The Dumbest Story of the Week

Begun, the redistricting war has. SCOTUS screws democracy while whining about people calling them out for screwing democracy. Our kitchen sponge is nasty, but my Special Lady Friend doesn’t care. According to rich people, calling someone rich is like using a racial slur. Poor babies. Gas is getting more expensive. Rude neighbors are the worst and nude neighbors are worse still. Casting demons out of the Internet with a holy mobile phone carrier. Yes, your newborn needs the vitamin K shot. New Orleans had better learn to swim. Communist spiders can’t stop Kyle Rittenhouse. Writing paper lists is good for your brain, but New York Times music lists are not. RIP Spirit Airlines. The only thing worse than flying Spirit is not being able to fly Spirit. No more buffalo. A billion-dollar ballroom. And happy 100 birthday to Sir David Attenborough, a man who has done much in the name of our magnificent planet and its wildlife, and so much more.

Donald Trump is winning 3-0 against the assassins and it’s all the Democrats’ fault. Are Canadian dinosaurs allowed across the border? Will the truth survive two more years? If the water isn’t blue at least we can paint the pool. White Castle is debuting slider vending machines. King Charles parries Trump’s grab-and-pull handshake. A Massachusetts woman fights the police with bees but it’s the bees that end up losing. Want proof that you’re an ugly American? Soon you’ll be able to acquire ID to prove it. The two-hour marathon barrier gets shattered in London, where you can also eat the world’s largest tiramisu. And so much more.

Tucker Carlson is sorry for promoting Donald Trump while sitting in his big house with his piles of money he earned for promoting Donald Trump, and you should definitely (not) believe him. Pilots draw giant dicks in the sky. Trump fast tracks the legalization of psychedelics to treat mental conditions courtesy of Joe Rogan. Robots can now run faster than humans. What, me worry? Donald Trump says that he would have won the Vietnam War very quickly if he was president. Training dogs to sit, shake, and vote! The mid-cycle GOP gerrymandering ploy blows up in their faces. A Chinese drunkard gets a chopstick stuck in his throat – for EIGHT YEARS. Kash Patel sues The Atlantic for saying that he is a drunkard. Eating a healthy diet causes cancer. The price of condoms is going up along with the price of gas. Some people are making a killing by betting on wars. Unfortunate surnames, and so much more.

Donald Trump picks a fight with The Pope and he somehow thinks he can win. Hungary has an election and autocrat Viktor Orban loses bigly. Is this a preview of the upcoming midterms? Trump’s numbers are down, but Democrats remain unpopular. Does that matter if they’re winning elections? Musician G. Love loses a pile of money in a crypto scam. Despite being full of the possibly carcinogenic sweetener Aspartame, Trump thinks that diet soda kills cancer cells. Come on, Aspartame! The Pride flag is back at Stonewall, Philz Coffee, and on Idaho flagpoles. Pete Hegseth borrows a fake Bible verse from Pulp Fiction and Steve Bannon thinks that he should STFU. Melania distracts from her husband’s war in Iran by Frankensteining the Epstein Files. A seven-foot inflatable penis gets acquitted in Alabama, and so much more.

After threatening to annihilate a civilization, Trump TACOs the shit out of the Iran War, leaving thousands dead, putting the U.S. in a worse geopolitical position, and spending billions for very little. A UK woman has sexytimes with a pair of twins and science can’t tell us who the daddy is. TDSOTW offers are rebuttal to a journalist who made the case that men who don’t like cats are undatable. An Alabama grandmother is about to be on trial for wearing an inflatable penis costume to a No Kings protest. She was arrested by a cop with a significantly smaller penis. Did you know that getting diagnosed with cancer makes you more likely to turn to a life of crime? The Artemis II mission has been a great success so far! Except for the space toilet, which is broken and has been making a burning smell. Not good. A biotech company wants to make brainless human clones. But how would we tell them apart from the rest of our modern society? And so much more.

