Badlands Media

Football season has arrived, and the crew wastes no time debating whose game day schedule reigns supreme (East Coast breakfast kickoffs versus West Coast five-beers-deep mornings) before diving into a coffee-warmer appreciation segment that somehow doubles as a good-brew sponsor read.
The meat of this episode is ESPN's three-year future power rankings, and the guys tear into them team by team. Expect a genuinely heated defense of Jordan Love as a tier-one quarterback, shots at the "emerging tier two" label, Herbert-over-Tua takes, and Alpha absorbing blow after blow as the entire NFC West gets ranked around him. Along the way, CannCon addresses the online mystery of whether he served in the Army or the Marines, and the trio gets sincere about aging, back injuries, and gym redemption arcs, including Alpha's raw story of restarting at rock bottom.
It closes with a "real conversation" between men and women, illustrated with cartoons nobody can quite explain. Sports, self-improvement, and locker room honesty.

Ashe, Christy, and Jackie kick off with a genuinely fascinating history lesson on the origin of pass the buck, tracing it from a 19th century poker table all the way to Harry Truman's Oval Office desk sign. It is one of those rabbit holes you did not know you needed.
Then the tone shifts as Ashe and a guest dig into the fresh reporting on Eric Swalwell and his relationship with alleged Chinese intelligence asset Fang Fang, questioning what Congress knew, when they knew it, and why accountability keeps getting kicked down the road. It is a frustrated, no holds barred conversation about foreign influence operations reaching into American institutions.
Later, the ladies lighten things back up with a handy iPhone document scanning trick, a voice memo hack worth stealing, and a closing round of internet reactions that will make you laugh out loud. Sponsors, laughs, and a little bit of everything, same as always.

Jon Herold digs deep into newly declassified FBI files on suspected Chinese operative Christine Fang, nicknamed "Rusty Thumbs" by investigators, and her years long relationship with Congressman Eric Swalwell, walking through the FBI's failed attempt to recruit her as a source before pivoting to a campaign corruption investigation that ultimately closed without charges. He builds out a detailed theory around a still classified National Security Presidential Memorandum he believes triggered the document release, connecting it to his ongoing coverage of the weaponized intelligence community storyline. Other topics include an appeals court dismissing an Alien Enemies Act challenge, Trump's Truth Social post on reducing joint military exercises with South Korea, Kushner and Netanyahu's Gaza disarmament stance, and a Bloomberg opinion piece skeptical of Tucker Carlson's third party ambitions. Sponsor reads, personal deck staining stories, and a lively chat session round out a dense Monday show.

CannCon and Zak Paine kick off Monday with a Kushner and Grinnell clip on longevity and priorities after leaving the White House, plus a quick check in on the surprise hurricane that battered Hawaii over the weekend. The real headline is a resurfaced Terry Moran interview where the ABC correspondent admits network brass killed his own investigation into the COVID lab leak theory back in 2021, a story the hosts say deserves way more attention than it has gotten. They also touch on a memoir clip getting renewed attention online involving a public figure's account of a traumatic experience at eighteen, and a chunk of a speech that has the hosts nodding along on campaign finance reform despite disagreeing with plenty else. They close with easily the favorite clip of the day, a Democrat election lawyer visibly melting down over dried up funding heading into the midterms.

Alpha Warrior and Josh Reid pour the coffee (with a little something extra) and dig into the drip of declassification they say has been building since June 30. Josh walks the thread from Tulsi Gabbard's Ukraine biolab and Wuhan disclosures through the Fauci gain of function texts, then into Trump's address on hundreds of millions of voter records stolen by China across 18 states.
The heart of it is three FBI counterintelligence operations, Oxford Comma, March Toll, and Round River, which they argue reveal Andy McCabe targeting Trump and Sessions as fake Russian assets while shielding Hunter Biden's China linked companies on protected status. Their read: the money trail and legal predicate for an election national emergency are already on the table, with NGOs as the next domino. Alpha adds his dish and tablecloth analogy for how the old system gets swapped out without the plates crashing. Bring patience for a drip drip payoff.

