Episode 256 - T.J. Hooker In Space

Due to a severe pumpkin carving accident, Tab is unable to join the podcast this week, and under similar but unrelated circumstances, Tim is unable to join as he is currently confined to county jail for drunkenly attempting to re-handle a car. Fortunately the hosts were able to dictate their general thoughts on what they would be discussing and using a high end artificial intelligence, we were able to construct a makeshift episode using a library of voice lines by famous actors. So, here's Episode 256, as voiced by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone:

- Counter-Advertising
- Acceptance Speeches
- The Small Penis Frontier
- The Worst Decision Ever

Controversy sells. So what happens when certain people decide to make everything a controversy? Well, the people that make those controversies make more money! It's quite simple, actually. Just make a bunch of stuff, hope someone says the wrong thing for the current political landscape, then brush it off. Tell the people yelling at you that you're sorry and that you care, while also doubling down and selling it to the other side. Companies do not care about you. They don't care about your political or social beliefs, as long as you give them money. The less you care about them, the better off you'll be.

Acceptance speeches should be about 15 seconds long. "Thank you, I worked hard. Thanks to all the people who supported me." They should not be a platform for your political beliefs, or even worse, a run down of your life story. No one cares about your spouse, or your dumb kids, or how many people you worked with and their life stories. Just be humble, take the thing and get the hell off the stage so the rest of us can leave here sooner.

Captain James Tiberius Kirk has been to space. Of course he has, we've seen 3 seasons and 6 movies of him in space. But, now, he truly has. Shatner did it. He didn't build a spaceship in his backyard, engineer a launch and pilot it himself, but by being an icon that influenced many an astronaut, he was awarded a seat on one of Jeff Bezos' trips. And he was humbled by the experience, you could tell it in his lack-of-words. You know who wasn't humbled by the experience? Bezos. The small, Blue Man Group reject, looked down on Earth from orbit and thought, "wow, I own so much of that, I'm the coolest person ever". Oh how I wish Shatner would have Kirk-Fu'd his ass out of the airlock.

Have you ever come across a decision so mind-bendingly stupid, so vehemently dumb, that you had to lay down and think about the series of decisions in life that led you to that point? How it felt like seeing one of the world wonders but in the opposite way? How it made you think about the chaos that is the universe and how it formed the perfect planet to sustain life, and that life then evolved over millions of years into humans who invented civilization, and that socio-political changes drove masses of people here and there and eventually you were born to witness this stupidity of gargantuan proportions?

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT.

Episode 255 - All According to Plan

Well, with World War 3 on the horizon, we here at HWIDG would like to wish you the best in the coming apocalypse. Whether it be Mad Max style resource-gangs getting in shootouts over Mountain Dew, Fallout style atomicpunk restructuring, or a Walking Dead-esque epidemic of zombies and bad writing, we hope you have half as much fun burning the roving gimpsuit gangs as you do listening to the Ham Radio-exclusive Here's What I Didn't Get, where we bask in the glory of our pre-apocalyptic times, and the new Here's What I Don't Get About Scavenging in the Wasteland where we scream about how we miss Sunny D and Little Debbie Cakes. So saddle up your zombie horse/Robotron/sawblade-shooting VW Bus, and dial in to 443.85 and join us!

- Resignations
- Not Being Able to Take a Punch
- Version 1.0
- Translation Accuracy

Imagine a series of bank robberies. The most heinous the country has ever seen. Dozens killed, hundreds of millions stolen. All by one man the police can not catch. Then, he slips up. Something goes wrong during the latest heist and he gets surrounded by cop cars outside. He's finally been caught. He drops his gun, the money and walks outside, arms raised. The police yell at him that he's under arrest, to lay down and be taken into custody. Instead, he simply says "I'm sorry for my actions. I know they were wrong now. I hereby resign as a robber." In Universe A he gets pelted by a barrage of gunfire for resisting arrest and is the first person to legally die of lead poisoning from gunfire. In our universe, he's a politician too, so it's okay and he goes home and collects his pension.

If you are going to put something out into the public for other people, you have to be willing to take criticism. And because it's the internet, that criticism will not be served to you on a light and fluffy cloud, no it comes in a jar filled with barbed wire and salt. And you better listen. Those are your fans. They want you to be successful, but you've hurt them in some way and need to fix it or lose them. It's that simple. You punch me, I punch back, harder, and you either run away or you can take it like a man and accept it.

Version 1.0 is great when it releases. Maybe its groundbreaking, even. But it never lasts. No one watches black and white silent films anymore. They're functionally the same thing, yet obsolete. Super Mario Bros. is a classic. Any fun these days? Not really. Want some home defense? Why not try a musket from 1775? Because it sucks! Move on, old people. The future is now.

So, as it turns out, language isn't just words. Crazy, eh? It's interweaved with history and culture, and changes with the time and as it spreads. So when some pedant complains about translation or localization that isn't machine-like and actually accommodates for its audience, and that it "ruins the author's intent" tell them to sit down, shut up, and eat their hamburgers, Apollo.

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT.

Episode 254 - Detroit Rock City

This week on WHAT WAS THAT? YOU'LL HAVE TO SPEAK UP SON! our two old men are at it again! With an industrial-sized tub of Ben Gay, a fresh stack of adult diapers, and a 2 LB bag of Werther's Originals, these grumpy old men are ready to... to.... what was it we were doing again? Where am I? Who are you? I've got to get back to base! I am Sergeant Handlebreaker with the U.S. Air Force and I am commanding you to stand down! ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA! Remember to call in if you want to leave a voicemail or talk to the ghost of Johnny Carson that lives in a potato. TURN THE SET BACK ON, THE VIRGINIAN IS ON! Back to you, Chet.

- Getting Old
- The Hate Rectangle
- Legacy IP
- Trust the Plan

Thirty isn't old, we know. Doesn't mean we can't channel our inner Walter Matthau though! I'm sure you olds that listen to the podcast are scoffing at our bodies slowly deteriorating to the level of your own while we're still living large without acid reflux and kidney stones. Well, we'll get you an ice pack while we can. Sooner or later we'll be the ones laying on the floor groaning about lumbar support or something or other.

