We are in desperate need of therapy. Thankfully, we were joined by Taylor Lorenz, staff writer for the Atlantic and human embodiment of the Internet, to help us unpack the horrible things that happened this week. Notably, people are monetizing their fetuses, lining up to take a selfie with an opossum, freaking out about a paper mâché sculpture called Momo, and filming themselves while hurling American cheese at their babies’ faces. Meanwhile, here in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio committed...
Mar 07, 2019•44 min•Season 1Ep. 68
As if trapped in the Netflix series “Russian Doll,” we keep dying and waking up in the bathroom. Recording this episode right after Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony, our heads were spinning. We nevertheless attempted to process what we saw, including the wild outburst from Congressman Chip Roy, Matt Gaetz’s thuggish Tweet and Michael Cohen’s emerging expertise in the field of ethics. Meanwhile, Trump was in Vietnam for his second summit with murderous dictator Kim Jong Un, who traveled th...
Feb 28, 2019•46 min•Season 1Ep. 67
This week, Amazon’s much-ballyhooed New York City HQ2 was returned to sender faster than a Prime delivery. Meanwhile, a beige national emergency reared its MAGA-hat wearing head at Mar-a-Lago’s omelette bar. Also: Roger Stone got the smackdown from Judge Amy Berman Jackson for posting a wildly ill-conceived Instagram photo; Buzzfeed published an exposé of Blippi, a kid-friendly YouTube star with a shockingly NSFW past; an Israeli couple was fined for sending a string of emojis, including a squir...
Feb 22, 2019•42 min
It’s New York Fashion Week and it’s not just the cold weather that is keeping us from experimenting with the hottest trend at the Grammys (hint: it’s an exposed ribcage). Joined by author and fashion journalist Christina Binkley, we shut down blackface turtlenecks, mock turtlenecks, Adam’s apple turtlenecks, harnesses on the red carpet, breast pumps as a fashion statement, and a boots-on-the-ground report about how Michael Cohen is spending his last days as a free man. Also on the docket: the tw...
Feb 14, 2019•50 min
There’s no good time to be incapacitated, but that’s what happened this week, and we’re still struggling to keep up with all the horrors. But with the help of our special guest, comedienne/playwright Glace Chase, we managed to shut down the substance, structure and guests of the State of the Union speech; a wild ATM incident in China; a man in the Netherlands embroiled in a legal battle to officially change his age; and, of course, the scandal in the Virginia legislature that combines three elem...
Feb 08, 2019•45 min
This week we find ourselves trapped in an upstate New York penitentiary of our own making. We shut down Trump’s continued insistence that he’s more intelligent than his intelligence agencies; Howard Schultz’s ill-conceived flirtation with an independent presidential run; and Gwyneth Paltrow’s violent run-in with an optometrist on the slopes of Park City. Also: technology continues to be terrible! Facebook engages in “friendly fraud” by taking money from children and gets the smackdown from Apple...
Jan 31, 2019•39 min
It’s one of the most horrible weeks in recent memory, and we return to a nation engulfed in carnage, both human and animal. We shut down Tales from the Grift, starring former Trump fixer and aspiring sex symbol Michael Cohen; explore how the Academy has taken everything bad about the Oscars and made it worse; discuss a Swedish movie shown inside a sarcophagus; and participate in a dramatic reading of text-message correspondence between our finest living artists, Azealia Banks and Grimes. Also: a...
Jan 24, 2019•43 min
What happens when you put 30 Nope superfans in a room with a cheese influencer and our finest living text-message dramaturgist? Your terrible week suddenly gets better! As the longest government shutdown in our nation’s history dragged on, we managed to execute our first-ever live show, in which we collectively shut down Trump’s hamburger inflation, Javanka’s “Vice” walkout, and explored how the hijacking of Brian’s Spotify account led him to develop a passion for Christian rock and Shen Yun dan...
Jan 18, 2019•51 min
The best thing about a cleanse is ending the cleanse--and thankfully our Trump cleanse is over. This week, Rachel reveals how the Trump administration is blocking her efforts to gain German citizenship, and we explore the technological ineptitude of Paul Manafort’s legal team and Leonardo da Vinci’s unexpected involvement in the Mueller probe. Meanwhile, the New Year’s resolution crowd is wreaking havoc at Chopt and undermining the spirit of eating salads. Also: people are blindfolding themselve...
Jan 10, 2019•45 min
2019 is here and it’s already off to an abysmal start, as the major TV networks featured an anti-vaxxer and a vaginal steamer on their New Year’s Eve specials and a high-profile New York “Illuminati” party offered guests the opportunity to sip breast milk from a baby bottle. Also: a New York Times op-ed advocated abandoning smartphones in favor of sex; a Japanese school administrator married an anime hologram; a bodybuilder in England tattooed his nether regions using--what else?--a rolling pin;...
