A favorite stupid podcast pairing:
— The Bugle for understanding stupid Trump people.
— My podcast “In the Know” for understanding stupid business people.
The Bugle is what happens when several extremely educated British people decide the only sane response to modern politics is sustained civilizational mockery. It’s less “news analysis” and more “Rome collapsing but everyone has microphones.” You come away understanding that half of politics is theater, a quarter is grievance, and the remaining quarter is men named Doug posting eagle memes next to pickup trucks.
Meanwhile, “In the Know” explores the equally bizarre anthropology of business civilization. Venture capitalists. Founders. AI prophets. Wellness futurists. Productivity shamans. Men who say “let’s jam on this” while slowly becoming PowerPoint. It’s nominally about innovation, but actually about ambition, status rituals, optimism, self-deception, and the quasi-religious belief that apps can somehow redeem mankind if the seed round closes in time.
One podcast explains why democracy feels like a casino attached to a Facebook comments section.
The other explains why every startup pitch now sounds like a TED Talk delivered during a ketamine-assisted ayahuasca retreat at Soho House.
Together they form a complete liberal arts education for surviving the 2020s.
Also:
— The Rewatchables for understanding why men can explain the 1995 movie Heat with the seriousness of medieval theologians debating the nature of God.
The Rewatchables is secretly not about movies at all. It’s about memory. Male friendship. Cable television. The anthropology of quoting scenes from Jaws for thirty years. Bill Simmons and the rotating cast approach films with the energy of monks preserving sacred texts after the collapse of civilization. Entire emotional universes are reconstructed from seemingly meaningless details like “that guy actors,” “apex mountain,” or whether the movie would somehow improve if Wayne Jenkins from The Wire burst into the scene screaming profanities.
It’s one of the last surviving corners of culture where people are still allowed to love things without embarrassment or irony.
Movies as oral tradition. Cinema as folk religion. Dad lore with a soundboard.