Culture
Erin Brockovich says the AI data center boom may really be a water grab
On This Past Weekend, Brockovich was skeptical of the sci-fi theories, but deadly serious about the water.
Penn Jillette says Bob Dylan lied about hopping trains, then Penn lived Dylan’s hobo story himself
The magician’s best trick in this Club Random classic is turning Bob Dylan’s self-mythology into a story about teenage gullibility, showbiz hunger, and the glamour of being broke on purpose.
Carl Hayden Smith says DMT entities told him he was not scheduled to die in an fMRI scanner
The psychedelic researcher’s wildest claim is not that DMT produces entities, but that those entities appeared to treat his lab scan like a cosmic false alarm.
Kevin O'Leary says he never saw Steve Jobs happy or laughing, and that Jobs thought being nice was noise
The Shark Tank investor turns a money episode into a bleak little sermon on Steve Jobs, genius, cruelty, and the Apple ghost that still sits in the room.
The Circuit: the week the tidy story kept losing
Across nine conversations this week, some of the biggest names on the podcast circuit spent their time roughing up the clean version of events, the plague that supposedly ended Rome, the aliens in the government freezer, the trophy that counts as a World Cup. What kept surfacing was a preference for the smaller, stranger, less quotable truth.
Neil deGrasse Tyson says Kessler syndrome could wipe out 100 percent of satellites within a few orbits
The astrophysicist’s real apocalypse scenario isn’t aliens or black holes, it’s orbital shrapnel moving faster than a bullet.
Maureen Callahan says Sarah Jessica Parker called the paparazzi for her Amagansett reading photos
Callahan’s case is less forensic investigation than Hamptons social anthropology, but the claim is wonderfully specific: nobody just happens upon Sarah Jessica Parker reading on a bench out east.
Cristiano Ronaldo says Euro 2016 is like winning the World Cup
The PBD Podcast panel heard Ronaldo’s post-defeat answer as pure ego, but the real story is how perfectly it fits the Ronaldo brand.
David Epstein says General Magic failed because it had too much freedom
On Modern Wisdom, Epstein turns the most romantic Silicon Valley story into a warning label for anyone who thinks total freedom makes better work.
Neil deGrasse Tyson says Obama was right that aliens probably exist, but UFO believers still need to show the alien
The astrophysicist’s alien position is less X-Files and more Costco math: too many planets, not enough proof.
Anthony Kaldellis says the Plague of Justinian probably did not kill half the Roman Empire
The historian's case is brutally practical: if half the empire died, why did Justinian's wars, taxes, and courts keep running?
Patrick Bet-David says the Pepsi jet lawsuit guy finally got 7 million Frontier miles
Frontier turned John Leonard's impossible Harrier jet prize into a Super Bowl bit, and the PBD crew correctly clocks the real winner, the airline's marketing department.
Patrick Bet-David says Iranian mourners held Kill Trump banners while the U.S. was negotiating with Iran
The PBD Podcast turns a funeral clip into an argument against negotiating with a regime whose street theater still knows exactly which American buttons to push.
Sean Stone says the real JFK files problem isn't what was hidden but what Richard Helms shredded when Nixon fired him
Oliver Stone's son thinks the JFK document dump is a distraction from a bonfire that already happened in the 1970s.
Prince William says his dad, King Charles, hates football and had nothing to do with the Aston Villa obsession
The future king of England went on a podcast hosted by two NFL players and casually threw his father under the bus.
Anthony Kaldellis says Roman families voluntarily castrated their sons to place them at the emperor's court
The Byzantine historian explains how castration was sometimes a family's smartest power move, not just a cruelty imposed on slaves.
Scott Horton says the Iraq War was planned in 1992 by the same neocons who wrote a plan for Netanyahu in 1996
The antiwar author lays out the paper trail connecting Paul Wolfowitz's 1992 global dominance memo to a literal strategy document his colleagues wrote for the Israeli prime minister four years later.
Kevin Spacey says Anthony Rapp's accusation collapsed because Spacey lived in a studio apartment with no bedroom
On Club Random, Spacey walks through the detail that sank Anthony Rapp's case, and explains why Elton John showed up in a British courtroom on his behalf.