A quadruple amputee and former professional cornhole player gets accused of murder. A high-ranking FEMA official sincerely believes that he was teleported to a Waffle House. Donald, Melania, and Barron Trump voted by mail this week while Donald holds the government hostage over the SAVE America Act, which would limit voting by mail. RIP hypocrisy. JD Vance thinks aliens are demons. Pam Bondi gets the axe. We shouldn’t kink-shame Kristi Noem’s husband for cross-dressing, but we should think that he and his wife are assholes for murdering American citizens while she ran DHS. If goat yoga no longer gets you going, you can try snake yoga in Portland, Oregon. Kid Rock gets a two-Apache salute, and this is just fine with Pete Hegseth. 19 million Americans have pondered killing other Americans. Trump leans on SCOTUS. Feeling soft around the middle? Try rib remodeling! Idaho sucks. Trump’s name will appear on greenbacks and his war rolls on all while his approval dips to 33%. Are you 40 years old and you’ve got a drug conviction? Be all you can be and Join the Army. Unvaccinated blood is in high demand. Fentanyl barbie. Are you having a polycrisis? Godspeed Artemis! And so much more.

Depending on how you count them, we may be in the midst of the fifth government shutdown in six years of Donald Trump’s administrations. The current shutdown – a showdown between Democrats trying to reform funding for ICE and recalcitrant Republicans – is the second shutdown in our Republican-controlled government since October. This time, Transportation Security Administration employees are working without pay, putting the safety of our air transport system at risk. In this episode, we talk with Christian, an active-duty TSA officer who keeps showing up to work despite the fact that our Republican lawmakers keep threatening their livelihood. Christian spoke with us anonymously to isolate them from possible retribution by TSA and Trump administration officials. Many thanks to those doing their duty while our elected officials simply won't.

Want to marry your first cousin? Florida has got you. Some former Fox so-called News personalities are beefing. Who has the edge? “Micropenis Mark” Levin or “Petulant Megyn” Kelly? Cesar Chavez teaches us another lesson about heroes. Bigfoot lives, or maybe not. A Utah woman wrote a book about grief to help her deal with the loss of the husband she murdered. Robots will kill us all. The Los Angeles Dodgers are sellouts. AI Val Kilmer brings up some interesting questions about the ethics of AI Val Kilmer. 867-5309 cancer, and more

Did you know that there are beauty pageants for camels? And that people (and camels) get kicked out for cheating? I certainly didn’t. Gibberlink is like pig Latin for AI, which is funny until it kills us. Gene Simmons has a strong opinion about other people sharing their opinions. And Timothee Chalamet isn’t going to be getting any dates with opera singers or ballerinas after sharing his dumb opinion about opera and ballet. Morrissey, pioneering new heights of insufferability, was too tired to show up to his own gig. Erika Kirk gets a new gig at The Air Force Academy. Joe Rogan is just now learning about geopolitics, and that’s sobering. Americans are the only citizens who believe that their fellow citizens are amoral. And the war rages on with the midterm elections just over the horizon.

Donald Trump, a man who campaigned on ‘no new wars,’ has gotten us into a stupid and unnecessary war with Iran. The first casualty of war is the truth, and we weren’t doing too well on that front before the bodies started piling up. Bombs are falling. Drones are being launched in every direction. Young girls are being blown to bits. And Donny hasn’t given us one consistent reason for all the madness. In the midst of it all, the puppy killer Kristi Noem got herself promotefired from the Department of Homeland Security and is being replaced by a man who cannot even secure the border between his first names. And since (oh yeah) life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone, a hot air balloon got stuck on a Texas cell phone tower, and a Charlie Kirk banner went up at The Department of Education. Prove me wrong about him being a racist and a misogynist. And if all this is just too much, you can find anodyne for your shattered nerves with a frosty ranch dressing milkshake.

Donald Trump bombs Iran with Israel in tow, launching the third Middle East war in your host’s lifetime, and much to his chagrin. Chicago crowdsources the names for its new snowplows and the people have spoken. Welcome to the fleet, Abolish ICE! MAGA loonies are eager to have leopards eat their faces, and those of their loved ones. The Clintons testify about Epstein. U.S. hockey players win gold, and some of them get tepid cheeseburgers along with their medals. This week’s State of the Union speech was the longest ever, but we all know that quantity doesn’t always equal quality. A lucky kid in Georgia gets a martini in their bag lunch. Dare to dream.

The Supreme Court finally had enough of Trump’s shit and give him an ‘L’ on his idiotic tariffs. The Olympic athletes run out of condoms and are then rescued from being lonely in the Olympic Village by reinforcements from the strategic condom reserves. Science determines once again that smart men lean left, and also that beards are gross. Or maybe not. Epstein accountability arrives elsewhere as England arrests one of the royals for the first time since 1647. Prince Andrew gets a taste of how the other 98% live. Who is your (least) favorite Republican? Tater tots get recalled due to little plastic bits. And who can tell? And RFK Jr. and Kid Rock make a really weird workout video that sort of doubles as a softcore porno. Strange days.

