The H&H Podcast

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comRob Henderson joins me to discuss Sinners, which critics and viewers are both raving about.Substack has a new screen share feature, which we tried out. I wanted us to play parts of the movie and react to it, but Amazon prevents you from being able to do that. We do use screen share though to read and react to reviews of the film by Ross Douthat and Steve Sailer. The Sailer one in particular cracks us up. I had forgotten how charming his old man racism can be. He at one point goes on a rant about the history of superstitious savagery in Haiti, which he attempts to connect to director Ryan Coogler’s alleged ethno-narcissism. See also the Scott Greer review, which I bring up. Unfortunately, while screen share looked good during the stream, it cuts off part of the screen in the video. Hopefully Substack is able to fix this. Nonetheless, we read from the articles out loud, so you can follow along. Overall, this is a fun movie that is hard to take too seriously. I was expecting something a bit more sophisticated given how much critics loved the film, but it’s mostly a crowd-pleaser. The storyline is simple, the characters aren’t too deep, the bad guys are as cliché as they can possibly be (literally the Klan!), and one finds demographic sops to nearly every racial group, with the exception of Hispanics. The messaging is somewhat basic, though there is a hint of subversion in the fact that the zombies talk like woke libs. We spend some time on the director’s bizarre fixation on cunnilingus. I count four or five different times it comes up. This leads to a discussion of the way movies and TV shows portray oral sex as received by women versus men. Rob and I also debate what makes the movie appealing. Partly, as Douthat and Sailer both point out, people want to talk about a blockbuster film that isn’t some kind of sequel, remake, or spinoff. Additionally, we find black masculinity appealing, and here you get an unadulterated version in its natural environment. If such a premise sounds fun to you, you might enjoy Sinners. Even if not, you should probably watch it anyway since it’s nice to be part of a conversation involving a movie that is not about Marvel superheroes or part of some other long-existing IP universe.

Chris Nicholson joins me to talk about Season 1 of Pluribus. This is a completely different conversation than the one I just had with Rob. Chris keeps pointing out, and I agree with him, that the show is probably not going to go that deep philosophically or in terms of the origins of the virus. He mentions his “oh no” moment when Vince Gilligan noted to the interviewer he was talking to that the drones were happy. Are we just getting the most basic thought experiment from intro to philosophy? Is the virus storyline simply unnecessary?I add that the interviews have another value here, in that Gilligan tells us explicitly that the show is not about Covid or AI. In some ways, the point about AI makes it worse, because it takes away one plausible method for the virus to have ended up with its bizarre and seemingly contradictory characteristics. We discuss the idea of Vince Gilligan interviews serving as the Word of God in understanding this universe.I note how incurious Carol appears to be about why animals are not part of the joining, or even why she is one of only a handful of people on earth immune from the effects of the virus. Major red flags. Chris reminds me here that I wasn’t demanding enough as a viewer. We’re getting answers about how exactly the joining works, and the rules governing the Others’ behavior. What we don’t have any hints of are the whys. There is no indication that we’ll ever get them either. Why are the Others like this? Is there a deeper logic of the origins of the rules? Does it have something to do with human nature, or does the virus not care about the specifics of the species it infects? Is there an evolutionary theory that can explain how we got here? The show creators want us to speculate on these things, but they haven’t given us anything to go on. Chris and I clarify that we’re not saying it’s a bad show. But there are a lot of opportunities to go deeper here, and we might just not get them. If things continue like this in Season 2, I’ll be disappointed but may be able to more fully enjoy the show without expecting it to be any different. For those who get to the end, you’ll see us preview the forthcoming Game of Thrones spinoff and talk about why shows take longer to make these days. For previous discussions on Pluribus, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, see below. All episodes are conversations between me and Chris, unless noted otherwise.“Should You Become a Pod Person?” Pluribus, S1:E1-3, with Rob Henderson“The Kim Wexler Theory,” Pluribus, S1:E1-6“The Righteous Mestizo,” Pluribus, S1, with Rob HendersonThe Breaking Bad UniverseNietzschean or Christian? Marc Andreessen on Breaking Bad and Saul“The Conscientious Objector to Therapy Culture,” Rewatching Breaking Bad, S1-S2“A Love Story?”, Rewatching Breaking Bad, S3- S4E4“The Whitewashing of Walter White,” Rewatching Breaking Bad, S4-S5Better Call Saul: S6E7, Plan and ExecutionBetter Call Saul: S6E8, Point and ShootBetter Call Saul: S6E9, Fun and GamesBetter Call Saul: S6E10, NippyBetter Call Saul: S6E11, Breaking BadBetter Call Saul: S6E12, WaterworksBetter Call Saul finale with Chris and Marc AndreessenNote: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use. You can also decide whether you want to receive either podcast via email or alerts through your settings. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comI’ve done two previous podcasts on Pluribus: one with Rob Henderson, and one with Chris Nicholson. I didn’t want to choose between them for discussing the end of the season, so I decided to do an episode with each. I’m releasing Rob today, and Chris will be later this week. As you will see, these are vastly different conversations, and I think many will enjoy the contrast. In this discussion, Rob brings up a good point, which relates to how Manousos and Carol approach their shared situation in ways that reflect sex stereotypes. I bring up Manousos as the “Righteous Mestizo” prototype, a figure we also saw in the Breaking Bad universe. I mention the hints of religiosity in his character, and the way that this undergirds his stubbornness and morally upright behavior. Perhaps this ties in to Vince Gilligan’s conservatism, and also his contempt for AI. Throughout the conversation, we refer to two Gilligan interviews, one in Variety and the other in Esquire. For previous discussions on Pluribus, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, see below. All episodes are conversations between me and Chris, unless noted otherwise.