Ep. 227: Hold On To Your Tinfoil Hats

EQ: How can we hold onto necessary joy in the midst of fascistic dread and existential horrors and alleviate the guilt associated with maintaining healthy boundaries with the daily news?

In this episode, we try to make sense of a truly unhinged February 2026 news cycle, from the slow drip of the Epstein files to the ongoing denials and distractions from Donald Trump, and the growing fear around a militarized federal police force after ICE killings in Minneapolis. We talk through what it feels like to watch the U.S. unravel in real time, including the inside outside perspective of being American abroad, how people in our lives are actually talking about the news, and where current events are quietly (or loudly) breaking relationships. Even cultural touchstones like the Super Bowl feel heavy right now, and we sit with how exhausting it is to live through overlapping crises and nonstop distraction. We also wrestle with all the unverified claims circulating online and how hard it is to filter what we are seeing, while still making the case for rest, small joys, dark humor, and showing up where we can as a way to stay human in a moment that feels overwhelming and absurd.

Do Your Fudging Homework

• Annie: Find your glimmers of joy and hope right now. They don’t have to be big, but they have to be yours. Chase after them. 

• Hope: Book from a long time ago “Hope in the Dark”, Rebecca Solnit, Rebecca Solnit makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Oscar nominations (Sinners, Train Dreams, Bugonia is weird an interesting); Moroccan baths folks. Go get scrubbed.