We're finally covering the Norse vision of the apocalypse, Ragnarök. We go over the Norse pantheon of gods, Odin, Thor, Loki, all your favorites, and then we get into some of the events that presage the coming of doom before plunging fully into that doom itself, particularly the tragic death of the Baldr done by coward Loki. We also get into some of the classic Norse apocalyptic monsters, Fenrir, Jörmungandr, Hel, Garmr, and, of course, Surtr (who could forget Surtr?). It's a trip through Norse myth with comparisons to Greek and Christian visions of the end of the world thrown in for good measure.

We open the episode by discussing the recent ceasefire in Gaza, with hopes that it finally holds and brings an end to this terrible war, while along the way noting some of the discrepancies of language still en vogue in the media when addressing this war.

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We're finally tackling 1981's Mad Max 2 or The Road Warrior. One of the most influential post-apocalyptic films of the last fifty years, it is also considered to be one of the greatest action movies of all time. So of course, Michael is ambivalent about it, and Stu is OUTRAGED by that ambivalence. By the end will our hosts reach some kind of accord, or will this be a friendship-ending episode? To find out, you must listen.

We start out by discussing Trump's recent threats to invoke the dreaded Insurrection Act in order to quell "riots" in Portland, Chicago, and other American cities. We speculate on what the goal of these threats might really be.

Politico on Trump and the Insurrection Act

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This week we have bowed to pressure and are at last covering a 2013 National Geographic documentary called "How to Survive the End of the World: Zombie Earth." This is the first entry in a six part series to which we shall be returning periodically. The zombie apocalypse scenario set out in this infotainment feature is really about rabies, and not just regular, terrifying rabies, no. The documentary dares to ask, "What if rabies went airborne?"

It's interesting to look back on this cultural artifact from the 2010s with the knowledge we now possess of how the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic played out, and we do just that in this episode, noting the things the documentary gets right and those things it gets...completely wrong...or misses entirely.

We open up the episode by talking about YouTube's recent settlement with Donald Trump over his ban in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection. Has a golden age of free speech really begun, or is something else afoot?

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