Chapo Trap House - 688 - Black Site Safe Space (12/12/22)

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

We review the year in Podcasts, according to the New York Times. Then, Sinema flips, the Young Republicans present the Allen Dulles award, and the CIA has a mental wellness problem. Finally, some movie mindset recommendations for your holiday season. Hell on Earth launch show/party @ Littlefield 1/20/23, tickets here: https://littlefieldnyc.com/event/?wfea_eb_id=479703214227 Matt w/ Talking Simpsons podcast, Live at SF Sketchfest, 1/25/23, tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/talking-simpsons-tickets-210772966617 Hell on Earth Bibliography/Reading List Here: https://www.chapotraphouse.com/hell

Hello, everybody. It's Monday, December 12th, Chapo coming at you. Okay, gentlemen, to start off today's show, I have one question for you. What are you going to do with all that fusion energy? That's right, fusion energy, now a reality. It's real carbon-free energy. It's free. It's infinite. The problems of the world, they're over, folks. We've got fusion power now. Can I show you how I would have done that? Yeah. Brandon may be dividing the races apart, but he's bringing particles together. And for the first time, it's energy positive. He's America's first power grid president who's causing a race war. It's so dumb that he went with we're going to cure cancer as his big fake promise when he was running in the first place.

If he'd said fusion energy, people would have made just as much fun of him, but at least now he'd have been able to be like, aha, fuck you. Well, what if he gets that too? What if? Well, then he's the goat. There's no question. I really love the idea that America, we discover every science thing that we last talked about in 1999. We get completely clean, completely renewable fusion energy. We develop a cancer shot. There's a big ceremony where Brandon is giving medals to scientists. It's the biggest like era for scientific discovery in like a hundred years. And O'Bungler is just in the crowd, balling up his fists, thinking about how he's like, he's like, just signed on to make 50 Netflix documentaries about like a guy who makes hummus.

His only memory from his presidency that we'll live on will be the hip hop barbecue. And the beer summit. Oh, I solved racism. No racial tension. When he brought those guys together to have a blue moon at the White House, that fixed everything. I think having a blue moon, that was that was the mistake. Just keep keep fruit out of beer. That's my want to solve problems in this country. Have a real beer. Get that wheat shit out of here. Blue Moon really should have been the official beer of the Obama presidency. They should have sponsored him because it's like exactly middlebrow. It's perfect for him. Well, you guys excited about this clean energy breakthrough?

No. Why? Why? Because there's no way. There's no way. Not going to happen. I don't know what they did. I'm sure it's impressive. I don't know how it works, but it's not going to do. It's not going to fix anything. They've made it. They got the for the first time ever they were able to generate energy from a fusion reaction, which is, you know, it's like the sun. They've created a new sun. We thought China did it. We thought China did it. But yeah, unfortunately, it's actually US government scientists working to make a new sun. I mean, I personally am excited. I mean, it's either it's a completely renewable like zero waste, totally renewable thing for the energy grid, or it will kill everyone. There's really no

talent. Yeah, no downside either. Like either all the problems are solved regardless. Yeah. Well, one can only one can only hope what all this free clean energy will do for humanity. I just I hope let's get it to market. Let's get it out there now. I will note this was developed by US government scientists at the Lawrence Livermore lab, and strangely not Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. It seems odd to me that they were not the ones to come up with a limitless infinite energy source. Well, I mean, that would be very bad for them to do because how are you going to make money off of that? Literally, it's free. It's like a cancer cure. Like these are all things that kind of cannot be arrived at through profit motivated research.

Well, just to kick off the show and our new free energy future, I thought, look, fellas, it's the end of the year. So what is my favorite thing about the end of the year? It's end of year best of lists. So I thought we would kick off the show today by examining the New York Times list of best podcasts, best of the year. And I just want to just go through it here and just see if we recognize any of these shows. Just just, you know, any thoughts you may have on the best podcasts to listen to out there. Beginning with Articles of Interest, American Ivy. Anyone heard of this one? Oh, love that. That's great. Articles of Interest. Is that like, is that the name of the podcast? And then American Ivy is like, that's like the season they're on? I think so. I think

so. But I mean, if the concept of the podcast is Articles of Interest, then they will be hearing from our lawyers because they ripped that off our show. I like the idea that it's a podcast version of the show Person of Interest only instead of trying to use surveillance technology to stop crimes. They're trying to use it to stop people from writing bad articles. Let's see what the podcast is. It says, I want you guys to just like clock in, just chime in the moment your brain turns off entirely. Okay. So the writer, producer and host Avery Shruffelman has a grand theory about why the same basic clothing items, Oxford button downs, chunky sweaters, press chinos, have remained wardrobe staples for the last half century. In this fascinating and heroically

researched seven part series. Finally, finally, a podcast that stimulates conversation with your least favorite aunt. I've noticed that pressed chinos are always in style. That's awesome. I'm killing myself. I'm imagining a JDAM missile slamming directly into my cock and blowing up my diamonds. This is according to one of the best podcasts of the year is a seven part investigation into why button downs and chinos remain faction staples. It says here, Shruffelman, a former producer and reporter for the podcast 99% invisible, has enough passion and nerve to stitch even unruly threads of race, sex and class into place. So it's interesting for the racial, sexual and class politics of jeans and a t-shirt. Then this is the podcast for you

and Avery Truffleman is the writer, producer. No trauma. Where's the trauma? This is fucked up, honestly. Have you ever said Dominicans wear timeless classics like pressed chinos and checkered trousers? I'd like an investigation on like, you know, people who wear pajama pants, like their regular pants, that type of person. You mean a hero? A legend? No, I would say more like that would more be like, you know, someone who is an adult who manages a Zoom is and like goes to pick up his girlfriend to junior high school. Someone who perhaps follows my chemical romance on tour, that type of someone who has like a squirrel tail on their key chain. Okay, next up on the best of the year podcast list is a show called I was never there. I mean, I've never listened to

this show. I hate this. This is like, let me guess, it's like about a guy from a town who disappeared. This is like one of those true crime podcasts where they try to produce it to make it, you know, make it about as good as an HBO Max prestige crime series. Okay. Okay, Felix, Felix, okay, listen to the description here. The mother daughter duo and hosts Karen and Jamie Zellermeyer bring a personal lens to this homespun investigation into the mysterious disappearance of their friend, Marcia Ferber in 1988. Felix undefeated once again. I nailed it. The thing I would not have guessed would be mother daughter combo, which actually makes it kind of interesting. Because as we know, real chopper fans know this, there's no set of

natural enemies quite like mother and daughter. It's true. They're like cats and dogs. Well, I think perhaps this mother daughter duo put aside their rivalry to disappear their friend, Ms. Faber in 1988. That's right. They dissolved her bones with live. Yeah. They saw the disappearance. They did it. Yeah. And they did it because they knew one day there would be a podcasting and that true crime would be the most popular genre. And then they could make hundreds of dollars doing this and get on the best of the podcast list. Diabolical. I think they would like immediately like if a mother and daughter dissolved somebody's bones and disappeared someone, they would end up, they'd have an argument over like, you know, whether an anthropology gift card

is is still valid. And the argument would devolve within 10 minutes. And they'd be like, well, at least, you know, at least I didn't keep bone fragments in the drains after I sold the house. You know, the cops would be like, wait, what was that? Next up, legacy of speed. You think this is about, you know, sort of a home spun tale about biker crystal math in the 1970s. Now, that sounds too cool. Homes. No, it's definitely not that. No, I'm going to say it's about speed. I'm going to say it's about a family of competitive bicyclists. That's a pretty good guess. I'm going to say it is a retrospective about like a car, some type of car. I'm going to say the Saturn, a Saturn sedan, the fastest car in the world. An oral history of the Subaru and Preza.

