Hollywood is at a breaking point—and audiences can feel it.

On In the Tank Podcast #522, Linnea Lueken, Jim Lakely, Chris Talgo, S.T. Karnick, and Donald Kendal dig into what’s reshaping movies and TV right now: DEI-era gatekeeping, studios quietly changing course, shrinking opportunities for creators, and the growing role of AI in entertainment.

They’re joined by Christian Toto, returning for his fifth annual appearance, to break down how Hollywood’s incentives filtered out creative voices—and why so many films now feel safe, preachy, and lifeless.

The panel also tackles Disney’s new AI deal involving OpenAI’s Sora platform and what it means for writers, actors, and storytelling itself. Plus: the crew runs through their “Unhinged” list of the worst movies and TV of 2025—and what might actually be worth watching next.

If Hollywood has lost its edge, this episode explores why—and what comes next.

Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET every Friday on YouTube, Rumble, X, and Facebook.

Visit our sponsor, Advisor Metals: https://climaterealismshow.com/metals

Chapters: 
00:33 Intro
01:57 Special Guest Introduction
03:55 Support Our Sponsor! 
05:50 Unhinged: Worst Movies of 2025 
22:08 Film Affected By DEI
49:15 AI in Movies? Good or Bad?
1:19:25 The Future of Movies: Embracing The Experience

STORIES COVERED ON THE SHOW:

DEI To Blame? - Writers and other roles in movie companies are being filtered by DEI politics in Hollywood. Does this have an effect on the quality of films?

https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-lost-generation/

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/hollywood-drops-dei-programs-donald-trump-disney-paramount-amazon-1236327202/

AI in Movies - Where is it good, and Where does it suck?

https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-openai-sora-agreement/
https://archive.ph/2xtns 

Optimism for the Future: the best films of 2025, what to look forward to in 2026 and beyond.

https://x.com/vegasstarfish/status/1961588349799731453
https://www.imdb.com/calendar/

In The Tank broadcasts LIVE every Thursday at 12pm CT on on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Tune in to have your comments addressed live by the In The Tank Crew. Be sure to subscribe and never miss an episode. See you there!

Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!

The signs are all around us. The climate cult is losing its grip on our politics and culture. The UN’s climate conference, COP30 in Brazil, was a flop that even the alarmist cheerleaders in the legacy media could not ignore. A major paper justifying radical climate action was just retracted. The Sierra Club is shedding a shocking number of members. And when was the last time you saw climate alarmist propaganda shoved annoyingly into your favorite TV show or movie – which was very common not so long ago?

The Heartland Institute’s Jim Lakely, Anthony Watts, Sterling Burnett, and Linnea Lueken will be joined by special guest Jason Isaac, Founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute and a former state legislator in Texas. We will also cover some of the Crazy Climate News of the Week, including a new pro-coal movie with an unexpected twist, how to handle a climate crazed wife, a claim that living modern life causes $5 billion of climate damage an hour, and why Americans in blue states pay so much more for energy than those in red states.

Visit our sponsor, Advisor Metals: https://climaterealismshow.com/metals

Stories we covered on this program:

1. QUEEN OF COAL
Daily Caller: Netflix To Platform Film About ‘Trans Woman’ Who Yearns For Coal Mines
https://dailycaller.com/2025/12/08/netflix-pump-show-trans-woman-who-yearns-coal-mines-home/

2. TAKE MY WIFE, PLEASE
How Can I Stop My Wife From Badgering Our Friends About Climate Change?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/style/how-can-i-stop-my-wife-from-badgering-our-friends-about-climate-change.html

3. $5 BILLION OF DAMAGE PER HOUR
THE GUARDIAN: ‘Food and fossil fuel production causing $5bn of environmental damage an hour’
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/09/food-fossil-fuel-production-5bn-environmental-damage-an-hour-un-geo-report-

4. BLUE STATE ENERGY BLUES
INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY RESEARCH: Blue States, High Rates
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/the-grid/blue-states-high-rates/

5. EPA EXITS ALARM BUSINESS
NY TIMES: E.P.A. Erases Mention of Humans Causing Climate Change From Some Web Pages
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/climate/epa-website-climate-change-causes.html

In The Tank broadcasts LIVE every Thursday at 12pm CT on on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Tune in to have your comments addressed live by the In The Tank Crew. Be sure to subscribe and never miss an episode. See you there!

Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!

