yeah, no.

By the way, that answer where he's clearly caught off guard, which is that throat clearing of, well, look,

here's the one thing I'm going to say.

And he's like, this is what I'll say about that now.

Like, are we expecting another statement incoming soon?

Yeah, he's having it right now.

He's obviously caught off guard.

He didn't even expect that question.

He's not even aware as a political operator that this is something that might come up that he'd have to have a slick answer to at the very least and then be able to spin into some kind of pitch for why he has answers that others don't.

He didn't even fucking think about it.

He's not even thinking that far ahead about the liabilities of standing on this side of the Israel issue and his own history with it.

Why would you trust a guy who didn't even expect that question?

Well, because the thing is, they don't.

actually believe in anything.

Of course.

And like, and as evidence that here's my favorite part from, this is from the very end of the New York Times write-up on this.

It says, Searchlight, Mr.

Gentleton said,

Let me just read a little bit further up.

It says, Many of the groups Mr.

Gentleson has argued Democrats should cast aside were already struggling to raise money and maintain their influence in a political environment dominated by the agenda of Mr.

Trump and his allies.

Searchlight, Mr.

Gentleson said, will conduct its own polling and serve as an ideas generator in the service of winning with margins big enough to advance meaningful policy in Congress, where increasingly slim margins have made such achievements difficult.

Ready for this?

Mr.

Gentleson described a shark tank-style policy generation process to attract proposals from outside Washington with an aim of untethering mainstream democratic thinking from the current ideological spectrum.

We're going to be holding up a mirror to this influence industry, Mr.

Gentleson said.

We are going to produce products that call into question a lot of these assumptions we have been operating on for a long time.

I'd like to hold up a piece of rope to your ceiling fan.

Can we get you fired from

your dad Venmoing you?

Like, this sucks so so

what are these products what are these policies that they're going to be advancing i don't know but we're going to hold a game show style conversation sharks i'm here to pitch you on a new policy you know like uh sharks it's called um

we're gonna we're gonna give people tax credits for building uh settlements in the west bank i mean i also the first half of that answer when he was like i didn't want to interrupt you but he was just like what we're gonna do is we're gonna use polling to come up with sentences that we will write down and give to clients yeah that indicate where political winds may be blowing this way or that way.

It's just like, yeah, you're just describing like the most basic idea of what a PAC or whatever, like a consultant does.

I don't think he's even gotten far enough in this to know how to make this sound.

Here's what I have to say to the gentle son about all of his policy product ideas.

What's proprietary about this?

What's stopping me from starting my own think tank indeed?

That will also tell Democrats that they need to move to the right on a number of pressing social, economic, and moral issues.

I mean, yeah, I'll crush you like the fucking cockroach you are, Mr.

John.

I'm Mr.

Wonderful.

I'm the political, Mr.

Wonderful.

Yeah, I like we are setting up our own, uh, we're calling it um the Lighthouse Institute, actually.

We're calling it the Spotlight Institute, which has a very different mission that might involve some people you know.

So, watch out.

We represent a group of political prisoners who have taken asylum in Israel.

Let's collaborate.

We have some similar ground here to work with.

Our number one issue, we think that Democrats are alienating everyone with their outdated,

rejected at the ballot box anti-Japanese empire prejudice.

We're going to get Democrats to unrecognize Korea.

Both Koreas, the entire peninsula.

It belongs to Japan.

Hey, look, those women were comfortable.

It's in the name.

Yeah, that's right there.

They had a great time.

Yeah,

we're going to do a presentation where we show everyone how annoying it is to use a Samsung TV.

And then we're going to show everyone what a Sony is like.

I mean, I think,

is Adam Gentelson?

Adam Gentelson.

I think Adam has the wrong idea of

what sort of secrets of the trade he has to offer here.

I'm not hearing a lot by way of political strategy.

It's a brand new strategy for the Democrats, which is that you triangulate to the right after losing an election.

Right.

I mean, this guy has secrets about like real secrets, like you said, access to Fetterman, like what happens when you crush one of his tusks into a potion and

what kind of magical properties that can imbue you with, you know, if you put it in a cauldron.

Like, that's valuable stuff that no one else has.

Forget this polling shit.

That's not your value.

Adam, we're the best place to feed ducks in Washington, D.C.

while you're on a depression quest.

You know, you have access to that.

Yeah.

I,

Brendan, what you said about how, like, he

there's something so vacant about this.

It just says such well-trod territory.

The weirdest thing about him,

it's so similar to Kamala 2, where It's clear that, like, if they do have any beliefs, they are lightly held enough that they will take on like any set of positions,

any posture, any branding, whatever is like the most expedient thing at the time.

And after the fact, they will always come out and say, okay, at the time I knew what I was doing was stupid, but well, you know, here's why, here's why

you should trust me the next time.

The weird thing about it to me is like, there is this unspoken branding with both of them that they are like,

that they're both, that they're so good at the at like the the real life house of cards like dirty work of politics but when you actually get them in a conversation like with gentlson how he was not astute enough to to realize that he would be asked about israel or with kamala in any interview

they are just they don't even have the ability to just bullshit for like 30 seconds yeah the wheels completely fall off so it's not there's not even like a point in them not having any beliefs.

It certainly doesn't make them, it certainly doesn't make them.

It doesn't make them quick on their feet.

Yeah, it doesn't make them.

That's supposed to be a whole trade-off.

Yeah.

It doesn't make them cannier operators.

The era of like, like, I think, you know, maybe we're thinking of this of the Clinton era where it's like the guy's, he's a, he's a stuffed shirt, but like he can, he can spin a yarn.

He can keep people, you know, just by whatever lies or

just embellishing stuff.

But this is, yeah, like you said, none of the sense of genuine ideals or values that I think people like to imagine is there, nor is it the slick operator.

You're failing in both directions.

He's fucking proposing having a game show to decide what they believe in.

That sounds horrible.

No one thinks that sounds like a good idea.

And you're telling it to the, I guess, to Weigel or the New York Times or whatever, everywhere you get interviewed.

It's a bad idea.

Who would watch that show?

Like, more people would, if Ace is High was real, more people would watch

I would rather watch Ace News.

Absolutely.

Aces High is 100% more interesting.

He'd have better ideas about these problems, I'm sure, from the different guests.

But Harry Reid, for one.

Absolutely.

You bring up Kamala.

This is just

a small detail from the Kamala Harris book tour that I thought was great.

This is from Politico.

