Doomed Planet

#125: In her new book, billionaire heiress Melinda Gates tries to present herself as a good human being with an interesting life and the same challenges normal people face. The Next Day: Transitions, Change and Moving Forward is a banal self-indulgent brag rag crammed with cliches and soured by boring, bad writing. It betrays a profound lack of self awareness. Being a billionaire is not a feminist concept - especially if you are known to fight capital gains taxes that would directly benefit working mothers.   Sponsored by Chop Mart - America's Guillotine Superstore!

#124: Proud to announce that the Doomed Planet podcast has a new sponsor: Chop Mart! Earth burns while  Billionaires earn We're living in tents Fuck the government Society's deranged Time for radical change Sharpen the blades We're going to Hades It's guillotine time! Get in line! Chop Mart - America's Guillotine Superstore

"Sadistic and greedy quack" Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard starved people to death at her makeshift sanatorium, called "Starvation Heights" by the locals. Hazzard's nonsensical, dangerously misguided book Fasting for the Cure of Disease (1908) was a best seller. Among her victims was Daisey Maud Haglund, the mother of Seattle restaurateur and king of publicity stunts Ivar Haglund.  

#122: Saudi-financed Lucid Motors is losing the race when it comes to providing electric cars for rich people. Lucid's former CEO received a 379 million dollar pay package and then resigned, and the stock tanked. Amazon-backed Rival car producer Rivian's stock is also doing poorly, and the share price of crazy guy Elon Musk's Tesla has plummeted as well. The most offensive aspect of these American electric car companies is their marketing. Is buying a $100,000 sports car or SUV really going to save the earth?

#121: Security consultant to the stars Gavin de Becker provides protection for cartoonish billionaire supervillains Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and contributed millions to Robert F. Kennedy. He claims that his secretive MOSAIC threat assessment surveillance system can predict violence before it happens. The title of his best selling pseudo scientific pop sociology advice book The Gift of Fear says it all - the more paranoid people become the more money he makes.    

#120: British social climber Tina Brown spent the 1980s in New York City thriving in a decadent world of crass rich people so repulsive that they would make today's gilded age plutocrats blush. Her book The Vanity Fair Diaries (2017) is a horror show of celebrity worship, Kissinger worship and Reagan worship. It's a slavish hagiography that deifies her former corporate masters and their Wall Street cronies.   Also: Introducing Wild World News - a new segment about the insane neoliberal technofeudalist agendas being pimped by politicians and the corporate media on behalf of their billionaire overlords. Or, you could also just call it a monthly wrap-up of the opinions posted to our Twitter/X feed, which can be found @wildworldnews.

#119: A celebration of the great and not so great people that left us last year. The lovely thing about obituaries is that they are a joyous remembrance for those that made the world a better place. Obituaries fill us with even more joy by reminding us that people who were evil can no longer inflict pain and suffering upon humanity. PLUS: A look back at Doomed Planet season 5, where we tackled unpleasant subjects such as the America's Most Wanted reboot, PornHub, the new Road House movie, Kamala's crusade of cringe, fentanyl voyeurism and Zapped - a story about aliens who assassinate bad people in a mission to help save the human race. Prescient! Doomed Planet - Obituaries for the Damned.  

#118: Those who expected genocide supporting cop Kamala Harris to win the presidency are now unburdened by the November that has been. The memestock presidency of genocide cheerleader Donald Trump and his crypto-fascist crypto enthusiast sidekick Elon Musk begins on January 20. Kamala Harris voters chose to put their blinders on and ignore the horrors of the Biden/Harris presidency and now they are sad. The billionaires that run things will now ramp up their avaricious pillaging. The dying American empire has become a chaotic torrent of speculation, fraud and genocide. Caitlin Johnstone said recently that "What we all want, deep down, is a truth-based relationship with reality. We might not be aware that this is what we are seeking from life, but it is. And everything in our society is stacked against our ever getting it." You think reality sucks now? Just wait until next year. PLUS! Roll out the guillotines! A quick peek at Town & Country magazine, which has been poisoning the minds of the rich — and the people who wish they were rich — since 1901.

#117: Doomed Planet host Alex chats with his old prep school buddy Robert F. Kennedy Junior. A ghoulish journey through RFK's life as a druggie, environmentalist, anti-vaxxer and animal carcass fetishist. When Trump wins next week RFK Jr. (according to RFK Jr.) will take control of both the Agriculture Department and the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversee the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. What could go wrong?

