The Saddest Place In America Is Wherever The Washington Post Films This Podcast | Defector

"The Washington Post remains in the midst of its weird, cheap transformation into the world's most boring conservative newsletter. This is happening at the behest of owner Jeff Bezos, who decided that he was tired of owning one of the most storied newspapers in America, and instead wanted to publish something much dumber and worse. You can see Bezos's priorities most clearly in his gutting of the paper's workforce and the revamping of its opinion section, which has proclaimed that its mission is to celebrate and defend "personal liberties and free markets," which is something like the opposite of "stuff you can't get anywhere else.""

"As a result of that pivot, the section routinely publishes some of the worst writing in the country -dull, lazy, artless, and familiar. That section now also has a podcast, which really aims to test that format's ability to create parasocial bonds with the audience. The podcast is called Make It Make Sense, and it appears to have been born out of the following pitch: What if we put three losers in a room and recorded them complaining about things nobody else cares about?"

"Plenty of representative clips can be found on the show's official Bluesky account, which has 27 followers as of this writing. Here's one where the hosts, in 2026, sit around and get kind of worked up about school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic: Here's another, in which one of the hosts has a fit about the Dutch placing restrictions on advertisements for meat. It ends with him staring into the camera, saying, "Shaming people for trying to enjoy a hamburger? That's smug, and elitist" and then taking a big bite of a burger:"

"Aside from the hosts' powerful anti-charisma, these clips are noteworthy only for what they illustrate about broader trends in media and politics. It's clear now that what powerful media operators like Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison want from the blue-chip properties they own is their own personalized versions of The Fr"

The publication has undergone a transformation marked by workforce reductions and a revamped opinion section. The opinion mission emphasizes personal liberties and free markets, positioning the content as something distinct from other offerings. The resulting output is described as consistently dull, lazy, artless, and familiar. The opinion section also includes a podcast intended to build audience closeness through a recurring format. The podcast features hosts discussing niche grievances and reacting to topics such as COVID-19 school closures and Dutch advertising restrictions on meat. Clips from the show are presented as examples of the hosts’ style and the broader media and political trends tied to ownership priorities.

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