Yeah, now that would be pretty good. All of the engineers who helped design the best car that exists. Okay, this is the quickest check out ever. I'm going to read you the description. Malcolm Gladwell is it? Next one. What's it about, though? It's about Tommy Smith and John Carlos, the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, the Black Power Salute. So, you know, at least about sort of an interesting topic in sports history, but I'm sure they'll figure it away to make it. We'll ruin it. Next up is Not Lost. What are we? What do you guys think this show is about? It's about men when they don't look at a map or ask for directions. That's a little one for the ladies. I've, you know, a lot of these jokes have been at your expense. There's one for the men.

We can take it. We can take it out and we can take it, too. That's what makes us awesome. Not Lost. It's about how men throw out their wives' bones after they kill them. I didn't lose them. I threw them out. Not Lost. It's about the disappearance of Melissa Farber, killed by a mother and daughter. The body is not lost because they know exactly where it's buried. I know. The travel show isn't an obvious genre for podcasts. Trips for pleasure are often about the visuals, especially in the Instagram age, but this innovative new series captures the magic of both its category and its medium. Brendan Francis Noonam, the host and a rotating cast of partners in many of the best episodes,

the writer Daniel Henderson, parachute into a new place, Mexico City, Montreal, Boseman Montana, and try to make friends. The social imperative Noonam's semi-formal objective in each locale is to get invited to someone's home for dinner, steers the show into unexpectedly suspenseful territory. With the help of creatively deployed sound design, episodes simulate an alternatively alienating and sublime experience of inhabiting a strange land. I don't really like that because he's probably interacting with a lot of cultures where it's illegal to not have somebody over for dinner, which is like most cultures that aren't American or English or German. That's like every culture but ours, really. Yeah. Yeah. Explain with house money.

Yeah. Oh, isn't this amazing? I walked into somebody's house in fucking Guadalajara, and I didn't have my cock out, and they invited me for dinner. Well, yeah, that's how everyone who isn't us acts. I think the climax of this podcast series is trying to do this in Sweden where it's illegal to invite someone to your house for dinner. Feed a stranger. I really like that they do that because that was one of the war. That was like a big fear I had when I was a kid, having to eat someone's. God, a lot of people just cook gross meals, okay? I would rather not eat. Having to eat out of social obligation a gross meal is very stressful. Yeah. Have you ever had like a really like gray pan-fried burger with a side of pickles for dinner? That was worse than

if I had gotten abducted. That was actually worse. I processed that memory like I got abducted. No offense did if you're the mom who made that. You're listening. But actually, yes. Everything that went wrong in my life is because of that. Fuck you. I would listen to the show if you find out halfway through that the guy's a vampire and he's drinking their blood at the end of the meal. That would be awesome. Oh, yeah. And he has to get invited in. Yes, he has to get invited in. Like those stories out of Sweden where like you'd go to your best friend's house and then like their parents would cook dinner for him and not you and then they would just leave you your own devices to play video games. I mean, what's not to like? That sounds awesome. That sounds perfect.

Yeah. You have to make awkward conversation or eat their gross food. Okay. Moving on, the next show is called Pivot. Pivot. Something about some disastrous tech company. Yeah. Yeah. It's like an oral history of like, I don't know, Zappos or something. Yeah. That's what I'm assuming. Is that Kara Swisher's show? Yes. This is Kara Swisher's podcast. So it is tech-related. Kara Swisher's suite. It's an oral history about the blunt wrap she invented. That sounds great. Yeah. I would listen to that show. It says, in podcasting, as in love, chemistry sometimes strikes in surprising places. Exhibit A is this twice-weekly talk show hosted by two charismatic business analysts. Okay.

Okay. Checking out. Checking out. Moving on. Reveal after Iyosa Tinapa. Is that part of the title? No, no. This is the next podcast. The next podcast is called Reveal After Iyosa Tinapa. Okay. Should I know what that is? I mean, this is some horrible kidnapping in Massacre in Mexico. Okay. All right. Oh, I remember this. Is this the teachers or the teaching students? Yeah. Devastating mass kidnapping incident in rural Southwest Mexico was left unsolved by local and federal officials in 2014. Yeah. This is like, this seems like actually like a worthwhile true crime investigation because that case is still horrifying. Yeah. Horrifying and

officially unsolved, I guess. Moving on. Next one. I'm there and a bunch of people for it, but I don't know if there's ever been an actual reckoning with how it happened. I guess I could listen to the podcast and find out. Next up on the best of lifts is a show called Rumble Strip. This is the show about having 1950-style gang fights. That would be cool. How to use a bike chain, a flick knife, you know, grease your hair, things like that. It's only about cars. It's only automotive. What is it? This majestic, long-running and hard-to-classify series is ostensibly about the everyday lives of everyday residents of the state of Vermont. Checking out. Checking out. Moving on.

New Englanders need to get the fuck over themselves. Oh, congratulations. You've got fucking trees to change color. Oh, my God. Let me suck your dick for eternity. It says here, to listen to Heilman's lyrical yet matter-of-fact reporting on a teenage student body president who took his own life or a lifelong dairy farmer's 11-year friendship with a black bear or the adolescence of a neighbor as recorded over seven years of conversations, is to imagine a better world in which her clones are dispatched to every town, state, and country. So get on cloning that podcast host and sending her to record the various suicides and quiet desperation of every New England town. That is brutal.