#116: Alex takes a walk through fentanyl hell and talks with some people holding crack pipes and torches. Seattle's Little Saigon neighborhood is experiencing unprecedented drug activity - great fodder for right wing media pundits and politicians who are quick to blame but have no solutions. Meanwhile, local residents go on with their day.

#115: Holocaust Harris exists in the context of all the genocides she has lived and all the genocides that came before her. 

#114: Tough on crime! Ruff on fentanyl! A freaky look at the right wing liars, kooks and weirdos running for office in Washington State.  PLUS: Our exclusive interview with Senate candidate Goodspaceguy! Cut from one hour to ten minutes because he is ridiculous. See also:Doctor of Death Dave Reichert(Doomed Planet #109) Spacing Out with Goodspaceguy  (Doomed Planet #39)

Viewers of the Amazon MGM Studios remake of Road House are bombarded with images of beer brands including Blue Moon, Coors, Hamm's, Hop Valley, Miller and Pilsner Urquell - all owned by conglomerate Molson Coors. We have a gay old time reminiscing about the original Road House (1989) starring Patrick Swayze before examining the product placement strategies of Molson Coors. Road House 2024 is trashy, brilliant schlock with great acting, a silly story and countless scenes of brutal violence. Jake Gyllenhaal as a charming muscle-bound meathead punching his way through a beer intensive scenario provides the perfect vehicle for advertising alcoholic beverages to underage future consumers.

The genocidal Zionist settler colonial state of Israel is failing rapidly. The genocidal Zionist-supporting settler colonial state of America is failing rapidly too.

#111: Alum and ad agency psychopath Jason DeLand will give the commencement address at Ithaca College next month, but did you know people even more famous than him also went to the school? Rod Serling taught there and ABC News hair farmer David Muir is an alum. The coolest guy to ever walk the halls of Ithaca College was, of course, Gavin MacLeod - captain of the Love Boat.

#110: Friend of the pod Elaine joins us to talk about Zapped! - the wild new (yet to be written) science fiction movie about space aliens that murder people they consider to be bad for the future of the human race. Politicians, abusers, polluters, corporate criminals ... they all get ZAPPED!

#109: The person who spent 20 years not catching the Green River Killer is running for Governor of Washington State. Dave Reichert will lose - further burnishing his legacy as an incompetent cop and ridiculous right wing blowhard.

#108: What is Pornhub doing with our information, and what are we doing with their information? The truth will shock you and make you feel gross - like you just crawled out of a septic tank. From the days of Playboy to our current era of phone porn, the host of Doomed Planet has seen it all in real time, a unique qualification for leading this dark journey into Pornhub - one of the world's most popular websites.  PLUS: Seattle food Porn! Microsoft jillionaire Nathan Myhrvold's obsession with cookbooks for the rich, and a restaurant that serves organ meat to customers willing to pay $200 to sit in a tiny room facing a wall.

#107:  A rebooted America's Most Wanted features original tough guy host John Walsh and his son, wearing matching leather jackets. The first episode opened with the story of the murder of Adam Walsh, of course. We allege that the case is unsolved and that John Walsh is still a suspect. Kidnap/rape victim and child safety activist Elizabeth Smart was trotted out. Actors pretended to work the phones in the background. PLUS: Fox-TV copaganda minister Stephen Chao helped create America's Most Wanted and Cops - where is he now? In hell? AND: The origin story behind the Nirvana t-shirt with the smiley face logo that has taken TikTok by storm.

#106: A year of toxic train disasters, graffiti wars, billionaire romance fiction, Danny Bonaduce's retirement, the premiere of cult film Fantasy A Gets a Mattress, the last KISS concert, phallic clams, Seattle restaurant wage and tip theft, Instacart's Satanic IPO and the debut of Genocide Joe. Yuk!

#105: My lesbian friends and their degenerate black criminal associate arrived at my junk food feast. Then the bible-thrasher neighbor kid said a prayer thanking the aboriginals for dying of European diseases in great numbers before the settler-colonials from that part of the world were able to slaughter them, saving money on bullets and concentration camp construction costs. Parents in 1973 were giving their kids copious amounts of LSD - the only explanation for how I thought a beagle and a tiny wild animal could cook toast on Thanksgiving. Luckily, most suburban families back then owned nine toasters. I'd learn later that the dog and the bird had captured the bird's mother that day, killed her and then devoured her raw mutilated corpse. They fought viciously over her last remaining bone, then devoured a pumpkin pie flavored with her blood. This is Doomed Planet's contribution to Mechanical Freak's 5th Annual Thanksgiving Pageant Spectacular. Listen here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/5th-annual-thanksgiving-pageant-spectacular/id1383962204?i=1000636364516 --- Doomed Planet https://doomedplanet.libsyn.com/

#104: Surprise - the current President of the United States is a war criminal!

