Strange headlines, old friends, and an apocalypse to survive.
John and Al frame each episode as a dispatch from what the show calls the cultural apocalypse, then talk it through with jokes and real curiosity. Recent subjects run from the Berlin collective Keinemusik to sovereign citizen pseudolaw, police body cams and the end of a major Australian radio partnership.
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Don't Praise The Machine (DPTM) bills itself as a survivor's guide to the cultural apocalypse, and it plays that line for laughs without pretending the news is harmless. The structure is easy to spot. A tightly written cold open sets out the theme in grandly exaggerated terms, then John and Al drop the script and talk. Those openings can be very funny: Jackie O walking away from Kyle becomes the collapse of the marbled pillars of the Australian commercial radio Parthenon. What follows is looser, full of false starts and tangents, but the tangents often carry the substance. In the radio episode the talk turns into a clear piece of media economics. Compared with the BBC's weight in Britain and the American FM model, Australia's more concentrated market lets a handful of personalities command big salaries, because every station has a similar catalog and anyone can play the songs on Spotify instead. The pair even joke that the duo's stars might fall far enough for them to book Kyle and Jackie O on the show. Music matters here. 'The Infuriating Genius of Keinemusik' is led by one of the pair, who describes a past as a drum and bass DJ and producer and finds the Berlin collective both hugely impressive and strangely irritating. The discussion covers how the members produced for Drake and built a following by throwing parties as a loose collective. Policing is another thread. 'Afroman’s Revenge & A Short History of Cops on Camera' starts with Justin Timberlake's Hamptons body cam footage and Afroman turning home surveillance video of a police raid into a viral track. It then moves on to how officers still try to game body cams, with a John Oliver segment cited along the way. 'Lawyer Explains Sovereign Citizen Pseudolaw' goes somewhere darker, moving from familiar clips of people shouting that they are a living man at traffic stops to an Australian manhunt that, as the episode tells it, ended with Desi Freeman shot and killed. 'Generation Alpha Arrives' looks at kids the show describes as born directly into the feed and asks what AI means for entry-level work. A memory of starting out as a lawyer, spending hours combing litigation emails, makes that question concrete. The episode also goes looking for positives and calls these kids the most technologically fluent generation yet. Then there is 'JOHN & AL Together In Melbourne 2026', a special edition with both of them in one city. It drops the usual theme for a long ramble about Japanese-inspired listening bars, hi-fi amplifiers and vinyl kept behind the bar. The result is two old friends making sense of strange news together, with the jokes first and the context close behind.
Made for: Suits a listener who likes pop culture and internet oddities talked through with humor, and who welcomes detours into radio economics, body cam footage or Berlin club music. A taste for Australian media stories helps.
What sets it apart: A deliberately overblown cold open frames each theme as news from the cultural apocalypse, then gives way to loose, tangent-heavy talk between John and Al that often turns up real context. Australian stories like the Kyle and Jackie O split sit alongside global internet culture.
Al and John grew up together in the 1990s but now live on opposite sides of the world. Each week, they get together through the magic of the Internet to catch up, make each other laugh and try to make sense of it all. The result is a funny, surreal and thought-provoking excursion through the arcane recesses of pop culture and technology, and the mysteries of everyday life. What’s it like to have a virtual companion? Did Hilaria Baldwin really pretend to be Spanish? Why did movies used to have a rap in the credits to explain their own plot? Get in touch at [email protected] or find us on IG @dont_praise_the_machine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A matcha cup gets cross-examined; your algorithmically acquired personality might be next.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A skeptical but amused look at Keinemusik as musical talent, lifestyle brand, and social-media performance.
Keinemusik's rise is framed as a sharp case study in club culture remade for the international cool class. The episode follows the Berlin collective from its 2009 formation through Afro House sets and the now-familiar images: three members behind a DJ setup, eating pizza,…
A clear-eyed look at how sovereign citizen pseudolaw can move from internet folklore into real-world danger.