Okay. Next up, the next show is called Unexplainable. Unexplainable. Investigation into squirting. What is it? Does it come from? No, it's actually something similar. It says here, where did the moon come from? What sounds did dinosaurs make? Does anyone know how smell receptors actually work? In this weekly science series, Noah Hasenfield, Brian Resnick, and Meredith Haudenot and the explainers at Vox. Okay. Moving on. Brain turned off. Sounded kind of cool for a second, but nope. All right. Next up is a podcast called Vibe Check. I'm done at this point. I'm out. It says the author and poet Saeed Jones and the audio journalist Sam Sanders and theater producer Zach Stafford bring their real life friendship and group chat

transcripts to thoughtful and endearing talk. Okay. It was the group chat transcripts. Yeah. Yeah. They were in group chat one day and they're sending gifts and they're like, this should be a podcast. One guy's a theater producer. That makes it even better. Wow. Amazing. Last on the list is Welcome to Provincetown. Any thoughts about where this is going? If it's, is it about, wait a minute, Provincetown. That's the gay Mecca, right? It's the gay Fire Island or was it? Okay. Yeah. Something gay. Gay themed something. That's all I'm going. That's all I can get. I don't know. Mitra Kaboli is 10-part documentary series chronicling the life of Matt Christman. No. Wow. What a surprise. There we go. Who would

have thought? I know it says here, chronically one summer in Massachusetts, gay beach side Mecca. Okay. So it's not Fire Island. I'm thinking of something else of gay beach side Mecca is filled with intimate scenes and unforgettable character studies or unforgettable characters. Kaboli, a P-town Neophyte and listener surrogate embedded four months with seven of the tens of thousands of seasonal residents who arrive annually in search of romance, fame, or sanctuary. Their story is supported with evocative sound design and editing. Check it out there. As soon as they talk about evocative sound design and editing, that's when I know you're in the realm of bad podcasting. It's like, I hate that when there's like, yeah, they act out like a real person.

They're like, and he was a, he was a cobbler. And then they do like shoemaking noises. And he's like, they have to say something like on the nose that like no one would say in real life where he's like, well, I'm just a cobbler. And then it's just, that's the shoemaking machine. I sure hope I can get out of this sleepy vacation town and self actualize the person. People are like, wow, that's great sound design. It's evocative. Like, you know, a lot of the times a cobbler can fix a hole in your shoe, but sometimes you also fix a hole in your soul. Yeah, yeah. And then you hear like, you know, little string music in the background, then it just like, just, you know, just, just too many just so slices of life from the world of, of

Provincetown, the gayest place on earth, or any place that Matt Christmas isn't in. No, no, no, no. All right. So that according to the New York Times, the 10 best podcasts of the year, I would say other than that, I can't wait. I'm going to check out all of them. They sound interminable. I do think that like for, okay, if you are the type of person that like you only listen to podcasts that like the New York Times recommends, those probably are like the best podcast though. You know, yeah, like they're not, they're not going to be listening to like podcasts about list or E one. Like those that is, if that's how you get your podcast, you are not going to enjoy those shows, my opinion. No, but you're going to have a good time with these guys

with the, you're going to love getting your vibes checked. Well, I guess vibe check is like your come town. You're like, oh, that shows like a little bit crazy. That shows a little too crazy. They said Elon Musk has incel energy. That's a little too nuts. But actually, again, again, you know, it vibe, vibe shift is known as the side Joan show now on. So just let's be clear here. Oh, they changed the name. Okay. Yeah, that's that's come down then. That's that if you're in New York Times, if you take their cultural recommendations on their face and don't just make fun of them, that is your come down. Well, some some some good podcasts you can listen to other than the one you currently are. All right, moving on to the the news of the week, I suppose the the major

political news is Kristen cinema of becoming an independent. I don't have much to say about this story. I don't think it'll really affect much. She's still going to vote the way she always does. So I mean, I don't think I don't think this is really gonna I mean, is this trying to her stave off getting primaried in the next yeah, she's got terrible polling against any any statewide Arizona Democrat who would want to challenge her. So she's more popular in Arizona among Republicans. She thinks she I think she's thinking she could pull a Lieberman, but Arizona is not Connecticut. There's the Republicans are going to want their own person and she's cooked. That'll just be a Republican seat. Yeah. And I also it would be one thing if Arizona was more of a toss

up. But I don't know, I would say Arizona, I would put it as like leaning Democratic for like every election from here on out pretty much. Yeah, but like Connecticut's like Connecticut's been a solid blue state for generations. Like the Republican Party has in Connecticut, when they had the chance to vote for Lieberman as an independent, they were like thrilled to have a chance to defeat a Democrat. They're not the Arizona Republicans don't feel that way. They're gonna want their own person. Well, it's also like a new era of politics, you know, it's either like you're against like the satanic pedophiles or you're not, you know, there's no there's no way to be like moderate on that. Yeah, I see the good and the bad in the satanic pedophile cabal.

I mean, I think the only thing of note in this story is that by becoming an independent, this cinema moves but one just just an inch closer to a certain square jawed senator from Utah, who is quite enamored by this kooky lady. And I think this could be a story for the ages. Well, yeah, I guess I guess this is like, you know, if we put it in sort of like indie movie parlance, I think Mitt Romney has been watching a lot of movies with Parker Posey in them, because he's like, oh, she reminds me of someone. Oh, I wonder who, Mitt. But this is the part in every mumblecore early 2000s indie movie where the quirky girl almost gets shamed out of town. And the square jawed hunk is like, don't don't let them tell you that you have to leave

Provincetown, you know, whatever weird ass New England town we're in, this mumblecore indie movies. And it's sort of like a like she's all that, you know, like the sort of teen romance where like Chris and Senate will take off her glasses and Mitt Romney will realize that she's actually really hot. No, I would say it's the opposite. I would say if she just appeared as is, he like, yeah, you're right. He wouldn't be into her. Yeah. But when she puts on like, you know, cat eye glasses and a polka dot like Panama hat and a maxi skirt, that's sort of patterned with a Roman centurion pattern. He's like, wow, she's the hottest woman ever and would never. Well, like for a good Mormon guy like him, that's just about the craziest chick you can think of. But

like, what if, okay, what if she goes in the other direction and like Dizer hair black and starts wearing wearing eyeliner and like listening to the Smiths and stuff where she comes like a like a got got GF for Mitt Romney. I think I want to appeal to him. No, because he's probably like met a lot like he's probably seen that a lot. Like that's probably one of the only way that was probably like the only way to like rebel in Utah for the longest time. He's like, he's definitely seen that before. He never, he never saw a girl like Kristen Sinema though. Well, best of luck to her in her new independent position. But yeah, you know, so she'll be doing she'll be just being independent. So congratulations to Kristen Sinema. But as long as we're talking about satanic pedophiles,

