The Lou Perez Podcast

Germania Rodriguez Poleo — journalist, writer, and Venezuelan exile — escaped her country at age 11 after the Chavez regime accused her mother of terrorism, tortured their bodyguard to death, shot at their car, and raided their home. She arrived in Miami as a refugee. Then she went to NYU and voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary. Her Reason magazine article "My Family Fled Socialism. Then I Vot...

Meghan Murphy is a writer, podcaster, and one of the original people to get canceled on Twitter — permanently banned in 2018 for tweeting "men aren't women, though" and referring to a man who wanted to get his testicles waxed as "him." She's been writing and podcasting independently ever since, and she now lives in Mexico. We talked about: the tweet that got her banned and the Yaniv waxing lawsuit...

Meghan Murphy is a writer, podcaster, and one of the original people to get canceled on Twitter — permanently banned in 2018 for tweeting "men aren't women, though" and referring to a man who wanted to get his testicles waxed as "him." She's been writing and podcasting independently ever since, and she now lives in Mexico. We talked about: the tweet that got her banned and the Yaniv waxing lawsuit...

Aaron Brown is a quantitative analyst, risk manager, and author of the new book Wrong Number: How to Extract Truth from a Blizzard of Quantitative Disinformation. https://amzn.to/4frmg3n He's also about to debate gun control at the Soho Forum in August — and his preparation for that debate is a pretty good preview of what's in the book. Topics include: why out of 28,000 gun control studies, the RA...

Rambo Van Halen is a pseudonym. He's a Hollywood producer — the real kind, the below-the-line kind, the guy making sure the steel gets to the factory — who worked in the industry for decades, walked away in 2019, and wrote a book about it. The book is called Hollywood Samizdat: Notes from Below the Line. It's published by Passage Press. Lou read it. He dog-eared it. They talked for an hour. Topics...

Kira Shishkin is the CEO and founder of Informed.now — a news-by-SMS service that sends you one text per day covering what actually changed the world in the last 24 hours. No ads. No bias. No storytelling. Just primary sources, direct quotes, and a link so you can read the original sources yourself. Kira grew up in Ukraine, came of age in Israel, and built this company after watching both countrie...

Salih Hudayar is the Foreign Minister and former Prime Minister of the East Turkistan Government in Exile. He was born in East Turkistan, fled to the United States as a political refugee at age 7, and has spent his life working to bring international attention to what the US government and over a dozen Western parliaments have formally recognized as a genocide. We covered: how China invaded and oc...

I sat down with Victor Varnado — comedian, founder of Supreme Robot, and the man behind the Worldwide Tic-Tac-Toe Championship. Victor is also King Super Nuts. That's not a joke. Well, it is. But it's also real. Victor built disability gaming software that could let paralyzed, blind, and deaf players enjoy video games without any extra hardware. He got a National Science Foundation grant to develo...

I sat down with Jason Gagne, fitness trainer and creator of the 90-day beginner program Good 2 Go Body. Jason has been training people for over 20 years and specializes in beginners — the people who've been told they're not in good enough shape to start working out. Check out Jason's 90-day program: https://good2go.podia.com/?coupon=LOU  (Every sign-up puts a few bucks in my pocket. Thank you. 🙏)...

Lou Perez sits down with investigative journalist and TV producer Rob Rosen, whose debut book Crimes of Omission: Distorted Justice, The Media's War on Truth is available for pre-order now. Rob produced A Reasonable Doubt on HBO Max, which led to nine wrongful conviction releases, and spent years at KCBS covering the OJ Simpson trial alongside Harvey Levin. TOPICS INCLUDE: How newsroom monoculture...

Lou Perez sits down with Stu Smith, investigative analyst at the Manhattan Institute, who has spent months infiltrating DSA meetings, Zoom calls, and internal channels to find out what the Democratic Socialists of America are actually up to. TOPICS INCLUDE: What most people get wrong about the DSA The DSA's internal "right wing" — people who just believe in elections The Red Rabbits: DSA's new arm...

Lou Perez is joined by Harris Sockel, lead editor at Pirate Wires — the tech media company that covers Silicon Valley without hating it. They cover a lot of ground in this one. TOPICS INCLUDE: - What Pirate Wires is and why it started on Substack during the pandemic - Why AI doom coverage is dishonest (and why the doomers won't go full prepper) - Lou's experience using Claude AI for press kits, pr...

New York City is heading in the wrong direction — and Rafael Mangual of the Manhattan Institute is here to explain exactly why. In this episode, Lou and Rafael break down the real story behind the Washington Square Park snowball attack on NYPD officers, the media's deliberate misframing of the Gracie Mansion IED attack, Mayor Zohran Mamdani's dangerous blind spots on public safety, and why the cit...

