Episode 1006 uses the beloved 1990 teen rebellion movie "Pump Up the Volume" to ask a deeper question: what happens when you take "Truth is a virus" and unrestricted free speech into the real world, where the fascists aren't outsiders trying to break in—they're already running the show? Driftglass and Blue Gal trace the death of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 through the rise of Hate Radio, Gingrich's language wars, Citizens United, and the collapse of every institution that was supposed to protect democracy from tyranny. The episode explains why lying became profitable, why corporate media's "Both Sides" obsession taught citizens that democracy was somebody else's job, and why an uninformed public is the only thing tyranny has ever needed. It's about how free speech got inverted, and why the FCC villain in a 1990 teen movie may have been onto something after all.

Links for this episode: 

The movie “Pump Up The Volume” (1990) is streaming ($) on Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, and Fandango At Home.  Clips are available on YouTube.  

Music from the “Pump Up The Volume” soundtrack can be found at this YouTube playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjDvaXwceFJTg_uhw4cymaJGtBdJZT7OJ&si=RxUS9h7X1OeGsbY2 

Music clips from this episode: 

Was Not Was:  Dad, I’m In Jail   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MZKkz4xefk 

Above the Law: Freedom of Speech  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q338zPrnwGw 

The movie “Pump Up The Volume” (1990) is streaming ($) on Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, and Fandango At Home.  Clips are available on YouTube.  

Driftglass on other podcasts!   Nicole Sandler   https://nicolesandler.com/7-8-26/ 

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

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Episode 1005 of The Professional Left makes the case that if you really want to understand America — not a focus group of twelve Trump voters in Florida, not three congressional primaries in Brooklyn, not the punditocracy's endless parade of confident predictions about things they fundamentally don't understand — you should probably be paying attention to Illinois, the most statistically representative state in the country, which the elite media treats as flyover country and nothing more. Driftglass and Blue Gal dispatch the Maine Senate mess quickly and cleanly, remind everyone of the crucial difference between how Democrats handle scandal and how Republicans do, and then spend the bulk of the episode doing what almost no one else in political media bothers to do — reporting on what an actual Democratic majority government looks like when it's governing well. The episode also takes a long, hard look at the prediction industrial complex and why mistaking a focus group for a national trend, or a New York City primary for a Democratic Party revelation, is not journalism — it's just filling airtime between mattress ads. Illinois, it turns out, has all the answers. Too bad nobody's asking.

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It goes in circles but never gets anywhere

It’s all horses’ asses

And there is no brass ring.

Driftglass on the Bob Cesca Show : https://www.bobcesca.com/the-bob-cesca-interview-driftglass-day-7-1-26/ 

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Science Fiction University returns at long last, with an extended deep dive into one of the oldest and most unsettling questions in the genre — who can you trust when the threat is wearing a human face? The episode traces the theme of trust through three very different versions of the same story: John W. Campbell's 1938 novella "Who Goes There?", Howard Hawks' 1951 Cold War-era adaptation "The Thing from Another World", and John Carpenter's 1982 masterpiece "The Thing" — showing how the same basic plot was transformed by the very different Americas that produced each version. Along the way there are detours through the nature of storytelling itself, the difference between trust and faith, the rise of the "mad scientist" trope, and why Carpenter's bleak, exhausted ending hits so differently than Campbell's optimistic one. If you've ever wondered why the 1982 version of The Thing feels so much more modern and unsettling than its predecessors, this episode will explain exactly why — and the answer has everything to do with Vietnam, Watergate, and the slow collapse of American institutional trust.  

Links for this episode: 

John W. Campbell’s book/novella "Who Goes There?" (1938) is available from major ebook retailers.  Also, many libraries offer a physical or digital borrowing option.  

"The Thing from Another World" (1951) is currently streaming on Criterion Channel, Tubi, The Roku Channel, YouTube, Amazon, and Apple TV.

"The Thing" (1982) is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and YouTube. 

Answers to our QUIZ!  

Terminator 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ8nofcN1gI 

Dr. Who: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQvn5sWNVtk 

Star Trek – Picard:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsDg01EuniQ 

Batman Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a71VqHpza58 

The Thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmqVrB1TTGo 

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

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No rebranding!  They cashed all those checks with the Tea Party.  Episode 1002 of The Professional Left opens with a pop quiz, and the reveal says everything you need to know about how this particular cycle always ends. Driftglass and Blue Gal trace the long, depressing, and darkly funny history of Republicans who were "done with Trump" until they weren't — Beck, Cruz, Graham, Vance, Ingraham, and a cast of dozens — making the case that what looks like a new political reckoning is actually just the same old rebranding operation being assembled from the same wreckage by the same people. Two classic films provide the episode's organizing metaphors: one about building a new plane out of the pieces of the one that crashed, and one about the uncomfortable truth that you can't put an entire party into a lifeboat when the entire party is the problem. The Republican Party didn't get captured by its worst impulses — it revealed them. 

Driftglass was also on two other podcasts this week! 

