Autocratic Despair: The Podcast
Stare into the abyss of the United States' descent into Authoritarianism with a truly funny comedian from Green Bay, WI and a very serious PHD in Global Fascism Studies from Cal-Berkeley.
Very Funny. Very Serious.
Episodes
22 episodes
Tucker Carlson Is Not Joking
Nick Mortensen and Dr. Craig Johnson open the week split. Craig comes back from a weekend in the wilderness at a four personally, then looks at the rest of the planet and lands on a six — the Middle East, Trump's fraying relationships with alli...
Trump's Hair Was a Longtime Subscriber to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter
This week opens not with despair but with vanity — specifically, the sudden and much-discussed fullness of the President's hair. Somewhere around the Vegas speech, Trump's hairline staged a comeback that the internet spent a full week arguing a...
Sluggish Schizophrenia = Trump Derangement Syndrome?
We open, as always, by taking our own temperature. Dr. Craig lands on a five and immediately gets talked up to a six, because he started rubbing his eyes thirty seconds in and Nick knows a bamboozle when he sees one. What's eating Craig isn't e...
Curtis Yarvin & Mike Gallagher Run Into Dr. Craig & Nick
This week is about a question neither of us expected to spend an episode on: what do you actually do when you find yourself sharing a room with someone who's helping build the thing you're terrified of? Not online. Not in the abstract. In your ...
Hunter Biden & Nick Fuentes Walk Into a Hotel Room
This week's episode opens with an unusual reading on the despair scale: Dr. Craig is mellow, down to four, buoyed — improbably — by the conclusion of the World Cup & whatever fleeting sense of global togetherness a tournament can still prod...
Gruff Leftist Sweetheart Jared Yates Sexton
Dr. Craig is out this week. Turkish hair surgery. Sitting in for him is Jared Yates Sexton, and he's been staring into this particular abyss a lot longer than I have.On June 14th, 2016, Jared was a creative writing professo...
Beefin' With The Bulwark
This week on Autocratic Despair, the comedy podcast about surviving American authoritarianism, Nick Mortensen and Dr. Craig run a leaner three-segment episode — and it opens on the hardest one, because it's the one that hurt. Graham Pl...
Been Living Off Wealth
This week on Autocratic Despair, the comedy podcast about surviving American authoritarianism, Nick Mortensen and Dr. Craig open on a rare thing in 2026: a piece of good news, delivered with a knife in it. The Supreme Court handed down...
America. Do Something About It.
This week on Autocratic Despair, the comedy podcast about surviving American authoritarianism, Nick Mortensen and Dr. Craig open on the strangest sales pitch in the country: Dana White, the UFC boss, in a Chevrolet ad, informing Americ...
Higher & Wider.
Craig's back from the desert and stuck at a four — buoyed by the World Cup, dragged down by the "National State Fair" spectacle. Nick's at a seven, and it's one man's fault.We open on Elon Musk, who in a single week became the world's fi...
Oops! All Talarico Talk
We had a whole episode planned. A Delaney Hall follow-up with court receipts. A cold open about a flesh-eating parasite crawling north through Texas. A thing about active clubs. And then, on Monday, James Talarico opened his mouth on a podcast ...
The World Doesn't Stop...But it Should
DR. Craig returns from the wilderness this week — literally. After a week in the desert painting rocks, running trails, and pointedly not looking at his phone, he comes back with a thesis: the internet is brain poison. Short-form content in par...
Dave Troy Sounds Off
S-Tier Autocracy Knower Dave Troy sits in for Craig this week while Dr. Craig is on assignment (Turkish Hair Restoration Surgery). Troy is a technology entrepreneur, investigative journalist, and the proprietor of America 2.0 an...
The Rizz Minister Has Been Getting it On!
This week on the Autocratic Despair podcast — a comedy about fascism, autocracy, and trying to have fun while the country falls apart — Nick opens at a seven on the despair scale after walking through the tailgate scene at Lambeau Field during ...
A Whole Potato or a "Hole in a Potato"?
In which the boys debut a new shorthand for the show's central feeling: the moment you realize there are now so many golden statues of Donald Trump scattered across his Florida golf courses that when someone mentions one, you have to ask wh...
Is That How You Get Your Jollies?
Episode 1 of Autocratic Despair opens with co-hosts Nick and Dr. Craig Johnson defining the show's central concept through two visceral scenarios: the reluctance to celebrate the Fourth of July without seeming to endorse the regime, an...
Preview: Dr. Craig is Fun at Parties
This week on the Autocratic Despair podcast, Nick and Dr. Craig take an unusually nuanced look at Cole Allen — the 31-year-old Caltech-educated tutor from Torrance, California who charged a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents'...
Preview: Uncle Energy + All Aboard the Talarico Train
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 t...
Preview: The Prairieland Railroading Happening Right Now
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.<...
Preview: Has Seth Rollins Gone Fashwave?
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 Desp...
Preview: Danhausen as the New Guy Fawkes?
In this preview episode of the Autocratic Despair podcast, host Nick Mortensen introduces Dr. Craig to Danhausen — a magical fun character from the WWE who is about to sweep the nation. Danhausen paints his face black and white, looks like a ca...