April Links

What I'm reading

Author

Riley Haas
April 30, 2026

This is monthly post where I summarize what I’ve been reading, as well as which podcasts I’ve been listening to.

What I’m Reading:

What I’m listening to:

  • Behind the Bastards:

    • “Covid Vaccine Grifting “Doctors”: Ugh, I hate these hosted by his proteges. This guy is Canadian and yet claims to be unable to pronounce "Surrey.” His excuse is, always, that he grew up in a cult. I think he’s putting it on because the main host routinely screws up pronunciations (he’s reading a script) and this guy wants to be like him. I hate it.

    • “How Nestle Starve a Bunch of Babies”: About baby formula, particularly overseas. I didn’t know about it.

    • “The Cult Behind Josh Duggar”: I was blissfully unaware of these people. Two things about this episode: First, the guest is a contest winner. He understands the guest’s role to be funny but, of course, he’s not a professional comedian so some of that really doesn’t work. Second, I found it really insightful, though. Here are at least two interesting tidbits that depress me. Apparently, a lot of the most extreme evangelicals all sex-based sins are roughly equally bad, meaning that masturbation and abuse are morally equivalent. This is abhorrent and a really immoral version of Christianity, to my way of thinking. But it does explain why so many sex pests seem to continue to do okay after they are caught. Related to this, it seems as though they’d rather have Christian molesters than non-Christian heathens. This guy molested his siblings but somehow he’s more redeemable than a gay or transperson. Again, this is a profoundly immoral version of Christianity, that views lip-service to a sect’s values while harming others (children!) as superior to living a life that would be judged far less immoral by most religions. I don’t know how many of these people there are, but they seem to have at least partially infiltrated one of the US’ major parties. No wonder that country is so fucked. Regardless of whether heaven and hell exist or not (they do not), what matters is behaviour, not words.

  • Canadaland:

    • “Can Carney Break Canada’s High Speed Rail Curse?”: I really struggled with listening to these YIMBYs. I’d love to send them all to Japan for a week. As Jenn says, at least the people who admit they are worried about their property values are being honest. The rest of these people are pretending they care about the environment and history. You know what helps the environment? Trains over planes. (How many flights will disappear if we have highspeed rail between Toronto and Montreal?) This reminds me of our neighbours who wanted to save a few hundred trees here to prevent the Ontario line being built. My question to those people was always “How many of you drive?” Because I bet it’s most of them. YIMBYs weaponize environmental concerns and, in this case, greater awareness of mental health issues, to be selfish. I would certainly be upset if the government was building a subway through my property and paying us for the land. (If it’s nearby, I wouldn’t be because a) I’d get a closer stop and b) I lived next to a GO train for years.) But I’d get over it. And I’d certainly not join a group to oppose it. I’d know it’s better for all of us that we have a new subway. Sorry, but I’m so angry.

    • Commons: “Mining”:

      • “Diamonds of Attawapiskat": Jenn says they talked about the mine in the coverage but clearly I didn’t pay attention.

      • “The North’s Giant Monster”: I had no idea about this. Like the other mining episodes, I found it alarming how recent this happened. I do think the “oral tradition” thing is not a solution.

      • “The Westray Disaster”: I had no idea about this. I kind of feel like the Canadian education system is failing us by not teaching us about our history of resource extraction. This happened before I was in high school.

      • “Before Bitcoin, Bre-X”: I’m actually not really sure what the connection to Bitcoin is but this is a really fascinating episode. I was too young to pay attention at the time, I guess.

  • Darknet Diaries:

    • “Melody Fraud”: This interview with a man who started as a “grey hat” advertiser was only marginally interesting to me until it gets to his current job, identifying music streaming fraud. At that point it becomes one of the most interesting episodes of the entire show.

