This Week in Despair with Peter-john Byrnes

Ever Mainard joins me for a wide-ranging discussion which encompasses the Chicago teacher's strike, anti-Muslim YouTube videos, crime in the streets, and the evil of Frappucinos. Ever explains the aesthetics of decorative cow skulls. I'm generally cranky about things.

New guest Rebecca O'Neal and returning champion Sonia Denis join me on this episode to discuss the 2012 political conventions, racists in denial, and the South Side of Chicago. Sonia reveals how you get on her blacklist. Rebecca explains how exhaustion trumps her sense of offense. I tell the story of the time I was booed and hissed by an audience with my wife in attendance. It's the episode with our most optimistic ending yet.

This episode was recorded on my birthday, and what greater cause for despair is that? Our National Bigfoot Correspondent Jason Earl Folks turns his expert eye to the latest sighting video emerging from Ohio, and Katie McVay joins us because one loud guest isn't enough. Atrocities discussed include anal tattos, Dungeons and Dragons groups who use Star Wars characters, major newsweeklies which no longer fact-check, and Todd Akin.

Adam Burke and Dan Telfer join me for a discussion of science, Mars, Wikileaks and Julian Assange, Sally Ride, and our military-industrial complex. Dan tells a story of terror from 1998. Adam is angry about Pussy Riot. If you asked me what my ideal episode of this podcast would sound like when I first started, it would be a lot like this. My guests are smart, engaged, and disagree with me. I'm wrong a lot on this episode.

This episode's conversation with Stephanie Hasz and Sonia Denis starts with a discussion of newly-selected GOP VP candidate Paul Ryan, but then descends into talk of cheese curds, horrible spiders, scrubbing toilets without a brush, and ends with a cataloguing of the varieties of sexual aids available on the market. Stephanie really needs to wash her hands more. Sonia will never set foot in Wisconsin. I had dreams of high-minded discourse when I started this podcast. They're all ashes now.

On a week where The Olympics celebrated the pinnacle of human health and achivement and Chick-Fil-A served up homophobia on a bun, Bill Bullock and Cody Melcher stop by to help me make sense of it all. Cody displays both a rapier wit and an extensive knowledge of rapiers. Bill reveals his encyclopedic knowledge of statutory rape laws in Midwestern states. Indiana is repeatedly disparaged. This episode is brought to you by schadenfreude.

On a particularly despairing week, I am blessed to have the sensible and reflective Dave Stinton. Topics include Fred Willard, and other movie-related atrocities. Dave unveils his vision of a world ruled by intelligent wombats. A personal letter from Barack Obama is discussed. I talk too much, to little avail.

A really fun episode in honor of Independence Day, where Civil War historian Bjorn Skaptason and man-about-town James Fritz discuss the past, the South and the hypocrisy of America. You know, the usual.

My heavily-medicated sister fills in as an emergency guest, and is funny enough that pain medication will be mandatory for all future guests. Kris Simmons sets a horrible precedent by arriving prepared with actual facts. Topics include the Supreme Court's decision on health care reform, Adele's pregnancy, and Mississippi abortions, but we end up spending the most time discussing strippers, foreign and domestic, literary and literal.

Robert Buscemi and Ever Mainard are my guests for the most unusual episode we've had so far. A discussion of women in comedy veers away from the week's news and into a discussion of bodily fluids you can find in a 24-hour coffee shop. It all ends with a conversation in which Robert gets me to discuss my personal feelings and my history, neither of which I'm the slightest bit comfortable in doing. This one gets pretty real, kids.