“Should You Become a Pod Person?” Pluribus, S1:E1-3, with Rob Henderson“The Kim Wexler Theory,” Pluribus, S1:E1-6The Breaking Bad UniverseNietzschean or Christian? Marc Andreessen on Breaking Bad and Saul“The Conscientious Objector to Therapy Culture,” Rewatching Breaking Bad, S1-S2“A Love Story?”, Rewatching Breaking Bad, S3- S4E4“The Whitewashing of Walter White,” Rewatching Breaking Bad, S4-S5Better Call Saul: S6E7, Plan and ExecutionBetter Call Saul: S6E8, Point and ShootBetter Call Saul: S6E9, Fun and GamesBetter Call Saul: S6E10, NippyBetter Call Saul: S6E11, Breaking BadBetter Call Saul: S6E12, WaterworksBetter Call Saul finale with Chris and Marc AndreessenNote: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use. You can also decide whether you want to receive either podcast via email or alerts through your settings.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comChris Nicholson returns after almost two years to discuss Pluribus, up to episode six.He raises some good questions about the direction of the show. Chris says that thus far, it is mostly a character study of Carol, and he has no reason to care about her yet. I say fair enough, but the reason that most of us began watching the show is the involvement of Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn. We compare Pluribus to Breaking Bad, which was plot-driven at first, and Better Call Saul, in which we were going in with a character that we already knew and loved.This led me to think through my own theory: perhaps Carol Sturka is Kimberly Wexler. I asked ChatGPT about this, and things went in a very weird direction. I haven’t seen any reason so far why this is impossible. Chris and I discuss the question of whether the hive mind is its own creation, or the result of what you get when you amalgamate all of the world’s humans. Is there a way to see the hive mind’s code of ethics as a sort of least common denominator human morality? The ethical system has some inconsistencies, and there are still open questions like why they can kiss others without their permission to fundamentally change them but they can’t violate their individual rights in other ways. The ethical system seems to be a mix of the most extreme forms of libertarianism and paternalism. And why do they care about Carol so much anyway? All of these questions hopefully have satisfying answers. We also talk about the possible AI angle. Is this hive mind the result of something that evolved naturally, or, as I suspect, a technological creation that started to spread across the universe? The latter is seeming a lot more likely. The idea that this is misaligned AI would explain the oddities of their ethical system. Chris lays down his marker and says that Pluribus is going to invert the process that unfolded in Gilligan’s previous two shows. Instead of a character going bad, here they’re going to become better. By the end, we’ll see peace, love, harmony, and an understanding that we all need each other. That would be kind of lame though, and I have too much faith in Vince Gilligan to think he’ll take us in that direction. Still, this makes sense in light of some of the lessons of the previous two shows, which teach that most people in American society are good. Chris and I debate whether we are supposed to share in Carol’s contempt for her fans, or react more negatively to her sneering at them. I was sure it was the former, but on further reflection maybe this is wrong. Just as most lawyers are ethical, finance isn’t about screwing people over, and most Americans try to live their best lives and follow the rules, perhaps the truly enlightened view is that we should let the romance novel readers have their fun. For previous discussions on Pluribus, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, see below. All episodes are conversations between me and Chris, unless noted otherwise. “Should You Become a Pod Person?” Pluribus, S1:E1-3, with Rob HendersonThe Breaking Bad UniverseNietzschean or Christian? Marc Andreessen on Breaking Bad and Saul“The Conscientious Objector to Therapy Culture,” Rewatching Breaking Bad, S1-S2“A Love Story?”, Rewatching Breaking Bad, S3- S4E4“The Whitewashing of Walter White,” Rewatching Breaking Bad, S4-S5Better Call Saul: S6E7, Plan and ExecutionBetter Call Saul: S6E8, Point and ShootBetter Call Saul: S6E9, Fun and GamesBetter Call Saul: S6E10, NippyBetter Call Saul: S6E11, Breaking BadBetter Call Saul: S6E12, WaterworksBetter Call Saul finale with Chris and Marc AndreessenNote: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use. You can also decide whether you want to receive either podcast via email or alerts through your settings.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comTyler Tone joins me to discuss There Will Be Blood (2007), as part of my Paul Thomas Anderson series, which has thus far included One Battle After Another (2025) and Boogie Nights (1997).I absolutely loved this film. Daniel Plainview was one of those characters who become incorporated into my psyche for a substantial period of time, like Don Draper or Tony Soprano. I open by discussing how Plainview’s relationship with his son affected how I interacted with my own for a few days. I find myself still returning to his competent benevolence whenever the kids become too annoying. We talk about the themes relating to capitalism, progress, and religious fundamentalism in backward communities. The movie was genuinely pro-capitalist in ways I didn’t expect. The man of action gets ahead by building, based on his own intelligence, competence, and drive. And I’ve rarely seen such a satisfying ending. Late in the conversation, we circle back to other PTA films, with Tyler giving me his theory for the general worldview of the entire body of his work. Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use. You can also decide whether you want to receive either podcast via email or alerts through your settings.