Tim Dillon

The episode opens with a story about cigarettes. One participant recalls a father's backhanded compliment that the speaker "never smoked them down to the filter," and a sister who smoked in high school. The speaker then describes doing a comedic sketch with Adam Ferrara and other comics, playing a "tortured liberal art student" who had to smoke on stage. Over a full day of rehearsal the speaker smoked about 15 cigarettes, threw up and got a "horrible headache," although the first cigarette was a pleasant "head rush" that made the appeal understandable.

The conversation moves to how smoking looks. A participant who says they have been sober from alcohol and drugs for 15 years explains that seeing someone with a cigarette reads as "they're using it to help hang on." Smoking can look fine on an actor at the Cannes Film Festival or on Timothée Chalamet, but the speaker says they never looked cool doing it. The downsides are listed plainly: the smell, ruined clothes, and that it is "very bad for your health, obviously."

What other product could they tell you it kills you and we're raising the price every year?

England is offered as the extreme case. The packs carry graphic warnings; one participant remembers a London pack showing what looked like a dead baby, linked to low birth weight. Even so, the participants say, "no one cares," and people there smoke more than anywhere else.

The participants contrast European and American eating. Portions in England are described as smaller and people as "more behaved," with Toby Carvery's ladle-on Sunday roast as the exception. The trade-off is that the English "drink more and they smoke." A clip is pulled up of European World Cup fans excited by Taco Bell ranch and unlimited refills.

Buc-ee's comes up as an example of American excess that visitors find alien. Someone reportedly saw soccer teams at a Buc-ee's for the first time who "just fucking couldn't believe it," and a viral clip mocking a gas station that size is mentioned as having its first 24 million views. Buc-ee's is called one of the most American places there is, a gas station that is also "like a weird theme park of food." A participant also asserts that visitors get sick in the US "because there's chemicals in our food." No evidence is offered for this beyond the claim that European food has fewer preservatives.

The bulk-buying culture of Costco and mayonnaise sold "in a bucket" leads to the comment that Europeans "all think we're preppers." Europeans shop for about a week at a time and own smaller refrigerators. One participant admits that some American grocery runs seem "slightly paranoid" and are driven by fears like a "race war," while allowing that Europeans could be wrong not to share those fears. The other blames the American news media for ramping people up toward things like stockpiling gold.

One participant describes having an "apocalypse truck" built when they lived in Los Angeles with young children: a Toyota Land Cruiser that could carry supplies and "literally drive over a mountain" or cross the desert if things went "sideways." The speaker says they left L.A. several times for real reasons, fires and riots, and were evacuated three times, once when fire came close to burning their fence.

The other participant shares a 2020 riot story. David Spade called to say "your block is on fire," and the speaker saw overturned police cars burning before driving to the desert. Leaving town is presented as "part of the L.A. experience," and Palm Springs as the usual place to go, even though it is "hot as fuck" and has "no water."

An origin story for Palm Springs is offered without a source. Supposedly Paramount Pictures contracts required actors to stay within 200 miles until a film finished editing, and Palm Springs sits about 200 miles from L.A. The conversation then turns to Pasadena, described as where producers lived, with beautiful mid-century modern homes and estates that feel "from another time."

The participants argue that present-day L.A. feels like a museum of what it used to be. They credit someone named Santino with the framing that "it's not Hollywood" anymore.

It's Hollywood the sequel. Like, you're not living in the thing anymore. You're living in whatever the second version of the thing is.

Someone suggests the "second version" is TikTok. A remark someone else made is repeated, that L.A. is slowly becoming Detroit, with the weather as the one thing that might save it. A Squarespace ad read follows. The economic argument is that show business, whatever its share of the economy, was L.A.'s main cultural draw, and that the state "overtaxed and overregulated" it into other states and countries. One participant says that "at one time" 80 to 90 percent of production was shot in L.A. and now it is 25 to 30 percent. The figures are stated from memory, introduced with "I think," and not sourced.

Gavin Newsom is criticized for answering complaints with GDP statistics and claims about California's place among world economies instead of admitting that, as a participant puts it, more people are leaving than arriving for the first time and large corporations are moving out. Imitating the boosterish tone ("I'm bullish on California"), the other participant compares it to "what every empire said until they fell."

The point is made concrete with what one participant saw on a recent trip back. On landing they saw a multi-day warehouse fire, which they first describe as involving "85 billion or 85 million tons of chemicals," a figure they correct mid-sentence and that remains uncertain. On the way to their apartment there was a car fire on the 405. The speaker mentions selling their house and keeping an apartment in the city.

