The Worst Story of the Year

Lost Debate

The Branch

News, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 607 Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode takes a visit to the goonverse — a strange online world where hundreds of thousands of people spend hours chasing a “goon state,” a trance-like high reached through marathon adult video consumption. Ravi talks with reporter Daniel Kolitz, whose Harper’s article on this community has become a viral sensation: horrifying, riveting, and impossible to look away from. Together they explore what this subculture reveals about loneliness, post-lockdown life, and the dangers of instant, unlimited online pleasure crowding out real-world connection. It’s disturbing, darkly funny, and a warning sign about where we’re all heading. Daniel Kolitz’s The Goon Squad, (Harper’s, Nov 2025) -- Leave us a voicemail with your thoughts on the show! 201-305-0084⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ravi at @RaviMGupta Notes from this episode are also available on Substack: https://thelostdebate.substack.com/ Read more from Ravi on Substack: https://realravigupta.substack.com Follow The Branch at @thebranchmedia Listen to more episodes of Lost Debate on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lost-debate/id1591300785 Listen to more episodes of Lost Debate on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7xR9pch9DrQDiZfGB5oF0F Listen to Where the Schools Went: https://thebranchmedia.org/show/where-the-schools-went/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to The Lost Debate, a show for Political Ecclectics.
0:03.3	I'm Robbie Gupta, and I'm not going to lie.
0:06.2	This is a strange episode, and if you have children around, you definitely don't want them
0:10.9	around for this one.
0:12.1	I am interviewing Daniel Colitz, who wrote the piece of the year, I have to say, in Harper's
0:18.3	magazine.
0:19.3	It's called The Goon Squad. And a lot of people have
0:22.4	started putting this on their best of year-end lists. And I'll just read you from Bloomberg,
0:28.3	who as I think they call it, the jealousy list, meaning the pieces they wish they had run. And this is
0:32.5	how they describe the piece that Daniel wrote. Daniel Colitz's deep dive into the world of porn obsessives,
0:39.4	his lurid and thralling reading. The subject matter might be a bit much for some readers,
0:44.3	but there's more here than meets the eye. The author and his subjects are wrestling with what it
0:48.9	means to be human in the face of an onslaught of technology capable of giving us exactly
0:53.2	what we want whenever we want.
0:55.3	What does it all cost?
0:56.8	We're only beginning to learn.
0:58.9	That is an excellent way to summarize why I wanted to talk to Daniel.
1:02.5	This is a piece that I was sent multiple times in the same day from people being like,
1:07.0	what the heck is this?
1:08.9	And I have to say, like, outside of, like, reading about, like, historic atrocities,
1:14.1	this was the most uncomfortable, saddest read that I can remember,
1:19.1	but also illuminating and really important.
	...

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