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comRob joins me to discuss the first three episodes of Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus, which is now on Apple TV.I started watching because I trust Gilligan based on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul both being among my favorite shows. The fact that he brings Rhea Seehorn along as the lead actress added to the appeal.If you haven’t watched it yet, you can go ahead and start now since we’ll be following along with the series (spoilers below). One cool thing Gilligan does is that he spends a lot of time showing people getting deeply into some technical or scientific topic or engaging in a form of craftsmanship. We see a great deal of lawyering in Better Call Saul, and engineering and chemistry in Breaking Bad. Recall Walter White’s experiences fixing the boiler and cooking meth, or Gus talking wine. We observe glimmers of this here when the scientists find signs of alien life, and when Carol and Helen are walking through the ice hotel and the bellhop is explaining the experience. Rob informs me that this is something the kids call “competence porn,” a phrase that we both hate but nonetheless seems to capture the phenomenon.Gilligan has identified as conservative, or at least more conservative than most people in Hollywood. I discuss with Rob the beauty of casting a Mauritanian as the lecherous guy who uses his newfound power to ride on Air Force One and have sex with as many women as possible. This is a country with a blend of French, Arab, and black African culture. In other words, this is like the sexual predator singularity (I can say it, I’m an Arab). Moreover, the Asians and Native Americans want to just accept the new world, the black guy wants to be king and have a lot of sex, and the upper class American white woman is the only one looking around and saying this is not ok! Perhaps she needed to be a lesbian, as that’s the only way a show can otherwise be this politically incorrect. The other benefit of making her one is that she stands out as a prototypical suburban Karen. Rob points out that even her name sounds like Karen. I also see hints of a parable that is pro-capitalist, or at least somehow about capitalism. When Carol finds Sprouts empty, she calls the aliens and tells them that she’s always been independent and wants to do her own shopping. But to get her “independence” she needs an army of drones to bring the food and stock the shelves. Isn’t this what capitalism is? People mindlessly doing repetitive tasks for our pleasure and benefit? We just don’t appreciate it and think that we created everything we have. Then at the end of episode 3, we get Carol’s shock upon realizing they would provide her with an atom bomb if she wanted one. Is this showing us where capitalism goes off the rails, when it gives us substances and products that are clearly harmful? Rob brings up AI as a theme, which I didn’t consider much before, but it makes perfect sense. Here is this thing that has access to all of the world’s knowledge, is much smarter than you, but also has blind spots and is dumb in a lot of ways.We spend a lot of time going over potential paradoxes regarding the rules of how the pod people behave and interact with the autonomous humans remaining. What if they get contradictory commands? Do they feel pain and pleasure experienced by other pod people? Why can they not coerce the remaining humans into doing stuff while their entire project is about coercion in the end? Where do animals fit into all this? There’s a lot in this universe that is yet to be explored. On the surface, we’re supposed to be on Carol’s side. But part of me wonders whether there’s a pro-alien reading of the show. Maybe they really are all-knowing and we should just listen to them. When Zosia serenely tells Carol, in her drugged up and miserable state, that we would all save a person drowning without thinking twice, doesn’t the point land? After all, Zosia is happy and Carol is spiraling! You might say she was in this condition because of the aliens, but the flashback to the hotel and initial episode tell us she wasn’t all that happy before. Rhea Seehorn is perfectly cast here. As a dry-humored cynic, she seems more Wexler than Wexler. Maybe this is another reason she had to be a lesbian. I feel that if a woman like Carol wasn’t a lesbian, her male partner would need to be a complete non-entity.The show is generally funny, though the snapback humor is a bit cringe. I think Seehorn provides the best possible version of it nonetheless.Gilligan has not disappointed, and I’m eager to see where this goes next. If you are interested, check out previous discussions I’ve had on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. All conversations are with Chris Nicholson, except for the two that involved Marc Andreessen. Pretty amazing to think that at this point I have done dozens of hours of video and audio on the worlds that Vince Gilligan has created. My audience for the TV reviews isn’t huge, but it is very passionate.The Breaking Bad UniverseRewatching Breaking Bad, S1 and S2Rewatching Breaking Bad, S3- S4E4Rewatching Breaking Bad, S4-S5Better Call Saul: S6E7, Plan and ExecutionBetter Call Saul: S6E8, Point and ShootBetter Call Saul: S6E9, Fun and GamesBetter Call Saul: S6E10, NippyBetter Call Saul: S6E11, Breaking BadBetter Call Saul: S6E12, WaterworksNietzschean or Christian? Marc Andreessen on Breaking Bad and SaulBetter Call Saul finale with Chris and Andreessen