It says, Kamala Harris's new memoir throws elbows at several 2028 contenders from her party, including Governor Gavin Newsom, who she casts as unreachable in the hours after Joe Biden dropped out of the last year's presidential race.

Hiking will call back, the former vice president wrote in her notes from her calls that day, which were counted in her campaign memoir 107 Days.

She pointly noted in parentheses, he never did.

This is the strongest indication that Gavin Newsom is the strongest contender that the Democrats have for president because

for all his manifest flaws and evil, he can smell a loser.

Yeah.

And then like that is a that is a that is a quality sorely lacking among democratic politicians and operatives.

Honestly, like this is, you know, market, this is the first time he's ever done or said anything where I don't immediately want him like exiled from the planet.

Like

I dare even say the first thing that he comes off is even somewhat likable.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like

they

I love how terse it is.

It reminds me of how I respond to messages when, like, someone I don't know that well asked me to do their podcasts.

Yes.

It's, you're just so rude and terse about saying no that, like, no one could possibly think you're going to do it.

He's, he's a real master.

He must say no to a lot of stuff.

He must get asked to do the most bullshit stuff.

Like, Lev Parnas' son is probably like, Do you want to do a Snapchat when cast with me?

And he's like, diarrhea retreat right now

i'm getting my i'm getting my colon blown out of these agells and i was like uh hiking we'll call back that's such a california asshole thing to do it's like yeah that's what these people they love hiking it's not urgent it's not like there's an emergency he's just like i'm out it's just i'm walking up a hill right now leave me alone yeah he driveth park is nice today yeah it's if he if he just like if he just held like a couple of my positions like if he was just like yeah we're we're gonna we're going to nationalize like all health care i would be

i i would max out to him because that kind like that kind of asshole behavior i have more faith in in someone like that being able to like get things done than like the biden glad handy stuff yeah yep unfortunately he is he's just like biden but with like a like a Patrick Bateman skin over yeah

the fact that he wasn't didn't even speak at the last convention, right?

I thought was like there must be either just a lot of hate for him within the party, or there's a, there's like a,

you know, Tyrannosaurus-sized skeleton in his closet that they're just like, whoa, no, we're not going to have him, you know, be the face of the party.

You know, I don't know which one it is.

I mean, if there's no type of like

a real Mewtwo, not,

you know, not an article that's like Gavin Newsom's finger-blasting secret, how he fucked up on a wine date.

If he's not, if there's no Me Too of Gavin Newsom, then like, I don't know what to believe.

Like, he's, yeah, like,

I don't, yeah, then maybe the earth is flat.

Well, I think he has the DeSantis thing.

I think he's, we talked about it long ago, but it's like,

I think, I mean, the one time he actually did try in a re-election campaign, he kind of stomped electorally

in California at least

against

Larry fucking Elder.

But

I just, his whole thing, I do not think it will play in other places.

I think it's going to be the same thing as DeSantis, where he has a decent floor among like losers who just like a Democrat who can string a few words together and shows like a mild awareness for the media meta we're in.

But the ceiling is not that much higher.

I mean, he is, he is trying to cast himself right now as like the Democratic Trump, you know, like when he like, and, you know, he's like.

Say the election was stolen then.

If you want to be, like, if you wanted to

stop short, like I said, like, yeah, they stopped short.

And I'm just saying, I will max out to him

if he runs on a campaign pledging to imprison all of his political enemies

and to criminalize,

criminalize the opposition party.

Also, get back together with Kimberly Guilfoyle.

No, put her in jail.

Well, one or the other.

Do both.

Treat her Do both at the same time.

Yeah, treat her like the American and Bolin.

Just, just, he needs to,

these little snarky tweets or whatever, it's just, I'm sorry.

That's not you being Trump.

That's not you being the Democrat Trump.

No.

Well, let's check in on how things are going with

Donald Trump.

Let's check out the other side for a second here.

Now, this is some big news.

This is like some earth-shattering news that happened over the weekend that like, I didn't know I'm going to be breaking here on the show.

Guys,

there's that issue that's out there that's sort of just been haunting American politics for a couple of years now.

The thing that sort of seems to implicate the leaders of both parties and much of, you know, the sort of banking, tech, and entertainment elite in this country.

Everyone's been asking for answers about this case.

And everyone's saying, show us the files.

Release the files.

Guys, Donald Trump is going to release the files.

We're getting the files.

We're getting the files this is from this from the ap president donald trump announced friday that he has ordered the declassification and public release of all government records about aviator amelia airhard

noting that her disappearance in 1937 as she attempted to fly around the world has captivated millions trump called her fate an interesting story and say people have been people have been asking him about declassifying and making public everything the government has on her okay everything the government has on her.

They're releasing the air hard files, guys.

Has on her.

Has emergency pod.

Emergency pod.

The air hard files are getting released.

Imagine if they release it and like just turns out she's a pedophile.

She's the first, she's the first version of Epstein.

It's like something

that plane.

What was she flying around everywhere for?

Landing on islands?

I mean, it would make it easier to do it.

Going missing on an island, maybe?

What's in the files?

We demand.

Okay, imagine Trump brings all those right-wing media influencers and hands them documents that they like get photographed waving to the media.

We have the Earhart files.

Yeah.

Their disappearance are going to crack the case on this.

I personally think she just crashed into the ocean.

That's me.

I think she was trying to hit the Empire State Building.

She's like the nexus of every single terroristic, pedophilic aspect of American culture.

It's all there in one lady.

Why do you think he's...

I was trying to figure out why he's doing that.

Why?

It says here in the article because people have been asking him for years about the code.

No, they haven't.

He's released a few JFK files, but he didn't even go back to the JFK thing.

Like, that's the one Airbnb.

Not even like the Lindbergh baby.

That's a more compelling mystery than what the fuck happened to Emily Earhart.

Aliens.

She was flying in one of the first airplanes ever around the world and then disappeared.

Yeah, I wonder what happened to her.

This shit pisses me off so much.

I see this so much.

like i i get because of like the youtube videos i watch i get so many recommended videos that are like the 20 scariest disappearances ever yeah and it's like this guy was a hiker and he went missing in the and it's like wow i wonder what happened he probably got killed by a cult it isn't just that he like wandering he got lost and like died died of dehydration what could there's literally videos like four hour long videos that are like the 20th the 20 scariest unexplained disappearances of outdoors youtubers yeah and it's like that's a very easy one to solve the files are just going to be like a transcription of the one of those youtube videos you know and pamboni's going to sit there like reading it and be like you know say like don't forget to like and subscribe because they're just directly copying it over from a youtube video amelia made it almost three quarters around the world before she suddenly and without notice vanished never to be seen again trump wrote on this social media site her disappearance almost 90 years ago has captivated millions millions.

