It’s Christmas Eve! You’re cozied up by the fire or banging about in the kitchen making your final preparations for the big day tomorrow, and your favorite multinational media empire is putting out fresh content for you to stick in one ear while the Christmas songs blare away in the other. We’ve got poetry and football and silliness aplenty. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — Spittin’ playoff-level bars
4:03 — The first round of the College Football Playoff!
16:35 — What did we learn about this system after the first round, and how should it be tweaked?
27:50 — Carson Beck done for the season
31:22 — CIB College Football Playoff Pick ‘em Contest Update
34:20 — Wrap-up! Towel Boy Technicals, JuCo players granted one more year of eligibility

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

The first round of the first-ever 12-team college football playoff is finally here, and Cast Iron Balls returns to the top of your podcast feed to talk all about, along with our regular assortment of news of the week and enjoyable digressions. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — It’s nearly here!
2:35 — Abe Live-Bets the Games!
11:40 — WGAS News SportsBag; Aaron Rodgers documentary incoming!
19:58 — Diego Pavia gets another year of eligibility; why is college football still so entwined with…college?
39:30 — Kirk Cousins demoted!
45:22 — NBA in-season tournament champion crowned!
58:35 — The Best Game in Every Time Slot!
1:17:34 — Wrap-up!

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

It’s a plus-size episode of Cast Iron Brains, because we sneak nearly a whole episode of Cast Iron Balls right into the middle of it. We’ve got the politics news of the week, the sports news of the week, and plenty of our other usual silliness and digressions. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — Holiday Cake Pop Autopsy
6:57 — WGAS Newsbag; MYSTERY DRONES!
19:21 — Daniel Penny verdict
27:50 — Pete Hegseth backlash to the backlash will make him SecDef
42:56 — ABC News settles defamation suit with Trump
50:18 — Black plastic kitchen utensils, the silent killer?
1:07:28 — WGAS Newsbag, Sports Edition! Abe Live Bets the Games!
1:10:18 — Ohio politician wants to make flag planting a felony
1:18:45 — Bill Belichick to coach UNC Tar Heels
1:33:03 — Marshall pulls out of Independence Bowl, Army-Navy game brings the smarm
1:43:40 — The Billboard Hot 100 Game
2:04:04 — Wrap-up! The Order; Tell Them You Love Me; Meditations by Marcus Aurelius; various Christmas movies

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

Your favorite podcast is back atop feeds all over the universe to discuss the most important news of the week, by which we mean we will first spend half an hour hearing tell of an arena rock concert featuring two of the worst bands from the late 90s and early 2000s as experienced by our intrepid cultural experiencer and reporter, the one and only Abe. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — Abe in the World, Concert Edition
38:12 — WGAS NewsBag: United Healthcare CEO murder suspect caught
1:05:00 — The fall of Bashar al-Assad
1:16:00 — The Word of 2024 is “brain rot”
1:18:04 — Did CBS News’ Senior National News Correspondent Mark Strassmann Get Off a Good One?
1:33:14 — Train Ruins The Billboard Hot 100 Game
1:52:00 — Wrap-up! Y2K, Die Hard, Station Eleven

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

Conference Championship weekend was awesome, and we’re here to discuss all of the games, but mostly just to yap about Georgia beating Texas, as that’s the thing we most care about and this is, after all, our show. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — Abe Live-Bets the Games!
5:15 — WGAS NewsBag, Sports Edition; Juan Soto signs with Mets; Heisman finalists announced
14:21 — Conference Championship games recap
57:00 — Playoff bracket breakdown
1:17:25 — Wrap-up!

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

Cast Iron Balls is here ahead of conference championship weekend to complain about what cannot possibly be a legitimate suggestion for improving the sport of baseball and also to discuss the various games and their PLAYOFF IMPLICATIONS. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — The birthday boy must scrub the tub or else he gets the club
6:05 — Abe Live Bets the Games
8:11 — WGAS NewsBag: Sports Edition; Just what the fuck is the GOLDEN AT-BAT?!
27:39 — College Football Playoff Rankings
51:30 — The Best Game in Every Time Slot
1:01:05 — CIB Pick ‘em Game
1:09:13 — Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Lock of the Week
1:13:47 — Wrap-up!

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

The background music for Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Lock of the Week is "Bama Country" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

CIB is back atop your podcast feed with a bit of yapping about the news of the week and then more than an hour of trying to explain how a dead author’s muse and an interview with the stars of the hit movie musical Wicked and a novel about a depressive incel Lyft driver are all evidence of the same thing—that we should all probably take our magical pocket supercomputers and smash them against the nearest brick wall. It’s an old theme of ours, but still plenty to mine from it, apparently! Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — Thanksgiving recap!
10:10 — WGAS NewsBag; Kash Patel to head the FBI?; President Biden pardons his son Hunter
48:50 — Cormac McCarthy and Augusta Britt and Wicked and the Black Box of Doom, oh my!
1:55:11 — Wrap-up! Gladiator II; Great British Baking Show

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

The long holiday weekend of rivalries in college football delivered a series of awesome finishes, and Cast Iron Balls is here to yap all about it. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — What a weekend!
5:52 — Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate
30:09 — The rest of the slate
48:11 — Abe Live-Bets the Games, CIB Pick ‘em Update
56:04 — Wrap-up!

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

Some technical difficulties delayed this lovely pre-Thanksgiving conversation from hitting your podcast feed until nearly suppertime, and for that we apologize. The good news is that we have a supersized episode for you to listen to as you doze off into your post-meal coma! We preview the weekend of college football action, talk briefly about the sports news of the week, and discuss the traditional Somalian thanksgiving. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — Abe Live-Bets the Games, Thanksgiving around here, and a distressing run-in with a potential KILLER
21:50 — WGAS SportsBag! Mack Brown fired, Daniel Jones a Viking
37:41 — The Best Game in Every Time Slot!
1:21:44 — CIB Pick ‘em Game!
1:29:55 — Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Lock of the Week, live from Plains
1:33:36 — Wrap-up! Doctor by day, MMA fighter by night; a clenching Jared Goff

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

The background music for Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Lock of the Week is "Bama Country" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Lori takes off to make a couple of Thanksgiving pies giving the boys a precious few minutes to digress as they see fit, and naturally they immediately start talking about…outer space? Autonomous cars? Elon Musk? Goddamn it. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — On the difference between openers and closers
8:24 — WGAS NewsBag
1:32:58 — The Billboard Hot 100 Game
1:48:25 — Wrap-up! Bonhoeffer

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.