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comFresh off watching One Battle After Another, I did a livestream review of Boogie Nights with Tyler Tone as part of a series on Paul Thomas Anderson films. We begin with a discussion about the movie playing to nostalgia. This was a film made in 1997 set in the 1970s and 1980s. It is impossible to imagine us today having the same feelings looking back at the aughts. I wonder whether this is similar to economic growth in that the low hanging fruit has been picked, and you can only do things like sexual liberation and break down taboos once. Culture thus becomes stuck soon after society achieves a long enough streak of peace and prosperity. We debate the message of the film. I came away believing that it was very anti-porn, while Tyler sees it more as about Hollywood in general, and with an uplifting message in the end. My view is quite darker. We discuss the B characters, and what their stories are trying to tell us. We’ll be doing There Will Be Blood next, so stay tuned for that. Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use. You can also decide whether you want to receive either podcast via emails or alerts.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comLily Zuckerman joins me again to discuss the new Paul Thomas Anderson film One Battle After Another. The movie consciously goes out of its way to separate itself from circa-2020 era wokeness. Lily calls it representative of Chapo Trap House liberalism.I enjoyed Lockjaw as an amalgamation of rightoid characters. He’s in the military, and also a Nazi, and an incel. I point out that another way that this movie is not woke is that its bad guys are literal white supremacists. There’s none of this idea that the real enemy is unconscious bias or disparities or whatever. It’s a liberal fantasy through and through. You get sex and violence, but also an enemy that makes you feel morally pure.I argue that a move away from the neurotic version of woke – here I’m thinking of a room full of masked DSA members talking about their anxiety – was inevitable. How would you even make an entertaining movie glamorizing these people? A liberalism that is about sex, violence, and killing Nazis is broadly appealing. It would center left-wing economic ideas, which are popular across the political spectrum including among Trump supporters, and also lets one protect the innocent and fight adversaries who are both evil and pathetic, like Lockjaw. We talk about the prospects of immigration being the issue that unites various factions of the left, given that it is the one place where conservatives actually do use violence against people of color. Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use. You can also decide whether you want to receive either podcast via emails or alerts.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comRob Henderson joins me to talk about Look Who’s Back (2015) (watch on YouTube), a German film with the premise that Hitler returns to life and becomes a successful entertainer. We talk about the over-the-top antifascist messaging of the movie, as on the surface we see Germans indulging their racism, and (spoiler) at the end a Hitler voiceover as we’re shown the activities of modern day rightists.Yet we can’t help but wonder… is there a Straussian understanding of the film, or perhaps the source novel? Frankly, Hitler comes across as really cool. He’s smart, talented, and charming. He learns about the world, takes initiative, and accomplishes his goals. Hitler gives fatherly advice. He has progressive views on women, and appears unbothered by all the homosexuality and gender bending he must observe in Berlin. Germans who oppose immigration are allowed to speak their piece. At the same time, the movie tries to give the impression that Hitler is actually talking to leaders of the NPD, with one of them asking that the cameras be turned off so he could express loyalty to the Führer. As I found out from my research, this was a scripted part of the movie, but it was intended to give the impression that it was real. I mention how people will always take the surface level interpretation of a piece of art, so it is not difficult to send a hidden message. This is what has always made me skeptical of Straussian readings of books, as people will miss the point unless you make it very clear for them, and that goes even for sophisticated observers, who are unlikely to put that much effort into understanding any particular work. Nonetheless, it’s fun to speculate. Scott Greer actually read the novel, and I asked him whether there was a way to read it from a pro-Hitler perspective. He replied yes, and the film actually made Hitler look even worse than the book. I await the Highly Respected episode on this. Rob and I discuss German remembrance culture, and whether the same film could be made today. We also mention the eerie way in which a lot of people’s faces are blurred, which I’m guessing is the result of Germany having really weird privacy laws. I take this as an indication that there is something deeply wrong with their culture.Near the end, we discuss the chapter on propaganda in Mein Kampf, and how Hitler would do as an influencer today. Note: If you don’t want the TV and film reviews, go to your settings in Substack and uncheck the H&H podcast. Also, if you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comLily Zuckerman is a student at UATX. She suggested we watch Materialists (2025), in which a high-end matchmaker named Lucy Mason (Dakota Jackson) goes around setting people up while also being involved in a love triangle of her own. I think this film perfectly encapsulates the post-MeToo era. Sure, there’s still a sexual assault storyline, etc. But it seems that after the crazy 2010s and early 2020s, men and women are back to being honest about what they want. Women want height and money, men youth and beauty. The film acknowledges this reality, and although it is judgmental about it – particularly towards the middle aged men who want to date younger, less so the woman who wants a guy with money – there’s an acknowledgment that this is human nature, so what are you going to do? Around 2020, cultural leftism felt like if it couldn’t change human nature, it could simply bully everyone indefinitely. With the decline in the power of the MSM, the rise of the bro podcast sphere, Elon’s purchase of X, the quick money that can be made via OnlyFans, and newer forms of social media, trying to repress our instincts has become a hopeless battle. The future is a more fragmented culture, which means that human nature will reign supreme given that no faction can exercise enough hegemony to realistically shape us into something else. Lily and I discuss the importance of height in this film and dating culture more generally. When I was a kid, we would talk about women desiring a man who is “tall, dark, and handsome.” Dark of course didn’t mean black or Indian, but more like a tanned white guy. But there was less of this idea that things were hopeless if you were short. Either we’ve become more realistic, or women feel freer to indulge in this preference. Lily explains why she thinks people should in fact be more rational about picking partners according to tangible criteria. I’m inclined to