OK, some more big news

Today’s issue is going to be a little bit different. I’ve said before that we spent the winter working on some big things and I have another very special announcement to share with you regarding Panic World. So keep reading to find out more!

But first, I wanted to remind folks that we’re doing a string of live shows in Brooklyn in July. Tickets are moving fast, so definitely pick one up while you can!

If you’ve never been to Garbage Day Live show and don’t know what to expect, I oftentimes tell people it’s like a TED Talk combined with a DJ set. Or like a comedy show that isn’t annoying to sit through lol. Basically, if you like the tone of the newsletter, you’ll like Garbage Day Live.

Our upcoming three-night residency at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn is all about saving democracy in America. Or, at the very least, diagnosing how we broke it. Each night has a different theme and different guests. On night one we have the amazing reporter Kat Tenbarge, on night two we have Peter McIndoe, the genius behind Birds Aren’t Real, and for night three we have podcaster extraordinaire Akilah Hughes. And we may have some more surprises to announce! You can grab tickets for each night by clicking the links below.

• July 8 — “The Masculinity Crisis”

• July 15 — “Silicon Valley Ate The World”

• July 22 — “America Is Doomed”

Alright, let’s get to the big announcement…

Panic World Has A New Home

My producer Grant Irving and I recorded the pilot for Panic World about a year ago. We knew, vaguely, what we wanted the show to feel like, but couldn’t have predicted how it would evolve — or how the country would devolve — in the 12 months since. Forty-three episodes and hundreds of thousands of downloads later, we’ve been lucky enough to build an audience of dedicated listeners and put out work that both of us are very, very proud of. A rare victory when you’re working deep down in the content mines every day.

And this week the show is evolving yet again. Panic World is joining Courier Newsroom’s media network and, starting next month, will be launching a video version. Yes, they, for some reason, think people should see my hideous visage. Joining Courier alongside us is two-time Panic World guest Akilah Hughes, who is making a fantastic politics show for them called How Is This Better, and comedian Ashley Ray, who is relaunching her podcast TV, I Say.

We’ll still be putting bonus episodes behind our Patreon and digging deep into the weirdest corners of the internet, just as we always have, but our hope is that we can take what’s already working and, with Courier’s help, do more of it. Bigger guests, more complicated stories, and, of course, video. We’re also having big conversations right now about how to make sure the video version and the audio version both work independently of each other. Don’t worry soundcels, we gotchu.

Being able to launch Panic World and work on it for the last year wouldn’t have been possible without the support from the Garbage Day audience, so I, sincerely, thank you for that. Nothing we do at Garbage Day would be possible without you sickos.

To celebrate Panic World’s big upgrade, I asked our little team to share their favorite episode so far. So if you haven’t jumped into the show yet, this should be a perfect primer for where to start:

Our episode last year, which didn’t so much debunk as, uh, “bunk” the idea that Tumblr turned kids trans with Vera Drew, the director of the amazing film The People’s Joker, was, for me, the moment I finally figured out what Panic World was. The episode is a delightful mix of internet history, earnest nostalgia, and cogent political analysis. It’s also a deep dive into the true magic of growing up online — the realization that our private and personal experiences behind a screen were always far more communal than we thought. The internet can be, and often is, a nightmare, but the same systems that alienate us can also liberate us. The same anonymity that lets us spread hatred and division can just as easily free us to embrace — or even invent entirely new ways of defining — our true ourselves.

Adam Bumas, Head of Research

Probably the most important part of doing research for the podcast is figuring out the scope of the topic Ryan and Grant are discussing. It’s always nice to find an eye-catching data point or funny clip to play, but a lot of moral panics are able to spread because they’re so vague and undefined. And that’s why both the research and the actual episode on porn bans has stuck with me so much. Now I understand the scope, and it’s such an awful cross-section of all the larger issues we usually cover. Also, Juniper is my favorite kind of guest, bringing her own slant to all of it.

Josh Fjelstad, Production Coordinator

My favorite panic, so far, is “Who turned Gen Z fascist?” with Felix Biederman. The tone Ryan and Felix strike is what we kinda always strive for — talking about serious (okay, mostly serious) stuff that is deeply researched (thank you, Adam) and reported, but we also have to make some jokes about it because how the hell else are we supposed to get through all this? Given Felix co-hosts Chapo Trap House and isn’t afraid to roast all these guys, he and Ryan had a natural rapport as they rattle off the influences that drove Gen Z to develop their own counter-culture to what we thought was an inevitable liberal culture for the generation. And it’s a story involving classics, like the Dark Enlightenment, Nick Fuentes, and pretty much everyone in the manosphere; while also teaching you about some new developments within it, like Nazi book clubs and the concept of “article zone,” which I love.