  • In the Dark:

    • “Blood Relatives”: The show returns to its roots, in some sense. This season is about an apparently infamous case in the United Kingdom involving a schizophrenic former model who killed her most of her family - parents, kids - but her brother was convicted of the crime. I knew nothing about the case going in. I’m most of the way through this season and I find the whole thing as infuriating as any of the criminal justice podcasts I used to listen to. It inspired the last post I sent out because I was so frustrated about how the original case appeared to be built nearly entirely on character evidence rather than any kind of physical evidence.

  • The Zach Lowe Show [nee The Lowe Post]: Playoffs!

  • Read Max/Unpopular Front Intermittent Audio Product Podcast: “Muskism”: Though I get annoyed by Musk discourse I do think one of the great questions of our time is, paraphrasing the guests, “Why is it that,as the world’s richest man gets weirder, he gets richer?” I’d go further and ask, “Why is it that the world’s richest man gets richer as he gets more anti-social or even anti-societal?” (One of the things I think the centre and the right have failed to account for in this century is how, throughout the history of capitalism but especially now, corporate power is often just as mendacious and dangerous as state power, in some cases even more so.) I think it’s important to understand how Musk continues to succeed.

  • Reply All:

    • “The Least You Could Do": During and after the George Floyd protests, white Americans Venmo’d black Americans money. This is about that. I feel bad for the white guy they interviewed even though what he did was stupid. But it also is a reminder of how useless the performative allyship was - and how performative it was - and it reminds me of the weird hypocrisy of “violating COVID restrictions is fine if you want to protest injustice” thing. It’s also weird to listen to a podcast recorded during “peak woke” now. Some of the language really dates it. I must admit I was thinking about how The Left always wants to fight internal battles and impose purity tests.

    • "Brian vs. Brian": Kind of like the less compelling, Christmas version of “The Case of the Missing Hit” (see below). Still enjoyable.

    • "The Attic and Closet Show": Two episodes recorded at the beginning of the pandemic with listeners around the world. I can understand why most people don’t want to revisit this but I do find that it’s useful for me to remember how weird everything felt. I also feel like there are a whole ton of people (mostly on The Right) who are memory-holing the death and fear and who continue to blame The Left for Government Overreach (even though in many jurisdictions, such as mine, The Right was in power) at a time when rightwing parties in places are very much overreaching in ways that are far worse than most of what happened during the pandemic. I wish those people would revisit media from back then to remind themselves what it was like.

    • “The Case of the Missing Hit”: A Top 10 or maybe even Top 5 Reply All episode, about a man who remembers a song from the ‘90s, but there’s no trace of it on the internet, and nobody else seems to remember it. (Apparently a lot of people say this is a Top Podcast Episode of All Time so that’s more reason to listen to this.)

  • The Scaredy Cats Horror Show: The guys from Reply All watch horror movies during the pandemic, but one of them is the biggest chicken in the history of the world.

    • “The Exorcist”: This movie scared me so much as a teen that I think it’s a wild choice to choose as the first movie. That being said, it’s an all time great film and its likely dated a bit.

  • Science Vs.:

  • The Bill Simmons Podcast: I’m listening to this every Sunday (except one) because Zach’s on it. Playoffs!

    Song Exploder: I only ever listen to this when I run out of podcasts.

    • Franz Ferdinand: “Take Me Out”: I have an enduring memory of the first time I heard this song, the brother of a classmate of mine driving me to a football game and losing his mind to this song while he drove. I immediately decided to dislike it.

    • “Ted Talk”: The host does a Ted Talk about listening better.

  • Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know: I have a bad habit of starting podcasts from the beginning. That was apparently a huge mistake with this show. In its early days, it’s basically the commentary track for a YouTube show I’ve never watched. Really weird. Jenn says I should listen to a knew one to confirm whether or not I want to give up and I guess I should but I can’t say I’m very motivated. I have no idea who recommended this to me so, if you like it, please let me know and I’ll give it another chance.

    • “Edward Leedskalnin’s Coral Castle”: Notes on a video about a place I’ve never been to or seen.

    • “The Deceptive Brain”: Notes on a YouTube video I have never seen and will never watch.