I'm ordering my administration to declassify and release all government records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her.

Like, what?

What?

Her blood type, shoe size.

I like how he's calling her Amelia, by the way.

It's just, that's a weird little touch of first name basis.

Going back to like why he's doing this, I was.

This may be, I may be assuming too much, but do you, I'm trying to kind kind of do the same thing that we did with Brandon, where we try to get, you know, get, take a sip of the soup and guess what's in it.

He, what if, like, he was no angel, folks.

He was, he was a bad, bad woman.

He, he, he, right now, he's perceiving that, like, the heat is on him, right?

For, for Epstein stuff.

And his brain is probably like running it through a filter of the stuff that happened during his first administration.

Like, he still probably thinks like Me Too is a thing.

Yeah.

And so what if his, his calculation is like, I know,

I'll like, I'll throw a bone to the Me Too people by releasing these files about these, this famous icon, Amelia Earhart.

Well, it's just, it's like a mystery.

It's one of those like quote-unquote mysteries of history that he thinks will be.

I think

it is not a mystery.

There is nothing salacious about the mystery to begin with.

The mystery is, where is her body in the Pacific Ocean?

I mean, he could have been out a bit like,

we're going to find D.B.

Cooper.

Yeah, that's interesting.

That's interesting.

That's a mystery site.

Some people say he knows Bigfoot.

We don't know.

It could be in Kahoots.

We don't really know, but we're going to find out very soon.

But, like, this is such a bland.

It's a Hail Mary.

And I...

I thought it was a joke when I first heard about it.

It is like classic old guy stuff.

Yeah.

Like, this is...

Like, he's kind of interested maybe in a cursory way.

So he thinks other people are dying to hear about it.

Yeah.

Like this is.

Amelia Earhart is like,

that is a topic of great of conversation that like a great great uncle brings up after 20 minutes of awful silence.

Yep.

Never found her.

You know, and you're just like,

because I bring it up because I know you've read this too, but do you remember in one of Gorvadal's memoirs, there's a whole chapter about his father and Amelia Earhart?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, I don't remember like the exact

I mean, basically, it's because like his father, like Amelia Earhart, was like one of the first American aviators.

He was one of the pioneers of flight.

Right.

And like, he was like, the family was very close with Amelia Earhart.

And basically, like, Gorvidal, it was just basically about how, in his estimation, Amelia Earhart was in love with his father.

and was being sort of like semi-exploited by her husband, who was sort of like a promoter and who sort of like coasted off of her and like

created kind of like a made her into like a national media figure.

but we're gonna find out about all that.

Definitely.

What did Gorvidal's father know, and when did he know it?

It is, yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I do like that final clause.

What did he say?

Everything else about her and everything else about her.

Okay.

Can't wait.

Um, but that, and that's, that's like,

that's almost as

lame as the Hegseth thing as well.

Like the other big secret.

Let's talk about the Hegseth thing.

This is, this is another thing I saw over the weekend where it was like, uh, Hegseth orders rare, urgent meetings of hundreds of generals, admirals.

This is from the Washington Post.

It says, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered hundreds of the U.S.

military's generals and admirals to gather on short notice and without a stated reason at a Marine Corps base in Virginia next week, so in confusion and alarm after the Trump administration's firing of numerous senior leaders this year.

And like when I saw this, I was like, our, you know, our rummy Secretary of Defense is like, you know, on a bender and orders literally like all of like generals and admirals who were in like, you know,

operating base, like, you know, like all over the fucking world, like the Pacific Command or whatever, orders them back to like a retreat in Virginia for like an all-hands urgent meeting.

And of course, my first thought was like, oh, fuck, like, World War III is starting.

Like, we're just going to go to war with Russia over Ukraine or something like that.

I was like, this does not seem good.

Then I thought about it for a second.

And then I was like, oh, phew.

It's going to be something mind-numbingly stupid.

Well, a bunch of people,

I mean, some people, people I know, know, were like texting me, like, you see this thing about Hegseth's going to, I mean, this is like, this is scary.

I'm like, I guarantee you, it's not going to be scary.

It's going to be fruity.

Like, this is going to be some really

fruity thing that he thinks is cool.

Fruity is exactly what this is.

This is from ABC News.

At next week's unusual gathering of several hundred senior U.S.

generals and admirals, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will deliver his message of restoring the, quote, warrior ethos to the U.S.

military and present new standards towards that goal, according to five U.S.

officials.

Many of the senior military officers will come to the Marine Base at Quantico, Virginia from all over the United States and from around the world to hear Hegseth in an event that could last just 30 minutes, according to two officials.

Why don't you just put it like a Zoom call?

Just be the big, put him up on the big board and make all the generals listen to you talk about whatever like fruity new sprit de corps that you're doing.

This is his whole thing.

He has nothing to do.

He just gets to rename stuff and say, we're saying war.

And by the way, and then in addition to that, one of the things he did this week was officially restored of honor bestowed upon the soldiers who did the wounded knee massacre.

And it's just like, like, shit like that.

Like,

I know he's got the Crusader tattoos and he's just like,

I'm a warrior, not a soldier.

We need battle harder than men.

I can't think of a single,

even like of the most right-wing cynical historians imaginable, who would ever describe the wounded knee massacre as anything other than just a wanton massacre of women and children.

Like in no way, shape, or form was it a battle fought that you could bestow medals of honor upon the men who did it.

And this was also like the medals of honor that were given out back then,

you didn't get them for like

risking your life necessarily.

It was just like, that was just the medal that was given out for like active duty servicemen.

People got medals of honor for like re-enlisting.

Seriously,

they would get medals of honor for like re-enlisting or like tending to a mule.

That's what

one of the fucking guys that wounded knee, like that is what his medal of honor is for.

They just didn't have anything.

They hadn't invented the bronze star to give to like future congressmen and TV personalities like Pete Hags have.

He's the most sort of comparable to Trump in that he's a TV guy.

You know, so he, he's, he's all about like, oh, we're not, I don't want to actually have to do anything, but let's have a ceremony.

Let's rename something.

Let's get the base kind of fired up.

