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Welcome to the official basketball podcast of New York City, where the hosts occasionally dip their toes into political discourse. We're your hosts Mike "Dunk'em Donuts" Hayden and Jared "Bench Toaster" Holt.

The guys discuss Orange Cheeto Drumpf's appearance at the third game of the 2026 NBA Finals, where he almost certainly caused our beloved New York Knicks to lose to the San Antonio Spurs. Depending what new channel you watch, you either heard that our decaying president was met with chants of "USA!" or an arena-shaking cacophony of boos.

After that, Jared and Mike turn their focus to recent reporting in Politico detailing under-the-table payments that Polymarket, an online "prediction market" where users gamble on the outcomes of world events, made to a host of social media personalities over the last year. The characters getting rich off the quiet promotional campaign included a transphobic swimmer, a (alleged) drug-addled bigot, and the single-dumbest conservative influencer who's crossed our timelines.

When it comes to news, Posting Through It is on its ass like back pockets.

Turns out AI chatbots can do more than create pornographic images of Miss Piggy...

Jared and Mike are joined by Luke Barnes, a senior research scientist at NYU who explores issues related to tech and democracy, to talk about cases where AI chatbots have radicalized people and encouraged them to harm themselves and others. But before that, the guys discuss how the landscape of extremism has changed since Trump returned to power and why an attempted terror attack in San Diego seemed to evaporate from the public consciousness so quickly. But before we can nail any of that down, we need to start at the beginning:

“The White House was our primordial soup, a base of evolution…”

Links for Luke

• ​How AI Chatbots Are Supercharging Digital Radicalization
• ​The AI Industry Is Discovering That the Public Hates It
• ​AI Chatbots Are Unleashing Violence Among Kids

Transition Music: "You Can't Have Everything" by Mad Drunken Americans

Listen to the full episode on Patreon: patreon.com/postingthroughit

Things are going badly in Iran and at home. Tensions are erupting with Israel. MAGA pundits like Jack Posobiec and Dave Rubin are getting bodied online by trolls. There is only man who can heal our divided country: Vanilla Ice. 

Jared and Mike review the impact the Iran War has had on MAGA before turning to America’s 250th birthday celebrations. The White House announced a cluster of has-been musicians as the lineup for America’s party, including Manilli Vanilli. Nearly all of them backed away from the event. But not Robert Matthew Van Winkle, aka "Vanilla Ice." Van Winkle has lived a life of relentless humiliation, as you will learn. And it set him up perfectly for a career as a MAGA grifter. 

Alright stop, collaborate and listen. Posting Through It is back with a brand new edition.

We're back with another installment in our critically acclaimed "Who the Hell?" biographical series, this time sitting down to scrutinize Michael Tracey: a contrarian writer and social media personality who has managed to draw a surprising amount of attention to himself throughout the Trump era.

Jared and Mike are joined by guest Bobby Silverman to review the arc of Tracey's career, from his early run-in with police at an Ann Coulter event to his eventual rise in media as a pugnacious hater of political pundits and journalists. This episode explores how Tracey, a self-described "roving journalist," has channeled his resentment for contemporary media into attention-seeking episodes of confrontation and contrarianism that have earned him fans among right-wing audiences.

After this episode, the corrupt woke media will never be the same.

Transition Music: "Tide Rips" by Bering Sea

Listen to the full episode on Patreon: patreon.com/postingthroughit

It’s a listener-driven Q&A show this week and it starts with Jared breaking down the overuse of the designation “Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE).” So-called NVE is everywhere these days and some of the people pushing the phrase are conspicuously right wing. Old friend of the show Katherine Dee weighed in on the topic, and you’ll never guess what her take is. 

The hosts weigh in on everything from coffee, to Matt Drudge, to metal, to the NBA finals, to cycling, to Hasan Piker and more. 

Also, Mike believes in ghosts. He’s serious about it.

Workers across the country are looking for ways to fight back against bosses who underpay, overwork, and mistreat their employees. Forming a union remains one of the most powerful tools available, but the process can feel overwhelming — especially when management is watching. The key is knowing how to organize quietly, build trust with coworkers, and protect yourself.