Live music is awesome. One of the best experiences you can have in your life. The physical air being pushed toward you by ginormous speakers, the electricity in the air as you eagerly wait for the band to take the stage, being hit in the chest by the drummer's stick, the smell of the devil's lettuce wafting in from outside mixing with the beer about to be sloshed onto you by a drunk oldhead, the smile the frontman gives you as you sing along to the words he wrote. It's more than just sound and lights. So, the best way to experience it? Watching the video your buddy took during a show, his phone pointed at the jumbotron, while he missed all of this, so he can post it on Facebook, out of focus most of the time, the music overloading his phone's tiny speakers.

IP is king. It's why Lord of the Rings is happening AGAIN. Horror movie slightly successful? 5 sequels in 7 years. And a TV show. Successful movie from 20 years ago? TV series reboot. Screw up the last season of your ultra-popular TV show, you better fast-track that prequel series. Yet, I'm sure Hollywood has 50 years of optioned scripts from thousands and thousands of books that they could produce at a moment's notice. Someone has their next Star Wars or Harry Potter movie sitting in a desk in their office that has a post-it on it that says "Call me back when you hit 5 million sold".

Has anything you ever planned gone just the way you imagined it? Congratulations, then. But what's your rate of success? One in a million? One in one hundred even? You can't successfully plan for anything that involves more than just yourself. People are chaotic beings that follow their own sense of whimsy, their own rules and their playing a game of 8D chess you can't even fathom. Or they're playing with a laser pointer like a cat. And everything in between and none of them are games you even vaguely realize. There is one plan in our universe, and it's "there is no plan".

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT.

Episode 253 - Crango

Introducing... Crango! The same great tastes you love from cranberries and mango, now combined into a mysterious new fruit! Why is it pitch black? We don't know, but that's how they come! It's totally safe! Why are they perfectly triangular? We also don't know, I guess they grow that way!  Are they available unshelled? Don't worry, the crunchiness is a natural defense mechanism the Crango evolved in the wild! Why are they so expensive? The new Crango is actually a delicacy ,and until we find a way to import them in batch instead of one by one, the price will stay high. Isn't that awfully inefficient and bad for the environment? What do you mean? Have YOU switched over to solar yet? Do YOU turn off the lights when you leave a room for more than 15 minutes. You know, as individuals we need to worry less about a freight ship travelling around the world for a single fruit and more on what we can do ourselves to help the environment! Crango!

- Foreign Language Classes
- Low Power Microwaves
- Van Life
- More Free Things, Please
- The Fall Tease
- Mango
- Custom Tools
- Constant Upselling

Hola, me llamo person that took 4 years of Spanish in high school-o. Sorry, that's all I got. I'd probably have been better off learning from Taco Bell commercials. Live mas? I'd like to live mucho mas, but I can't balance my checkbook. What yo would really quiero is someone to teach me about taxes and things i'll actually use instead of four years wasted on seeming cultured.

If you're so strapped for cash that you can't invest in a microwave that spits out at least 1000 watts of power, you really need to rethink your life. Hell, you'd probably get to work earlier if you had, that frozen breakfast bowl would only take a minute and a half instead of six minutes and still be cold in the middle.

Remember in history when we thought that living out of your car was a cool thing that cool people did? No? Hmmmm. Then why do these people with enough money to live a comfortable normal life want to live out of a van just so they can upload a picture of a lake to Instagram every other weekend? Small spaces suck, and unless you're a clean freak, it's won't be so hot come week 5 when you can't find a laundromat that takes Bitcoin.

Imagine the audacity of someone to walk into a McDonalds and demand a free Big Mac because their friend got a free Whopper last year sometime. That's what people who play F2P games that complain about not getting even more free things sound.

The Summer knows its time is over. But like a bad tenant, he's trying every loophole he can to hold on to that sweet rental space. And just as Fall gets his foot in the door, the government passes another eviction moratorium on Seasons. Get the hell out of there, ya bum!

Big Mango is up to something I tell ya. It's everywhere now. Did they find a landfill's worth and can't sell them? Was there a science breakthrough on "natural Mango flavor"? Just like "strawberry kiwi" before it, the powers that be are cramming this fruit into EVERYTHING. But the biggest offender? Mango salsa. I want fruit in my salsa as much as I want a barbed knife in my eye.

Hex, torx, triangle bit, spanner, spline, hell I think there's a screw bit that is a miniaturized portrait of the Mona Lisa, but they all got to go. We don't need your custom screw head for "security reasons", we need it to be a standard head so we can fix it.

There must be people that just subscribe to every premium service out there to shut up the ads about signing up for it that they absolutely bombard free users with. Pop ups, emails, texts, just nonstop begging for your money. Well, they aint gonna get it. Out of spite. I'll be the last to convert.

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT.

Episode 252 - More Beer!

Check out the Video Episode!

It's Fall now. I don't care what you say. We had the sneak preview, and now it's here, so chug a bunch of Claritin and get your carving kit out because some horny teens just moved in next door and you've got to stop them. While you're carefully hanging up the dead bodies in order to scare the virgin last girl, think about what went wrong in your life that got you here. Was it being drowned in a lake for being ugly? Was it dying in a fiery blaze because you like to touch kids? Or maybe because you're a magical midget that likes mayhem? Perhaps it was even one of these:

- True Crime Internet Detectives
- Not Enough Beer
- The Man Behind The Wizard
- Third Party Support Sites

Every now and then a 'girl next door' young blonde woman from Ohio pisses her boyfriend off enough or catches the attention of a crazed lunatic and for weeks all the news can talk about is the search for her. And with the rise of the internet, some people have started to take on the case themselves! Searching through social media and making a timeline of her movements in the lamest form of vigilante justice possible. Do they ever find the guy and go beat his ass? No. They find the wrong guy and get him arrested at work. But you know who could actually find all these missing white women? Batman. Not himself of course, I'm sure if Batman was real, he'd just have the Batcomputer solving all these cases in a minimized tab while he trolls through the local orphanage for his next Robin.

