If Books Could Kill: "The Worst Takes of 2025" [TEASER]

Hosts: Michael Hobbes & Peter Shamshiri
Date: December 29, 2025

Overview

In this end-of-year 'teaser' episode, Michael and Peter compile their definitive list of the most egregious, short-sighted, or simply bizarre political and cultural takes published in 2025. The hosts skewer punditry's obsession with contrarianism, media both-sides-ism, lazy blame-shifting, and the persistent inability of the political commentariat to grapple with reality—even as the United States slides ever more clearly towards authoritarianism. True to their style, the episode blends biting humor, exasperation, and substantive critique as they walk listeners through a parade of takes that, in their words, "captured our hearts and ruined our minds."

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining the Year’s "Bad Takes"

• The episode opens with the hosts joking that the "worst takes" might be their own critics, but quickly pivots to a genuine retrospective:
  • “This was an incredible year for bad takes. This was one of the championship worst takes years.” (B, 00:44)
• They clarify that they’ve tracked these takes all year and, without "recency bias," hand-picked a definitive list.

2. The ‘Both Sides’ Media Problem

• Michael and Peter’s first category: brain-dead both sides-ism and contrarian takes, especially in mainstream opinion journalism.

• Hall of Shame Highlights:

  • Olivia Rheingold’s Free Press piece denying the scale of starvation in Gaza (02:22).
  • Meghan McCardle’s “Missing Context from the Elon Musk Salute” (Washington Post).
  • Bret Stephens’ "No, Israel is Not Committing Genocide."
  • Persuasion’s back-to-back pieces rationalizing tariffs and negative coverage of Gavin Newsom’s tweets—“Persuasion is so interesting because it's like, what if the Free Press had no money?” (A, 03:40)

• Notable Example: The Atlantic’s “Sometimes a Parade is Just a Parade” (Corey Shakes) rationalizing Trump’s birthday military parade, exemplifying willful historical amnesia about authoritarian displays.

  • Quote:
    • “Not everything the Trump administration does is destructive to democracy. And the example of Bastille Day in France suggests that dictatorships are not the only governments to hold military displays. … In today's climate, a military parade could offer an opportunity to counter misperceptions about the armed forces. ...” (A reading Shake, 06:26)
    • Peter’s retort: "Look past the symbolism. Look past the purpose of it. Look past the person running it. Find a fake purpose." (A & B, 07:49)

• Insight:

  • Mainstream punditry entertains contrarianism for its own sake, at the expense of honest context:
    • “What’s actually happening in the country is this one dimensional fascist power grab. But the problem with punditry in this era is that that's not that interesting. ... People don't think that their job is to contextualize this.” (B, 08:05)

3. Misreading Shifting Political Winds

• The hosts mock a New York Times Magazine piece ("Goodbye, the Era of Hyper Politics is Over" by Ross Barkin) for decreeing that activism and salient politics ended after 2024:

  • “He characterizes Trump trying to end birthright citizenship...as ordinary because the opposition to it manifested in the courts rather than in protests, which isn't even entirely true. It's, like, entirely about procedure and optics.” (A, 16:03)
  • “If you thought that politics was about to calm down...it's hard to believe that this person analyzes politics for a living.” (A, 15:15)

• Observation: Center-left pundits catastrophize Democratic losses yet dismiss Republican disasters as "the will of the people."

  • “Every time Democrats win, they're like, ‘oh, this is kind of a fluke.’ And every time Republicans win, they're like, ‘oh, this proves it. No one agrees with us.’” (A, 14:18)

4. The Unkillable Campus Free Speech Panic

• Peter and Michael highlight Persuasion and others’ lazy repetition of “campus wokeness” as a causal story for Democratic troubles, despite electoral evidence to the contrary.