I do want to bring up the dinner party held over the weekend by the New York Young Republicans Club right here in Manhattan. They had their annual grooming gala and then boy auction at the end of the night. I just, there's just a write up of this and there's just one element from the coverage of this gala grooming gala that I'd like to share with you guys. It involves our old friend, Pete's a gate Jack Prilosec. And I just want to read you here. It says here, Pesobiac, a radical right political operative resides with his wife Tanya and Hanover, Maryland. The couple took the couple took an Amtrak Northeast regional train into New York's Penn Station Moynihan Hall on Saturday afternoon to get to the NYYRC gala. Train 88. That's pretty

funny. Train 88 to the Nazi dinner party. Pulled in at around 3.45 p.m. and a hate watch reporter observed Pesobiac and his wife de-bored and entered New York City. Antifa, don't even think about it tonight. Pesobiac posted to Twitter three hours later at 6.39 p.m. with the location of the tweet marked Manhattan, New York. All right, now here's the interesting thing that I want to take note of. The New York Young Republicans Club gave Pesobiac a speaking slot and the Allen W. Dulles Award named after the former head of the CIA. The New York Young Republicans Club said in a December bulletin that the award is given to an individual who embodies the virulent anti Marxist spirit of Dulles. So I just like the idea of the, you know, the anti-Deep State

sleuth being given the Allen Dulles Award at the New York pedophile gala. Dulles was the first white hat capol guy, obviously. Kennedy was clearly, he was going too far into the, he was getting too many second helpings at the buffets, if you know what I mean. It seemed like a fun night though, a fun night for, and then there also talks about this guy, you know the guy, Josh Hammer, who like Newsweek put in charge of their political coverage to be to be the based news weekly. It's sort of a little here it says, starting in May 2020 after editor Nancy Cooper and chief content officer, Dayan Kandapa, brought political activist Josh Hammer to run Newsweek's opinion section. The 90-year-old publication has emerged as a hub for opinion pieces

authored by radical right activists. Newsweek has published the Pesobiac as well as the 2020 election lie pusher Raheem Qassam in recent years and Hammer has also hosted both of them on his Newsweek branded podcast. The three men sat together talking and laughing at table number six during the New York Young Republicans Club event near the stage. When QAnon influencer turned congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene took the stage, Hammer stood up and applauded. When she endorsed former president Trump as her 2024 candidate of choice, Pesobiac turned to Hammer and Grind. In January, Florida governor Ron DeSantis invited Hammer on the tour of his office and the Florida-based Newsweek editor has since hyped DeSantis as a potential presidential

candidate. You going to go up there, Josh? Pesobiac chided Hammer about Greene's endorsement of Trump, a listening laughter from the table. A hate watch reporter approached Hammer after Greene's speech, made an introduction and asked if he knew Peter Brimlow of V-Dare. He's right here, right now, Hammer asks with excitement. I didn't even know he was here, Hammer said of the infamous white nationalist publisher. I'm going to say hi. The hate watch reporter asked Hammer how he got his job at Newsweek and the reporter and the opinion editor abruptly stopped talking. He asked the reporter to identify himself again. When the reporter did, Hammer's expression slackened. He quickly claimed he did not know Peter Brimlow and left.

Just a little bit about Josh Hammer. The only thing I'll say about Josh Hammer is, please do yourself a favor and just Google image search Josh Hammer to see what this guy looks like. I mean, that name makes him sound pretty cool. I cannot do justice to thinking about Josh Hammer unless you simply Google what he looks like. Imagine a regular Orthodox Jewish guy, but a little bit damper, perfectly light bulb-shaped head. All right. Well, moving on, I have a reading series for you guys today. This one was from the other week, but I made sure to keep this one in my back pocket because it involves a topic that we love talking about. Matt, you brought up none of the New York Times best podcasts of the year seemed to deal with trauma

of any kind. There was no trauma check. It's pretty messed up. Do better. Come on, podcasters. Well, here is an article about trauma. It's about the trauma of a very specific subset of people. That's right. Those who work in clandestine intelligence services because, look, they got the healthcare bill for Havana syndrome and nothing else, but in the healthcare bill, there was not enough for their mental trauma and anxiety. This is an opinion piece in Politico titled, Don't tell your non-work friends about the decapitations. Working in the intelligence community often means living with trauma. We can't pretend it doesn't exist. This is by Heather. No, I insist. I am the one insisting that there's no trauma involved.

It says this is by Heather Williams as a senior policy researcher at the Nonprofit Nonpartisan Rand Corporation. She formerly served as a deputy national intelligence officer for the National Intelligence Council and spent 13 years working in the intelligence community. She would now like to tell you about her trauma. So the article begins, many people grow up wanting to be secret agents. I fell into the field somewhat by chance, though it turned out I was good at it and advanced quickly. Less than a year into the job, I volunteered to deploy to Iraq, where the US was hunting down terrorists like Abu Musab Al-Zarkawi and dismantling al-Qaeda organizations. I learned how to fire a rifle, ram a car,

search my vehicle for bombs, and withstand torture. So right off the bat, she's saying she volunteered to go to Iraq and fight al-Qaeda there. That's the hero. We love her. But one night in the US, while sitting down at a restaurant with my non-work friends, I too casually mentioned that suicide bombers tend to decapitate themselves in their attacks. A suicide vent tends to destroy the neck and send a head to ceiling. My friends turned to me with horror and shock. I was reminded that I shouldn't talk about this part of my life with my normal friends. You mean your lame friends, fucking losers. That's like, that is an incredibly cool thing to hear from somebody. Yeah, who wouldn't be interested in that factoid that often suicide

bombers' heads are perfectly preserved after obliterating the rest of their body? I bet these people were like, ah, too much information. Yeah, your problem is you need better friends. Get out of here. This is like when you leave the invaders in for them and start talking to people outside of it. I think that's why they all have to give themselves tactical tummy aches with fake Havana syndrome because their friends are too lame. Yeah, it did say she was trained to withstand torture, but apparently she can't withstand a dinner party. Come on. They got to update the SEAR manual to include that, like having your anecdote not land at a dinner party. A portion of US intelligence professionals are in the military, but many are civilians. That doesn't

stop them from serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a host of other dangerous places. Many, like I did, wear a Kevlar helmet and body armor, carry a loaded weapon, and are classified legal combatants. Others watch hours of beheading videos to identify ISIS trademarks, conduct heart-breaking searches for POWs, or identify human remains at the sites of terrorist attacks. Well, if it's a suicide bomber, it'll be pretty easy to identify the remains. Just find the head and, you know, just match it to the driver's license. Easy. Part of what's traumatizing is watching hours of beheading videos to identify ISIS trademarks. I mean, I think after one, you pretty much get what the trademark is. Cut the guy's head off. Cut the guy's head off. Yeah. Pretty one mark. I

got to say the cartels are way more showmanship. A lot of more variety there, although they're pretty good. Chain sign once in a while. Machete. Yeah. Dole machete. But yeah, no, I just like the idea. I mean, yeah, that's a job that would give anyone trauma. I got to be an ISIS video completist. I got to see it all. This is the same trauma that Facebook moderators in the Philippines have. Only they're paid like five cents a day. And knowing they don't get to get free health care for life because they slept too close to some crickets. When you see when you see a non-ISIS guy use an ISIS trademark in a beheading video, do you get to like DMCA them? Hey, come on now. Making money off my content. Sending a copyright strike to the Sinoloa cartel.