Outdoor festivals, what are they? They're cordoned off public areas that it's okay to get drunk in! Do you think its okay to run out of beer at one of these 2/3rd of the way through the day? What if you went to Six Flags and they stopped half the rides at 2 PM? You'd be pissed! Are there a dozen other things to do or see there? Yeah, but we all know what you're there for. What if all the rides were at the very back of the park and not spread throughout? That's just more poor planning. And it's not like this is the first time! You'd think they could fix this and make it better and more efficient year after year, but what do I know.

When you create a character or persona, it's important not to break the illusion. It's why when you go see a play and Hamlet stabs someone he doesn't stop, turn to the audience and say "Don't worry folks, I didn't really stab him, we're actors and this sword is a fake!" It's why kids cry when the guy in the Mickey Mouse costume pulls off his giant head. They don't care about the park employee, they want pure, unadulterated Mouse. Similarly, I don't need to know that you're depressed, or you want me to donate to a GoFundMe for your sick cousin, or even that you're on vacation so you won't be active for the next 2 weeks. You post dumb fake movie quotes, you're not a public servant.

You know that feeling you get when you go to a restaurant and the service is above and beyond your expectations? Or when the guy at the store you're at actually cares about what he sells and can give you great advice? That's great customer service. Unfortunately it's the 0.01% of all customer service experiences. More and more companies are moving support to third party services that handle 150 other companies already with a phone farm in Mumbai. "Josh" from SupportCo doesn't know and doesn't care about your very specific use case of a very expensive piece of equipment, he just wants his $1.25 an hour.

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT.

Episode 251 - Thanks O.J.!

Check out the video episode! 

Webster's dictionary defines the number 251 as "the natural number between 250 and 252", but it is so much more than that. It's also the second number after 249 and the second number before 253. It is also the mass number of the element Californium which was discovered in a wastebasket of a green room the day after a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. But perhaps most importantly, the 251st episode of Star Trek is "Timescape" in which Data outright calls Deanna Troi a ho, and what, my friends, is better than that? So find your closest robot friend and get ready to call out the closest hussies as we discuss:

- Celebrity Gossip Pipeline
- Satellite TV
- Flaggots
- Non Fan Complaints

Celebrities! They're like a whole different species to us plebeians. How could we possibly understand their lives? With a bevy of 24/7 information on them! What are they eating and drinking? Who are they going out with? What kind of dump did they take last night? Any info you want on a celebrity is now available for the low, low cost of your soul. Every peek of a tabloid or TMZ news post chips away at your essence. Go read a book or learn a trade with all the time you spend wondering what brand of deodorant Jennifer Lawrence buys.

Stuff from space is awesome. Bar none. Spaceships. Aliens. Symbiotes. Phasers. TV. Except that last one. Don't get me wrong, the concept of getting your TV from a satellite in space is sweet, but it comes with some severe disadvantages. Turns out the weather is in between here and space, and since satellite already is geared towards those outside city centers who can't have cable run to their house, you're now stuck in the middle of nowhere without TV because of a little cloud. And I guess the satellite people think that folks out in the country are worrying 24/7 about not being able to go to the store to buy things if their wagon breaks down because approximately 78 percent of its programming is trying to directly sell you something.

People can't just not like things anymore. They have to stop everyone else from seeing it, instead of using the tools they've been given to not see it themselves. They are the kid in elementary school that tells the teacher because the comic book you're reading says "damn" in it. The kind of person that calls 911 on a jaywalker on an empty street. The crazy vegan that throws their food at the employees because something they didn't order has eggs in it.

Non-fans don't have rights. I'm sorry, that's just how it is. I have no reason to be upset if they made Slimer hot in the new Ghostbusters movie because A) I'm a grown man and Ghostbusters is for children and manlets and B) I have no stake in it! If I threw a hissy fit about it, I'd be getting mad just to get mad, and you don't want to be that kind of person. There are too many other things to actually be mad about than things you don't actually care about.

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT.

Episode 250 - Five Star Pull

Check out the Video Episode!

Five years strong and growing! Thanks to all out listeners and supporters, and shoutout to Flinstones Vitamins for keeping our bones healthy! As we snort another batch, let us regale you with our tales of nerd rage about:

- Zombieland: Double Tap
- Mobile Game Economy
- A Lack of Visible Artistry
- Collectibles

A bad sequel can be just that. But a bad sequel to a movie you didn't love in the first place? Well, that can just ruin your whole frame of reference for the original. A combination of annoying characters, a lack of laughs, and a general blandness to the whole thing leaves Zombieland 2 kinda like a zombie that ran into a tree and can't get free. It's a bad version of something that already wore out its welcome.

Whether it's medieval fantasy, dinosaurs, superheroes, or scantily clad anime babes, you can bet that the hot new mobile games will rely on multiple timers, forms of currency, and lootboxes. 1 Gold Box is 1.99, but 5 Gold Boxes is 7.99. And 50 Gold Boxes for 69.99 is the BEST OFFER! Well, it's the best offer if you like krill. These games can get by with 5 million people that don't drop a dime into it. That's what the ads are for. But that 0.000001% of users? The whales that drop a fat hundo every day just on the chance they can get an ultra rare 5 star Deadpool? That's where the money's at. And those are the people they care about. You're a serf.

Ever see a good ventriloquist act? There's a guy with his hand in a puppet's ass the whole time. But if he's good he can really make it feel like he's talking to a whole-ass person. I know Rowlf the Dog and The Swedish Chef are puppets. My brain knows that Jim Henson was under a table or some rig puppeteering them, but dammit, they're real to me! I can ignore the visible seams in the construction if the content is good enough. But these days, there are no seams. Everything is pristine digital perfection, but it's made by robots. I'll take a dude in a suit over it any day.

Ah collectibles. Your childhood items that ended up in your trash when you moved, your parent's attic, or on the other side of the country in someone else's trash when they moved, really go for a fortune these days. That old issue of Batman was the first appearance of Tim Drake! And instead of some modern day speculator manchild freak, you read the shit out of that comic book! You lent it to a friend, who spilt grape soda on a page, but you tore it out cause it was just an ad for Castlevania 3 which you already had. You actually used the thing. It wasn't some artificially rare issue, or some factory churned out vinyl doll that'll end up the next Beanie Babies, it was a thing you used and enjoyed like a regular person. Too bad sucker, now a 9.8 CGC graded copy goes for $350.

