The H&H Podcast

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Lily Zuckerman joins me again to discuss the new Paul Thomas Anderson film One Battle After Another. The movie consciously goes out of its way to separate itself from circa-2020 era wokeness. Lily calls it representative of Chapo Trap House liberalism.

I enjoyed Lockjaw as an amalgamation of rightoid characters. He’s in the military, and also a Nazi, and an incel. I point out that another way that this movie is not woke is that its bad guys are literal white supremacists. There’s none of this idea that the real enemy is unconscious bias or disparities or whatever. It’s a liberal fantasy through and through. You get sex and violence, but also an enemy that makes you feel morally pure.

I argue that a move away from the neurotic version of woke – here I’m thinking of a room full of masked DSA members talking about their anxiety – was inevitable. How would you even make an entertaining movie glamorizing these people? A liberalism that is about sex, violence, and killing Nazis is broadly appealing. It would center left-wing economic ideas, which are popular across the political spectrum including among Trump supporters, and also lets one protect the innocent and fight adversaries who are both evil and pathetic, like Lockjaw. We talk about the prospects of immigration being the issue that unites various factions of the left, given that it is the one place where conservatives actually do use violence against people of color.

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Rob Henderson joins me to talk about Look Who’s Back (2015) (watch on YouTube), a German film with the premise that Hitler returns to life and becomes a successful entertainer. We talk about the over-the-top antifascist messaging of the movie, as on the surface we see Germans indulging their racism, and (spoiler) at the end a Hitler voiceover as we’re shown the activities of modern day rightists.

Yet we can’t help but wonder… is there a Straussian understanding of the film, or perhaps the source novel? Frankly, Hitler comes across as really cool. He’s smart, talented, and charming. He learns about the world, takes initiative, and accomplishes his goals. Hitler gives fatherly advice. He has progressive views on women, and appears unbothered by all the homosexuality and gender bending he must observe in Berlin. Germans who oppose immigration are allowed to speak their piece. At the same time, the movie tries to give the impression that Hitler is actually talking to leaders of the NPD, with one of them asking that the cameras be turned off so he could express loyalty to the Führer.

As I found out from my research, this was a scripted part of the movie, but it was intended to give the impression that it was real. I mention how people will always take the surface level interpretation of a piece of art, so it is not difficult to send a hidden message. This is what has always made me skeptical of Straussian readings of books, as people will miss the point unless you make it very clear for them, and that goes even for sophisticated observers, who are unlikely to put that much effort into understanding any particular work.

Nonetheless, it’s fun to speculate. Scott Greer actually read the novel, and I asked him whether there was a way to read it from a pro-Hitler perspective. He replied yes, and the film actually made Hitler look even worse than the book. I await the Highly Respected episode on this.

Rob and I discuss German remembrance culture, and whether the same film could be made today. We also mention the eerie way in which a lot of people’s faces are blurred, which I’m guessing is the result of Germany having really weird privacy laws. I take this as an indication that there is something deeply wrong with their culture.

Near the end, we discuss the chapter on propaganda in Mein Kampf, and how Hitler would do as an influencer today.

Note: If you don’t want the TV and film reviews, go to your settings in Substack and uncheck the H&H podcast. Also, if you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.

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Lily Zuckerman is a student at UATX. She suggested we watch Materialists (2025), in which a high-end matchmaker named Lucy Mason (Dakota Jackson) goes around setting people up while also being involved in a love triangle of her own.

I think this film perfectly encapsulates the post-MeToo era. Sure, there’s still a sexual assault storyline, etc. But it seems that after the crazy 2010s and early 2020s, men and women are back to being honest about what they want. Women want height and money, men youth and beauty. The film acknowledges this reality, and although it is judgmental about it – particularly towards the middle aged men who want to date younger, less so the woman who wants a guy with money – there’s an acknowledgment that this is human nature, so what are you going to do? Around 2020, cultural leftism felt like if it couldn’t change human nature, it could simply bully everyone indefinitely. With the decline in the power of the MSM, the rise of the bro podcast sphere, Elon’s purchase of X, the quick money that can be made via OnlyFans, and newer forms of social media, trying to repress our instincts has become a hopeless battle. The future is a more fragmented culture, which means that human nature will reign supreme given that no faction can exercise enough hegemony to realistically shape us into something else.

Lily and I discuss the importance of height in this film and dating culture more generally. When I was a kid, we would talk about women desiring a man who is “tall, dark, and handsome.” Dark of course didn’t mean black or Indian, but more like a tanned white guy. But there was less of this idea that things were hopeless if you were short. Either we’ve become more realistic, or women feel freer to indulge in this preference.