Yeah. Imprisoning on ISIS trademarks. Okay. It says, in our line of work, being exposed to violent and traumatizing events all day is routine. I mean, I mean, I once again, it's like being exposed to violent and traumatizing events. It's like rather than just doing violent and traumatizing events. Yeah. It's kind of like Willie Wonka talking about how he's exposed to candy. Yeah. Exposed to violent and traumatizing events all day is routine. And then we leave the office to go home to our family. It's a life that we signed up for, but it doesn't mean that there aren't real consequences for too long. The real consequences being that you feel bad about yourself. Not that dozens of people use torture that you oversaw personally. It says here,

it's a life that we signed up for, but it doesn't mean there aren't real consequences. For too long, the intelligence community has ignored that reality to the detriment of both its people and the country they serve. Fortunately, there's still plenty that can be done. They already got the Havana syndrome money. What else do they fucking want? Jesus Christ. Matt, that's to stop the invisible cricket lasers from cooking their internal organs. But you can't, that doesn't heal the soul. I like this subtext of this. It's completely preventable for me to feel bad about my job that I'm supposed to feel bad about. Hey, you know that basic human fundamental sense of right and wrong that is just screaming at every

moment because of the job I do? Is there some sort of pill I could take? Some sort of subsidy you could give me to just wipe that out, please? So I can do my job more effectively for the American people. Yeah. I get a, I think the best website on the Internet is Quora. I signed up for Quora so I can get daily emails of what the trending questions on Quora are. But this is such a Quora question. I work at the CIA and I'm feeling a symptom similar to guilt, but I don't think it's guilt. What is it? Shout out Alex Pitek and Jeremy and their show Quora Raiders that I went on last week that featured a Quora question. Well, anything bad happened to me if I throw up a gang sign for fun? Goddamn. Quora is so good. There's another, we did another Quora question

was that like, if an anaconda has wrapped itself around your torso, can you bite the anaconda as a last resort to get out of its death threat? Good question. The answer is no, you can't. It will do nothing. It will only hasten your death. I mean, you might as well try at that point. What else you got? Nothing. You got nothing. Yeah. Actually, I might try to bite just to like get more air out of my lungs so that I die quicker so that I'm not still alive when its mouth goes over my head. Yeah, that would sound like that. I like the idea that someone asked that question wall wrapped. Oh God, I hope there's somebody online right now who has experience with this. Yeah, I have to I have to ask like a guy like a computer programmer from Myanmar,

like the only people who answer questions in earnest on Quora, people from the subcontinent. God bless them. They have more of like a civic, they're more civic minded than like any America. They're trying to help. They literally are though. They literally are. And they there are so many questions that are like such clear like, you know, it's like a like probably like a 13 year old being a smart ass. You know, it's like the type of thing me and my friends would ask when we were that age. It'll be like, oh, I like I touched my penis and something came out. But the actual response will be like, what you're experiencing is ejaculation. You probably saw a semen on the ground, if not

key. What color was it? Like it's it's I think if Elon Musk was a true Internet connoisseur, he would have bought Quora. Yeah, Twitter. Yeah, if he really wants to save the world, to helpful hints and advice, better than just yeah, driving them insane with this is about this is about saving civilization. Because if woke ism compels young people to think that they can get out of an anaconda wrapping themselves around their bodies by gnawing on its flesh, then I mean, our humanity doesn't have much of a future. Let's put it that way. No, let's see. So it says here, yes, for too long, the intelligence community has ignored that reality to the detriment of both its people and the country they serve. Fortunately, there's still plenty

that can be done. Trauma is defined as actual or threatened death, injury or violence. But there is also secondary trauma, the repeated or extreme indirect exposure to adverse details of a traumatic event during the course of professional duties. The latter has been recognized as a problem in other professions. And in the narrow case of intelligence officers who operate drone aircraft, but is rarely talked about broadly in the intelligence community. When I came back from my deployments, I had one admittedly pro forma and superficial required meeting with a psychologist. But no one ever checked in on me about my feelings on more than a decade of work immersed in violent topics. Oh my God, just drink yourself to death like a real spook for Christ's sake. James Jesus

Angleton is weeping into his fifth martini of the day in hell. Pathetic. No, but I like this, he says, the way she phrases this, that no one checked in with me about my feelings after more than a decade of work immersed in violent topics. Yeah, that's just like she's like a moderator on the torture forums. She's like, I gotta, I gotta wait into this topic again. The intelligence community doesn't have a good understanding of how prominent these problems are, particularly the impact of indirect trauma, or how to shift to a more proactive approach to addressing trauma exposure. At Rand, where I now work, we've been looking at the risks of lasting trauma on those who do intelligence work. We interviewed middle and senior managers from multiple agencies and

found that there are some mental health supports available for intelligence professionals, but they appear underutilized and may not be equipped to meet the true scale of the need. That would be a damn shame if they couldn't meet the true scale of the need. Is this the jobs everyone's going to have in the future? You're either an app slave or you're the personal, uh, uh, consoler of deep state murderers? Is that it? That's your only non-app related job is they call you up in any hour of the night and you're like, no, you're a good person. The fingernails grow back. It's fine. More broadly, the intelligence community lacks a culture of mental wellness.

I think that's my favorite sentence that I've read this year. DJ, run that back. More broadly, the intelligence community lacks a culture of mental wellness. Uh, yeah, you know, um, when the third Iraqi cab driver who was sold to us, begged for his life in one of our torture dungeons, I thought that the culture there was really affecting my wellness. See, this is why you need these people to be immersed in occult practice and to do like overt ritual abuse, because if they don't, they just become these embarrassing dorks. You have to like lean into the evil. Yeah. You're not going to win the Alan Dulles award with this, with this private b-worship.

Uh, because we found there's a poor understanding of the risks, particularly of secondary trauma among all levels of staff. I love it. It's like, yeah, we're all aware of the risks that like someone may kill me for all the evil I do in the world, but no one really prepared me for the secondary trauma caused by all the evil and suffering that I inflict on other people. That means individuals may fail to recognize the effects of distress or they may lack the vocabulary needed to describe their feelings so as to effectively seek care. Intelligence professionals adhere to a strict code of ethics which includes remaining neutral when informing policymakers about issues. This makes them party

to life and death decisions, but without the agency to determine their outcomes. They must defer to policymakers about whether, for example, the US will act to prevent atrocities they anticipate. Missing something too can bring on a sense of guilt and blame. God, I hate, I hate working in the intelligence community and being riven with guilt about all the atrocities I stopped. I could have stopped from happening, but didn't. I mean, that's, yeah, it's a put, yeah, that's, oh, it's, it's, it's like, uh, yeah, my biggest flaw is that I'm too much of a perfectionist. I work too hard at my job. Yeah. Intelligence professionals can also experience moral injury and less understood of trauma. Moral injury stems

from failure to prevent or bearing witness to acts that violate their deeply held moral beliefs and expectations. This can happen when intelligence programs overstep their authorities and violate civil freedoms or even when those in a position of political power fail to protect secrets obtained through great risk and sacrifice. Julian Assange did somewhat, he caused so much trauma to so many intelligence workers. Oh my God, they're just, there's so much imposter syndrome caused by that. I think we should, I think we should, okay, like, as, as a way to heal their trauma, I think we should stop calling them derogatory things like spooks or spies or war criminals. I think, you know, they should be called torture workers.

