I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome to The Contrary Podcast. We're trying to wrap up an absolutely insane year.

We've been taking some days off for the holidays. I hope that you have as well. But we're also doing a series of Year in Review shows.

We're going to be talking to Tom Nichols. We're going to be talking to Susan Glasser. And today, Matt, Matt Lewis. You'll be able to find all of our year-in-review

stuff on our newsletter or the website. If you don't subscribe yet to do the contrary, you really

ought to consider it because there's a lot of material there. You know, I don't promise you a safe

space, just straight, sober, smart, usually kind of snarky commentary, to get us through this particular

period to kind of remind people that, you know, we're not alone in what's going on here.

So this week we are going to be doing a series of these year-in-review shows, and each one,

I think, is going to have a different take because there is just so much

that has happened in this last year, this year of shock and awe where we were warned about

authoritarianism, but we got something quite a bit worse, you know, an oligarchy and an imperial

presidency and the attack on the rule of law like we have never seen before, not to mention the entire

shittification of the White House. So let's get ready to dive in once again.

Oh, and joining me for this episode of 2025, what the hell just happened to us is my good friend Matt Lewis.

Matt, how are you doing?

Hey, Charlie, doing well.

All right, so we have a lot of ground to cover.

You know, I was thinking about what the biggest surprises of the year were.

And, you know, I think you and I talked about this the other day. And I'm always

reluctant to say that because nothing should have surprised us since we were warned about

absolutely everything. Now, I was surprised by all the capitulations, all of the obeying in advance.

I was, you know, surprised by what happened with the corporate media, you know, the

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