1043 - The Obamalisk feat. Kate Wagner (6/8/26)
McMansion Hell writer and architecture critic Kate Wagner joins us for an early review of the Obama Presidential Center. We talk about its design, its architecture, its cloying message of “HOPE” that feels like Ludovico conditioning, and what it means as a final, definitive end of the Obama era and the Long 2010s.
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Comments (203)
Calling Obama even ostensively progressive is crazy in 2026
The limo mentioned at 31:42
“No mangas, dawg”
As an NC native, Kate Wagner knows a thing or two about hideous buildings constructed by soulless miscreants
agonizing episode, you'd think after all these years will would get better at interviews
they're burying Joe Biden alive in there, that he might serve the Obamas even unti the afterlife
YAAAAS KATE WAGNER IS MY GOATTTTTTTT
Felix came through with that Episode 1 audio quality
Please do a reading series on the Bovino 2028 campaign page it is a fucking gold mine. This is the sixth point on what appears to be his policy agenda: "The creation of a non-governmental, citizen led and funded, society for american intellectualism and cultural expansion, promoting free access to online and in-person socratic discussions, debate competitions, open debate on the vast and wide ranging negative physical, spiritual, an and emotional impacts of ai and digital existence, ted-x style symposiums promoting american, western, and Western aligned ideals."
The next point: "Immediate formation of the department of youth masculinity in order to save the young men of America from the impotent spell of a purely digital, basement based existence & into warriors the warriors for freedom & protectors of national sovereignty our nation cries out for."
Someone please teach this poor woman that it's not pronouned "musayum"
🤡
As an architect, this episode was great. Can confirm it’s kind of a shit job.
Tbh the Nancy P car park got hangers
Will really got in his liberal arts bag for this one
I think it’s cool that Felix recorded his audio by looping it through one of those speakers where it has a dish with a bunch of sand over it so you can visualize sound waves, and then if I’m not mistaken he mic’ed the sand with the bug mic the FBI put in his bedroom. It’s a brave artistic statement and a stunning addition to his recent experiments in sound manipulation.
Obama = LISK?!?!
Happened to rewatch Skyfall this past weekend and it did not hit like it did in 2012. I’m thinking because it’s peak Obamacore.
Hell yea Kate Wagner
Deep dish bladerunner
The Obamalisk wouid make Albert Speer blush
What a great crossover, love her blog
How is it not a library if you can read Michelle’s and her husbands books?
good luck to Kate Wagner, the last one of her was James Howard Kunstler and he went totally nutso
Before I listen to this episode, I’m gonna quote myself from an earlier comment: Although the Obama Presidential Library takes influence from Brutalist aesthetics, it uses none of the movement’s design principles (simplicity, honesty, lack of ornamentation). It’s kind of like how his politics have the aesthetic of progressivism without any actual progress. Side note, LBJ library is best presidential library.
good take
shoutout st john the divine, specifically the modern take on revelation in the facade with nuclear destruction of nyc and the fall of the twin towers and other skyscrapers featured in its imagery
Hour long discussion about how architecture is becoming ugly only for them to say two ugly buildings are their favorites lol
fun one!
“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit” -Barry Obama
Dudes just want to be like Archimedes
Kate is the reason I go "ahoy matey" when I see a round window or why I call decorative baubles "An Arts" and for that she's forever going to be part of me : )
Can anyone in the biz recommend books on architecture theory for a nonspecialist? This talk has reawakened my inner George Costanza.
Talking about the rent in Chicago being comparable to Mississippi and as affordable is sooooo nuts like yeah the Obama center is driving rent up in Woodlawn and Hyde park and rent is unrelatedly going insanely up all over the city as well and isn’t affordable for people making 40k what’s this 300k nonsense
idealism is what this episode has in the absence of a material understanding of housing costs
nothing architects hate more than desigining a fucking building and she's the worst. she's fine on criticism but her policy prescriptions and diagnoses of causes is completely wrong
Huge Kate Wagner head
Idk if I can trust Kate after looking up the Berlin Phil. That’s a godawful looking building
I really, genuinely love the LBJ Library, because it looks like America is. Tomb for one of the world's biggest pieces of shit, who spent his entire life destroying anyone and anything that stood between him and more power, then finally got to the very top and found it more gruesome than even he could tolerate – not because it was a conventional abattoir, but because it was a featureless office block where people who don't fucking exist administer the Slaughterhouse of Forever
When William Gull, in Iain Sinclair's first novel, says "Know: I am appointed time's abortionist," he's saying it from the LBJ Library
Do they have the Tan suit?