Lily explains why she thinks people should in fact be more rational about picking partners according to tangible criteria. I’m inclined to agree. Whatever the discourse around dating is right now and whatever it is encouraging people to do, it’s clearly not working. The default script people go through their lives with makes the difference, and we’ve flipped from one of being married and having children, to one that says focus on your career and a family would be nice to have if you find the perfect person in the right moment and it doesn’t interfere with your other goals in life. When we discuss people being picky, this I think is what we’re getting at. People think they should have jobs no matter what, so they’ll settle for a “good enough” career instead of remaining unemployed. They at one point treated family formation the same way, but don’t anymore.

Note: If you don’t want the TV and film reviews, go to your settings in Substack and uncheck the H&H podcast. Also, if you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.

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Anora (2024) was hailed by critics as a movie about the empowering nature of sex work (spoilers below and in the episode). Rob Henderson and Tyler Tone join me to discuss. We just don’t see it. This seems to be one of those films where there’s a politically correct interpretation that is divorced from the actual content of the movie. That conclusion seems inevitable from the last scene, in which Ani has sex with Igor and then breaks down. I was afraid there would be a cheesy heartwarming ending where she doesn’t have sex with him but wants him to take her out on a date. That’s how a rom-com would’ve finished. But this was much darker.

I knew we were supposed to feel sorry for Ani, but I saw her as a gold digger. Rob and I debate whether she was “really” in love with Ivan. He convinces me that she fell in love in the way someone like her would. The fact that she liked him for his money did not make the relationship any less real. This made sense. I guess the thing I struggle with is that Ivan just sucks so much as a person, so it’s hard for me to sympathize with a woman caring about him.

Speaking of which, Russians come off poorly here. We discuss the role of Russians in pop culture, and whether the movie could have worked if the rich family were American instead. I thought the father was the worst character of all, but Rob and Tyler convinced me that there was another way to interpret his behavior. Rather than being cold and aloof, chiming in only to laugh at Ani, he was taking a backseat to his wife, and enjoyed seeing her taken down a peg.

One of the more interesting debates we have is over how the audience is supposed to feel about Igor. He came into Ani’s life as a thug there to restrain her. If he could be redeemed by a few nice gestures, it indicates a more forgiving attitude towards male misbehavior than we saw at the height of the MeToo era.

Twin Peaks originally ran for two seasons on ABC from 1990 to 1991. A running joke on the show was that FBI agent Dale Cooper, the protagonist, really liked coffee and cherry pie. He was always complimenting establishments on their coffee and cherry pie, while recommending them to other people. To an audience in the early 1990s, this must have been very funny. But the humor of a guy really liking coffee was lost on me watching in 2025.

In the 2017 remake of Twin Peaks on Showtime (spoilers beginning here), Dale Cooper returns in a catatonic form. This Zombie Cooper really likes coffee and cherry pie. Whenever we arrived at a moment where his old self comes out after he has seen coffee or cherry pie, I would feel this sense of anticipation and enjoy the predictable punchline. Man likes coffee is not funny to me. But a character I’ve grown to know and love returning after a quarter century in a different form – and liking coffee – is a thought that brings me overwhelming joy.

“The past is a foreign country.” With the invention of TV and movies, we can visually and audibly experience the kinds of situations and jokes people once found funny, what they feared, how they expected the sexes to relate to one another, and more. Even if previous eras put less emphasis on realism in art, we at least learn what was expected from individuals in terms of ideals, prototypes, and norms. Becoming familiar with characters living in one culture and watching what they are like in another, through the passage of time, can be a surreal experience.

Of course, all of us who were alive in 1990 and are still here today have had to adjust to new social realities, but in real life the shift is so gradual that its shock is diluted throughout countless small experiences reminding us that the past is always incrementally slipping away. Only through fiction can we fully experience getting to know characters living in one generation and then suddenly seeing what they are like in the next. The fact that this premise is so interesting is why you’ll often see novels, shows, and movies about an individual waking up from a coma, or in a variation of that theme, people living in a foreign country and then coming back, which is the premise of the King of the Hill remake.

This is part of the appeal of the Twin Peaks story. Tyler Tone originally convinced me to get into this universe, and he now joins me to discuss the series, with a particular focus on The Return.

We spend time on the aesthetic shift between the original and the remake. As argued by Jonathan Foltz, the story is much more thematically and geographically sprawling than the original, reflecting what has happened to American culture since the early 1990s.