• “They're just like partying like it's 2021.” (B, 17:33)

• The hosts argue pundits impose their own narrative obsessions onto every political event, regardless of facts:

  • “Everyone just wants to look at the election and jam their little narratives into it.” (A, 18:37)

5. "Vocabulary Warfare" and Manufactured Outrage

• Example: the Atlantic’s “What’s So Shocking About a Man Who Loves His Wife?” is roasted for overreacting to gentle online teasing ("wife guy"):

  • “He's preemptively defending himself from the wife guy allegations. He's like, I'm not just a wife guy online, I'm like, I like her in person.” (B, 22:17)
  • “...the lightest teasing has made him ashamed of his own love for his wife.” (A, 25:01)

• Core Critique: Endless media cycles about offending terms & language show a collapse of context.

  • “But the whole thing with all of these fucking vocabulary complaints is the complete collapse of context. There's no example of someone being like, hey, stop being a wife guy. This is, like, really condescending to your wife.’” (B, 24:47)

6. Trans Rights as a Scapegoat

• Multiple segments focus on how political/media actors wrongly blamed trans rights and “identity politics” for Democratic losses:

  • “Trans people were functionally blamed for the 2024 election by a ton of people.” (A, 26:45)
  • “Kamala Harris did not say the word transgender a single time in any official campaign materials. Like, they did not run on transgender rights. They just didn't.” (B, 27:08)

• Quotes & Insights:

  • “The median voter is going to associate trans rights with the Democratic Party more than the Republican Party. So it will be an effective line of attack. So you actually just need to make the case.” (A, 29:14)
  • “You're signing on to a lie. You're signing on to something that is equivalent to climate change is not real, the 2020 election was stolen, vaccines cause autism. And so what you need to do is push back against the conspiracy myths.” (B, 31:10)

7. Democratic Messaging and the Limits of Nuance

• The hosts conclude that the compulsion to "thread the needle" with nuanced, equivocal rhetoric is failing:
  • “I think Trump's appeal to a lot of people is that he doesn't really equivocate. ... Rather than doing this whole like, well, we support trans rights, but here are the limitations... it would be better to just say something simple that's almost a lie.” (A, 34:03)
  • “Just accept that we live in idiocracy now and fucking roll with it.” (B, 34:41)

8. The Media’s Impulse to Blame the Left

• Even when institutions are attacked from the right, NYT and others still find a way to blame academia and “liberal elites”:

  • Reading from NYT editorial:
    “Too many professors and university administrators acted in recent years as liberal ideologues rather than seekers of empirical truth... It has led to massive resentment against intellectual elites. ... This insularity does not justify Mr. Trump's policies, but it does help explain the dearth of conservatives defending universities today.” (A, quoting 36:51)
  • Peter: “Brain dead child. The mind of a child.” (B, 37:35)

• Key Point: The NYT’s relentless publishing of anti-academia takes helps legitimize right wing scapegoating, then acts surprised when trust in higher ed collapses:

  • “You publish three fucking op-eds a week about how higher education is bad and illegitimate and suppressing debate.” (B, 38:25)

9. The Epstein Files—Elite Complicity, Denial, and Fact-Check Failures

• David Brooks’ NYT column “The Epstein Story: Count Me Out” is held up as an apex of elite defensiveness.

  • “Why is Epstein the top issue in American life right now? ... it pays to focus on topics that are salacious, are easy to understand and allow you to offer self confident opinions with no actual knowledge.” (reading Brooks, 41:15)
  • “The QAnon mentality is based on the assumption that the American elite is totally evil and that American institutions are totally corrupt.” (A, reading Brooks, 42:01)

• Michael: “A huge shocking percentage of American elites had some tie to this guy who was a known pedo, right? ... It’s very weird to be like, ‘ugh, this is just because people assume the American elite is totally evil.’” (A, 42:18)

• Gotcha Moment: Brooks is later revealed in Epstein-dinner photographs, which the hosts relish as poetic justice:

  • “Maybe reflect on that the fact that there’s ties between you and like this tranche of fucking elites. Rather than writing about like, hey, I feel bad about the way that I may have aided and embedded this, you just write about how like, ‘eh, let’s focus on something else.’” (B, 45:21)

