This was interesting, and worth a subscription primarily based on my familiarity with Josh and Ben's other work.
Take this for what it's worth (not much), but I'll say that the thing I am wary of is this podcast feeling like because it is in the center it needs to be 'balanced.'
I don't need every episode to be about the orange man being bad and I can appreciate the desire for a generally lower temperature of discourse, but Trump 2 is not Trump 1, one political party has unified control of government, and there are a lot of concerning things happening. If the desire to turn down the temperature leads to a chronic understating of the stakes or a desire for balance means finding something to criticize each side about every episode I will be disappointed.
Again, for the little that is worth. Good luck on the new venture!
I'll settle for the three saying Trump 2 is bad but the solution is not overthrow of capitalism and working class seizing control of means of production.
One criticism I had of the previous Very Serious iteration of the podcast, was that it sometimes felt like a competition to see who could be the most flippant and smug, who could make the most fun of annoying liberals. Ironically, it didn't feel very serious!
I don't disagree that liberals can be annoying, by the way! But I think if you're going to make a serious argument for centrism -- especially in an environment where one side of politics controls all the rungs of political power and is not remotely centrist -- you need to do a little more than saying "oh, absolutely I disagree with the Trump administration on this issue" and then immediately following that up with "but check out these naked bike riders in Portland, god they're annoying" and going on about that for five minutes.
Which isn't to say that I want you to exclusively focus on "Trump bad" takes. But I think this stuff needs to be more than a handwave before going back to complain about woke or whatever.
Fwiw that's kind of my issue with Bari Weiss too. Like I'm sure that she has some liberal and centrist beliefs, but it's kind of hard to see when she trucks with so many people who are Trump apologists, or who say "yeah, Trump is bad" before launching into a 2000-word tirade about the tyranny of they/them pronouns.
Anyway, thanks for the show. Despite my gripes I do genuinely value it. I'm probably not going to be an always-subscriber (got a fairly tight media budget at the moment), but I wanted to sign up just to voice my support for the project. Keep it up!
I'd like the hosts take on the apparent lack of "centrists" in the GOP Congress. Specifically, the GOP Senate confirmed Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, RFK Jr, Kash Patel, and Emil Bove. Any one of those could have been defeated by 4 holdouts, and all were confirmed. Lisa Murkowski supported the very extreme rightwing OBBB.
What good are centrists and moderates in elected office if they bend the knee to the extremists in their own parties at almost every turn? I geuss the did defeat Matt Gaetz for AG and Ed Martin for DC US Attorney, but physician and Senator Cassidy's decisive vote to confirm RFK is one of the most pathetic thigs I have ever seen a Senator do.
I think something very specific happened with Murkowski and OBBB. One of the no votes on OBBB was Rand Paul, who didn't want to raise the debt limit so much. But if they'd needed Paul's vote, they could have gotten it by attaching a smaller debt limit increase to the bill. So that would have meant the law would have passed anyway, and Murkowski wouldn't have gotten any of the modifications she sought to protect Alaska. Murkowski's kind of one of the last great parochial politicians in the Senate, and I suspect she saw it as a way to deliver for Alaska at the margin. It certainly wasn't a politically expedient vote otherwise, since she relies heavily on Democratic voters to win in Alaska's ranked-choice voting system.
I enjoyed this first episode enough to subscribe, but I would like to hear more discussion about who your target audience is. Do you believe you are speaking to a silent majority who wants something different than what the mich smaller left and right are offering?
Megan's aside about prisoners using cans of mackerel rather than cigarettes suggests something interesting about currency. I liked that even better than the fascinating discussion of bearer bonds.
I like the concept and the initial execution, though I will confess to being a little hazy on exactly what "centrist" means in 2025 American political reality.
My one constructive critique is that I would probably enjoy a slightly higher ratio of policy wonkery to political analysis. So much of the news and opinion coverage of government is devoted to partisan political analysis that a bit more engagement with the blocking-and-tackling of policy would be refreshing.
I enjoyed this quite a bit, I particularly appreciate background and context on comparing current political events to pre-2000 events that some of us may not have much knowledge, direct or otherwise, of.
Someone born in e.g. 1990, because "history" class only teaches up to ~ 20 - 30 years ago, was unborn or too young to remember (or was not paying attention to) 1985-2010 politically, but didn't learn anything about that period in school either. So additional context is particularly helpful for those folks.
I believe that you guys take D/E/I to mean (and pretty much *only* mean) the crazy policing of speech on college campuses and those irritating corporate training sessions we were subject to post 2020 - but to Trump and MAGA it seems to primarily mean that black people, women, and especially black women were given positions of leadership that they couldn’t *possibly* deserve. So when Bari Weiss speaks so vehemently against D/E/I, forgive those of us who really need to know definitvely which version that she is referring to.
