Jen and Noam discuss the ongoing situation in DC and the agents from…well we can’t tell which agency they’re from since they don’t have ID and their faces are completely covered. Of course, we can’t not talk about the infamous DC Subway attack and the staged re-arrest of sandwich thrower Sean Dunn. 

From there, we move to GQ’s ill-advised profile of Hasan Piker and the quest to make him the left wing Joe Rogan. Unfortunately for Piker, this doesn’t go well. 

We wrap up by talking a bit about the new horror movie Weapons (warning - there are spoilers!) and the tendency modern audiences have to read into a movie more than what is actually there. 

Noam and Jen return to discuss the back half of last week, which had more going on than most full weeks. We talk about the Gaza occupation that may or may not happen, the upcoming peace summit with Putin and Trump but not Zelensky, how Noam is not a Mossad agent sent to infiltrate American social media, and the ick of online sports betting. 

Jen and Noam record a late episode this week discussing the American Eagle nontroversy and the end of the culture war, Trump firing the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he didn’t like the job numbers, Jim Acosta's insane decision to interview a dead kid, and the ongoing situation in Gaza.

Noam and Jen did an extra long episode, because it was an extra long week. We start by discussing the tea on Tea, the vibe-coded app that was long on 2018 nostalgia but short on information security. Aside from the irony of repeating past mistakes, we discuss the shortfalls of relying on LLMs to do your heavy lifting for you, especially if you don’t have the knowledge needed to check the outcome.

We move on to discussing the Macrons suing Candace Owens over the flagrantly insane (but also defamatory) things she has said about Brigitte. While the Macrons are completely within their rights to sue Owens and are justified in doing so, it also gives her more material for her content mill. So what to do? We also take a brief detour into the Mehdi Hasan vs MAGA trainwreck that demonstrated how siloing can rot your sense of reality. 

Gaza is back in the news again, over an impending famine, and whose fault is it anyway? Also, the NYT published a piece citing one anonymous IDF source saying that they have no proof that Hamas has stolen humanitarian aid regularly, which is all some folks needed to blame Israel. Does it make sense? No, but when has that ever mattered. 

The Trump-Epstein story keeps getting further off the rails, this week with the news that Bondi informed Trump he is mentioned in the DOJ’s investigation files. And maybe Ghislaine Maxwell is getting a deal to testify that Trump did nothing wrong? Or maybe Obama will be arrested? 

Finally, we get to the movie part of the pod because we saw two movies this week, Eddington and Fantastic Four - First Steps. There is a lot to unpack with Eddington, but not as much with Fantastic Four.

Jen and Noam kick off this week with a tradlife PSA - don’t cheat on your spouse, and don’t have meaningless sex. Also, don’t let a handler ruin your big chance at connecting with Emma Stone.

Next we explore the not-so-curious case of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert getting the axe (well, in 10 months from now) and how, despite this all being fairly SOP for a company getting ready for a merger, media folks want to make this about Trump. 

And, of course, we can’t not talk about Trump’s big week in Epstein news, from his telling his base he doesn’t want their support if they refuse to believe the Epstein story is a hoax to the Wall Street Journal reporting on a letter that Trump signed (we are trying to not get sued here) for Epstein’s 50th birthday book. Haters say it’s fake, but we highly doubt that so what now? 

Noam and Jen tackle one of the more insane weeks in internet discourse. First, we have Grok going a little off the rails and becoming MechaHitler for 16 hours. Does its meltdown say more about AI, or the humans that it learns from? 

Then we have the Man Who Never Dies, Jeffrey Epstein, who did not make any lists or files and did indeed kill himself. At least according to the DOJ and the FBI, members of which assured all of us for years that there was indeed a list, files, and that Epstein did not kill himself. We talk about how MAGA is right to be mad, how everyone involved deserves what is happening, and why anyone offered up a definitive answer in the first place. 

Last, we discussed the very controversial movie Superman. Not controversial because it’s James Gunn’s first outing for DC (but that too) but because people on the internet cannot just let things be. 

Jen and Noam take a (slight) break from discussing politics to talk about internet drama. We go over the reveal that everyone’s favorite topic of discussion, Zohran Mamdani, identified as African on his application to Columbia, the Ethan Klein lawsuits and if they will set a precedent for what counts as fair use, Robert O’Neil’s grifter heel turn, the latest Pixar flop, and the value of just letting quirky characters be quirky without tying it to a trendy identity. 

Noam and Jen finally record this week’s episode! We talk about the big NYC Democratic primary upset of Andrew Cuomo by Zohran Mamdani, what is going on with the Iran-Israel conflict and Syria possibly joining the Abraham Accords chat, the Trump v. CASA that was not about birthright citizenship but nationwide injunctions, and the Fresh Prince of Ipswich deciding that being antisemetic is a easy way to fame. 

Jen and Noam discuss the war thing that happened last week, including (well, mostly) the US strike on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities. Was it a good idea? What is the state of the Iranian nuclear program now? What happens next? Are we getting a ceasefire? Will Trump get his coveted Nobel Peace Prize? What really happened in the lead-up to the US strike? Is MAGA going to forgive and forget if this all turns out to be a success? 

Noam and Jen spend most of the episode discussing the current escalation of the Israel—Iran conflict and our various thoughts about it. Noam also teaches you how to make a nuclear bomb, kind of. Neither of us is sure where things will go from here, since so far, this attack and counterattack have not gone the way everyone expected. 

We also discuss Trump’s comments on immigrants and the new directive not to perform workplace raids in specific well-connected industries. To finish it up, we discuss what we know about the assassination and attempted assassination of two Democratic members of the Minnesota state Congress. As of the time of the recording, the suspect was still at large, but was arrested Sunday night.