Podcasts
August 16, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Readers of Thomas Kuhn’s famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions will know his central thesis that when anomalies and contradictions arise in a reigning scientific theory it creates a crisis out of which new theories emerge to replace the old. We may be seeing the beginnings of such a crisis for modern Darwinism, which appears to have gaps and contradictions that can’t be explained or explained away. The rumbles about
»
August 9, 2019 — Steven Hayward
“Prudence” is not just something Dana Carvey liked to lampoon back when President George H.W. Bush was in office. Rather, it is the highest and most essential quality of those superb human beings we used to call “statesmen” before political science and history banished both terms in a fit of egalitarian madness that has yet to abate in our leading intellectual circles. One antidote to this narrowing of our horizons
»
July 26, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Long time readers will know that we’ve been very focused on the problem of the “administrative state,” an arcane term from political science that has in the last few years broken out big in everyday discussion. The administrative state refers to the trend, decades in the making, of transferring lawmaking power away from the legislative branch of government to permanent, unelected bureaucrats and executive agencies. The administrative state undermines a central
»
July 19, 2019 — Steven Hayward
A specter is haunting . . . well, just about everybody: the specter of a revival of nationalism. This week I attended the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, which was sponsored by the brand new Edmund Burke Institute. As Christopher DeMuth put it, “who knew that the next big thing would be the nation-state?” Of course if you say you are in favor of “nationalism” these days, right away critics
»
July 12, 2019 — Steven Hayward
One of my teachers in graduate school, the great constitutional historian Leonard Levy, insisted that “a history must serve its readers with explanations that suit the horizons of their curiosity and with writing that entertains and stirs them.” No one exemplifies that vivid style of biography and history better than Andrew Roberts. I caught up with Andrew in San Francisco this week, where we had a wide-ranging conversation about Churchill,
»
July 4, 2019 — Steven Hayward
By popular demand from listeners, we’re bringing back “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, on this special edition for the July 4 holiday. Many listeners asked us to offer up mini-tutorials on various aspects of the American Founding and political thought in general, so we break down the Declaration of Independence, drawing notice to five key features—including how some of the specific indictments against King George III remain highly
»
June 29, 2019 — Steven Hayward
You could be forgiven for thinking this week’s Democratic debates were straight out of an old Monty Python sketch, which prompted Steve to ring up Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, “Lucretia,” for a full-tilt boogie rant-fest about what ought to be the two main “Freeport questions”* that could unravel the Democratic Party between now and election day next year. Are we really going to bring back busing? And how
»
June 21, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of one of the iconic moments of modern environmental history—the infamous Cuyahoga River fire in Cleveland. Things were so bad, the legend goes, that rivers were catching fire! But most of what you think you know about that story is incomplete or inaccurate, argues Jonathan H. Adler, the Johan Verheij Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. In a now-famous article,
»
June 15, 2019 — Steven Hayward
This week’s special guest is Col. Austin Bay, author of a lively new book on foreign affairs and grand strategy, Cocktails From Hell: Five Complex Wars Shaping the 21st Century. Austin Bay has an extraordinary biography, including earning a Bronze Star for his service in the Iraq War. But that is only the beginning. Austin is the author or co-author of more than a dozen books (including a novel or
»
June 7, 2019 — Steven Hayward
This week’s two-part episode features our own Scott Johnson reporting on the verdict today in the Mohammed Noor case, and then we shift focus dramatically, talking with Prof. Joshua Dunn of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and Matthew Peterson, vice president for educational programs at the Claremont Institute, about the latest bitter internecine fight on the right about “David Frenchism.” I didn’t know this was even a thing,
»
May 31, 2019 — Steven Hayward
I thought about calling this week’s episode “Everything You Know about the Enron Story Is Wrong,” but that isn’t completely accurate, nor just to my guest and the breadth and depth of his insight into this subject. This week’s guest is Robert L. Bradley Jr., who deserves to be known as the Robert Caro of energy history. Rob is the founder of the Institute for Energy Research, one of the best
»
May 24, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Just in time for the start of your Memorial Day weekend, an early edition of our podcast. I’ve decided that “populism” is when the wrong person or party wins a democratic election. Certainly the way the media and liberal elites have reacted to the Liberal Party’s upset win in Australia bears this out (keep in mind that the Liberal Party in Australia is the conservative party, but what do you
»
May 18, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Lo and behold, I opened up this morning’s Wall Street Journal to see a weekend interview with this week’s guest, historian Wilfred M. McClay of the University of Oklahoma, about his brand new book Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story. In the course of our conversation, we cover not only what’s wrong (but also partly right) about Howard Zinn, but how Bill got the audacious idea
»
May 11, 2019 — Steven Hayward
This week I talk with economic historian Phillip Magness, co-author (along with Jason Brennan) of a brilliant new book, Cracks in the Ivory Tower: The Moral Mess of Higher Education. This splendidly written and fast-paced book vindicates Stan Evans’s first rule of insufficient paranoia—no matter how bad you think things are, when you look closer, you find out it’s even worse than you thought. Crack in the Ivory Tower explains
»
May 4, 2019 — Steven Hayward
This week I talk with Charles Lipson, the Peter Ritzma Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Chicago, about how to talk and argue about matters amidst the increasingly bitter polarization of our time. But along the way we revisit his idiosyncratic intellectual odyssey that brought him from rural Mississippi to the Ivy leagues. In addition to his academic work on international relations, you can read Charles’s popular
»
April 30, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Scott was still out of breath when I caught up with him just after he arrived home from the courthouse after the verdict in the Noor trial, but I prevailed on him to sit down and record a quick 15-minute special edition of the Power Line podcast. I managed to get Scott to extend his thoughts a bit beyond his Joe Friday-style “just-the-fact-ma’am” news coverage of the trial here on
»
April 27, 2019 — Steven Hayward
I’ll bet you didn’t know you need a federal disaster management plan for your pet rabbit if you use your pet rabbit as part of a magic act for birthday parties. Well, you did, until the U.S. Department of Agriculture got embarrassed by the adverse publicity for this abject stupidity, but it is of a piece with the proposed European Union regulation on the proper length and curvature of bananas
»