#103: Uncle Grandpa joins us to talk about Agents of Chaos - Sean Howe's great new biography of drug dealer, raconteur and High Times publisher Thomas King Forcade. Forcade was involved with many happening scenes: underground publishing, drug smuggling, the yippie movement, hippie capitalism, punk rock and, of course, High Times magazine, which was a culmination of all of those things, especially the drug smuggling.

#102: Gig economy food delivery startup Instacart has finally filed for an initial public offering. Sales peaked during the pandemic and are now flat, with little realistic growth on the horizon. An exploitative business model continues to harm the company's image and alienate employees. Formidable competitors have emerged, and relationships with supermarket corporations are tenuous. The founders and their venture capitalist sponsors will cash out, but not at the levels they dreamed of even a year ago. The Instacart I.P.O. will be a disaster for the drivers too - they get nothing.

#101: Seattle rock musicians who didn't live to see old age include the fabulous four - Jimi Hendrix, Curt Cobain, Layne Staley and Chris Cornell. We also pay tribute to lesser-known artists Andrew Wood, Stefanie Sargent, Mia Zapata, El Duce, Michael Dahlquist, Mike Starr, Mark Lanegan, Van Conner and Tom Hansen. PLUS: Honorable (not from Seattle) mentions to Kristen Pfaff, Shannon Hoon, John Saunders and Scott Weiland. SEE ALSO: #098: Visiting Jimi Hendrix at Greenwood Memorial Park #065: Curt Cobain's Juvenilia #059: Did Curt Cobain Eat Food? #045: Layne Staley's Lame Last Days #058: Chris Cornell's Icky Widow #025: Rock Star Wives: Mary Weiland #029: Notorious Seattle Junkies: Mark Lanegan This episode is dedicated to writer and musician Tom Hansen. (September 22, 1961 August 24, 2023) #024: Notorious Seattle Junkies: Tom Hansen

#100: Cheating workers from their pay is a common practice at restaurants. In Seattle, a new law has helped lawyers win big settlements for wage and tip theft victims. A mom and pop business engaged in this sort of fraud will probably not get sued, but if your food empire gets too big get ready. Canlis, Tom Douglas, Red Robin, Zeeks Pizza, Lowell's, Great State Burger and Pagliacci have all found out. Who is gonna be next? PLUS: A teen was hit and killed by the Seattle monorail while doing graffiti, which brought the trolls out from the wormwood. Greg & Brian from Mechanical Freak join us to ask "who is this hateful annoying voice saying awful things about a dead kid? Local right wing crank Ari Hoffman, of course!"  R.I.P. ANOM https://youtu.be/14LO6KpUqDw Mechanical Freak https://mechanicalfreak.website/

#099: Jane was bad with money, had a partner behind on child support and had substance abuse issues. Her downward spiral through our predatory financial system ended with a stay in rehab that her insurance didn't fully cover - putting her deeper in the hole.

#098: We tour a cemetery and see rabbits, gated communities for the deceased and a lavish monument to Seattle guitarist Jimi Hendrix. PLUS: Mulletsploitation films American Movie, The Dancing Outlaw, Heavy Metal Parking Lot and Demon Lover Diary.

#097: Fantasy A Gets a Mattress is a charming guerrilla horror comedy that, like any great art, creates an oddball mood. This celebration of postering and graffiti set in a post-apocalyptic Seattle dreamscape populated with endearing social outcasts is a triumph of no budget filmmaking. More info about FAGAM: https://www.drcleanproductions.com/graffiti

#096: Friend of the pod Elaine joins us to discuss the lies in tough on crime rich guy rock star Duff McKagan's autobiography It's So Easy and Other Lies. Has the world finally had enough of Duff? Find out as we dish out the Duff love. See also: Notorious Seattle Boozers: Erica C. Barnett Notorious Seattle Junkies: Tom Hansen Notorious Seattle Junkies: Mark Lanegan

#095: Chauncey Wright turned his Klondike gold rush grub stake into a profitable Seattle restaurant empire despite being known to never deny a broke, hungry man a free meal. He pioneered the eight hour restaurant shift and paid his staff the same rate as they had been earning for a ten hour day. He died young, his widow Annie married a drunkard, and the Chauncey Wright Restaurants Company was taken over by Hazen J. Titus - a marketing guy from the Northern Pacific Railroad who promoted giant baked potatoes and Wright-branded fruitcakes. Annie continued to maintain the Wright restaurant in the Smith Tower - at the time the tallest building West of the Mississippi and the tallest building on the West Coast until the space Needle was completed in 1962.

