Pop quiz, hotshot: Who has the best, most inspiring anti-war message in the United States today? Is a faith leader? A labor organizer? A rock star? No? What if I told you it was a high-profile, unapologetic bigot? Or the other one? Or the other other one, if you really want to collect the full regressive set?

Weird as it sounds, that’s the subtext of some of the messages we’ve been getting from the liberal side of the aisle these days. If you’ve spent more than a minute on social media this past week, odds are good that you have noticed an uptick in presumably liberal-leaning media figures online encouraging you to engage with a growing list of MAGA notables who can’t wait to tell you how offended they are by Trump’s war in Iran. Just for fun, try logging onto your social media platform of choice, search some iteration of “I can’t believe I’m agreeing with Carlson,” and watch your browser sizzle up and crash. Be careful you don’t find yourself buried under an avalanche of “Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point” JPGs while you’re at it.

The “entire,” 43-minute-long anti-Iran War monologue of Carlson’s April 6th episode is “worth watching,” former Obama speechwriter-turned-podcaster Jon Favreau told his 1.3 million followers, sharing a more than two-hour-long episode of Carlson’s eponymous show.

Headquarters Newsroom, the liberal media outlet built from the ignominious remains of Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign, has been similarly enthusiastic whenever MAGA media oprichniks voice rare, and often conspicuously tempered dissatisfaction with the regime’s Iranian adventurism; “Candace Owens cites our post while shredding Donald Trump in new video,” bragged a recent Bluesky message, preceded by three other Owens-centric posts. Democratic Representative Ro Khanna went even further, crediting Owens, Carlson, and Marjorie Taylor Greene—and nobody else—by name, along with other anonymous “progressive activists & anti-war conservative voices” he claimed pushed Trump back from an atomic Iranian brink. To date, his message has around 2.3 million views.

So what’s going on? Should we welcome these previously verboten figures into our lives now? Should we make a space for them in the anti-war vanguard?

The answer to those questions is no. Here’s why.

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• Sid Rosenberg’s beef with Mr. and Mrs. Met

• Eric Swalwell’s resignation from Congress

• Jack’s first bylines as an intern at The San Francisco Chronicle

• Those photos of Justin Trudeau and and Katy Perry at Coachella, which reminded us of that photo of Orlando Bloom and Selena Gomez

• Trump claiming he didn’t the AI slop he posted was of him depicted as Jesus

• Speaking of Jesus, Trump is now feuding with the Pope lol

• Doordash Grandma, welcome to the Resistance, with a side quest where we remember Ken Bone

• J.D. Vance’s 21-hour negotiations with Iran didn’t go well

• The double-blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and how Trump is leading the speedrun of American decline on a global stage

• Vance’s weird analogy about his wife skydiving

• And in our After Dark segment available only to subscribers, we get into the alleged attack on Sam Altman’s house

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends Steven Sodebergh’s The Christophers

• Katherine recommends Jason Molina’s Songs: Ohia

• Aleks recommends Rooster, on HBO

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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• Whether werewolf astronauts would permanently be in wolf form due to their proximity to the moon

• Trump’s chaotic Easter Sunday post and his promise of war crimes (note: this episode was recorded before Trump threatened on Tuesday that a “whole civilization will die tonight”)

• Why Iran reminds Jack of how Trump handled COVID

• Pam Bondi was shitcanned as Attorney General—who’s next??

• This episode was recorded the same day Savannah Guthrie returned to the Today Show, which naturally led to a discussion about Jenna Bush Hager’s highly influential book club

• We took a quick scan of some current Kalshi bets

• And in our After Dark segment available only to subscribers, we discuss the scandal involving Kristi Noem’s husband and correct the record on Timothée Chalamet’s Jewish identity

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends the pro-shot of Maria Friedman’s Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, on Netflix

• Rafi recommends Karthik Subbaraj’s Pizza Movie on Hulu

• Aleks recommends Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama, now in theaters

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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• A very silly Politico magazine story about Rahm Emanuel that opens with an inane lede about how he eats a salad and how we’ll be slurping down countless stories like this in the lead-up to the 2028 Democratic primary

• We Remember Some Salads and each rank our top three office worker nutrient bowl chains (R.I.P. Hale and Hearty). What are yours????

