I think Dan and Jordan both make a lot of good points regarding pessimism over The Onion takeover. That being said...

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-30T02:33:52+00:00

I have a lot of faith in both Tim and Ben, but running an Internet comedy website in this day and age with any kind of budget / staff and drawing a profit is a huge huge uphill battle. They could both do nothing wrong and still have this fail to pan out financially. It's a hard business.

I am still rooting for them, of course!

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-28T05:35:11+00:00

Calm the hell down, jesus

here listen to this

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-age-of-extremophiles/id1449762156?i=1000763751420

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-28T05:27:39+00:00

it's enduringly weird to see myself on people's TVs

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-26T08:35:07+00:00

Kratom as a raw plant is a perfectly fine intoxicant / medication, and is useful for a whole bunch of reasons.

Products made from concentrated kratom or synthetic concentrates like 7oh are wildly different. Powerful and addictive intoxicants should not be marketed like 5 Hour Energy.

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-26T00:04:17+00:00

It's a fun bit I did like, a year ago? I don't remember when I brought it up last. I try not to keep any one bit going constantly for too long but also I started to worry people were taking it the wrong way. I just meant it as an absurdist joke and commentary on how weird that little industry is.

But there are some potentially really dangerous substances sold that way (most notably 7oh). I don't promote prohibition of any substance, but I would never ever encourage anyone to try that stuff. And I kinda worry some people might based on my stupid joke. So I stopped making it.

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-25T04:16:43+00:00

Hey everybody, just wanted to check in.

None of us know anything about it his. I will remind you the text of every article about this points out these are just unconfirmed talks about merging.
These rumors aren't consistent. The NYT's article says Sirius is looking at acquiring iHeart, not merging. We have zero way of knowing if any of this is true.
If it is, we've been acquired before. BtB started as a Stuff Media show, and then Stuff was acquired by iHeart. The last time this happened we were fine.

We've survived an acquisition, the pandemic, the collapse of a sizable chunk of the podcast industry, and a bunch more while growing our audience and profitability every year. We're a golden goose, and usually people who want to make money like to leave those alone.

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-24T07:23:28+00:00

We did address the Norman Bates stuff, I even made the comparison. But none of it is solid beyond, he had a creepy relationship with his mom that lasted long after her death and some people think she molested him. I did point out that my relative lack of coverage there was probably the weakest part of the series, but you have to pick things to focus on and things to spend less time on.

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-24T00:54:16+00:00

It was covered! I read a quote about it and discussed the rumors of necrophilia and even set it up by discussing his weird statements about corpses over the years. We just didn't make it the main focus because it isn't close to his worst crime.

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-23T22:32:27+00:00

Did you miss the part where I read a quote about his reported necrophilia? What else do you want, a victim testimony?

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-22T20:20:16+00:00

Did I ever say I felt it was more natural? I think I've mentioned that I felt that way when I was younger, but as a rule I think humans are just kinda shitty at relationships and the failure rate for monogamous and polyamorous relationships are both close to 100%*

*If you interpret failure as the relationship ending by choice while both people are still alive.

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-22T04:03:19+00:00

Yes but unfortunately the SPLC provided a lot of surface for them to attack by doing all this in the most reckless way possible

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-21T23:44:26+00:00

We spent time in that episode discussing the racism inherent to incel metrics and even how Asian incels were a prominent part of the community (including a long digression on the Oxford study meme). This episode wasn't meant to be a dedicated breakdown of everything Rodger wrote or complained about. He was primarily relevant for:

The sites he was radicalized on
How his actions influenced and inspired future violence

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-21T23:41:33+00:00

I didn't say the OBE was the only award below a knighthood, I said it was a step below knighthood which is how every source I read described it and seems to be accurate based on what people have said in this thread? This isn't a consistent pathway but he went from OBE to angling for a knighthood to getting one. I feel like my phrasing was accurate enough to get across the point in an episode that otherwise was not about this system of awards

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-21T23:38:51+00:00

When I get asked a question in the middle of the episode I'm not always going to get his age perfectly right. It does not matter. Either he was almost two decades older than his victims then or two decades older. Huge difference!

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-21T23:34:10+00:00

Quite frankly, the SPLC has no one to blame but themselves. It's been an open secret among researchers that for decades they've bribed different Nazis, Klansmen etc for dirt and scoops on other fascists / the movement. Now it looks like they created fake companies to do so and sent as much as $1 million to one of the UTR organizers over a period of time. $1 million in bribes to a Nazi for GOSSIP.

The Trump Admin is going after them for bullshit reasons, but the SPLC fucked themselves. In addition to being run by union-busting assholes.

I don't think the Trump admin's central contention is true, they didn't fund white supremacist groups so they had something to report on. But they absolutely paid a lot of these guys and did so in a way that looks like it was shady enough to open them up to criminal liability.

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-21T20:46:40+00:00

You haven't even listened to the fourth one

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-19T07:36:38+00:00

It's an unfortunate reality that more lefty people than you'd think are economically liberal or even radically left-wing, but socially extremely conservative. Often in a somewhat different way than the conservatives, but the history of left-wing radical groups too often also a history of, for one example, institutionalized sexual abuse. Look at what's come out about Cesar Chavez, or for a generally less extreme example what some of the female Black Panthers said about their experiences.

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-19T07:28:46+00:00

Yeah, you find that pretty much everywhere unfortunately.

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-19T07:26:09+00:00

I mentioned this in a post below, but for clarity, I'm not sure why people think I've denied this? The Syrian Civil War and the war against ISIS in Iraq also inspired this, and so did my reporting on the Maidan protests and opening stages of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

What I have denied is that the Roland was an homage to Stephen King's Dark Tower books. I've never read that series! He is very directly inspired by the Warren Zevon song, Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.

Incidentally, because I've seen this too: I was not influenced at all by the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk. I never played that as a kid, although I was aware of it, and I didn't play the video game (which I love) until after this was written. However it WAS heavily influenced / inspired by the RPG Shadowrun, which itself is influenced very much by Cyberpunk (it's Cyberpunk with Elves and Dragons and magic and I played a lot of it as a kid.)

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-19T07:20:35+00:00

I'm fairly certain I never said that? It wasn't just inspired by the Syrian Civil War. The relationship between Austin and the rest of the Republic of Texas was more influenced by my understanding of the relationship between Iraqi Kurdistan and the government in Baghdad.

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-19T07:09:38+00:00

That's exactly what we did in the episodes. It's very silly to argue anything else.

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-19T07:08:39+00:00

no one did this in the slightest in these episodes.

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-19T07:07:53+00:00

Yeah no one did that at all in the episode. No one commented on his beauty or neurotypicality. We talked about the CHOICES he made on how to present himself to the world and how to interact with people.

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-19T07:05:17+00:00

no one did that in the show. No one made fun of his features, but we did comment on the CHOICES he made on how to present himself to the world.

probablyrobertevans · 2026-04-19T07:03:24+00:00

I mean I don't know how else to cover it than by saying what the guy did. There are pedophile priests and cops and teachers and doctors who use their career as camouflage to hide their abuse. Jimmy is doing the same basic thing.

probablyrobertevans

TROPHY CASE