Sovereign citizen belief gets crisp historical and cultural framing, from pseudo-legal faith in capital letters and exact hyphenation to a movement carried online from the United States into Australia, the United Kingdom, and beyond.
A pointed look at how police cameras shaped public scrutiny, and how visibility can still be controlled.
Don't Praise the Machine uses two celebrity encounters with law enforcement to examine how police interactions became recorded media. Afro Man's home surveillance from a police raid, later repurposed as a viral comedy track's music video, is set against the release of Justin…
A Melbourne meetup turns bar hi-fi, Rodney Rood, and podcast-event fantasies into a loose, self-aware episode.
John Junior Boost Maloney and Al turn a Melbourne meetup into a roving conversation about what a podcast can become when it starts acting like an event.
A radio partnership's rupture becomes a clear case study in contracts, attention, and concentrated media power.
Don't Praise The Machine treats the shaky fate of Jackie O and Kyle Sandlin's $200 million arrangement as more than celebrity-radio drama. It follows Jackie O's walkout and sets it against on-air fights over astrology, serious misconduct allegations, and a Melbourne push framed…
Sharp history, messier than the myth.
Overlooked lives, read from the sources, talked through warmly.
The hosts review 2025 with humorous takes on culture, technology, personal achievements and failures, and make predictions for 2026.
Don't Praise the Machine looks at the Berlin collective the transcript calls "kind of music", tracing its 2009 formation, its scarf-heavy visual identity, and its rise from club parties to a social-media phenomenon.
Don't Praise the Machine opens on Desi Freeman's death in Australia and connects it to a sovereign-citizen manhunt after two police officers were allegedly shot.
["Don't Praise The Machine ties Justin Timberlake's June 2024 Sag Harbor stop, Afroman's 2022 Ohio raid footage, and Rodney King to the long history of cops on camera.", "The hosts trace the format back to a 1939 dashboard-camera article, then to bulky 1980s VHS rigs and the 1990s police dash-cam market.", "They argue that body cams changed public expectations because footage can challenge police narratives, even when officers try to game the system.", "The Afroman segment ends with songs like 'Lemon Pound Cake' and a March 18 jury verdict that sided with Joseph Foreman after six hours."]
Don't Praise The Machine's Melbourne edition opens with a stye on John's eyelid, ChatGPT's warning not to pop it, and an Adelaide doctor who pricks it and drains 'stye juice.' John Junior Boost Maloney, a barrister and Melbourne University lecturer, uses the in-person session to compare Melbourne's old shopfronts and modern towers with Adelaide's more concentrated bar scene.
Don't Praise The Machine frames Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O's split as the possible end of a $200 million ARN deal that was supposed to run until 2034.
Don't Praise The Machine examines Generation Alpha, defined in the episode as people born roughly between 2010 and 2024 or 2025, who encountered smartphones, feeds, Roblox, and AI from childhood.
Don't Praise The Machine examines celebrity GoFundMe campaigns after the deaths of James Van Der Beek and Eric Dane.
Alexander Holland and John Junior Boos Maloney examine why the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics generated stories about alleged genital injections, teammate credit-card fraud, public infidelity confessions, and celebrity sponsorship conflicts.
Alexander Holland and John Junior Boos Maloney examine why matcha spread from a niche Japanese powdered tea into Thai noodle salads, croissants, cakes, lattes, and beauty products.
Don't Praise The Machine examines why male nudity has become more common in prestige films and argues that 80-90% of onscreen penises are medical-grade silicone prosthetics.
Australia's upcoming social media ban for under-16s is debated with a barrister, covering arguments for and against the policy.
This episode explores how Tom Green's early internet talk show inadvertently inspired the video podcasting format, including the Joe Rogan Experience.
The hosts discuss the Triple J Hottest 100 Australian Songs of All Time while recording live from Camden, London.
Two friends humorously dissect the baffling career of UK celebrity Peter Andre, from his pop star origins to his recent film controversy.