Torture work is work. Torture work is work. The intensity of the job can compound damage from trauma exposure, both deployed and at home. I worked long hours on rotating ships, factors that can be more detrimental to mental health and direct combat exposure. So she's saying working long hours in an office can be more traumatic than direct combat exposure. Wait, dodging mortars. Oh man. Poor management and toxic work environments, which are sadly too common in the intelligence community, can exacerbate the risk. Folks, the CIA is a toxic work environment and they, they have to do better. They have to do better. I'm a bisexual torture worker with mental health problems as of my toxic

work environment. Stigma is a well-recognized hindrance to seeking mental health care, but intelligence officers may further worry that seeking help, even through official channels, could compromise their security clearance. Yeah, no shit. You start to ask the official CIA fucking psychologists. They're like, hey, I'm starting to feel bad about some of the things I've seen and done. You think that will hinder your career? You think you'll get the promotion that you're hoping for? You know what? You sound stressed. Why don't you take these tickets to see a magician in New York City? We've got you a new... Hey, look, stressed out torture workers. We've got you a new self-driving Tesla that's networked with our computer servers.

It'll get you to your therapist's office or off a bridge if needed. Well, Michael Hastings' prescription says they are often, they are often legally prohibited from talking about their professional experiences with their family and friends, which could typically be an important support network for someone experiencing trauma. The effects ripple through these agencies, which are vital to U.S. national security. Employees suffer from depression and substance abuse or reduce productivity and professional burnout. Oh, God. Can't have that. Use productivity at the torture factory. That can prompt unnecessarily high staff turnover, which has higher stakes in a sector

where people require costly security clearances and depart with a head full of secrets. One positive note is that the intelligence community isn't the first to deal with these problems. It is simply late to doing so. There is a wealth of applicable literature on trauma risks for the military first responders, journalists, and other professions, but intelligence leaders must be willing to dedicate attention and resources to the problem. The intelligence community needs to communicate to its workforce about the varied forms of trauma, how it affects individuals and what resources exist to help. And employees won't seek that help if they fear it will cost them their jobs. So intelligence officials need to ensure policies are clear,

available, and protect staff appropriately seeking care. Lastly, the community should research how to design and implement programming that will cultivate an environment of mental wellness. Well, I'd like to just recommend a wonderful program. It's about the lives of people in Vermont. It's about the student body president. It's about the local guy who keeps his Christmas lights up all year round. We use a lot of heavy editing and audio design to bring their stories to life in a way that you'll feel that trauma melting away and you'll want to live in that small Vermont town. I am luckier than most. My parents are social workers and I grew up in an environment where feelings, even the dark ones, were seen as healthy. My husband has experienced

war. I don't feel I have to hide my emotional scars from him. As time has passed, I tell myself it has gotten easier. But in truth, I am just less frequently confronted with reminders of my deployment. I continue to research some of the world's ugliest problems and resilience and hardiness are requirements of the job. But even now, I sometimes feel myself approach the fraying edges of my own emotional capacity. Folks, she's out of spoons. The spoons are gone. The spoons are gone. Fortunately, there's a rich spoon deposit in an unstable African country. We're going to send you there to just drop a bunch of opium and underage children on top of some warlords so that we can get access to them. And finally, that secret agent job you

might have imagined. There are days it is adrenaline filled and even glamorous. It is also isolating and relentless. It inflicts mental and emotional costs. The consequences of ignoring those can be tragic either individually or to the nation. Protecting the intelligence workforce can help protect us all. There we go. All right. Yeah. The hug boxes for CIA operatives. That's what they need. Like just a robot that hug. They could repurpose the drowning robots to also hug them. All right. We'll get some time to wrap up the rest of the show. Do you want to just dip back into the The New York Times best of lists and take a look at what they think are some of the best? What else is going on? Yeah, sure. Movies or TV shows? Those are fire podcasts. I can't

wait. I'm going to listen to all of them as soon as we're done here. So I need to know what shows to watch, too. So these are the best movies of 2022. All right. Let's go. This is Minola Dargis and A.O. Scott. Minola Dargis. Let's see. Her list. The number one best movie of the year is a movie called E.O. I have no idea what that is. Okay. Any guesses? Any guesses what E.O. is about? E.O. Is it like two letters? It's just two capital letters. E.O. It's the prequel to when old McDonald got a farm when he was young. Actually, that is what it is. Felix, did you know what this movie is? No. Is that actually it? Yep. I'm going to kill myself. Soon after this indelible heartbreaker opens, a little circus donkey called E.O.

named for the sound he makes sets off on a strange at times phantasmagoric adventure. Along the way, he encounters other animals, but more consequently, kind and cruel people whose treatment of him reflects the denatured world that we have made. So this is a story about a circus donkey, Felix. So you're right. This is basically a prequel to old McDonald had a farm. Wow. Movies are just getting better. You're already great. Just getting better. I mean, I'm sort of surprised that there's now two donkeys and they're running for best actor this year because, you know, Jenny, the donkey and banshees of inner Sharon. I thought that was the best donkey performance of the year, but I have yet to say E.O. Next up in a movie called

Petit Maman. What? Petit Maman. Who the fuck is that? Is that a guy, too? Is that an animal? Is that a bedraggled skunk? Who is that? Petit Maman is set largely in and around a house nestled in the woods. Skiyama's Luliputti in Torta Forest is a wittily modern fairy tale and model of elegant narrative economy. And it's charming center as a young girl who, together with another new acquaintance, ventures forth on a modestly scaled yet expansive journey filled with the lights and enchantment. One that finds our little heroine embarked on the greatest, most mysterious adventure of all. Love. Streaming on Hulu. No, thank you. No, thanks. Next up, three. Nope. Nope. This is the movie people probably have seen and heard of. Nope. I thought it was not

very good. Yeah, it did not blow me away. There were good parts in it. I liked seeing Michael Wincott back in movies again, but there are parts I liked about Nope, but it just didn't really cohere into any... What did you say about Nope is that Jordan Peele has to have his metaphors taken away from him. Yeah, he loves the metaphors, and he's just clearly anxious about letting anything settle into a coherent thing, because then it can be observed, so he just wants to let it float all over the place, and then you basically dares you to say it's not good. Next up is a movie called No Bears. Well, I mean, we're already off the bat. I'm not like this movie at all. You're guaranteeing that the movie is not going to have one of the best things that

a movie can have is a fucking bear. That's usually true, Save for the Revenant, which was... That was not good. No Bears. It says here, for years, the veteran filmmaker Panahi, a longtime critic of the Iranian government... Okay, I won't be seeing this movie. Yeah, get out of this propaganda. It's slendering the Islamic Republic. CIA operation. I have no interest in seeing this. Next up is Kimmy by Stephen Soderbergh. This is a movie I actually did see. It was pretty good. I enjoyed it. I don't know if it was the best movie of the year, but it was sort of... That's a wild thing to put on your list, but... Internet post COVID rear window, but it was thrown on. I watched it on a streaming website,

and that seemed appropriate, and to me, that means it's not really a movie. But Stephen Soderbergh, it's always nice to see his little formal experiments, and the guy's very varied in his output. Next up, we got The Eternal Daughter by Joanna Hogg. Every mother's worst nightmare. This daughter just won't die. Can't get rid of her. This one is with a stunning Tilda Swinton who plays both mother and her adult daughter, and this beautifully controlled, affecting story about memory and grief. Wait, so this is some fucking awards-baked clumps shit here?

