This week, we unpack Louis Theroux’s newest documentary, “Inside the Manosphere” alongside a heated Jubilee face-off featuring Jillian Michaels and body positivity activists—two equal and opposite extremes in the ongoing battle of the sexes. When both sides push to the edge, what does a way forward actually look like?

This week we walk through how a “contained” war somehow managed to squeeze the Strait of Hormuz, rattle global markets, and drift into the familiar “no boots on the ground…unless” phase. None of it is surprising—every escalation was basically sitting in the pregame notes. Less fog of war, more willful blindness.

This week, a State of the Union with the tenor of a wrestling match: jeers, applause lines, and red-meat rhetoric set the tone for a country already on edge. We break down the drama in the chamber (Ilhan Omar vs Trump, “these people are crazy”, etc) before diving into the escalating fallout from the strikes on Iran: questions of war powers, international law, civilian risk, whether the operation deters conflict or accelerates it, and the cascading geopolitical dominos.

What shapes music — the artist, the audience, or the architecture?

This week, we dive into How Music Works by David Byrne and explore the deeper currents behind sound itself. From cathedral ceilings to village drum circles, we unpack how environment, technology, and culture shape what gets composed — and what gets heard. We also discuss our own pasts with music, playing, and current projects.

Drawing on the ideas of Marshall McLuhan and Walter J. Ong, we examine the shift from oral to written traditions, from communal rhythm to isolated composition, from acoustic space to electric media.

Why did symphonies bloom inside churches?Why did polyrhythms flourish in open air communities?And how has recording technology rewired the way we experience music?

This conversation moves across continents and centuries.

This week: Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show—loved, loathed, endlessly litigated.

Then we crack open the latest Epstein file drop. What’s new, what’s noise, and what does our fixation on the abyss say about us?

Aliens, awkward cosmic silence, and a cult that thought salvation came on a spaceship. We hop from global UFO sightings to the Fermi Paradox to the bizarre legacy of the Heaven’s Gate cult.

This week we dive into Greenland—its history and growing geopolitical importance—then unpack the emerging “Donroe Doctrine” of the Trump admin and how it compares to past administrations’ views of power.

This week, we welcome another friend of the show, Ilya, for a wide-ranging conversation on the evergreen subject of AI. We explore the origins of thought and language, and how early, habitual engagement with AI may atrophy those human capacities. Along the way, we examine a recent case involving a young man in Pennsylvania who used ChatGPT as both therapist and pickup-artist coach—with predictably chaotic results.

This week, friend of the show Evan Barker joins us to discuss the recent ICE-involved shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, and the subsequent fallout. Evan also fills us in on the details of her new book.

Preorder Evan’s book here: “Nothing Left, Confessions of a Democratic Operative”

While America invades Venezuela, Johnny and Jess discuss looksmaxxing and one of its biggest proponents, an influencer named Clavicular. What’s the nature of beauty? Is Clavicular some modern result of our image-obsessed algorithm culture? Will the world still love us when we’re no longer young and beautiful?