Weakness for Bleakness

Episode 39 - Nothing on the TV, Nothing on the Radio

Hey bleakers. It's been months! Kieran is back from his quest to find himself in the wasted landscape of America. For an agonising fifty minutes, hear him deliver his field report about conspiracy theory, celebrity sightings, Yosemite mai tais and American Italian cuisine. Then listen to Darcy's breakdown of the Andrews/Hanson family court investigation - it's depressing!

In stories, we cover Bernie's health scare and coverage of his campaign more generally, Boris Johnson's unbroken stream of public self-humiliations, the bizarre and disquieting boring of Australia's political elite into the depths of the American arsehole, and our experiences of the climate strike on opposite sides of the world.

Hopefully we'll be back to a pretty regular schedule now with both of us dumb bastards back in Melbourne full time. I hope you're well. We've missed you!

 

Episode 38 - Actually His Name is Epstein's Monster

Kieran's going away for two months so enjoy this Weakness for Bleakness Megasode(tm) in the interim. We look at the genuinely baffling scope of the Epstein madness and ponder a future where the craziest conspiracy plot out there turns out to be more true than we could have feared. And then we enter into a sort of rambling theological war with our Prime Minister over the shaky spiritual ground of his prosperity gospel bullshit. 

Our stories this episode are: sushi pizza restaurant goes tits up because they obeyed the law; turns out recycling isn't some dangerous school of magic only available to those who roll a Chinese character; one-of-a-kind ooshie destruction drama; and the new beer tax: will gradually deepening our regressive sin taxes be the thing that tips the hand of the proletariat into revolution?

We also talk a little bit about the second round of Democratic primary debates at the top of the show. Spoiler: boring, Sanders good, Warren okay, Booker embarrassing, Biden shite.

Outro song is '1998 Demos' from old mate Leonardo's Robot, off the album Ziggurat Vertigo.

Episode 37 - Wet Bandits v Dry Bandits

Hoy bleakers, Darcy's back and there's a couple weeks before Kieran's gone. So here's a bit of a megasode, a two hour paean to political monstrosity that orbits around the dark star of the UK Tories. Darcy runs down the origins of the name and the deep legacy of vicious ineptitude that lives on in the current party. He also takes a look at how they differ from our tories and also how the two parties resemble each other. There's kind of a mini B Topic where we gripe about how shit the current Labor party are.

Our stories are: Australian aged care facilities are killing their residents through the totally normal and understandable malady of malnutrition; Victorian authorities are doing sweet fuck-all to prevent the bulldozing of the sacred sites of the Djab Wurrung people; George Calombaris fully got away with stealing nearly eight million dollars and I guess the powers that be barely give a fuck; and a little bit of a Musk Update, which is mostly an excuse to talk about the Grimes fitness regimen thing that fooled way too many people.

The album we pulled our old outro music from has been released - Ziggurat Vertigo by Leonardo's Robot. You can listen to it on Bandcamp or Spotify using the links below. Our exit music for this episode, the song 'Concrete', is taken from the album.

All the best, bleakers, stay in it.

https://leonardosrobot.bandcamp.com/album/ziggurat-vertigo

https://open.spotify.com/album/4mJOn8gM7jqRHlbSBEFk8v?si=-Wdze8_rRz273X6_xPbOkQ

 

Episode 36 - Get (politically cor)Rekt

Come hear us congratulate ourselves. Darcy wants to talk about political correctness, specifically how easy it is to say sorry and back off from a shit position, specifically how easy it is for him to walk back his vile racist slurs from last week. We're here, we're white, and we're ready to accept your plaudits for solving the problem. Kieran wants to talk about prison labour. Shouldn't be a controversial position but I guess maybe it is: forced prison labour for sub-minimum wage is bad.

 

In headlines: Telstra contracts! Dutton saying gross shit! Labour tax strategy! Georgina Downer (our favourite)!