agree. Whatever the discourse around dating is right now and whatever it is encouraging people to do, it’s clearly not working. The default script people go through their lives with makes the difference, and we’ve flipped from one of being married and having children, to one that says focus on your career and a family would be nice to have if you find the perfect person in the right moment and it doesn’t interfere with your other goals in life. When we discuss people being picky, this I think is what we’re getting at. People think they should have jobs no matter what, so they’ll settle for a “good enough” career instead of remaining unemployed. They at one point treated family formation the same way, but don’t anymore. Note: If you don’t want the TV and film reviews, go to your settings in Substack and uncheck the H&H podcast. Also, if you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comAnora (2024) was hailed by critics as a movie about the empowering nature of sex work (spoilers below and in the episode). Rob Henderson and Tyler Tone join me to discuss. We just don’t see it. This seems to be one of those films where there’s a politically correct interpretation that is divorced from the actual content of the movie. That conclusion seems inevitable from the last scene, in which Ani has sex with Igor and then breaks down. I was afraid there would be a cheesy heartwarming ending where she doesn’t have sex with him but wants him to take her out on a date. That’s how a rom-com would’ve finished. But this was much darker. I knew we were supposed to feel sorry for Ani, but I saw her as a gold digger. Rob and I debate whether she was “really” in love with Ivan. He convinces me that she fell in love in the way someone like her would. The fact that she liked him for his money did not make the relationship any less real. This made sense. I guess the thing I struggle with is that Ivan just sucks so much as a person, so it’s hard for me to sympathize with a woman caring about him. Speaking of which, Russians come off poorly here. We discuss the role of Russians in pop culture, and whether the movie could have worked if the rich family were American instead. I thought the father was the worst character of all, but Rob and Tyler convinced me that there was another way to interpret his behavior. Rather than being cold and aloof, chiming in only to laugh at Ani, he was taking a backseat to his wife, and enjoyed seeing her taken down a peg.One of the more interesting debates we have is over how the audience is supposed to feel about Igor. He came into Ani’s life as a thug there to restrain her. If he could be redeemed by a few nice gestures, it indicates a more forgiving attitude towards male misbehavior than we saw at the height of the MeToo era.

Twin Peaks originally ran for two seasons on ABC from 1990 to 1991. A running joke on the show was that FBI agent Dale Cooper, the protagonist, really liked coffee and cherry pie. He was always complimenting establishments on their coffee and cherry pie, while recommending them to other people. To an audience in the early 1990s, this must have been very funny. But the humor of a guy really liking coffee was lost on me watching in 2025.In the 2017 remake of Twin Peaks on Showtime (spoilers beginning here), Dale Cooper returns in a catatonic form. This Zombie Cooper really likes coffee and cherry pie. Whenever we arrived at a moment where his old self comes out after he has seen coffee or cherry pie, I would feel this sense of anticipation and enjoy the predictable punchline. Man likes coffee is not funny to me. But a character I’ve grown to know and love returning after a quarter century in a different form – and liking coffee – is a thought that brings me overwhelming joy.“The past is a foreign country.” With the invention of TV and movies, we can visually and audibly experience the kinds of situations and jokes people once found funny, what they feared, how they expected the sexes to relate to one another, and more. Even if previous eras put less emphasis on realism in art, we at least learn what was expected from individuals in terms of ideals, prototypes, and norms. Becoming familiar with characters living in one culture and watching what they are like in another, through the passage of time, can be a surreal experience. Of course, all of us who were alive in 1990 and are still here today have had to adjust to new social realities, but in real life the shift is so gradual that its shock is diluted throughout countless small experiences reminding us that the past is always incrementally slipping away. Only through fiction can we fully experience getting to know characters living in one generation and then suddenly seeing what they are like in the next. The fact that this premise is so interesting is why you’ll often see novels, shows, and movies about an individual waking up from a coma, or in a variation of that theme, people living in a foreign country and then coming back, which is the premise of the King of the Hill remake. This is part of the appeal of the Twin Peaks story. Tyler Tone originally convinced me to get into this universe, and he now joins me to discuss the series, with a particular focus on The Return. We spend time on the aesthetic shift between the original and the remake. As argued by Jonathan Foltz, the story is much more thematically and geographically sprawling than the original, reflecting what has happened to American culture since the early 1990s.The first series offered an idealized vision of small-town America – albeit with a dark underbelly – while the 2017 series feels haunted by economic decay, addiction, and disconnection. We reflect on how Twin Peaks originally brought tens of millions together on network television, while The Return premiered on a premium TV channel and streaming service with orders of magnitude fewer viewers.The conversation begins with a discussion of the subplots and character arcs, before getting into larger questions about the series. We reflect on how The Return withholds the Cooper fans expect, offering instead Zombie Cooper as Dougie Jones and the evil Mr. C. I take the fact that we don’t get the Cooper we remember until late in the show as a sign that he’s too good for the culture we’ve created. As viewers have come to expect anti-heroes, an unblemished classic hero is difficult to imagine. I talk about how pro