Build a grand ballroom.

Yeah, yeah.

Cover everything in gold.

And then even though it's kind of repulsive, given that we are in a sense, you know, seeing history get

kind of redefined into some of its most grotesque revanchist version of American history.

Again, it's just kind of him talking about something that doesn't fucking matter, you know, as far as like doing anything right now

i always think like the thing that is so it's so weird that his his

the thing he did before like he was a tv personality he was in the national guard i think he was in the national guard but then i think he joined the infantry so he was in the army at once the infantry is in the like there is infantry in the national guard and the national guard like did get sent to a rock that was like a famous thing

he was just in the minnesota national guard yeah

he might have been in the reserves too, like after, but that's still like,

that's still like, okay, if you're like a re if you're like the real life version of Sam Fisher,

imagine like the National Guard guy like makes you fly across the country after spending like a weekend dangling from like an HVAC pipe, snapping people's neck.

Like I would pass a law.

Like no National Guard guy can have any administrative position.

It's such a bullshit that like, he, he went to Princeton and, like, joined the National Guard as an officer because, you know, before 9-11, it was just like you went camping and did sit-ups for four days out of the month and you would get like a grade pension or whatever.

But like, imagine you're one of these like General Jack D.

Ripper types, like McRaven or one of like one of these psychos.

Like, and then you get an order that you have to, like, drop what you're doing and head to an all-hands retreat in Quantico so that the Secretary of Defense can give you a motivational speech for a half an hour and then you can leave.

Yeah.

Well, like, what is that?

Do you think like any of those guys, any of like the Delta Force psychos that are like pissed off there they're having to miss like drug trafficking meetings to go to this?

Do you think they're like, oh wow, we were going to quit until your amazing speech.

We were going to, we were actually going to surrender.

He should like hire one of those like motivational speakers that they hire to like uh berate and scream at like uh salespeople yeah you know right just like like your wife is cheating on you right now because you're not selling enough what's wrong with you pussy i love that guy yeah that guy is awesome

uh

and i i believe i did hear something about how like it will have to do like the he's also like instituting new standards for military grooming about like facial hair and yeah it's just it's it's it's fruity well well like one of the, one of the, there used to be like an exemption for like black servicemen.

This is actually a Zoom Walt reform,

Admiral Zumwalt, around like the early set.

It was in the book Bloods, actually.

Yeah.

He, Zum Walt was, he was like,

we talked about it, like one of the one of the World War II veteran libs that like a foundational figure in modern American liberalism.

But he, like, he had a bunch of

black officers who advised him on stuff like this.

And previously,

the Navy's standards on facial hair, they like,

they would, they wouldn't account for like how like, I think it's what, like over like 60% of black men get the, get that skin condition when they shave.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

Like the bumps.

And they should, they created an exemption because of that skin condition.

Okay.

And Hagseth is like rolling back these now like

50-year-old fucking reforms that

just make a ton of practical sense.

That you wouldn't, like, it wouldn't make sense to just like kick perfectly able-bodied people out of the Navy

because you force them to have a skin condition.

Yeah.

That they could otherwise avoid by having like the most like

the most inconspicuous goatee possible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like the, like, like less, not one of those, like,

what are the Van Dycks?

Just like short enough where it, like, doesn't fuck up their skin.

But

he's rolling it back for, like, God knows what fucking reason.

Well, you're right, but he's like, nothing to do.

Because he has nothing to do.

Yeah.

What the fuck is he up to?

Every time I see him, he's like doing push-up challenges with troops and stuff like that.

But it's like...

But he's also, then you see the right-wing people being like, well, I like that he's just kind of chilling out and being a fun American guy instead of taking us to war.

It's like, well, he also did, did, he had no problem with bombing Iran, which you seem to think is a bad thing.

I guess the Tucker wing

with Israel bombing Qatar.

Like the ally where we have a giant military base in the process of a negotiation that we want to succeed.

But also none of that is up to him either.

So he's not making decisions or anything.

He's

apparently Stephen Miller is the guy behind all these Venezuelan boat killings.

For a hexeth,

it's a pageantry.

It's all pageantry.

And he just wants to be.

And he wants our

sailors, airmen, marines, and army soldiers he wants them looking cute and tight yep so i mean it's not i i'm glad it's not something apocalyptic obviously but it is so i'm sorry like every time i think about this i i i have to bring it back to the trump military birthday parade yeah that was that was a real low moment for this country yeah

that was really bad i consider that the official start of the american century of humiliation yeah that was awesome that was so

like, what did they think it was going to look like?

I loved it.

I loved it how, like, they, so they had, like, Rangers and like fifth special forces guys, like, trying to march in formation.

And of course, like, they don't know how to fucking do that.

I was shocked at how bad the marching was.

It's, if there's one thing you got to do in those, it's march, march well.

And it was uninspiring.

And of course, people rightfully put up like the Chinese parades, the North Korean parades, even even some Europeans.

And our guys just did not, did not measure up.

It was bad.

Wasn't Hagsteth like on his phone during that?

Yeah, they were looking at their bored as fuck.

He doesn't care about it.

It's got to be about him like doing something symbolic that Monday that makes him feel like, you know, he's earning his keep or whatever.

But also, is it like...

Calling all the generals and making them come to the meeting and Quantico?

Isn't that like high key drunk behavior?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

At least the idea yeah the thing where you grind like you bring the party that everyone was joined to like a grinding halt but you're like listen i've been friends with this guy for three fucking years

it would be so funny if like all of them like for whatever reason they all have to like

go to the base proper on ospreys and he just he just takes out like every officer in america above like lieutenant colonel level it's just completely like the joint chief, the like the new joint chiefs are all like 22 year olds.

He just ruins the American military.

He could be because I mean he's going to be he's going to be sipping before this you know to feel himself.

Sure.

This could be like about you know just three morning gin and tonics just to get stopped your hands from shaking.

This could be like if Frank Drebin did the Saddam Hussein

like by accident.

Yeah.

Like he slips a Nordberg's

gun into killing all of our hype men.

It could happen.

The one thing that I will, like,

I will hand it to Pete Hagsethon that I do actually find impressive about him.

I think it's admirable how much he's able to work out while being drunk like all the time.

Like, that's hard to do.

Yeah.

Like, try.

Dehydrating.

Yeah.

Try waking up and immediately drinking like some.

You know, he's drinking the stupidest cocktails.

He drinks something called like a trucker's Manhattan that has like red Gatorade in it.

