Positively Dreadful

Crooked Media

Positively Dreadful, hosted by Crooked Media’s Editor in Chief Brian Beutler, takes listeners below the headlines of the stories stirring widespread anxiety in today’s news landscape to give them a richer understanding and appreciation of how and why to remain engaged, even in the face of daunting challenges. read less

Our Editor's Take

The Positively Dreadful podcast is on a mission to keep everyone engaged with the news. It comes with the understanding that the news can make people feel anxious and detached. Yet, something within a story should always make people think differently. Brian Beutler, the chief editor of Crooked Media, hosts the podcast. Before this job, he was a writer and reporter for various news sites. He's passionate about finding the balance between optimism and cynicism.

Each week, on Positively Dreadful, Brian discusses a different news story, from Roe v. Wade to what's new on social media. "Disorganized crime" is the topic of conversation in one episode. Brian discusses Washington, DC, and how it's changed over time. Changes include levels of crime and the affordability of housing. A desire to change the criminal code has gone from a local decision by the mayor to President Joe Biden. Brian talks to Slate writer Mark Joseph Stern to find out more.

Another podcast episode, "We'd Like To Spank The Academy," focuses on the film industry. Brian asks listeners not to expect a recap on the latest award ceremonies. This episode reviews how the industry has changed due in part to streaming services and the impact of the pandemic.

Brian believes in the benefits of creating a collective viewing experience through film. Following this idea, Brian and his team have made new award categories and share their honest reviews on the latest films. Categories include "the best mom in movies this year" and "most overhyped movie." They discuss opinions on representation and the latest trends.

Positively Dreadful reviews interesting and complicated news stories. "Press This Mess" is about the accountability of the media and asks the question: can we fix it? "TikTok Dirty To Me" investigates the popular social media app. Is it right to ban the app? Is it influencing political elections? Each episode offers an insightful and informative debate on current topics. New episodes debut each week.

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Coming Soon: Positively Dreadful

Coming Soon: Positively Dreadful

Crooked Media’s Editor in Chief Brian Beutler takes a deep dive beneath the headlines of the stories stirring anxiety throughout society to give you a richer understanding and appreciation of how and why to remain engaged—even in the face of daunting challenges. New episodes every Friday starting June 24th on the Rubicon feed.

Packing Our Mailbags

Packing Our Mailbags

Don’t smile because it’s over. Cry because it happened! In this final episode of Positively Dreadful, host Brian “Maverick” Beutler answers listener’s questions with the help of his trusty producer copilot, Emma “Rooster” Illick-Frank. It’s less of a goodbye than a see you later—so don’t unsubscribe from the feed! Brian shares what he wants listeners to take away from the show, explains his theory of politics, and reminisces about that one time he skewered John Boehner with a well-worded question.

Should Biden Give Up on Student Loan Debt?

Should Biden Give Up on Student Loan Debt?

After a three-year hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans will have to begin repaying their student-loan debt this month. And after the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in June to strike down President Biden’s student-loan forgiveness program, mass relief probably won’t come anytime soon. Biden has adopted other, narrower programs, and may try to salvage a Plan B for broader forgiveness. But in the meantime, millions of Americans are financially unprepared to start making payments again, and the Department of Education is stuck in a logistical quagmire, trying to restart a repayment system that wasn’t designed to be paused. What should Biden do in the face of a right-wing Supreme Court that seems uninterested in changing its views? Or about the larger, systemic problems that caused a student-debt crisis in the first place? Even in an ideal world of free or affordable public universities, what impact would right-wing ideology have on curriculum? Host Brian Beutler discusses all of these questions and others with Kevin Carey, vice president for Education Policy and knowledge management at New America, where he directs the Education Policy program.

There Goes the Sun?

There Goes the Sun?

