The Ayn Rand Alliance to End Homelessness

05/29/23 • 124 min

On this week’s episode of The Audit, Dave and Josh cover Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign announcement and observe that GOP politics are mostly a match-up between manly “right-wing lunatics” against “nerds and dorks.”

Despite their differences, all Republican campaigns seem to agree that homelessness in cities is the fault of Democrats, woke liberals, and the unhoused people themselves. PragerU videos are an excellent resource for observing exactly how conservative activists are reframing complex social issues like homelessness and addiction into black-and-white talking-points about “compassion brigades” and reductive policy that evades real solutions.

Special guest Josh Androsky — a Los Angeles-based comedian, organizer and leftist political advisor — joins the fray to scrutinize one (highly dramatic) short documentary produced by a conservative think-tank that aims to reveal the “reality” of LA’s homelessness problem.

PragerU videos we discussed this week:

The documentary about how the right wants to fix homelessness

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A transcript of this episode is available here.

PragerU videos we discussed this week:

The documentary about how the right wants to fix homelessness

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Previous Episode

Why Pragers Go Wild for Bill Maher

Bill Maher is all the rage over at PragerU. On this week’s episode of The Audit, Dave and Josh look at why PragerU regularly uses video clips featuring the comedian and host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher for their more hard-line conservative screeds on race, culture, and economics.

They are joined by special guest Gareth Reynolds, a comedian, writer, and co-host (along with Dave) of The Dollop podcast. The crew discusses the “Bill Maher bubble,” cranky old men, reanimating Martin Luther King Jr., North Korea, and Mr. Potato Head.

PragerU videos discussed this week:

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Next Episode

The Climate Change Misinformation Machine

This week, journalist and activist Naomi Klein joins Dave and Josh as a special guest to look under the hood of several PragerU “educational” videos that offer a conservative spin on the topics of climate science and green technologies.

Klein, who has authored several influential books (including This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate), points out how the fossil fuel-funded groups behind videos like these have shifted tactics in the years since COVID, moving from a strategy of “hard denialism” to one that centers on the rhetoric of “personal freedoms.”

Here are the PragerU videos discussed with Naomi Klein this week:

Dave and Josh also have a lengthy discussion about the recent Vanity Fair exposé detailing the culture of fear that surrounded the actors and TV writers on the landmark mystery series Lost. The article sheds light on many of the same toxic Hollywood workplace issues being raised in the current Writers Guild of America strike. (Here's TV writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach’s follow-up statement responding to the article.)

A transcript of this episode is available here.