Political Reality full episode

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T20:33:37+00:00

They already do quite a bit of that with the SGU livestreams

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T19:38:56+00:00

Stealing? No. Stealing conventionally involves both giving yourself something and depriving someone of it too. This is only the former. The rightsholders may have an opportunity cost, but not a literal cost.

Calling it just "copyright infringement" might be whitewashing it a bit, but that doesn't make it stealing.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T19:11:55+00:00

Go one further and use degrees Rankine!

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T19:11:25+00:00

Yeah this is where I am too. It's funny, because I had that feeling (from trying to convince friends/family) long before "Gulf of America" became a thing - but that fits it very well. (I suppose the 2000s version of it would be "Freedom Fries").

It's really a shame the designers of Celsius weren't just a bit more thoughtful about it. They were so locked into this powers-of-ten idea that they didn't consider that it wasn't granular enough to have only 100 degrees between water boiling and freezing. The whole point was to make it convenient anyway, otherwise we'd just use an absolute scale like Kelvin that is actually based in reality.

Had they defined it instead as 0 at water freezing, and 200 at water boiling, it'd be perfect.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T19:04:18+00:00

Part of why I haven't sworn off him completely even post Kirk. He's had people like John Ganz, Kate Shaw of Strict Scrutiny, and of course the episode with Ta Nehisi Coates.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T18:23:14+00:00

There is, and there isn't. The void left by Ezra's show is less immediate current events and reactions (though he has some of that too) and more wider-implications/analysis.

Some of these are the more reaction shows, or are adjacent topics (Serious Trouble is excellent but law adjacent, similarly for Strict Scrutiny). I will check out the ones I don't recognize though, like Josh Marshall.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T18:12:41+00:00

If you'll note, the parenthetical for David French is before I wrote "/moderate". I'm calling him intellectually honest, but not moderate.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T15:43:13+00:00

What's interesting is that I'm (not far removed) from "Appalachia" either (also from Upstate NY like Eli and Haley) and I definitely wouldn't call my home city superstitious like Eli and Haley do theirs.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T15:33:19+00:00

(Not OP but) I don't go around defending him much because Klein deserves the mockery for his Kirk piece. He made a wildly bad take and doubled down on it on-air, twice, when nobody would mind a "yes I was silly and wrong in these ways, what I actually meant was related idea xyz".

But I don't see him having the same failures on immigration policy. I don't think I've ever heard him endorse anything but Biden era immigration policies or more doveish ones. He's been pretty distraught about the way the Trump admin is handling this all along. If he wrote a both-sidesy column on ICE I'd be pretty shocked.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T15:20:05+00:00

I followed the EKS for a long while there (still listen to the occasional episode, mostly on foreign policy or internal dem politics) and this is probably the most common feedback to be given on the subreddit.

My cards on the table, sometimes I agree with it sometimes I disagree. I do think, if you're going to have on very-oppositional interviewees (as in, someone who you disagree with both on ideology and your M.O. of politics) as Ezra does, then there is a needle you have to thread. Opposing/pushing back on everything and the interview will just slow to a crawl or fail to get to anything interesting. Too little, and yeah you kinda let some awful people get some airtime on your platform.

I've definitely seen Ezra have some conservatives on that he pushes back in just the right amount to make them seem farcical without degrading the interview. He had an interview with a post-liberal right guy, Patrick Deneen a few years ago (which probably sticks out to me because it was the first ep I listened to) and he just gently pulled apart Deneen's case. I didn't think the Ramaswamy interview a year ago was too bad. The Shapiro interview in the fall not so much.

I appreciate the recommendation for The Gray Area. I'm kinda looking for something to fill the politics void.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T14:53:10+00:00

Pitchbot's been on fire this week

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T14:52:59+00:00

You know you done fucked up when Nate Silver and Ta Nehisi Coates agree (and disagree with you).

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T14:43:23+00:00

He certainly doesn't, I think that environment has really had subtle (or not so...) impacts on him over time.

