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 It is called Democrats Are Captive To Outdated Norms.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?