Sen. John Kennedy says AI could independently hack nuclear codes and launch missiles within five years
The Louisiana senator dropped a genuinely alarming AI prediction on a comedy podcast, sandwiched between Vienna sausage fishing tips and fig newton discourse.
Alex Hormozi says doing hard things physically does not make you better at doing hard things emotionally
The guy who built a business empire on the gospel of relentless effort is here to tell you your ice bath is not making you braver where it counts.
Armie Hammer's new film 'Citizen Vigilante' is banned in Germany and its director says it will inspire real-world vigilante killings
A low-budget Armie Hammer thriller is topping Apple's charts while its director and one of America's biggest podcast hosts predict it sparks actual vigilante violence. That is not a marketing strategy. That is a warning.
Nathan Apffel says pastor Ed Young Jr. may be claiming $3.6 million a year in tax-free housing allowance
The church accountability podcaster spent a night in a Texas jail just for showing up with a sign asking a pastor one question about his finances.
Jeff Bridges says a Big Lebowski fan theory claims Donnie never existed, and he thinks they might be right
The Dude himself has been sitting with a theory that would rewrite everything you thought you knew about bowling night.
Megyn Kelly says Jamie Lee Curtis’s “Los Angeles” pronunciation is an insufferable affectation
A tiny morning-show pronunciation squabble became, in Kelly’s hands, a felony-grade culture crime.
Rebecca Serle says In Five Years came from a psychic who predicted her future husband’s name and timing
The novelist’s fate-obsessed bestseller has a very on-brand origin story, though it works better as literary fuel than as evidence for the supernatural.
UFO documentary filmmaker Matthew Perna says U.S. presidents have historically been kept in the dark about recovered alien bodies
The guest is not a crank with a podcast and a tinfoil aesthetic. He is a filmmaker who got Jay Stratton, the most senior UAP official in U.S. government history, on camera saying he saw non-human beings with his own eyes.
Jim Capers says his Operation Bulwark Silver Star may be upgraded to the Medal of Honor
The Vietnam veteran frames the possible Medal of Honor upgrade less as vindication than as a cruelly late receipt for men who never came home.
Former Navy SEAL says the divorce rate in the SEAL Teams is over 100 percent
A former SEAL breaks down exactly why the Teams chew through marriages at a statistical rate that shouldn't even be mathematically possible.
Matt Ehret says God letting Satan cause evil for a greater good is coping
On Danny Jones Podcast, Ehret pushed back on a Carmelite theory of Satan by arguing that divine permission for rape, murder, and genocide sounds less like theology than a bedtime story for the powerless.
Joe Rogan says multiple sitting and former US presidents personally contacted Spotify to get him removed
Rogan names no names but the table fills them in fast, and nobody is asking for receipts.
Matt Ehret says 'Ku Klux' is Greek for 'circle,' making the KKK a straight rebrand of the Confederate secret society that killed Lincoln
A Canadian historian walks into a podcast and explains that John Wilkes Booth was probably Manchurian-Candidated in Montreal, and that the KKK is just the Golden Circle with a new logo.
Megyn Kelly says Natasha Lyonne will die if she doesn't get treatment immediately after Tribeca meltdown
Kelly pulls no punches on the Russian Doll star's onstage appearance, calling it a failure of everyone in her orbit and drawing a direct line to Carrie Fisher and James Gandolfini.
Mo Gawdat says AGI is already here and your job has roughly three years
The ex-Google insider who wrote a book about AI happiness thinks the smarter-than-human threshold is not coming. It passed.
Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro Says Half the Internet Is Bots and Foreign Governments Are Buying Your Political Opinions
The Daily Wire co-founder argues that bot-driven fake consensus is the KGB playbook running on autopilot, and that Elon Musk is the only person alive who actually knows how bad it is.
Sheryl Crow says a songwriter paid $5 to clone John Mayer's voice and she couldn't tell the difference
Crow heard a demo, assumed it was her friend, and only then learned any amateur can now buy a convincing replica of a working musician's voice for the price of a coffee.
