Week 32 - August 7, 2026
Primary results and shoe nostalgia
I always find it interesting when national news covers a topic playing out in my own community. Between data center build-outs and the Senate primary, Michigan was in the news a lot this week and the coverage I heard did a good job of capturing the sentiments I’m feeling on the ground.
Here are the episodes we voted for this week.
Most Popular This Week
Guys Trip 2022 · Matt McCusker & Shane Gillis · Spotify
Diana Pasulka · Joe Rogan Experience · Spotify
Forrest Galante · Joe Rogan Experience · Spotify
Most Covered Subjects
Iran war and Strait of Hormuz tensions: 25 episodes
Ukraine, Russia, and Putin: 11 episodes
The Aschenbrenner AI hedge fund collapse: 5 episodes
IRAN WAR
The Bluffs Keep Landing Nowhere
Iran specialist Jonathan Hackett walks through a week of Trump threatening a major strike on Iranian energy infrastructure, then calling it off by tweet at 9pm after Saudi Arabia’s MBS phoned in asking for restraint. Jonathan’s read is bracing. Sanctions barely touch Iran’s ruling elite, who bank in Mayfair, while ordinary Iranians absorb the pain.
The sharpest thread here is math nobody in Washington wants to say aloud. America is shooting down $50,000 Iranian drones with $4 million interceptors, and Patriot production can’t keep pace. Add missile shipments slipping past Egypt’s coastline undetected, and you get a war escalating in slow motion with no exit anyone can describe. If you want the unglamorous machinery behind the headlines, this is it.
The Team House · Jonathan Hackett, Jack Murphy & Mick Mulroy · 56m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
POLITICS
A Blueprint for Fixing a Broken System
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg lays out how out of whack the system has gotten. A multi-billionaire probably pays a lower tax rate than a school teacher or a firefighter, because the code taxes work harder than it taxes wealth. His fix isn’t punishing wealthy people, it’s raising rates on capital gains and corporate profits, closing the loophole that lets the ultra-rich borrow against stock instead of ever selling and paying tax, and creating a public dividend from AI profits, since these companies trained on data and infrastructure the public already built. That revenue, he says, is what pays for healthcare, education, and paid family leave.
The sharper claim is that the economic fixes aren’t actually the hard part. What’s radical, in Pete’s view, is the political change required to get there. Scrap the Electoral College for a popular vote, add Supreme Court term limits and more justices, ban gerrymandering, make the House proportional, and pass a constitutional amendment undoing Citizens United so corporate spending stops counting as speech. He leans on Stein’s Law, something that cannot go on forever will stop, and warns his own party against running on getting the country “back” to where it was, since that system is what created the opening for Trump in the first place.
The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett · Pete Buttigieg · 1h 55m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
RUSSIA
Why Putin’s Real Target Was Democracy, Not Ukraine
Historian Anne Applebaum argues Putin invaded Ukraine mainly to smother a democratic example next door, and explains why autocracies are quietly losing this war.
3 Takeaways · Anne Applebaum · 20m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
AI BUSINESS
How a $30B Hedge Fund Blew Up in 3 Days
Host Nathaniel Whittemore explains how Leopold Aschenbrenner’s AI hedge fund, built on the fame of his 2024 essay “Situational Awareness,” evaporated in three days after 4x leverage turned a semiconductor selloff into a wipeout.
The AI Daily Brief · Nathaniel Whittemore · 31m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
ELECTIONS
How Abdul El-Sayed Beat AIPAC’s Money in Michigan
Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer dissect Abdul El-Sayed’s one-point Michigan Senate win despite being outspent eleven to one, which Bernie Sanders calls politics’ most extraordinary recent victory.
Pod Save America · Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer & Bernie Sanders · 1h 11m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
AI BACKLASH
Why Data Centers Unite Left and Right in Opposition
Writer Jasmine Sun reports from Wisconsin and Michigan on the reasons data centers pushback has become the most galvanizing bipartisan issue in local politics.
The Ezra Klein Show · Jasmine Sun · 1h 18m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
NUTRITION
Why Calorie Counting Doesn’t Work
Epidemiologist Tim Spector, cofounder of the nutrition company Zoe, argues calorie counting is a scam. Even identical twins can carry entirely different gut microbiomes, so the same meal affects each of them differently, which means a printed calorie count can’t actually predict how your body will respond to it.
His fix is eating 30 different plants a week and ignoring labels like organic or high protein. It’s a rare diet segment that leaves you smarter at the grocery store, not more anxious about it.
Young and Profiting with Hala Taha · Tim Spector · 1h 14m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
RELATIONSHIPS
What To Do When The Other Person Won’t Change
Therapist Nedra Glover Tawwab, author of the new book The Balancing Act, argues most relationship advice misses something basic. You cannot make someone change, only shift how you show up around them.
She coins the term local distancing, easing contact with a draining person without a full cutoff. It’s a clear eyed guide for anyone stuck between wanting connection and dreading the people who exhaust them.
10% Happier with Dan Harris · Nedra Glover Tawwab · 1h 5m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
MONEY
The Data that Shows How Today’s Young People Have it Harder
Financial journalist Beth Kobliner has covered personal finance for 30 years, and she says today’s pessimism is not a mood, it’s math. Starter home prices have nearly doubled after inflation since the 90s, pushing the median first time buyer age from 28 to nearly 40. She ties the crypto and gambling boom to what she calls the giving up factor, turning reckless money bets into a rational response to a worse economy.