That is the most... Tilda Swinton is the clumps? Dude, that is the most fucking girlfriend movie I've ever heard of. That is like the platonic ideal of a movie a girlfriend forces you to watch. If there exists a platonic ideal of a YouTube video of a boyfriend forces a girlfriend to watch, where it's like Hitler's top 10 most evil cards. This is the female equivalent. They both exist in polar opposites of the realm.

And you have to sit through with them to prove your devotion to the relationship. I saw a tweet the other day from a young lady who said, the worst thing I ever had to do to get dick was watch DJ Vlad interviews. Oh no, is this about me? You know, it's like one of those things, it's like it's a test, you know? Every young lady you bring back, you throw in the Soulja Boy interview. If she's not vibing with it, then you know, it's the bad news. Everyone likes the Soulja Boy interview where he claims that he shot

five people in self-defense in a home invasion. So I looked over to Abraham and I said, give me the clock, bow. Yeah, he describes killing six people during a home invasion in his studio in Atlanta that the police just never followed up on that. It was just, it happened, you know, don't ask any questions. He's so awesome. That rules. Okay. Next up, a movie called Happening.

Happening. I thought they already made this movie. What the fuck? Yeah, they made that movie. It was about trees murdering people. It ruled. Marky Mark is a scientist. Mark Wahlberg as a science teacher is one of the most artistically interesting miscastings ever in any movie.

Especially since it's not just like his job, you know, as a background thing, it has, there's key moments that hinge on him using his scientific mind to save them. And, and Shyamalan dramatizes that by just like going in on his close up of his face with his like knitted ass brow, just going like, I'm thinking, hold on a minute. Let me just, let me just do the scientific method here. Matt, do you remember the opening scene of that movie where he's quizzing kids on what's happening to the bees? And he's, yeah, we really don't know.

No one knows what's going on with the bees. Yeah, they're gone, but we don't know where they went. And like, he's a science teacher, but he's telling these kids that science doesn't have the answer. Yeah, yeah, it's basic guesses. We don't know. Got to talk to Father Stu. Got to talk to Father Stu about the bees. The Happening says, based on the memoir by Annie Ernau, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature

this year, we'll be seeing that one. Skip, Decision to Leave by Park Chan Wook. You know, I'd like this movie, Old Boy, Lady Vengeance. This is, I don't know. I mean, I'm a little bit, like every, everyone has described this movie as yet another internationally acclaimed filmmaker doing a riff on Vertigo. I do love that. I mean, I'll probably see this when it's...

If Vertigo happened today, it would be called The Catfish. If Rear Window happened in 2022, you would accidentally join your neighbor's Instagram live while he's killing somebody. If North by Northwest happened today, you'd accidentally be in someone's close friend circle and that person would be a spy. Psycho would have a thread written about him on Twitter. A woman who fucked him and said, he's weird. Next up is Expedition Content.

Expedition Content? Expedition Content. Now, that sounds like a movie, all right. It says, this documentary made for the weirdest movie-going experience I had this year because for most of its 78 minutes, all it shows is a black screen. This has to be a joke, right? Wait, what? Although the movie includes a few brief visuals, the relative absence of imagery forces your

attention on the soundtrack, which consists of audio recorded during the making of Dead Birds, an ethnographic classic about the Downey people of New Guinea. The result is a mind-expanding inquiry on anthropology, how it speaks and for whom, and on cinema itself. So wait, this is a movie that is just a black screen and then the audio of an already made documentary? This is James O. Incondenza ass shit. No, thank you.

This is like something that like a Trump voter would say a liberal watch is to make fun of them. This is what the tax dollars are going to produce. Oh, what do you watch? A movie that's 78 minutes where there's just nothing on the screen and you just hear audio and it's supposed to make you reconsider ethnography? Yeah, actually, I did. It was one of my favorite movies of the year. Matt, my ass. Bullshit.

What are you considering orthography? What is that? It's so fucking stupid. Fucking 1999 ass movie. All right. Next up is All the Beauty and the Bloodshed by Laura Poitras. Okay, you have me at Bloodshed. Yeah, okay.

Okay, Laura, let me guess. The government did something bad. Take a hike, honey. No, I'm. So this movie, this is good. I keyed into this. Matt, this movie is promising both beauty and bloodshed, which are like the two things that really I think every cinematic experience includes.

Yeah, I'll assume what it's about. It says here, Poitras' tough-minded, formally graceful portrait of the photographer Nan Golden. Her art and activism opens with Golden, huddled with some like-minded compatriots outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Okay, false advertising, boring. Yeah, not here in those real bloodshed here. I actually heard this was good. I heard this was a good movie.

I think it sounds interesting. Well, Laura Poitras has done good. They sure should not call it All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. It should be like- It should be called No Beauty and Bloodshed. Cloudy with a chance of bloodshed. All right. And then let's just briefly run down A.O. Scott's list of top top movies.

All right. Well, this one is really, I mean, like he's already signaling that he has no credibility here, because his number one best movie of the year is Nope. Come on. We've already ably- It was okay. Get a fucking grip. Next up is a movie called Neptune Frost by Saul Williams and Anastasia Uzeman.

It says, speaking of radical and new, this masterpiece of anarchist aesthetic faces down our current dystopia, one in which African miners are worked to death to dig the minerals that power the West's technology. Sexual and political violence are endemic. Ecological catastrophe and genocide are in danger of being normalized. And summons up a utopian spectacle of music, silliness, sex, and beauty. A hundred years from now, if the planet survives, this will be counted among the classics of our sorry time, taught in schools and quoted in speeches.

I could see. I could imagine watching this one. Certainly, yeah. By the description. You know, if you feel like you're a little vitamin deficient and you need to- You need to take your vegetables and then after you eat it, you're like, I actually feel better. I should have done that earlier.

Next up is a movie called Mr. Bachman and His Class by Maria Speth. Mr. Bachman and His Class. This is a sequel to Mr. Holland's Opus. No, it says, when they aren't hailed as heroes, school teachers are held up as scapegoats. The actual work they do is rarely examined with a kind of rigorous sympathetic scrutiny that Speth brings to her in his portrait of a German educator approaching retirement. Her documentary is an argument for paying attention and a lesson in how to do it. I'm sorry. I will never pay attention.

I don't think documentaries should be on your list of best movies of the year. It should be best documentaries of the year. I think it's a different thing. Yeah. It's not really the same thing. You should have a separate list. I wouldn't not see this movie if you paid me to. Life of a German school teacher.

