Hey, everybody. We got a great bifurcated one today, you know, for a real change. That's right. We have two guests a lot, but usually they talk about the same subject, like Molly Jung Fast and Mark Leibovich on the politics of the week, or Frank Four and Ann Applebaum to talk about

the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. But this week, Trey Crowder joins us to give his take on J.D. Vance.

Trey and Vance became famous around the same time in 2016 Vance for Hillbilly Elegie and Trey for his liberal

redneck persona going viral.

And both Trey and Vance had moms who were opioid addicts.

So folks started lumping them together, and Vance and his wife came to one of Trey's shows in

Columbus, Ohio. And after the show, Trey and J.D. went to a bar to pound some beers. And mainly

they talked about how much they hated Donald Trump. That was during the period when

Vance was suggesting that Trump could be the new

Hitler. Nevertheless, as Trey read Hillbilly elegy, Trey realized that even though he and J.D. both had

some things in common. They both had very different views of the world, and I think you'll enjoy that.

And then we have Anne Appelbaum, but this time, this time to talk about her new book,

Autocracy Inc. The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, and who won a Pulitzer for a book

about the Russian gulags,

had also written another book on autocracy called

Twilight of Democracy, the seductive lure of authoritarianism.

So she revisits the same subject, but this time she is much, much more pessimistic because the authoritarian's,

you're Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Belarus, they have their shit

much more together coordinating their massive propaganda machines, using advanced technology

to surveil their populations,

supplying weapons and muscle to each other. And they seem to be winning. So we got a light one

about Trump's running mate, who has turned out to be a bit problematic and a disturbing one about the advance of authoritarianism around

...