It's, it's, it's Venom Knob Creek.

He drinks that, and then he immediately, like, he does these idiotic workouts.

Like, he'll do, like, the, he does workouts that have, like, names called, like,

like

the hero's thrust.

And it's, you do the same number of steps that all the firefighters who died on 9-11 did.

And at least, like, he's at least able to hold together enough to not vomit on camera.

Yeah.

And it's like that is

to the extent that anyone in that administration is sacrificing, he kind of is more than anyone.

Like, I would like to know what his secret is because he also does not have the alcohol explode.

You can't say that.

Not yet.

I don't know how old he is.

He's like 45.

Okay, so.

Drinks for my friends.

All my friends, the generals.

Drinks for my friends.

Oh my god, imagine after he kills all the officers,

then he's he's gonna find a way to like use military technology to send a text to every phone in America.

And

you'll wake up in the middle of the night.

It'll be like louder than any

alert.

Louder than any Amber Alert.

And we'll just be like, are you mad at me?

Listen, listen, I know I sleep, but I just want to say how much I fucking love all of you.

And I'm really fucking sorry.

If I had all the genius in the world, I would fucking put myself in the place of all the guys who died.

Just

13 different Ospreys collide with each other while trying to land in Quantigo.

It could happen.

I know you hear a lot of really bad shit about me, but I just want to let you know.

I just want to let you know.

I fucking love you.

I hope you don't believe it.

I did some bad shit, but I'm still a a good guy.

Getting two Amber Alerts and the one is like that.

And then like 30 minutes later, after you don't respond, it's like, well, fuck you anyway, cunt.

You have

the amber alert the next day in the morning, just trying to act like nothing happened.

I've actually been sober for three old weeks.

It's like Gentleson fighting oligarchy for several months now.

Oh, God.

You know that me and Andrew got obsessed with Blue October.

You know that song, Hate Me?

Yeah, hate me.

Yeah, yeah.

That's whenever the guy in the song goes, I'm sober now for three whole months.

It makes me think of Hegset so much.

Like, he's so Blue October.

Yeah.

That's probably his, like, that's his alarm clock, probably.

Hate me.

That'll be it through the PA system at this meeting of the generals.

He should come out to pyrotechnics.

Like, you know, like

Phidix

kills the general military command of the Pentagon with a great white-style pyrotechnics incident and his warrior ethos fucking motivational speech.

The first accidental purge of the military command is still just like a great idea that could happen.

He's going to kill a four-star general like how Maude died.

Like he's going to shoot on your t-shirts.

Yeah.

All right.

Well,

I got

one more thing today.

And I've been sitting on this story for a week or two, but I really wanted to do it with you guys.

You guys are familiar with Peter Thiel, right?

You're familiar with his sort of sweaty and confusing public appearances as of late.

Particularly the one where Ross Douthat interviewed him and was like, are you the Antichrist?

And he was like,

you know,

and it was like, and he was like, and then Duthat was like, now, to be clear, you would like the human race to continue, right?

And he was like, uh,

he paused for like 30 seconds as you saw, like, you know, he's like sweating like Patrick Ewing at the foul line.

Who is telling him to do though?

Like, yeah, he needs to just not.

I mean, I guess it's good for

us to see it and for people to be creeped up by him, but whoever's telling him to do these interviews has got to go.

I saw him.

Joe Rogan.

And, like, Rogan was like, well, it's not like you met with Epstein, you know, after the conviction and he was like, actually,

I met with him in 2014

after some moral failing.

And

it's like, why would you agree to do something where you talk for four hours?

Like, he's, there's never been, like,

a more like alarming public figure.

Like, you know, one of his major hobbies or interests now, aside from creating, like, a, you know, global surveillance state and a

murder machine, is that he's obsessed with the Antichrist.

I actually didn't know this.

Yeah.

Okay, yeah.

No, he is obsessed with the idea of the Antichrist.

And apparently, like, he gave a series of lectures in San Francisco on the Antichrist.

It's all for you, Peter.

I mean, this is from personality.

And this is from the San Francisco Standard.

This is their account of like, of, this is their account.

Like, I mean, it was off the record.

So they were like talking to people coming in and out of the Peter Thiel Antichrist lecture.

This is what they had to report.

It says, hundreds of people lined up on Monday night outside the Commonwealth Club, braving a line of protesters, sporting demon masks, and blasting death metal in order to see Peter Thiel deliver a lecture on the Antichrist.

The off-the-record talk was the first in a four-part series that the PayPal co-founder and venture capitalist sold out within hours of announcing last month.

An online invite said vaguely that Thiel would be addressing the topic of the biblical Antichrist and its theology, history, literature, and politics.

Despite the lack of details, the event drew a passionate crowd.

Dozens of protesters swarmed the sidewalk, carrying signs emblazoned with the billionaire's face and reading, Not Today, Satan.

Lecturer attendees, meanwhile, lined the block, bearing their noses in their phones as protesters heckled.

The crowd was largely white, male, and clad in some form of button-down attire appropriate for seeing their high priest deliver his sermon.

Surprisingly, few in the crowd counted themselves as true fans.

I'm personally ready for horns to grow out of his head in the middle of talking, said one attendee who identified himself as Dick Dick Gay.

That would be great.

Mr.

Gay, who had flown in for the event from Los Angeles.

Is this the New York Times?

No, this is the San Francisco Standard.

It says, Mr.

Gay, who had flown

in for the event from Los Angeles and said he was one of the investors of, said he was one of the investors of sperm racing,

which is an actual thing wherein men compete to see whose sperm is fastest under a microscope, said that he attended the University of Austin or UATX, an anti-woke college

reported to be partially funded by Thiel, and built his career around the principles outlined in Thiel's book, zero to one.

So living your life,

this is a guy who's dedicated his life to being taught,

going to school by principal Barry Weiss, and then

dedicated his life to the principles in Peter Thial's book.

And he's the founder of an investor in sperm racing.

How did it, like, is it a sport?

I think it's just, it just says he was one of the investors of sperm racing, which is an actual thing where when men compete to see whose sperm is fastest under a microscope.

So I guess, like, how do you make money from that?

Like, I guess like, do you get sponsors?

It's like, you know, like, I'm jacking off in the bathroom with one of those like NASCAR-like suits.

Like,

Marlborough, Mountain Dew.

I'm just like,

well, don't use Mountain Dew.

A team comes in and like takes one of my nuts off and puts it in a new one.

