Why is Tim Walz, a 60-year-old dad from Minnesota, so internet savvy? And why is he so good at making right wingers look not just weird, but also extremely, chronically and dangerously online? Jon and Max discuss the meme appeal of Harris’ new VP pick, why Republicans are sinking deeper into weirdness with transphobic attacks on Olympians, and what X’s latest legal tantrum is really about.

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All of a sudden, nearly every Democrat in the country has started calling out Republicans for being really damn weird. And with JD Vance’s pronatalist views and Trump’s insistence that Kamala Harris isn’t actually Black, the GOP isn’t beating the allegations. When did Republican rhetoric go from fear-inducing, to groan-inducing? Jon is joined by Laura K. Field, a researcher and political theorist who recently published a piece in POLITICO on the topic, and who is writing a book about the evolution of the Republican party. She breaks down why GOP weirdness is tied to the emergence of the “New Right,” how JD Vance exemplifies this moment, and how to prevent the movement from capturing more power in American politics.

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Kamala Harris memes are bringing together leftists and wine moms, neolib shills and NeverTrumpers, political wonks and pop stars across every platform. Why is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president breaking the internet and right-wing brains? Jon and Max discuss the danger of the VP leaning into the memes, MAGA trolls' reaction to her candidacy, and how much of Silicon Valley is all in on Trump.

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We still don’t know why a 20-year-old from Pennsylvania opened fire on Trump last weekend. Lone shooters whose paths from normalcy to vigilantism seem esoteric, obscure, or perverse have become a familiar pattern—but there’s actually a lot we do understand about the origins of political violence. Max sits down with terrorism scholar J.M. Berger to understand the psychology of violent extremists and what role the internet plays in their decision to act. But first! Max is joined by the New Yorker’s Jessica Winter to talk about the online fandom around Vice President Kamala Harris and the true meaning of the coconut emoji.

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Elle Reeve, CNN commentator and author of the new book Black Pill, joins Offline to share her reporting on the darkest corners of the internet. For over a decade, Reeve has tracked the emergence of the alt-right, watched them radicalize on sites like 4chan and 8chan, and documented their migration off the web and into the streets of Charlottesville and halls of the Capitol. She and Jon talk about how this new brand of white nationalism feeds on male loneliness and white resentment, the schisms within the movement, and its implications for politics. But first! Jon and Max unpack the last few weeks of Dem Drama®. The guys critique the debate discourse, explain why social media forced this conversation to happen, and reveal why Jon is finally disabling some of his Twitter notifications.

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Chat GPT isn’t going to top the Billboard Hot 100 any time soon, but something is happening with AI and music—something’s BEEN happening. Unlike in entertainment and journalism, big music labels and even musicians like Drake and Grimes are cautiously embracing the latest in AI. And the results are not all bad! New Yorker writer John Seabrook sits down with Max to explain why the music industry has historically adopted new technologies, and how that Muddies the Waters around what is made by humans vs. what is made by machines. What does the future of songwriting look like with an AI Bob Dylan? Will a tide of lowbrow AI slop hurt artist payouts? And what’s really behind the record industry standing with artists?

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Has this pod saved America…from phone addiction?! We got Jon Lovett to take a rather extreme version of the Offline challenge in Fiji, AND America’s top doctor and friend of the pod Vivek Murthy is now calling for a Surgeon General’s warning label on social media platforms. Max and Jon bask in their success, then mourn the dismantling of the Stanford Internet Observatory, the nation’s leading mis- and disinformation research organization. Then, Max sits down with longtime tech journalist Brian Merchant to talk about whether AI development is slowing down, why workers should organize against the technology, and what good AI use cases and centaurs have in common.

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The kids are not alright, and the culprit is their phones. That’s the thesis of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation. He joins Offline to discuss why he thinks smartphones and social media are fueling a teen and adolescent mental health epidemic, the evidence behind his claims, and the criticism his anti-phone crusade has received. Then he and Jon dive into the four recommendations Haidt believes will lead us out of this crisis.

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.