I liked this everyone who doesn't is just a lumpen who wants more details on deaths and mutilation in the ME. Just give me some more low-stress eps like this.
I gotta read this brutalist library as yet another F.U. from Obama to his biggest supporters. Obama diehards (think PodSave TommyJons) would probably prefer a museum that looks like a bouncy castle or neon 1980s McDonalds. Yet here's something that looks straight out of early sixties Yugoslavia. I remember Obama met with Edward Said and seemed to sympathize with Palestinians before his neoliberal turn as president. He did very little to check Israel, allowing his successors Biden and Trump to sign on to wholesale genocide, so I read this raw and ugly building as sublimated hatred for his own movement.
nice lil artsy episode. last one was a classic classic classic
I mean... its not a *bad* episode, like those awful dnd episodes, its just uninteresting
Was that imperial drag at the 26 minute mark? I about fell over when I heard that. Criminally underrated band.
i think the chrysler is my fave building as well, although the citigroup building is pretty neat, especially when wolverine jumped a motorcycle off of it in the comics
an obamalisk is CR 13 so you really want a party of, say, 4 level 11 players to take one down
Going to the Obama Spire to get my gravity gun upgraded. It's just a shame they didn't build an Obama Prism to scale, slightly larger than the Bass Pro Shops pyramid.
Barrack Hussein Obama Chiraq Facility of Public Reeducation in Residency.
It’s a Combine citadel
I remember that building from playing tribes ctf
Art Vandelay dropping in for a hot second
Rent in Chicago has already skyrocketed in the past couple years. And South Chicago is getting that shitty Quantum Computing center which is expected to further jack up rent prices on the southside
I’ve been muttering to myself in Obama voice for the past 3 hours and it’s your fault
whats up w felix’s audio? sounds like a cloud of graininess released every time he speaks. anyway, love the guest!!!!
will not asking felix what his fav bldg is, is revenge for the bobs big boy memorial hang glider assault
This whole interview could be boiled down to “ isn’t he uppity”
I dont think it could be boiled down to that
Nobody knows who the fuck Adam22 is.
Wow, Obama’s presidential library is filled with Obama shit? Just like every other presidential library?
Best building in America is the Jamestown Sklallam gas station/market in Washington, despite being a gas station. Coolest place to stop and pick up some snacks on a road trip. It’s called the Longhouse Deli & Market.
Holy trypophobia on the whole written part of the building facade. Looking at it makes me break out in itches
Best designed presidential library is Selina Myers vagina shaped library from Veep with her tomb in the clit
McMansion Occupied Government 🤮
I’d suggest the McMansion hell patreon for anyone who dug this ep
This ep was very much needed. I currently work around a bunch of hellish mixed-use construction, so I've been able to witness firsthand the building process. Everything is so disposable and shitty. It's just series of boxy, toothpick foundations covered with fake facades that are kind of meant to look modern. Nothing is built to last and it's all to A) make the developers a quick buck by using cheap materials and B) give the cheap suits of local government the ability to attend ribbon cuttings and say, "see, we're building new things (luxury apartments that you can't afford while giving out massive tax credits to rich developers)." It's all so fucking depressing.
Not the ep I wanted but damn did I learn some things
Literally the corporate headquarters from RoboCop
close enough! that's Dallas City Hall, a building that already exists : )
Bomb-ass guest fellas! I just noticed that I already had McMansion Hell bookmarked in my browser, so I must’ve been clued into Kate somehow, but must not have been paying attention. That’ll change, for sure.
when's the last time felix tried renting in chicago bc I wanna know where the "Mississippi cheap" buildings are at ???????
Seriously. Renters forced into bidding wars, lines down the block for apartment viewings.
Why ObamaLISK and not ObamaLITH
Obama + Lisk deez nuts = Obamalisk
i hope the limo he did coke and got gay top in is hanging in the lobby like an air and space museum plane
It is! They also have Larry Sinclair’s remains in a big glass display case, like an owl in a natural history museum 🦉
What was her favorite building?
Berliner Philharmonie
I've been to it, its apparently supposed to look like hands coming together in a kind of hi-five. It doesn't. What I did learn, to my surprise, is his name is actually Barack Hussein Obama Jr.. they kept almost all of the park public and it includes a public library they built. Kate's "ostensibly"s are a little over-sour. The worst part about the place is the baffling appearance of the obamalisk itself and the property taxes/rents going up
I work at the Whitney museum and Will's hate is justified. Its badness isn't limited to the aesthetic features, it's also impractical to work in with some major engineering oversights. Two thumbs down!