Part two of the Burning Bright and Ghost saga. Last week gave us the final boss, so naturally this week brings the final convergence, a title Burning Bright cheerfully admits his past self chose despite using "convergence" in roughly half his episodes. This one is meant to be bicameral: two proxy states, two bosses, one game board.
The promise for tonight, delivered with maximum deadpan, is to discuss Ukrainians, Israelis, and Nazis, and whether there is any difference between the three. Totally uncontroversial, boilerplate geopolitics, as you have come to expect.
Ghost brings the deeper dive: Syria as the geographic center of everything, Assad's Five Seas Vision, the Abraham Accords reconsidered, and why the Mecca agreement matters precisely because no external power is steering it. There is also a sharp breakdown of media narrative-shifting around Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia joining a new defense pact.
Pattern recognition over panic, with the dry humor turned up.

Jonathan Drake shifts gears into chapter three of Spooner's Science of Justice, trading the tight logical if then structure for a narrative history lesson on how despotic government actually got started. Spoiler, it was not a noble experiment gone wrong. Spooner traces a direct line from ancient bands of robbers plundering agrarian farmers, to slaveholders realizing chains were bad optics, to the modern representative government that convinces everyone to vote for their own subjection. Expect Vikings compared unfavorably to senatorial candidates, a breakdown of how legislation has always just been the paperwork criminals use to divide their spoils, and a preview of Spooner's next essay on poverty and debt, which ties directly into his surprisingly Bitcoin adjacent monetary theory. Jon also weighs in on a current Supreme Court case and gives a candid nod to his own dip experiment gone wrong in Sudan.

Jon Herold and Chris Paul open with a media narrative they're not buying: reports of low morale aboard a deployed carrier near the Strait of Hormuz, which they frame as a coordinated pressure campaign to get Trump to back off his Iran messaging. From there they roll straight into Trump's own Hormuz clip and some Monroe Doctrine talk.
The middle stretch bounces through a Fauci clip, JD Vance commentary, and a CNN mixup calling something "Indiana" that clearly wasn't. Caroline Leavitt gets her own segment, with the guys questioning why Trump even needs a press secretary when he can just tweet whatever he wants directly. There's also a genuinely odd discovery: the National Trust for Historic Preservation apparently spent a hundred and forty five million dollars abroad last year, which raises more questions than it answers. Toss in a White House Correspondents' dinner throwback and a Joshua Baez segment, and it's a packed one.

Cam Cooksey opens episode 63 (recorded August 15th, and a happy birthday to Jackie's dad, Javier) as the first show on Badlands that Saturday, mapping out a relaxed night of Truth Social posts, funny X finds, and the long overdue return of American of the Week.
The heart of the show is his "triangulating truth" theme. Cam walks through Trump announcing missionary Kevin Rideout's rescue from West Africa, an AI photo tour of the new White House ballroom with George Washington, and a striking war casualty comparison putting Trump's Iran and Venezuela numbers against Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He gets fired up over a federal judge unsealing Epstein documents (rejecting Ghislaine Maxwell's objections) and an SPLC executive's fraud arrest, all via Ali Tucker's spin free write-ups.
He closes with Guard Vegas hype (the September retreat he calls a family reunion) and a young man's words of wisdom. Let go and embrace the flow.

The crew can't quite believe how much oxygen a paid Charlie Kirk assassination debate sucked up online this week, and spends a solid chunk of time roasting the whole "we'll figure out who killed him by watching two influencers argue" premise. From there it's on to a pop quiz built from the week's Badlands headlines, covering a contested Attorney General confirmation vote, an FBI investigation that followed James Comey's firing, and a leaked characterization of Biden Ukraine corruption allegations that raises some eyebrows. There's also a genuinely thoughtful dive into an immigration fraud scheme involving a marriage of convenience, a look at reports of China accessing voter roll data in multiple states, and a call in appearance from a sitting congressman that turns into an unexpected tax rant. Somewhere in the middle, drone guns and a possible robot dog cameo come up too. A little bit of everything this week.