Afford Anything · Beth Kobliner · 1h 14m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
HISTORY
A Russia Without Many Men
Journalist Julia Ioffe traces a demographic scar most Americans don’t know about. World War II killed so many Soviet men that some villages had 100 women for every 19, and Stalin’s postwar policy trapped men in marriages while paying women to have children out of wedlock. The result, she argues, still shapes Russian gender dynamics eighty years later.
Conversations with Tyler · Julia Ioffe · 55m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
HISTORY
The Foot Gauge That Measured Our Childhood
Journalist Paul Lukas traces the story of the Brannock device, the metal gadget with sliding parts we all used as kids in shoe stores. Invented in 1925, introduced nationwide by Payless, and still handmade today by the same small company in Syracuse. While Payless collapsed after a private equity buyout drained its profits, this measurement device continues on. It’s a quiet eulogy for a kind of American business that barely exists anymore.
99% Invisible · Paul Lukas · 28m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
REVISITING PAST NEWS
The Journalist Who Threw His Shoes at George W. Bush
Reporter Sarah Qari finally tracks down Muntadhar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist whose shoe-throw at Bush went viral in 2008, and finds years of covering civilian deaths nobody outside Iraq seemed to hear behind it. It reframes a punchline as an act of exhausted, desperate journalism.
Radiolab · Sarah Qari · 1h 17m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
PREPPER SUBCULTURE
Touring Elite Doomsday Bunkers
Creator Tommy G shows Julian Dorey his stunt confrontations with senators like Rick Scott over stock trading, then pivots to the stranger trend of ultra-luxury doomsday bunkers among tech and political elites. It’s part congressional accountability journalism, part unsettling status symbol reporting.
Julian Dorey Daily · Tommy G · 1h 4m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
AMERICANA
The Company Towns that Still Run on Captive Labor
Documentary maker Peter Santenello, who’s filmed from Iran to Amish country, explains how Appalachian coal towns once paid workers in company-only scrip and evicted widows within days, and how that same structure still exists in places like Baghdad, Arizona. It’s a travel conversation that treats rural poverty as something to understand, not gawk at.
Modern Wisdom · Peter Santenello · 1h 59m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
TRUE CRIME
The Insider Who Tried to Extort His Own Employer
Cloud engineer Nickolas Sharp felt underpaid at router maker Ubiquiti, so he secretly cloned the company’s source code, staged a fake hack, and demanded a Bitcoin ransom. When Ubiquiti stayed quiet, he leaked to a journalist that the company had lied to customers, crashing its stock twenty percent in two days. A VPN dropout during the heist exposed his home IP, and Nick is now six years into a federal sentence.
Darknet Diaries · Jack Rhysider · 36m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
LATE 2000s
Teen Burglar Who Taught Himself to Fly Stolen Planes
After escaping a juvenile halfway house at seventeen, Colton Harris-Moore spent two years evading police across the Pacific Northwest, stealing food, cars, and boats. He then taught himself to fly from manuals and flight simulator videos, crash landing stolen planes across several states without a single lesson. He became a folk hero with fan pages and countdown clocks before police finally caught him in the Bahamas.
Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén · Harvey Guillén · 35m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
PARANORMAL
The Wyoming Hunter Aliens Rejected
Wyoming oil rig foreman Carl Higdon was elk hunting in 1974 when a humanoid he’d call Aso led him aboard a craft, examined him for hours, and rejected him as unfit breeding stock. He came back with no idea who he was, unable to recognize his own wife or remember how to drive the stick shift truck he’d used his whole life, while a six person search party independently spotted strange colored lights hovering over the forest that same night.
What keeps the story alive is the physical evidence nobody has ever explained. Doctors found that Carl’s tuberculosis scars and kidney stones had simply vanished from his X-rays. And his truck turned up three miles from where he’d parked it, sunk to the axles in a mud hole with no tire tracks leading in or out.
The Why Files: Operation Podcast · 38m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
Caitlin Becker (aka Meekah) - on how food poisoning nearly cost her the audition that turned into a global kids' entertainment empire, and why she eventually turned down the contract anyway.
Flightless Bird · 1h 47m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
The Office Revisited - Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey dig into deleted scenes from 'Two Weeks,' where Michael leaves Dunder Mifflin, including Michael's completely unhinged office resume speech.
Office Ladies · 1h 10m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
Spider Man Review - Van Lathan joins Sean and Amanda to call Brand New Day phenomenal while Amanda ranks it her least favorite Tom Holland outing, before the three settle in to rank all 11 Spider-Man movies.
The Big Picture · 2h 11m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
Juno Temple (aka Keeley Jones) - Ted Lasso actress dishes on marrying her former on-set driver, missing Hannah Waddingham most, and Kylie's blunt take on anyone with opinions about someone else's birth story.
Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce · 1h 3m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
Prenup Prep - Divorce attorney James Sexton on the enforceable prenup clause that cost one bride $10,000 a month in alimony for every ten pounds she gained, and why the prenup conversation is secretly one of the most romantic ones a couple can have.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin · 1h 2m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
Talking to Your Uncle - Journalist Joshua Johnson on why the fix for talking to someone insufferable isn’t distance but getting closer and swapping neutrality for objectivity. Use a doctor’s clinical curiosity instead of a debate stance.
TED Talks Daily · 10m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
Squishy Dumplings Virality - Toy exec Zac Barber breaks down the playbook behind squishy dumplings, this year’s biggest fidget-toy craze.
Planet Money · 26m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTube
CEO Responsibilities - Ad Agency CEO Neal Arthur on why brand has become the CEO’s job now.
Masters of Scale · 30m · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · YouTubewrite up.
This week we reviewed 732 episodes across 232 podcasts. Our picks run 25 hours and 35 minutes if you listen to every recommendation.