And to talk about “mainstream news media” being left leaning but not once mentioning Fox News - which has a significantly larger viewership than CBS, ABC, and NBC's news divisions and certainly CNN and MSNBC - and that Fox doesn't even attempt to balance its MAGA-fellating coverage is maybe missing part of the point of people being concerned about CBS seeming to move to the right.
Anyway, I'm enjoying the cooling breezes of this Central Air thus far!
I mean what's more American than temperature control?
I think every episode should end with a random and ridiculous pop culture deep dive from one of you, though it would probably always wind up being Ben.
Josh, bruh, Ben CLEARLY stated the rules of his exposition at the start of his post. "Someone on set fucked up" is clearly a violation of the spirit if not the letter of those rules. Wait, maybe you did this for the listener who didn't get to read the post, and it was all an act! Heavy is the head that wears the crown indeed. You're like Dave Foley in the Kids in the Hall
I’m not really a centrist… I’d say I’m a moderate liberal. I’ll add this to the docket and see where things go. Not really into any right-leaning content these days lol
Throwing y'all $9 this month because I like the idea of a centrist podcast, and am curious to see where it goes.
That said, I'll lose interest pretty quickly if this podcast consists mostly of dunking on the Democrats/leftists/Bluesky/mainstream journalists/wokescolds for being ridiculous or ineffectual. I'm not interested in a wonkier version of Blocked and Reported. A podcast like that would feel out of touch and even dated in our current political environment.
I'm a bit concerned that Trump and his policies mostly got mentioned as asides or "to be sure" caveats during the first episode. Republicans control the federal government and Donald Trump has enacted so many awful and even illegal policies. We're also well past peak woke, and academia and mainstream media don't have the same cultural power they did 5-10 years ago. MAGA billionaires are buying up more and more of both traditional and social media, and the biggest podcasters and YouTubers tend to lean right.
MAGA is in power right now, and wielding it in sweeping and (in our lifetimes) unprecedented ways. MAGA is a much bigger threat to the values the hosts espouse than Democrats. This isn't 2022.
Y'all should point out when you disagree with the left or even center-left--part of why I would listen is to get that perspective. Be loud and proud centrists. But that's different than merely being anti-left.
I felt this at the point Megan talked about how great freedom and America... if they'd added "which Trump is not doing" I'd have stood and sung God Bless America, but to say that and not note that there are US soldiers in cities because they didn't vote for Trump leaves a sour note.
This was interesting, and worth a subscription primarily based on my familiarity with Josh and Ben's other work.
Take this for what it's worth (not much), but I'll say that the thing I am wary of is this podcast feeling like because it is in the center it needs to be 'balanced.'
I don't need every episode to be about the orange man being bad and I can appreciate the desire for a generally lower temperature of discourse, but Trump 2 is not Trump 1, one political party has unified control of government, and there are a lot of concerning things happening. If the desire to turn down the temperature leads to a chronic understating of the stakes or a desire for balance means finding something to criticize each side about every episode I will be disappointed.
Again, for the little that is worth. Good luck on the new venture!
I'll settle for the three saying Trump 2 is bad but the solution is not overthrow of capitalism and working class seizing control of means of production.
You know, a liberal.
Thanks a lot for that, I enjoyed it!
One criticism I had of the previous Very Serious iteration of the podcast, was that it sometimes felt like a competition to see who could be the most flippant and smug, who could make the most fun of annoying liberals. Ironically, it didn't feel very serious!
I don't disagree that liberals can be annoying, by the way! But I think if you're going to make a serious argument for centrism -- especially in an environment where one side of politics controls all the rungs of political power and is not remotely centrist -- you need to do a little more than saying "oh, absolutely I disagree with the Trump administration on this issue" and then immediately following that up with "but check out these naked bike riders in Portland, god they're annoying" and going on about that for five minutes.
Which isn't to say that I want you to exclusively focus on "Trump bad" takes. But I think this stuff needs to be more than a handwave before going back to complain about woke or whatever.
Fwiw that's kind of my issue with Bari Weiss too. Like I'm sure that she has some liberal and centrist beliefs, but it's kind of hard to see when she trucks with so many people who are Trump apologists, or who say "yeah, Trump is bad" before launching into a 2000-word tirade about the tyranny of they/them pronouns.
Anyway, thanks for the show. Despite my gripes I do genuinely value it. I'm probably not going to be an always-subscriber (got a fairly tight media budget at the moment), but I wanted to sign up just to voice my support for the project. Keep it up!
I'd like the hosts take on the apparent lack of "centrists" in the GOP Congress. Specifically, the GOP Senate confirmed Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, RFK Jr, Kash Patel, and Emil Bove. Any one of those could have been defeated by 4 holdouts, and all were confirmed. Lisa Murkowski supported the very extreme rightwing OBBB.
What good are centrists and moderates in elected office if they bend the knee to the extremists in their own parties at almost every turn? I geuss the did defeat Matt Gaetz for AG and Ed Martin for DC US Attorney, but physician and Senator Cassidy's decisive vote to confirm RFK is one of the most pathetic thigs I have ever seen a Senator do.
