the Chapo philosopher king and best reason to listen had a stroke and is on indefinite hiatus

the subreddit was almost completely unrelated to the show, like legit i was there for months before i knew the show even existed. the sub got big because it was accessible big tent leftism - actual leftist shit that could criticise neoliberalism and point out the contradictions while being easily digestible and not racist. thats all it took because there was virtually nothing else that did all those things.

They were at peak form during the election cycles because you had a cast of dipshit politicians doing things every week and so you got recap + jokes each week so you could keep relatively current without bothering with liberal media.

True Anon is the real podcast now

Citations Needed is a good podcast, if a little dry. Do they talk about Twitter drama much?

The subreddit was full of liberals just like this place is.

Whats wrong with ?

Finally getting into the Beetles in 2024 and y'all I don't think McCartney is that good also where's John Lenon at these days?

I don't know why you started with episode 1.

It was only 2 year old Twitter drama then

It has good episodes and bad episodes. I generally like it. I enjoy when they really dig into liberal/chud brainworms, and regularly get good guests.

I think it had finally gotten into a good post-Bernie rhythm, but then Matt had a stroke and it's been more hit or miss.

I don't think it's "must listen to" by any means though.

Last 3 episodes were really bad. The regular show is good when they find a slate of insane ameribrained op eds to ridicule for 45 min also bc of the size of the show they have on very good guests fairly regularly. The episode recently with Ryan grim where they discussed his new book about the squad(absolutely brutal portrayal of AOC) was very good. Their interview with beirut based journalist Séamus Malekafzali was also stand out. All the spin offs that are actual passion projects are also good like others mentioned in this thread.

Maybe part of it was that there was a widespread desire to be irreverent, and the hosts mixed a lot of history and politics in with their media critique.

But the bigger reason why r/CTH took off is because r/communism sucked and r/anarchism sucked and r/socialism sucked and r/latestagecapitalism sucked. As soon as r/CTH became known as a nonsectarian space that upheld progressive politics but no specific banner, and started to develop a reputation of its own, including making fun of reactionaries instead of banning them, it began to really take off.

it's background noise at work i would never pay for it

I think Chapo’s moment kind of passed with the failure of Sanders’ 2020 run tbh. Kind of felt like one of the last nails in the coffin. Also other podcasts do what they did better these days.

I will say I do still love the pure screaming pathos of Matt losing his shit at an awful Megan McArdle OpEd about the Grenfell fire. One of the first times I ever felt like someone else was being driven mad by this stuff to the same degree and in the precise way I am.

I think the media analysis is really smart and insightful but it has a weird way of making you feel like you already know everything they're saying, and the delivery tends toward the dry side.

I still listen to them, and subscribe to the Patreon, but their podcast has been getting weaker for a long time.

Like everyone else says, their golden era is 2016 to 2020. 2020 to now has been a slow decline, that accelerated as soon as Matt was hospitalized.

I mainly still subscribe and listen out of inertia. If Trump wins this election I expect the quality to go up a little, but without Matt this podcast is a hollow shell of its former self. The main things keeping me around are the occasional amazing guest, and their coverage of Israel.

Trueanon is much better in general, and Bad Hasbara usually does a better job of satisfying my need for anti Israel content. Starting Chapo now is like watching the last season of Lost, without the sunk cost of all the previous seasons, It's going to be confusing boring and lame, and you're not going to understand why it was popular in the first place.

I stopped listening sometime in 2019-2020 because I just couldn't handle anymore doses of reality while I was doing the dishes.

In the few years I lurked it, the subreddit legitimately was only ever tangentially related to the podcast, it very much had a life and culture of its own that just reacted to the podcast instead of being shaped by it at all.

I got way much more out of the community than I ever did the show. And still do, obviously, since I haven't listened in years.

2016-2020 was peak chapo era and I'm guessing the period when most of us on this site listened to the podcast. I at least stopped listening at the start of 2020 and I think a lot of other people stopped listening in that year also. I think it was really a product of that time period, of these new extremely young leftists discovering socialism for the first time. Most listeners also I'm guessing were fully children of the end of history, many of whom came of age during the Obama era, and the irreverent takes and just taking the piss out of the absurdity of the 2016 election and then the subsequent dumpster fire that was the Trump administration were a breath of fresh air to the civility politics that had defined the earlier era, especially during Obama. People were sick of West Wing, they wanted Chapo.

So I think that's the context for the podcast existing and getting so popular. But the sub pretty quickly moved past the podcast, and I think the podcast hosts actually mentioned the sub on one episode to criticize it? They sorta hated the sub. So there was a divide between the sub and the podcast, at least by the time I got on there. Nevertheless, the subreddit always had the new episode pinned to the top, and the podcast was still mostly how people got on the sub - they were attracted by the podcast's refutation of liberalism and civility politics, and then found their way onto the sub to further their development into a marxist-leninist.

Half the hosts aren't even there at this point for various reasons . I still tune in regularly if only hoping to hear the sweet insightful tones of Matt Christman once again but even with his presence the podcast is and always was going to be a shadow of itself in the wake of the Bernie campaign. Matt himself actually acknowledged in an interview that it was incredibly relieving to not be 'relevant' anymore such that they could actually influence anything.

I have no plans to ever stop listening but at this point: it's not a place to get cutting edge hot takes or anything super insightful/important. It's just something I listen to while working out cause it's a classic para social relationship where I feel like I'm hanging out with my old friends from back when I still had optimism.

I think that it's still pretty good and I would never pay for it but it's nice to hear people who think like me during the week otherwise I would go insane

It was my gateway to learning about leftist podcasts but I also still find some episodes funny to this day so idk

I'm not even American nor have i ever used Twitter

Cumtown is sorta an acquired taste, so I get it.

yeah, it's awesome.

ep 800 was really good, listen to that one

Their voices are annoying too (except for Matt) and they all desperately try to one up each other with the most damp humor, it makes me want to throw my phone against a wall.