wrestling changed over the 1990s, reflecting the larger cultural shift, and the move away from clear cut good guys and bad guys. There is something similar going on with the original Sheriff Truman, who is omnipresent throughout conversations and via his brother and namesake, while never actually showing up. At some point, we also discuss how the original “Bob” really doesn’t work in 2017. I guess in 1990, a plausible symbol of evil was a guy who looks like a janitor in a denim outfit? Such a figure is laughable today. Maybe Bob takes whatever form represents evil in a particular cultural context. If so, it’s interesting to think how out of place the original character looks from our vantage point. I was hit hard by the storyline with Bobby and Shelly. David Lynch first led us on to believe that they were still together. Then in the middle of what looks like a family discussion, the young criminal comes out and takes Shelly away. Bobby is defeated. The entirety of Shelly’s past is seen in a different light. She wasn’t a victim of Leo; he was the kind of man she sought out, with her daughter falling into the same patterns. The seeming revelation that something similar happened between Ed and Nora at first compounded the original despair, but their relationship then moves in the opposite direction. Tyler and I speculate on why the two love stories end up differently. We discuss David Lynch’s politics. Tyler informs me that he voted for Gary Johnson in 2016. I note that the clearest tell that he was a rightoid is that he didn’t cast many nonwhites in the series, except for Asian females. See in particular the scene where the tiny girl is put on the ground and crawls on the floor. Relatedly, there’s the fact that the Twin Peaks universe caters to the male gaze as a more general matter. This appears to be the role of Tammy, who serves as the sidekick to Lynch himself. As mentioned in my review of that film with Rob, I’ve always thought that the point of Mulholland Drive was to put two beautiful actresses in sex scenes together. We spend some time on the Dr. Jacoby storyline. To me, it’s interesting that the two people who we see enjoying his show are Nadine and Jerry. All three of these individuals are B characters throughout the series. Are those the ones who get into paranoid right-wing politics? Tyler questions whether Dr. Amp is actually right-coded, but I think I convince him by pointing to the shovel scam and the Americana iconography. It is true there are some more left-wing critiques in his rants, and this shows Lynch being ahead of his time, given the MAGA-MAHA convergence we have witnessed. Ben Horne makes occasional appearances to show us how men have changed. Before, he had sex with his subordinates. Now he doesn’t. Not because he’s afraid of being cancelled, but because that’s not what we expect from older men in positions of power anymore. He’s kind of dead inside, compared to the energetic and jovial character he was a quarter-century ago, so this really doesn’t seem like a celebration of the feminization of the world. And then there’s Audrey. I was in shock watching her first appearance. You can see the same facial expressions, patterns of speech, tics and eccentricities. But what was cute or could even make a man fall in love with a woman in her twenties – the frivolity, indecisiveness, arbitrary and fierce passions – is unsettling in one who is deep into middle age. Only the mole remains unblemished as a commemoration of the past. Shelly in contrast is still beautiful, and it seems like Lynch made Audrey look particularly bad to drive the point home. People talk about her storyline, and much of The Return, as an assault on the concept of nostalgia, but here the lessons are heightened as we’re reminded of one of the cruelest facts of human existence: women age. After exhausting some of the main subplots – I don’t think we could’ve gotten to all of them, even with much more time – we move on to larger themes. The show, we agree, is less about solving mysteries than about resisting the very idea of resolution. Tyler emphasizes that he doesn’t particularly like the idea of worrying about plot details, but rather seeks to experience the director’s larger vision. He mentions the four and a half hour YouTube video that seeks to explain the series, which I’m just starting to get through. I ask about the significance of the episode centered around the detonation of the atom bomb. Tyler argues that we shouldn’t think about this as a scientific explanation of the main plot, but rather see nuclear weapons as a symbol of man becoming alienated from his nature and losing control. We talk about nuclear weapons as the symbol of man-made danger versus AI, with me arguing that the latter is much more depressing as the crowning achievement that might destroy us. Nuclear weapons are cool. They’re just machines that are doing more of the thing that machines do, that is rearranging matter. AI cuts to the core of who we are, and while there will be a lot of great applications going forward, it is also drowning the world in slop. Fine, slop is not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I don’t know, I find slop worse. This is the technological version of hating pronouns more than genocide, even though I’ve become so polarized against MAGA liars that I can’t even hate pronouns all that much anymore. And of course, if you listen to Eliezer, AI is much more dangerous than nuclear weapons anyway.We close the conversation by discussing the final episodes, particularly Cooper’s surreal re-entry into an altered timeline. Does he really believe he can save Laura Palmer? Was the lesson that he was being too hubristic, or something else? Tyler presents a popular theory that the ending was, despite all appearances, a happy one. I like having that out there as a possibility. Regardless, if there’s one rule of watching Twin Peaks, it is to remember that the point is not narrative closure. The show is a reflection, telling us who we are and what we’ve become. I don’t think the reality of our modern culture is as dark as Lynch believed it was. But we can’t lie to ourselves and say we haven’t lost something. And we cannot find redemption in nostalgia in a world where rapid societal changes are constantly making a mockery of what we have loved. This is a public episode. If you'