When i went to the LBJ library in Dec 2019, I was standing at the urinal when a familiar face stepped into my peripheral view at the urinal next to me: Rahm Emanuel! He then walked the entire museum on a private tour, and I kept literally bumping into him. We did overhear some terrible things. He was there in preparation for the Obama library, and kept bragging about things like, "ours will be totally paperless" (aka disposable, imaginary)
l always wonder what to read into the fact that the main practical use for a McMansion is as a convenient place to film pornography (probably the best use they're put to tbh), and as an episode of some show on HGTV when its resold. Which seems like the same category of thing.
Great ep
Can confirm. Am not a practicing architect because I'm not a freak like some of my former classmates.
Great ep, although Angels Gate in San Pedro is not only a beautiful basketball court but an American architectural icon imo
It’s a Necron temple. Exterminatus!!!
I hate to say it but W has the coolest presidential library
I owe a lot to Kate’s blog for increasing the level and sophistication of my architecture snobbery
Kate is such a great guest. I love when she pops up here and on Trillbillies.
The DSA alderman for the neighboring ward, Jeanette Taylor, tried to get a community benefits agreement to mitigate some of the problems the center is causing, but Lori quashed that effort and pushed it through.
Felix I wish my rent was the same as a shack in Mississippi brother
It does look like somewhere you get disappeared to.
Another Kate episode, please!
We love Kate Wagner don't we folks
She's everyone's favorite X-Man (in all seriousness basically everything l've read from her rocks)
design in general such a shit gig, would recommend doing anything else
WhatthefuckhasObamadonesofar.com
Not, I beg you, lovely, lovely Ludwig Van. It's a sin. It's a sin. It's a sin
T. Rex baby
Mutalisk, hydralisk, ultralisk, obamalisk
This ep feels petty. Very mean girls.
Great episode ! I was telling one of my coworkers about McMansion Hell last week. I used to walk a dog in a neighborhood that should be featured on the site.
“here lies hope and change”
Architecture mentioned
I'm a huge Brutalism sicko but I kinda like this building on just architectural terms. Rest of the criticisms of it and Obama, I can get onboard but ... I can look at this building all right
this ep feels like it bled into our timeline from the one where hillary won
I'm a custom cabinet guy. I swear to Jesus Carl Winslow Christ that if i have to build another set of white shaker cabinets with rift white oak accents and matte black hardware, I will die (which means i will die as soon as i get to work this morning). There's so little creativity in architecture/ interior design these days.
I got like 30 chrome cabinet pulls by Michael graves for a dollar a pop on eBay and replaced the matte black crap in my apartment, total vibe changer
McMansion Hell owns.
Kate Wagner astutely recognized that the title 'architect' has been steeply discounted over the last 40 years (post-Reagan). Entry level makes dirt. 20:10
Felix doing his signature move here (scaring guests by referencing esoteric streamers and porn actors)
https://youtu.be/5VTx8vXXYFU?is=pOz--L4eycDO8R_b
Obamalisk was really OP in StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm.
Architecture is gay to know anything about!
Kate Wagner went to college in NC. Makes me proud
podcast crossover event of the year
Great one. Bryan Quinby should have her on for an “architecture guys” episode, you got into it here for a couple mins but there’s definitely more there…
When I went to the LBJ library like a year ago, they had a Vietnamese cook book in the gift shop.
How To Cook (for) Vietnamese People?
Tod Williams and Billie Tsien are known to be giant assholes
The Obama reading room is like the Christian Science reading room except instead of telling you to defeat your cancer with prayer, they give you some loud to choom on and have Larry Sinclair suck the disease out of you.
Kate is the GOAT
Lovely T Rex stinger
Love how the Obama’s have made Hyde Park their own personal museum, taking power back from the evil institution of UoC ☝️
Jesus fuck is wills internet connection on PCP? Also this episode sucks my fuckin dick.
Will there be a smoking section?
Next to the basketball court
They cookin dog at the obamalisk cafeteria
Only fitting for the Glizzy Gulper
I'm just stranded here 😓
Fuck every biologist who decided to name a species after Obama 🤦♂️
Weakest thing I’ve literally ever heard of 👎
AI solves this
This presidential library could age well, as the trees grow, and once the building is repurposed to serve as a National Memorial to the Victims of Capitalism. People with genuine creative talent, unconstrained by Obama's need for ego-gratification, could do wonders with the interior and exhibit space.
It looks like OCP headquarters in Robocop.
Thanks Kate! Would love to hear her thoughts on Parametric design. Seems like the Peter Theil future for architecture ala Peter Shumacker that fucking slug
Let me guess, he Obungled that too
What a terrible episode. Jesus Christ
It’s honestly fucked up
I would like to be the first to drop a hot deuce in the Nancy Pelosi Parking Lot but something tells me I've been beaten to the punch
One of the best episodes yet. Love this intersection of politics / society and the spaces we inhabit. Great work all y'all.