Like it almost feels like we're being evicted by nature.

The other participant widens "nature" to include human nature and bad decisions, comparing human stupidity to that of animals that go extinct. Asked whether L.A. can recover, the answer is that "something big has to happen." The city would have to see itself "as like a functioning business instead of a giant scam for nonprofits," and the speaker faults what they call the "empathy industry" for absorbing a large share of public money.

Atlantic City is offered as a comparison with problems similar to L.A.'s but "vastly worse." One participant recounts asking the owner of the Ocean casino what would fix the city. The owner described a concentration of people who are, "for whatever reason," not productive, along with many social programs in one area, and the crime, vandalism and disorder that come with it. In the owner's view this has to be removed before businesses can thrive. Both participants agree strongly with that account.

The participants say the same thing happened in New York in the 1990s: crime was cleaned up, and businesses then felt more comfortable investing. They credit Rudy Giuliani and say he is "demonized" for it. They add that if he had left public life after that, his legacy "would have been amazing," but he stayed and went "into some interesting tangents." They also mention the press conference where hair dye ran down his sweating face, with the advice that at his age "it's okay to have gray hair."

From there a broader point follows: there is "silliness on the left and silliness on the right," because the people who seek power are "a little goofy," and the most enlightened people do not want to be mayor of New York City.

One participant speculates, with open uncertainty about timing ("I don't know how quickly it will do this"), that AI might reduce cultural divides and unite people. The next big fight, they suggest, may be over surveillance, privacy and individual rights, with people "demanding autonomy" from artificial intelligence instead of fighting over culture.

The other participant answers that the danger comes when people no longer have a voice, and presents England as that scenario "play[ing] out slowly." They say freedom of speech there has been suppressed "to an alarming point," pointing to arrests over retweets and likes. That leads to a joke about whether a retweet earns extra years compared with a like. The serious point is that people who feel their reality is not represented, and who are arrested when they complain online, have nowhere to go.

The discussion of the British approach includes several qualifications. Immigration is named as the main topic being policed. One participant argues that citizens have a right to say they are worried about higher immigration even when they say it inarticulately. They concede that "some things clearly are an incitement to violence," but note that online speech is full of irony, colorful language and attempts at humor, and say authorities are treating too many statements as threats to the public. People were also reportedly arrested for saying rape gangs existed, "And there were," the participants add.

A headline is read on air: "UK scraps police probes of legal social media posts after review says response went too far," dated April 1st, 2026. One participant pushes back that they had just seen a report of someone arrested days earlier. The participants note that "legal" is confusing in a country without American-style free speech protections, and guess that the scrapped probes may have covered things like cartoons that were clearly not incitement under UK law.

While discussing Dearborn and Sharia law, the participants bring up a National Review piece on "the UK's horrific rape gangs." It describes an independent rape gang inquiry report put out by Members of Parliament and Restore Britain party leader Rupert Lowe. The text read on air includes a stated limitation: investigators could not compel witnesses or require document production that might corroborate testimony. With those limits in mind, the piece calls the report "a damning collection of victims" testimonies portraying "sexual terrorism that occurred nationwide for decades."

One participant hedges a figure while giving it ("I think they said it was 250,000 girls"). This echoes an earlier, also uncertain, mention of "a quarter million people." The participant argues the abuse was covered up because the media did not want to inflame anger against migrants. They add that most migrants were, "I'm sure," innocent of it, and that in a free society everyone has a right to know if rape gangs operate in their country and who runs them.

But isn't that crazy that in the, under the guise of progressiveness, you've enabled rape gangs?

The reply calls this unsurprising given an "ends justify the means" style of politics. On this account, if the goal is to dismantle what some call a "patriarchal white male dominated society," many people stop caring whose rights are respected along the way.

Drawing on a recent 21-day stay, mostly in London with a short trip to Paris, one participant calls London a cosmopolitan, New York-like city that is used to diversity and not "full on panicked." They still call the problem real, especially outside London where the economy has stagnated. It is not clear what jobs new arrivals will do, and some cultures differ from English culture on women's rights, gay rights, free speech or religious freedom. A Farmer's Dog ad read interrupts. It includes the sponsor's claim that research shows dogs kept at a healthy weight live up to two and a half years longer on average.

Dearborn, Michigan is raised as an example. As the participants tell it, progressive residents welcomed newcomers until the Muslim population was large enough to elect a mayor who then banned pride flags. One participant claims these communities are inching toward Sharia law, then qualifies it. People polled in Islamic countries may answer under duress, they say, so "at least a percentage" may favor it.