Special Episode - Debates Are Boring

Little special between-episodes episode here, where Kieran, by himself, talks through the first round of debates in the US Democratic Party primary. Ever wanted to listen to one person stutter through a tedious political evade-a-thon only to come to the conclusion that Bernie Sanders Is Good? Then this is the episode for you.

Episode 35 - Iran, Iran So Far Away

Middle-East heavy episode this week, bleakers. We talk about the looming Iran war, how terrifying and stupid it is, and also about the baffling proportion of UK Tories who think the country is riddled with sharia-law no-go zones.

The stories we're looking at are CFMMEU party donations, Scumbum's "Trumpian" ambitions for the Australian economy, his extraordinarily sinister-sounding Industrial Relations reform, and some stats re: religion, migration ambitions, democracy-opinion-having, etc. from the Arab world.

It's good stuff.

Episode 34 - Civil Dick Source Code

Ciao, bleaklings. Another post-fast feast for you today. Our big topic from Darcy concerns refuting the idea that bigots are experiencing undue prejudice at the hands of bleeding heart leftist hypocrites, when in fact the correct take is that it's good, actually, that they're being shouted down. We talk about tolerance, the Karl Popper's paradox thereof, and the shaky moral ground of reasonable "civil discourse". We also talk about Adrian Cheok, the mad scientist villain from a side-banner porn game who absolutely dares you not to cum in minutes when confronted with his sexy, sexy robots. Oh, also, he's a fucking fascist and he wants to set up another dumb "Western Civilisation" school where you can study the new model of beauty: bloated, cyrrhotic shit-sack Steve Bannon.

In stories, we got Folau's big double down, we got Tiny Homes and the slum-to-come, we got local wards and the political composition thereof courtesy of new legislation from Dandrews, and we got a big ol' juicy doubler of a Musk Update for you.

Episode 33 - Federal Eruction

Holy hell, bleakers, it's been a spell. We're back, for a few weeks anyway, and we want to talk to you about the results of the election. What went wrong? What were the bad things? Were there any good things? And more importantly, is there a way for us to pivot and rip the piss out of the Labor party? You bet your god damn sweets there is.

And in headlines, some bizarre Caro smearing; some terrible Setka infestation that just won't shift; Netflix and Uber are unprofitable but mostly TV is kind of bad a lot these days; and another mini update on the US Dem primaries, from your tenth and least informed source.  

Episode 32 - Ol Vennie

Greetings, my tetrachromatids.

Internet and University are to blame for the lack of an episode last week and the late episode this week. But with those problems resolved, we bring you this, our thirty-second episode, a scrabbly thing looking back at the last few weeks.

First up, Venezuela! What can we take from the current clusterfuck and apply to discourse with those folks who use it as a holistic condemnation of socialism? Then Kieran's got a little kicker on there in the form of three juicy climate change nuggets sure to suck the wind out of your lungs.

 

In stories: Would a -rose by any other name smell so much like Butt?; Georgina Downer is the latest Coalition person to fuck up the integrity of campaign advertising, and she's not even an MP; Darcy does this new gimmick where he experiments with playing devil's advocate for stuff. Here, he jumps to the defense of Robert Richter; and lastly, Kieran walks you through the Ramsay Centre curriculum.

Episode 31 - This Is My Favourite Infographic

Hey kids, and welcome to, uh, "Season 2" I guess we're calling it.

We're talking global poverty numbers this week, and why you shouldn't trust your friends when they tell you that, contrary to all reason, only 10% of the world's population are poor. We're also talking about the Gilette ad, and yes, you're right, it's not exactly timely, but somebody wrote about it in the Spectator and far be it from us to deny you all.

In headlines, we've got the miserable ghost of Tony Abbott's onion fiasco, we've got some criminal charges maybe coming down the pipe for some AMPeople, we've got franking credits trickery from the LNP and we've got more drama in the gang war between the mafia and the legal system.

And a new outro song for season 2! Leonardo's Robot gave us another one. This time it's "Franz K"