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT.

Episode 249 - Kebert Xela (feat. Tyrone Watermelon)

Check out the Video Episode! 

On this week's episode we talk about that mistake that has plagued us for 20 years. 20 years ago our great nation's leaders made a terrible decision and it has now, finally come to bite us in our rear. The wake of destruction it has caused is immeasurable. Of course I'm talking about the 2001 film Freddy Got Fingered. A supposed "comedy" film, this waste of time and money was thrust upon Americans and for the last 20 years has been a black mark on our great nation's history. It's so bad, that I'm pretty sure it's responsible for something that happened about 5 months after its box office debut. So join us in reveling that we may never see it again, along with:

- Jeopardy Host Debacle
- The U.S. Dollar
- People That Don't Value Pets

Who's going to be the new host of Jeopardy? Well, no one at this rate. All these prospective hosts are getting shot down like flies by the cancel gun. People want the perfect person, as if Trebek wasn't absolutely hammered during filming, being half a beer away from an on-air Bill O'Reilly moment. There's never going to be your unicorn. So just pick a non-serial killer that has a modicum of charm and get going or else we're going to have to wait another 10 years until Weird Al makes a new Jeopardy-themed parody.

Dollars. Bucks. Greenbacks. Simoleans. Smackeroos. C-notes. Dead Presidents. Whatever you call them, they're a dying product. Most of the world's money is a jar of IOUs that get traded around and stapled to other IOUs as interest. Your bank account? Not actually money. Your taxes? Not actually money, but if you don't pay them, the government comes after you for real money to pay them the fake money they owe someone else but won't themselves pay off. It's like that guy that always borrows five bucks from you and swears he'll make it up at the casino when he hits it big. And the unban him.

Pets are not children. They are also not replaceable vermin just because pet shops exist and grandpa shops don't. You take care of them and they take care of you. They truly become family members in their times with us. Except your cat wont go on a racist rant at Thanksgiving. You ae their whole world for as long as you are lucky to have them. Love your pets, folks.

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT.

Episode 248 - Mutagenic Nightmare

Check out Gabbin about Godzilla!

Plus check out the video episode! 

In honor of HWIDG's upcoming 5th anniversary, we will be releasing a new version of the podcast to celebrate. This new version will include 500+ sound effects including airhorns, DJ drops, crying babies, and farts. Also, fishing.

- Skyrim's House of Cards
- Alex Kurtzman's Re-Signing
- Adapting the Worst
- Insular Movie Communities

Skyrim's engine is a 1997 Ford Fiesta. For years it ran just fine. But as it got older it got harder and harder to keep it working as well as every other new car. Fourteen years later, you sell it off, and the new owner decides to turn it into a drag racer. But you've patched it and replaced parts so often that the new owner just barely gets his project completed. And it barely runs. It sputters at start and backfires every minute or so. But people like it! It's a really fun ride. In fact it's so fun that people want to work on the car, fix its problems. But then some want to change its paint scheme. Or change its tires. Or make it amphibious. Or add a supercharger. Or turn it into a tank. and some people want to go for a ride after every single one of these changes is made. And they expect it to break world records.

If the janitor at your local grocery store was known for shitting in his hand and throwing it around the store and smearing it on all the produce, would you expect him to be rehired? What if he was pissing in the cereal and calling it Cheerios 2.0? What if the owner of the store pretended that a feces-covered banana and a bowl of piss-soaked cereal were part of a healthy breakfast? Would you still visit that store, or would you go back to the store across town that didn't do any of that?

Coming to a theater near you: a biographical picture for the ages! One of history's greatest stars, the king of rock and roll himself, Elvis Presley as you've never seen him before. From visionary director James Cameron comes the life of the King at his best. No music, no movies, no Las Vegas. This groundbreaking picture presents Elvis in his most human moments. Picking his nose, scratching his butt, throwing up drugs from the toilet's point of view. Alongside three hours stunningly recreated in-mouth shots of each peanut butter banana sandwich the King ever consumed, it's the best biopic of Elvis to ever grace the screen!

There's something to be said for ranking and judging a series in comparison to its various versions. But eventually there exists a sect of fans that forego all outside judgement and solely bases their thoughts on each new addition to the franchise on it simply existing. "Batman's in the new Batman movie, so it's automatically better than the baby Marvel movies!" These fans are so blinded by their love for fictional characters, that they can't believe that these characters could be involved in a less than stellar product!

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT.

Episode 247 - Nosing My Palate

Check out the Video Episode! 

For the first time in our county's history, the impossible has happened. A cruel, vindictive man has rigged an election in his favor. Tab Birt is charged with one count of election fraud and one count of vote tampering for his interference in a local whiskey tasting event. His whiskey license has been revoked and he is now absolved of his right to purchase and consume any whiskey or whiskey-based products. He is currently at large. He is armed and dangerous. If you or anyone you know have knowledge of his whereabouts we urge you to call 1-800-867-5309 with any tips you may have.

- Whiskey Tasting
- Always Being Connected
- Illusion of Stock
- Armchair Generals

Take a bunch of grains, mash 'em up, boil 'em, collect that sweet vapor, and what do you get? The cause and solution to all of man's problems. Add a dash of pretentious asshole and you get an overpriced whiskey tasting event where you get cold, (actually) bloody steak and a WHOLE OUNCE of whiskey. A WHOLE OUNCE. To taste and savor! All while an ascot-wearing turd nugget mansplains taxes to you while his suit jacket is straining against his Covid gut. But remember, he's not there to tell you HOW to enjoy whiskey, just to swindle you out of 100 dollars and far too much of your time.

Our phones are to us as laser pointers are to cats. It bleeps and lights up and we freak out and paw at it. All for what? Notifications that your second cousin uploaded a photo of his weekly trout fishing trip, or that some person you met in college and had to do a group project with is on their second divorce and fifth kid? An email offering you 25% off something you don't want? An Amazon notification that the package you just got handed has been delivered? It's all noise.

