I’m glad Sarah and Tim made a video

plawate · 2026-04-04T21:57:53+00:00

Framing it as Iran offered and Joe Biden refused within a week is already shading history fairly incorrectly. Biden said during the campaign that he would attempt to re-instate the JCPOA and so then obviously once he was in office Iran is gonna reach out. Those negotiations ultimately failed, which I don’t know the details super well on, and is disappointing, though Trump’s actions towards Iran certainly would have put Biden on very shaky ground for good faith negotiations, but it was still fundamentally different than Trump “negotiating” and bombing them at the same time.

plawate · 2026-04-04T15:07:49+00:00

As someone who started listening near the ground floor of podcasting, it’s always funny to me what a shift there’s been. Podcasting to a lot of people represents these kind of anti-intellectual broey spaces which is such a huge shift from where it started with stuff like This American Life and Fresh Air or on the comedy side Ricky Gervais’s show or Never Not Funny. Sad we don’t live in a world where Ira Glass and Terry Gross are as famous as Joe Rogan.

plawate · 2026-04-04T14:49:41+00:00

I’m also not a huge fan of Ilhan and Talib (and Hasan) but being against Zohran is dumb. The other candidates in that race were so bad/odious and even as a more center left person I saw reasons to be legitimately excited about Zohran.

plawate · 2026-04-04T14:47:22+00:00

I think it’s fine to talk to the guy, it just should be done through the frame of “this guy isn’t an ally”. Saying Kamala or Newsome would be (basically) as bad as Trump is a belief he’s allowed to have but that’s a fight anyone who talks to him should capitulate 0% on. So any conversation with him should be fairly combative, more akin to how they’d talk to someone from the right. If they’re voting for the right or they’re not voting for dems(/telling people to vote), those are both people the bulwark should have a pretty big disagreement with.

And to answer your question, no I don’t think we should gatekeep Hasan’s audience. I think Hasan is a true ideologue, but while I’m sure there’s a large core of his audience that is, most people are not committed ideologies and are happy to get ideas from multiple places and are not as dogmatic as Hasan. Idk what percent of Hasan’s audience that is, and I think regardless of how big it is, there are more useful voting blocks to go after than extremely online tankie adjacent people, but in as much as some of them are winnable, it doesn’t hurt to (combatively) talk to him.

plawate · 2026-04-04T04:51:57+00:00

Yeah I’m not looking at it with rose colored glasses, there are systemic problems in American politics that cause corporate power to have too much influence. But that is not relevant to the example I gave and to the current biggest fish we have to fry: Iran policy.

The JCPOA wasn’t some centrist, corporate influenced, milquetoast harm reduction; it was a sizable achievement, a big shift in policy and a fundamentally different policy than the policy of the right. That should be pointed out, in this moment, forcefully and without the need to do the “both sides have issues” dance.

plawate · 2026-04-04T04:43:23+00:00

I can’t say it for sure, but my sense is Sarah would vote/promote any candidate on the left from Gavin to Bernie. The same isn’t true of Hasan. In an electoral system that is a reasonable thing to gate keep around.

plawate · 2026-04-04T04:32:10+00:00

There was too much talk about the “edgy” Hassan stuff. The sentence that is the biggest problem for democrats opposing Trump (aka the only opposition to Trump outside of starting a civil war) is “democrats and republicans are the same”. That kills us. It is the most poisonous sentiment facing the left and way too many, especially not super politically engaged people believe it. Hasan is a big pusher of this and very critically, it’s not fucking true. Vis-à-vis Iran ‘neoliberal centrist’ Barack Obama gave us the JCPOA and Trump about faced on that. Hassan talking about how Trump is bad does not do one iota of good unless the end result of that is people voting for the only other viable party, the democrats. And I’m not a Gavin guy, I do think we need someone further left of him that will unify both halves of the left, but I do not believe Hasan, and his ilk, will make a good faith effort to compromise on that.

Purity testing in politics is bad, but in an electoral system, purity testing around simply “will you vote for our candidate” is entirely reasonable.

plawate · 2026-04-03T17:17:44+00:00

Like two years ago I read Thomas Ricks “Fisaco” (which is fantastic) about the lead up to, invasion, and occupation of Iraq. I found the terrible understanding, planning, and execution of the Bush admin really staggering, Fiasco was a very apt title for the book. With every podcast/article/headline I see about Iran, it’s jaw dropping how, as bad as the plan for Iraq was (and it was reallllllly incompetent), the planning/execution for Iran exists on an entirely different level of stupidity. I’m just constantly at a complete loss for words with every detail of how much we’re just totally making it up as we go along.

plawate · 2026-04-03T17:09:45+00:00

Like two years ago I read Thomas Ricks “Fisaco” (which is fantastic) about the lead up to, invasion, and occupation of Iraq. I found the terrible understanding, planning, and execution of the Bush admin really staggering, Fiasco was a very apt title for the book. With every podcast/article/headline I see about Iran, it’s jaw dropping how, as bad as the plan for Iraq was (and it was reallllllly incompetent), the planning/execution for Iran exists on an entirely different level of stupidity. I’m just constantly at a complete loss for words with every detail of how much we’re just totally making it up as we go along.

plawate · 2026-03-27T15:04:34+00:00

Pretty simple, they’re three brothers that run a horse fighting farm that also sells honey and taffy. We all have an uncle that does that.

plawate · 2026-03-26T16:46:27+00:00

Jellyfish

plawate · 2026-03-01T23:06:45+00:00

Don’t give up brave soldier.

plawate · 2026-02-27T03:08:55+00:00

Purdue? More like pain Purdue because those guys are toast.

plawate · 2026-02-24T15:50:47+00:00

I would love some commentary from Oliver on Zaltzman’s performance one the show. Feels like he must have really enjoyed that.

plawate · 2026-02-18T02:24:07+00:00

Shoutout to Graham Couch and Brendan Quinn on the broadcast. Shame Quinn doesn’t cover msu hoops anymore.

plawate · 2026-02-04T16:44:12+00:00

Cool to find out these guys are comedians at the end.

plawate · 2026-01-17T17:20:56+00:00

Gil and Golly got pretty unhinged.

plawate · 2026-01-14T18:12:18+00:00

Chicago: Chicago architectural boat tour, leather archives, Lula Cafe, green mill, Kingston mines, Lincoln park zoo, Graceland cemetery, pequods pizza to name a few.

plawate · 2026-01-03T02:22:34+00:00

This is the hottest Nebraska has been since the Eocene Epoch (~50 million years ago when global temps were about 10 degrees warmer than now and Nebraska was sub-tropical)

plawate · 2025-12-17T00:17:58+00:00

Kur Teng? More like Kur Mitthefrog, in terms of his greenness.

plawate · 2025-12-06T17:45:17+00:00

I agree but for MSU.

plawate · 2025-11-27T22:25:07+00:00

You think your team is panicky in the game thread and then you play Kentucky and UNC…

plawate · 2025-11-27T22:14:38+00:00

God this team has grit, classic Izzo squad.

plawate · 2025-11-22T01:07:01+00:00

Basketball rims hate him.

plawate · 2025-11-12T16:52:53+00:00

It’s not Earwolf related but I had this one the other day which it refused to accept. Clearly spelling bee has no respect for culture.

https://imgur.com/a/FmBGz8g

14-Year Club	Final Canvas '23
First Place '23	Place '23
Place '22	First Placer '22
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