Don't care. Next up is Aftersun by Charlotte Wells. This is a movie I've heard quite a bit of buzz about. It says here, a father, Paul Mezcal and his 11-year-old daughter Sophie, Frankie Corio, take a vacation on the Turkish coast. A trip filtered through Sophie's adult memory. This debut feature feels so matter-of-fact and unaffected that you may not notice the complexity and assurance of its craft.

Its emotional power, though, is unmistakable. Pretty good things about this movie. Next up, Five No Bears. We've already talked about that. Number six, Tar by Todd Field. Folks, we love Tar, don't we? That Tar. Lydia Tar.

She's gotten troubled. People don't like her anymore. Lydia Tar is not hot anymore. Folks, folks, she wanted to conduct Mahler's Fifth Symphony, but it's not going to happen for her. I watched Tar this weekend, and I thought it was great. I thought it was really good. So I'm giving two thumbs up to Tar. It's a bit of a much to marinate on.

Tar is the definition of much to marinate on. I'll leave it at that. All right, well, you don't want to get in trouble, so you don't say anything about it. Very clever. I'll see it at some point, sure. I like Todd Field a lot as a director. Yeah, not much.

You can't go wrong with Blanchett. She might be a camp hen in the words of Lex G, but she's... I mean, what am I... I'm watching a movie here. What do I want? I want somebody going for the rafters. I will say... I don't want to give too much away about Tar, but it is rarely...

Because I only absorb Tar through the debate about it, and I rarely was I as ill-prepared for a movie I thought I was going to see versus the one I did see. I will just say... I thought it was going to be some sort of like cancel culture morality tale, and it is really not that at all. It is completely different. And what I will say about Tar is that our boy, Nick Nightingale,

picked up a few tricks from the old master, Stanley Kubrick. Next up is a movie called Lost Illusions by Xavier Giannoli. It says, a breathless tour of the sleazy, seductive modern media system in which reputations and loyalties are bought and sold. Hype Trump's truth and gossip makes the world go round. It's early 19th century Paris, but the period atmosphere only makes the present day relevance more peckant. Benjamin of Wasson plays Lucien, a young poet from the provinces,

who is all too happy to savor the corruptions of the capital. Needed or keep it, boys? Lost illusions? I don't see it happening in my particular case, but I respect the effort that went into it. So it's about like a newspaper 200 years ago. Sounds great. They really take a lot of lessons about what it's like now.

Next up is All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. We've already talked about that. And then number 10 is a movie called Down with the King. Already starting in on Charles, man. This guy can't catch a break. Come on. Give him a minute. What's this one about?

This is by Diego Angaro. It says, while not explicitly a pandemic movie. Oh, Spanish director. Let me guess. A guy has sex with someone who's like slightly underage and a picture of his mom is like close to him. Let me guess. He does a weird sex thing that you're supposed to think about.

Let me guess. His wife is an amputee. No, let's see here. Oh, no. This is the movie with Freddie Gibbs in it, Felix. Oh, OK. You were there? Freddie Gibbs is in the movie?

This is actually not about a Spanish guy who becomes the third person with a job in Spain. This is a subject by having a job. What is it actually about? It says here, while not explicitly a pandemic movie, this quiet character study has many of the home works of COVID cinema, a small cast, outdoor locations, uncomplicated scenes, and a minimalist approach to plot.

A hip hop star played by the real life rapper, Freddie Gibbs, has gone into the woods like Henry David Thoreau to live liberally. His malaise, beautifully conveyed, and Gibbs' subtle, unaffected performance is specific to his own professional and personal circumstances, but also captures a lot of what us have felt

in the past few years. It's easy to feel we must reset the terms and conditions of our lives, but very hard to figure out how. I guess I would like to see Freddie Gibbs in a movie. It's sort of a quiet, meditative, outdoor drama. I remember seeing a trailer for it. It's like Freddie Gibbs goes to live in a farm in the country

and forms a relationship with a farmer, and he's in that creative rut in his life. Maybe, yeah. No, I'll probably watch that. That's it. Yeah. I like Freddie Gibbs. There's an episode of Atlanta in the last season

that's just... And Felix, I know I shared this with you yesterday, but I was excited on your behalf because mentioned among these best of end of the year movie lists is a movie called The Corsage, which is about your all-time dime, Empress Elizabeth. The first hot woman ever. First woman that anyone ever went.

That is a 10 out of 10. Cece Empress Elizabeth, the woman who installed spiral staircase directly into her kitchen because she would binge eat sometimes because she had a needing disorder. She didn't like her husband. She was killed by an Italian. She worked out too much.

And yet she trans-Europe in her glamour and beauty forever. So this is... And I think I've discovered the one new movie that Felix will see this year other than Avatar, The Way of Water. No, I would see this, yeah. I would prefer to see it at home. I don't...

A slow period drama about Empress Elizabeth is more of like, if you're a projector owner like myself, I feel like that's more of like an at-home type movie. But I would also see it in theaters. All right, well, there you go. So that's some holiday movie recommendations. I've seen one of these movies, two of them, if nope, and it's R.

And very unlikely that I'll be seeing any of the other movies on this list. Yeah, I'm really... I don't know, I might see the movie about this movie, honestly. Here's the thing about movies. They had a good run. You can't argue that it didn't. There's some real humdingers in there

if you look through the whole 100-some-year history of film. And we should all just cherish that. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of good stuff. All right, should we leave it there for today's show? Yes, we need to do plugs, though. I have some of that. Yeah, we have some of that.

Plugs, plug away, boys. All right, these are all hell on earth related announcements. Well, not all of them. I've got another one for Matt as well. As promised, we have a bibliography up for hell on earth. It is on the Chapo website, chapotraphouse.com slash hell. A reading list there if you would like to pick out some titles and try to give yourself some background for the series.

It is... sorry, the formatting on that page looks like shit. I am not a web designer, but we will have a real cool interactive map bibliography about a website coming soon. But for the time being, you can just find books and stuff with some annotations on the bibliography, chapotraphouse.com slash hell. We are also announcing a launch party for hell on earth here in Brooklyn. That is going to be at Littlefield on Friday, January 20th.

That will be Matt and me. We are going to be reading or presenting a live recording of another kind of a bonus episode for the series for the first half and then doing a Q&A for the second half and then hanging out at a bar nearby. And then I think Will might come through. We might have some special guests. Great. We might have a certain handsome Brooklyn-based historian

who has appeared on the podcast, though I have not officially asked him to do it yet, though I'm sure he'll come through because he lives right in the neighborhood. That will be a lot of fun. Tickets will be linked in the description here. That is Friday, January 20th, hell on earth launch party. That's me and Matt and Will. And then on January 25th, I will be in San Francisco for SF sketch fest

where I will be the guest of the talking Simpsons presentation. Simpsons predicted it. And I'll be there with Bob Mackie and Henry Gilbert talking about all the things the Simpsons have gotten allegedly predicted over the years. And that should be a lot of fun. That's going to be the 25th, eight o'clock. These are two can't miss events. All right, gang. That does it for today.

Bye-bye. Okay, guys. Till next time, everybody. Bye-bye.