NOT WOKE SHOWS: Ruthless Podcast

Becky Soto

+6 clout

Sep 14, 2026

I put the Ruthless Podcast on while I was folding laundry that had been sitting in the basket so long the socks had unionized, and three hours later I looked up and the laundry was still unfolded and I had laughed myself into a weird little side cramp. Smug, Holmes, Duncan, and Ashbrook. Four guys who look like they carpool to the same slightly stained Republican barbecue and somehow it works. They call it a variety progrum and I love that they lean into the misspelling like it's a family crest. It is news, fake news, gripes, interviews, and a whole lot of ribbing each other that lands somewhere between locker room and group chat that never ends. I kept waiting for the polished cable-news cadence and it never came, which is the point. They just barrel through the day like four buddies who got a mics budget and decided no one gets shelter. I cackled when Smug went off on the pot-smoking seniors and told the cops to send the SWAT like it was a hostage situation at a bingo hall. I am probably remembering the line wrong but in my head it was "roll the tanks, Grandma's got the munchies," and I laughed so hard the neighbor's dog started barking back at me. There is a soft spot in me for dopes and sidekicks and this crew is swimming in them, including themselves. Duncan will go on a tear about something tiny until you realize he has accidentally made a decent point under the rant. Holmes and Ashbrook bounce between straight man and chaos agent depending on the segment. Smug is the one who holds the room even when he's gone half the week, which of course made one boomer listener write in about how real men used to clock in the morning after the baby was born. That email made me snort coffee. The whole progrum has that feel: they read the room, roast the room, then roast each other for reading the room wrong. Production is sharper than the seedy-young-Republican look would suggest. Sound is clean, the interviews actually land, guests get room to talk without the gotcha theater. When they do sit somebody down it feels like a conversation instead of a press release. Then they swing right back into blowing some micro-scandal into a morality play and half the time it is ridiculous and half the time it is weirdly clarifying. I kept muttering "oh come on" and then two minutes later I was nodding like yeah okay that part tracks. Not every stretch works. Some episodes after the Biden stretch have a flatter energy, like the sharks got jumped and now they are just thrashing in the shallows owning the same libs on loop. One of them has a laugh that could shatter glass at thirty paces and another mumbles like he is confiding state secrets to his sleeve. The runtime can sprawl. Twenty percent meat, sixty percent them entertaining themselves, twenty percent leftover gravy. I get why some people bail after the twentieth cackle at a line that was only mildly funny. I also get why others put it on for every walk and every dinner prep. It is ambient companionship with opinions, which is rarer than it should be once Rush left the building. I do not need them to be profound every minute. I need them to sound like they are having more fun than the people they are mocking, and mostly they do. They will trash a RINO then forget to name the exact vote that made them mad and a listener will come unglued in the comments and somehow that is part of the charm too. The fellas are not performing purity. They are performing "we showed up and the mic is hot." Sometimes that means kitten mittens for their own side's screwups. Sometimes it means kicking conspiracy fringe out of the tent without a funeral. I appreciated the latter more than I expected. What keeps me coming back is the variety promise. One stretch is pure politics chew-toy, next is some dumb viral nothing that they treat like Watergate, next is an actual informative sit-down, next is four guys arguing about who is the least useful member of the least useful majority. It feels lived-in. Like somebody left the garage door open and the neighborhood wandered in. I quoted somebody in my notes as saying "there is no shelter for anyone" and then immediately misremembered it as "no safe spaces and also no safe couches," which is not what they said, but it is the vibe. Would I call it the hottest most accurate thing on the planet? No. Would I call it a reliable place to get lightly bruised by the news without the lecturing tone that makes me want to throw my earbuds out a car window? Yes. The laughter is too loud sometimes. The moral judgment on minutia can tip into satire of itself. The guys look exactly as seedy as the description promises. And still I finished a whole week of episodes with a smile and a slight sense that the world is ridiculous enough that four dopes with mics might be the correct dosage. If you want somber think-tank seriousness, keep walking. If you want a progrum that will talk over itself, snort at its own jokes, then suddenly land a clean observation about socialists who do not need the softener word Democrat in front of the label, this is your walk soundtrack. I regretted about half my own exclamation points while typing this and left them anyway because that is how the thing made me feel. Enthusiastic. Mildly annoyed. Weirdly fond of the sidekicks. Still folding the laundry tomorrow. Three stars that are honestly more like three-and-a-half on a day when the cackle stays under control and the interviews cook. Your mileage, as always, will vary with your tolerance for guys who refuse to act impressed by themselves even when they kind of are.