Dan Richards says Egyptologists used Bayesian modeling to delete carbon dates that contradicted the pyramids timeline
A self-described electrician-turned-researcher makes a specific, technical accusation against mainstream Egyptology, and the accusation is harder to dismiss than it sounds.
Rob Shuter says Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds will stage a public outing on Taylor Swift's wedding day to steal headlines
Gossip reporter Rob Shuter tells Megyn Kelly his sources say the couple's image rehab strategy involves a very petty, very public stunt timed to the biggest celebrity wedding of the decade.
Candace Bushnell says a typical 90s New York night was 20 drinks, a couple grams of coke, and two packs of cigarettes
The Sex and the City author gives Gen Z the least cosmo-glossy version of the myth: the real New York was darker, meaner, smokier, and much more financially brutal than the HBO fantasy.
Dan Richards says Egypt’s Labyrinth giant metal object is called Dippy and is not from Filippo Biondi’s pyramid scans
The Danny Jones Podcast detours into the internet’s favorite archaeological fever dream, a supposed metallic Tic Tac under Hawara, and Richards is more useful as a skeptical sorter than a true believer.
Graham Hancock Wants You to Believe Civilization Has a Missing Chapter
The author and ancient-history provocateur makes his case for a lost pre-ice-age civilization, and some of it is harder to dismiss than you'd expect.
Graham Hancock on Death, Lost Civilizations, and the Enemies He Can't Forgive
The ancient-history provocateur comes in reflective and leaves a little raw.
Graham Hancock Wants You to Believe a Secret Society Built the Pyramids
The ancient-mysteries author brings his lost-civilization thesis to Diary of a CEO, and the math is more interesting than the mythology.
Graham Hancock Wants You to Know Science Is Just a Pimple on the Nose of Human History
The ancient civilizations theorist comes to Diary of a CEO to relitigate everything, and some of it actually lands.
Megyn Kelly on Anna Faris: What Entertainment Tonight Refused to Say
Maureen goes after the celebrity press for treating a visibly alarming red carpet appearance like a routine junket moment.
John Lennox on Hell, AI, and Why the Output Is Not the Point
The Oxford mathematician and Christian apologist comes to Diary of a CEO to argue that consciousness, not computation, is what separates humans from machines, and that hell is something you choose.
John Lennox Says Transhumanists Are 2,000 Years Late to Solving Death
The Oxford mathematician makes his case that AI is idolatry, atheism is self-defeating, and Christ already beat Silicon Valley to the resurrection.
Douglas Brunt says Stalin’s erasure of Immanuel Nobel inspired George Orwell’s 1984
Brunt makes the case that the forgotten Nobel oil empire was not just a business story, but a prototype for Orwellian erasure.
Doug Brunt says Stalin’s erasure of Immanuel Nobel inspired George Orwell’s 1984
Brunt’s claim is a great lost-history grenade, though his Stalin-to-Orwell line compresses a messy Soviet story into one very TV-ready villain.
John Lennox Told Peter Singer That Atheism Is a Faith, and the Internet Lost Its Mind
The Oxford mathematician and Christian apologist sits down with Steven Bartlett and refuses to give easy answers, which turns out to be the most persuasive thing he can do.
Rob Shuter says Taylor Swift rejected Anna Wintour’s wedding gown help and has six dresses in the running
The celebrity columnist’s read is brutal and very Vogue funeral-coded: Anna Wintour’s old trade, access for influence, no longer works on Taylor Swift.
Mel Robbins says the Red Sox are making their first bobblehead honoring a woman for her Let Them Night
The summer-reset episode mostly sells anticipation as self-care, but the searchable nugget is a Fenway promo claim big enough to make Red Sox fans squint.
John Stryker Meyer says MACV-SOG reports went directly to the White House and he could not talk for 20 years
The Vietnam veteran’s account of the secret war is less a war story than a lesson in how a country hides a war from itself.
Mo Gawdat says everyone except China and America is about to become third world in AI
The former Google X executive's bleak AI forecast is less about killer robots than the UK paying rent forever to someone else's software stack.