We have every reason in the world to try to stop climate change. But when it comes to geoengineering––lacing the atmosphere with particles to block the sun’s warming effect––experts are split on whether the intervention would create more problems than it would solve. At this rate of global warming, though, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which humans won’t eventually try it out. Inadvertently, we’ve already piloted the method through air pollution. Is the geoengineering genie already out of the bottle? Should we even want to stop it? Are there ways to deploy these efforts that will insure against scenarios where we wish we’d never tried? Host Brian Beutler is joined by Elizabeth Kolbert, a New Yorker staff writer and author of Under a White Sky, and Dr. David Keith, a professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago and an advocate for geoengineering research.

Why Does the U.S. Suck at Building Things?

Why Does the U.S. Suck at Building Things?

At the start of the pandemic, China built a 1,500 room hospital in 5 days. In the United States, things don’t tend to go that way. We’re notorious for our boondoggles, cost overruns, and the slug-like pace it takes us to complete relatively small projects. It’s given rise to a debate over why we so often suck at building stuff, and what we should do to get better at it. Is the problem red tape that ultimately cripples projects or falls victim to abuse? Is it that powerful interests have a monopoly over what gets built? Is the key to creating state capacity for progressive ends building comparable progressive power? A bunch of the scholarly legwork that gave rise to this debate about the future of liberalism was undertaken by a University of Michigan law professor named Nicholas Bagley. He’s the author of the influential law review article “The Procedure Fetish,” and he joins host Brian Beutler for a discussion about how systems that were designed to either sabotage government or keep government honest have combined to make government incapable of building new projects that would make life better.

Have AOC and the Squad Become Part of the System?

Have AOC and the Squad Become Part of the System?

A few weeks ago the left-wing writer and critic Freddie DeBoer published an essay in New York magazine, in which he argued that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become “just a regular old Democrat now.” The piece described left-wing dissatisfaction with AOC’s record in Congress as an outgrowth of a larger left-wing disaffection with U.S. politics, and concluded the Democratic Party is simply structurally resistant to socialist change. DeBoer generated a lot of warranted counter-criticism, but also captured something very real about the sentiments of marginal Democrats—the ones who might vote blue as means of blocking authoritarians from victory, or who might abstain from voting when left-wing candidates lose their primaries. In that world, disenchantment with AOC and the left wing of the Democratic Party is palpable, and raises some interesting questions: Is their disenchantment rooted in real grievances? Are Democratic politics really so resistant to left-wing pressure that the Democratic Socialists of America ought to stop deluding themselves? What could DSA or future AOCs do to have a bigger impact on policy, one that wouldn’t leave so many of its members with the sense that it’s all pointless? Host Brian Beutler moderates a debate between Eric Levitz, a New York Magazine writer who wrote a lengthy critique of the DeBoer article, and Ryan Grim, the DC Bureau Chief of The Intercept and author of the forthcoming book The Squad.

Should Crooked Media Have Interviewed Chris Christie?

Should Crooked Media Have Interviewed Chris Christie?

Last week, Pod Save America interviewed former New Jersey governor Chris Christie. An early and critical endorser of Donald Trump, Christie has now broken with his Republican contemporaries to wage a staunch never-Trump presidential campaign. So far, he’s the only candidate that has both qualified for the first GOP debate and demonstrated that he’ll attack Trump directly. Some PSA listeners were upset with our choice to give Christie a platform, but what does it really mean to give someone airtime? How quick should we be to reach for that deplatforming button? Are respectable news organizations always suckers for amplifying dishonest, or disreputable, or checkered people? Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett, who interviewed Christie, and Oliver Darcy, a senior media reporter at CNN who covers platforming decisions, join host Brian Beutler to debate the role of shunning and accountability in media.

Should Democrats be Trashing Trump?

Should Democrats be Trashing Trump?