Cates Holderness, Managing Editor

Gotta go with the "Is dating worse than ever?" episode featuring writer Magdalene Taylor. As someone who recently joined and then almost immediately quit a few dating apps, it really contextualized the bleakness of that experience. Listening to Ryan and Magdalene chart the course of dating on the internet from the Match.com days (I’m old enough to remember the commercials) to the current algo and AI app days was fascinating, as was nailing down the distinction between a pervert and a gooner. Lol.

Marti Irving, Grant’s very supportive partner who listens to all of our episodes before they go live

I love the “Women The Internet Loves To Hate” episode and its hall of fame of most-loathed-internet-girls. It’s pretty charming and profound to hear Caroline Calloway (poet laureate of millennial Instagram) react to learning about her lineage in real time. I was more of a Xanga and Neopets pre-teen so I missed all of these early phenomena and it’s such a fascinating archive of plucky, enterprising teenagers getting their lives ruined by Men Online. Anyways, just another exemplary Panic World episode, thoroughly showcasing how everything and nothing changes. Justice for Cracky-chan, JenniCam, and Boxxy. Caroline, too! Also me, and anyone else who was sent Yahoo! Chat dick pics at an impressionable age. I’m depressed now. Maybe I actually hate this episode? Thanks, Panic World.

Grant Irving, Producer

I was nervous about this episode for two reasons: First, Ryan said he wanted this guy Charlie Warzel as a guest. And Charlie’s work was really good, but he wrote for The New York Times and The Atlantic, so I assumed he was going to be a humorless drag. Little did I know he was my true ally against Ryan. The second reason I was worried was we had a thesis we felt was right (that January 6th was, politically, a success) but we weren’t quite sure we could prove it. I didn’t know if the episode was going to be too depressing and I also wasn’t sure it would all come together. It turned out to be funny in a “haha let’s drink bleach” way and I think we all left more clear on the state of our current dystopia than when we started. Since then I’ve been planning more episodes that scare us the same way.

Also, forgive me, an earnest moment. Before Panic World, I was an executive producer at Sony. I got the axe in the first round of layoffs when they gutted their narrative division. At the time, I was on depression leave. I think the stated reason was bereavement, which was true, but the job itself played a large part in my affect becoming flat. The arbitrary production schedules, the song and dance marketing meetings, the lawyers asking for less potent word choice, the pressure to make shows for everyone, thus being for no one. Disappointment was always the final result.

I kept trying to justify that the trouble was worth the little bit of win, but there was a clear moment I should have walked. If I wasn't such a simp for healthcare, I would have quit when my boss's boss's boss summarized my series Dying for a Fight — which followed a mother trying to prove that her anarchist son's murder had gone unsolved for years because the police hated him — as "the one with the crazy mom." I think I tried to contort my face into a smile and a head nod. 

The day after getting fired, I started to feel like myself again. I tried to independently sell some shows and Panic World actually got the most interest. We came close to selling it. But when companies' money vanished or they just became too annoying, we decided to make a pilot for free just to see how it felt. It was fun, so we kept doing it.

This is the first show I’ve worked on that feels totally uncompromised. The first time I didn’t have to rotate a PDF for a boomer to get it made. And our new overlords, Courier, have said repeatedly, they want to work with us because they’re fans. In fact, I’m sorry to tell you, they specifically said they won’t stop us from talking about gooning. We offered to drop it!

Now, we get to keep doing this for the foreseeable future, until my crypto scheme pays off, or until they kick down Ryan’s door, or until it’s not fun. I can make rent and buy groceries and we get to keep doing that because we made something that we wanted to listen to – and because, blessedly, you wanted to listen to it too. I’ve made shows that were successful, charted well, got optioned, whatever, but they didn’t build a real community. This is different. It’s been the most rewarding thing I’ve gotten to make. So, this is really a long way to say thank you, I’m really glad I didn’t quit before making this. Also, as I say on every episode, maybe consider giving us $5, patreon.com/panicworld.

P.S. here’s a blessed loaf.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***