• Also, remember when someone allegedly found a DEAD RAT in a Chopt salad???

• The Rahm story led us to this absolutely cursed YouGov ranking of Democrats’ “fame” and “popularity,” so of course we made Jack guess who was in the top five

• We also remember how Kelsey Grammer and Jennifer Aniston were great on 30 Rock

• There was also this goofy Axios story about how some (anonymous) Dems are wringing their hands about 2028 and whether they should nominate a straight, white, Christian man

• Did you know Grimes joined LinkedIn?

• And in our After Dark segment available only to subscribers, we discuss Ryan Gosling’s career, the sad state of movie promotional tours, and the ways we make celebrities humiliate themselves to make us watch their little shows and movies. We also touch on The Devil Wears Prada 2, The Drama, and seeing movies in 4DX lol.

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends Jeopardy! (Ken Jennings ONLY!!!)

• Caitlin recommends Jury Duty: Company Retreat on Amazon Prime Video

• Aleks recommends Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s Project Hail Mary, in theaters now

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

Spotify: Tap the “Play” button and select “Link Account” to sync your Substack subscription and unlock it instantly.

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• Trump saying the war is over, but not really, but maybe? The only thing we know for sure? We’re losing

• This Max Fisher video about what’s motivating the four main actors in the Iran War

• Gas prices soaring, seems fine, we definitely aren’t facing a supply shock we haven’t seen in decades, or maybe ever?

• As if going to the airport wasn’t already absolutely miserable, now we have to stand for hours in security lines while ICE agents run amok

• We started talking about James Talarico’s chances in Texas, but that led to us talking about magazine covers, what they’re even good for anymore (don’t even get us STARTED on the scam that is “digital covers”). This is also the moment Cros revealed he had never seen the “Planet Hillary” New York Times Magazine cover

• Coining our fandom/stan army name…if you don’t like it, then start commenting!!!

• And in our After Dark segment available only to subscribers, we dive deep into the latest Chappell Roan drama involving soccer star Jorginho Frello, Jude Law’s daughter, and the mayor of Rio

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends the audiobook for Liza Minelli’s memoir, Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!

• Cros recommends Summer House on Bravo

• Aleks recommends the OTC medication GasX

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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This is a Subscriber-Only Special Edition. Join us at discourseblog.com.

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• A winding discussion about Train Dreams, Blue Moon, Felicity Jones Bad Actor Disease, and an important plug for our forthcoming annual Oscars Special Edition episode

• Producer Sam gives us the local perspective on the Texas Senate primaries

• She also reminds about that weird scandal involving James Talarico and Collin Allred

• The Free Press’ Olivia Reingold is at it again! This time she has a bombshell report on New York City First Lady Rama Duwaji’s Instagram likes

• And in our After Dark segment available only to subscribers, we break open the biggest story of the year: Donna Kelce’s home renovation!

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This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends watching and/or listening to our annual Oscars Special Edition episode. Listen to last year’s here!

• Sam recommends Breaking Bad

• Aleks recommends The Sundays’ album Static & Silence

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your favorite podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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It’s never a good idea to expect Donald Trump to stick to one argument. The president is a congenital liar who loses a little more brain function with each passing day. Inventing new rationales for terrible decisions is kind of his whole thing.

But even by that degraded standard, Trump’s ever-shifting justifications for his war on Iran are breathtaking. Every few hours seems to bring a new explanation for why the United States and Israel decided that it was a good time to launch an illegal, unprovoked, open-ended assault on another country. The two countries struck because of some undefined imminent threat! No, wait, it’s because the nuclear program Trump definitely “obliterated” last year was perhaps un-obliterated and needed to be re-obliterated! Sorry, what he really meant was that the Iranians took Americans hostage… in 1979, and it’s time someone did something about it! Hmm, scratch that—it’s to do regime change! Actually, hold that thought…

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This nonsense makes Trump look like what he is: a reckless imperialist engaging in an already spiraling war of choice. It also helps create what he may feel is an encouraging level of confusion about what exactly he wants out of this catastrophe.