The signs are all around us. The climate cult is losing its grip on our politics and culture. The UN’s climate conference, COP30 in Brazil, was a flop that even the alarmist cheerleaders in the legacy media could not ignore. A major paper justifying radical climate action was just retracted. The Sierra Club is shedding a shocking number of members. And when was the last time you saw climate alarmist propaganda shoved annoyingly into your favorite TV show or movie – which was very common not so long ago? 

The Heartland Institute's Jim Lakely, Anthony Watts, Sterling Burnett, and Linnea Lueken will be joined by special guest and fan favorite Steve Milloy of Junkscience.com. We will also cover some of the Crazy Climate News of the Week, including an exodus from EPA, what climate policy failure looks like in graph form, perhaps the cringiest moment in COP history, and Donald Trump’s call to have those who have pushed climate alarmism investigated.

Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, X, and Facebook.

Visit our sponsor, Advisor Metals: https://climaterealismshow.com/metals

In The Tank broadcasts LIVE every Thursday at 12pm CT on on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Tune in to have your comments addressed live by the In The Tank Crew. Be sure to subscribe and never miss an episode. See you there!

Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!

"Woke" and its pushers continues to be exposed for the ugliness, fraud and tyranny their policies unleash on the rest of us, all over the world. We'll cover how the architect of Jaguar’s disastrous rebrand has finally been canned, and Rep. Aftyn Behn’s loss to Matt Van Epps in Tennessee reveals her and her party as very sore losers indeed.

We'll also take a look at the years of widespread fraud inside Minnesota’s social services system, and discuss how Governor Walz not only buried the problem but may be setting the stage for even more abuse through a new program.

And on UNHINGED: Multiple-time violent criminals are being released to attack people again, and other craziness.

The Heartland Institute's Linnea Lueken, Jim Lakely, and S.T. Karnick will talk about all of this and more on Episode #521 of the In The Tank Podcast.

Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, X, and Facebook.

Visit our sponsor, Advisor Metals: https://climaterealismshow.com/metals

In The Tank broadcasts LIVE every Thursday at 12pm CT on on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Tune in to have your comments addressed live by the In The Tank Crew. Be sure to subscribe and never miss an episode. See you there!

Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!

The latest annual UN climate conference, COP 30, is coming to a close. Already a failure, the delegates of doom who gathered in Brazil decided that they needed a serious goal to cap off the conference. What did they come up with? Nothing less than the coming up with a concrete roadmap for the complete phase-out of fossil fuels. They might as well have agreed on drawing out a roadmap to Neverland, because that’s just as likely to be found as a future with zero use of fossil fuels.

The Heartland Institute's Jim Lakely, Sterling Burnett, and Linnea Lueken will be joined by special guests Craig Rucker of CFACT, who just got back from COP 30 in Brazil, and Tony Heller, one of the most-popular and influential climate realism communicators in America. We will also cover also cover some of the Crazy Climate News of the Week, including an exodus from EPA, what climate policy failure looks like in graph form, perhaps the cringiest moment in COP history, and Donald Trump’s call to have those who have pushed climate alarmism investigated.

Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, X, and Facebook.

Visit our sponsor, Advisor Metals: https://climaterealismshow.com/metals

In The Tank broadcasts LIVE every Thursday at 12pm CT on on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Tune in to have your comments addressed live by the In The Tank Crew. Be sure to subscribe and never miss an episode. See you there!

Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!

In Episode 182 of Ill Literacy, Tim Benson talks with Jonathan W. White, co-editor ofMeasuring the Man: The Writings of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln.

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined once again by Jonathan W. White, Professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University, to discuss his latest book, co-edited with Lucas E. Morel, Measuring the Man: The Writings of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln. They chat about how White discovered a cache of unknown, insightful letters in England by Douglass on Lincoln, the distrust and vitriol Douglass directed at Lincoln as he moved slowly and methodically toward emancipation, how three personal interactions between the two led to powerful feelings of friendship and mutual admiration, and how, after Lincoln’s assassination, Douglass expressed greater appreciation for Lincoln’s statesmanship during the Civil War and praised him as a model for postwar America.

In The Tank broadcasts LIVE every Thursday at 12pm CT on on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Tune in to have your comments addressed live by the In The Tank Crew. Be sure to subscribe and never miss an episode. See you there!

Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!

On November 20, 2025, Donald Kendal, director of the Glenn C. Haskins Emerging Issues Center at The Heartland Institute, was a guest on the Lars Larson Show. He was asked to be on to talk about the election of socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City, and a new Heartland Institute Rasmussen Reports poll showing the growing appeal of socialism to younger voters. 

In The Tank broadcasts LIVE every Thursday at 12pm CT on on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Tune in to have your comments addressed live by the In The Tank Crew. Be sure to subscribe and never miss an episode. See you there!

Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!

Thanksgiving is approaching, but grocery prices seem to just keep getting higher. We will discuss what causes food costs to rise, and how it can be stopped.

A new exclusive from the Free Beacon reports that George Soros gave a quarter million dollars to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which works with advertisers for Big Tech trying to deplatform conservative voices and destroy X.com. Plus, Rasmussen polling found that a worrying chunk of young voters would be willing to hand functions of government over to AI, including policymaking decisions and our very rights.

And on UNHINGED: Trump Derangement Syndrome increasingly appears to be a genuine pathology, with sufferers totally unable to cope.

The Heartland Institute's Linnea Lueken, S.T. Karnick, Jim Lakely, and Chris Talgo will talk about all of this and more on Episode #520 of the In The Tank Podcast. Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, X, and Facebook.

Visit our sponsor, Advisor Metals: https://climaterealismshow.com/metals

Interesting and recommended video on AI: We Are Not Ready for Super Intelligence:

Chapters:
00:38 Intro
02:17 Panel Introduction
06:47 UNHINGED: Trump Derangement Syndrome Continues
20:57 Real Reason Food Cost is High
43:30 Advisory Metals
45:33 Soros continues to control the media
54:31 AI OVERLORDS?

In The Tank broadcasts LIVE every Thursday at 12pm CT on on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Tune in to have your comments addressed live by the In The Tank Crew. Be sure to subscribe and never miss an episode. See you there!

Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!

Is COP30 shaping up to be the worst UN climate conference ever? The 30th Conference of the Parties is underway in the Brazilian jungle — some of which was cleared and paved to bring the private jet-set and bureaucrats into the venue. And just days in, the whole thing is already descending into chaos.

A large group of angry indigenous protesters have stormed the conference, furious that the agenda left them out. Poor planning and shoddy infrastructure have led to rain leaking through light fixtures, broken air conditioning, and even problems with something as basic as toilet paper disposal.

Maybe sensing this impending farce, at least 30 major countries — including the United States — have declined to send official government delegations. We’re only a few days in, and it’s already looking like the worst COP ever. That takes some doing.

On Episode #182 of The Climate Realism Show, we’ll break down what’s really happening at COP30 and what it reveals about the people who want to control every aspect of our lives to “save the planet.”

The Heartland Institute’s Jim Lakely, Anthony Watts, Sterling Burnett, Linnea Lueken and guest Chris Martz will also cover some of the Crazy Climate News of the Week.

Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, X, and Facebook — and jump into the live chat!

Chapters: 
00:55 Intro
02:35 Special Guest and Panel Introduction
04:17 Crazy climate news of the week
19:41 Democrats are getting quieter over Climate News?
29:35 COP 30: The Natives are Restless
36:09 COP Pledge Defeat the Deniers 
51:49 The COP 30 Fall Out
1:07:03 Advisory Metals!
1:08:51 Q & A

In The Tank broadcasts LIVE every Thursday at 12pm CT on on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Tune in to have your comments addressed live by the In The Tank Crew. Be sure to subscribe and never miss an episode. See you there!

Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!

America’s great exodus from major cities and entire states keeps accelerating — and the election of socialist Mayor Mamdani in New York City is only speeding things up. Yet polls show young Americans becoming more favorable toward socialism, even embracing ideas like government-run grocery stores. What does that say about our culture, our education system, and the nation’s future?

On the education side, things are just as alarming. UC San Diego reports that incoming students can’t meet basic math expectations — not just at grade level, but far below it. How did we get here, and how can states and the federal government fix this before it truly spirals out of control?

PLUS on UNHINGED:
An AI-generated country song has charted in online music sales. Is this a sign of an unhinged future — or has mainstream music been formulaic and awful for years anyway?

The Heartland Institute’s Linnea Lueken, S.T. Karnick, Jim Lakely, and Chris Talgo break it all down on Episode #519 of the In the Tank Podcast.

Tune in LIVE at 1 p.m. ET and join us in the live chat!
Streaming on YouTube, Rumble, X, and Facebook.

Support our sponsor, Advisor Metals:
https://climaterealismshow.com/metals

Chapter: 
02:08 Intro
5:48 TOP Country song is AI????
24:36 Exodus of NYC and other Blue States
36:11 Most Young Voters Embrace Socialism
1:10:43 How Do We Fix Our Education System?

In The Tank broadcasts LIVE every Thursday at 12pm CT on on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Tune in to have your comments addressed live by the In The Tank Crew. Be sure to subscribe and never miss an episode. See you there!

Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!