German historian and author Dr. Rainer Zitelmann is currently under criminal investigation in Berlin for retweeting a meme comparing Putin to Hitler. He's one of the world's leading experts on Hitler and National Socialism — and the tweet was a historical warning about dictators who say "just this much, then I'll stop." He faces up to three years in prison. Lou and Rainer dig into Germany's Sectio...

From Sound Factory to Suing Live Nation: Tommy Dorfman's Wild Ride Through NYC Nightlife NYC nightclub legend Tommy Dorfman joins Lou to tell the story of how he built a club empire from the ground up — and how Live Nation allegedly destroyed it all in 2011. Tommy started throwing parties at 16, packed out iconic New York venues like Sound Factory, Tunnel, and Limelight, and was on the verge of la...

Comedy producer and podcaster Hatem Gabr (Live from America Podcast) joins Lou for a wide-ranging crossover episode covering Ramadan, Team USA's Winter Olympics hockey gold, the Eileen Gu controversy, Trump's locker room call to the hockey team, and nonconsensual snowball fights in NYC. Hatem — a practicing Muslim, former professional soccer player, and heart transplant recipient who captained Tea...

Today I'm joined by Neoborn Caveman to discuss the Shakespeare-Lou Perez-David Duchovny connection, the Alice in Wonderland Protocol, and over (re)sharing.   Check out my book, That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: On the Death and Rebirth of Comedy https://amzn.to/3VhFa1r       Watch my sketch comedy streaming on Red Coral Universe: https://redcoraluniverse.com/en/series/the-lou-perez-comedy-68501a2fd36...

PODCAST COPY   On today's episode, my friend Randall Bock returns to The Lou Perez Podcast — or do I return to his podcast? Both really.   As the good doctor describes our conversation: Growing Up As The World Lost Its Marbles Reflections on cities, family life, and institutional collapse As prelude to Christmas and looking back on the year, comedian and social analyst Lou Perez speaks with the ea...

On today's episode of  The Lou Perez Podcast , I talk with clarinet player James Zimmermann about being a nine-year-old on Broadway (you may have seen him in The Will Rogers Follies back in 1991), why old people gravitate to the fine arts, the slopification of entertainment, blind auditions, and his firing from the Nashville Symphony.   Check out my book, That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: On the Deat...

My friend Sean Malone returns to  The Lou Perez Podcast to talk about being a new (old) dad, how fatherhood radicalizes you, and why you should cover the Earth before the earth covers you.   Check out my book, That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: On the Death and Rebirth of Comedy https://amzn.to/3VhFa1r       Watch my sketch comedy streaming on Red Coral Universe: https://redcoraluniverse.com/en/series...

PODCAST COPY   New Hampshire supremacist Jeremy Kauffman joins me to talk about the psychology of libertarians, Scott Adams's legacy, and how social media is actually real life.   Check out my book, That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: On the Death and Rebirth of Comedy https://amzn.to/3VhFa1r       Watch my sketch comedy streaming on Red Coral Universe: https://redcoraluniverse.com/en/series/the-lou-pe...

On this episode of  The Lou Perez Podcast I'm joined by my friend Robert George : writer, comedian, and Track Star crusher. We talk about mixtapes, New York accents (without New York accents), how my mother published me during Black History Month, and Robert's claim that he is not fellow black conservative Jason L. Riley.   Check out my book, That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: On the Death and Rebirth...

On this episode of  The Lou Perez Podcast I'm joined by my friend Robert George : writer, comedian, and Track Star crusher. We talk about mixtapes, New York accents (without New York accents), how my mother published me during Black History Month, and Robert's claim that he is not fellow black conservative Jason L. Riley.   Check out my book, That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: On the Death and Rebirth...

I'm kicking off the new year with  Justin Kramm , Global Shit Stirrer of Shitshow Creative . We talk about his work in advertising, adopting manatees, The George A. Romero Foundation , and doing mushrooms with gold. I hope you enjoy the episode and be sure to join Justin Kramm's Shit List. Check out my book, That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: On the Death and Rebirth of Comedy https://amzn.to/3VhFa1r...

On this episode of  The Lou Perez Podcast I'm joined by the publisher of Current Revolt, Tony Ortiz . Current Revolt is a Texas-based newsletter, the TMZ of the Lone Star State.   We talked about late Texas Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee berating her staff, a former exotic dancer alleging an affair with a Texas state rep, #Grubgate, and the democrat judge who put on blackface for a panty raid (d...