Wait, so he goes to the bottom.

So, like, Will Slagan and the Pit Stop is going to get a finger up in his ass in 1.5 seconds.

Wait, but so he's a student at Barry.

Yeah, he said he attended the University of Austin.

Bovine University.

He attended Bovine Barry University.

And it said, still, he said he had difficulty, he had difficulty squaring the ideas Teal espoused with his track record, specifically his co-founding of the defense tech company, Palantir.

Palantir makes the AI technology that decides who lives or dies in a battlefield, which seems exactly like the Antichrist Thiel describes in all of his lectures, he said.

I'm very curious what he has to say about that or what excuses he might make.

Oh, whoops.

I've wasted my life, said Gay.

Okay.

Wait, I'm just realizing all the shit I like is like stupid and evil.

This is the section that really fried me, though.

Attendee Justin Park said he just wanted to pitch Thiel on putting a seven and a half foot cross on the moon.

That's the

nice configuration.

Brendan, I do, I wanted to have you to talk about this because when I talked to when it got to the guy whose only thing is he's seeking investors to put a seven and a half foot cross on the moon,

I'm like, that is the film, the William Peter Blatty film, the ninth configuration starring Saturday.

I really denied it.

Yeah.

I think it's a great idea.

It's a great poster.

Yeah, it's an awesome poster.

It says, wearing a blue Banana Republic blazer with a round pearlescent pin engraved with a cross, the 43-year-old said his company, Cross on the Moon Coalition.

Come on.

It's like his company.

Once again, a company is something that makes money.

Yeah, well, theoretically.

I mean, like, if it was the Cross of the Moon Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to putting a cross on the moon, but this is, like, oh, we said the cross of the moon coalition.

It says, his company, the cross on the moon coalition.

And the titanium alloy cross it hopes to erect on the lunar surface is meant to glorify and evangelize Christ through space exploration.

So the only way you could make money off that is like if your company just like it borrows money to put in a bet on like one of unpredicted.

Like they buy all the shares for will there be a cross on the moon.

Yeah.

And then you try to make when the cross on the moon happens, that's the end of your company.

Exactly.

Park said he's hoping to find something meaningful to learn from teal, but made it clear he's also interested in having the billionaire evangelize his company's goal.

Putting the cross on the moon would cost around $40 million, he said.

That's a steal to put something on the moon, I would imagine.

$40 million.

That's $40 million.

That's nothing.

That's like, yeah.

We could, if we started saving,

we could contribute to this.

Yeah.

I see no reason not to.

We should, I mean, that should be a secondary.

To your subscription.

Well, no, well, I...

I do have that dream of the $10,000 a month subscription where you get all the forbidden conversations.

But I meant

for the Lighthouse Institute.

Yes.

That's to reclaim the moon for Shinto.

Yeah, that all kind of goes together.

It says, he could be the rock this project needs.

He said,

is that a pun on moon?

Yeah, yeah, I was going to say, the moon's already a big ride.

That's the rock that you should be interested in.

Don't worry about

whatever rocks are in Peter Thiel's fucking head.

Worry about the rocks in your head.

Yeah.

He says, at least one man waiting to get in who declined to give his name or profession was a a true believer.

He called Thiel a very intelligent person and said he was almost prophetic in supporting Trump before any almost any other mainstream figure.

The man who was in his 30s said he wasn't a Teal fan until last year when he became a Trump supporter after seeing the president survive an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.

I misunderstood Thiel, he said.

I used to watch the NN and think he's a Nazi, but now I'm attending his lecture on the Antichrist.

Sitting next to the cross-community, sitting next to the cross on the moon and the sperm racing guy, Dick Gay.

I mean, like, I know Peter Thiel's big idea is to enslave and exterminate humanity, but, like, do any of his fans, like, have any...

But not them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They'll be valued members of his inner circle.

Cross on the Moon Coalition.

Yeah.

I mean, if only them.

Yeah, like in a Doctor of Strangelove situation where only the best are going to be the breeding horses for humanity deep in the minds, you want the cross on the moon guy.

Yeah.

And you obviously want the sperm races guy there.

You got to find out whose sperm is the fastest.

Yeah.

Going back to the sperm racing.

Okay.

For a second.

So I'm imagining it's like, like you, me and Brendan, we're like, we've argued about this as long as we've been friends.

Sure.

Whose sperm is the fastest under a microscope?

Now we can.

So then we pay the sperm racing company to do a sperm race for us.

So I think you like you go to their facility or maybe you just mail them your comb or something like Elon does.

You mail them your comb and then they put it under a microscope.

But is there like a live stream where they're like, and coming around the bed, we've got Will's the fastest, Will's sperm is the fastest.

And then in the street, it's Brendan, Brendan James, Brittany Sperm is picture it like a mario party go all the way mini game yeah yeah and then just press a really fast and your guy goes but then slow down around the corner yeah i would be so proud if my sperm was like senna

like

tragically felix's sperm died when it loved doing the most yeah racing under a microscope yeah i mean he inspired everyone though yeah semen biscuit

Well, now he says, now he says, I used to think, I used to watch CNN and think he's a Nazi.

Now he understands the billionaire is talking about something bigger.

If you read the Bible, there's a whole spiritual warfare, he said.

It's not about left versus right.

It's about God versus Satan.

It's about good versus evil.

It's about right versus wrong.

It's almost like angels versus demons.

Got it.

See, like,

this guy, okay, this guy, he gets the concept, but he's just like, it's not really about left or right.

It's about...

It's about angels versus demons.

It's about right.

It's about good versus evil.

Like the minions of like the minions of Satan versus like, you know, all the angels of heaven.

And the guy I'm convinced is on the right side of this dispute is Peter Thiel, who can't even really give a straight answer that he's not the Antichrist when on video.

Or that he thinks the survival of humanity is something to be desired.

It is an odd bunch here.

He gets fancy, like, you can't even call them softballs.

Like, Joe Rogan will be like, but you think it's wrong to like hold up a baby with Quadric's robotic mech suit from Avatar and and sort of rip its spine out and slurp up the stem cells like an oyster, right?

And he's like, in some situations, I would be

against doing that, but I haven't seen all the cases.

Thial has been speaking for at least a year about the Antichrist, who for the uninitiated is a biblical figure who will rise before the Last Judgment and attempt to turn people against Jesus.