The runaway favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination will soon be under felony indictment in three, or maybe four jurisdictions, but most leading Democrats are withholding comment on Donald Trump’s mounting legal problems. Joe Biden has reportedly ordered his campaign and the Democratic National Committee to keep quiet about it, even as Republicans work overtime to try to muddy Biden’s far more ethical record of conduct. Why aren’t Democrats doing more to emphasize character contrast between Biden and Trump? Are voters too mired in their personal circumstances to care which politicians are corrupt or cruel? Do appeals to their material well being, rather than appeals to morality, decency, or ethics reach more people? Faiz Shakir, the chair of Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign and founder of More Perfect Union, and Leah Greenberg, an executive director of Indivisible, join host Brian Beutler to hash it out. Should Democrats (other than Joe Biden himself) be more engaged in salacious infowars with the right? Or should they leave that kind of red meat politics to Republicans while building a singular economic policy appeal?

Would Democrats Live to Regret Court Packing?

Would Democrats Live to Regret Court Packing?

Whatever you think of recent, watershed Supreme Court opinions, it’s indisputable that the court’s six Republican appointees are deeply out of step with the will of the public—not to mention the entire institution was constituted without public consent. But should anything be done about it? The Court’s architects think everything is wonderful and will claim any criticism of the justices represents some kind of subversive attack. But even good-faith critics can’t agree on an answer. Some influential liberals, like Joe Biden, think the answer is nothing. At least not now. Others think the answer is to pass a law expanding the court and fill the vacancies with liberals, so its balance reflects what it should have been all along. And between those two poles, there are a number of ideas for reforming the court to better insulate it from political ideology. Host Brian Beutler moderates a debate over which—if any—of these ideas is best, and how to go about enacting them given that the current state of the court suits Republicans just fine. Joining him are Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer, whose criticisms of the court have put the justices themselves on the defensive, and Lawfare editor Benjamin Wittes, who has warned Biden’s commission on the Supreme Court against outright court packing.

Guile and Error: a debate

Guile and Error: a debate

President Biden cut a deal with House Speaker McCarthy to increase the national debt limit. Or, more accurately, he defused the Republican threat to default on the debt and tank the economy if Democrats don’t accede to their policy demands––at least for the next few years. Many pundits have said Biden “won” the debt-limit fight, that he didn’t concede any more than he would’ve during the regular government-funding process, and that he achieved some semblance of bipartisanship. But that stands in stark contrast to President Obama’s approach; after House Republicans extorted much bigger concessions from him in 2011, Obama said it was a mistake to negotiate in the first place, and refused to do so again. Republicans talked a big game, puffed their chests, but ultimately backed down from future standoffs. Which approach is right? Those who argue Biden out-negotiated McCarthy, and thus “won”? Or those who say Biden’s decision to negotiate in the first place re-establishes a terrible precedent and thus precludes any claim to victory? Host Brian Beutler moderates a new, debate-style format for the show. Jordan Weissmann, Washington editor of Semafor, defends Biden’s approach, while David Dayen, executive editor of the American Prospect, argues this new precedent won’t age well.

Shortly after the Coast Guard kicked off its rescue mission to find the OceanGate submarine, one of the company’s founding advisers posted the following message online: “I hope to get a few hours of sleep, wake up and see very positive responses from the U.S. government in my Inbox. If I don’t, the whole world will know the names of the people who did not do their jobs.” It’s the latest example of powerful “disruptors” who got rich touting high-minded libertarian principles about innovation and deregulation, then blaming the government when everything predictably goes wrong. As with the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Silicon Valley Bank debacle, the taxpayers foot the bill for the cleanup, while the supposed visionaries get a slap on the wrist. Host Brian Beutler is joined by Crooked contributor Max Fisher, whose book The Chaos Machine examines the mass-scale wrecking Silicon Valley has done to our society. They talk about how American industry got here, the psychology and origin story of the disruptor class, and how the path from idealism to nihilism is shorter than Elon Musk’s temper.

Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted

Donald Trump recently marveled that talking about trans rights whips his supporters into a frenzy far more effectively than economic issues like tax cuts do. He and other Republican leaders are (thus!) intensifying attacks on trans kids, banning health-care procedures and trying to separate them from their parents. The politics and discourse in some parts of the U.S. have left families with trans children little choice but to pack up their belongings and move to more welcoming places. Twelve-year-old trans activist and author Kai Shappley and her mother Kimberly left their home state of Texas and relocated to Connecticut less than a year ago. They join host Brian Beutler to talk about why they had to move, what it’s like being targeted by the state for gender expression, and how the Biden administration can better support girls like Kai.