The first series offered an idealized vision of small-town America – albeit with a dark underbelly – while the 2017 series feels haunted by economic decay, addiction, and disconnection. We reflect on how Twin Peaks originally brought tens of millions together on network television, while The Return premiered on a premium TV channel and streaming service with orders of magnitude fewer viewers.

The conversation begins with a discussion of the subplots and character arcs, before getting into larger questions about the series. We reflect on how The Return withholds the Cooper fans expect, offering instead Zombie Cooper as Dougie Jones and the evil Mr. C. I take the fact that we don’t get the Cooper we remember until late in the show as a sign that he’s too good for the culture we’ve created. As viewers have come to expect anti-heroes, an unblemished classic hero is difficult to imagine. I talk about how pro wrestling changed over the 1990s, reflecting the larger cultural shift, and the move away from clear cut good guys and bad guys. There is something similar going on with the original Sheriff Truman, who is omnipresent throughout conversations and via his brother and namesake, while never actually showing up.

At some point, we also discuss how the original “Bob” really doesn’t work in 2017. I guess in 1990, a plausible symbol of evil was a guy who looks like a janitor in a denim outfit? Such a figure is laughable today. Maybe Bob takes whatever form represents evil in a particular cultural context. If so, it’s interesting to think how out of place the original character looks from our vantage point.

I was hit hard by the storyline with Bobby and Shelly. David Lynch first led us on to believe that they were still together. Then in the middle of what looks like a family discussion, the young criminal comes out and takes Shelly away. Bobby is defeated. The entirety of Shelly’s past is seen in a different light. She wasn’t a victim of Leo; he was the kind of man she sought out, with her daughter falling into the same patterns.

The seeming revelation that something similar happened between Ed and Nora at first compounded the original despair, but their relationship then moves in the opposite direction. Tyler and I speculate on why the two love stories end up differently.

We discuss David Lynch’s politics. Tyler informs me that he voted for Gary Johnson in 2016. I note that the clearest tell that he was a rightoid is that he didn’t cast many nonwhites in the series, except for Asian females. See in particular the scene where the tiny girl is put on the ground and crawls on the floor. Relatedly, there’s the fact that the Twin Peaks universe caters to the male gaze as a more general matter. This appears to be the role of Tammy, who serves as the sidekick to Lynch himself. As mentioned in my review of that film with Rob, I’ve always thought that the point of Mulholland Drive was to put two beautiful actresses in sex scenes together.

We spend some time on the Dr. Jacoby storyline. To me, it’s interesting that the two people who we see enjoying his show are Nadine and Jerry. All three of these individuals are B characters throughout the series. Are those the ones who get into paranoid right-wing politics? Tyler questions whether Dr. Amp is actually right-coded, but I think I convince him by pointing to the shovel scam and the Americana iconography. It is true there are some more left-wing critiques in his rants, and this shows Lynch being ahead of his time, given the MAGA-MAHA convergence we have witnessed.

Ben Horne makes occasional appearances to show us how men have changed. Before, he had sex with his subordinates. Now he doesn’t. Not because he’s afraid of being cancelled, but because that’s not what we expect from older men in positions of power anymore. He’s kind of dead inside, compared to the energetic and jovial character he was a quarter-century ago, so this really doesn’t seem like a celebration of the feminization of the world.

And then there’s Audrey. I was in shock watching her first appearance. You can see the same facial expressions, patterns of speech, tics and eccentricities. But what was cute or could even make a man fall in love with a woman in her twenties – the frivolity, indecisiveness, arbitrary and fierce passions – is unsettling in one who is deep into middle age. Only the mole remains unblemished as a commemoration of the past. Shelly in contrast is still beautiful, and it seems like Lynch made Audrey look particularly bad to drive the point home. People talk about her storyline, and much of The Return, as an assault on the concept of nostalgia, but here the lessons are heightened as we’re reminded of one of the cruelest facts of human existence: women age.

After exhausting some of the main subplots – I don’t think we could’ve gotten to all of them, even with much more time – we move on to larger themes. The show, we agree, is less about solving mysteries than about resisting the very idea of resolution. Tyler emphasizes that he doesn’t particularly like the idea of worrying about plot details, but rather seeks to experience the director’s larger vision. He mentions the four and a half hour YouTube video that seeks to explain the series, which I’m just starting to get through.

I ask about the significance of the episode centered around the detonation of the atom bomb. Tyler argues that we shouldn’t think about this as a scientific explanation of the main plot, but rather see nuclear weapons as a symbol of man becoming alienated from his nature and losing control. We talk about nuclear weapons as the symbol of man-made danger versus AI, with me arguing that the latter is much more depressing as the crowning achievement that might destroy us.

