The Present Age

The Present Age is reader-supported. Please consider subscribing to the free or paid versions. Thanks! Today, for another edition of You Know, where I introduce you to someone who is starting a newsletter who you should know, I am joined by the insightful Maris Kreizman. Maris is the former host of the beloved podcast The Maris Review, the new head of the recently relaunched newsletter of the same...

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to read a book called The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness , by Jonathan Haidt. The argument made in the book went like this: with the rise of smartphones and other internet-connected devices, there’s been a massive uptick in mental illness among Gen Z youth and adolescents. Haidt connects these two,...

Parker Molloy: My guest today is Matt Negrin, a senior producer for the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. And just about the only person on the planet, I know who gets more irritated about the way politics gets covered in the media than I do. Matt, thank you so much for joining me. Matt Negrin: No, I'm obviously happy to have a contest with you about who is more angry at the media on a daily basis. It'...

This is part 2 of 2 of my conversation with Matthew Sheffield. If you haven’t checked out last week’s episode, you may want to do that here: Parker Molloy: A lot of criticism of Democrats seems to ignore the asymmetric nature of partisan media. There's a massive right-wing infrastructure in place that can keep the same topic and headlines for an indefinite amount of time. This makes it easy to pic...

This week’s podcast guest is Matthew Sheffield, the founder and editor of Flux , a new online community for progressive writers and podcasters. I was interested in talking to Matthew about his earlier life experience as someone who was present when right-wing media really started building the echo chamber. The interview went pretty long, so this is part one of two. The second portion will be poste...

Parker Molloy: Hello, hello. My guest this week, today, whatever, you're listening to this podcast is Michael Ian Black . Hey. Michael Ian Black: Hey. How's it going? That was quite an introduction. It was. I'll record something. I'll record something before this, talk about... I'll be like— You're making a big assumption that people are going to know what that means or who I am. No, no. That's ju...

Parker Molloy: So you've been writing this awesome newsletter over on Substack, called The Sword and the Sandwich. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Tal Lavin: Yeah, so I launched, actually, this month, October 4th, and it's a really odd... It is an odd mix. Like, I recognize it's an odd mix. The sword is first of all, because I own a bunch of swords, and love them, but also, it sort of sym...

Parker Molloy: Joining me this week is Pete Croatto. Hey Pete. Pete Croatto: Hey Parker. How are you? I'm doing okay. I'm hanging in there. I'm surviving. It's becoming fall. It's getting cold outside. I love it. Me too. It's rainy right now. It's fine. Matches my mood. I love it. So you wrote a book about the NBA and how it became so entwined with pop culture. Can you tell me a little bit about y...

On this week’s edition of The Present Age podcast, I chat with writer Thor Benson about some of his recent work covering mental health and the pandemic. Parker Molloy: Hey, joining me is the Thor Benson. Hello. Thor Benson: Hi. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Thanks for taking the time to join the podcast. I am very interested in some of the things you've been writing over at... I read the two pieces...

My guest on this week’s podcast is singer-songwriter and [checks notes] king of Halloween Nick Lutsko. I’m really excited for this episode, and I highly recommend checking out the audio version if you can, as there are a few song clips in there (as well as a live/acoustic version of one of Nick’s songs at the very end). You can follow Nick on Twitter at @NickLutsko . His Patreon can be found here...

Welcome to the Present Age podcast [and transcript]. I’m your host Parker Molloy. Joining me today on the show is Aaron Rupar, the author of the new Public Notice Substack. Let’s get started. Parker Molloy: Hey, Aaron. How's it going? Aaron Rupar: I'm good. Thanks for having me on the podcast. Yeah, of course. As soon as I heard that you were starting your own thing, I wanted to get you on here to...

On this week’s podcast, I interview my friend and former co-worker Eddie Geller. Eddie is running for Congress in Florida’s 15th district. If elected, he would have the best taste in music of anyone to ever hold office. Just throwing that out there. Let’s get started! Parker Molloy: Hey Eddie, how's it going? Eddie Geller: Hey, thank you for having me. It's going pretty well. Well, that's good, it...

This week on The Present Age Podcast, I chat with Franchesca Ramsey. You may know her from her YouTube videos, her time on Comedy Central’s Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, her web series MTV Decoded, the recent iCarly reboot, NBC’s Superstore, or even a Maroon 5 video. Parker Molloy: Hey, Franchesca, how's it going? Franchesca Ramsey: Hi Parker. I feel like the standard answer is it's going good,...

Welcome to another episode of The Present Age podcast. I’m your host Parker Molloy. Joining me on this week’s episode is writer and podcast host Molly Jong-Fast. Parker Molloy: Oh, hello, Molly! Molly Jong-Fast: Hi, Parker. It's so fun to get to meet you! Yeah, I know! We followed each other on Twitter for, what? Four or five years or something? I don't know. It feels my entire life, but I know it...

Welcome to the Present Age podcast. I’m your host Parker Molloy. Joining me on today’s show is animator and crypto art creator Bryan Brinkman . His work has appeared at places like The Tonight Show , Saturday Night Life , and even Sesame Street . Today, he’s going to teach me a bit about NFTs . Parker Molloy: So, joining me today on the podcast is Bryan Brinkman. Hello. Bryan Brinkman: Hello, Hey...

Welcome to the Present Age podcast. I’m your host Parker Molloy. Joining me this week is meteorologist and climate scientist Eric Holthaus. Eric operates The Phoenix , a Substack about humanizing the climate emergency. He’s the author of The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What’s Possible in the Age of Warming , and he founded Currently , a free subscription weather service. Parker Molloy: Join...

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Present Age podcast. I’m your host Parker Molloy. Joining me on today’s show is the man behind what I’ve long referred to as “the only good government Twitter account.” His name is Joe Galbo, and he’s the social media specialist at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Parker Molloy: Joining me today is Joe Galbo. Joe, what is it that you do? Joe Galbo:...

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Present Age podcast. I’m your host Parker Molloy. Joining me on today’s show is baseball writer and all-around good dude Keith Law. Keith is the author of two books — Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, The New Ones that are Running it, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball and more recently, The Inside Game: Bad Calls...

Welcome to the Present Age Podcast. I’m your host Parker Molloy. On today’s show, I speak with my friend Carlos Maza. As the host of Vox ’s “Strikethrough,” Carlos helped shine a light on the way the choices made by the media helped raise Donald Trump and Republicans to power. His videos, with titles like “Why every election gets its own crisis,” “How Trump makes extreme things look normal,” and “...

Parker Molloy: So, I was on your podcast, Well, This Isn't Normal, back in April of last year. And I think at the time I was still under this impression that this was all going to be somewhat temporary, in terms of pandemic-related stuff, that by the fall things would return to a sense of normalcy. And now more than a year later, it seems like we're just starting to get back to whatever normal is....

Parker Molloy: Joining me today is former Congressman Joe Walsh. Joe Walsh: Hey, Parker. It's awesome to be with you. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me. This is not a conversation I could have pictured having, I don't know, two years ago, so it's- No, crazy times, and you and I have come together on some things. Yeah. And I've learned some things from you, Parker. So t...

Parker Molloy: Welcome to the first episode of the Present Age Podcast. I am your host Parker Molloy. Comic book fans may know today’s guest from his work writing The Amazing Spider-Man, She-Hulk, Silver Surfer, Iron Man, and most recently, the Fantastic Four. His name is Dan Slott, and our conversation starts right now. Dan Slott, thank you so much for talking to me. I appreciate it. Thank you! D...