This week on another preview episode of the Autocratic Despair podcast, Nick and Dr. Craig start with a confession: they both enjoyed the Atlantic's report on FBI Director Kash Patel's alleged drinking problem a little too much. And they want to talk about why that enjoyment felt so good and so rotten at the same time.

The Atlantic published a bombshell investigation alleging that Patel — the man running the agency that just convicted eight Americans of terrorism for wearing black clothes — has been drinking to the point of obvious intoxication, missing mornings, going unreachable behind locked doors, and panicking when his computer froze because he thought he'd been fired. More than two dozen current and former officials spoke to the reporter. Patel has denied everything and filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit.

Nick and Craig sit with two reactions. The first is a flicker of hope disguised as schadenfreude: if Patel is drinking like that, maybe some part of him knows what he's doing is wrong. Maybe the substance abuse is the last remaining signal from a conscience that hasn't been fully extinguished — shame metabolizing itself as vodka because it has nowhere else to go. The second reaction is darker: since when do we take pleasure in someone's self-destruction? These are not the people Nick and Craig were three years ago. The show examines how sustained exposure to authoritarian cruelty has quietly recalibrated what its hosts are willing to enjoy, and whether noticing that recalibration is enough to reverse it.

A quick update on the Prairieland case: Judge Pittman has still not ruled on the defense motion for a new trial based on allegations of jury coercion. Meanwhile, a second legal thread has emerged — Benjamin Song's attorney has filed a motion arguing a Brady violation, alleging the prosecution failed to disclose that the wounded police officer drew his weapon before anyone fired. That fact only came out during the officer's own testimony at trial. Sentencing is scheduled for June 18. The clock is running. The names still need saying.

Then the show goes meta. Nick and Craig talk directly to their preview audience about what they're building, where the show is headed, and why Talarico Talk is the spine of the whole project. The weekly segment in which the hosts foolishly pin their hopes on a very normal yet annoyingly religious politician from Texas isn't a sidebar. It's the thing that keeps the show from collapsing into pure despair. The congregation is forming. The Talarico train is boarding. America has a Talarico-shaped hole. Nick and Craig want you on board — not because Talarico is a savior, but because the exercise of hoping for something specific is itself a form of resistance.

The episode closes with Nick offering extended and unsolicited advice on how to be a better uncle. Not necessarily a biological uncle — though that counts. Nick argues that "Unclng arts" are dying in America and that reviving them is one of the few things you can do this week that will make the world measurably better. Step one: avail yourself of the cornucopia of nicknames available for addressing children. These include but are not limited to: kid, big dog, chief, champ, and boss. Nick has opinions about when to deploy each one. He shares them whether you asked or not.

Names said on this episode: Kash Patel, Cameron Arnold, Zachary Evetts, Savanna Batten, Bradford Morris, Maricela Rueda, Elizabeth Soto, Ines Soto, Benjamin Song, James Talarico, Herman Bailey, Champ Bailey, Boss Bailey, Glenn "Big Dog" Robinson, Ray Allen, Jon Ossoff, Roy Cooper, Beto O'rourke, Colin Allred, Ken Paxton, John Cornryn.

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The Autocratic Despair Podcast launches in May. Until then, enjoy this practice episode.

This week on Autocratic Despair, Nick and Dr. Craig open with something they haven't been able to do very often on this show: celebrate.

On April 12, Viktor Orbán — the international model for how to dismantle a democracy from inside one — conceded defeat in Hungary's parliamentary election after sixteen years in power. Péter Magyar's Tisza party won in a landslide, taking 138 of 199 seats on 53.6% of the vote, giving Magyar the two-thirds supermajority needed to amend Hungary's constitution.

The celebration is tempered by what Craig knows from his scholarship: that defeating an authoritarian at the ballot box is the beginning of the work, not the end, and that the institutional damage Orbán did over sixteen years — to the judiciary, to the media, to the constitution itself — will take a generation to repair even with a supermajority. But for one week, the show allows itself to note that the thing they've been telling their audience is possible — voting an authoritarian out of power — actually happened, in a country where the system was even more rigged than it is here.

Then the episode pivots to the story that brought Nick to an eight on the despair scale this week.

An explosive new report by journalist Kris Hermes on the independent news site Unicorn Riot has surfaced disturbing new details about the Prairieland terrorism case in Fort Worth, Texas — the landmark trial in which eight Americans were convicted of providing material support for terrorism for wearing black clothing to a protest outside an ICE detention center. For listeners unfamiliar with the case, Nick walks through the full story from the beginning: the July 4, 2025 protest at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas; the shooting that wounded a police officer; the unprecedented federal terrorism charges against eight people based on their clothing; the verdict on March 13; and the Attorney General's promise that "this will not be the last."

The Unicorn Riot report adds a new dimension: credible allegations that the jury may have been coerced. Amber Lowrey, sister of defendant Savanna Batten, describes hearing a "loud uproar" from the jury room about an hour before the verdict — sustained yelling audible in the hallway. Two male jurors were visibly crying when the verdict was read. . A paralegal named Tamera Hutcherson confirmed the fight occurred. Defense attorney Christopher Tolbert has filed a post-verdict motion for a new trial, arguing juror misconduct and possible coercion.

Nick and Craig then examine the federal judge who will decide the motion: Mark Pittman, a Trump-appointed Federalist Society founding member whose conduct during the trial included sanctioning defense lawyers for filing routine motions, declaring a mistrial over a Black defense attorney's Jesse Jackson memorial t-shirt on the day Jackson died, personally controlling all jury selection questioning, blocking the primary defendant from using a self-defense argument, and sealing the wounded officer's medical records from the jury.

The episode closes with an honest accounting of what is known and what isn't. The defense motion is pending. Judge Pittman could rule any day. Eighteen more Prairieland defendants face state-level trials, with the first scheduled for April 20. The question the episode leaves with the audience is whether the self-correction mechanisms of the American legal system still function — whether the courts can catch and reverse their own errors when the government has decided to call protest a form of terrorism.

Names said on this episode: Cameron Arnold, Zachary Evetts, Savanna Batten, Bradford Morris, Maricela Rueda, Elizabeth Soto, Ines Soto, Benjamin Song, Amber Lowrey, Christopher Tolbert, Tamera Hutcher

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When the weight of watching democracy erode gets to be too much, where do you go? In this episode, Nick and Dr. Craig Johnson explore the surprisingly serious topic of retreating into childhood comforts as a coping mechanism for Autocratic Despair — and why that instinct might be healthier than it sounds.

Then things get strange in the best possible way. Nick makes the case that WWE superstar Seth Rollins has become an unlikely avatar of the "Fashwave" aesthetic — the eerie intersection of authoritarian visual language and ironic pop culture — and Dr. Craig is forced to reckon with what that means.

Plus: Dr. Craig comes clean about his hobby. Turns out the man who wrote the book on fascism spends his free time painting miniature Warhammer figurines — and honestly, it makes complete sense.

***Dr. Craig and Nick wish to assure you that we do not mention professional wrestling in every episode.***

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