{"podcast":{"title":"Serious Trouble","slug":"serious-trouble-5498851","podcast_index_feed_id":5498851,"rss_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/906465.rss","website_url":"https://www.serioustrouble.show/podcast","image_url":"https://substackcdn.com/feed/podcast/906465/8304b8163a0aee7dba424b4492ff198e.jpg","author":"Josh Barro and Ken White","episode_count":183,"summary":"An irreverent podcast about the law","last_synced_at":"2026-06-13T08:17:11.388966+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/serious-trouble-5498851"},"episode":{"title":"Pro Se Exam","slug":"pro-se-exam","published_at":"2026-03-27T15:05:14+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/serious-trouble-5498851/pro-se-exam","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/serious-trouble-5498851","url":"https://www.serioustrouble.show/p/pro-se-exam","audio_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/192262051/6e05f68f31c4812bac00bca98ec343a2.mp3","summary":"This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week Ken and Josh discuss Judge Lewis Kaplan losing some patience with Sam Bankman-Fried, and not just because Bankman-Fried’s mom tried to communicate with him ex parte . SBF has been making purportedly pro se filings, at least one of which appears to have been dictated to and FedExed by his mother , and he simultaneously has an appeal proceeding in the appeals court with real lawyers. Kaplan says he has to choose — are you pro se or not? And he wants to know — have any lawyers besides mom been helping with these filings he’s supposedly personally responsible for ? Meanwhile, the “Department of War” has been having a rough time in court. The Pentagon’s anti-reporting press policy has been thrown out as a First Amendment violation , so now the Pentagon says no reporters at all can work out of the Pentagon press room . Meanwhile, Anthropic won a preliminary injunction blocking the Pentagon’s declaration that the company is a “Supply Chain Risk.” (The Anthropic order came down after we taped — we’ll have a further update on next week’s show.) That’s for all subscribers. Paying subscribers will also hear our conversations about: * DOJ’s admission that it had no evidence of a crime related to Jay Powell’s testimony about Federal Reserve headquarters renovation cost overruns (and the surprisingly low bar for issuing a subpoena that the government nevertheless failed to clear). * A surprisingly practical choice by DOJ in New Jersey . * Minnesota’s effort to force the federal government to disclose investigative material related to the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti and Renée Good. * Mike Lindell in contempt of court . * Mike Flynn getting a settlement from Trump for his alleged persecu…","meta_description":"This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week Ken and Josh discuss Judge Lewis Kaplan losing some patien…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1449,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/serious-trouble-5498851/episodes/pro-se-exam/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/serious-trouble-5498851/pro-se-exam.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}