Blame Schiffting

Blame Schiffting

This week, just as Donald Trump was placed under arrest and arraigned for stealing and concealing troves of state secrets, House Republicans advanced a resolution to censure Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, who’s been one of their main boogeymen since the early days of the Trump administration. The resolution, which failed Wednesday afternoon, is best viewed as a diversionary tactic, and an attempt to pin Trump’s legal woes on Schiff, who was instrumental to Trump’s first impeachment and one of the Democrats’ most effective communicators about Trump’s corruption. The Congressman joins host Brian Beutler to discuss the latest Trump indictment, how vulnerable Trump is now, and what the Republican party’s continued loyalty to the former president means for their political future.

Biden by the Rules

Biden by the Rules

If the debt limit fight was any indication, President Biden appears to be minimizing setbacks, pausing his forward-looking policy agenda, and focusing on the stuff he enacted last Congress. But is that the best he can do? After all, low-hanging fruit remains within reach of his executive power. No one expects the president to spend the next 17 months bombarding the political world with executive orders. But it’s worth asking what he’s capable of doing in theory, and why he isn’t doing those things now. Would Biden need to change how he conceives of politics and governing in order to make the most of his administrative power? The American Prospect has been keeping track of what Biden has chosen to do and what he’s left on the table ever since he took office. David Dayen is the executive editor of the magazine, and he joins host Brian Beutler to explore the limits of the possible in this divided government, and how Biden could use this moment to reconsider the full powers of his presidency.

Upping the Vigilante

Upping the Vigilante

In the past few years, the Republican politics of crime and racial scapegoating have given way to the outright glorification of vigilante killers like Kyle Rittenhouse, Eddie Gallagher, and most recently, Daniel Penny. Last week, Penny choked a Black street artist to death for the crime of being mentally ill on a New York subway. In response, Ron DeSantis called him a “Good Samaritan” and said America has his back. Why has this trend taken hold? Is it new? And, most importantly, to what end? Host Brian Beutler welcomes Matthew Dallek, a professor at George Washington University and author of the new book Birchers, which details the founding of the far-right John Birch Society and its attempt to take over the GOP. Brian and Matt discuss the ever-shrinking line between violent right-wing extremists and mainstream Republican politicians, why the GOP is turning racist vigilantes into folk heroes, and how the groundwork for MAGA to take over the Republican Party was laid 50 years ago by a group of wealthy, extremist bigots.

Ma Ma Ma My Corona

Ma Ma Ma My Corona

The World Health Organization and U.S. government have declared an end to the COVID-19 public health emergency. And it’s not hard to understand why: the herd got pretty immune. As great as it is that fewer people are getting sick and dying, memory-holing COVID has perverse consequences for people who are suffering from long-term effects of the disease. What happens to them now? Is there any progress towards a cure? And is the back-burnering of COVID-19 slowing that progress down? These questions are top of mind—for us, at least—because both host Brian Beutler and Associate Producer Emma Illick-Frank have different species of long COVID. They discuss the current state of long covid discourse, treatment, and research with Dr. Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, a physiatrist who developed the Post-COVID Recovery Clinic at University of Texas Health San Antonio.

Tweedle Free and Tweedle Dumb

Tweedle Free and Tweedle Dumb

Joe Biden released his first re-election campaign video and it was…actually good. Instead of touting minimum wage or Medicare protection, Biden characterized this election as a fight for freedom––the freedom to choose when to become a parent, to be an out and healthy trans person, and to safely inhabit schools and other places of learning. It’s a big move considering Republicans have had a near monopoly on emotionally resonant rhetoric for the last 40 years. So what will Biden’s “freedom” re-election campaign look like in practice? Does coopting this rhetoric from Republicans represent something greater than savvy politics? Will the Democratic Party share the courage of Biden’s convictions? Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent joins host Brian Beutler to talk about what freedom means in American politics today, and why this campaign message is not only shrewd, but also philosophically correct.