There’s just one problem: Other people are also talking about why we’re suddenly at war. And a lot of them are giving the same reason: because Israel wanted it. That has the potential to erode both the U.S.-Israeli relationship and Israel’s already shaky standing with the American people. For anyone who wants to see the U.S.-Israel alliance, with all of its inherent cruelty and oppression, consigned to the dustbin of history, this can only be a good thing.

Before we get to why that is, though, it’s important to understand how this story has unfolded over the past couple of days.

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• How this turned out to be even more terrible than we could have predicted

• Trump’s nonsensical pretext for why the U.S. joined Israel in their a…

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• Who we each think were the best and worst Faithfuls and Traitors

• Our Flops of the Season

• A debate about which of the “missions” was the stupidest

• An essential digression and dramatic reading of Colton Underwood’s “personal life” section in his Wikipedia entry

• Every moment where our souls left our bodies

• Our ideas for how they could change the game to be more consistent (or at least compelling!)

Enjoy!

Want to hear this special edition episode on your preferred podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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On Saturday morning, the United States and Israel launched an illegal, unprovoked, unjustifiable attack on Iran—the kind of full-blown assault the world has been dreading for years. What happens next is anyone’s guess, but we should be clear about a few things that we already know for sure.

The first thing, obviously, is that this is a despicable decision by the U.S. and Israel. It is a flagrant act of imperialist aggression against a sovereign state, with no legal basis either domestically or internationally. You couldn’t find many clearer examples of a war crime if you tried. Already, civilians in Iran are being massacred; Israel got started right away by indulging in one of its favorite pastimes—murdering dozens of little children. Trump has barely tried to make a case for any of these crimes, with the exception of a gruesome and insulting video he posted in the middle of the night on Saturday in which he spewed random lies and called for regime change in Iran while wearing a ludicrous “USA” baseball cap.

This is evil stuff.

The second thing we know is that we have been lied to over and over again about this war. The U.S. and Iran have been engaged in negotiations all week about Iran’s nuclear weapons program—you know, the one that has never been proven to be anywhere near operative, and that Trump claimed to have obliterated less than a year ago. Less than 24 hours before the strikes, Vice President JD Vance was telling the Washington Post, “I think we all prefer the diplomatic option. But it really depends on what the Iranians do and what they say.” Now we learn, via Reuters, that all of that was a sham: “An Israeli defence official said the operation had been planned for months in coordination with Washington, and that the launch date was decided weeks ago.” That’s not surprising, but it’s still unconscionable.

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In the same Post interview, Vance said something he probably shouldn’t have.

“I do think we have to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. I also think that we have to avoid overlearning the lessons of the past. Just because one president screwed up a military conflict doesn’t mean we can never engage in military conflict again. We’ve got to be careful about it, but I think the president is being careful.”

That brings me to the third thing we know: Donald Trump is not being careful. He is being reckless and deranged, just like every warmongering U.S. president before him. And, despite Vance’s waving away the entire catastrophic history of U.S. intervention in the Middle East as an irrelevance, we know that that history is actually a guide to what’s going to happen. We know what happens when U.S. presidents plunge us into open-ended, bloody conflict under false pretenses: tons of people die, and the consequences last for generations. We have had decades and decades of experience with these kinds of disasters. Does anyone really think that senile tyrant Donald Trump is the one to break that pattern? Of course not.

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Finally, one last thing we know as surely as we know anything: nobody wants this war—nobody apart from the bloodthirsty psychopaths who populate DC and Jerusalem, the weapons manufacturers, and the AI slimeballs looking to test their latest killing technology, that is. People know intrinsically that this is insanity. There is no mass constituency for this war of choice, no desire for the chaos, instability, and death that it will spawn.

We should be furious to live in a country that does this—to be at the mercy of a flailing empire that always chooses death and conquest over peace and justice. We should be furious at a political system that makes it so much easier to kill people than to help them. We should be furious at an establishment that lusts so ardently for war, and that has so much contempt for humanity. We should be furious at the untrammeled power of a global ruling class that causes so much suffering. And we should recommit to the most important task ahead: destroying as much of that power as we can.

Solidarity with the people of Iran. End this war now.

• How we’re all dealing with the Big Blizzard of 2026

• Katherine saw Emerald Fennel’s Wuthering Heights. She’s not a fan!