I think something very specific happened with Murkowski and OBBB. One of the no votes on OBBB was Rand Paul, who didn't want to raise the debt limit so much. But if they'd needed Paul's vote, they could have gotten it by attaching a smaller debt limit increase to the bill. So that would have meant the law would have passed anyway, and Murkowski wouldn't have gotten any of the modifications she sought to protect Alaska. Murkowski's kind of one of the last great parochial politicians in the Senate, and I suspect she saw it as a way to deliver for Alaska at the margin. It certainly wasn't a politically expedient vote otherwise, since she relies heavily on Democratic voters to win in Alaska's ranked-choice voting system.
I kind of wonder if she is done when her term is up.
I enjoyed this first episode enough to subscribe, but I would like to hear more discussion about who your target audience is. Do you believe you are speaking to a silent majority who wants something different than what the mich smaller left and right are offering?
Megan's aside about prisoners using cans of mackerel rather than cigarettes suggests something interesting about currency. I liked that even better than the fascinating discussion of bearer bonds.
I like the concept and the initial execution, though I will confess to being a little hazy on exactly what "centrist" means in 2025 American political reality.
My one constructive critique is that I would probably enjoy a slightly higher ratio of policy wonkery to political analysis. So much of the news and opinion coverage of government is devoted to partisan political analysis that a bit more engagement with the blocking-and-tackling of policy would be refreshing.
I enjoyed this quite a bit, I particularly appreciate background and context on comparing current political events to pre-2000 events that some of us may not have much knowledge, direct or otherwise, of.
Someone born in e.g. 1990, because "history" class only teaches up to ~ 20 - 30 years ago, was unborn or too young to remember (or was not paying attention to) 1985-2010 politically, but didn't learn anything about that period in school either. So additional context is particularly helpful for those folks.
I believe that you guys take D/E/I to mean (and pretty much *only* mean) the crazy policing of speech on college campuses and those irritating corporate training sessions we were subject to post 2020 - but to Trump and MAGA it seems to primarily mean that black people, women, and especially black women were given positions of leadership that they couldn’t *possibly* deserve. So when Bari Weiss speaks so vehemently against D/E/I, forgive those of us who really need to know definitvely which version that she is referring to.
And to talk about “mainstream news media” being left leaning but not once mentioning Fox News - which has a significantly larger viewership than CBS, ABC, and NBC's news divisions and certainly CNN and MSNBC - and that Fox doesn't even attempt to balance its MAGA-fellating coverage is maybe missing part of the point of people being concerned about CBS seeming to move to the right.
Anyway, I'm enjoying the cooling breezes of this Central Air thus far!
I mean what's more American than temperature control?
I think every episode should end with a random and ridiculous pop culture deep dive from one of you, though it would probably always wind up being Ben.
2 of my favorite public intellectuals!
Just kidding. Actually paid for another subscription.
Great show. If you have to issue corrections, I hope you’ll label the segment “Central Err”.
Josh, bruh, Ben CLEARLY stated the rules of his exposition at the start of his post. "Someone on set fucked up" is clearly a violation of the spirit if not the letter of those rules. Wait, maybe you did this for the listener who didn't get to read the post, and it was all an act! Heavy is the head that wears the crown indeed. You're like Dave Foley in the Kids in the Hall
I’m not really a centrist… I’d say I’m a moderate liberal. I’ll add this to the docket and see where things go. Not really into any right-leaning content these days lol
Throwing y'all $9 this month because I like the idea of a centrist podcast, and am curious to see where it goes.
That said, I'll lose interest pretty quickly if this podcast consists mostly of dunking on the Democrats/leftists/Bluesky/mainstream journalists/wokescolds for being ridiculous or ineffectual. I'm not interested in a wonkier version of Blocked and Reported. A podcast like that would feel out of touch and even dated in our current political environment.
I'm a bit concerned that Trump and his policies mostly got mentioned as asides or "to be sure" caveats during the first episode. Republicans control the federal government and Donald Trump has enacted so many awful and even illegal policies. We're also well past peak woke, and academia and mainstream media don't have the same cultural power they did 5-10 years ago. MAGA billionaires are buying up more and more of both traditional and social media, and the biggest podcasters and YouTubers tend to lean right.
MAGA is in power right now, and wielding it in sweeping and (in our lifetimes) unprecedented ways. MAGA is a much bigger threat to the values the hosts espouse than Democrats. This isn't 2022.
Y'all should point out when you disagree with the left or even center-left--part of why I would listen is to get that perspective. Be loud and proud centrists. But that's different than merely being anti-left.
I felt this at the point Megan talked about how great freedom and America... if they'd added "which Trump is not doing" I'd have stood and sung God Bless America, but to say that and not note that there are US soldiers in cities because they didn't vote for Trump leaves a sour note.