#094: The Gooey Duck Song was a regional hit inspired by the geoduck, a giant mollusk named by aboriginals for it's phallic appearance.  ALSO: Evergreen college claimed the geoduck as it's mascot in 1971. The Gooey Duck song became a standard campfire ditty for Washington State summer camp kids. Koch brothers lackey Mike Rowe defiled a geoduck corpse on his reality TV show. PLUS: Obituaries for the damned! We asked Chat GPT to write farewell songs for Berlusconi, Watt and the Unabomber.

#093: Model and actor Carrie Stevens writes about her long-term open relationship with Kiss drummer Eric Carr in Unrated: Revelations of a Rock 'n' Roll Centerfold. This unabashed autobiography fits squarely in the "rock groupie with a poor understanding of feminism" genre. If you're a really good-looking but not talented young person looking to leave small town America for a career in big city showbiz read this book first before making any decisions. Some of her sage advice: Don't drop out of school, don't join a harem and don't pose for Playboy.

#092: A dive into Filmlandia! - David Schmader's hilarious guide to Pacific Northwest movies, including Class of 1999 (1990) - about a violent Seattle high school staffed by cyborgs, and horse bestiality art film Zoo (2007). Richard Pryor's "star-packed garbage picture" Bustin' Loose (1981) was shot in Washington State. War Games (1983) is about "a teenage computer whiz presciently located in a Seattle suburb." John Wayne played a "hippie-stomping" Seattle cop in McQ (1974). If you fetishize Pacific Northwest movies you'll go hard for Filmlandia!

#091: Billionaire owner of trailer parks and destroyer of newspaper worlds Sam "the grave dancer" Zell has taken his last ride. PLUS: Podcast shoutout to Ironweeds out of Troy, New York. One of the hosts is the author of The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America. ALSO: Anti-abortion goblin Mark Gietzen lost his right to life in a plane crash.  

#090: Journalist Robert Evans of the Behind the Bastards podcast probably won't ever do an episode about the late Clear Channel Communications founder Lowry L. Mays because Evans sold his podcast empire to iHeartMedia, formerly known as Clear Channel Communications. A wise man does not bite the (posthumous) hand that feeds him. In this episode I throw shade on right wing Christian Texas billionaire and radio homogenizer Lowry L. Mays while showering appreciation on controversial writer, activist and podcaster Robert Evans. Much of the iHeartMedia-sponsored left-leaning content Evans produces nowadays would make Lowry L. Mays turn over in his grave, and that is cool news.

#89: Private equity billionaire Thomas H. Lee is best known for buying and flipping Snapple, a sugary tea brand, and working with Wall Street ghoul Mitt Romney to acquire Dunkin Donuts. He profited from an investment in Aramark, which provides food services to prisons. Lee (was) living proof that Wall Street is predatory, parasitic and inhuman.

#088: Red-nosed robber baron J.P. Morgan chain smoked eight inch cigars and ate three dozen oysters every morning. PLUS: Ray Dolby made a billion bucks using his great brain (and money-loving heart) to revolutionize the music industry. Do his heirs who now control the family fortune pay their fair share in taxes?

#087: Olivia Hayle has made millions of dollars selling her formulaic billionaire romance novels on Amazon. This is her smutty story.

#086: Our Bad Billionaires series continues with a peek at union-buster, misunderstander of basketball, irritating neighbor and producer of crappy coffee Howard Schultz. The great Seattle SuperSonics player Gary Payton once said that "Howard Schultz doesn't know sh*t about basketball." Schultz also doesn't know sh*t about being a decent human being.

#085: Special guest Graffiti Teen joins us to discuss Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell's misguided, performative battle against graffiti, how African-American themed murals in the Central District are window dressing for real estate developers, the arrest of EAGER and SATN, and Banksy's pro-NATO propaganda.

#084: On February 3rd a train derailed in East Palestine Ohio, catching fire and spilling hazardous chemicals. Three days later officials released vinyl chloride from the wreck in a "controlled burn." The disaster thrust Mayor Trent Conaway into the media spotlight, where he was caught between angry citizens and multiple government agencies insisting the town's water was safe to drink. In a stunt reminiscent of Obama's sip of Flint, Michigan water Conaway, Ohio EPA Director Anne Vogel, the Police Chief and Congressman Bill Johnson drank East Palestine faucet water. Conaway, a Trump supporter, is in way over his head.