• The DNC is refusing to release its 2024 election autopsy, probably in large part because of how much of Kamala Harris’ loss is attributable to the Biden Administration’s reprehensible response to the genocide in Gaza

• A helpful and definitely accurate pathologizing of FBI Kash Patel’s appearance in the locker of the U.S. men’s hockey team post-Canada victory

• A brief discussion on how our pending war with Iran would be the ultimate realization of America’s “foreign policy”

• And in our After Dark segment available only to subscribers, we touch on “longevity influencer” Peter Attia stepping down from his new gig as a contributor to Bari Weiss’ CBS News after his…interesting appearance in the Epstein Files

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends Alysa Liu’s gold-winning performance at the winter Olympics and the iconic interview between French clown Philippe Gaulier and Hilary and Chelsea Clinton

• Katherine recommends Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent and David Cromer-directed, Tracy Letts-written play Bug, now on Broadway

• Aleks recommends Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette on FX and Hulu

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your preferred podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

Spotify: Tap the “Play” button and select “Link Account” to sync your Substack subscription and unlock it instantly.

Apple Podcasts & Others: Go to Settings in Substack > select Discourse Blog > scroll to the “private podcast feed” section > select “set up podcast” > then copy and paste the link it generates into your preferred app.

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• Jack tries to coin a new catchphrase involving Frasier

• We get into MAGA’s Certified Loser reaction to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance

• We remember some Super Bowl Halftime Shows and are informed of The White Lotus’ Sabrina Impacciatore’s surprise performance at the Opening Ceremonies

• The funniest and stupidest scandals coming out of the Winter Olympics, including Quad God, Minions Guy, and that Norwegian athlete who begged on live TV for his girlfriend to take him back after cheating on her

• And in our After Dark segment available only to subscribers, we return to The Complaints Dept. for important, subversive takes on AI, depressing Super Bowl ads, and the sorry state of closed captioning on Peacock

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee’s new show, How to Get to Heaven From Belfast, on Netflix

• Caitlin recommends (with admitted reservations) director Paul Schrader’s Facebook page

• Aleks recommends Creed’s 2001 Thanksgiving Day Halftime Show x 9/11 Tribute

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your preferred podcast app? First, subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

Spotify: Tap the “Play” button and select “Link Account” to sync your Substack subscription and unlock it instantly.

Apple Podcasts & Others: Go to Settings in Substack > select Discourse Blog > scroll to the “private podcast feed” section > select “set up podcast” > then copy and paste the link it generates into your preferred app.

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We are painfully reminded every day that defeating the forces of fascism is not easy. These people have a lot of power and they love using every bit of it to harm the rest of us. To put it mildly, this sucks.

However. However! The fascists have an Achilles heel, one we’ve written about before: they are perhaps the biggest losers this planet has ever produced. The depth of their dedication to loserdom is sometimes breathtaking to behold. They look out at everyone being normal and not a loser and start breaking out in rage hives and screaming and crying like toddlers about how we all need to join them in their miserable little loser land.

You will get no better example of this tendency than the gold-plated, Hall of Fame, Mt. Everest-level fascist loser reaction to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show over the weekend. Hundreds of millions of people around the world watched the show and had boring, sensible reactions like “that was good” or “Bad Bunny is a talented and fun entertainer.” Or maybe they went “eh, not really my thing, but who cares.” What they did not do was run to every platform they could find and try to pretend that, no, actually, the show was both terrible and EEEEVIIIILLLL. But that is because they are not history’s greatest losers—unlike the following people I am about to mention.

Let’s take a little tour through Loser Land, shall we?

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• Analilia Mejia’s shocking win in the special election to fill New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s former Congressional seat

• Taylor Rehmet flipping a deep-red state Senate seat in Texas

• And what this all could mean heading into November

• The massive layoffs at the Washington Post

• And in our extended episode available only to subscribers, we discover how Jeffrey Epstein very likely read some stories we’ve worked on…😬

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends The Nation’s special Gaza package, “A Day for Gaza,” he helped oversee and The Muppet Show revival on Disney+

• Paul recommends the latest Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band’s record, New Threats from the Soul and Summer House on Bravo

• Aleks recommends the app WaterMinder

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your preferred podcast app? First subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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As promised (threatened?) when we announced our Big Plan to go all-in on Discourse Pod, we are now posting the free versions of Discourse Pod to YouTube. Like and subscribe, etc.!

