• AOC’s egg-freezing journey and surprise revelation that she broke up with her fiancé two years ago

• Paul gives us the best rundown you can get on last week’s primaries, including Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow victory over Haley Stevens

• Francesca Hong’s dumb tweets from 2020 and the very weird Wisconsin gubernatorial race

• And in our subscribers-only After Dark segment, we litigate the origins, meaning, and purpose of “Woke 1”

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends READING A BOOK (and not asking AI how to read The Last of the Mohicans)

• Cros recommends Sam Kriss’ essay, “If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you” and @ahh.gpt on Instagram

• Paul recommends Martin Campbell’s Casino Royale

• Aleks recommends Radiohead’s The Bends

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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MAJOR SPOILER ALERT! (Although, can you spoil Homer???) We get into all the major plot points of the film, so if that’s something you care about, you’ve been warned!

We get into:

• Whether Christopher Nolan has any female friends who aren’t his wife

• Whether this movie is proof of the Male Loneliness Epidemic

• What movies we think everyone thought they were acting in

• The limitations of Tom Holland, who is now officially on Fraud Watch

• Also whether Matt Damon was miscast as Odysseus

• What parts we thought were actually cool (loved being in that damn horse)

This is a Subscriber-Only Special Edition. Join us at discourseblog.com.

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Producer Sam is back in the third chair to discuss:

• The eve of the very important primary between corny dad Abdul El-Sayed and Israel-lover Haley Stevens in Michigan, including the legendary video of Stevens claiming “Israel comes to me in my dreams”

• The role Michigan plays in the ascendant left and why AIPAC is trending toward becoming the NRA of a new generation

• We were recording when Ohio Congressman Max Miller—accused by his ex-wife of domestic abuse against her and their daughter amidst acrimonious custody proceedings—went on CNN to give Jake Tapper an insane defense against the many accusations against him. It’s bleak!

• And in our subscribers-only After Dark segment, we recap David Ellison’s very funny blog for The New York Times arguing that, actually, the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger is good (lol)

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends Ride or Die, on Amazon Prime

• Sam recommends New Girl, on Peacock

• Aleks recommends the trailer for Brian Duffield’s Whalefall

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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• The Other Mommy trailer playing before The Odyssey (movie pod forthcoming!!!)

• Trump being himself at Lindsey Graham’s funeral

• Sean Hannity talking about a “heavenly” version of Mar-A-Lago

• Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear DEMANDING to see Mitch McConnell alive and speaking OR ELSE!!!!!!!!!!!

• And in our subscribers-only After Dark segment, some TEA about Yesteryear and Ross Douthat leaving the Times for 60 Minutes

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends Charli XCX’s new record, Music, Fashion, Film

• Sam recommends the fifth and final season of Hacks on HBO Max

• Aleks also recommends Music, Fashion, Film and Interior Motives, on YouTube

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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• Getting to the TRUTH about the cyclospora outbreak and whether Taylor Farms’ donation to a pro-Trump Super PAC had anything to do with the funny business involving the FDA

• The World Cup’s very first halftime show, starring Madonna, a bunch of pitchy kids, BTS, Justin Bieber, Muppets, an orchestra, and Chris Martin

• Trump was there, and when players weren’t making fun of him (or cropping him out of photos), he was giving, “Let’s get you to bed, grandpa”

• And in our subscribers-only After Dark segment, Rafi tells us about the Olive Garden Unlimited Pasta Pass and its apparent role as Republicans’ preeminent talking point about…“voter fraud”? We also discuss our favorite pasta shapes lol

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack started watching Widow’s Bay on Apple TV; he also recommends air purifiers

• Rafi recommends the Channel 4 series Year of the Rabbit, streaming on Tubi, and getting a scoop of ice cream

• Aleks recommends the fifth and final season of The Bear on Hulu and Pavement’s third record, Wowee Zowee

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Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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• Senator Lindsey Graham dying and the vast conspiracies and revelations therein; also, this incredible ABC News story from 2016 that auto-plays a video from The View where Whoopi Goldberg is wearing a Rudolph nose:

• Jack’s blog on the slobbery remembrance of Graham on Meet the Press

• Senator Mitch McConnell’s alleged “proof of life” pic, which, hmmmmm

• The Cyclospora outbreak rocking the nation, and what role it did (or did not) play in Lindsey Graham’s death

• And in our subscribers-only After Dark segment, we recap all the people who lost their damn minds following Graham Platner dropping out of the Maine Senate race. Caitlin also finds out that Michael Barbaro left his husband for his now-wife. Never forget!