Why does it gotta be a chode-esque obelisk. I feel like we are being told the answer to a question no one asked.
He couldn't just show them the hog so he had them keep guessing til it was close enough to please him.
- Standing in the top floor of the command center, watching and smiling as thousands of KX droids in CPD uniform start marching across the city: "So it, uhhhhhhh, turns out I'm pretty good at killing people."
Short episode >:(
You could always listen to the episode a 2nd or maybe even a 3rd time :) Maybe you'll catch some details you missed on the 1st listen
I spotted a nature doc I hadn't seen on Netflix and I thought, "ooh, is this an Attenborough that I missed?" because it's titled "Our Oceans", similar to "Our Planet". NOPE, it's narrated by Barack Obama. He just had to bite Attenborough too for some reason.
"Let me be clear-- First Order gets, uhhhh, what First Order wants."
Thinking about Obama and how much the Dems glaze him, if Trump tries to run for a third term I can see the democrat fedayeen lobying to run Obama again. Not realising that Obama directly created the conditions foe a Trump-like figure.
She’s not lying. Herbert Hoovers library looks like my dentists office in mid 90s central Florida
"We were, uhhhhh, *this* close to, uh, greatness."
Since Obama is bound to be chatting in public soon, would somebody please ask him if he still thinks Tom Homan is cool? How about Larry Summers? To think they called Reagan the teflon president.
Shit belongs in Andor. You know Obummer would rock that Imperial Director drip so goddamn fast.
The library is a Brutalist Chode
Good band name
It looks like the Fireman's Place by the Sea in The Return
I think I could shove the entire building up my ass guys! Time to save Chicago
It is giving butt plug
Obama should live out his days taking photos with people in the replica Oval Office like a mall Santa
audio episode about a purely visual thing wow frickin genius guys
this mf can’t rotate an apple in his mind lmao
Does she pronounce “niche” as “neek”? 🤔she’s a natural born chapo host lol
I thought she said "unique"
I looked it up and the Obama Library isn't even half as tall as the reflecting pool
What does it mean? Obamna small peen?
I took immense pleasure thinking about some ass hole spending $10k for the worst seat in MSG to watch the Knicks shit their pants. Courtside included Rahm Emmanuel, Mike Bloomberg and Howard Lutnick.
Hell yeah fuck the knicks
Ok, that shit definitely looks like Imperial architecture in Star Wars, but it also looks like a stone or a pebble. That's ugly and grim.
great guest and episode, it was fun to take a break from reading about the pedophile president forcing himself on the people of NYC to hear about the drone war president forcing himself on the people of Chicago's south side
I eagerly await the Trump Presidential Library/Casino
Chrysler building- basic normie answer
This was a solid bonus episode… oh wait…
Hey pal, these guys work two days a week and it’s not their fault the NBA scheduled a basketball game on one of those days. I suppose you just want Will to have no life whatsoever?
All this talk about Jackson Park, but not a breath given to Jackson Bark: the large dog park/obstacle course that is by far the crown jewel of the otherwise oppressive Greater University of a Chicago complex
A++ Ep. Great guest.
obama would be the kind of video essayist who shuffles around a bunch of paper and has 600% mic compression
yesss i was hoping this episode would manifest.
Kate Wagner is the GOAT. The Obama Center really is phenomenally evil looking. The circumstances around it do nothing to help with that.
My wife is an architect and she hates 75% of the men she works with.
Rookie number
I live in Chicago and this guy is so ugly
What's Obama's last name fr tho
Doesn't have one. I saw the birf certificur.
Will starts speaking at 0:34
Kate WHO???
Felix begins speaking at 2 minutes and 49 seconds
He’s sounding nice and sandy in the mix
I heard Ezra Klein talking about the aesthetic of the right wing and then he was like ‘the left has its own aesthetic’ and reference the Obama ‘Hope’ poster. I wanted to shake him and scream that was almost 20 years ago and it was self-evidently fake
Your first mistake was to listen to Ezra Klein at all
Awww yeah! I know Kate from the Trillbillies! Good guest.
SLOP
Fuck yes, as a PM, I've been following Kate for years.
Let me be clear... my gaze is gonna turn you to stone
Finally I can listen at work!
Kate Wagner da goat
What a good get for this subject
It’s me, Dwayne Ryan Schutt The Rock Obama.
Have you seen Jim Tews?
i guess i can listen while watching the game..
And that's why they call it Football!
lets go
Alright