Nuclear weapons are cool. They’re just machines that are doing more of the thing that machines do, that is rearranging matter. AI cuts to the core of who we are, and while there will be a lot of great applications going forward, it is also drowning the world in slop. Fine, slop is not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I don’t know, I find slop worse. This is the technological version of hating pronouns more than genocide, even though I’ve become so polarized against MAGA liars that I can’t even hate pronouns all that much anymore. And of course, if you listen to Eliezer, AI is much more dangerous than nuclear weapons anyway.

We close the conversation by discussing the final episodes, particularly Cooper’s surreal re-entry into an altered timeline. Does he really believe he can save Laura Palmer? Was the lesson that he was being too hubristic, or something else? Tyler presents a popular theory that the ending was, despite all appearances, a happy one. I like having that out there as a possibility.

Regardless, if there’s one rule of watching Twin Peaks, it is to remember that the point is not narrative closure. The show is a reflection, telling us who we are and what we’ve become. I don’t think the reality of our modern culture is as dark as Lynch believed it was. But we can’t lie to ourselves and say we haven’t lost something. And we cannot find redemption in nostalgia in a world where rapid societal changes are constantly making a mockery of what we have loved.

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Rob joins me to talk about the last two episodes of Season 3 of The White Lotus. Overall, I found the ending mostly satisfying. But the plot holes. There were so many! Among them (spoilers below):

* Tim assuming that his family would be permanently poor

* Tim acting like a lost doofus unable to handle any pressure throughout the show

* Belinda getting a $5 million transfer into her bank account that quickly, without anyone worrying that it would come to the attention of authorities

* Rick assaulting Jim Hollinger at his house, and then returning to his resort not expecting anything to happen

Still, most of the storylines wrapped up quite nicely. I like that Rick ended up giving Chelsea validation in the short time they had left together. I did not foresee Hollinger actually being Rick’s father, but it made sense. We all thought Gaitok was headed towards a bad ending, but he did get the girl. This may have involved a sacrifice of his principles, but still, Mook under normal circumstances was well out of his league. If you’re going to sell out, that’s exactly what you do it for. I didn’t expect the friendship of the three women to last, but I liked how they came together at the end.

The scene I found most profound on the show was Victoria’s brief speech on the nature of wealth. Modern people, particularly the rich, have this conflicted relationship with their standard of living and place in the world. After Piper told her parents that she realized she didn’t want to live in a developing world monastery for a year, Victoria explained that it would be indecent for them not to make the most of their fortunate circumstances.

We’re lucky, it’s true. Nobody in the history of the world has lived better than we have. Even the old kings and queens. The least we can do is enjoy it. If we don’t, it’s offensive. It’s an offense to all the billions of people who can only dream that one day they could live like we do.

The right has this tendency to LARP and imagine things were better in the past, while liberals know history has been miserable but are often consumed by guilt. Lately, we’ve seen a kind of rightoid Maoism that celebrates poverty and thinks it’s good for the soul. None of this is healthy. The idea that enjoying your life is the way to honor the story of human progress is a message that is both intellectually compelling and quite moving. Victoria’s wisdom was a pleasant surprise, showing that she was much different than we had been led to believe.

Previous discussions of The White Lotus

Me and Rob on Season 1

Me and Rob on Season 2, Episodes 1-4

Me and Rob on Season 2, Episodes 5 & 6

Me and Rob on Season 2, Episode 7

Me and Sophie on Season 3, Episodes 1 & 2

Me on Rob on Season 3, Episodes 3 & 4

Me on Rob on Season 3, Episodes 5 & 6

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.com

Rob Henderson joins me to discuss The White Lotus, Season 3, up to episode six. There are spoilers in this conversation, as well as the rest of these show notes.

We start out by discussing the latest in the Ratliff family incest dynamics. Sophie called it last month. She was right and I was wrong. We spend quite a lot of time on the extent to which Lochy manipulated his brother into what happened, and how intentional he has been in the process. I wonder whether Rob’s interpretation of his character is consistent with other things we know about him.

We then go on to talk about the relationship between Jackie, Kate, and Laurie. The show does an excellent job of presenting the kind of situation where a person cares very deeply about something but feels the need to keep repeating “I don’t care,” which is a giveaway that they do. I note that continuously telling someone to go get laid is a way of belittling them while pretending to be on their side.