Cenk Uygur says Israel blocks an Iran peace deal every time Trump moves toward peace
On The Diary of a CEO, Uygur argued that Trump has a deal available with Iran, but Benjamin Netanyahu keeps pushing him back toward war.
Cenk Uygur says Israel gave America a list of seven countries to attack after 9/11
The Young Turks host turns a Diary of a CEO Iran debate into a blunt accusation about U.S. foreign policy, while Kevin O'Leary argues the real issue is stopping Iran from getting a bomb.
Don Lincoln says quantum field theory predicts dark energy 10^120 times too large
The Fermilab physicist puts a number on the vacuum catastrophe, and the number is so stupidly large it makes ordinary scientific failure look dainty.
Michio Kaku Says We're Probably Not in a Simulation, and He Has 71 Years of Physics to Back It Up
The string theory co-founder visits Diary of a CEO and does something rare: he actually answers the big questions, then politely dismantles one of the internet's favorite cosmic theories.
Tina Fey Has No Beef with Timothée Chalamet, and God Is Fair
The 30 Rock creator stops by New Heights to settle the great Knicks game manspreading controversy once and for all.
Tina Fey on Athletes, Almonds, and Why She Can't Get Her Kids to Watch 30 Rock
The Kelce brothers haul in Tina Fey and Nate Bargatze for an episode that somehow covers manspreading at MSG, a Cleveland Guardians ownership stake, and the origin of Nashville hot chicken.
Ron White says a Proverbs verse on his dead mother's refrigerator brought him back to God
The memory champion's most striking claim wasn't about technique, it was about a Bible verse his mother left where he would see it.
Tulsi Gabbard says Democratic elites want to be God and compete with Americans' faith
On The Shawn Ryan Show, Gabbard turns a familiar anti-elite argument into something grander and darker, a theology of Washington power.
Michio Kaku Will Not Tell You Whether Aliens Exist, No Matter What You Threaten
The theoretical physicist comes prepared with one answer for every question: maybe.
Michio Kaku Calls Genesis a Fairy Tale and Then Explains Why That's Fine
The theoretical physicist comes to the Diary of a CEO to talk immortality, nuclear annihilation, and why the Bible is a metaphor he actually respects.
Ben Rhodes Told You So: The JCPOA Was Right, the Iran War Was Dumb, and Everyone Knew It
The former Obama deputy national security advisor walks Jon Stewart through a decade of foreign policy failure, and the argument is depressingly airtight.
Graham Platner Wants to Be the Oyster Farmer Who Fixes the Senate
A Marine combat vet from Sullivan, Maine showed up on Jon Stewart's podcast and spent an hour saying the quiet parts loud about why Democrats keep losing.
Alex Wagner on Why Republican Senators Are Torching Their Own Careers for Trump
The MSNBC veteran joins Brian Tyler Cohen to explain how the Iran war, gas prices, and a castrated Congress add up to a 2026 disaster Republicans are building themselves.
Pete Holmes Retells the Prodigal Son and Somehow Makes It Funnier Than His Standup
The comedian and podcaster walks a live audience through evangelical upbringing, mushrooms at Bonnaroo, and why awareness is the only God worth arguing about.
Kara Swisher Says the Ellisons Are the Problem, Not Trump
On the Colbert segment the network wouldn't air, Swisher has a clear villain in mind, and it isn't the White House.
Alexis Bellino says RHOC cut her grief footage and made her Shannon Beador’s nemesis
Bellino’s complaint is specific, plausible, and very convenient, which makes it basically a perfect Housewives allegation.
Dan Aykroyd Hosts History's Weirdest Omnibus, and It Actually Works
Hollow earth theory, psychic Cold War spies, and a ghost who got her husband convicted: the Unbelievable with Dan Aykroyd is exactly as unhinged as it sounds.
Shannon Beador's Hot Mic Moment Is the Most Honest She's Been All Season
She stormed off twice, lost half her party guests, and accidentally confessed her relationship fears directly into the camera she thought had stopped rolling.
Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi in 1978: Two Guys Who Weren't Sure the Show Would Last Seven Episodes
A newly surfaced interview captures the Blues Brothers at 26 and 29, still sleeping on foam slabs and genuinely unsure if any of this was going to work out.