Podcast begins publishing; later funded directly by listener subscriptions.
Chapo Trap House began publishing in March 2016, hosted by Will Menaker, Matt Christman and Felix Biederman, and moved to listener funding through Patreon later that year. It went on to become one of the highest-earning accounts on that platform.
The show is commonly associated with the label “dirtbag left.” The sources located for this entry establish the podcast’s existence, its funding model and the currency of the label, but do not establish that the show caused the style or the term; Amber A’Lee Frost’s August 2016 essay arguing for vulgarity in left-wing speech predates her involvement as a co-host and neither uses the term nor names the show. The earlier claim that the podcast was a “catalyst” for a movement is therefore stated here as sequence rather than cause.
Day-level precision is not used: the launch month is documented, the exact first-episode date is not established by a source cited here.