Shoutout to Producer Sam for this trailer, which I think captures the specific mania you feel listening to and (should you choose this for your family) watching us.

As a reminder: full, extended episodes and special edition episodes are available exclusively to subscribers.

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Want to hear the full, extended episode on your preferred podcast app? First subscribe here. Then, follow these instructions:

Spotify: Tap the “Play” button and select “Link Account” to sync your Substack subscription and unlock it instantly.

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• Why Wirecutter recommends the ugliest products

• How the killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti by CBP in broad daylight has unleashed a huge, mainstream wave of hating ICE

• A quick review of Bari Weiss’ “bold” new vision for CBS News and her announced lineup of wacko contributors

• Tony Dokoupil interviewing his mom

• A sidebar about how maybe TV news is bad for democracy

• Jeff Bezos’ gutting the Washington Post the same week as the Melania Trump documentary insta-flopped

• And in our extended episode available only to subscribers, we reminisce, gossip, and reopen deep traumatic wounds about working at Fusion and digital media in the 2010s

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack tried to watch Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein but ended up watching Rich Peppiatt’s Kneecap, about the eponymous Irish hip-hop trio, instead

• Sam recommends season five of Broad City and acknowledges the existence of Harry Styles’ new song “Aperture” and Hilary Duff’s return to music

• Aleks recommends subscribing to Consumer Reports over Wirecutter and the podcast Bandsplain, especially its recent episode about Portishead

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your preferred podcast app? First subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

Spotify: Tap the “Play” button and select “Link Account” to sync your Substack subscription and unlock it instantly.

Apple Podcasts & Others: Go to Settings in Substack > select Discourse Blog > scroll to the “private podcast feed” section > select “set up podcast” > then copy and paste the link it generates into your preferred app.

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• An exciting new segment called Katherine’s Snack Box

• We remember some political cartoons (I could not find the one Katherine mentions; if you know which one she’s talking about, PLEASE GET IN TOUCH)

• What radical acts of self-preservation we’re performing to keep ourselves from sliding into unending abyss of defeat and nihilism that might only end by going full Bell Jar mode

• Make sure to read Katherine’s Big Piece about Tony Dokoupil’s miserable tenure leading The CBS Evening News in The Intercept

This week’s cultural recommendations:

• Jack recommends Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent

• Katherine recommends The Format’s new record, Boycott Heaven

• Aleks recommends the new season of the HBO and BBC series, Industry

Want to hear the full, extended episode on your preferred podcast app? First subscribe to Discourse Blog here. Then, follow these instructions:

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Many things in life are hard. Some things are simple. What we have right now when it comes to ICE is simple: either back its abolition or get the hell out of the way.

The need for these goon squads—it feels too respectful to call them “agencies” or “law enforcement groups” or any other euphemism that makes them sound proper and regulated—to be wiped off the map is nothing new. (I wrote my first “abolish ICE” post way back in 2017.) Nor is the fascist abuse they carry out. These aren’t people who were behaving themselves until Donald Trump took the brakes off. ICE (and, to be clear, when I say ICE, I’m using it as an umbrella term that includes Border Patrol and all the other machinery of death that constitutes our immigration system) has always been a cancer on our society. It is poison. Its job is to destroy, to terrorize, to torture, and, as we keep seeing in Minneapolis, to kill. It is the worst of us.

But if what ICE is and what it does has been clear forever, the demand to eliminate it has rarely occupied a central place in our politics. The Abolish ICE movement spiked under the first Trump administration, and then subsided when Joe Biden took over. A Democrat was in charge, and there were plenty of other things to worry about. By the time the 2024 campaign rolled around, it was conventional wisdom that something had to be done about all these immigrants in the U.S. Democrats raced to prove that they would be even crueller to immigrants than Donald Trump. After he took office, Democrats raced just as hard to pass odious anti-immigrant legislation. They wanted their hands in the blood. What could go wrong?