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends the audiobook of Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s The Odyssey, as read by Claire Danes

• Caitlin recommends the audiobook of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, as read by the author

• Aleks recommends Widow’s Bay, on Apple TV

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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Did you know that Discourse Blog has a podcast? It’s true! It’s called Discourse Pod and it comes out every single week—and paid subscribers get access to exclusive bonus episodes and our special After Dark segments. Tune in here or wherever you get your podcasts!

The death of Senator Lindsey Graham this weekend was a surprise. The outpouring of nauseating memorializing that greeted his death was mostly not a surprise.

By now, we all know how this stuff goes. First, a bad person dies. Lindsey Graham definitely checks that box. He was an awful human being whose most pleasurable experience in life was watching people getting bombed to smithereens overseas. You can go elsewhere for longer rundowns of his many horrible deeds; for the purposes of this blog, I’m going to assume we’re on the same page here.

Second, a bunch of prominent people fall over themselves to share the most bootlicking remembrances of their beloved monster. That box has also most definitely been checked. Here’s Senator Adam Schiff gushing about how funny Lindsey was! Here’s Cory Booker in a stupid shirt reminiscing about all the good times he and Lindsey used to have! Here’s actor and activist Jesse James Rose talking about how Graham once “paid a twinky pre-transition college student a fat stack of cash to do unspeakable things to him in a hotel room while he wore red lingerie!” (In case it wasn’t clear, Rose was the aforementioned pre-transition twink.) OK, maybe that one doesn’t quite fit the bill, but it’s too good not to include here. Is it true? Not true? One thing is certain: you can’t libel the dead. Let a thousand of these flowers bloom, folks—the time to dish is now.

By now, this type of discourse cycle has mostly dulled into predictable tedium. Everyone’s playing their part, either maligning the dead or being mad about maligning the dead or being mad about not maligning the dead, yada yada yada. Normally, I’d just leave things there. I’m tired!

But. BUT! But. That was before the world was graced with one of the most hall-of-fame, EGOT, Triple Crown, Olympic gold medal-level revolting examples in the history of this particular genre. It came from Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, and it is just—well, we’d better go through it piece by piece. That’s right—there are multiple parts to this thing, and each one gets worse than the last.

OK, enough dancing around it—let’s, sigh, dive in.

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• Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner cancelling a bunch of events this week

• The new, explosive exposé from Politico in which a former girlfriend of Platner accuses him of sexual assault

• Platner’s video statement almost, but not quite, suspending his campaign

• The pundits heralding Platner’s campaign as a straight bro savior of the left (surprise! it’s not)

• Trump meddling in the World Cup to get a U.S. player reinstated and it going exactly as you’d expect (we lost, brutally)

• Mitch McConnell reportedly being on death’s door

• And in our subscribers-only After Dark segment, a review of every cursed detail of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding at Madison Square Garden

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends John Early’s Maddie’s Secret, now in theaters

• Sam recommends The Studio, on Apple TV

• Aleks recommends Olivia Wilde’s The Invite, now in theaters

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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This is a Subscriber-Only Special Edition. Join us at discourseblog.com.

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This piece originally appeared in The Nation.

As the 2026 election cycle unfolds, the Republican Party and its allies are honing strategies to malign their Democratic opponents. In Texas, this mission has taken on a pointedly homophobic and transphobic tone, meant to humiliate Democratic state Representative James Talarico in his campaign for the US Senate.

The attacks span from merely disturbing to fully deranged. We’ve had Stephen Miller calling Talarico the Democrats’ “first transgender Senate candidate who is clearly transitioning into a female.” A joke about Talarico needing to paint on his facial hair. An image of Talarico’s face superimposed on New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s head. An AI-generated deepfake video showing Talarico dressed as Maria from The Sound of Music, singing a transgender reassignment surgery–obsessed parody of “My Favorite Things.”

