Where did the "tradwife" trend come from — you know, aside from the 1950s — and why has it become increasingly popular online? Today, we’re talking about not just how men aren’t doing that well, but maybe women aren’t either. This question, of course, is because the (usually) alt-right tradwives supporters have a new girlboss, and it’s Erika Kirk.Journalist Liz Plank joins us to break down the resurgence of these regressive ideas about where women belong and how they should conduct themselves, the trend’s origins (again, aside from in the ‘50s), and why the #tradlife is appealing to people now.

Our guest Liz Plank is a journalist, podcaster, and author. She hosts the Boy Problems podcast wherever your listen (or watch on YouTube), the Airplane Mode newsletter, and you can follow her work more broadly at https://www.elizabethplank.com/ or @feministabulous everywhere.

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Remember Chewbacca Mom, Damn Daniel, BeanDad, or most recently, Chappell Roan? These are just some examples of people who have become the “main character” on the internet — for better, or mostly (maybe always) worse. Today we’re talking about the old adage that “each day on [Twitter] there is one main character. The goal is to never be it.”
How has the internet warped our perception of celebrity (or “cewebrity”)? What does it mean to be swatted or doxxed now, versus a decade ago? Taylor Lorenz, someone who has been the main character on the internet several times, joins us to discuss.
Our guest Taylor Lorenz is a journalist. She hosts the podcast Power User, and writes about tech and online culture for her Substack, User Mag at https://www.usermag.co/. You can also follow her YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/taylorlorenz and everywhere else @taylorlorenz.
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Are we watching the collapse of short-form video and on the cusp of yet another pivot to (a different kind of) video? Today we’re talking about the rise of livestreaming and what makes it different than the Vines and YouTube Shorts that you know. From Clavicular’s overdose to “nuisance streamers” like Vitaly (better known as “VitalyzdTv”) and banned-from-pretty-much-every-streaming platform Johnny Somali, why do people like to watch this stuff? And how do we adapt to this new era of video content that is maybe also helping cause the downfall of society?
Ryan & Grant discuss, as well as how Panic World and Garbage Day will be experimenting with video ourselves.

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Today we’re talking about Aella the e-girl and “rationalist," who is probably also pretty smelly — at least if her birthday gangbang breakdown is to be believed. She's known for issuing controversial polls about sex and relationships, and then scrapping with people online about the results. June Sternbach & Josh Boerman from the Ill Conceived podcast join us to trace Aella's history and her impact on the broader culture, for better or for worse.

Our guests June Sternbach & Josh Boerman host the podcast Ill Conceived. You can follow it here or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

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Today we're joined again by journalist Kat Tenbarge to talk about one of the grossest guys on the internet. He’s also one of the most popular Twitch streamers there is. His name is Zack Hoyt, better known as Asmongold. His first video was in 2008, featuring him trying to catch a rat in his parents’ house. He then became obsessed with World of Warcraft and started streaming his gameplay. The rest is history.He has a “rat clock.” Roaches frequently join his streams of popular video games. Then, of course, he got radicalized by the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard trial and started getting political. How did we let this happen? And is he part of the manosphere or kind of his own thing? Ryan, Kat, and Grant try to determine what exactly is appealing about this kind of guy.

Our guest Kat Tenbarge runs Spitfire News. Subscribe to Spitfire News at ⁠https://spitfirenews.com/⁠, and follow her on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok @kattenbarge. She also makes videos for our friends at COURIER, which you can find at ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@COURIERHQ⁠.

Patreon

Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to our exclusive Discord? Sign up for a membership at:⁠ https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld⁠.

Sponsors

This episode is sponsored by Surfshark. If you want to make your online life feel just a little less exposed, go to ⁠https://surfshark.com/panic⁠ and use code PANIC at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN.

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The law Section 230 is maybe the invisible force that governs everything in our lives. With a California court ruling against Meta, what are we to do? How responsible should social media companies be for the content posted on them? Brian Reed joins us to discuss Section 230 and its implications, both past and present.

Our guest Brian Reed is the host of Question Everything. Check it out anywhere you listen to podcasts.

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In 2012, a strange message appeared on 4chan: “We are looking for highly intelligent individuals….” What followed became one of the internet’s most mysterious puzzles: Cicada 3301.

Players uncovered hidden codes, real-world locations, encrypted files, and even phone numbers across the globe. Some believed it was a secret society. Others thought it was a CIA recruitment tool. Maybe the Illuminati. Or at least, very organized teens. So what was Cicada 3301 really? And could something like this even exist on today’s internet? Baths joins us to try to get to the bottom of it.

Our guest Baths is a musician. You can find his work and tour dates here, or on streaming services like Apple and Spotify. 

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And if you want to see this conversation on video, ⁠Panic World is now posting episodes to YouTube!

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Why did boomers “go crazy” — and was the internet actually to blame?

Ryan is joined by Sam Seder to trace the long history of boomer radicalization, from the Fairness Doctrine and Rush Limbaugh to Fox News, 9/11, Alex Jones, and the algorithmic media ecosystem that followed. Together they argue that the internet didn’t create boomer brain rot so much as supercharge a worldview that had already been built by decades of grievance-driven mass media.

Our guest Sam Seder hosts The Majority Report, whose past episodes can be found here, on YouTube, and all major podcast platforms (or check it out live Monday to Friday from 12-2:30pm).

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Ryan & Grant convene their movie club to discuss The Secret Agent, one of — or maybe the — best film(s) of 2025, and what it says about where we're at as a society.

Want to hear the rest of this conversation? And get even more extra content, like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to our exclusive Discord? Sign up for a membership at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld.

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Today we’re talking about the moral panic around “transvestigation,” an online “game” where people try to identify who is or isn’t trans. Particularly popular in right-wing corners of the internet, transvestigating is a subculture of people — with no background in biology at all — who analyze photos, facial features, and body proportions to “prove” their claims, that basically every celebrity is secretly trans.

Kitty Kimz and Jeff from Free Country USA join us once again to trace the surprising early origins of this conspiratorial thinking about trans identities and how it’s continued to permeate culture on the internet and beyond.

Our guests Kitty Kimz & Jeff host Free Country USA, a podcast you can find on YouTube @freecountrypod, Instagram @freecountrypodusa, and everywhere else you listen or watch pods.

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Did Jeffrey Epstein destroy the internet? Ryan posits his theory, after not going totally insane (we think) reading through hundreds of Epstein files: Epstein was the Forrest Gump of the 21st century and there’s pretty much no major event this century that he didn’t have some sort of weird interaction with. Marcus Parks of Last Podcast on the Left joins us to indulge these conspiracies — and throw in a few more.

Our guest Marcus Parks is the co-host of Last Podcast on the Left. Check them out wherever you listen to podcasts, and watch the video versions on Spotify and Netflix. You can also follow Marcus on Instagram @marcusparks and his music history podcast, No Dogs in Space, here.

This episode is sponsored by Mint Mobile. Get your first three months for $45 by shopping plans at https://www.mintmobile.com/courier

Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for a membership at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld.

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