#083: The Wild World News podcast network headquarters is located dangerously close to Seattle's Hillman City neighborhood - developed by lifelong bunco artist Clarence Hillman. During his scammy life Hillman ripped off countless gullible investors in Seattle and Southern California. He briefly served time in the notorious McNeil Island Prison, but was pardoned by President Howard Taft. NOTES: We talked about McNeil Island in episode #3  - Sex Offender Island. https://doomedplanet.libsyn.com/sex-offender-island Hillman City is adjacent to Columbia City, partially developed by another scammy bunco guy - Craig Dieffenbach, the subject of episode #30 - Seattle Scam Artist Craig Dieffenbach. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/seattle-scam-artist-craig-dieffenbach/id1489888555?i=1000477816143 Check out our new podcast: Bad Billionaires! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bad-billionaires/id1663331620

#82: Genial TikTok star Taylor LeJeune, who achieved fame by posting junk food consumption videos, died of a heart attack on January 11th. Taylor, known as Waffler69, lived in rural Louisiana, one of the poorest states in the USA, was obese, and had no teeth. Heart disease ran in his family. ALSO: Why fame will be fleeting for all TikTok stars, especially Cuttheactivist - a boozing comedian with a drinking problem that is no joke, and Nate Petroski - an off the grid homesteader with a $2500 espresso maker and a sponsorship from DoorDash. Check out our new podcast: Bad Billionaires! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bad-billionaires/id1663331620

Discover how capitalism's winners spend their fortunes and evade their taxes! Enter their dazzling, decadent world of luxury and excess! Money. Power. Yachts. Mansions. Private jets. Gold! Stocks! Bonds! Doomsday Bunkers! World domination. Eternal life! FAME! BAD BILLIONAIRES! Hi this is Alex R. Mayer, host of the brand new Bad Billionaires podcast. In 2005 I made a video movie called Paul Alien. It's a mockumentary about the now deceased Seattle Billionaire Paul Allen … but my fascination with the richest of the rich goes way back to my childhood. I had a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records and there was a picture of John D. Rockefeller giving away dimes. And even as a five year old I thought: “this motherf*cker is the richest person in the world and all he can give away is dimes?” And then of course I became obsessed with J. Paul Getty. Probably as depraved and evil as Elon Musk but at least Elon Musk is peddling electric cars. Getty's business was oil. And look where that has led us. I hope you tune in to Bad Billionaires. Coming soon.

#081: Fake charities, Curt Cobain's bad art, Margaritaville, mass murder, Anne Heche's grisly demise, suburban lawns, beheadings, dying weekly newspapers and dive bar owning sex offenders: Our 3rd season lampooned the worst of America. The Doomed Planet Podcast: Documenting the dastardly deeds of criminals in Seattle and beyond since 2020.

#080: The Mecca Cafe was once owned by curmudgeon Dick Smith and is now run by entrepreneur and accused serial-rapist David Meinert.

#079: Stuart Elway has been practicing the dark art of polling since 1975. Elway has worked for almost every major local corporation, advancing their pro-business agendas with often misleading push polls containing deceptive questions and incorrect information. PLUS: Podcaster, writer and expert on the history of American policing Brian Platt examines a recent Elway poll about Seattle crime. "Polling is marketing. Polling exists to justify the already existing political positions of the customer who ordered the poll."

#078: In March 2020 Seattle alt-weekly newspaper the Stranger published their last print edition. We take a look at that issue (warning: Katie Herzog alert) and also examine the paper's late 1990s golden age. ALSO: R.I.P. Seattle raconteur Tom Chamberlin, and a sneak preview of our episode about unscientific local pollster Stuart Elway.

#077: Halloween Special! An airplane's propeller killed Robert J. Scoggins Baby Eddie Bosley was beheaded by a train Thaddeus Ward lost his noggin to a sawmill Ruth Demerritt's body was found in the rain Seattle hunters noticed a head that was chopped An “Oriental” died on an execution block Ida Hartley was decapitated with a bolo knife While the neighbors screamed Seattle Mayor Gill symbolically beheaded the city rat catching team  

#076: Why suburbs and the lawns that go with them are insane. PLUS: Caged meth babies, Uncle Grandpa reviews the Impossible Sausage, shoutouts to the Mechanical Freak podcast, J. Paul Getty's disease and an obituary for the guy who invented McMansions.