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Comment by rnk | Hacker News Reader

Behind the bastards is excellent, I should start listening to that podcast again. It's fantastic that they're covering musk. Is there any explanation for why they think not paying their bills lead to a good outcome? Are there bills so high that somehow they control the other side or something ridiculous like that?

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Aside: I never could get into it. It feels too much like 'punching down' to me. Not in the real sense, but the hosts always come off as 'better' and so when they make fun, it's just not a good vibe. The recordings also come off to me as unprofessional. Things like googling during the taping, not being well briefed on the material, being salty that they have to cut to ads (and there seem to be a lot of ads!), and just bad audio quality. I've really tried, but the podcast somehow rubs me the wrong way. What am I missing?

I don't know. I haven't listed to it for a year or two, but I enjoyed it in the beginning. They went through historical figures mostly. They talked about some famous dictators like Mussolini and Hitler, but there were many other ones. They had a show about the history of fascism in Italy that I think was part of that series. There were several attempts to take over the govt before Mussolini succeeded, it was eerily reminiscent of today's US.

I wish he would stick to the historical content. These days there's too much discussion of modern issues. I guess that's fine, but not what I personally want from the podcast.

Also, the guests can be pretty hit-or-miss. Some are great, some are pretty terrible.

I mean, the whole idea is that it’s about horrible people. Being nice about the horrible people is, unsurprisingly, not considered a priority. Not sure where punching down is coming from; almost all the subjects are either dictators or filthy rich. You can’t punch down on Stalin.

He occasionally does a non-bastard episode, and the tone is very different.

It's hit and miss, but the good episodes are worth listening to.

And of course there is the Steven Seagal two-parter, which is not only one of the best episodes of Behind The Bastards - it's one of the best podcast episode sets ever.

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