The weather outside has been frightful, but the aimless chatter is quite delightful as we ring in 2025 with fresh CONTENT. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — The perks of being two generations younger than your neighbors
14:20 — Collecting ever more sleep technologies
20:35 — CIB’s 2025 resolutions, and running headlong into the velvet rope bathroom economy
41:50 — WGAS NewsBag; terrorism in New Orleans, exploding Teslas in Vegas, and the rest of the news of the week
1:29:40 — The Billboard Hot 100 Game
1:39:02 — Wrap-up! Harbin; Seven; The Karate Kid

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

2024 has come to its natural end and CIB is here to talk about everything we got wrong about it. Or at least the things we remember being wrong about and are willing to acknowledge. It was a fun year, podcasting-wise—thanks for listening along! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — Stumping Abe with questions like “How was your Christmas?” and “How much Willie Geist does a person really need in their life?”
8:05 — Briefly, the news of the week, and the world says goodbye to Jimmy Carter
26:47 — Recapping and scoring our 2024 predictions
1:04:31 — Kylie Kelce’s podcast launch gets laundered into “news”
1:24:56 — The Billboard Hot 100 Game
1:47:43 — Wrap-up! A year in podcasts; A Complete Unknown; the last few Christmas movies of the season

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

The most popular spinoff sports podcast of the Brain Iron Media Empire is here to send off 2024 in style, with a playoff preview and a call from the greatest presidential pigskin prognosticator to ever walk the earth, live from Plains. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — Abe Live Bets the Games!
6:20 — The Pop-Tarts Bowl, and lesser college football action
24:01 — The Best Game in Every Time Slot
35:24 — CIB Playoff Pick ‘em Game!
50:55 — Wrap-up! Google Gemini tells us about ourselves, and Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Lock of the Week, Live from Plains

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

The background music for Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Lock of the Week is "Bama Country" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

We’re having a holly, jolly time plowing through the news of the week and we leave plenty of time for Strassmann, the Billboard Hot 100, and our other usual assortment of complaints about the media and culture. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — Abe in the burbs taking selfies with The Grinch
5:20 — WGAS NewsBag; Matt Gaetz House Ethics Committee report drops
14:30 — Biden commutes 37 of 40 federal death sentences
21:08 — Lara Trump won’t be the next senator from Florida
23:16 — Kay Granger has abandoned her seat in Congress, and a local journalist is on the case
29:44 — Trump and Musk stop extended government funding bill before Congress passes last-minute temporary solution
41:23 — Larry Hogan looks into the mysterious sky and sees…stars?
47:30 — Slate columnist hated a book but missed the worst part
56:25 — Did CBS News’s Senior National News Correspondent Mark Strassmann Get Off a Good One?
1:02:33 — The Billboard Hot 100 Game
1:27:33 — Wrap-up! Homestead; La Palma; Christmas viewing

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

It’s Christmas Eve! You’re cozied up by the fire or banging about in the kitchen making your final preparations for the big day tomorrow, and your favorite multinational media empire is putting out fresh content for you to stick in one ear while the Christmas songs blare away in the other. We’ve got poetry and football and silliness aplenty. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — Spittin’ playoff-level bars
4:03 — The first round of the College Football Playoff!
16:35 — What did we learn about this system after the first round, and how should it be tweaked?
27:50 — Carson Beck done for the season
31:22 — CIB College Football Playoff Pick ‘em Contest Update
34:20 — Wrap-up! Towel Boy Technicals, JuCo players granted one more year of eligibility

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

The first round of the first-ever 12-team college football playoff is finally here, and Cast Iron Balls returns to the top of your podcast feed to talk all about, along with our regular assortment of news of the week and enjoyable digressions. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — It’s nearly here!
2:35 — Abe Live-Bets the Games!
11:40 — WGAS News SportsBag; Aaron Rodgers documentary incoming!
19:58 — Diego Pavia gets another year of eligibility; why is college football still so entwined with…college?
39:30 — Kirk Cousins demoted!
45:22 — NBA in-season tournament champion crowned!
58:35 — The Best Game in Every Time Slot!
1:17:34 — Wrap-up!

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

It’s a plus-size episode of Cast Iron Brains, because we sneak nearly a whole episode of Cast Iron Balls right into the middle of it. We’ve got the politics news of the week, the sports news of the week, and plenty of our other usual silliness and digressions. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — Holiday Cake Pop Autopsy
6:57 — WGAS Newsbag; MYSTERY DRONES!
19:21 — Daniel Penny verdict
27:50 — Pete Hegseth backlash to the backlash will make him SecDef
42:56 — ABC News settles defamation suit with Trump
50:18 — Black plastic kitchen utensils, the silent killer?
1:07:28 — WGAS Newsbag, Sports Edition! Abe Live Bets the Games!
1:10:18 — Ohio politician wants to make flag planting a felony
1:18:45 — Bill Belichick to coach UNC Tar Heels
1:33:03 — Marshall pulls out of Independence Bowl, Army-Navy game brings the smarm
1:43:40 — The Billboard Hot 100 Game
2:04:04 — Wrap-up! The Order; Tell Them You Love Me; Meditations by Marcus Aurelius; various Christmas movies

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.

Your favorite podcast is back atop feeds all over the universe to discuss the most important news of the week, by which we mean we will first spend half an hour hearing tell of an arena rock concert featuring two of the worst bands from the late 90s and early 2000s as experienced by our intrepid cultural experiencer and reporter, the one and only Abe. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

Show Rundown
Open — Abe in the World, Concert Edition
38:12 — WGAS NewsBag: United Healthcare CEO murder suspect caught
1:05:00 — The fall of Bashar al-Assad
1:16:00 — The Word of 2024 is “brain rot”
1:18:04 — Did CBS News’ Senior National News Correspondent Mark Strassmann Get Off a Good One?
1:33:14 — Train Ruins The Billboard Hot 100 Game
1:52:00 — Wrap-up! Y2K, Die Hard, Station Eleven

Relevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

The opening and closing themes of Cast Iron Balls were composed by Marc Gillig. For more from Marc, go to tetramermusic.com.