Podcasts
July 11, 2020 — Steven Hayward
I’m back today with “Lucretia” for another “Three Whisky Happy Hour” to end the week, dishing out a sweet Irish whisky to go with our idea for the attack ad we hope the Trump campaign will run against the Democrats; a mild American bourbon whisky for the uneven Harper’s magazine statement opposing “cancel culture;” and a bracing peaty/smoky Scotch whisky to ponder the question of whether universities have passed the
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July 10, 2020 — Steven Hayward
Just in time for your weekend listening, I have adapted John’s interview with Gov. Kristi Noem into a podcast, to which I have coaxed some additional background material out of John about the history and political changes in South Dakota and other plains states over the last few decades. In short, this is not George McGovern’s upper midwest any more. So if you didn’t get the chance to take in John’s
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July 4, 2020 — Steven Hayward
By popular demand we’re bringing “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, back to the show, and we’ve decided to start our own “Three Whisky Happy Hour,” because why should Greg Corombos and Jim Geraghty have all the fun (and the booze) with their Three Martini Lunch. As Lucretia is a champion whisky drinker, we decided to offer up American bourbon, Scotch (the more bracing Islay and Highland single malts),
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June 10, 2020 — Steven Hayward
When our cities start to come apart and people say it seems like 1968 all over again, that can only mean one thing: time to get in touch with Fred Siegel. Among Fred’s many fine books is The Future Once Happened Here: New York, LA, DC, and the Fate of America’s Big Cities, which explained the high cost of incompetent liberal rule of our major cities in the 1960s and 1970s
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May 30, 2020 — Steven Hayward
“Decadence” is one of those familiar terms that is trivialized or rendered comic by overuse—perhaps you’d say from decadence itself. And while most people think decadent is mostly a synonym for “sumptuous,” it has a wider and deeper meaning, which is the subject of Ross Douthat’s new book, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success. Douthat, a columnist for the New York Times and author
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May 23, 2020 — Steven Hayward
This may well be one of my favorite episodes out of all 188 that we’ve done to date—certainly one of the most interesting. My guest this week is John M. Ellis, distinguished professor emeritus of German literature at UC Santa Cruz. Prof. Ellis is out with a terrific new book, The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, The Damage It Does, & What Can Be Done About It. This slim
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May 17, 2020 — Steven Hayward
This episode flips the usual format, with my guest interviewing me for a change. I first took note of Zachary Wood when he was an undergraduate of Williams College. He was the president of a student group called “Uncomfortable Learning,” whose mission was to invite to campus outside speakers with a heterodox perspective (which is code for “conservative” for the most part). Invitees included Charles Murray, Christina Hoff Sommers, David
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May 7, 2020 — Steven Hayward
This special edition of the show features John Hinderaker joining me today as co-host, and then we have a side order of Scott Johnson at the end. Yesterday Facebook announced the creation of a 20-member oversight board that some media accounts describe as a “supreme court” to advise and in some cases rule on what kind of material can be taken down from the popular global site. Facebook founder and CEO
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May 5, 2020 — Steven Hayward
When the news broke yesterday that the New York Times‘s egregious “1619 Project” had won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary, I knew the only thing to do was get Phillip W. Magness on the line. Magness, a senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, is the author of a brand new and indispensable book answering the factual errors and gross interpretive distortions of the 1619 Project, entitled
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April 27, 2020 — Steven Hayward
The Wall Street Journal this morning includes an article by T.J. Rodgers, the retired founder and CEO of Cypress Semiconductors, with the provocative title, “Do Lockdowns Save Lives? In Most Places, the Data Say No.” Rodgers mentions in the first paragraph that much of the statistical work behind his article was done by our own Joe Malchow, who is Power Line’s Wizard of Oz behind the curtain who keeps up
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April 22, 2020 — Steven Hayward
It’s Earth Day today—and not just any old Earth Day, but the 50th anniversary. It’s passing rather more quietly than in many previous years because the coronavirus crisis is eclipsing everything at the moment. But a lot has changed since the first Earth Day. Not only is the environment in the United States, and in most places around the world, in much better condition than it was in 1970, but
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April 15, 2020 — Steven Hayward
A few days ago Scott brought our attention Dr. Jonathan Geach’s essay on Medium, “Eight Reasons to End the Lockdowns as Soon as Possible,” and today Dr. Geach joined me to review the article, and, since the COVID-19 story is moving so fast, preview a sequel on “Moving Goalposts” that he is readying for publication. In addition to walking through the adverse health tradeoffs of an extended economic shutdown, Dr. Geach
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April 7, 2020 — Steven Hayward
This special mid-week edition offers an alternative to the all-virus/all-the-time coverage currently smothering all other topics right now, this time featuring Robert Bryce talking about his brand new book A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations. The book is a companion to his documentary film Juice: How Electricity Explains the World that will be available on streaming services in June. (For the moment, check out the YouTube trailer
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April 4, 2020 — Steven Hayward
My guest this week is Jeremy Carl, currently a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and formerly a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, where he directed the Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy. His political writing and commentary has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, National Review, Politico, the Economist, and many other leading newspapers and magazines. Of special interest to me, however, is Jeremy’s personal story
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April 1, 2020 — Steven Hayward
As promised (or threatened, depending in your point of view), another bonus episode of our podcast. Conrad Black argued this week that Franklin Roosevelt deserves to be regarded as a conservative champion, or at least that conservatives should steal him away from Democrats. FDR himself argued that Democrats should steal Lincoln from Republicans, so why not return the favor? I take up this exotic perspective with Power Line’s International Woman
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March 31, 2020 — Steven Hayward
Readers: As promised, I’m going to step up the frequency of podcasts for the duration of the COVID-19 martial law, and I’ve got several guests lined up for conversations over the next few days. But tomorrow (Wednesday) I’ll be hooking up with “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, to catch up and kick things around. We’re both really desperate to talk about anything besides the coronavirus, and we’ve decided
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March 28, 2020 — Steven Hayward
Our parochial news media seem only interested in reporting on the state of things here in the U.S. and in their favorite European vacation spots like France and Italy, but of course the COVID-19 pandemic extends into Eastern Europe as well, where most countries are also on some degree of quarantine or lockdown. I decided to check in with Clifford Angell Bates, a friend based in Warsaw who teaches political
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