Adam stops by to lament the untimely end of HBO’s Entourage, and demand its return under a Biden administration. We also talk about the thing with the Russian bounties, Obama’s re-emergence from retirement and Kevin D. Williamson’s weird fixation on leaf blowers.

Chapo Trap House

432 - Entourage Every Day feat. Adam Friedland (6/29/20)

We welcome Ken Klippenstein (twitter.com/kenklippenstein) to the terror dome to FOIA-splain the unmarked troops detaining protestors in Portland, Billy Barr’s legal regime, just what the hell Homeland Security is doing, and trace the origins and expansion of the Unitary Executive Theory

Episode 86: D.H. Ass

We start off this week looking at the roll of bullying in Massachusetts politics & the inauspicious beginning of the MLB season. From there we kind of transition into the ongoing normalization of COVID and Trump’s federal police goon squad in America. Then, after TTRPG’ing contested 2020 election scenarios, we kind of take a left turn towards Brazil’s Looney Tunes fascism, and stick the landing by reflecting on Mormons as the Perfect Americans.

440 - Arm the Emus (7/27/20)

We survey the damage wrought on the COVID economy and take a look at what comes next

https://newmodels.io/proprietary/a-bit-worse-houellebecq-transl-kelsey

Episode 88: Covid Cliff

Will’s away, but we’re joined by fan-favorite Derek Davison and host of the Tides of History podcast Patrick Wyman to discuss shrimp supply chains, the ongoing effects of the Bolivian coup, Israel and America’s militaries & the decline of empires.

Derek and Patrick’s new writing substack: discontents.substack.com

Bath Iron Works Strike Fund: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/LocalLodgeS6

442 - Battle Without Honor or Humanity feat. Derek Davison & Patrick Wyman (8/3/20)

Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs, and Operators stops by to discuss some of the darker parts of Canadian history, including Mountie Gladio, Nazi connections in Ottawa, and Vancouver Island’s noted concentration of Satanists.

Support Dan’s content over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/operators

UNLOCKED 439 - Maple Gladio feat. Dan Boeckner (7/23/20)

Writer and director Adam McKay (Vice, The Big Short, every movie you quoted endlessly with your homies ~2004-2012) stops by to talk film, the giant sucking memory hole of the Bush presidency, balancing humor with anger, and wrangling with SNL censors. Be on the lookout for a new season of Adam’s Jeffrey Epstein podcast coming up this September.

UNLOCKED: 441 - Orange Julius or Hi-C and Turkey? feat. Adam McKay (7/30/20)

Friend of the show Ike Barinholtz(MADtv, Eastbound & Down, Suicide Squad) joins us to talk cartoons, the Shapiros, a reading series from our favorite Chicagoland OpEd writer, and of course to discuss long-term effects of exposure to The Joker.

444 - The Rats are Coming feat. Ike Barinholtz (8/10/20)

WE ARE BACK -- and laden with information about Ghislaine Maxwell's post-arrest machinations, and new terrible details about her pre-arrest sprees

Episode 90: Docudump

Defector’s Patrick Redford stops by to talk the (hopefully likely) fall of JKIII, NBA strikes, and whether robots go to hell. 

Check out defector.com for all your sports blog and media needs: www.defector.com

450 -  In The Bubble feat. Patrick Redford (8/31/20)

By now, it's largely taken for granted that country music is a racialized signifier, interchangeable with right-wing politics. And it’s not such an unreasonable generalization: the political currents of twanged and drawled patriotic paeans like Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)," and Brooks & Dunn's "Only In America" leave little to the imagination.

But how, exactly, did this come to be? After all, country music, a descendant of the blues, folk, Tejano, and other genres, with connections to labor organizations like the Industrial Workers of the World and social-justice movements, has historically attracted musicians spanning the political spectrum, and didn’t necessarily emerge from such a staunchly right-wing political tradition.

Rather, popular conceptions of country music have long been deliberately shaped by a series of broader ideological projects. Throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries, conservative politicians and other right-wing forces have exploited the genre to promote illiberalism, racism, revanchist politics, and runaway anti-intellectualism where not giving a shit about the world beyond one’s own cold beer, pickup truck, old lady is not only acceptable, but actively encouraged and flaunted. 

On this episode, we examine how the genre of country music has been wielded as a tool of reactionary politicking in the US, from the machinations of Henry Ford in the 1920s to the Nixon administration’s Southern Strategy in the 1960s and ‘70s to the heady Shock and Y’all days of the Bush years, and how a once working-class tradition became a cultural cul de sac of worn-out tropes and middle-class, white grievance politics.  

Our guest is writer, editor and artist Alexander Billet.