GLoP Culture

Clowns are buoyant, which may explain how this podcast stays afloat. This month, Jonah, John, and Rob ponder the lousy-man theory of history, admire a podcast whose hosts actually do research, and demonstrate why seminary hasn’t made Rob any less cranky. Along the way: TV greatness, a longstanding dispute over Miller’s Crossing, and the academic credentials of professional clowns.

The GLoP crew celebrates America’s 250th birthday the only way they know how: by trying to name five movies that explain the country and somehow ending up in a ditch full of Fire Birds, Paper Moon, The Best Years of Our Lives, the mayor from Jaws, Mel Brooks at 100, Gila monsters, late-stage capitalism, early-stage diarrhea, and the eternal question of whether this is still technically a pop-culture podcast. It’s patriotic, digressive, occasionally disgusting, and probably more grateful for Western civilization than Western civilization deserves.

John Podhoretz, Jonah Goldberg, and Rob Long er, "ricochet" from Trump potentially skipping his son’s wedding to the collapse of late-night television, the strange death of black-tie culture, the rise of “Technogerd” pharmaceutical ads, and whether the future belongs to GLP-1 drugs, Episcopalians, or Chinese vertical dramas. Along the way: Jane Fonda at the Chinese Theatre, yacht-rock pedophilia lyrics, the comedy gold of the JPMorgan sex-lawsuit texts, Netflix sitcoms, empty Manhattan churches, Johnny Carson’s killer instinct, and the immortal phrase “Fiddla Please.” It’s a classic free-association GLoP: equal parts cultural criticism, showbiz war stories, theological detour, and middle-aged panic attack — all powered by Dongfang energy and sustained by propofol-grade banter.

If you came for structure, coherence, or basic human decency—wrong podcast. In this unhinged episode of GLoP Culture, Rob Long, Jonah Goldberg, and John Podhoretz wander from a cornhole champion murder story to Helen Keller trutherism, pausing only to take gratuitous swings at Gandhi, Princess Diana, and basically anyone history has been too polite to re-examine. Along the way: deeply suspect jokes, aggressively niche cultural references, unsolicited architecture criticism, and a surprising amount of time spent litigating the moral failures of long-dead public figures. There is no thesis. There is no arc. There is only digression.

It’s February, the weather is trying to kill us, the garbage hasn’t been picked up, and somehow this leads—inevitably—to Frank Sinatra insulting his fans, Catherine O’Hara being a comic genius for half a century, the Washington Post lighting itself on fire, and the uncomfortable possibility that puzzles and recipes are the last functioning pillar of American journalism. Also Jeffrey Epstein and a trio of off-color jokes. Obviously.