Imagine going to a specialty store in search of something specific. Let's say you want a bottle of Laphroaig 10 Year Scotch, so you head down to your local liquor store. You ask the guy in the store for "Laphroaig 10" and he comes back with an armful of wine and vodka. You say, that's not "Laphroaig 10", that's not even whiskey! "Yes", he replies "but they are alcoholic beverages, and that's what you're looking for." That guy should be fired from his job, right? Yet Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and every other online store gets away with padding their search results like this.

If I want to take part in the decisions going on in a war, I'm going to go play RISK. What I'm not going to do is spew my Call of Duty-level knowledge of the military industrial complex over Twitter. Opinions are like buttholes, everyone's got them, and in 2021 more people than ever love sharing in-depth views of them online.

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT.

Episode 246 - Nipple Reattachment Surgery

Check out the video episode! 

This week on Podcast Crimes, how well do you know your fans? For every diehard fan out there that is a normal Joe Schmo, there lurks the possible John Wayne Gacy of podcast fans. The small town of Saratoga in Wyoming recently had a crisis on their hands when there was a spree of vandalism. The police, despite setting up cameras to catch the criminal behind these heinous acts, were dumbfounded when each morning they were sent a package of freshly broken door handles. But with the help of a forensics expert, they were led to the home of Robert Karns, where they found a literal trove of handles in his basement. After he was apprehended, he only ever spoke one phrase: "No more handles". Chilling. Join us next week as we explore other podcasts and their totally real, actual, crazy fans.

- Enhanced Cleaning Procedures
- The Death Warrant of HWIDG
- Elon Musk
- Asterisks

There's a reason the Handlebreaker doesn't like martinis. Tab made me one once and the combination of floral gin, lemon, and bad vodka reminded me of drinking the bottom of a jar of Lysol wipes. That's not a flavor I like to associate with my mouth area, especially during a sit down meal. You don't put out all of your kitchen sink cabinet cleaning products when you have guests over for dinner do you? You make fish tacos and serve them with a side of RAID?

How do you introduce suspense into any action movie? Add a ticking clock element! Knowing Batman only has a few seconds to save Harvey Dent from the Joker amps up the action! So, as any good film does, we have now introduced a ticking clock to HWIDG! What's going to happen? Will the show end? Will it go on? Find out in a year or two!

Elon Musk is the real life Tony Stark. The problem with that is that we don't live in a comic book world where the billionaire tech guy gets a new lease on life and starts to use his riches for good. Instead we have the asshole egoist that wants to solve the world's problems five things at a time. Do we need self-landing rockets? Do we need self-driving electric cars when neither electric cars nor self-driving cars have been perfected yet? Do we need a giant sci-fi not-flamethrower? What about a giant interconnected network of underground tunnels with trains in them? No.

No one wants the truth it seems. We live in a world of asterisks.  Batteries not included, some assembly required, etc. Any number you read on a package is the peak theoretical highest and never an example of average use. That hard drive has a write speed of 5000 gigabytes! That's amazing! Yeah, well it peaked at 4,950 for a fraction of a second in one test out of twenty. Ta-da!

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT.

Episode 245 - It's Turbo Time

Check Out the Video Episode!

In what some are calling the "Canonball Run" of podcasting, we present to you the absolute fastest produced episode of this show yet! Live (in the past) from the road, Tab regales us with tales of truck stop shower sex and over-priced beef jerky as we yell about:

"I Didn't Mean to Sic My Fans On You"
Saying Goodbye
Streaming Rights

There's a point when someone reaches a certain amount of clout that the gods of the internet grant them a gilded whistle. This powerful artifact allows them to dunk on or call someone out in a way that would get them roundhouse kicked in the face otherwise in real life, only to then deflect the blame when their fans rise up with pitchforks against the target. It's like throwing Maximus Aurelius in the ring to fight for you but then throwing him to the tigers.

Saying Goodbye sucks. We've all got to do it every now and then and it never gets easier. But absence makes the heart grow fonder, so it's okay that Bethesda has taken fifteen years to put out Not Skyrim 2, just like it's okay that your sibling takes 8 years to finish their Associate's Degree. Welcome them back with open arms when they come to visit, but also watch your wallet.

Streaming media is like playing Hot Pocket with your credit card. Is this movie on Netflix this week? Is the sequel on Hulu instead? Is the 14th episode of season 7 missing due to a now-cancelled celebrity? The answer to all of these questions is Yes and No.

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT.

Episode 244 - Go, Go, Gojira!

Check out the Video Episode!

It was only a matter of time folks. Usually we're not ones to copy trends and follow what everyone else is doing, but this time there's big money involved, so away with our dignity! We're proud to present Here's What I Don't Godzilla, from North to South, East to West, but especially the East, the only Godzilla-based podcast to tackle all of life's toughest kaijus every week. Brought to you by Ronco! Join us each week as we battle through the gauntlet of Tohos and Showas and Mothras and whatever other dumb puppets Godzilla destroys because he's the best!

- Cheaters
- Falling For It
- Making Up Leaks
- Doubling Down

Cheating in a single-player game? Who cares. You wanna make your Skyrim guy invincible with a spell that summons 50 dragons at a time? Go ahead. It's a power fantasy. But in a game that's all about doing the impossible and improbable under dire circumstances? Well you're just cheating yourself. Where's the fun in NOT dogfighting in the air, getting shot by an AA canon, but downing the other pilot before you blow up, then parachuting out of your burning plane, sniping the other falling pilot before he lands, then falling onto the AA canon guy that shot you out of the sky in the first place, then plunging your knife into his stomach and stealing his dogtags so his family never has a sense of peace, then 30 years later including them in a letter saying "lol get fukd AA noob". You're just cheating yourself out of that moment.

Maybe this one will be it guys. Maybe THIS will finally be the 80s franchise they dig up for the third time, but this time instead of defiling its body, they'll dress it up all nice looking and treat it with respect! It's not going to happen, folks. Stop getting hype for the same reboot over and over. How many "passing the torch" reboots have come and gone the last 5-10 years? They're all the same thing, and look at you dummies paying money for each one each time. Here's some advice: enjoy the memories you have of [INSERT CHILDHOOD PRPERTY HERE] and find something else to be obsessed with. Star Wars, Ghostbusters, TMNT, He-Man, Thundercats, Transformers, whatever it is is not for you anymore.