Jan 03, 2019•41 min
It was our first full year of podcasting, and what a year it was. As we recover from the latest romaine lettuce panic and sip ersatz Lacroix with “cloudberries” because we cannot have nice things, we explore the lowlights of 2018 grouped into the topics for which we are best known: insaniacs, salad, innovation, politics (minus Individual-1) animals, and the world of fashion. We reopen the case of the Canadian salesman who tried to chill pepperoni by opening a window and inadvertently let 40 vomi...
Dec 28, 2018•1 hr 6 min
One step forward, two steps back. The Holland Tunnel’s holiday décor debacle was fixed following a public outcry, yet we find ourselves reckoning this week with even more horrors, such as Russian Nest hackers, robots gone wild and the shocking revelation that Azealia Banks is the tech world’s Zelig, last seen hiding in Elon Musk’s house after fashioning an amulet out of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s beard hairs. Joined by WIRED senior writer Lauren Goode, we shut down the most horrible gifts of the ...
Dec 20, 2018•50 min
Emerging from glamorous Art Basel, where we rubbed shoulders with everyone from former Real Housewife Kelly Bensimon to grifting Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, we’re really struggling this week to acclimate to New York's rat and diarrhea-infested subway. In addition to demystifying Miami, on this week’s episode we shut down the hottest toy of the season, Poopsie, and explore the dystopian panopticon overseen by an Elf on the Shelf. Also: the Holland Tunnel struggles with a violent backlash to i...
Dec 14, 2018•35 min
It’s the most horrible time of the year, and in the spirit of radical self-care, we are instituting a new policy: Trump-Free December. There are enough awful things to deal with, like Rachel getting urinated on at 3am, Brian’s dad's wifi woes, upside down hamburgers, declining French fry portion sizes, a crisis in the canned tuna world, the cryptocurrency cruise from hell, mutiny at a sex robot convention and forced hugging at Ted Baker HQ. We are also introducing a new segment called #AskNope, ...
Dec 06, 2018•33 min
We’re recording live from the 10013 zip code, recently declared the tiny-turtle complaint capital of New York City. With the help of media maven Bevy Smith, we shut down “grabbers" at the border, John Bolton’s language barrier, a gender reveal explosion in Arizona, Moroccan cannibals and the dystopian gamification of behavior in China. Also: Bevy weighs in on the biggest pop culture controversies of the week, including Melania’s Christmas decorations, that Lena Dunham profile in New York Magazin...
Nov 29, 2018•39 min
It’s Thanksgiving week and the world is a very dangerous place! Donald Trump couldn’t even pardon two turkeys, believes that Finnish leaf-raking techniques will prevent forest fires, and plumbed new depths as he sided with Saudi murderers over our own intelligence agencies in an embarrassing exclamation-filled public statement. Meanwhile, romaine lettuce rears its E. coli-infested head and wreaks havoc on Americans' collective consciousness and Australians are having conniption fits over the pla...
Nov 23, 2018•44 min
It’s our one-year Nope-aversary and the ceiling can’t hold us. We’re traversed a wormhole back to the year 2000 and we’re reliving election trauma while trying on clever hat disguises in an effort to commit voter fraud. Meanwhile, Trump is in full FML mode, holed up in a Fox News cave while Roger Stone and his minions brace themselves for their forthcoming (fingers crossed) indictments. Amazon lands it’s HQ2 a stone’s throw from Rachel’s condo, sending real estate agents into a feeding frenzy. J...
Nov 15, 2018•35 min
A day late and a Euro short, here we are with our first-ever trans-Atlantic #Nope, recorded in Duck, North Carolina and Lisbon, Portugal. In a week that was reminiscent of a Hieronymus Bosch etching, we vomit over the White House’s decision to release a doctored propaganda video from Infowars to back up the lie that CNN’s Jim Acosta assaulted an intern (he didn’t). We also question the wisdom of Nevada’s selection of a Republican corpse for their state assembly. Rachel reports live from Web Summ...
Nov 09, 2018•40 min
It’s Halloween and we are broadcasting from a vomitorium inside a bicameral House of Horrors. This week, indisputably the worst on record, we shut down a pathetic attempt to ensnare Special Counsel Robert Mueller in a sexual harassment scandal by enlisting the services of actor Christoph Waltz. We also foretell the end of the reign of Pumpkin Spice Everything and the rise of Everything Bagel Everything. We wonder who on earth is ordering water pickles, why witches are setting up shop in coworkin...
Nov 01, 2018•42 min
After staggering around, riddled with pre-midterms polling anxiety, we sat down with New York Times reporter Katie Rosman to discuss the worst news in what was a horrible week, including the #magabomber, Soros Derangement Syndrome and Trump’s reaction to the Saudis’ bogus account of the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. We also shut down a Chinese entrepreneur’s plan to light up the Chengdu sky with a fake moon, a New Jersey meal delivery company’s embrace of the “Nofap lifest...