But Thiel's comments on the subject received greater attention after a June interview on New York Times columnist Ross Douthat's podcast, in part because a stuttering teal failed to fully rebut Duthat's assertion that actually it is Teal himself who is ushering in the coming of the Antichrist with the technology he is developing.

In the podcast, Teal explained that he believes the Antichrist will present itself as an advocate for regulation.

Oh, wow.

Pushing to slow technological and scientific progress in the name of safety.

He suggested with a straight face that the Antichrist could look a lot like 22-year-old climate activist Greta Thurnberg.

All right.

So, I mean, like, this is like, the thing that's so depressing about this is just like the poverty of these people's imaginations.

Because, like, I know, like, with all the fucking drugs he does, like, I mean, like, of course he's into, like, he's into the Antichrist, but he's like, This is where you end up.

But he's like, okay, I'm going to imagine the Antichrist in the 21st century, like, you know, is alive in the world today, like Damien.

And he's pushing for government regulation of Silicon Valley.

What a fucking shock.

Wow.

That works out great for me.

Wow.

What are the odds of that?

I, like, I think, like, if you believe in, like, if you seriously think like in your day-to-day life you are contesting like devils and ghouls and the fucking candle jack and all of it you're an asshole like you're a fucking idiot but

i mean

i kind of hope it's true because if you get fooled by peter teal into thinking he's like fighting the antichrist you deserve like you have you have earned your stay in hell like that is that is real bumpkin shit.

Yeah.

Uh, um, uh, during the course of his lecture, uh, Teal, Teal closed after warning about the dangers of the Antichrist rising to usher in Armageddon by selling attendees on his latest product

a number and sign that will be engraved into your hand or forehead.

Well, I was thinking, like, this is like how now the guaranteed sign you're getting a fraudulent call is if they say they are your bank looking to protect your account.

That's how you know you need to hang up and not give them any information.

So, him warning about the coming of the Antichrist, you know, it's coming from inside the house.

It says, the consensus was that the talk largely repeated the points that Peel had made in previous interviews on the subject,

namely that the Antichrist would use the threat of Armageddon or some looming crisis in order to consolidate control and create a one-world government.

Like he's doing it.

Sort of like he's doing right now.

I'm the speech shaking.

That's also like

that's such a shitty prediction because then that's like anyone.

Watch out for someone who warns about a crisis.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, thanks.

You're painting yourself into a bit of a corner there, but yeah.

One attendee recalled Thiel specifying that this figure could not be a state figurehead like Chinese President Xi Jinping because it needs to be more global.

He couldn't recall if Thiel suggested Thurnberg would make the cut.

So it's like President Xi can't possibly be the Antichrist because it's too, because it needs to be more global.

So it's only the president of the largest country on the planet.

Yeah.

And that's pretty much as global as one guy could get.

Like a Swedish,

a Swedish woman who's like, you know, wants people to stop dying in Gaza.

It says, one attendee revealed that Teal's discussion of the Antichrist was more about a scenario than an individual.

Thiel's antichrist scenario is one in which a unified government suppresses technology to impose order, or Armageddon, where an AI takes over and ushers in the end of the world.

We'll either have the one government that destroys technology and takes over, or you have an AI that destroys everything, he said.

Another guest, when asked about the talk, shot back a single word, mid.

You went to it, asshole.

You don't get to complain yeah

stupid shit you're in this audience you're you're a rube in one way or another but yeah that that's pretty funny it's either going to be an ai or the people who try to stop the ai i mean what is being communicated here at all i don't get it i think it's i think this is just to set up like

a year from now

after there's another like um you know 26 year old instagram model mysteriously falls 40 stories from his penthouse yeah peter till will will be like, Actually, this is so crazy.

But this guy who I did not at all kill, he was actually going to be the Antichrist.

I paid a team of Vatican witch doctors and the real hell thing, and they figured it out.

And he was the Antichrist, and I got rid of him.

It's not really about an individual, but a scenario.

Like, there could be an Antichrist scenario

involving a prominent and wealthy individual who has

young paramores who continually

swan dive out of penthouse apartments owned by me and sort of suicide attempts, suicides, we'll call them.

Yeah, a scenario, like a scenario.

Like if we were, say if I was, I had certain tastes and I, part of my branding was to encourage people not to go to college.

And in fact, encouraging gifted 16 and 17 year olds to just skip that step directly and come work in my field and sort of enter my social circles, hang out around me and my friends.

Well, he said the Antichrist will use, like, under the guise of a threat or safety, like that would be the mechanism to which he gets it.

So, like, you know, like, just be wary out there.

Or be people warning, saying, like, oh, like, you know, don't go in Peter Jones' bedhouse apartment.

You know, that's the worst thing they could be saying.

Yeah.

As far as their guilt.

And if you're there, like, be careful of any banana peels near the edge of the.

Yeah.

Falcon it.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news.

If your parents say, no, you're only 15,

you can't live in his ziggurat,

they might be the Antichrist.

They really might be.

You should turn it into more of a Jeff Foxworthy list of things.

It'd be more entertaining, whatever the fuck he said at this stupid speech with these gentlemen.

The people who were like, actually, it really sucked, pissed me off so bad.

It's like,

yeah, poop found a diarrhea fast.

Come up with

a better suggestion.

Don't just knock him, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hey, if you're a 19-year-old Instagram model who's about to talk to a reporter from Gawker, you just might be impressed.

Closing out here about other people who are like not impressed with the antichrist, the four-hour Antichrist lecture of like, you know, like the ramblings of a drug-addicted badman.

It says here, a a group of three frenchmen all living in san francisco and working in tech gave the talk a seven out of ten because of repetitiveness they did appreciate some of teal's jokes including apparently a saying it would be a travesty for elon musk to go to therapy because it would make him less productive

what if what if you what if you actually went there and like an hour of it is like it's like eddie murphy rolling he's just like it's so funny it's so

funny he's bringing back death comedy and just crushing the crowd is like they're ripping up the seats like he's like he's he's no one is ever killed like this I take my shit out this whole room gonna get like

and he comes out wearing wearing like a button-up shirt and jeans that are like airbrushed with his face on it

the first hour of the talk Stepkids always know you be fucking on their mama

and then after he then like at exactly an hour mark, he's like, okay, enough of that.

It just gets into boring antichrist shit.

This is from one of the French guys.

He was really anti-introspection, one recalled.

I wonder why.

Okay, it's what we're saying.

He's sort of a, he counsels against looking in the mirror.

Remembering things

he did.

Staying away from mirrors in general.