How to get people to see movies 101: make good movie, get good marketing. Done. How to get people to see movies (as understood by internet weirdos) 101: Write an article about some reddit user's screencap of a 4chan post of a supposed CGI farm worker's thoughts on what secrets the next big blockbuster has in it. Do this once a week every week after the movie is announced but before the trailer is out. Once the trailer is out, flood the news sites with stories about 'PLOT LEAKS FOR X-MEN '92' that are just the trailer scenes stitched together in some cohesive fashion but also completely made up. Do this every day so the DAILY MCU NEWS YouTube channels have something to post everyday. When the movie comes out in 6 months, don't mention any of the "news" of those leaks you've been pushing for 2 years.

Dear Diary: today I tried to give myself superpowers again. This time I touched a white-hot stove to see if I had cool heat powers or invulnerability. I do not. But if I wanted to, I could now become Fifth-Degree Arm Stump Boy! Anyways, see you tomorrow! Dear Diary: You know, sometimes you just really believe that something will work. Well, I tried to give myself superpowers again today. I thought, maybe leaping a building in a single bound, or shooting lasers from my eyes, but I kinda really want heat and or invulnerability powers. So I did the stove thing again. I swore, for a second I thought it was working! I couldn't feel a thing! The doctors say that's because the nerves in that good hand were immediately burned away. BUT now, that I have to write with my feet, I could be a cool leg-based hero! Anyways, I got a feeling that the third time's the charm, so see you tomorrow!

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 243 - Escape Pod Plan

This week we have lost a dear friend. Join us in mourning as we say goodbye to someone that has been with this podcast since it started. But when life throws your loved one off of a cliff/into a volcano, it resurrects said loved one with a new body and kick-ass devil powers. So get ready to say hello to Devil Recording Laptop and his cronies: 

- Broken Computers
- Bad Internet
- "What I Look Like Now" Posts
- Social Taxonomy

Remember when computers were whole rooms? That's right, if you didn't know already, computers used to take up whole rooms, the way a server farm takes up a whole room for hundreds and thousands of computers running servers these days. Try breaking one of those puppies. No flimsy hinges or lack of cooling there. These days our computers are made to be small, sleek, and the way of the big E-ATX tower is going off to visit a farm upstate. Like most technology, it's moved from user-serviceable parts that require a little specialized knowledge, to plebian consumer-friendly "just buy a new one" opening-this-device-voids-your-warranty boxes.

Slow internet sucks. We've all had to put up with it. Maybe your at grandma's house and all she needs is to send emails and print recipes, so she has the bottom-of-the-barrel speed. Or you're staying at that budget hotel/motel on a business trip, and their wi-fi is shared among the six floors. It sucks but you can put up with it, or ignore it and live that weekend like a luddite. But *bad* internet? Going out at the most inopportune times, speeds running lower-than-low,flickering on and off? That's the worst.

People age. That's a fact of life. Some people age like the finest of cabernet sauvignons, some age like they've found the fountain of youth, and others age like milk you bought at a dented can store. As we get old, most of us lose track of keeping our bodies in line. Kids and work taking up all your time leads to a lot of fast food and microwave dinners. You can't wolf down a whole pizza like you could back in high school, or you're gonna have a bad time. That's why it's admirable for anyone that tries to work on their body instead of working on their Netflix and Ice Cream night streak. What's not admirable is being proud of letting yourself go and letting the world know it.

As people, we put ourselves in groups. Maybe as some sort of latent survival tactic from the cavemen days, but it's still there. We create groups to generalize people and that's fine. But these days, we've taken it to the extreme. Like a gamer who's only into 2D Roguelike Multiplayer Action Platformers, people have started these small niche groups, like Nonbinary Overweight Thirdsoul Druids, so they can feel special. And when we all feel special? No one's special.

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 242 - Alien Swill

Check out the Video Episode!

On this week's episode of HWIDG, we'd like to apologize for any audio snafus there might be, but just remember we're just a couple of dudes. We're not one of these big podcasts backed by a global media company. Those kinds of podcasts have like 5 producers and 3 editors to catch all of that. So if there aren't any audio problems, praise us, because we're just as good as these big name podcasts that absolutely don't have any problems whatsoever.

- Alien Covenant
- Non-Alcoholic Whiskey
- Live Chat
- Web of Lies

Ah, the Alien movies. Is there another series that spans such a gamut of quality? Maybe, but I can't think of one right now because the awfulness of Alien: Covenant is still living rent-free in my mind, days later. It's a lot like a Karen. She wants to be vegetarian, but still eat BBQ. Alien Covenant wants you to care about its characters but does nothing with them and hires charisma-less actors to portray them. It wants you to marvel at the new cool aliens, but then takes the practical effects they did on set and paints over them with CGI. It wants you to believe that these people are scientists on an alien planet, but they don't bother to wear any protective suits! Just say 'NO' to Alien: Covenant.

Who is non-alcoholic whiskey for? Why it's for losers with poor self-esteem! That's right! Don't drink but still go out to bars and parties where people pressure you like you're a Sophomore in high school, and you feel bad about it? Boy do I have the product for you. Just sign this form that registers you as a Spirit Offender and we'll be on our way. In two to four weeks you should receive your first shipment of Swill™! What is Swill™? Well, we ventured into a remote mountain in the Galapagos and found a tribe of natives that had never had alcohol before. So we took their local toilets and rinsed them out, then bottled that rinse water! It's perfect on the rocks, in a cocktail, or buried with you deep in the ground where no other person can have it!

Imagine if you will, a sports bar. Imagine all the folks watching the big game that night. Now take their thoughts and shouts of excitement and mix them in with the thoughts and shouts of excitement of approximately a dozen deranged hobos. Pop them up in chronological order and that's what its like watching the live chat on YouTube or Twitch, or anything streaming. You've got your garden variety trolls, your obligatory scam spammers, the crazy people that think the people they're watching are their best friends, and your lonely "show feet plz" troglodytes. They invented the "Hide Chat" button for a reason. Use it.