Clarence Thomas has been accepting lavish gifts from a Republican mega-donor for almost as long as he’s been on the Supreme Court, while disclosing none of it. Or rather, he initially disclosed some of it, but stopped when reporters got wise to the relationship. Meanwhile, his real-estate tycoon patron, Harlan Crow, has had business before the Supreme Court, and Thomas did not recuse himself. Since these revelations came to light, Thomas has shown no indication of remorse, or that he’ll change the nature of this relationship—he enjoys the same kind of impunity as Donald Trump, with the added benefit of lifetime tenure on the bench. We’ve never lived in a world of perfect political accountability, but the Clarence Thomas problem is new. Richard Nixon had to resign the presidency. Spiro Agnew went down. Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas was forced to resign in 1969. What changed, and why? Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman joins host Brian Beutler to discuss her role on the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate scandal, and what it would take to hold public figures accountable for their corruption at least some of the time, like we were able to in the 60s and 70s.

Republicans in the Tennessee assembly expelled two of their colleagues for joining a protest for new gun laws at the state capitol after a nearby school massacre. And the whole stunt blew back at them righteously. The country saw a party that responded to a mass shooting by exerting maximum punishment on gun control supporters and their democratically elected colleagues (but only the Black ones). What’s happening in Tennessee might be remembered as a clarifying moment when voters had to pick a side and sided against reactionary politics and authoritarianism and racism. Yet these clarifying moments are starting to feel all too familiar. Similar moments happened in the 2010’s with the rise of the Tea Party, and continue today through as Donald Trump retains total control of the GOP. Has anything changed since the Tea Party? Why did Democrats struggle so much to make Republicans own their extremism then, but seem to be faring better now? Are Democrats, or at least state-level Democrats, getting better at illuminating these important choosing moments for voters? Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler knows how to beat reactionary politics better than anyone, and he joins host Brian Beutler to discuss how Democrats can build on victories and public enthusiasm in Wisconsin, Tennessee, and other states.

Arrested Developer

Arrested Developer

Donald Trump got arrested and the world didn’t end. The fear of backlash that seemingly paralyzed so many of our institutions of accountability now seems mostly like a figment of the imaginations of the people who run those institutions. What took so long? Some of that is attributable to corruption, to former Attorney General Bill Barr and other Trump loyalists who ran interference for him while he was president. But some of it looks more like cowardice. People were anxious about doing something hard, and talked themselves into reasons why they didn’t have to. So with the Band-Aid ripped off, what could decision makers have done differently? Former FBI counterterrorism investigator Peter Strzok joins host Brian Beutler again to discuss how we can improve our accountability systems so that threats like Donald Trump aren’t left beyond the reach of the law until it’s too late.

TikTok Dirty To Me

TikTok Dirty To Me

A social media app is causing a bipartisan furor in U.S. politics, and it’s the one where young people make funny dance videos. Because TikTok is owned by the China-based company Bytedance, Congress is concerned the platform is more of an espionage front than an entertainment medium. TikTok at least theoretically allows China to collect private data from Americans, sow division in U.S. society for geopolitical gain and even inundate U.S. users with propaganda to influence our elections. On the other hand, it isn’t hard to think of reasons why banning TikTok might be a bad idea. Are we just cowering to anti-China demagogues? What are the implications for free speech? And what are the political costs of banning an app that tons of Americans, particularly young Americans, love? Add it all up, and it’s hard to figure out the least-bad option. Data-privacy specialist Julian Sanchez joins host Brian Beutler to stress test the pros and cons of banning TikTok, and add nuance to what looks like a stark choice between either flooding our society with more anti-democracy propaganda or engaging in the kind of censorship we’d normally decry if another country did it.