Panic World

Why did the Democrats lose so badly in 2024? Rob Flaherty joins us to dissect the "DNC autopsy" — the formerly internal report about what went wrong in 2024 — about which he gave his own thoughts on The Bulwark in May. Rob was the deputy campaign manager for Kamala Harris and also formerly a digital strategist for Joe Biden. Rob distills his analysis of what happened in 2024, and th...

Did you catch Peter Thiel's Enhanced Games in Las Vegas on May 24th? You know, the libertarian-minded, steroid-fueled, biohacked Olympics. No? Still nothing? After recruiting mostly ex-Olympic athletes from track & field, swimming, and weightlifting, parent company Enhanced trained them for months in Abu Dhabi — while also loading them up on a cocktail of drugs to see how many world records they c...

Venerable satirical Chicago-based outfit The Onion is truly on a mission to save democracy — and it starts by relaunching FKA Alex Jones’s InfoWars, which The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron LLC, acquired via bankruptcy auction. CEO Ben Collins joins us to discuss the business’s past and future; chumboxes vs. subscriptions; why they still put out physical newspapers; “Google Zero”; the...

This past weekend, Ryan & Grant went down to see what the UFC Freedom 250 fight on the White House lawn was all about. What they found was $30 margaritas, $120 graphic tees, one (1) mechanical bull, and a whole lot of people who just wanted to watch some dudes beat each other up — and didn’t even know it was supposed to be Trump’s big birthday bash. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free...

Today we’re talking about the D4vd murder case, one of the darkest stories in pop culture at the moment. D4vd — or David Burke — got his start as one of the original Fortnite streamers, who then built a big Discord community around himself, including an alter-ego, "IT4MI," and ultimately his work as a musician blending styles like bedroom pop and indie rock. But in April 2026 he was charged with a...

What would the internet look like if major tech companies like Meta and Google were no longer usable? With Google more deeply integrating AI into Search and changing how it’s worked for the first time in 25 years, many fear “Google Zero,” where websites simply don’t receive any traffic from search anymore. But Google isn’t the only one. With so many companies going all-in on AI, replacing employee...

Why is everything online just clips now? We’ve reached a point with digital video that’s made it impossible even for a normal, non-sicko to ignore: we’re awash in slop (whether AI-created or not). Ryan works through his thinking with Grant about how everything on the internet became video: how the people who were first to figure that out made enough money that they’re now able to take on legacy me...

We’re taking a breather to let Grant out of his cage and get some fresh air, but we didn’t want to leave you without something to panic about. So this week we’ve got an episode from friend of the show and previous guest, Alex Goldman, the host of Hyperfixed. It’s about Markus. When his good friend died suddenly, he went online to get more information. What he found was several AI-written obituarie...

Today we’re talking about billionaire Peter Thiel and his many fascinating, varied interests. You might know him for secretly funding Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit that destroyed Gawker, but did you know that he is also pretty interested in New York’s comedy scene, its hipsters, and something about a biohacked Olympics? What is going on here? Claire Parker joins us to delve into the concept of “Thiel Bucks...

If you forgot to add this important event to your calendars, Spike Jonze’s 2013 sci-fi film, Her, was actually set in 2025. Ryan and Grant watched the Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson vehicle now that we’re just past that date to see what it got right and wrong. They discuss where Jonze thought we would be versus where we are with generative AI, societal isolation, relationships — and whethe...

Why are cats so popular on the internet? It started with cat memes like I Can Haz Cheezburger and Keyboard Cat, then we became enamored with cat celebrities like Lil Bub, Grumpy Cat, and Princess Monstertruck. And now, we’re witnessing the next evolution in cat internet content: “cute cat AI.” Our guest and host of American Hysteria, Chelsey Weber-Smith, calls it a “Kitty Horror Picture Show.” Che...

Where did the "tradwife" trend come from — you know, aside from the 1950s — and why has it become increasingly popular online? Today, we’re talking about not just how men aren’t doing that well, but maybe women aren’t either. This question, of course, is because the (usually) alt-right tradwives supporters have a new girlboss, and it’s Erika Kirk. Journalist Liz Plank joins us to break down the re...

