June Links

What I'm reading

Author

Riley Haas
June 30, 2026

What I’m Reading:

What I’m Listening to:

  • 30 for 30 Podcasts:

    • Murder at the U: Like all podcasts, they eventually just become a true crime show.

    • Chasing Basketball Heaven: I found this kind of maddening. Two aging basketball writers talking about one of the first guys to try to get teams to switch to shooting more threes who happened to [redacted].

  • Behind the Bastards:

    • “The Ivermectin Episode”: This is a pretty good explanation of how this stuff works - decent hypothesis turns into culture war grift once it doesn’t work out.

    • “The Libertarian Theme Park of your Dreams/Nightmares”: One of my favourite guest hosts is here and so this was so much less enjoyable than it could have been. (I went to Reddit to read complaints about him once and everybody loves him and I don’t know why! He sucks!) I still need to watch the Action Park documentary.

  • Canadaland:

    • “Cluster-F**ked! How Media Derailed Scientists in New Brunswick’s Medical Mystery”: An update on what’s happening in New Brunswick with a retired scientist from the federal government.

    • Commons:

      • “War”: It should be titled “Afghanistan.” The more I listen to this season, the more I feel like it is mandatory listening for Canadians, much like the “Mining” season.

        • “Tortured Pasts”: I didn’t pay enough attention to this at the time and I’m annoyed with myself because I should have been outraged.

        • “The Narcokings of Kandahar”: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’ is not always a great way of doing things. It might, you know, make the locals resent you.

        • “Medusa”: I don’t know how to say this without sounding crass. Put aside what you think about Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan and war in general. (I shouldn’t have to say: I am generally against war.) This episode focuses on a Canadian operation that, in any other century, would have been regarded as a massive tactical success. Canadians inflicted something like 40 times the casualties as they suffered. But they portray it as a failure because 5 Canadians died. But it’s war! It says a lot of how we fail as a society to understand war and violence that we feel that way. The strategic failure of the operation gets maybe 90 seconds. I found this frustrating. (Again, putting aside whether Canada should still have been in Afghanistan in 2006.)

  • Conversations with Tyler: “Katja Hoyer on Weimar, the GDR, and the German Character”: I have always sort of been fascinated with Weimar, and never done much about it, so I figured I should listen to this.

  • Darknet Diaries:

    • “Tarjeteros”: Heisty. Reasonably engrossing but not why I listen to the show.

  • The Zach Lowe Show [nee The Lowe Post]: Even in the off-season, I listen.

  • Phantom Island: “Did the Las Vegas Sphere save the New York Knicks?”: From May. I’m always interested in stuff like this, where a change in resource allocation (in this case, owner attention) may have had unintended consequences.

  • Raptors Republic: “ALLEN GRAVES TORONTO RAPTOR - Pick Reaction & Analysis w/ scout”: Every year the Raptors have a first round draft pick the fanbase hates it and freaks out. But, sometimes, as with Scottie and seemingly with CMB, the Raptors are correct. This time, these guys don’t like it but they have a guy on to pitch it. As usual, I maintain that nobody knows for sure about draft picks - this is a bet - and that outrage over the choice - especially over the 19th pick in the draft - just shows you’re incapable of self-reflection. (How many people mad about this dude were mad about CMB? The whole fucking fanbase was mad about Scottie over, um, Jalen Suggs! You can’t be mad about every draft pick in the moment and then forget about it if the player turns out to be good.)

  • Reply All:

    • "A Song of Impotent Rage": A pretty good example of how a bad singer can’t sell a song. Also, listening to this six years later it’s hard not to think he’s worried about the wrong problem.

    • "The Confetti Cannon": This is a hard listen given the sheer optimism about Biden. At least a few people say the work is not done but it’s still hard to listen to people who think they’re out of the woods.

    • "Happiness Calculator vs. Alex Goldman": I reject the premise that you can use Twitter to figure out the mood of America both because life satisfaction definitely doesn’t correlate with social media usage and because the sample is constantly changing.

    • "America's Hottest Talkline": A fascinating investigation into a phone issue that turns into a history of 900 numbers, 800 numbers, phone sex lines and chatlines.

  • Science Vs.:

  • The Bill Simmons Podcast: I’m listening to this every Sunday because Zach’s on it but I honestly don’t know if it will continue during the off-season.

  • Song Exploder:

    • “Different Trains”: Coincidentally I just listened to this for the first time so this was cool to hear how it (the first movement) was created.

What I’m Watching:

  • Citation Needed: “The Fight to Get Money Out of Politics”: This is a newsletter I get that covers crypto and AI. She did an interview with someone about the way money is used in politics in the States.

  • Garbage Day: “I looked into the AI bubble and here's what I found”: I feel like this is a decent theory.

  • Drew Gooden: “The Online Gambling Epidemic” [a year old]: We all know this is happening.

  • Ibram X. Kendi: Chain of Ideas: An interview about his book about the Great Replacement Theory and how it distracts people with privilege (racial, gender, even economic) from identifying the real causes of their angst and suffering.

  • Last Week Tonight:

    • “Feral Hogs”: There’s also a really great Reply All about this. (Well, about the infamous tweet and this topic.)

    • “New College”: The thing about this that is so maddening is not that this is a clusterfuck but rather that a whole bunch of people in the US fall for similar bullshit over and over and over again.

  • YouTube album reactions: I am still watching these even when I forget to put them here.

What I’m Writing:

In case you’re not following along on the blog. Most of the first half of my 2006 trip across Canada has now been published. Part 2 will come in July and August.

Part 1: Quebec & The Atlantic Provinces