Pam Bondi pulled a Brett Kavanaugh in a House Judiciary Committee Hearing and Trump eats it up. A bridge to nowhere, or maybe Canada may not open because Trump is a grifter. A Louisiana National Guardsman leaves his rifle in a Bourbon Street bathroom. And Lindsey Vonn almost loses her leg. The National Park Service is likely going to be run by another grifter, and they’ve removed the Pride flag from Stonewall National Monument. Tariffs are costing Americans piles of cash – cash that they’re not saving for retirement anyway. Birth rates are down, because who wants to have babies in a hellscape? And Trump introduces ‘Coalie’ – a dopey mascot that whimsically helps him fight on the wrong side of the climate war.

Are you watching the Big Game this weekend? Even if you aren’t, ICE is watching YOU. MAGA gets big mad about Bad Bunny and hires an idiot to play an alternate halftime show. But the Puppy Bowl is where it’s at. American Libertarians are MIA when it matters. The Midterm Elections are right around the corner and the election interference is already in hyperdrive. A MAGA comedian get himself canceled. Six times. Some Olympians have armadillos in their trousers. The Melania agitprop movie sells a few tickets but might not be the best business investment. Democracy simply dies at The Washington Post. And Donald Trump proves yet again that there is no bottom.

Welcome to the fascist American future, where state-sponsored violence is the only law that matters. Now that the Proud Boys are collecting ICE signing bonuses, they’ve executed yet another American citizen in broad daylight and the MAGA crowd is suddenly opposed to the 2 Amendment. RIP Alex Pretti. Greg Bovino gets himself demoted, but fear not! Tom “bags of cash” Homan is on the case. Ohio’s Stage Right Theatrics thinks that the theater isn’t conservative enough, and I will bet they have some different ideas about how to solve a problem like Maria. Donald Trump makes an ass of himself at Davos because he doesn’t know the difference between Iceland and Greenland. Not that it seems to matter. Airlines experiment with “densified” seating. Old guys don’t like rock & roll. Stephen Miller thinks that Star Trek is too woke. (Has he ever seen Star Trek?) And Melania Trump rakes in nearly $30 million dollars for her 15 minutes of fame.

"I come from a long line of frontiersman and outdoor types." And that’s a line from one of my favorite movies, which would be The Coen Brothers’ Raising Arizona. It is spoken by the protagonist, H.I. McDunnough. But it could just as easily be about my ancestors, or about me. So, when the National Park Service announced late in 2025 that the National Parks Pass for the new year would feature a picture of Donald Trump alongside George Washington – two presidents who have had nothing to do with America’s beloved national parks, and in the former’s case has gutted the NPS budget – those of us who find solace in America’s wild places were pretty vexed about it. Enter artist and conservationist Jenny McCarty, who quickly conjured an artistic way to speak truth to power – by making stickers that feature original art that can be placed over Trump’s glowering face on the likely-illegal new American The Beautiful Parks Pass design. I invited McCarty to join me for a wonderful conversation about our collective love for the natural world, our disdain for fascists, and how art can save us. You can buy Jenny McCarty’s National Parks Pass stickers – and lots of other wonderful art at: www.thesageleafstudio.com

A man who can’t stop invading countries and flipping off his citizens unironically got himself a Nobel Peace Prize. Except unlike Obama, he got a used one on the secondhand market. Reality is in the eye of the beholder in the murder of Renee Good. A man who fomented an insurrection threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act. Pete Hegseth sure does have a perfidy mouth. Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's semiautonomous territory. The Pentagon returned some sex toys to a Toronto sex shop - except the sex shop owners weren’t the ones who sent them to soldiers in Bahrain, where you can’t drink, eat pork, or own sex toys. Picking your nose can lead to losing your mind. Drone delivery is coming to a city near you and maybe it’s time to move to Alaska.

ICE is saving us by killing us. That will be sure to keep the immigrants out. (Sarcasm font.) Alabama's governor has opinions about what happened in Minnesota this week. McDonald's is facing a lawsuit over the fact that a McRib sandwich may not have any rib meat. You probably don't want to know what IS in a McRib. A guy in Wales got busted for impersonating an admiral for whatever reason. RIP CPB. The White House launched a new website that clears up who was responsible for the insurrection at the Capital on January 6th, which was merely peaceful people, but who were also riotous Democrats. People are fighting to get on rides at Disneyland. Pete Hegseth is jealous of Mark Kelly. And Donald Trump remembers that he wants Greenland. Truth is dumber than fiction.

