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Last week’s stunningly bad debate and a few shocking Supreme Court rulings have rapidly taken the 2024 Presidential Race into relatively unprecedented waters. We’ve assembled the CTH election unit of reporter Dave Weigel and analyst Josh aka Ettingermentum to survey the state of the race, Joe Biden’s quickly diminishing outlook, and potential surprise outcomes that may lay ahead. Plus, key tips and tricks to master your playthrough of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.

Find Dave’s reporting at Semafor here: https://www.semafor.com/author/david-weigel
Find the Ettingermentum newsletter here: https://www.ettingermentum.news/

Will talks to musician and climate journalist Jael Holzman (Ekko Astral, Heatmap News) about her experience as a congressional reporter at outlets like Axios and Politico, and the conditions that led her to quit. We discuss the institutionalized bias against accurate reporting on topics like climate change and trans rights & healthcare, the outrageous complacency with baseless stories from the likes of LibsofTikTok, and other incidents of casual “lavender scare” that permeate the D.C. press corp.

Check out Jael’s medium post on quitting congressional journalism here:
https://medium.com/@jaelholzman/why-im-leaving-congressional-journalism-ee97e2bbebf6
And get into Ekko Astral here:
https://ekkoastral.bandcamp.com/album/pink-balloons

We’re joined by journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous and filmmaker Kavitha Chekuru to discuss their new film The Night Won’t End: Biden’s War on Gaza. The film examines the lives of three families as they try to survive the continued assault on Gaza. Will and Felix discuss the film, the civilian toll of the war, the U.S. state departments continued obfuscation around civilian casualties, and the complete breakdown of international human rights law around the war.

The film is available in its entirety on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECFpW5zoFXA&ab_channel=AlJazeeraEnglish

Featured player Alex Nichols returns to look at the creeping criminalization of the “edgar” haircut in Tekkkxas, the jomney sun-ization of the U.S. Navy, the state of the American “young” fascist movement, and Joe Biden’s floundering celebrity outreach program.

Keep an eye out on our Patreon for a new series of Vic Berger videos covering Trump’s time away from the White House in Mar-a-Lago, premiering exclusively at pateron.com/chapotraphouse starting June 18.

We talk to Lance Oppenheim, director of Ren Faire, the new docu-series on HBO. Ren Faire looks at the drama behind the scenes of the enormous Texas Renaissance Festival. When capricious 86-year-old owner and founder “King” George Coulam attempts to retire, his underlings, the obsequious & loyal-to-a-fault Jeff and the ambitious & conniving Louie, are pitted against each other in their attempts to gain control of the park. It’s a darkly comedic real-life Shakespeare story, but it also touches on a lot of ideas about work, employment, ownership, power, performance, alienation, and an (unhealthy?) obsession with the past, all in the context of a very particular modern workplace.

All three episodes of Ren Faire are available now to stream on Max (the place for HBO).

Last week, we looked at Trump’s felony convictions and the various weaknesses that brings his campaign. This week, we turn to Biden world. First, Hunter is in court on federal gun charges, leading us all to learn about his bizarre taste crack music. Then, we spend the majority of this ep reading through the absolutely addled interview Joe Biden gave to Time magazine last week. How cooked is he? Can we make sense of any of this? How could we get two candidates this bad leading their presidential tickets? We discuss all inside.