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It’s all part of a familiar playbook for Republican men, denigrating an opponent by aligning his performance of masculinity with femininity and queerness, and plotting it outside this grid of gendered expectations in which he’s expected to perform.

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• Ranking New York City’s avenues and the darkness of Eighth Avenue

• Zohran Mamdani going three for three with this Congressional primary endorsements

• Some people who are mad about Tuesday: Democratic leadership, major loser Jaime Harrison, and Meghan McCain

• Jack’s interview with Darializa Avila Chevalier in The Nation

• What Tuesday’s wins mean for shifting power centers in New York, the strength of Mamdani’s political prowess, and what it says (and doesn’t say) about the Midterms and beyond

• And in our subscribers-only After Dark segment, we dive into the FIVE-bylined enterprise reporting conducted by the New York Times on Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s alleged wedding at Madison Square Garden next week

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends the AIPAC-funded Darializa Avila Chevalier oppo-mailer, “Fuck Kamala Harris”

• Cros recommends Love Island UK

• Aleks recommends Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, now in theaters

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

Spotify: Tap the “Play” button and select “Link Account” to sync your Substack subscription and unlock it instantly.

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• The would-be Iran Peace Deal, aka “Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran”

• Everyone’s mad about it! Mostly neocons, including: Ben Shapiro, Bret Stephens, and congr…

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• Trump attending Game Three of NBA Finals (they lost)

• Are rumors of Taylor and Travis holding their wedding at Madison Square Garden a false flag by Tree Paine?

• Scott Pelley’s tearful exit interview from 60 Minutes and CBS News with the New York Times

• Remembering how Lady Gaga once said she wanted to be a combat journalist

• There is unfortunately another goddamn scandal surrounding Maine Democratic Senate Graham Platner, this time involving some of his ex-girlfriends

• And in our After Dark segment available only to subscribers, a follow-up on the California primaries and Spencer Pratt’s implosion

This week’s cultural recs:

• Jack recommends Kyle Balda’s The Sheep Detectives, now in theaters

• Caitlin recommends Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men

• Aleks recommends the music video for Britney Spears and Madonna’s “Me Against the Music” (inspired by seeing Kane Parsons’ Backrooms)

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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• Sid Rosenberg is looking…well toasted? Let’s just say, when you make Trump’s skin look normal, then you might have a problem. Everyone, please wear sunscreen (EVERY DAY).

• Bari cleans house at 60 Minutes and installs a new crony, Nick Bilton, one of media’s least essential voices, as the new executive producer

• Scott Pelley? He’s not happy about this news, babe, and ripped Bilton a new one in his first staff meeting. (Note: This episode was recorded before Pelley was fired from CBS News)

• Trump’s failed “Freedom 250” concert series, which apparently involves Vanilla Ice, Martina McBride, half of Milli Vanilli (???), and Flo Rida

• And in our After Dark segment available only to subscribers, Jack gives us a helpful rundown of the California gubernatorial primary, starring Xavier Bacerra, Tom Steyer, and Steve Hilton

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends the Amazon Prime series, Kevin

• Sam recommends Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear and the Summer House reunion on Bravo

• Aleks recommends the new season of The Four Seasons on Netflix and Daniel Roher’s Tuner, now in theaters

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

Spotify: Tap the “Play” button and select “Link Account” to sync your Substack subscription and unlock it instantly.

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• Jack doing a tight 10 on the Strait of Hormuz

• Boots Riley’s latest film, I Love Boosters (we’re not fans)

• Trump’s very convincing excuse for missing Don Jr.’s wedding to Bettina Anderson

• Trump describing his son as “a person who I’ve known for a long time”

• The DNC 2024 election autopsy is finally here (sort of) and everyone is mad at DNC Chair Ken Martin

• And in our After Dark segment available only to subscribers, we chat about the recent reporting alleging that Bari Weiss’ reign over CBS News might be curtailed after the merger between Warner Bros.-Discovery and Paramount

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends the DEBUT LP from Discourse Blog’s own Paul Blest and his band Long Relief, Win Some, Lose Some

• Aleks recommends Charli XCX’s new songs, “Rock Music” and “SS26”

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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Apple Podcasts & Others: Go to Settings in Substack > select Discourse Blog > scroll to the “private podcast feed” section > select “set up podcast” > then copy and paste the link it generates into your preferred app.