Donald Trump finally gets his Venezuela-shaped distraction. How many people are going to die to massage his fragile ego? The holidays finally roll out of town, leaving us missing the cheese tray and the bar. Does Your Boo Annoy You? If they do, don’t make a list. And if you do make a list, make damn sure they can’t find it. Is there an annual list of things that Americans get stuck up their bums? You bet your ass there is. Donald wants a toy boat. Amazon omits Pottersville. And Erika Kirk seems to have a thing for JD Vance. Eww.

Lots of people will be flying the holiday season. But do you who travels ALL the time? Musicians. Life on the road isn't all limos, hookers, and blow. Believe. It's trying to find creative new ways to keep the airline baggage handlers from destroying your instrument every time you hop on an airplane. Musician Ted Wulfers is learning this lesson the hard way after his prized guitar recently got manhandled by an airline. Now he's up to his eyeballs in formal complaints and it remains to be seen if they will take responsibility and make him whole again. Ted joins us to share his story and give some advice as for how to protect your guitar on the road. Is it too much to ask to have the people we entrust to get us there in one piece also get our instruments to the same place in the same number of pieces? Happy holidays from The Dumbest Story of the Week!

Happy holidays from TDSOTW! Rest in power, Rob Reiner. You truly were one of the good ones. Trump proves once again that there is no bottom. DOJ whiffs on releasing the Epstein Files. Young men don’t know how to talk to young women and Slut Camp is here to help. Or not. Trump’s higher ups get a fancy photoshoot, and they are none too pleased with the results. Trump announces the Patriot Hunger Games, and he is too up his own ass to notice the optics. The MAGA crowd displays some hypocrisy on gun violence in a post-hypocrisy society. Wanna crush a city or two? Let’s build a Godzilla Rage Room! And Trump puts his name above JFK’s on The Kennedy Center.

Trump pitches austerity with a golden spoon up his ass. SCOTUS is A-OK with partisan gerrymandering. The U.S. Navy goes full-pirate and seizes a Venezuelan oil tanker. Do you think they want another oil war? I do. As if we didn’t already have enough to worry about, quicksand is more real than previously believed. Cheap Trick surrenders and Kiss sucks for Trump at The Kennedy Center. Liam Neeson uses his particularly dumb set of skills to turn to the Dark Side and narrate an anti-vax documentary. Australia takes a step in a civilized direction by banning social media for kids. Nick Fuentes gives some misogynist marriage advice. Who’s the dumbest of them all? Hint: It might be your boyfriend.

It's the holiday season once again and just as Ralphie Parker learned in A Christmas Story, you never bend the knee to a bully like Scut Farkus. And we're looking at you, Northwestern University. As it turns out, female dogs are much more observant than male dogs. And we're looking at you, male humans. Pete Hegseth is in increasingly deep water with his murderous boat attacks in the Caribbean. but there isn't a bus that Donald Trump won't throw anyone under. And we're looking at you, Admiral Frank "Mitch" Bradley. You're about to become familiar with the underside of a big, orange bus. Experts are giving humanity two years before AI takes over, but we can fight our AI overlords with poetry and em dashes. And it turns out that 'phone sober' may be more beneficial than sober sober.

Got MAGA relatives? Of course you do. Will you have to share a Thanksgiving table with them this week? Here is a short episode sliding in under their radar that includes some helpful tips on how to survive the maelstrom of logical fallacies, racist policies, and inane musings of your cultist relatives while they pass the stuffing. Good luck, and happy Thanksgiving from The Dumbest Story of the Week! I am thankful for so very many things. Including all of you.

Well, well, well. Marjorie Taylor Greene is resigning. Should we be happier about this? It gives me no joy to say it, but Americans are getting dumber, and we have the receipts. Are you eating Doritos right now? Because ultra-processed foods are really, really bad for your body. Scientists have receipts on that, too. Donald Trump is as misogynist. Is anyone surprised? After all, it takes a piggy to know one. Some Trump cultists want to turn Disneyland into the MAGA-ist place on Earth. Are you afraid of vomiting? You might be surprised to learn that there is a name for that. This week, we also share some helpful tips to get you through the Thanksgiving holiday while sharing a table with your MAGA relatives.

The Epstein Files strike back and MAGA has decided that the right play is to defend pedophiles. Sounds about right. It took the Democrats five days to squander their blue wave momentum, and that might be a new record. The government is no longer shutdown, at the cost of your weed gummies. Kim Davis of Kentucky, the dowdiest of Kim Davises, loses again and gay Americans can continue to get married. For now. We live in a world where artist that don't exist can have a #1 song. What is the preferred duration for sexytimes? It's shorter than you think. Kim Kardashian is big mad at psychics who told her that she would pass the bar exam. Trump wants to name an NFL stadium after himself, and the U.S. Treasury wants to put his face on both sides of a coin. Heads he wins, tails we lose.

A rogue blue wave strikes American and Republicans are Big Sad about it. Dick Cheney dies and perhaps meets the hundreds of thousands of humans killed in the unnecessary war he started, The president of the United States fights to not feed his constituents. Lauren Boebert wears a racist Halloween costume but wasn't invited to Trump's Great Gatsby ball. Let them eat ballrooms, I guess. A jury found Sandwich Guy to be not guilty, serving justice in a delicious manner. RIP to The Farmers' Almanac. The Edmund Fitzgerald sunk 50 years ago November 10th. A Utah Republican wants to ban all porn. One Mississippi monkey remains free. And a picture of a useless Donald Trump doing what he does best is worth well over a thousand words.

Happy Halloween from The Dumbest Story of the Week! This is the week I learned about 6-7, and I am dumber for it. A man in Taiwan discovered just how durable his Apple AirPods are in the strangest manner possible. The bar for joining ICE is staggeringly low, and is anyone surprised? A criminal springs a criminal! Trump commutes George Santos' seven-year sentence, and he is out just in time to TP his house for Halloween. Charles Barkley may be Alabama's next governor, and it is unclear how he could do any worse than his predecessors. Meanwhile, next door in Mississippi a bunch of test monkeys are on the loose that may or may not be infected with diseases. AI thinks that Doritos are guns. And my friend Dana Knudson joins me to teach me about the black market for LEGOs, which are actually called LEGO. I stand corrected.

This episode is another opportunity to pull myself – and hopefully all of you - out of the morass that is our weekly news cycle and focus on one topic and one person. I stumbled upon this week’s guest because he wrote a piece in The Guardian that resonated with me. It is called Democrats Are Captive To Outdated Norms. It’s Endangering Democracy, and it got me to thinking about_ how I am represented by my “team,” which is, ostensibly - and because I don’t have a better option - the Democratic Party,” and what we can do to move things in a better direction. A direction of action rather than strongly worded letters to aspiring dictators. So, I reached out to the author of that piece, Ryan W. Powers, and I cajoled him into doing a short interview. Ryan bills himself as a legal analyst and former Big Law attorney who writes a weekly Substack newsletter on democracy, dissent, and the law. He calls it _The Powers Project.

An investigation by POLITICO revealed this week that Young Republicans engaged in a little "locker room talk" this year, including talking about suppressing Epstein documents and gas chambers, as well as using racial, homophobic and antisemitic slurs and joking about rape. One of them said that he "loved" a certain long-deceased fascist German leader from 90 years ago. Charming. Trump is still killing boaters in the Caribbean and Border Patrol officers murdered a family dog in El Paso. War crimes, anyone? Trump and his neck genitals make the cover of Time, but he isn't pleased about it. SCOTUS tells Alex Jones that he is indeed responsible for that $1.4 billion defamation suit. Dr. Demento and a Marine Corps colonel retired. Former national security adviser John Bolton got indicted. Ace Frehley died. Remember to practice safe phone at this weekend's No Kings protest!

ICE and the Texas National Guard Invaded Chicago and Qatar is about to invade Idaho by getting a new military base on American soil. Because those things make sense, right? The Nobel Committee wisely decided to give their peace prize to someone who hasn't invaded cities in his own country. No prize for you, Donny! Have any of you read Joseph Heller's book, Catch-22? Because you really should. An expert on American anti-fascism and his family got death threats, and then they were bizarrely not allowed to leave the country - until they were. Can I come with you? Republicans only care about an issue when it affects them directly. The government remains closed. Rush is going on a reunion tour next summer. Unpopular opinion alert! Rush lyrics are terrible. MAGA gets big mad at the NFL for hiring American performer Bad Bunny to play the NFL halftime show in 2026. If we all survive that long, I suppose.

