How's it going America,
Check out the latest episode of The Pod Millennial! I talk to Phil Labonte, Katie Uhlaender, and Pamela Garfield-Jaeger, but I also talk Morrissey's new single and the fandom that reaches back to my teen years. And we just wrapped our upcoming show, so be sure to tune in Tuesday for a fresh episode!
Let's get into it:
One of my favorite podcasts recently called it quits and I'm still feeling a bit salty about it. America This Week, with Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn, two old news heads who have been in the trenches for decades. They didn't always agree on everything, but twice a week I could count on them to dig into an aspect of the news cycle that wasn't altogether straight forward. They delivered analysis that I found compelling and interesting and more measured than the constant barrage of news media that I consume every day.
I'm not sure why they gave it up, something about new forms or something, but whatever the reason, I think it sucks. I appreciated the insight from two men who did not appear to have a partisan motive to their discourse but had their own moral foundations against which they would weigh the rightness or wrongness or in-between-ness of the actions of government officials, protesters, writers, or anyone else.
Another podcast I liked quite a bit, Bari Weiss' Honestly, is also on hiatus and the other Free Press podcast I liked, Breaking History, is doing a new format and running repeats. All that to say that as a reader, as a consumer of media, to me the most important thing is being able to count on the content being delivered. That content becomes part of my routine, helps keep me from doom scrolling, and allows me to take in the kind of insight that is a little more slow roasted. Sure, I get it, things come and go.
So far, I'm not going anywhere. We locked in episode 4 of The Pod Millennial, set to drop on Tuesday. And we already got started on episode 5. If you haven't checked it out yet, I hope that you do. It's been a bit of extra work for sure but I'm enjoying it, I like writing up the monologues for the beginning of the show and catching up with people who I already like. Guests have been all people I know but soon we'll start branching out probably. Although I do have a pretty fat rolodex... kudos to anyone who knows what that is.
This week the news cycle has been consumed by two main stories: the ongoing chaos of the Nancy Guthrie missing persons case and a trans shooter in a remote town in Canada. There have been other stories, and everyone has been trying to break in:
Dems grilled Pam Bondi over the Epstein files in Congress. After demanding that she release all the files they think she released too much. Meanwhile, it's Dems who are getting pilloried for their Epstein ties. DHS is drawing down agents in Minnesota and setting their eyes on somewhere else. They deported enough people that Minnesota may lose a congressional seat and they found over 3,000 children who had been lost to the system under the Biden administration. ICE director Todd Lyons said 1.6 million illegal immigrants in the US have final removal orders and 800,000 of them are convicted criminals. And if that seems like a lot, I remind you that the Super Bowl and the dueling half time shows were only just this past Sunday.
I hope you have a great weekend!
Libby