7 Podcasts for Bookworms In a world filled with digital distractions, these shows will help you indulge, develop or rekindle a love for reading.

This delightfully snarky, deeply researched series delivers takedowns of the kinds of nonfiction best sellers you might pick up at the airport, focusing mainly on self-help, financial advice pop psychology and political punditry like “The Secret” and “The Rules.” “If Books Could Kill” is hosted by Michael Hobbes (a journalist well known to podcast fans for You’re Wrong About” and “Maintenance Phase”) and Peter Shamshiri, a lawyer. The duo project infectious joy in deconstructing the appeal of these mass-market juggernauts despite being laden with pseudoscience, oversimplifications and questionable data. Alongside a breakdown of the flawed arguments and ideas in each title, Hobbes and Shamshiri also explore how these books have fed into false and harmful cultural narratives, championing critical thinking skills in an entertaining and persuasive way.

My takeaway is that we have not been mean enough to the New York Times this year
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/a...

Kash Patel's FBI is a total mess A new lawsuit indicates he's too busy chasing online clout to notice.

CNN reporting that the DC pipe bomber was motivated by Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. It’d be nice if we had an FBI run by people we could trust to tell the truth about these types of things.

ICYMI from Sept. at @atrupar.com’s PN.

www.publicnotice.co/p/kash-patel...

The theatrical releases are "not our business model" company is better for movies? Further consolidation hurts creatives who are already fighting for work. This should be fought vigorously. Anyone who appreciates creatives knows this. It is "none of the above."

It’s a public service not a business. Losses are not relevant. It’s in the goddamn constitution. Gonna lose my mind. AAAAAAAAAHHHHH

That this is happening the same year Warner Bros. released SINNERS makes even more depressed about it.

Yeahhhhh this could legitimately be a death knell for theatrical distribution. Every time major studios merge it means fewer wide release films get made in general - which means fewer jobs for filmmakers and worse times for theaters - but in this case it could wreck the whole system.

All media mergers end up hurting writers, actors, directors, and everyone else who works in the industry. Executives, assistants, caterers, teamsters, everyone. Fewer companies means fewer jobs, period.

It’s increasingly clear that we live in a world by and for billionaires now, but the movies have always been a stridently democratic art form. The spaces where indie films thrive need to be protected and we are losing sight of that in an ever growing sea of corporate content.

The pro shot version of Merrily We Roll Along with Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez hits theaters this weekend. I don't see any reviews, so maybe there's an embargo, in which case it would be completely inappropriate for me to say "Do not miss it."

If I were a statewide elected official in Mississippi, and I was told to drop whatever else the people of that good State tasked me to do, to focus instead on interpreting a “uniform” law that apparently has fewer adopters than Bluesky, and to decide whether to follow an intermediate appellate decision from New Mexico at the behest of federal judges in New Orleans, I can tell you this much: I would not think the exercise beneficial to federalism. I respectfully dissent.

What is this dig at BlueSky doing in a judicial opinion? www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub...

It turns out, financially incentivizing viral slop, rage bait, hate, divisive politics, porn bots, and other generally horrifying vaudevillian behavior was a really quick way to destroy that app. Who could have seen that coming, except for everybody who used it?

A meme with a character from Watchmen whose name I can’t remember, saying: It is 1982. I am one year old. Tron bombs at the box office It is 2010. I am twenty-nine years old. Tron bombs at the box office It is 2025. I am fourty-four years old. Tron bombs at the box office

This meme made me laugh.

Screaming. Guys will literally install Grok in their cybertrucks instead of going to (real) therapy.

It feels like this is becoming a more common mass shooter profile: Someone who's interested in politics but not as a vehicle to express clear values or a coherent viewpoint. He just wants to mock anyone who takes it seriously.

She Broke Off Two Engagements. She Couldn’t Commit. Now She’s Dating Chatbots Instead. As chatbot romance grows more common, women are redefining what they want from a partner—even if they are just ones and zeros.

This is not a romance. Nobody is "in love" with apps. There are no A.I. boyfriends. You cannot "date" a chatbot. Accepting this framing and treating it as real is tech-industry propaganda. slate.com/technology/2...

Trump admin 'seems to care very little about autistic people,' says advocate In making unsupported claims about autism, the Trump administration is "pointing the finger" at parents and making them feel guilty, says autism community advocate Colin Killick.

In making unsupported claims about autism, the Trump administration is "pointing the finger" at parents and making them feel guilty, says autism community advocate Colin Killick.

Too soon to circle back to all the people who said "The left did this"?

Institutional statements like this serve the same function as decrying “polarization.” They purport to diagnose the problem while studiously avoiding pointing out that the right bears much more blame for destroying norms and undermining any sense of mutual respect.

The thing that is hard to communicate is that that specific flavor of “brainrotted 4chan slug with incoherent beliefs” is also downstream of the right wing politics factories dumping glowing nuclear sludge into the river

there’s a reason nihilism has risen and it wears Rush Limbaugh’s face

So after two straight days of Republicans saying trans people and the Left did this, threatening full on violence, it turns out the suspect is a politically unaffiliated white dude who was trained to use guns by his Republican law enforcement dad? Do I have that right?

Gamergate was a precursor to our modern Discourse(tm) and folks will look at you like you've grown a third head when you explain that to them

This is a pretty solid explainer about what e-bikes are and the rules around them.

What I'd love to see is more coverage of what e-bikes *enable* people to do. Stories about disabled people who use them to gain independence. Or lower income people who benefit from not needing the expense of a car.

Ordinary voters who bought in should have a chance to change their minds. Pundits should be saddled with this error permanently

He said immigrants were eating dogs and cats. What did you think his policy was gonna be?

“Some of us aren’t creative enough to brainstorm without ChatGPT!” Well then maybe you should sit this one out.

Cops love to do the "if [left of center politician] becomes mayor, we're all gonna resign!" thing and then not resign when it happens www.nbcchicago.com/chicago-mayo...

Norms & duct tape, folks. It’s all that’s held the Republic together for decades. And shredded the last norms and rolls of tape.

and some now-prominent pundits legitimated this nonsense

This is damn absurd. Trump said that he would spend two weeks trying to negotiate a deal with Iran to avoid war. He said that two days ago. He clearly did not mean what he said.