• Fact-Check Hall of Shame:

  • Glenn Kessler’s “fact check” on Trump’s Epstein ties:
    “If the full file is ever released, we’re confident that no connection would be found. Rest assured, if Trump were prominently mentioned, it would have been leaked by now.” (B, reading Kessler, 47:13)
  • Peter: “Wrong bitch. Wrong bitch. We still don't even have his taxes.” (A & B, 48:31)
  • Michael: "The lyingest motherfucker of all time is telling you the most obvious lie of all time. And you're like, like, I believe them." (A, 49:09)

10. The “Worst Take of the Year”

• After two hours of examples, the episode alludes to the 'crescendo'—their pick for absolute worst take:
  • “To clarify, I personally think the worst take of the year is actually ‘Charlie Kirk was doing politics the right way.’... However...we’re going to do the second worst take...” (B, 49:34)
• The episode’s ultimate winner: Thomas Chatterton Williams’ “The left's new moralism will backfire under Trump” (Atlantic, Nov 13, 2025):
  • Tease for the full discussion to come.

Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Both-Sides-ism:
  “Not everything the Trump administration does is destructive to democracy. … It could be doing a thing that it's not doing.” (A & B reading/paraphrasing, 06:26-07:01)

• On Contrarianism:
  “People don't think it's their job to like read things or give historical context. So they have to do like takes. They have to do views on things like, oh, I need to say something about this that's like counterintuitive and interesting.” (B, 08:55)

• On Blaming Identity Politics:
  “Multiple segments focus on how political/media actors wrongly blamed trans rights and ‘identity politics’ for Democratic losses.” (A, 26:45-30:03)

• On Media Enabling Right-Wing Campaigns:
  “You publish three fucking op-eds a week about how higher education is bad and illegitimate and suppressing debate.” (B, 38:25)

• On the Epstein Files:
  “People are saying the American elite are covering for evil, which is precisely what you are doing right now in this column.” (B, 43:03)

• Michael’s summary of elite defensiveness:
  “The lyingest motherfucker of all time is telling you the most obvious lie of all time. And you're like, like, I believe them.” (A, 49:09)

Notable Segment Timestamps

• 00:44 – 03:47: Defining “worst takes” and year highlights
• 05:14 – 07:57: “Sometimes a Parade is Just a Parade” and military parades as both-sides-ism
• 10:12 – 15:34: Analysis of “The Era of Hyper Politics is Over” and pundit misreads
• 17:10 – 18:57: Persuasion’s evergreen anti-wokeness campaign
• 22:17 – 25:01: The “wife guy” Atlantic article and the culture of performative offense
• 26:33 – 34:41: Media scapegoating of trans rights; Democratic messaging failures
• 36:36 – 40:44: NYT’s editorials on higher ed; blaming liberal academics for right-wing authoritarianism
• 41:01 – 49:09: Epstein files coverage, Brooks and Kessler’s defenses unraveled

Tone & Style Highlights

• Closely hews to the podcast’s signature tone: irreverent, exasperated, darkly funny, and granularly well-informed.
• The hosts freely mock the most self-serious elements of punditry, reading select quotes in incredulous or sarcastic voices.
• Despite humor, their critiques are substantive and rooted in a clear-eyed assessment of recent American political and journalistic failures.

In Summary

This episode is an energetic, densely packed rundown of the “championship” bad punditry of 2025, as seen by two of the sharpest media critics podcasting today. Whether mocking both-sides-ism, the recalcitrant “campus free speech” narrative, or institutional denial surrounding the Epstein files, Peter and Michael deploy withering quotes and insightful, frustrated analysis to skewer a commentariat chronically unable—or unwilling—to grapple with the realities of U.S. politics.

Listeners come away with a rundown not only of specific bad takes, but also of key patterns poisoning mainstream analysis—even as the stakes of doing so become more and more dire.