This is the only presidential debate on a weekend…ehhhh… 6:00 P.M.–A quick look at the audience makes it seem like the entire crowd could carpool home in an SUV. My God, where are the people? 6:02–Looks like NBC has gone with showing a football game—priorities are right, I guess—so I’m forced to watch this one…
Episode 40–How Do Democrats Lose? The Southern And Northern Strategy
Can the Democrats take back the white working class? And how did they lose them in the first place? Tricky questions that we attempt to answer by looking deep into the history of the Democratic Party–which contained MLK and George Wallace at the same time–and how the Southern Strategy cost them the white working class decades…
Live-Blogging the VP Debate
This should be a real event. A boring guy with white-ish hair vs. a boring guy with very white hair… 6:00 p.m…even the pre-debate montage of these guys makes them look boring. I can almost hear the editor of this clip package “Hey guys, you can’t make a turnip sexy.” 6:05…A debate moderator I’ve never…
Episode 39–Are We Poisoning Ourselves? Food and Other Addictions
Our big things trilogy might be finished, but we still found another big topic to tackle: food and various other addictions. Americans eat too much of it, and we dive deep into: why is there a political divide in food? Why do red states associate freedom with things that kill them? Is sex addiction real?…
Live-Blogging the First Presidential Debate
The pre-debate montage on NBC might as well say “brought to you by WWF” and a “let’s get ready to ruuuuumble!” 6:00–Savannah Guthrie tries to be even blander than usual, while Chuck Todd talks about competing visions of America in a way that makes Trump’s sound worse. I can’t wait to see Trump’s mean tweet…
Please Watch My Short Film “Falling Towers”
First completed short film under the Alabama Liberal YouTube Channel (subscribe please), Playlist One Man Movies, movies made by one person, filmed in one day, from idea to finished film in one week, on a budget of no more than one dollar… Please watch, like, and comment
Episode 38–How (Not) to Make It in the Media
Really and truly folks, how many podcasts could give you everything you wanted to know about the media in just one episode? I’m talking Brody’s adventures trying to make movies in Alabama, getting cast in things in Los Angeles, trying to publish books in New York, and striving to crack that ever-elusive club of bloggers…
Episode 37–Are Fossil Fuels Holding Us Back?
In the second part of our “Big Things” trilogy, we look at the biggest thing: climate crisis. After debunking the various (cough, bullshit, cough) climate change denials, we look at getting rid of fossil fuels and what that would really mean. Questions asked (and answered) include: Is climate crisis contributing to terrorism? Is it more…
Episode 36–In Defense of Teachers [The Education Episode]
In one of our best episodes yet, Brody and Michael go deep on a topic often discussed, but rarely understood: education. Questions are asked (and answered) like: why are teacher’s unions the most misunderstood organizations in America? Why are they so often scapegoated for education’s ills? Why are Charter Schools a “cure” that’s worse than…
End of the World…Party [A Montage of Trumpocalypse]
A quick montage I put together to prepare you. Hey, the apocalypse may not be so bad, I hear cockroaches taste better than you’d think…
Book Review: the Terrific “Movie Freak”
Great books about movies are rare, and books that manage to truly capture the feeling movies can give you (like Patton Oswalt’s “Silver Screen Fiend”) are even rarer. Yet Owen Gleiberman’s “Movie Freak” may be the best book about movies I’ve ever read, and is the best book ever written about the lure of films, as evidenced from the book’s…
Book Reviews: “The Girls,” “Barkskins,” and “Lily and the Octopus”
It may seem like a cop-out to praise all three of these very different books, but they take wildly divergent paths to being equally terrific… Barkskins by Annie Proulx…A big, bold, ambitious book that practically has “Great Novel” stamped on the book cover. It’s about two “barkskins” (tree cutters) who settle in New France and…
Episode 35–What Will Obama Do Post-POTUS? And Predicting His Legacy
In our first truly “Obama Episode” we pull out our crystal ball to wonder what Obama will do after his presidency, and trying to predict how he’ll be remembered as President. Such burning questions include: Will Republicans miss torturing him? Exactly what bugs Republicans about Obamacare (their own plan)? Do Americans know we have the…