In this PTI Bulletin, union organizer Esteban Gil joins Jared and Mike to explain how union organizing actually works, how to build solidarity with colleagues, and what your rights are when the company starts pushing back.

Links:

• NewsGuild / Pacific Media Workers Guild / Chicago News Guild

• Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee

Content Warning: This episode includes audio clips that contain derogatory and racist language. Listener discretion is advised.

Maybe you've heard of the mustachioed guy in a cowboy hat who hurls racist slurs at strangers, or the one who dresses as the Joker to recite FBI crime statistics at Black people on chat websites. Believe it or not, these are real adult men who not only exist but profit from what we're calling "confrontation porn": a genre built around angering or horrifying people through open displays of bigotry or sadism.

"Chud the Builder" — the online handle of Dalton Eatherly — was a rising star of the genre until he shot a man. That's where this episode picks up. Eatherly now faces serious legal trouble stemming from his racist stunts, and fellow online bigots have raised more than a quarter of a million dollars for his defense. We also look at another figure in the genre who helped lead that fundraising effort: Paul Miller, aka "GypsyCrusader," known for harassing strangers while performing an array of personas, including one he calls "Racist Mario."

It’s a tough world out there in 2026, and some of us might to have to “fight for free.”

Transition Music: "Split the Difference" by Aqueous

Listen to the full episode on Patreon: patreon.com/postingthroughit

Jared and Mike welcome MSNow opinion editor Anthony Fisher to this week’s cremium episode to talk about an old friend of ours, Bill Maher, and a friend we haven’t really talked about before: Ministry mosh-pit beefcake John Fetterman. 

The crew talks about a recent podcast featuring these brilliant, brave, heterodox liberals in conversation and what their popularity with Trump’s base says about them — and about the MAGA movement. 

Anthony came from libertarian circles, and the discussion turns to how meekly libertarians abandoned their principles at the feet of Trump. Mike also talks about his recent trip to "Restoration 250": a surreal, under-attended Christian nationalist Lollapalooza funded by your tax dollars. 

So sit back, open up a beer, and spend a little time with “Hitler McPedophile,” the man who will listen — if you’re only willing to speak to him.

How sick is our democracy right now? (Not in the skateboard-trick way.) Jared and Mike are joined by Ari Berman to find out. He’s the national voting rights correspondent at Mother Jones and one of the country’s leading reporters covering issues related to elections. 

This episode reviews how recent Supreme Court decisions weakened the Voting Rights Act, why states like Tennessee have become a blueprint for dismantling majority-Black districts, and the contradiction between years of MAGA claims about “rigged elections” and the GOP’s open embrace of aggressive gerrymandering.

Faithful Posting Through It listeners know this is a topic that has stressed out the hosts (especially Mike) for a long time. Viktor Orbán may have fallen in Hungary, but his vision of weakening a country’s democratic infrastructure to produce authoritarian outcomes is alive and well in the United States.

Links for Ari Berman:

• Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It (2024)

• Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (2016)

• Bluesky / X (Twitter)

Jared's piece at Open Measures: Pro-Trump Communities Spent Years Claiming Elections Were ‘Rigged.’ Now They Support Gerrymandering.

Transition Music: “nu cringe part 2” by Battikh

Jared and Mike hit Trump National Doral Miami to witness the unveiling of “Don Colossus,” a 22-foot, gold-covered Trump statue that seems to symbolize a particular affliction in MAGA’s character. (Look closer, Lenny!) They also talk about Poodle Room veteran Kash Patel’s balls-on-the-table stare-down with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the grifty Trump phone, and infighting on the antisemitic flank of the GOP between Nick Fuentes and Dan Bilzerian over who is more of a fed. 

Jared and Mike also talk about Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on a lovely media tour blaming social media bots for Israel’s unpopularity. The interview landed alongside a major The New York Times report on abuse allegations involving Palestinian prisoners, which sent pro-Israel influencers into immediate damage-control mode. 

There’s never been a better time in America to flex nuts as a 22 foot golden man.

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