#0293 - Welcome to 2026: Please Wash Everything - 01/02/2026

The first broadcast of 2026 kicks the door in wearing snow-covered boots and immediately starts rifling through the emotional junk drawer of modern life. Viktor Wilt opens the year half-rested, mildly annoyed at sleeping too long, and fully prepared to judge society for its past sins—starting with a ruthless inventory of once-luxury gadgets now rotting in garages and landfills. Color ID boxes, Palm Pilots, trunk-mounted CD changers, projection TVs the size of refrigerators—nothing is safe from being publicly declared obsolete and spiritually embarrassing. This spirals into an existential debate over whether any object we treasure today will avoid becoming tomorrow’s cursed Goodwill donation, with brief detours into vinyl nostalgia, GPS failures, and the very real trauma of being betrayed by Airbnb directions in Missoula.

From there, the show veers sharply into television discourse, where Viktor defends the Stranger Things finale against clickbait outrage merchants desperately trying to crown it the next Game of Thrones catastrophe. Spoilers are avoided, but judgment is not. This turns into a larger rant about internet performative disappointment, media literacy, and why some people seem to enjoy being mad more than enjoying things. Just as listeners settle in, the tone takes a hard left into deeply upsetting territory: a viral thread revealing that a non-zero number of grown men do not wipe. What follows is a full-blown hygiene intervention, equal parts disgust, disbelief, and public service announcement, culminating in a firm directive to wash everything, raise children better, and never—under any circumstances—tolerate a grown adult who refuses basic cleanliness.

The episode continues its march through humanity’s worst decisions with a parade of cursed headlines: a New Year’s potato drop in Idaho that somehow resulted in shattered windows and a child in the ICU, a fictional fireworks show in England that hundreds of people showed up for anyway, a public toilet seat discovered with human bite marks, and a McDonald’s employee who voluntarily dunked their hand into a deep fryer to retrieve an earbud. Each story reinforces the running theory that a measurable percentage of the population should not be allowed near fireworks, grease, wildlife, or the internet. This is scientifically supported later by survey data suggesting some Americans genuinely believe they could defeat a grizzly bear in hand-to-hand combat.

Between the madness, Viktor also tears into “dream jobs” that are actually sleep-deprivation factories, explains why flying is mostly just a long humiliation ritual, plugs giveaways involving pregnancy cravings and metal concerts, and tees up Traffic School with Lieutenant Crain—who remains mysteriously tight-lipped about his family’s upcoming Family Feud appearance. The episode closes with arguments over gravy leading to a KFC stabbing, an announcement of Ghost tickets, debates over concert scheduling logistics, and the looming possibility of girlfriends being dragged on-air to share embarrassing stories. It’s a New Year episode that manages to be festive, furious, baffled, and weirdly educational, all while begging listeners to please—please—wipe, shower, and stop biting public infrastructure.