Smell that? Is that the stench of the algae bloom in Washington? Or maybe the odor of a big honkin’ AI bubble that is ready to burst? I’ll tell you what doesn’t stink: the huge sweep in Left Wing candidates in Mamdani’s New York. This week, Adam is joined by friends of the show Brennan Lee Mulligan (Dimension 20, Critical Role), and Ed Zitron (Where’s Your Ed At? https://www.wheresyoured.at/ ).
Adam Conover
Ew. Doesn’t he have some crypto to shill?
He’s definitely the most liberal of the three, but I didn’t have any particular complaints about him in this video. I think he might have been the most vocal antizionist in it.
Adam Conover switches opinions on stuff depending on what he thinks pays best, so he can be really invested on one aide of an issue one day, and really invested on the other some months later. It’s really gross imo.
I think it’s good that he’s currently anti ai, but i just don’t think its any kind of principled stance
the literal dronie
Adam Conover, and succdem Brennan (i feel like brennan is best when he stays away from politics). ed zitron i dont know enough to comment onHe runs as PR company for tech companies. So keep that in mind when Zitron speaks of good amd bad tech companies.
All I know about Brennan is a video of him going full Foucault in a D&D campaign
All I know about Brennan is a video of him going full Foucault in a D&D campaign
he did a political add with DSA and sometimes has anti-AES takes
Honestly better than expected for the average american media figure.
He is basically on par with your average Western leftist, so he ultimately views the power of the state itself as ‘problematic’.
He was the DM for the latest season of Critical Role, which takes place in a post-French revolutionary style fantasy setting, where the Gods themselves were overthrown, but the magical aristocratic houses that had been established were largely left intact, and now seek to become Gods in their own right (definitely no overarching metaphors for capitalism here folks). However there is an overarching theme throughout his work that states and institutions are incompetent and cannot be trusted no matter their foundation, which is extremely burger-brained.
I did not know he ran a PR firm for tech companies, but that does explain his level of access. I have never actually heard him speak well of tech companies, but idk.
He speaks well of a lot of tech. He’s big on how tech used to be good “back when they did innovation and made new cool stuff”. Listen to an interview on his show with any tech journalist.
Here’s his company btw https://ezpr.com/
His opposition to ai seems genuine, but when he speaks of tech companies a lot of it is rooted in what he seems to view as the squandered potential rather than a blanket opposition to capitalism.
To quote an interview he gave once
“I work with founders all the time. I’m a founder myself, I guess—I don’t like the title. But when you are a person that has to make more money than you lose, otherwise you lose your business, and you see these chunderfucks burning 5, 10 billion dollars in a year—and everyone’s celebrating them? It’s offensive.”
I just thought he was speaking positively about them in context to how people compare what was happening then to what is happening now.
Ah, so he is a fan of ‘back in the day we did good capitalism’. Not that surprising. At least I don’t hear him punch left at all, so I will take that for what it is worth. He is just jealous that he doesn’t get the money spigot lol
He did an interview with two tech journalists where they spent like an hour going through how much they loved 2000s-2010s silicon valley and their favorite gadgets.
Gag, guess I am glad I didn’t listen to that one.
It was exhausting to listen to. I still listen to him sometimes, so I don’t want to give the impression that i’m asking people to not. I just think his analysis should be understood in perspective.
Ed is basically the only tech/finance journalist with the ability to get interviews with the high level finance people, and other high access mainstream tech journalists who has been sounding the big blaring alarm bells for the last year or so that the AI thing is a huge fucking boondoggle that is both an enormous waste of money, and likely the death rattle for both Silicon Valley as a hub for real innovative engineering and investment capital as a driver for those hyper scalar ideas.
He has a substack called wheresyouredat that is a pretty funny.
He isn’t really a socialist persay, as he was at one point a supporter of the LibDems in England before they did a coalition government with the Tories, but he has been featured in basically every ‘center-left’ (Chapo, TF, CN, etc.) podcast at least once, if not several times, as he has an extremely good understanding of the depth of the AI fraud. I have never heard him punch left. That said, none of these people are particularly far left.
I would almost say that he is likely further left than Brennan is, because idk how much of what Brennan does is simply performing leftism for the camera.
The only reason fucking Adam Conover has any goddamn relevance is because he is friends with the Sam Reich. An absolute vacuum of a human being, on par with Hank Green but much less funny.
I would almost say that he is likely further left than Brennan is, because idk how much of what Brennan does is simply performing leftism for the camera.
I personally would guess the opposite. I’ve listened to both these guys talk quite a lot and Ed Zitron tends to criticize “crony capitalism”, as in he believes capitalism is broken right now but can be fixed. I have him in the same category as people like Ryan Grim, primarily journalists who do very important and good work but who aren’t driven by ideology, they just end up in leftist spheres because the reality they report on happens to align with what leftists are preaching. Brennan seems pretty definitively anti-capitalist and I have no reason to believe he’s insincere about it, if anything I sometimes feel like he’s hiding his power level on Dropout. Can’t say the same about Adam Conover though. I wanna give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s not just pandering to the radlib Dropout audience but something about him just gives me the ick.
Edit: Yeesh, the views on Conover’s podcast episodes are looking rough. Barely breaking 10k on some of the recent ones.
Yeah, based on what I have learned from the thread, I would absolutely agree with that.
Also what a shame about Adam’s podcast, couldn’t have happened to a more deserving dickhead. Pays to have rich friends, I suppose.
Not sure about Ed but Brennan has an extremely lib understanding of leftism, he’s a peak DSA “leftist” who thinks Stalin was one of the worst mass murderers of all time aka anti communist in reality
‘center-left’ (Chapo, TF, CN, etc.) podcast
What’s TF and did CN drop the ball at some point? I’ve listened to a few CN but not in depth
Trash Future, wherein a bunch of English and Canadian people talk about the state of start-ups and English politics, with a fair smattering of anti-Russian and anti-Soviet bashing depending on if November (ala Kill James Bond and Well Theres Your Problem) is on the episode or not.
Nah, Idk what Citations Needed is up to these days, but it’s more that they rarely interact with the larger podcast-verse, and kinda just do their own thing, kind of like Fourth Reich Archeology (which is genuinely one of the best podcasts coming out right now, up there with Blowback). Both CN and FRA are among the most leftwing podcasts that are out there for sure, genuinely socialist (I just say ‘center-left’ as a general term for this whole entire space ala the Adam Friedland Show.)
Trash future. Its usually fine (I think, it’s been a while since I listened to it) but it’s also very quick to excuse British imperialism, hates AES, and November Kelly turns fascist for brief spells every couple of months.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