Don't be freaked out when you don't see anything in it.

It says, he said, we are very selfish and we care a lot about ourselves as individuals, and that therapy and yoga and stuff like that is not good for the world.

We should not care so much about ourselves and care more about the world.

Another attendee said the talk revealed a less well-known, more scholarly side of Teal.

He noted that Teal is different from his expectations of a tech investor, pointing to the billionaire's cynical view of technology's impact on the world.

The part about Teal that's interesting is he breaks your expectations about what a VC tech should be.

I'll say,

kind of, yeah,

certainly.

Yet another said he missed the majority of the lecture because he was at dinner with his mother.

Is this one of the French guys?

No, this is just yet another attendee.

Oh, okay.

He said he heard the rumblings about the lecture being repetitive, but he hoped the series would get spicier and spicier as it progressed.

All right, comment.

But would he be back for the next one?

I hope so, he said.

But if my mom's back in town, you got to prioritize.

Okay.

Someone in this article wins the Good Son Award.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I like that.

That young man, whoever he is, God bless him.

And he was there for as little of the speeches as possible, which is also a plus to him.

You know, he wasn't really there for it.

I like the thing about

Peel being actually skeptical of technology.

Yeah, it's like

when you put cameras in certain places, they're supposed to work.

Yeah.

Yep.

All right.

Well, I think that does it for today's episode, but I got just two things I want to do at the end of the episode.

Well, actually, first of all, Brendan, you're here.

I'm here.

The new season of Blowback just dropped.

It just dropped.

If you want to.

What places are we visiting this year on Blowback?

What characters will we be encountering?

What fun stories from American history will we be examining this year?

Some kooky characters, but the subject matter in general, for those who are listening alongside Felix and my...

Metal Gear miniseries, we're going to Angola, which features heavily in the fifth game of that series.

So really, if you want to have fun fun listening to the Metal Gear thing, you have to listen to Blowback Season 6 in order to understand the historical context.

But it's a really good season, I think.

We are proud of how it turned out.

It's the Cold War showdown in Africa, the largest Cold War showdown in Africa in which South Africa, apartheid South Africa, a local warlord and the United States tried to overthrow the government of Angola, which was partnered up with the Cubans and the Soviets.

And it's kind of notable because the revolutionary Cuba sent tens upon tens of thousands of soldiers to fight directly for the Angolans.

And we're really the difference between apartheid South Africa knocking down that country

and not.

And so

there's a lot of different

kind of stories at play.

And we kind of run you through in the first episode

the highlights and the characters.

But please go sign up, listen to the whole thing if you like.

blowback.show.

And it's 10 episodes, add-free if you sign up, as well as 10 more bonus episodes.

And we make a special effort to, in a bonus episode and throughout the main season, to flesh out Israel's connection with South Africa, because I think that's a point of interest for a lot of people for obvious reasons.

And it is extensive.

It's, you know, all the way to their nuclear program and stuff like that.

So we thought it was a pretty fascinating season.

Blowback, Angola, check it out.

Links will be available in the show description.

And then just one final bit of a podcast promo here.

This comes courtesy of CHAPO Foreign Affairs correspondent Derek Davison, who would like to let you know that him and Danny Besner's podcast, American Prestige, is a finalist for the 2025 Signal Awards in News and Politics.

Now, there is a link where you can, this is

listener's choice compliment to the award.

So you can show your support for Derek and Danny's show, American Prestige, by voting at a link that we will have in the show description.

Now, they are up against some heavy hitters, which include Pod Save America and the Daily Wire.

So they were very tough just to be nominated.

So

I'm beginning my campaign here to vote early and often for Daniel Bessner and Derek Davidson's American Prestige podcast, a 2025 finalist at the Signal Awards.

Look for that link to vote in the show description.

Finally, the last thing I would like to talk about before we leave for today, I'm sorry to end on a mournful note, but I do feel compelled to note the death of a man who Felix and I both knew and admired a great deal.

Over the weekend, we heard the news that sort of shockingly and out of nowhere, the writer Caleb Horton died.

Caleb is a guy who was one of like the first

real like writers who I, whose work I became familiar with through Twitter.

And I was aware of his work way back when I was working at Live Right Norton, and I really wanted to do a book with him.

His writing was, his writing on basically like music, California,

a lot of things, but like he had a very, very sparse, a very funny, and a very elegiac literary style that like I described it as it's a style that many people copy, but only a few people achieve.

And Caleb was really one of them.

And just personally, knowing him, he was a very thoughtful, soft-spoken, and kind person.

And I just would like to use this moment on the show to...

encourage you if you're not familiar with any of Caleb's writing to seek it out because he really was a really really gifted prose stylist like I said he wrote about music and his native rural California in a way that was really,

really, just really striking.

And his loss is just unbelievably senseless.

It came out of absolutely nowhere.

And I would just like to take this time to express my condolences and my heartfelt sympathies to his family, friends, and everyone who was close to him.

Yeah.

Longtime listeners.

will remember Caleb from, I think he was one of our first 20 or 30 guests ever.

but

he, you know, everything that Will said about his writing is completely correct.

And the thing that always surprised me, my, the first few times that we ever spoke with him or encountered him in real life was

just

how it's so rare for someone who can write in the way that Caleb did and about the subject matter that he did to appreciate and understand humor in such a natural way.

It's not that

anyone expected him to be humorless per se, but it's

much less talented writers have been far more difficult to hang out with than Caleb was.

A gigantic, gigantic loss.

It's sort of eerie that

this happens in such close proximity to Jordan Breen's death, because with both men, I sort of think they're two people who were born in the wrong time.

Jordan, in Jordan's case, he was born far too early.

He's someone who would have succeeded had he had a YouTube channel or a podcast of his own.

Whereas with Caleb, he was just not fit for such a shitty media environment that

would not properly remunerate his talents.

Yeah, absolutely.

And like I said, I would just really recommend you check out the piece he did on Merle Haggard, the piece he did on Charles Portis when he died recently.

I mean, I'm just thinking even back to like his sort of like the remixed Dilbert cartoons that just became like existential horror.

Like, just a really funny and unique voice.

And like, it's, it's a really, it's a terrible, terrible loss.

And it's just, it's, it's senseless.

And I don't know what else to say other than like, once again, sending all my love to his friends, family, and just like anyone who knew Caleb and cherished his writing.

That does it for today's show, everybody.

We'll talk to you again soon.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Adios.