The wheels are coming off this country. As for me, I'm off to a music festival for the weekend.

This episode is going to be different. The usual dumb shit that happened in the last week, and there was plenty of that to go around, can keep until next week. It has always been my plan to incorporate interviews into The Dumbest Story of the Week, and I am very happy to say that this week I was fortunate enough to talk with an accomplished journalist and author about a topic that ties directly into some of the themes of this podcast. Stephen Marche is the author of several books, both fiction and nonfiction. He has written for Esquire, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and other many other publications. Stephen is also a weekly contributor to CBC Radio. He has collaborated with artificial intelligence on the first AI-generated novel reviewed in The New York Times, Death of an Author. The reason I wanted to talk with Stephen is because of a book he released in 2022 called The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future. I am all too aware that I am a longtime fan of apocalyptic fiction, with Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, and George Orwell books being among some of my favorites. But Stephen Marche crossed the United States several times to prepare for writing The Next Civil War, researching and conducting interviews across the political spectrum, in and out of governance and the military, and spanning the social divides in order to write what is a very much real assessment of the powder keg of American divisiveness and what it might look like when the bonds that hold Americans together inevitably give way. The story he is trying to tell we Americans is a sobering one. I hope you like this interview. I am proud to share it with you.

Purported champions of free speech are curtailing free speech in the name of a man who championed free speech. And defense of the First Amendment is coming from some unexpected places. As such, I have found myself on the same side of an issue as Tucker Carlson AND Ted Cruz. Up is down. Black is white. Miracle Whip is mayonnaise. Dogs and cats. Living together. Mass hysteria. Also, studying chimpanzees has prompted some scientists to believe that primates have been getting drunk for 30 million years. It's not our fault! Trump finds his way back from Great Britain, much to our chagrin. Dolphins know their friends by tasting their urine. No thank you. White rice may be better for your than brown rice. Trump has the U.S. military kill some more Caribbean boaters in an extrajudicial attack on another Venezuelan boat. Conor McGregor drops out of the Irish presidential race. And Donald Trump admits that smart people don't like him. Truer words, Donny.

This is not The Onion, but I can see the headline now: Man Who Condones Gun Violence Becomes Victim Of Gun Violence. I suppose it's time to start prepping for the next civil war. Oh, and you can forget about the Epstein Files now. Trump was an FBI informant, anyway. At least according to Mike Johnson. Also, a racoon gets a hangover. Germans do the second most German thing ever and invent powdered beer. Tucker Carlson thinks that Pete Buttigieg isn't gay for some reason. Brazil's Supreme Court proves that it is more supreme than our Supreme Court by sentencing former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years in jail after a coup attempt. Instead, we have the Supremacist Court. And Morrissey wants to sell The Smiths, but who's buying?

Florida is going backwards by canceling vaccine mandates as the West Coast launches a forward-thinking heath alliance. Who's MAHA now? Joe Rogan can't read science data. No surprises there. Some squirrels in California have gone carnivorous. Humans are made of meat, you know. Spirit Airlines has filed for bankruptcy twice in ten months, and their executives are giving themselves a big, fat payout. It's the American way. Artificial sweeteners in diet soda can lead to steep cognitive decline. Gee whiz. I wonder who drinks twelve Diet Cokes a day and has access to nuclear launch codes? Disneyland is not the happiest place on earth. That would be Finland. Again. Maybe it's because one of their own won the Air Guitar World Championship. Even better than the real thing.

Episode #42 is the answer for everything. At least if you have read Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy it is. Do you remember college? Sure you do. INTERVIEW! The first Dumbest Story of the Week guest - Tony Pierce, the mastermind behind the brilliant Hear in LA podcast - joins the big show to talk about the number one party school in America. The CDC leadership has bailed, which means that we will most definitely be ready for the next major health crisis. Maybe we'll just drink some raw mild and rub some dirt on the next pandemic. Donald Trump thinks that Americans want him to be our dictator. TDSOTW begs to differ. Florida billionaires make Florida millionaires eat their shit. Trump's immigration junta is off the rails. We take a little tour of the theater of the macabre. A man gets stuck in a playground slide like Winnie the Pooh. Oh bother. The Orgy Dome at Burning Man couldn't stand the weather. Taylor Swift gets engaged. On purpose. Trump cancels Kamala Harris' Secret Service detail just in time for her book tour. We get a bit of good news: Alligator Alcatraz is illegal. As are most of Trump's tariffs. And the big guy's hand has a prominent bruise that may mean that he has some serious problems of his own. And so much more.