Oct 25, 2018•43 min
We took a 23andMe test this week and discovered that not only are we related, but we’re more Cherokee than Elizabeth Warren! Together with documentary filmmakers Aaron Wolf and Michael Culyba, we shut down the worst news in what was a horrible week, including Facebook’s bizarre new political ads policy; the untimely death of a Republican pimp-turned-Nevada-State-Assembly-candidate; the New York Times real estate section burying the lede on Vag-china; Allbirds’ unicorn status; the haunted subways...
Oct 18, 2018•44 min
Amid the worst week on record, and joined by journalist and digital native Kerry Flynn, we turned to fashion and technology for a shred of delight. But there was none. Designers were parading models in straitjackets down the runways of Paris, the iOS 12 update unleashed a flood of accidental animojis, and Apple’s sad attempt to portray the humble bagel was an epic fail. Also this week: a PhD candidate in France developed a robotic human finger that attaches to your iPhone, Jeffrey Katzenberg and...
Oct 11, 2018•41 min
This week, we took a break from liftin’ weights at Tobin’s with our pal Squi to dissect Lindsay Graham’s attempt to win a Tony Award (and perhaps a VP slot on the Trump 2020 ticket) in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. We also shut down another insane Lindsay--La Lohan--getting punched in the face after posing as an Arab man; a vomiting cannibal snake in India; Scrabble’s perplexing new additions to its dictionary; the first-ever robot brothel in Houston; Silicon Valley moguls’ ill-concei...
Oct 04, 2018•33 min
Following the latest Kavanaugh revelations, we take a break from throwing up and realize we’ve been inadvertently embracing the Ikigai lifestyle. We also explore the drug habits of marine life; a shameful Bavarian all-you-can-eat sushi joint; a Halloween coffin competition in St. Louis; a spider sex party in Greece, and ultimately we lament the lost art of goat herding. HEAR US ON ITUNES https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/this-week-in-nope/id1312654524?mt=2 SPOTIFY https://open.spotify.com/show...
Sep 27, 2018•35 min
Everything is terrible! Not even glamorous red carpet photos could distract us in a week where the glorious Angela Basset was mistaken at the Emmys for...Omarosa. In this episode, the cousins recount their harrowing visit to a drug store hall of mirrors pop-up; GOP Senators prepare to use female staffers as human shields; Hurricane Florence brings wetness and flying killer snakes to the Carolinas; a spider haunts an anonymous woman in Ipswich; Instagram influencers shriek about a restaurant; Sto...
Sep 20, 2018•36 min
It’s primary day in New York and we are gagging over politicians’ peculiar food combination choices. Also in this episode: Barnes & Noble’s ill-fated foray into the charcuterie business, fishing in a Chelsea restaurant, a PTSD-inducing mall in Bangkok, deranged Minions at New York Fashion Week, an invitation to support wolf therapy, a feline railway executive, Gwen Stefani’s responsibility for the current White House occupant…and, last but not least, how to have a dream vacation just like Th...
Sep 13, 2018•40 min
We find ourselves trapped inside a zoo without walls, caught between a seal, a rat and a smoked watermelon ham. This week, the ‘90s have been reasserting themselves in some unsettling ways, with the sudden return to the cultural spotlight of Geoffrey Owens (aka Alvin from “The Cosby Show”), one-hit-wonder Vanilla Ice, and the Lord of the Dance himself, Michael Flatley. Also: universities explore the canon of e-sports and force students and teachers to cohabitate in a perverse new incarnation of ...
Sep 05, 2018•38 min
It’s 103 degrees in New York City and we’re mourning the loss of two cultural icons: John McCain and Aretha Franklin. We shut down Russia’s new Khalashnikov chicken robot, InfoWars’ theory about John Kerry’s Antarctic laser beam, a new Hollywood con queen, Oreo’s new disgusting flavor combinations, Dunkin’ Donuts rebranding and Procter & Gamble’s trademark overreach. Also: a Maryland woman’s quest to sequence the dog poop genome. HEAR US ON ITUNES https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/this-wee...
Aug 29, 2018•40 min
This week, we find ourselves tethered to the blockchain in the struggle for truth and justice. Joined by multi-hyphenate guest Walt Mossberg, we shut down wild animal crackers, the Cohen-Manafort-Duncan guilty grifter trifecta, goats on the lam, mullets in Tribeca and ultimately come to grips with the overwhelming odds that we are living in a virtual reality simulation. HEAR US ON ITUNES https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/this-week-in-nope/id1312654524?mt=2 STITCHER https://www.stitcher.com/pod...
Aug 23, 2018•41 min
It’s a dry ice world and we’re just living in it. This week we address horrors such as dragon breath, cocaine nuns, Gumball 3000 confusion, the Asian nations of Nipple and Button, armpit advertising, pork-skinned billionaires and White House sorceress, Omarosa. HEAR US ON ITUNES https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/this-week-in-nope/id1312654524?mt=2 STITCHER https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/this-week-in-nope SOUNDCLOUD https://soundcloud.com/user-518735966/tracks OVERCAST https://overcast.fm/itu...
Aug 15, 2018•39 min
