Flagrant Review

This is my 63rd podcast. I listened to an episode released April 22 titled, "Tom Segura on Surviving Joey Diaz Megadose, Discovering Andrew Tate & 'Exposing' Garth Brooks Secret." There are way too many comedy podcasts. Just more standard shock humor. I did think there was some interesting conversation about the business side of comedy. They talked about negotiating how much money they get. Some shady things clubs do when there is a bonus for selling out how they say there are last minute cancellations so it doesn't count as a sell out. They talked about Clint Eastwood making movies and how he only does one take. I give this 1/5. It gets one point for the interesting conversations.

The Why Files: Operation Podcast Review

This is my 62nd podcast. It is currently ranked 55. The episode I listened to was released April 20. It was titled, "Basement: Daniel Whiteson. CERN, Dark Matter, and the Aliens Next Door." After listening to the last podcast it was somewhat refreshing to listen to people talking who have some brain cells. Whiteson is a researcher on CERN's Large Hadron Collider. They have a machine that smashes protons together every 24 nanoseconds. They are looking for when a different than expected outcome happens from colliding protons. They talked a bunch about aliens and if they met us how we could learn from each other. Whiteson talked about a book he is writing where there are dark matter aliens who are already here but we don't know it. Whiteson is into philosophy and he says more scientists should consider philosophy as there are a lot of interesting scientific philosophical questions. I give this show a 4/5 for the interesting conversation. I minus one point for the host sincerely believing that we live in a simulation. I just think that has to be one of the least plausible explanations for things.

2 Bears 1 Cave Review

This is my 61st podcast. It is currently ranked number 46. I listened to an episode released April 20 titled, "The End is Here w/ Ari Shaffir." Another "comedy" podcast. This podcast was pro-alcohol and pro-drugs. He criticizes people who oppose it saying they really haven't experienced life and are missing out on so many experiences. Meanwhile he describes entire days and nights of doing nothing but drinking. He thinks drinking is the only experience of life and therefore those who don't do it are missing out. I bet this guy cannot comprehend the joy of a sober day of hiking. They also mentioned some event they were hosting saying Christians, Jews, and conservatives will be there. I think people like this are more influential on so-called Christians, the political type, than Jesus or anything written in the Bible. I give this 0/5 for being ridiculous and bad for the country.

TruRed Crime Review

This is my 60th podcast. This is currently out of Spotify's top 100 podcasts. I listened to an episode released April 20. The title of the episode is 15 Year Old Graped In the Playground." This podcast was mostly just playing police interviews with the suspect. I started off thinking I would like this podcast because I think it is important to tell crime stories. I thought this podcast was terrible. I learned very little context of the crime. I think the host should have given some background information. I give this 1/5 for telling the story with no context. It gets 1 point because I like listening to crime interviews but it was hard to understand the crime.

The Basement Yard Review

This is my 59th podcast. It is currently 45. I have been behind on this blog so trying to do some catch up. The episode I listened to was from April 20. It is titled, "Mr. Gabagool is Here." This is one of them comedy podcasts. One of the hosts shared a story about a woman on a plane who asked him if he was Mr. Gabagool. He was confused by this. She identified him as having a podcast but he wasn't sure where she got the name from. This podcast had too much profanity as unfunny people use profanity so others will laugh at unfunny things. I give it 1/5.

The Watch Review

This is my 58th podcast. It is currently ranked number 54. The title of this episode is "'Avengers: Doomsday' Footage, 'Euphoria' S3E2, and 'Margo's Got Money Troubles' Episodes 1-3." It was released April 20th. My biggest worry about this podcast is that there would be some spoilers about Avengers: Doomsday. I am pretty extreme when it comes to trying to avoid spoilers. In the ideal world, I would want to know nothing about the movie going into it. If it is a Marvel movie then I am going to see it so I don't need to see any trailers about it. I don't like watching trailers of movies that I know I am going to see. If one comes on I tune it out. I get annoyed sometimes with spoilers on the episode image shown on the streaming service. No matter how hard I have tried to avoid spoilers, Disney has given me spoilers of characters who will appear in Daredevil: Born Again through their images they show on the streaming service. So I was preparing myself for a new level of spoilage because I wasn't going to be avoiding it this time. I committed to listen to the top 100 podcasts, the newest episode as it came up so I am required to do so. Fortunately, for me all my stress and worry about this turned out to be for no reason and there were no spoilers. They said before Avengers: Doomsday comes out that they are going to rerelease Avengers Endgame with footage that links to Avengers: Doomsday. That does not give away much. I probably would need to know this to watch Avengers Endgame again as I have seen it already. Hopefully, they don't mess anything up. It would be interesting if they put Doctor Doom in it and then Robert Downey Jr. is playing two different characters. I think it will be good. Then they talked about Euphoria. I suppose the only thing that could be better than watching Euphoria is listening to people talk about how they watched Euphoria so I at least got that going for me. One of the hosts criticized the writer for putting commentary in the show about California's zoning laws and how difficult it is to build in California. He says he doesn't agree that all Californians should be worried about it being difficult to build in California. This mindset is super annoying to me. Zoning laws are the number one thing that we can control that can help bring housing prices down. Wherever you go in the country, you have local governments working hard to make sure housing stays expensive as the people who own put restrictions on those who do not. In somewhere like California, local governments consistently put obstacles in the way of building. In Salt Lake County, you have people speaking out against every attempt to put in high density housing in various places. Somewhere like Rigby, Idaho, you have laws requiring at least one acre of land for housing. So from the most urban to the most rural, the government is micromanaging decisions regarding housing that restricts natural decisions people will make with the free market and increases the cost of housing everywhere. Demand cannot keep up with supply when demand keeps being restricted. Then you get this richy rich podcast host talking like he can't even understand why people would want to be able to build houses in California. I did find some of this interesting and some not. Mostly it was just the Marvel stuff which was short. Mostly they were reviewing this boring Euphoria show. I dock this podcast one point for profanity, one point for being a NIMBY, and one point for the uninteresting topic. I give this podcast 2/5.

Conspiracy Theories Review

This is my 57th podcast. It is currently ranked number 67. The episode I listened to was titled, "The Secret Twin Study: Files Sealed until 2065." The episode was released April 15. This was a really interesting story about a study conducted by researchers colluding with an adoption agency. In the study, they separated twins and sent them to different families of different backgrounds. They didn't tell the families that the twins had a twin so they never knew. As part of the agreement to adopt these children the parents were told they were part of a study, the researchers would come visit the house and ask their children questions periodically. But the parents never knew they had twins. Obviously, the study is super immoral as you shouldn't harm people to learn Robot Erasmus style. As the kids grew older several of them learned they had twins. There was a big backlash against the study. The study was never published and it is sealed until 2065. The narrator of the podcast kept asking why the study hasn't been published and why it is sealed but it seems obvious to me that it wasn't released because it was already getting backlash before it was released. It seems the immorality of the study has been exposed and I don't think it goes deeper but more details would continue to get people angry. The narrator kept acting as if there was a deeper conspiracy because that is the theme of the show. I don't think there is a deeper conspiracy because the records can be recovered by the people in the study though it isn't the easiest process. If the researchers were hiding something more nefarious than what has already been exposed they could destroy the records instead of sealing them at Yale. It was an interesting listen. I dock it one point for going too deep on the conspiracy when the story itself was interesting. It was not needed to go deeper than that. I give this 4/5 for being an interesting listen.