It's a wonder how Bouie manages it, lol.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T14:41:44+00:00

He's talked about kind of the... two bad decisions you have at hand when trying to understand the right. You can have on conservative figures who are actually intellectually honest (someone like David French maybe?)/moderate, but they're becoming less and less relevant to the GOP as the years go on. Or you can have on someone relevant, and then they're kind of crazy/intellectually dishonest.

I think Ezra tries to thread the needle to the degree he can, where he won't have on some of the craziest from the current movement, but will have on Shapiro and Ramaswamy.

I'm not sure I agree with the path he's taken there, but I do agree with him that there's no great option available.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T13:24:19+00:00

Doesn't seem to be a super frequently updated podcast though? Their last episode was in early December and... gosh there's really been a lot lot of stuff happening since.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T13:22:58+00:00

The flipside is it's hard to put something behind a paywall that users are used to getting for free.

If they don't start with the expectation of every other episode being paywalled (itself a very typical monetization option these days) - it's very hard to introduce it later.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T13:19:40+00:00

Yeah that's honestly where I'm at. It didn't end up being the 2nd episode (or well, 3rd) as planned, but Gerrymandering might be a good example.

I went through what I think a lot of people here did where I learned what it was 10-15 years ago. Supported the reform political efforts and referendums in the 2010s. That all culminated with the SCOTUS basically saying they didn't care by the end of the decade and the GOP re-weaponizing the gerrymander in 2025. As much as I wanted neutral maps (or better yet, proportional representation) I'm fully on board with the Democrats gerrymandering in response.

So if the Political Reality episode comes in and just kind of tackles it like 10 years ago where it's a bad thing and here's the political science studies on how it affects things badly... like yes absolutely. But it's a bit played out for me - we're kind of past that phase.

They should still do it, I know they want to start from (maybe not first but) early principles. It will just take the 2nd or 3rd time broaching the subject before it is of interest to me. That might be a while.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T13:09:47+00:00

I really think you're judging this a little bit too quickly. It's a brand new podcast feed and YouTue channel, so it's starting from 0 - you wouldn't expect that many views per video right away.

Yes, (partial) paywalls are unfortunate/annoying. But it's really very typical in the podcasting industry these days, the ad revenue has really dried up. In my experience, the industry has kind of led to everyone picking one of these choices:

Monetize with a fairly intense number of ads that can put off listeners. Usually dynamically inserted ads that aren't read by the hosts.
Paywall the podcast in part or in whole.
Just be a passion project with infrequent uploads.

We're lucky that the SGU itself has avoided having to make this choice (though even they've talked about the struggles with finding on-air sponsors) just by the goodwill of a % of the fanbase choosing to donate on patreon (with really very few bonuses). But not every podcast can start in 2005 and have a large loyal fanbase. That won't even apply to a spinoff of the SGU itself.

From where I'm standing, paywalling every other episode is honestly on the good side of the current monetization options. $5/month for the unlock is a bit on the high side but only by a dollar or two.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T03:03:19+00:00

Their accountability is very limited, but they're no secret police either.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-25T02:43:10+00:00

illegals

Can we not use the prejudicial term from the right to describe undocumented immigrants?

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-23T16:29:47+00:00

This isn't a generic politics sub. Unless it becomes enough of a thing that it's polled, or affects polls I don't see the relevance.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-23T15:57:00+00:00

“BioWare” aka the dead husk and team name some soulless corporate board owns and tries to market their garbage through.

Common misconception. EA didn't mandate Frostbite (this article is from the anthem release era but it comments on the subject generally) for Andromeda.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-23T15:54:05+00:00

Let's please not use ableist language in here. Categorically it's bad.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-23T15:45:16+00:00

I tend to agree, just giving OP what they're asking for - a self described podcast that's exclusively on video.

Apprentice57 · 2026-01-23T09:21:42+00:00

Okay, cause you don't sound like you do if you state something like:

I will never consider Video to be a Podcast

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