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Well, cut to now. After a year in which ICE embraced its core Gestapo nature while most politicians looked the other way, things have escalated to the point where it keeps murdering people in broad daylight. It’s no use saying that ICE gone rogue or is somehow straying from its mission. This is what it’s for. It will always be what it’s for. There’s no way around that—no bad apples to be pruned from the tree, no little decorations or, god help us, QR codes that will make this better. It must, must, must be done away with—and doing so must be a red line, non-negotiable demand.

That brings me back to where I started. Right now, the Democratic Party is seemingly taking a bold stance, vowing to block funding for the government if that funding includes money for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. Wow, great, etc. But look closer at what top Democrats are saying.

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When we started Discourse Blog nearly six years ago (!), it was just months into the pandemic, and like the rest of the world, we had an abundance of time: to blog, to plan, to devote ourselves to the mission of this site—worker-owned, fully independent leftist perspective on politics, culture, and whatever the hell else is on our mind (it’s our site after all). Our readers made us an early Substack success story, and I think I speak for the entire team when I say that we’ve been continually honored, humbled, and occasionally horrified by your response. Thank you—it’s helped keep us going all these years, even as the world reopened and our lives changed.

Recently, we embarked on an experiment that put in motion a new era of Discourse Blog—one we’re excited to announce today.

We’ve long tinkered with the idea of having a podcast. We did it in fits and starts, but nothing quite stuck; we hadn’t found the right format. Everything we came up with was too onerous—too much time, too much production, too little return on investment. So we decided to strip as much back as possible, to the most sustainable version of the idea, which you might have seen on the site in the last two months: Discourse Pod.

It’s just me, Jack, Producer Sam, and a rotating third chair discussing the recent headlines (“the podcast where we discuss the discourse”), with plenty of digressions along the way. These episodes have been a test for us—a way to see if this was something we could consistently produce in a way that felt fun, energizing, and enjoyable to hear and/or watch.

By our own internal barometer, it’s been a huge success: the team has felt reinvigorated by working on the pod. It’s also been a success in ways we hadn’t anticipated: Working on these test-run episodes has brought us a renewed focus on dedicating ourselves to kinds of projects that bring us—internally at Discourse Blog, but also with you all, our readers—closer together.

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We are living through, as Jack aptly puts it in the announcement video at the top of this post, an especially bleak, despairing time—one with armed goons killing people in cold blood on the street with impunity; a “free” press overrun by sycophants and stooges; and vicious, genocidal war all over the globe. This podcast has proven to be an unintended lifeline for us, a way to commune with, laugh with, and be angry with people who share our worldview. It turns out that when you just focus on what brought you together in the first place (being absolute freaks about seeing what’s happening in the world and in our feeds through an unabashedly leftist perspective), you end up having a great time.

And we think you will, too. Starting today, Discourse Pod will be our primary offering on the site. We’re going all-in. Don’t worry, we will continue to blog—just at a different pace than you might be used to if you’ve been around since the beginning.

Here’s how it will work:

For everyone

• New episodes every week, available in video and audio formats here on Substack, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and very soon, on YouTube and wherever you choose to listen (or watch!) us

For paid subscribers

• If you’re already a paid subscriber to Discourse Blog (thank you!), you will continue to get access to all of our written blogs and the ability to comment.

• You’ll also enjoy FUN NEW PERKS: In addition to our weekly free episodes of the podcast, paid subscribers will also get access to extended versions of the podcast that includes a bonus segment where we share gossip, trade rumors, and/or go a little deeper on a subject we can’t shut up about. OH BUT THERE’S MORE: You’ll also get Special Edition episodes, including our annual Oscars and Great British Bake-off pods, but also new ongoing series we’re excited to reveal more of in the coming months. Our first Special Edition, The Complaints Department, is live NOW.

We know this will be a big shift for some of you, and not one everyone may love, at least at first. But it’s our sincere hope you’ll give the pod a shot—if you liked our blogs, we think there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy hearing and seeing the voices behind them, too.

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Thank you to everyone who has made six years of Discourse Blog a thrilling, hilarious, and humbling ride—we wouldn’t be here, now in HD video, without you.