thebruenigs

Brutal Leaders and the MAGA Kid

Matt and Liz discuss a frequent and bizarre argument made on behalf of certain kinds of politicians who do bad things -- that they can't help it due to structural oppression that forces them to be ...

Review of Liz Warren's Book: The Two-Income Trap

The gang (mostly Matt, apologies in advance) talk about Elizabeth Warren's book The Two-Income Trap. As with most things, the book errs in not recognizing the superiority of the welfare state in so...

Parenting Challenges; AOC on Sweden and MMT

Sorry for the delay on this episode. Our daughter started preschool (discussed in episode), creating some issues for us in getting the recording done. We talk generally about our parenting experien...

Lib Paranoia Ramping Up; Sawhill's A Modest Proposal

The crew commemorate the anniversary of Josh TPM's porn tweet, talk about liberal paranoia ramping up around the election, and Sawhill's modest proposal to reduce poverty by giving poor woman IUDs,...

Christmas Special ft. Lapland Santa (Antti Jauhiainen & Joona-Hermanni Mäkinen)

Liz and Matt are joined by Antti and Joona of Parecon Finland.

The World According to Matt

In this rare solo episode, Matt outlines his whole vision of what's the chief problem with capitalism and how best to tackle it. He starts with a discussion of capital's share and wealth ownership ...

Hot Topics and Climate

The zoo crew talks Biden, Democratic Primary generally, Jordan Peterson, the Race Science guy, and "regressive" Climate politics.

Is Liz the Head of an Anti-Beto Conspiracy?

The crew return to their old bantering form in this episode. No guests. Just hot topics and chatter.

The GOAT Ralph Nader

Liz and Matt have a wide-ranging discussion with citizen advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader. We ask him about his views on recent trends in the Democratic party and play a game: Na...

Fashing Out with Guest Tom Frank

The crew sits down with Tom Frank (Listen Liberal, What's the Matter with Kansas?) and have a sprawling conversation primarily about fascism, the subject of Frank's next book.

Matt is Cancelled + Will Butler of Arcade Fire

The gang discuss Matt's cancellation over his blog post about student debt forgiveness in the first half of the episode.

Will Butler of Arcade Fire comes on in the second half of the prog...

The Hedonic Blitzkrieg

In their thanksgiving special, Liz and Matt eschew hot topics in favor of a full episode on the pitfalls of consumer markets. The jumping off point for the discussion is the recent writing about the D...

Creepy AOC Tweet; White Women Be Like; Hygge Thanksgiving

The wacky crew is at it again. Come for the theme song. Stay for the top notch discussion of politics and culture.

Generation Wealth, Nationalization

Liz and Matt discuss hot topics, Lauren Greenfield's Generation Wealth, and the underrated policy instrument of self-regulation via nationalization threats.

Along with the bonus episode, The Bruenig...

Bonus for Patrons: The Midterms

Liz and Matt discuss the midterm results, the early push to run Beto O'Rourke for president, and a new electoral system Matt has cooked up that does not require people to vote.

Patrons only!

Hello, It's Halloween

Liz and Matt discuss Halloween happenings, the DC elections (poorly), the strange socialist posturing in climate policy, a philosophical tension in competition, among other things.

The gas company (...

Dems Love Amazon; Bernie v. Warren; Catholic Sex Abuse

Liz and Matt discuss a recent poll showing Democrats have more confidence in Amazon than any major US institution, the opening shots in the pundit effort to distinguish Bernie from Warren, geoengineer...

Warren DNA Debacle and Child Allowance > *

We discuss the hot topic of the Warren DNA debacle, our 5 year old run in with Gavin McInnes, the Kamala Harris LIFT credit, the superiority of the child allowance over other welfare state programs, M...

Fake Ads

We are taking submissions for fake ads to read on the podcast. We did this a bit before and are now bringing it back for patrons in particular.

Here is an example of an ad we read before:

Political Correctness and Alcoholic Free Will

Liz and Matt go through the usual hot topics, discuss an inane survey about "political correctness," and talk about how Liz got in trouble with the internet for saying alcohol consumption contributes ...