Episode Details

On Sunday night, the evil orange guy who occupies the White House hosted a UFC fight on the South Lawn. With a branded octagon. And military honor guards as ambiance. And a fighter who, after winning his match, grabbed the mic to announce to smear Michelle Obama by saying she's better than he is (that's what he meant, right?). While Joe Rogan grinned next to him like a golden retriever who just found out about steaks.

I didn't watch it. I don't do fights, certainly not trashy fights at the WH, but you can't avoid the sickening clips.

To help make sense of all of it, I brought back Dr. Art Jipson, professor of sociology at the University of Dayton, who studies extremism, culture, and the ways societies lose their collective minds. We talked about what laws the White House UFC event may (or may not) have broken, why we can no longer tell parody from reality (there was an AI video that nearly convinced me the Trump family was suing MSG owner James Dolan over crowd boos, and honestly, I didn't immediately doubt it), and Jean Baudrillard's concept of hyper-reality — which sounds very French-professor-y but is actually the perfect framework for what we're all living through right now.

And a whole lot more, including two clips from one of the early hate-talk radio precursors to today's moronic mic hogs- Bob Grant in 1984 (yes, I was his producer then) that might blow your mind.