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This is a Subscriber-Only Special Edition. Join us at discourseblog.com.

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• New York State is eying banning potassium bromate, AKA the chemical that makes bagels taste so damn good

• Speaking of chemicals worth dying for, you can pry Katherine’s vape from her cold, dead hands

• Remembering Some Blogs (or the time Katherine tweeted about her “personal 9/11” and it caused a lot of drama at work)

• Protests outside the New York Times building demanding the paper retract Nicholas Kristof’s piece, “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians”

• Benjamin Netanyahu? Mad

• The Free Press? Mad

• The overuse and misuse of “blood libel”

• CBS Evening News anchor Tony Du-poop-il didn’t plan for his reporting trip to China very well

• And in our After Dark segment available only to subscribers, Sam unpacks the BIG DRAMA involving Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, Barack Obama, and breakfast tacos

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Katherine recommends Ben Lerner’s new book, Transcription

• Sam recommends Curry Barker’s new movie, Obsession

• Jack recommends prescription sunglasses

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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• How having a W2 job can make you a little bit (or a lot of bit) libertarian

• Trump saying he doesn’t care at all about the impact of the Iran war on Americans’ finances

• A quick aside about The Devil Wears Prada 2 (listen/watch our subscribers-only ep!)

• A chat about how Spencer Pratt opened his run for mayor of Los Angeles with an incredible AI slop video depicting himself as Batman that Republicans are absolutely eating up, munch munch crunch crunch

• Cros’ theory on why MAGA loves these hyper-stylized fake videos and images so damn much

• A detour into how badly the Bush family is aging

• How evil is like IBS

• And in our After Dark segment available only to subscribers, we talk FBI Director Kash Patel going ballistic in a Senate hearing about his alleged drinking on the job

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This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends Cats: The Jellicle Ball, now on Broadway

• Cros recommends the second seasons of Running Point and Beef, both on Netflix

• Aleks recommends Veronica Mars, newly on Netflix

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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MAJOR SPOILER ALERT! We get into all the major plot points of the film, so if that’s something you care about, you’ve been warned!

We get into:

• What the hell this movie is trying to say about The State of Media

• The ouroboros of legacy sequels

• Whether Andy Sachs is supposed to be a good journalist

• If this movie hates women

• The specter of Anna Wintour haunting this movie

• The uncanny valley of Justin Theroux’s prosthetics

• Who the Real Villain of the original Devil Wears Prada was

This is a Subscriber-Only Special Edition. Join us at discourseblog.com.

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The Week’s Rafi Schwartz returns to the third chair to discuss:

• What foods are better soggy

• Kelsey Grammer’s 2021 collaboration with Gristedes??

• Was the shooting a FALSE FLAG OP to speed up the construction of the White House ballroom?????????

• Kash Patel reportedly being cucked mid-shooting :(

• Suspected WHCD shooter Cole Allen’s blog-worthy manifesto

• The Free Press’ Olivia Reingold going straight-to-cam

• The bleak conditions under which Trump assassination attempts keep happening

• A deep-dive on the mentalist Oz Pearlman, the entertainment at the WHCD

• This photo of Stephen Miller; this video of RFK Jr. and Cheryl Hines

• Our excitement for TMZ opening a DC bureau

• And in our After Dark segment available only to subscribers, we get into the very funny Vanity Fair profile of CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil (or as we call him, Du-poop-ul)

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate (and NOT!!! the Jonathan Demme remake)

• Rafi recommends Judd Apatow’s The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling

• Aleks recommends AMC Lincoln Square in New York City

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

Spotify: Tap the “Play” button and select “Link Account” to sync your Substack subscription and unlock it instantly.

Apple Podcasts & Others: Go to Settings in Substack > select Discourse Blog > scroll to the “private podcast feed” section > select “set up podcast” > then copy and paste the link it generates into your preferred app.

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