    • “Edward Bernays”: I went back to the beginning of this show, as I am want to do, and was very confused. They were talking about some other show of theirs - seemingly an old YouTube series that might not exist any more - and I found it extremely disconcerting. I will give them another 1-2 episodes but I suspect I will not stick with this.

What I’m Watching:

  • Garbage Day: An internet newsletter I read has, um, pivoted to video

  • Last Week Tonight:

    • “AI Chatbots”: I knew all of this already but it still is kind of ridiculous that we’ve all just decided that the potential is so great it’s fine if the companies offload the human cost onto society.

    • “Prediction Markets”: I really think we’re going to find that the societal harm outweighs whatever predictive quality these provide.

  • “More Evidence for UAPs! Scientists Afraid to Speak Out”: So, as you likely know, I am extremely skeptical that UAPs (the new name for UFOs) are aliens. I think it extremely unlikely that lifeforms are traveling across galaxies to subtly observe us or fly around the sky. However, I agree with her point that, because there is stigma around looking into UAPs, the only people who look into them are kooks, which leads to crazy theories. This “new” evidence of anomalies in the sky before we had satellites obviously needs to be investigated further. But I’m also extremely wary of anyone who thinks it clearly means we’ve been observed from space by aliens. The U in both of these acronyms means “unidentified” for a reason, we have no idea.

  • “SPIRITUALLY DEPRAVED & MISERY-INDUCING LANDSCAPES OF NORTH AMERICA”: Oh man, this is amazing.

  • “Why Rome Never Industrialized”: They had the steam engine!

  • “Moral Motivations for Violence: At the Heart of a Major Armed Group in Congo”: Back when I was trying to write my book about the Just World Fallacy, this would have been a great piece of evidence to have. It’s about how human beings rationalize mass violence by telling themselves their actions are moral and for the greater good.

  • YouTube album reactions: Climbed out of the rabbit hole and then fell back in.

    • Isaac Brown: This guy is a producer and so I find it interesting to hear his takes (and he has an incredible ear for instruments/production). He gets a little judgy sometimes, but at least he’s honest, I guess.

      • The Beatles: Let It Be: Immediately after reading about it: “Guys, was this recorded live in the studio?”

      • Led Zeppelin III: I thought he was going to get mad about the production of one song but instead he loved that song and he got mad about the production of two other songs. This video really soured me on him. He claimed a deliberate production choice was a mistake - it’s obviously deliberate, dude! - and couldn’t make it through “Hats Off to Harper,” a song that is both hardly unlistenable and a deliberate homage to something he of course has no idea about. What a weird reaction.

    • JustJP:

      • Gentle Giant: The prog musician’s favourite prog band, or something. Wonderful to see someone get so excited about a band that used to excite me this much.

        • Acquiring the Taste: This album title has long felt very appropriate to this band, who are very hard to get into I suspect if you find their vocals weird. (They sing like they’re at a Renaissance Faire or whatever.)

        • Three Friends: I think I might have underrated this one when I was younger.

        • Octopus: Their best album, if memory serves.

    • Walterooski:

      • Nick Drake: His entire oeuvre.

        • Five Leaves Left: My personal favourite because it was the one I listened to first.

        • Bryter Layter: Walter’s hot take is that Drake’s weakest album is his best album.

        • Pink Moon: Does Volkswagen get royalties?

      • Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks: Though he’s a big Dylan fan he had apparently never listened to this before.

      • Faith No More: King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime: He loved my second favourite FNM album.

      • Mr. Bungle:

        • Mr. Bungle: My memory is that he liked some aspects of this but was really put off by the lyrics (which are extremely juvenile). I didn’t even know what some of them were until I watched this guy read them.

        • Disco Volante: I started watching this guy’s reaction videos because of how much he loved California. And he did. And he tolerated their debut, I guess. But he seems to have been traumatized by this record, which I find rather weird. One reason, for sure, is his habit of reading the lyrics the first time he listens to songs, something I just cannot relate to.

      • Talking Heads: