Will Menaker, Matt Christman, and Virgil Texas are co-hosts of the popular podcast Chapo Trap House, described in the New Yorker as the vanguard of the “Dirtbag Left.” The show has become the top earning podcast on the crowd-funding platform Patreon thanks to its irony-laced and extremely vulgar yet surprisingly insightful commentary that blasts both Republicans and Democrats from a position far to the left of both.
The Chapo hosts are on the record as being firmly against rational debate: their New York Times bestselling book is titled “The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason,” and their rhetorical style generally tends toward invective and broadsides. They are nevertheless visiting Princeton University’s debate society for a reasoned exchange of ideas.
“Civilized Conversation with Virgil Texas, Matt Christman, and Will Menaker” will take place Thursday, December 6, at 6 p.m. at Whig Hall at Princeton University. Menaker will moderate a debate between Christman and Texas on a topic to be announced. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, e-mail justinbw@princeton.edu.
The Princeton event is not the Chapos’ first Ivy League appearance. In 2017 the podcast visited Harvard University and held a March Madness-style tournament bracket to determine the school’s most evil alumnus, with victors decided by audience applause. Henry Kissinger won easily and was sentenced to be “kicked out of an airplane into a volcano.”