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comRob joins me to talk about the last two episodes of Season 3 of The White Lotus. Overall, I found the ending mostly satisfying. But the plot holes. There were so many! Among them (spoilers below):* Tim assuming that his family would be permanently poor* Tim acting like a lost doofus unable to handle any pressure throughout the show* Belinda getting a $5 million transfer into her bank account that quickly, without anyone worrying that it would come to the attention of authorities* Rick assaulting Jim Hollinger at his house, and then returning to his resort not expecting anything to happenStill, most of the storylines wrapped up quite nicely. I like that Rick ended up giving Chelsea validation in the short time they had left together. I did not foresee Hollinger actually being Rick’s father, but it made sense. We all thought Gaitok was headed towards a bad ending, but he did get the girl. This may have involved a sacrifice of his principles, but still, Mook under normal circumstances was well out of his league. If you’re going to sell out, that’s exactly what you do it for. I didn’t expect the friendship of the three women to last, but I liked how they came together at the end. The scene I found most profound on the show was Victoria’s brief speech on the nature of wealth. Modern people, particularly the rich, have this conflicted relationship with their standard of living and place in the world. After Piper told her parents that she realized she didn’t want to live in a developing world monastery for a year, Victoria explained that it would be indecent for them not to make the most of their fortunate circumstances. We’re lucky, it’s true. Nobody in the history of the world has lived better than we have. Even the old kings and queens. The least we can do is enjoy it. If we don’t, it’s offensive. It’s an offense to all the billions of people who can only dream that one day they could live like we do. The right has this tendency to LARP and imagine things were better in the past, while liberals know history has been miserable but are often consumed by guilt. Lately, we’ve seen a kind of rightoid Maoism that celebrates poverty and thinks it’s good for the soul. None of this is healthy. The idea that enjoying your life is the way to honor the story of human progress is a message that is both intellectually compelling and quite moving. Victoria’s wisdom was a pleasant surprise, showing that she was much different than we had been led to believe. Previous discussions of The White LotusMe and Rob on Season 1Me and Rob on Season 2, Episodes 1-4Me and Rob on Season 2, Episodes 5 & 6Me and Rob on Season 2, Episode 7Me and Sophie on Season 3, Episodes 1 & 2Me on Rob on Season 3, Episodes 3 & 4Me on Rob on Season 3, Episodes 5 & 6

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comRob Henderson joins me to discuss The White Lotus, Season 3, up to episode six. There are spoilers in this conversation, as well as the rest of these show notes.We start out by discussing the latest in the Ratliff family incest dynamics. Sophie called it last month. She was right and I was wrong. We spend quite a lot of time on the extent to which Lochy manipulated his brother into what happened, and how intentional he has been in the process. I wonder whether Rob’s interpretation of his character is consistent with other things we know about him. We then go on to talk about the relationship between Jackie, Kate, and Laurie. The show does an excellent job of presenting the kind of situation where a person cares very deeply about something but feels the need to keep repeating “I don’t care,” which is a giveaway that they do. I note that continuously telling someone to go get laid is a way of belittling them while pretending to be on their side. Talk of the Valentin situation leads to a fascinating conversation about asymmetric aging. Older men who want to have fun can go off to a place like Thailand and simply buy what they want, while it doesn’t work like that for their female counterparts. A man can be “used” for his money or material possessions and not care. But women need to be desired, and that becomes much more difficult as they get older. We of course discuss the great autogynephilia speech, which you can watch here. It was one of the most compelling soliloquies I’ve ever seen on television. In preparation for this conversation, Rob and I did our first serious reading on the issue, which was chapter 9 of J Michael Bailey’s book on the topic. Relying on his work, we talk about why autogynephilic men lie to themselves and others about their condition. I note how Frank had a completely novel explanation for his desires, one that he had wrapped up in Buddhist philosophy, which contrasts with the more scientific sounding justifications for transgenderism normally given in the West. Rather than saying he naturally has the brain of a woman, when Frank takes the female role, he maintains his voracious sexual appetite. So he ended up telling himself a story that was consistent with a Buddhist outlook that stressed deep questions regarding the nature of the self, rather than the precepts of gender theory. By avoiding the adoption of a politically correct ideology, Frank found it easier to justify completely indulging in his appetites before becoming religious. Links to previous discussions of The White LotusMe and Rob on Season 1Me and Rob on Season 2, Episodes 1-4Me and Rob on Season 2, Episodes 5 & 6Me and Rob on Season 2, Episode 7Me and Sophie on Season 3, Episodes 1 & 2Me on Rob on Season 3, Episodes 3 & 4Articles mentioned in the discussionAndrew Sullivan interviews Mike WhiteNew Yorker profile of Mike White

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comRob joins me this week to talk about the first four episodes of Season 3 of The White Lotus. We start off by discussing the Ratliff family and whether the incest dynamics are actually there or that was kind of a head fake at the beginning of the season. Other topics addressed are whether Mook is too perfect, the relatively positive portrayal of age gap relationships, toxic female relationships, the horrors of aging, and much more. The conversation goes down a dark path as we wonder if Season 3 might be paying homage to The Shield, a show that you can watch me, Rob Henderson, and Marc Andreessen talk about here. Links to previous discussions of The White LotusMe and Rob Henderson on Season 1Me and Rob on Season 2, Episodes 1-4Me and Rob on Season 2, Episodes 5 & 6Me and Rob on Season 2, Episode 7Me and Sophie on Season 3, Episodes 1 & 2