Talk of the Valentin situation leads to a fascinating conversation about asymmetric aging. Older men who want to have fun can go off to a place like Thailand and simply buy what they want, while it doesn’t work like that for their female counterparts. A man can be “used” for his money or material possessions and not care. But women need to be desired, and that becomes much more difficult as they get older.

We of course discuss the great autogynephilia speech, which you can watch here. It was one of the most compelling soliloquies I’ve ever seen on television. In preparation for this conversation, Rob and I did our first serious reading on the issue, which was chapter 9 of J Michael Bailey’s book on the topic. Relying on his work, we talk about why autogynephilic men lie to themselves and others about their condition. I note how Frank had a completely novel explanation for his desires, one that he had wrapped up in Buddhist philosophy, which contrasts with the more scientific sounding justifications for transgenderism normally given in the West.

Rather than saying he naturally has the brain of a woman, when Frank takes the female role, he maintains his voracious sexual appetite. So he ended up telling himself a story that was consistent with a Buddhist outlook that stressed deep questions regarding the nature of the self, rather than the precepts of gender theory. By avoiding the adoption of a politically correct ideology, Frank found it easier to justify completely indulging in his appetites before becoming religious.

Links to previous discussions of The White Lotus

Me and Rob on Season 1

Me and Rob on Season 2, Episodes 1-4

Me and Rob on Season 2, Episodes 5 & 6

Me and Rob on Season 2, Episode 7

Me and Sophie on Season 3, Episodes 1 & 2

Me on Rob on Season 3, Episodes 3 & 4

Articles mentioned in the discussion

Andrew Sullivan interviews Mike White

New Yorker profile of Mike White

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Rob joins me this week to talk about the first four episodes of Season 3 of The White Lotus. We start off by discussing the Ratliff family and whether the incest dynamics are actually there or that was kind of a head fake at the beginning of the season. Other topics addressed are whether Mook is too perfect, the relatively positive portrayal of age gap relationships, toxic female relationships, the horrors of aging, and much more. The conversation goes down a dark path as we wonder if Season 3 might be paying homage to The Shield, a show that you can watch me, Rob Henderson, and Marc Andreessen talk about here.

Links to previous discussions of The White Lotus

Me and Rob Henderson on Season 1

Me and Rob on Season 2, Episodes 1-4

Me and Rob on Season 2, Episodes 5 & 6

Me and Rob on Season 2, Episode 7

Me and Sophie on Season 3, Episodes 1 & 2

I’m joined by my new friend “PhiloSophie” (Substack, X) to discuss the first two episodes of Season 3 of The White Lotus.

In previous seasons, I’ve been discussing the show with Rob Henderson. He is traveling this week, but we plan to talk about future episodes together going forward. For now, let me know what you think of Sophie.

We debate incest dynamics within the Ratliff family, the concept of the “Chadcel,” how the show handles the topic of phone addiction, the need for men to be at least somewhat dangerous, what exactly is going on with Rick, and more.

Links to previous discussions

Me and Rob Henderson on The White Lotus, Season 1

Me and Rob on The White Lotus, Season 2, Episodes 1-4

Me and Rob on The White Lotus, Season 2, Episodes 5 & 6

Me and Rob on The White Lotus, Season 2, Episode 7

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

David Lynch recently passed away, so Rob and I decided to honor the legendary director by watching two of his movies, Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2008), and discussing them.

We liked the first film, and debated various interpretations of it, including the standard one and other possible theories. I’m motivated to have a contrarian take here, perhaps because of the overwhelming beauty I found in the reality we were initially introduced to.

While Mulholland Drive gave us much to work with, we both absolutely hated Inland Empire. In my view, it’s fine to have surrealist or absurdist elements, but if it gets to the point that the whole thing is a disjointed mess it’s hard to stay interested or care what happens. A character could have died or turned into a rhinoceros at any point after the first hour and I wouldn’t have been moved or surprised, because nothing actually matters once you figure out what the director is trying to do. You need reality to be bounded in some way if you hope to be entertained by or learn from a work of art.

We refer to ChatGPT throughout, which performed quite impressively, generating arguments for novel interpretations for the films and clearing up some of the confusion we had about the plots and sequences of events.

At the end we decide we’ll give the series Twin Peaks a chance, so look out for that.

By the way, the other day I asked people to subscribe to my new YouTube channel, where I posted the conversation with Brian Chau. As it turns out though, I already have a YouTube channel with nearly a thousand subscribers. I just forgot it existed. So ignore the link I posted yesterday and go here if you want to watch my free videos on YouTube. But I prefer you see them here.

If people have other interpretations of the films or thoughts on the conversation here, feel free to leave them in the comments.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe