S2E1: Syriana
It's finally here, after much fanfare and buildup: Season 2 of KJB starts off not with a bang, but with a knowing hmm as we kick off Da Cerebral Hour
Syriana is potentially the best depiction of spy work we have covered, and it's serious themes lead us to a very thoughtful and introspective discussion of western intervention- and also Mark Strong is here in what i can only describe as 'Arab Face'
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Comments (18)
Listening to this in March of 2026 for no reason in particular.
Matt Damon has Divorced Dad Energy in the form of "doing a coup with my Arab Prince bro".
Loving Alice Analysis. Would love to see the gang do more GWoT and "Serious Political" movies.
I was briefly a woman in Saudi Arabia listening to this podcast as I was transiting through King Khalid International Airport. There was a woman singing the Fajr, that was cool. I became quite intimately familiar with the calls to prayer as I'd spent the last three weeks living next to a mosque in India, one muezzin was getting over a cold or something so it was DIRE.
the highest I've ever been in my life was when I saw Syriana. thank you for clearing up some things
this is a good ep and i bet a good movie but “syriana” sounds like a war on terror drag queen
On the subject of trying to include homophobia in the SCUM system, you could just make it a tribute to Sean Connery and make it the SHCUM system
Given Clooney's persistent deadnaming of Mark Strong as Jimmy, I wonder if the character is actually white? I haven't gone back and looked to see if there's evidence of that but it makes some sorta superficial sense.
This was my reading of the situation as well. I figured “jimmy” was, like, undercover or something to that effect.
You know, I got this confused with the movie COLUMBIANA and I was trying to figure out why you were watching a crap film. Then you started talking and I realized hang on, they've not even mentioned Zoe Saldaña yet. Oops.
1. Excellent episode, honestly so nice to hear you talk in depth about a legitimately good film and the way it tells its story 2. I am in such wild shock because the episode image looks fucking *exactly* like an Egyptian friend of mine, god damn the makeup department really fucking went to town on mark strong in some ways they probably shouldn't have
Y'all making me cry tears of joy. Hope in a future martial arts portion you find time for The One. Where (if I recall) evil Jet Li shouts a transphobe unconscious and has a way better ending than good Jet Li.
Whoa what, I do not remember this
Minor but important correction: the then-80 year old King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz was the Noble Saudi Royal Reformer in 2005, not MBS. Not to be confused with the previous Noble Saudi Royal Reformers Fahd, Khalid, Faisal, or Saud - all of them being sons of the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz aka “Ibn Saud”, who died in 1953. Abdullah outlived two of his Crown Princes, the Defense Minister Sultan and the Interior Minister Nayef, both of them powerful full brothers of King Fahd and current King Salman. Salman himself was thought unlikely to become King because like most of his brothers, he was (is) old as fuck and in ill health, and in any event there were plenty of grandsons from among Ibn Saud’s 40+ large adult sons who could theoretically have become King, many of them older, more experienced, and more well-known to other governments than MBS was before 2015. Isn’t absolute monarchy a great system…
YES YES YES Lupin: cagliostro is so much fun
Yass
I now have the phrase "Riyadh Tim Horton's" stuck in my head.
Ah, finally. The action movie starring Paul Krugman