The Nicole Sandler Show:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NlPMu5Y29Q

The Brad Cast with Desi and Digby:  https://bradblog.com/?p=17822 

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

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Episode 1001 of The Professional Left kicks off the post-1000 era with a reading from Octavia Butler — written in 1993, about a fictional America that looks uncomfortably like the one outside your window right now — and uses it as the jumping-off point for a clear-eyed reckoning with why the country got here and who is responsible. The opening of the Obama Presidential Center was a wonderful occasion by almost any measure, but the sight of a certain former president celebrated as a beloved elder statesman on that stage is something Driftglass and Blue Gal simply cannot let pass without comment — because the problem with the Republican party was never Trump, and it didn't start in 2016, and pretending otherwise is just the next chapter of the same lie. The episode traces a straight, unbroken line from the failures and crimes of the Bush years through the racist primal scream of the Obama era to the inevitable arrival of Trump, making the case that every institution now preparing to rehabilitate the post-Trump Republican party is getting ready to run the exact same con all over again. Our job, as it has always been, is to remember — and to keep saying so out loud.

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

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Episode 1000 of The Professional Left opens with the countdown finally hitting zero — and instead of a victory lap, Driftglass and Blue Gal do exactly what they've been doing for 999 episodes: explain the thing hiding in plain sight that everyone else is too polite, too complicit, or too invested in the status quo to say out loud. The Trailer Trash Woodstock that took over the White House lawn gets put in its proper historical context — not as something shocking and new, but as the entirely predictable result of decades of Republican appeasement of its worst impulses, a straight line running from Rush Limbaugh's Lincoln Bedroom sleepover to the rubble of the East Wing. A brief but devastating tour through PBS's Friday night ritual of performative Both Siderism — featuring everyone's favorite human pretzel, David Brooks — makes the case that the cage match on the White House lawn and the quiet dinner-table tones of public television are actually serving the same purpose for two different audiences. And after 1000 episodes of being told they were alarmists, crackpots, and too angry, Driftglass and Blue Gal are still here, still right, and just getting started.

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

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Episode 999 of The Professional Left takes a detour through the smoke-filled back rooms of mid-century Chicago machine politics to explain something essential about the moment we're living in right now — because it turns out that Mike Royko had the whole Trump era figured out decades before Trump came along, he just called it by a different name. Driftglass and Blue Gal walk through how patronage systems work, why people stay loyal to them, and most importantly, what happens when the patron stops delivering the goods — both the material kind and the emotional kind. The cultural patronage Trump has been selling his base — the endorphin hits, the permission to be cruel, the promise that the right people would be hurt — is starting to curdle in ways that are impossible to ignore. And with rural white voters, MAGA young men, and even the faithful starting to ask the one question every patronage machine dreads — "Where's mine?" — episode 999 sets the table perfectly for what's coming next Thursday.

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

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Episode 998 of The Professional Left opens with a game of "Who's This Jagoff?" — a quiz that turns out to be a master class in how the Both Sides Do It lie gets laundered through the media, repeated without evidence, and rewarded with radio shows and television bookings no matter how many times it's been proven false. Driftglass and Blue Gal dig into the deep roots of that lie, traveling back twenty years to a single Neal Conan moment on NPR that perfectly captures how "to be fair" became a reflex that has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with appeasement. The Scott Pelley firing gets a second look too, revealing a layer of the story that didn't get nearly enough attention the first time around — because it turns out that even the hero of the story had already made his peace with the Both Sides gods before Bari Weiss came along. And while a very well-funded gathering of self-described centrists in Washington, DC, was busy congratulating itself for finding the middle ground between democracy and fascism, Illinois Democrats were over here quietly governing like they actually mean it.

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

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Episode 997 of The Professional Left uses the sudden, very public firing of Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes as a jumping-off point to ask a much bigger question — why do the people with the biggest megaphones still have absolutely no idea what Democrats actually want, or who they actually are? Driftglass and Blue Gal trace the long, embarrassing history of elite pundits who spent decades inventing a fictional Democratic party, got everything catastrophically wrong about the Republican one, and are now loudly demanding that Democrats take their advice anyway. A deep dive into the 2027 Illinois state budget — passed by an actual Democratic majority serving actual Democratic voters — turns out to be a surprisingly clear and satisfying answer to the question the title asks. If you want to know what Democrats want, it turns out you don't need a pundit — you just need to pay attention to what Democrats do when they're actually in charge.

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

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Episode 996 of The Professional Left takes a hard look at the media circus surrounding the Maine Democratic Senate primary, asking who is actually stirring the pot, why they're stirring it, and who benefits when a private matter between a married couple drowns out every important conversation about the Republican incumbent's actual record. Driftglass and Blue Gal walk through a long and inglorious history of political sex scandals — from FDR to Gary Hart to Newt Gingrich — to put the whole thing in perspective and make the case that the bar for Democratic candidates is being set in a very different place than it is for Republicans. The New York Times, The Bulwark, and the usual cast of Both Sides Do It pundits all make 'but the Democrats' appearances, right on cue. And a deeply revealing New York F-ing Times piece about young men who get their political opinions from Joe Rogan and still somehow blame Both Sides equally turns out to be less a portrait of a generation in search of answers and more a masterclass in how conservative propaganda and legacy media complicity get permanently bonded together.

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

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