Lordy, lordy was this week full of dumb news. Some of it spilled over from last week, like Donald Trump getting punked by Putin. And the Republican brain trust continuing to take the bait on California Governor Gavin Newsom's epic Trump Trollfest. Fuck whose feelings, exactly? New research shows that doing your own research makes you dumber. Some Illinois Nazis get the boot, and Jake Blues would be pleased. Cracker Barrel enrages their base with a corporate logo refresh. Trump now believes that he has stopped ten wars in seven months, and he is personally campaigning to get himself a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. A Yosemite park ranger gets fired for violating a rule that didn't exist. They say that evil never dies, but James Dobson just proved otherwise. Trump goes on patrol in Washington D.C. Not. Crosswalks and border walls get a new coat of paint. Or two. And if the radioactive shrimp don't kill us, society itself will collapse before long. How long? You'll have to listen to find out!

Big Balls from DOGE got himself carjacked. An event Donald Trump then used as a pretext for militarizing our nation's capital and launching his own army of Brownshirts. What, me worry? California Governor Gavin Newsom calls Texas' redistricting bluff, thereby showing the rest of the feckless Democrats that it is possible for donkeys to have balls. Newsom also does some performance art with Trump's tweets and they're funnier than you think. JD Vance draws a lot of water in his home state. The Secret Service and the Army Corps of Engineers raised the level of a river so that Vance and his family could have ideal kayaking conditions. For real. An actor who once played Superman, a literal alien, has joined ICE to keep real aliens out of our country. An airline pilot goes on a bender and wanders around a fancy resort in the nude. Why not. Southwest Airlines gets guilted into fixing a guitar they broke. Donald Trump fucks up The Smithsonian and The Kennedy Center in one fell swoop and still manages to find time to fly to Alaska to stroke Vladimir Putin's... ego. And more. So much more.

What's better than a beautiful garden full of roses? A cement pad, of course. Donald Trump kills the messenger over jobs numbers. Will reality ever matter to Republicans again? Scientists are battling invasive snakes in Florida using robot rabbits. No shit. Republicans bust a nut over torpedoing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. You know, because ignorant citizens are more servile. Oh, and to clear salary cap space due to Big Bird's $80 million dollar contract. The U.S. government wants you to crowdfund the ballooning national debt due to Trump's idiotic Big Beautiful Bill. A sex symbol from an ad for blue jeans may or may not be a Republican. Does it matter? Does anything matter? Nihilists, Dude.

We were flush with dumb this week, up to and including a dead person who denied that their cancer existed. Chuck E. Cheese got arrested in Florida. How many people is too many people when it comes to sex? A Spanish adult entertainment company CEO gives her employees "self-pleasure" breaks, and I am in the wrong line of work. Los Angeles no longer has the worst traffic in the nation. Who is the new best at being the worst? A show set in Yosemite isn't shot in Yosemite, but maybe that's a good thing. Hulk Hogan dies, and you can learn a lot about a person as for whether or not they're sad about that. Will the Coldplay kiss-cam CEO sue the band for his own stupidity? A straight-up fascist is running for governor in California. Trump's immigration policies keeps a group of bat-wielding little leaguers out of the U.S. And Trump is building a ballroom at the White House. What better to flatter you with, our Great Leader!

Is Donald Trump in the Epstein Files? You bet your ass he is. But he wants you to think about anything other than that. How about Obama, renaming sports teams, Adam Schiff, of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.? An American citizen moves to Russia to escape Woke Texas. How's that working out? Steve Miller cancels all future concerts due to the volatile climate. Take the money and run, you midnight toker, you. The Trump administration wants to save money by spending $167,000 to destroy its own property. Trump has cankles and Tommy Tuberville blames it on Democrats. Eww. The LA Times is going public. In N Out burger's billionaire owner thinks it's hard to raise a family in California. And one of the best things ever may be going extinct.