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A review is on the record even before the verdict. The title still needs 90% of members not labeling it woke before a review can put it in the catalog.

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Becky Soto
+6 clout
Sep 14, 2026
I put the Ruthless Podcast on while I was folding laundry that had been sitting in the basket so long the socks had unionized, and three hours later I looked up and the laundry was still unfolded and I had laughed myself into a weird little side cramp. Smug, Holmes, Duncan, and Ashbrook. Four guys who look like they carpool to the same slightly stained Republican barbecue and somehow it works. They call it a variety progrum and I love that they lean into the misspelling like it's a family crest. It is news, fake news, gripes, interviews, and a whole lot of ribbing each other that lands somewhere between locker room and group chat that never ends. I kept waiting for the polished cable-news cadence and it never came, which is the point. They just barrel through the day like four buddies who got a mics budget and decided no one gets shelter. I cackled when Smug went off on the pot-smoking seniors and told the cops to send the SWAT like it was a hostage situation at a bingo hall. I am probably remembering the line wrong but in my head it was "roll the tanks, Grandma's got the munchies," and I laughed so hard the neighbor's dog started barking back at me. There is a soft spot in me for dopes and sidekicks and this crew is swimming in them, including themselves. Duncan will go on a tear about something tiny until you realize he has accidentally made a decent point under the rant. Holmes and Ashbrook bounce between straight man and chaos agent depending on the segment. Smug is the one who holds the room even when he's gone half the week, which of course made one boomer listener write in about how real men used to clock in the morning after the baby was born. That email made me snort coffee. The whole progrum has that feel: they read the room, roast the room, then roast each other for reading the room wrong. Production is sharper than the seedy-young-Republican look would suggest. Sound is clean, the interviews actually land, guests get room to talk without the gotcha theater. When they do sit somebody down it feels like a conversation instead of a press release. Then they swing right back into blowing some micro-scandal into a morality play and half the time it is ridiculous and half the time it is weirdly clarifying. I kept muttering "oh come on" and then two minutes later I was nodding like yeah okay that part tracks. Not every stretch works. Some episodes after the Biden stretch have a flatter energy, like the sharks got jumped and now they are just thrashing in the shallows owning the same libs on loop. One of them has a laugh that could shatter glass at thirty paces and another mumbles like he is confiding state secrets to his sleeve. The runtime can sprawl. Twenty percent meat, sixty percent them entertaining themselves, twenty percent leftover gravy. I get why some people bail after the twentieth cackle at a line that was only mildly funny. I also get why others put it on for every walk and every dinner prep. It is ambient companionship with opinions, which is rarer than it should be once Rush left the building. I do not need them to be profound every minute. I need them to sound like they are having more fun than the people they are mocking, and mostly they do. They will trash a RINO then forget to name the exact vote that made them mad and a listener will come unglued in the comments and somehow that is part of the charm too. The fellas are not performing purity. They are performing "we showed up and the mic is hot." Sometimes that means kitten mittens for their own side's screwups. Sometimes it means kicking conspiracy fringe out of the tent without a funeral. I appreciated the latter more than I expected. What keeps me coming back is the variety promise. One stretch is pure politics chew-toy, next is some dumb viral nothing that they treat like Watergate, next is an actual informative sit-down, next is four guys arguing about who is the least useful member of the least useful majority. It feels lived-in. Like somebody left the garage door open and the neighborhood wandered in. I quoted somebody in my notes as saying "there is no shelter for anyone" and then immediately misremembered it as "no safe spaces and also no safe couches," which is not what they said, but it is the vibe. Would I call it the hottest most accurate thing on the planet? No. Would I call it a reliable place to get lightly bruised by the news without the lecturing tone that makes me want to throw my earbuds out a car window? Yes. The laughter is too loud sometimes. The moral judgment on minutia can tip into satire of itself. The guys look exactly as seedy as the description promises. And still I finished a whole week of episodes with a smile and a slight sense that the world is ridiculous enough that four dopes with mics might be the correct dosage. If you want somber think-tank seriousness, keep walking. If you want a progrum that will talk over itself, snort at its own jokes, then suddenly land a clean observation about socialists who do not need the softener word Democrat in front of the label, this is your walk soundtrack. I regretted about half my own exclamation points while typing this and left them anyway because that is how the thing made me feel. Enthusiastic. Mildly annoyed. Weirdly fond of the sidekicks. Still folding the laundry tomorrow. Three stars that are honestly more like three-and-a-half on a day when the cackle stays under control and the interviews cook. Your mileage, as always, will vary with your tolerance for guys who refuse to act impressed by themselves even when they kind of are.
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