Podcasts
October 22, 2021 — Steven Hayward
What do baseball and politics have in common? I have no idea, but Henry Olsen does. Actually, the kinds of data measurements we use in baseball can be applied to politics as well, and few do it better than Henry. So in this “classic format” episode, we talk about why President Biden is just biding his time in office, having squandered his election by mis-reading the public mood, and how
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October 16, 2021 — Steven Hayward
This week’s episode, recorded with a live audience on Zoom, was off the hook a little more than usual, as Lucretia was in a grumpy mood (despite my futile attempt at appeasement by changing up my whisky selection), and audience questions and comments came flying in fast and furious. Yet somehow we managed to cover a lot of territory, from an after-action report on this year’s Indigenous Peoples Day Columbus Day holiday,
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October 9, 2021 — Steven Hayward
This week’s episode is sans-guests and sans-metaphysics, as Lucretia and I kick around the news of the week, which is a mix of the usual ominous portents from Washington, along with some evidence that Democrats are in free-fall with the public. First up is a look at the egregious Department of Justice letter identifying parents protesting at local school board meetings as a threat to the regime (in an ironic
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October 3, 2021 — Steven Hayward
We’re a day late with this week’s episode because Lucretia and I had the opportunity to catch up live with the Pacific Research Institute’s education expert extraordinaire Lance Izumi in San Francisco, to talk about what’s going on in the world of K-12. Lance is the author of the forthcoming book entitled The Homeschool Boom, but also helpfully fills us in on the backstory of how Japanese whisky originated and came to take
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September 30, 2021 — Steven Hayward
This short, Power Line Classic format episode features me in conversation this morning with Mackubin T. Owens, decorated Vietnam War vet, long time friend of Power Line, professor at the Naval War College, and author of numerous articles on books on civilian-military relations. With all the controversy over General Mark Milley’s direct contacts with senior Chinese military leaders, his apparently extensive contacts with journalists, and the confusion or contradictions over
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September 26, 2021 — Steven Hayward
We’re a day late because of travel problems, and I’m working on a backup computer because I left my main laptop behind at my office on Friday (hence the older bumper music on this episode, because I don’t have my up-to-date sound files), but this allowed us finally to book historian Richard Samuelson to join the happy hour to talk about . . . history. Specifically, what the hell has
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September 18, 2021 — Steven Hayward
I make a triumphant return as host this week, and after some of the ritual lover’s quarrel over whisky (including a celebration of my happy place—see nearby pic), Lucretia and I get down to the main business, which is slagging the left, and taking on the problem of “scientific expertise” in modern government. We begin with an update on the egregious 1619 Project, with a look at a long essay
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September 11, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Lucretia assumes hosting duties for this week’s potpourri of a show because I am recovering from major surgery, which I relate at the show opening today. (It includes a theological dimension!) But while I’m improving, the recall effort against California Gov. Gavin Newsom appears not to be. I explain the reasons why the polls show a strong turnaround in Newsom’s favor over the last week to 10 days, and why
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September 4, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Next Tuesday, Encounter Books will publish Glenn Ellmers’ magisterial intellectual biography The Soul of Politics: Harry Jaffa and the Fight for America, and Glenn joins us this week to walk through some of the highlights in the book in what is turning out to be a month-long “Jaffapalooza.” Naturally, we draw Glenn into our running argument about the problems of communicating the proper understanding of the principle of equality in an
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August 28, 2021 — Steven Hayward
This week’s episode is a Biden-free zone, so if you’re looking to avoid the Biden-Afghan collapse story, this is the show for you. Instead we decided to circle back return to an argument I was losing badly at the end of last week’s episode with Michael Anton, and go into greater depth on the meaning of equality in American political thought. To recap, I argued that the critics of “all
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August 21, 2021 — Steven Hayward
We’re not done thrashing the Afghanistan disgrace, so we coaxed Michael Anton (the Power Line podcast’s most frequent guest it turns out) to join us for a few quaffs. We use three of his recent articles to launch our discussion, starting with “Afghanistan: Doomed from the Start.” But we use a section from the middle of this essay, on the blunders of our advisers in the Middle East who don’t
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August 19, 2021 — Steven Hayward
We weren’t able to do a 3WHH episode for our regular Saturday time slot last weekend because I was on the road, so we’re doing this mid-week show with a special return guest, philosopher Spencer Case, who in a previous life served in the U.S. Army in deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan. While supportive of our military mission, he had misgivings about how it was all going during his
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August 7, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Lucretia takes over hosting duties for this episode (which seems only truth-in-advertising, since most listeners think she is charge every week), as we contemplate the question: wouldn’t it be nice if we actually had two political parties? We use as our text for the subject one of Harry Jaffa’s earliest essays, “The Nature and Origin of the American Party System,” where he explains why at its core party competition at
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August 5, 2021 — Steven Hayward
As everyone knows, California is having another fun-filled recall election next month, and some recent polls show that Governor Gavin Gruesom is in trouble and may well lose. The way California’s recall works is that if a majority votes to recall the governor, the second step on the ballot is to choose a successor, and right now the list of people who have qualified for the replacement field is nearing
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August 3, 2021 — Steven Hayward
As regular readers know, when it comes to COVID, our go-to source for making sense of the subject is Kevin Roche, who brings his years of experience in the health care field to his very useful website, healthy-skeptic.com. Scott Johnson follows Kevin’s work closely (here, here, and here, for example), but we decided it was time to hear from Kevin directly in podcast form. Among his other pithy phrases are,
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July 31, 2021 — Steven Hayward
We’re back! After a hiatus for a week while I was overseas, Lucretia and I return to the bar with some new whiskies and a sequel to our last episode that talked about the hysterical attacks on our friends at the Claremont Institute. Little did we know the liberal hysteria was just getting started! Damon Linker, the columnist at The Week and a previous guest on this podcast, thinks our
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July 17, 2021 — Steven Hayward
I figured a nine time zone distance might provide a margin of safety from Lucretia’s rear-end kicking over my article “What the Hell Happened to Bill Kristol?“, which Lucretia finds sorely wanting. And my attempts to mollify Lucretia with tales of how great Hungary’s conservatives are was mostly unavailing, even if true. Anyway, in this slightly abbreviated episode (because I had to rush off to begin a typical Central European
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