Ambitious Crossover Attempt

Jen and Noam discuss elections. US elections, Israeli elections, how somehow the US elections are Israel's fault.  But really, we spend most of the time talking about the midterms and how the GOP got absolutely taken behind the woodshed by voters. Even Texas is blue now. Will Republicans learn from this and change their ways? Probably not, but we do hope that maybe sanity will return. We also hope...

Noam and Jen gear up for the midterms by talking about what an absolute disaster the GOP has become. Specifically, that bonkers ad that Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign ran platforming Amy Acton's mom. Why did nobody point out what a horrible idea that was? Because everyone in the GOP is now stuck in an echo chamber and they don't understand how this looks to normal people. Stop me if you've heard this...

Jen and Noam take some time to talk about important issues like the here one day gone the next WH press secretary Katie Zacharia, the mystery of who gave the order to turn off Starshield right before Russia launched a drone attack against Ukraine, Trump busying himself with minutiae leading up to the midterms, and generally what the hell is going on. And then we get to the thing we really want to...

Noam and Jen would have liked to spend the whole episode talking about dogs, specifically Yoko. Alas, the new cycles will not allow us that luxury. So we discuss being nice to Claude, being superintelligence to dogs, the Matter Complier, the ugliness of livestreaming an execution by firing squad, and whatever that is going on with MAGA in Texas.  For our WAWC, Noam recommends the game Well Dweller...

Jen and Noam have a nice long chat about the FlyDubai airplane hijacking, Jacob Geller's weird Title IX admission, the whole mess at Cornell, and Eric Schmitt's publicity stunt gone awry.   For our WAWC, Noam talks about Lanterns again now that the season is over, specifically about how the internet is wrong about the show (but what's new). Jen is happy that The Apothecary Diaries is back (so is N...

Noam and Jen get to have the conversation about the upcoming AI apocalypse that they were going to have last week until Nikole Hannah-Jones ruined everything. We discuss AI doomerism, AI CEOs warning of impending doom yet doing nothing to stop it, how AI isn't a sentient being, and how we're not all going to die from AI. For our WAWC, Jen doesn't have anything because we're in the dead time betwee...

Jen and Noam are finally back! Just in time to discuss Nikole Hannah-Jones' big piece on how she was an inattentive parent who left her kid in a bad school because reasons. OK, that's our interpretation of what happened, not hers, not that she seems to have learned anything from the experience either. Nevertheless, she is persisting, along with some of her supporters.  Since it has been so long si...

Noam and Jen are back to discuss navigating DC during Freedom 250 events, Trump's continuing ballroom saga, if we will see a constitutional amendment in our lifetimes, the very weird case of Natalie Harp and her obsession with being close to Trump, Jen's big theory as to who leaked all these stories, and the never-ending Arday apologia.  For our WAWC, Noam assures us that the new HBO Plus series L...

Jen and Noam discuss a little Francesca Hong and the general woes of the DSA crowd before getting into the end of the Jason Arday saga. On that topic there is a lot to unpack; where Cambridge went wrong, the responsibility Arday holds for his own actions, blaming "online mobs" for repeating factual information, and the consequences Arday was not going to face for his many egregious lies. In all of...

Noam and Jen know that 2026 is hard and scary and that everyone wants to return to 2020. But alas, we do have to discuss the things happening in 2026, like El-Sayed's very slim win in the Michigan Democrat primary for Senate. As per usual the polling was wrong. The problem is, the polling was very, very wrong and people are starting to ask questions about if that happens for less than honest purpo...

Jen and Noam take a (slight) break from discussing the depressing political news to talk about important things, like the controversies surrounding data centers and generative AI and the new Spider-Man movie. Important things.  We get a bit into the drama surrounding the YouTube content creator Hank Green, who has for some reason self canceled over his sin of….using ChatGPT to do his grunt work so...

Noam and Jen spend a little time talking about things like Iran and what's going on now before getting into the most important topic of the year: Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Spoiler alert - it's a good movie and will win many awards. We discuss the movie itself and, of course, the extremely weird online reactions to the movie and its success.  Just a good, old fashioned Ambitious Crossover At...

