Behind the Bastards podcast
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 4 of 42 podcasts by recommenders
Long-running history podcast whose episodes on niche figures, movements and events people recommend as well-researched and entertaining.
Long-running history podcast whose episodes on niche figures, movements and events people recommend as well-researched and entertaining.
19 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 18
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 95%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 18 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 18 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Well-researched deep dives on historical episodes
“has a pretty good couple of episodes on this little corner of history”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “De-dollarization: Is the US dollar losing its dominance?” “does a pretty good job of covering the School of the Americas”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices” “did a good two-parter on Thiel's lectures”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Peter Thiel's Antichrist Lectures” - Comment from 15 Oct 2026 in “Why is every rationalist blog post way too long?”
- Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified”
- Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “'Dilbert' creator Scott Adams dies at 68 after prostate cancer battle”
Episodes on Thiel, Maxwell and Zuckerberg
“there's a great Behind the Bastards episode on Robert Maxwell”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient and growing” “Robert Evans recently did a decent summary of Thiel's project”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse” “has a great episode on Zuck, worth a listen”
Comment from 18 Aug 2026 in “Meta Files Patent for Facial Recognition, Automatic Recording of People” - Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Peter Thiel's Antichrist Lectures”
Covers rationalist community and Zizians
“if you want to really be confronted by the personal histories of some people who went really far down the rationalist rabbit hole”
Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “Sex, AI, and the Apocalypse” “the series makes a decent argument that the Zizians were simply the result of taking the ideology to its rational conclusion”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “My falling-out with the rationalist community” “Can also recommend the behind the bastards episodes about this, maybe not as accurate as Carlin but more humourous.”
Comment from 27 Feb 2026 in “Google Workers Seek 'Red Lines' on Military A.I., Echoing Anthropic” Entertaining and funny despite serious topics
“Can also recommend the behind the bastards episodes about this, maybe not as accurate as Carlin but more humourous.”
Comment from 27 Feb 2026 in “Google Workers Seek 'Red Lines' on Military A.I., Echoing Anthropic” “Sweet, I love Behind the Bastards, thanks for providing the entertainment for my next few walks”
Comment from 19 Aug 2026 in “Civic Hygiene – avoid building technologies that could be used by a police state (2013)” “they were quite entertaining”
Comment from 18 Mar 2026 in “Peter Thiel Fears the Antichrist Is Coming”
Other podcasts people recommend
The four most recommended other podcasts, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dwarkesh Podcast | 29 | 8 | 78% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Oxide and Friends | 26 | 3 | 90% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Acquired podcast | 25 | 0 | 100% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Behind the Bastards podcastThis page | 18 | 1 | 95% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Mindscape podcast by Sean Carroll | 18 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | Approved |
What people said
19 of the 20 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“do a fairly well-cited dive into it”
“if you want to really be confronted by the personal histories of some people who went really far down the rationalist rabbit hole”
“Sweet, I love Behind the Bastards, thanks for providing the entertainment for my next few walks”
“has a great episode on Zuck, worth a listen”
“Rationalists should really watch this video”
“the series makes a decent argument that the Zizians were simply the result of taking the ideology to its rational conclusion”
“does a pretty good job of covering the School of the Americas”
“raising some excellent points about how LLMs have ingested a lot of cult leader material”
“There's an interesting Behind the Bastards podcast about the rise of incel culture and its push into mainstream.”
“by God this podcast (quite popular I hear) is insufferable”
“they were quite entertaining”
“did a good two-parter on Thiel's lectures”
“there's a great Behind the Bastards episode on Robert Maxwell”
“Can also recommend the behind the bastards episodes about this, maybe not as accurate as Carlin but more humourous.”
“has a pretty good couple of episodes on this little corner of history”
“If you want to dig down deeper into his past, you can listen to a 2 part episode”
“did an interesting episode on him”
“had a great series about this too”
“Robert Evans recently did a decent summary of Thiel's project”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.