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies. That's what Stevie Nicks said. Well Stevie, how about you stay over there in Lie Land with Todd Howard and the Government and leave us alone. We're called Truthers and we want to know the truth. Can it be hard to accept? Yes. But it's like pulling off that band-aid. The longer it sticks, the more it's gonna hurt. And eventually? Well it's not a band-aid, it's a scab. The kind that is just ready to heal and you might as well be peeling off skin when you get rid of it. "I never want to do that again" kind of pain.

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 241 - Microwave Faux Pas

Check Out the Video Episode! 

This week, the world is still reeling from the incredible happenings at the World Firework Championships. The bronze medal went to veteran Chip Mahoney with an amazing display of simultaneous grilling and fireworking, culminating in a finale where he cleaned up 12 beer cans by flying them via bottle rocket directly into a garbage can. Taking silver this year was newcomer Howard J. Hines with an extensive Harry Potter-themed Roman Candle Battle exhibition. But shocking the world in an unforeseen upset was the first place medal winner Tab Birt who produced a spectacle for the ages. A full orchestra, decked in sparklers performed Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture while he timed the song's usual cannon firing to the sound of exploding microwaves. If you weren't there in person, you can now purchase the 2021 World Firework Championship Highlights VHS for only $49.99!

- Won't Someone Think About the Dogs?!
- Freedom Isn't Free
- Invincible Pacing
- Women Using Kids to Stop Fun

Fireworks have been around for over a thousand years. We've had domesticated dogs since long before that, but they've had plenty of time to adapt. The Fouth of July happens every year. It doesn't just sneak up on you like a silent tornado. If you have dogs that you haven't trained to not piss themselves at fireworks, you need to be ready for that weekend. It's called being responsible. Complaining about fireworks is a moot point. You either were prepared and are an asshole that wants to sap fun from everyone else due to your Pekingese, or you're a bad pet owner. Pick one.

Freedom isn't free. But it could be. It could be if we stopped being Earth's Hall Monitor But Also The Kid Who Stirs Shit Up. How about we stop spending billions of dollars a year sending troops to countries that don't want us there because we sent billions in weapons there five years ago and a bunch of zealous assholes got their hands on them. It almost seems like we're that crazy firefighter that goes around setting fires so we can put them out because there's not enough fires and the city is going to shut us down.

I understand that when you take a book and turn it into something else, you gotta change it. Having a movie where you constantly hear the main characters thoughts via narration would be real dumb. The book of a musical? Good luck getting anyone other than trained musicians to read it. But you have to be careful in moving things around or else you can lose fundamental aspects of why something works. Like making Blofeld James Bond's brother, or having Antonio Banderas play an Arabian ambassador, or making a beloved 300 page children's book into three separate three hour snoozefests.

Having children is not a miracle. Billions upon billions have been doing it for the last couple million years. The creation of fire? The wheel? Those are worth celebrating. You fulfilling your biological imperative to bone is not. If you bring your child somewhere unsafe and refuse to leave, that's on you. A kid is crying at a loud concert? Leave. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Your kid is not special, you are not special, and acting like you deserve special treatment because you had one only makes me feel like a really late term abortion is in need. Not for the kid, for you.

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 240 - Beating the Dickens

Check out the Video Episode! 

As HWIDG's last official episode of June, we'd like to preemptively say this may or may not be the end of the show! It's a gamble, really. Either one of the hosts could die in a heinous bottle rocket accident or get killed by a friend for tossing an M-80 under their car! We might come back next week with the issue "Not Having Ten Fingers Anymore"! So remember listeners, if you're going to play with fireworks this Fourth, film it just in case anything crazy happens, so you can get that sweet internet clout!

- Open Container Laws
- Bad Endings
- Paper Checks
- Beating it Out of You

Why is alcohol bad? Because some old guy in the sky said so. It's true. If you let your kids drink alcohol they'll start doing all kinds of bad stuff, like going to parties where girls exchange oral sex for colorful bracelets, and smoking the devil's lettuce and going to Judas Priest concerts while playing satanic board games. They'll start getting into cars by sliding across the hood and start selling bootleg fireworks in order to fund their expensive Pink Floyd vinyl collections! Alcohol is a terrible evil that can infect up to, get this, FIVE WHOLE PERCENT of a glass of beer! So remember, in the bar, totally legal to walk around with a beer in your hand. During a traffic jam-I mean festival parade downtown, totally legal. Once your big toe goes past that cordoned off section of street though YOU'RE A FELON.

Ah, serialized storytelling. The big draw is tuning in every week to resolve that sweet cliffhanger. Cliffhanger after cliffhanger you watch, read, or listen. If the series gets canceled in the middle? Sure, that sucks. The story will never be finished! But, you can live with the satisfaction that you didn't slog through hundreds of weeks just to get to a terrible ending, because that my friends, is the ultimate bummer. You see a bad movie? No problem, you forget about it, it took 90 minutes of your time. You end your long running premiere TV show with a big ol' dragon dookie? You've got a riot on your hands.

Paper checks are like bingo. As a kid, it's exciting enough, but what you really want is that sweet set of Pokemon stickers that the bingo represents. You get older? Never touch the game. You practically forget it exists. You want nothing to do with it, actually. It's a bunch of hoops to jump through just for some money. Then old age starts setting in, and your hobbies start going away. You can't read as well anymore, you've lost your dexterity, so you go down to the old bingo hall. And suddenly your whole life is bingo and no one can take that away from you, because you're old and we're supposed to respect you or something. What I'm trying to say is I hate paper checks.

Boy, that thing you really like to do? It would be a real shame if we made you do that but with boring things and old things that aren't interesting and only 'popular' because they're old. And we tell you that your version of that thing will never be of any value. And we're going to do that for another ten or so years until you hate doing that thing. Oh also, you're a child! That's right! We're crushing the dreams and wishes of billions of children for laughs! Suck it, nerds.

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 239 - We Assume

Check out the video episode! 