Jen and Noam record a day late because they were busy mourning the loss of Lindsey Graham. OK not really, but we did have to push back recording to make sure we could get a full headcount on current GOP leadership and their health status. Luckily Mitch McConnell also made an appearance (kinda) after being MIA for a month, but it's fair to say we have a bit of an old man problem going on.  As for t...

Noam and Jen finish up their America250 celebrations in time to record an episode this week, because woo boy last week was a doozy. SCOTUS handed down their long waited but predictable (kinda?) decision upholding birthright citizenship, along with a few other notable decisions involving executive power and campaign finance. Speaking of campaigns, Platner's isn't going so well now that he's out of...

Jen and Noam check in to discuss Scott Wiener's bad week of being hounded in public over his very tepid support of Israel, the primary win of Darializa Chevalier in the NY-13 district and should we care, and what exactly is going on with the "ceasefire" with Iran and why it is that the US is needing bomb the same places we bombed back in April. For our WAWC, we go back to our roots and tell you to...

Noam and Jen reflect (heh) on the past week, starting with the reflecting pool and moving on to what exactly is going on with the US and Iran and the MOU. It's all a bit murky, nobody is doing their best work, and everyone has someone to blame for the failure. For our WAWC, it's time for season 3 of House of the Dragon! We finally get our big boat fight, some character deaths, and Jen pointing out...

Jen and Noam are celebrating the president's birthday! No, we aren't actually! But we are talking about Trump and his on-again, off-again affair with Iran. After we finished recording this week's episode there was an announcement of an alleged deal between the US and Iran, which sounds more like Trump capitulating to try to give himself a birthday win. Needless to say, we've heard this one before...

Noam and Jen are on time this week, because there's a lot to talk about. As we somewhat alluded to last week, the NYT dropped a story detailing Graham Platner's past. While it is being slammed as a soft catch and kill, and the main named accuser Lindsey Fifield has said there was a lot more that wasn't included in the article, what was included is pretty damning. Damning enough that, 20 years ago,...

Jen and Noam are late again, but that's Noam's fault because he's a Euphoria fan (?) now. But we don't just discuss the season (series?) finale of Euphoria, we discuss the DC based America 250 events that are falling apart in real time because Trump can't keep his hands off the celebrations. And yes, despite the feigned indignation on the topic, it's a little hard to say Trump isn't making this ab...

Noam and Jen make it back a day late. It's ok, that's what a three day weekend means. We did have plenty to talk about though, seeing as Trump settled his lawsuit against his own IRS over something that happened during his last term and that means that there is now $17.76B of taxpayer money that can now be used for….well it's not really been determined what for. What's for certain is that all of t...

Surprise! Jen is visiting Boston, so we are podding in person, and we even watched a movie together to discuss (more on that later). We cover Trump's trip to China and his worrying comments on Taiwan, and transition to his domestic conflict with Thomas Massie and now Lauren Boebert. Will the Republican party become a Vancian Post-MAGA party or will Rubio symbolize some gradual retreat from maximal...

Jen and Noam make it back after Noam's illness (not hantavirus, just regular virus) to discuss Nick Kristof's stupid gullible toxic empathy, how it's not possible to train a dog to sexually assault anyone, how in the world could anyone question the word of 14 people, and where is all of this antisemitism coming from anyway.  We start out, however, talking about The Odyssey (the movie, that's not a...

Noam and Jen make fun of Richard Dawkins finding God in the machine. Ok, not God, but Claude(ia). This kicks off a rambling discussion of AI, consciousness, the Turing Test, if AI is the doom of all humanity, Sam Altman's house getting firebombed, people being way too het up over data centers, water usage for golfing courses and water features in shopping malls, and how Skynet will still send robo...

Jen and Noam return a day late, because one of us has emergency podcast duties now. Of course we have to start with the WHCD and the attempted assasination attempt on Trump. Everyone is fine, and nobody much seemed like they felt they were in any real danger, as evidenced by the way everyone involved acted during and after the incident. And of course, it's not an assasination attempt without peopl...

Noam and Jen are not sure what is going on. We…think the war with Iran is still on? Does Trump know? Does anyone? It's all very up in the air, which is not great when you're talking about a hot war.  We do know that "Hungarian taxpayers" were funding all of the conferences that CPAC has been holding in Hungary all these years, thanks to Magyar and his anti-corruption tear. We also know certain peo...