Autocratic Despair

This week on the Autocratic Despair podcast — a comedy about fascism, autocracy, and trying to have fun while the country falls apart — Nick opens at a seven on the despair scale after walking through the tailgate scene at Lambeau Field during two sold-out Luke Combs concerts. 80,000 people across two nights at his hometown stadium, and Nick didn't go — not because of the music, but because o...

In which the boys debut a new shorthand for the show's central feeling: the moment you realize there are now so many golden statues of Donald Trump scattered across his Florida golf courses that when someone mentions one, you have to ask which one. Nick and Dr. Craig open by sorting through the Don Colossus — a 22-foot gilded statue of Trump in the "fight, fight, fight" assassinatio...

Episode 1 of Autocratic Despair opens with co-hosts Nick and Dr. Craig Johnson defining the show's central concept through two visceral scenarios: the reluctance to celebrate the Fourth of July without seeming to endorse the regime, and the panic of watching your own party embrace a candidate with a Nazi tattoo. From there, Nick is at a 6 on the despair scale, driven by an unsettling encounte...

This week on the Autocratic Despair podcast, Nick and Dr. Craig take an unusually nuanced look at Cole Allen — the 31-year-old Caltech-educated tutor from Torrance, California who charged a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 25 armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and several knives in an attempt to assassinate President Trump and senior administration official...

This week on another preview episode of the Autocratic Despair podcast, Nick and Dr. Craig start with a confession: they both enjoyed the Atlantic's report on FBI Director Kash Patel's alleged drinking problem a little too much. And they want to talk about why that enjoyment felt so good and so rotten at the same time. The Atlantic published a bombshell investigation alleging that Patel...

The Autocratic Despair Podcast launches in May.  Until then, enjoy this practice episode.  This week on Autocratic Despair, Nick and Dr. Craig open with something they haven't been able to do very often on this show: celebrate. On April 12, Viktor Orbán — the international model for how to dismantle a democracy from inside one — conceded defeat in Hungary's parliamentary election after s...

When the weight of watching democracy erode gets to be too much, where do you go? In this episode, Nick and Dr. Craig Johnson explore the surprisingly serious topic of retreating into childhood comforts as a coping mechanism for Autocratic Despair — and why that instinct might be healthier than it sounds. Then things get strange in the best possible way. Nick makes the case that WWE superstar Seth...

In this preview episode of the Autocratic Despair podcast, host Nick Mortensen introduces Dr. Craig to Danhausen — a magical fun character from the WWE who is about to sweep the nation. Danhausen paints his face black and white, looks like a cartoon vampire, adds the suffix "-hausen" to everything he touches, and delivers his catchphrase "very nice, very evil" with the energy o...

A 3 minute preview of our podcast - The Autocratic Despair Podcast - with Nick Mortensen and Dr. Craig Johnson that takes an excerpt from a podcast where we have a discussion about why we never got into Billy Bragg. Connect with us today!