I’m joined by my new friend “PhiloSophie” (Substack, X) to discuss the first two episodes of Season 3 of The White Lotus.In previous seasons, I’ve been discussing the show with Rob Henderson. He is traveling this week, but we plan to talk about future episodes together going forward. For now, let me know what you think of Sophie.We debate incest dynamics within the Ratliff family, the concept of the “Chadcel,” how the show handles the topic of phone addiction, the need for men to be at least somewhat dangerous, what exactly is going on with Rick, and more. Links to previous discussionsMe and Rob Henderson on The White Lotus, Season 1Me and Rob on The White Lotus, Season 2, Episodes 1-4Me and Rob on The White Lotus, Season 2, Episodes 5 & 6Me and Rob on The White Lotus, Season 2, Episode 7 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

David Lynch recently passed away, so Rob and I decided to honor the legendary director by watching two of his movies, Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2008), and discussing them.We liked the first film, and debated various interpretations of it, including the standard one and other possible theories. I’m motivated to have a contrarian take here, perhaps because of the overwhelming beauty I found in the reality we were initially introduced to.While Mulholland Drive gave us much to work with, we both absolutely hated Inland Empire. In my view, it’s fine to have surrealist or absurdist elements, but if it gets to the point that the whole thing is a disjointed mess it’s hard to stay interested or care what happens. A character could have died or turned into a rhinoceros at any point after the first hour and I wouldn’t have been moved or surprised, because nothing actually matters once you figure out what the director is trying to do. You need reality to be bounded in some way if you hope to be entertained by or learn from a work of art. We refer to ChatGPT throughout, which performed quite impressively, generating arguments for novel interpretations for the films and clearing up some of the confusion we had about the plots and sequences of events. At the end we decide we’ll give the series Twin Peaks a chance, so look out for that. By the way, the other day I asked people to subscribe to my new YouTube channel, where I posted the conversation with Brian Chau. As it turns out though, I already have a YouTube channel with nearly a thousand subscribers. I just forgot it existed. So ignore the link I posted yesterday and go here if you want to watch my free videos on YouTube. But I prefer you see them here. If people have other interpretations of the films or thoughts on the conversation here, feel free to leave them in the comments. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comRob Henderson joined me last night on a live stream to discuss the question that has roiled right-wing twitter: should American men work at Panda Express? For background, see Rob’s coverage here. See also friend of the Substack Scott Greer, whose article we reference. Rob is amused by the Greerhead Pledge, which you can learn about from my conversation with Scott. We go into the status-money tradeoff in jobs, the reasonableness of people’s expectations, how much these anonymous rightists reflect attitudes in the rest of society, their similarities with woke, and more. We also discuss whether working at Panda Express will actually limit what kind of partner you can hope to attract. I explain why one of the beauties of immigration is that it allows you to go outside of the status hierarchy of your own society when looking for a wife. I’m big into following your dreams. Listeners shouldn’t get the impression from this conversation that I’m for income-maxing above all else. That’s not what I did, and if you truly have a passion or talent for something, go for it. What I’m objecting to here is the idea that you should tell people who are only slightly above average it is fine for them to look down on normal, everyday jobs. That’s not good either for society or encouraging people to live happy and productive lives.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comRob Henderson joined me on a livestream today to talk about The Penguin, the miniseries that ended last night. See here for our discussion of episodes 1-4, and point eight here on the racial demographics of crime in Gotham. I talk about my theory of the general message of the miniseries, which is that leftist revolutionaries are truly evil people who manipulate resentments for their own gain. I also argue that the rivalry between Oz and Sofia is the 2016 Democratic primary all over again. On one side, you have an establishment figure who suffers due to sexism, and on the other a fat folksy guy who represents a multiracial class-based revolution. One claim to victimhood is treated as clearly more legitimate than the other.There’s a strange glitch in the recording where when I listen to it with my AirPods it’s choppy, but mostly fine when I play through my MacBook speakers. I’m not sure how it sounds on other devices or whether this is even a problem for everyone. This is the hazard of doing this through livestream rather than a normal recording.To get notifications for future livestreams, download the Substack app.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comLast night I had an AMA with Rob Henderson. The way I’m going to do these from now on is that the livestream is open to everyone in the moment, but only paid subscribers can listen to the whole thing. To join us for future episodes, you need to have the Substack app downloaded on your phone or tablet. Announcements are on X and Notes, and you get a notification when it starts on the app. I don’t want to email everybody because I think it creates too much spam in people’s inboxes. I’m planning to have a discussion with Alex Nowrasteh this Friday at 5ET, so join us for that if you can. Rob and I begin by discussing a recent video of Jordan Peterson that has been making the rounds. See my criticism here and Rob’s defense. We also field questions on the upcoming election, women in politics, how and why we block on X, the few smart conservative institutions that are out there, and more.