Wisecrack Edition

How Our Addiction to Consumption Is Killing Us Endless growth is taken for granted as being the sign of a healthy economy. But our obsession with growth isn’t just myopic, but actually dangerous, for ourselves and the planet. Let’s explore the radical alternative of degrowth and consider whether we could ever stop consuming ourselves to death.

How Hawk Tuah Explains Parasociality The phrase “Hawk Tuah” was briefly inescapable in 2024. And the woman behind the meme, Hailey Welch, rocketed to mainstream popularity before introducing a crypto coin that may have been a straight-up scam. So why would people invest their hard-earned money in a not-so-inside joke? Let’s talk about parasocial relationships, and whether they’re good, bad or just plain complicated.

How I Failed an Online Marxism Course After being served an ad for a free course on Marxism, Socialism, and Communism from Hillsdale college over and over, we had to check it out. So Michael signed up and completed the course, and along the way, gained some weird and terrifying insights into the dark underside of the conservative intellectual movement. Check it out for yourself in this video investigation into right-wing American education.

The Silicon Valley Plan to End Capitalism While the billionaires of Silicon Valley might seem like they're pushing capitalism into a brave new world, they're actually trying to move beyond it all together. It's called technofeudalism, and it imagines a world in which powerful corporations and oligarchs replace governments. While it might sound like something out of a dystopian film, we're already living in it. We'll explain in this video on how the tech bros want to re-shape politics.

Why the Generation Wars are Made Up Intergenerational conflict can feel unavoidable, with boomers hating on millennials hating on Gen X. But what if our paradigm for thinking about generations isn’t just cliche, but entirely misguided? We’ll explain in this video on the manufacturing of generational conflict.

Are Family Values Fascist? Recently a number of right-wing figures have become obsessed with children, whether it's having lots of them on their own, or creating a moral imperative for the rest of us to reproduce. So are they just really into the idea of spreading their own genetic code, or is there something more insidious going on? We'll explain in this video on the right-wing obsession with having children.

The Document that Created our Modern Oligarchy In the 1970's a single memo was written that opened up the gates for the full on coprorate takeover of American democracy. It sounds dramatic, but understanding this document can help us make sense of what's happening in America today. We'll explain in this video: The Memo that Changed America.

Hypernormalization: Why Everything Feels So Bad As our political reality gets increasingly surreal and chaotic, it’s becoming harder and harder to make sense of things. But according to the theory of hypernormalization, the lack of a coherent sense is actually the point. And if we look at how this concept was used in the Soviet Union, we might be able to better understand what’s happening in America, and where we’re headed next. We’ll explain in this video on Hypernormalization.

Why Some on the Left Want DEI to End While it's not surprising to see politicians on the right celebrate the continued dismantling of DEI programs, it is surprising to see some on the left agree with them. So are the these progressive figures becoming reactionaries? Or are there good reasons to be skeptical of DEI policies? We'll explain what's really going on in this video on the Left Wing Attack on DEI.

Why American Christians Love Trump American Evangelicals and Donald Trump have always seemed like strange bedfellows, especially as Trump has spent most of his life flaunting the sort of debauchery that Christians usually dispise. But if we look deeper, this strange marriage actually makes a lot of sense. We'll explain in this video on how Trump won the hearts of American Evangelicals.

Did Judd Apatow Predict the Manosphere? While you might not immediately think of Judd Apatow and Andrew Tate at the same time, Apatow's filmography offers a shockingly accurate analysis of both the causes and cures of male loneliness and toxicity. And his earliest screenwriting credit, Heavyweights, might serve as a rosetta stone for understanding his larger project. We'll explain in this video on how Judd Apatow has the cure for male loneliness.

What America Gets Wrong about Mental Health RFK Jr. has some pretty bold takes on mental health, including banning antidepressants and starting wellness camps. But the weird thing is: He’s not 100% wrong. The MAHA movement actually gets a lot right about what’s broken with our mental health care system. It just comes to the wrong solutions. We’ll explain in this video: Mental Health Care is Broken, RFK Jr. Will Make It Worse.

Hey guys - this is our last video, at least in this iteration with this team. We love you all a lot and thank you for all of your support over the years.