The inevitable sunset of The Velvet Sundown, the world's first million-streamed AI band. Texas' Ken Paxton, a bigot who doesn't want gay people to get married, is getting a divorce because he is an adulterous Christian. Are you surprised? California conservatives want to move to Idaho. Please. No. Don't go. Are you more scared of sharks or beaches contaminated with poop? Check the numbers - you're far better off with Jaws. Missouri's Republican governor overrides the will of the people. Are you surprised? Coldplay's kiss-cam finds a couple work colleagues stepping out. Bad idea. Scientists hack bees. And Fox so-called News proves once again that there is no bottom for the MAGA cult.

The dumb stories just keep rolling along, don't they? Republicans aren't to blame for the tragic flooding in Texas, but they have been working to make it harder to pick up the pieces after disasters for years. Also, when the FEMA relief does come, Trump makes certain that Texas gets it faster than deep blue California. Ted Cruz sure does like going on vacation, doesn't he? A bunch of idiots right out of a Carl Hiaasen novel attacked a TV news station's weather radar. No shit. The IRS shreds the line between church and state. RFK Jr.'s CDC shares a fake study. Again. The Republicans really want to add Trump's big, fat head to Mount Rushmore. Everyone is apparently not welcome in Idaho classrooms. And it seems as if men are doing more housework. How's that sitting with the Alpha males, do you think?

I used to like the 4th of July. Hoo-boy. The wheels are coming off this country. Trump's Big, Stupid Bill arrives like a freight train full of rabid monkeys. I may have confused Medicare and Medicaid, but I'm not sure it matters while the wheels are coming off. Surprise! Kristi Noem is a grifter! Robots flop just like humans while playing the first autonomous soccer match. There is an AI rock band, and they suck as much as many real ones. A Kentucky town executes a real Dukes of Hazzard car jump and the masses love it. Also, in which I reminisce about Friday nights way back when.

Donald Trump and his sycophants are trying to convince you that their expensive Midnight Hammer bombing mission was the greatest military operation in the history of the world. Given that the Normandy invasion in June of 1944 involved 156,000 troops from multiple countries, 195,700 naval personnel, 7,000 ships and landing craft, 11,000 aircraft, and 50,000 vehicles and took two years to plan, that sounds about right. How can you not be exhausted by this guy at this point? The compromised Supreme Court jerks the wheel towards authoritarianism. A basketball star doesn’t believe in history before 1950, which is fine because until this week I’d never heard of him either. The Onion goes legit. “Big Balls” retires. Some jackass shoots donkeys with arrows. Are you eligible for ‘Methaphone’ treatment? This is the episode in which I poke the social media bear with predictable results. I am headed to Chicago next week, and I am going to miss the lightning bugs one day. Target is trying to buy liberals back. Will it work?

I love you guys so much that I made an episode during my vacation in Yosemite National Park. I also protested on No Kings Day in Yosemite National Park because I speak for the trees and all that. Donald Trump finally gets his idiotic parade, and you know what? It rained on his parade. Stochastic terrorism is here. And rest in peace, Gilbert. You are the Best Boy.

Donald Trump declares war on Los Angeles and Los Angeles isn’t having it. Step off, Mr. President. American fascism is here. People who know nothing about California think they know everything about California.  Fox so-called News is full of shit, and there is nothing new under the sun. Terry Moran did something that many modern journalists find difficult because of their corporate baby-daddies - he told the truth. Off with his head! Trump thinks he is a king, and we think otherwise. See you all at No Kings Day!

Senator Joni Ernst believes in nothing, Lebowski! Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s bromance that flushed our country down the toilet has come to an end. What would be call their Brangelina-esque power romance? Dusk? Elump? Some Republicans believe that Joe Biden is a robot. Because of course they do. Amazon wants robots to deliver your packages and Biden is currently unemployed. Problem solved! Pete Hegseth somehow finds a way to lower the bar. And a toddler goes on an amazing journey.

Donald Trump once again gets out his pardon pen to exonerate grifters of all manifestations. Oh, and potentially some stochastic terrorists. They don’t need better infrastructure, but Texas sure needs a law to make sure that the Ten Commandments are posted in every Lone Star classroom. A couple hikers strike gold in Europe. For real. Does your college degree suck? Probably. How long do sperm live? I’m sure you’ve always wondered. RFK Jr. is making sure that Americans can’t get vaccines, and that sure sounds like he’s making America heathy again. (Sarcasm font.) Trump is using his stupide Golden Dome to shake down Canada again and they’re not having it. Oh, and new research shows that Americans swear the most. No shit?