Remember Chewbacca Mom, Damn Daniel, BeanDad, or most recently, Chappell Roan? These are just some examples of people who have become the “main character” on the internet — for better, or mostly (maybe always) worse. Today we’re talking about the old adage that “each day on [Twitter] there is one main character. The goal is to never be it.”How has the internet warped our perception of celebrity (o...

Are we watching the collapse of short-form video and on the cusp of yet another pivot to (a different kind of) video? Today we’re talking about the rise of livestreaming and what makes it different than the Vines and YouTube Shorts that you know. From Clavicular’s overdose to “nuisance streamers” like Vitaly (better known as “VitalyzdTv”) and banned-from-pretty-much-every-streaming platform Johnny...

Today we’re talking about Aella the e-girl and “rationalist," who is probably also pretty smelly — at least if her birthday gangbang breakdown is to be believed. She's known for issuing controversial polls about sex and relationships, and then scrapping with people online about the results. June Sternbach & Josh Boerman from the Ill Conceived podcast join us to trace Aella's history and her impact...

Today we're joined again by journalist Kat Tenbarge to talk about one of the grossest guys on the internet. He’s also one of the most popular Twitch streamers there is. His name is Zack Hoyt, better known as Asmongold. His first video was in 2008, featuring him trying to catch a rat in his parents’ house. He then became obsessed with World of Warcraft and started streaming his gameplay. The rest i...

The law Section 230 is maybe the invisible force that governs everything in our lives. With a California court ruling against Meta, what are we to do? How responsible should social media companies be for the content posted on them? Brian Reed joins us to discuss Section 230 and its implications, both past and present. Our guest Brian Reed is the host of Question Everything. Check it out anywhere y...

In 2012, a strange message appeared on 4chan: “We are looking for highly intelligent individuals….” What followed became one of the internet’s most mysterious puzzles: Cicada 3301. Players uncovered hidden codes, real-world locations, encrypted files, and even phone numbers across the globe. Some believed it was a secret society. Others thought it was a CIA recruitment tool. Maybe the Illuminati....

Why did boomers “go crazy” — and was the internet actually to blame? Ryan is joined by Sam Seder to trace the long history of boomer radicalization, from the Fairness Doctrine and Rush Limbaugh to Fox News, 9/11, Alex Jones, and the algorithmic media ecosystem that followed. Together they argue that the internet didn’t create boomer brain rot so much as supercharge a worldview that had already bee...

Ryan & Grant convene their movie club to discuss The Secret Agent, one of — or maybe the — best film(s) of 2025, and what it says about where we're at as a society. Want to hear the rest of this conversation? And get even more extra content, like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to our exclusive Discord? Sign up for a membership at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Learn more about...

Today we’re talking about the moral panic around “transvestigation,” an online “game” where people try to identify who is or isn’t trans. Particularly popular in right-wing corners of the internet, transvestigating is a subculture of people — with no background in biology at all — who analyze photos, facial features, and body proportions to “prove” their claims, that basically every celebrity is s...

Did Jeffrey Epstein destroy the internet? Ryan posits his theory, after not going totally insane (we think) reading through hundreds of Epstein files: Epstein was the Forrest Gump of the 21st century and there’s pretty much no major event this century that he didn’t have some sort of weird interaction with. Marcus Parks of Last Podcast on the Left joins us to indulge these conspiracies — and throw...

What’s cool and what’s cringe, and which generation gets to decide? Today we’re talking about Gen Z, formerly known as “iGen,” and its relationship with millennials (and vice versa). Expert on all things internet, Hank Green, joins us this week to talk about the tried-and-true tradition of generations ragging on each other. Get ready for a lot of talk about gooning, looksmaxxing, mogging, and 6-7...

When did liking women, as a straight man, become gay? Today, we posit that the “logical” endpoint of being in the manosphere is that eventually being so hateful toward women dictates that liking them, having sex with them, or getting married to them, is actually gay. Podcaster, activist, and pornstar Siri Dahl joins us to discuss… that. Our guest Siri Dahl’s work can be found at https://siridahl.c...

From research to vibe coding to therapy to girlfriends and boyfriends, how are we using AI these days? Let’s do a check-in on one of those topics that inevitably fires everyone up: AI. One person who’s fired up about it is Dexter Thomas of Kill Switch, who joins us to get into the interesting relationships people are forming with AI — for better and (mostly) worse. Our guest is Dexter Thomas, an E...