On tonight's episode of HWIDG Investigates: a mysterious suicide and an even more mysterious letter. When disgraced former podcast host "The Handlebreaker" was found dead in his prison cell last week from an apparent suicide, the world was shocked. With no traces of foul play, and the cameras of the prison "down for maintenance", it seemed like an open and shut case on the man who was charged with destroying millions of dollars of government property. But a letter was found just recently that sheds new light on the suicide, and conspiracy theorists are saying that the cypher might point to murder. The contents of the letter were brief, but it read: "lol watch me get Epstein'd". Who knows what the mad man might have meant by this puzzling statement. We'll never know. Next week we investigate:

- Not Doing Your Job
- Juneteenth
- Barren Food Wastelands
- Honeypots

Regular people work. Some have careers, some have jobs, some have gigs. Even the people in their dream job have to put up with BS from higher-ups or customers or just some aspect of what they do. And what do these people do? Do they whine until they get what they want? Do they laze around and do their job in the most smarmy, sarcastic way? No. They grit their teeth, buckle down and get it done. Now only if people with cushy jobs like actors could do the same damn thing.

Juneteenth is now a holiday. Go ahead and ask a family member or neighbor or co-worker if they know what it celebrates. See what they say.

Sometimes you go out to eat and they don't have some side or are out of some special. That's understandable. If it takes you five times to pick something from the menu that they *do* have? Why are they even open? Why bother with the menu at that point? Just sit people down and give them a random plate of food. Hell, that's what keeps gamers attached to money-sucking free-to-play games and microtransaction-filled multiplayers: lootboxes! Ten buck flat fee and get a random plate of food!

There are no such thing as FBI honeypots. There is no way that the honorable bureau would plant some affable podcasts hosts in order to draw in radical citizens ripe for Manchurian Candidate-esque re-conditioning. That would be ludicrous. Just as ludicrous as what the government is doing to its citizens, wouldn't you say? Doesn't that make you angry? Don't you want to do something about it? Anyways, make sure to check out our sponsor Furious Firearms for 99% off a patriotic new rifle!

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 238 - Chained to the Desk

Check out the Video Episode! 

Now available on the HWIDG Store is our new soothing Here's What Doesn't Burn Cooling Relief Ointment! For burns small to large our proprietary blend of chemicals will quickly soothe away any possible burning sensations from fire, radiation, or an entire episode of a podcast dedicated to dunking on you. So admit defeat and grab a bottle today!

- Government Slow Lane
- CG Trailers
- The Smart Home
- Missing a Line Drive

Have you ever been to the dentist and the doc shows you your X-Rays and you catch a glimpse of the computers they have, running on 15 year old Windows XP computers? When they decide to upgrade those in a few years, they will graciously give those to their local state government, finally moving them into the twenty first century. Until then, you better hope they still have a User's Manual for Windows 3.1 because Karen in accounting is going to need it to run her computer. Or you could just send her the instructions yourself through a telegram.

A CG Trailer for a game used to be the hype reel. It would play when you booted it up, getting you ready for what you were going to play. They made those after the made the actual game. These days? Despite that games look as good as ever, they pay some CG Studio millions of dollars to make a 30 second "tone" piece they use to announce their game at E3. Then they start making it look like that. How about instead, you make a good game and show me what that looks like? Instead of putting out some high bar trailer that the game will never live up to.

Connected devices! Everything is connected and talks to each other these days! Your fridge can tell you're running out of ketchup, so it tells Alexa to order you some more, and when that shows up, your Amazon Home Lock opens for the delivery driver, and he walks in and starts touching himself, activating your Amazon Love Machine. He knows he shouldn't but he just can't stop, and then you walk in. You see this delivery guy humping your beloved sex doll and you lose it. You go for your Amazon Gun Safe and pull out the Limited Edition Prime Day Remington 870 with Alexa. You whisper, "Alexa, cap this fool". In an instant, a hole is punched through his chest cavity. Gore strewn across the room, you look at Cherry the Amazon Love Machine to see she has been hit. The life is fading from her eyes, her battery doesn't have much longer. And worst of all? She's not in production anymore. So starts your journey through the wastelands of 2025 to find her a new body.

Sometimes something is personally tailored to your tastes. All of its individual pieces are right up your alley. Then you try it. And it just doesn't come together. For all intents and purposes it SHOULD. But it lets you down. Even more than something you have no hopes for because it should be what you like. Some people try to force it. But you can't. It's just not for you, and you need to accept that.

All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 237 - Defraud the Movies

We here at HWIDG like to bring you important messages each week, but none has been more important than this one. Folks, there's a rising threat in our community, and it's time we address it. For too long, Tired, Old New Yorkers have been running around, rudely telling people off, walking around with marinara-stained undershirts, rambling about gabbagool, claiming they "knew Bobby DeNiro back in da day", and just generally creating a bunch of mayhem. So we are advising against a campaign to End T.O.N.Y, and we hope you'll join us.

- Spin-off Shows
- Vocal Fillers
- Kaijuu Lovers
- Recap Reviews

Urkel. Screech. Joey. Sheldon. What do these names have in common? They were the annoying sidekick on their respective shows, then when it came time for that popular show to end, they took the screechy monkey baby and gave him his own show. Typically this is just the same as the original, but now instead of an ensemble cast of likeable dudes, it's just the one guy. It's like if you took a cookie recipe ingredients, and replaced everything with equal amounts of baking powder and expected someone to eat it.

We, um, don't, um, like, like, uhh, people that, uhh, throw in all kinds of, ummmm, like, filler words when they, uhh, talk or whatever. Especially when, uhhhh, the can, uh, just edit, uhhh, their own, like, podcast.

Godzilla is not a hero. He's a monster. He's hellbent on destroying the Earth. Does he save Earth from other wacky monsters (or should I say, sweaty men in bad rubber suits)? Yes, he does. But only in a "No one destroys Earth but me" context. When there's a couple of rad teens in a big ol' robot trying to kill the monster of the week, you're not rooting for that monster. You want those kids with attitude to punch that monster in the face with a sword.

A recap is not the point of a review. A review should let the reader know what the reviewer liked and disliked about the thing. For something like a video game, this would be graphics, gameplay systems, story, sound, replayability, etc. If a game review went level by level describing what the reviewer did, it would be a terrible review. At that point it's just a written Let's Play. For movies if you spend most of it just recapping the plot, then saying if you liked it, that's just a Wikipedia page Story section and a rating.   All this and more on this week's episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!