It was easy when podcasts were more about general philosophy and critiquing the establishment. It's easy to effectively tear things down and not be dumb about it.

But now Podcast Bros (and the occasional Podcast Gal *cough* TRHL *cough*) have gained enough audience to where they're their own sort of establishment and have shifted towards prescriptive rhetoric.

And you know what?

Almost none of these people have built anything in the real world, and it shows.

There's a fine art between maintaining the stratrigic purity of a dream or goal and balancing it against the pragmatic realities imposed by the craziness and fractally-frothy unpredictability of the real world.

The podcast world is full of people who have never learned to do this effectively with serious skin in the game. It's this weird combination of trying to max out on purity points and making over-the-top compromises for minimal or unholdable gains.

It's become a new version of the intellectually-incestuous circle-jerk that traditional academia and the corporate press have been for ages, with the same zombie-level personality cults following along.

The Dave Smith vs. Douglas Murray debate? Both of them are unwatchable (unless you really have time to waste).