Lewis Bollard is the Farm Animal Welfare Managing Director at Coefficient Giving on Substack. He joins to discuss the Save Our Bacon Act, and the economic tradeoffs of better animal welfare against higher meat prices.

Senate switchboard number: (202) 224-3121

Prior Episode: “Big Ag’s Meat Ethics”

Instead, I’ve built a website specifically for patrons to offer ideas for topics and guests on the show.

It’s a simple website, just one box. Put your suggestion in, and it goes directly to the database I use to…

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In this (admittedly random) bonus episode, Josh Jennings returns to the show to talk about the Gnostics, a now-defunct Christian sect which once interpreted the person and message of Christ’s in a radically different manner than is understood by …

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Then we turn to adaptation itself, and the choices involved in translating an ancient epic for a modern audience. Using Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey as our case study, we ask what an adaptation is free to change, what it has to preserve, and at what point a new version stops being The Odyssey at all.

“All the Gods Suck Except Circe”

In this episode we cover:

• Ceuta, the other Gibraltar

• How Carthaginians made our alphabet

• The EU ramifications of mass migration

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It’s not that America won’t spend money on mass transit, it’s that we piss it away when we do. Our transit system is a mess, with a lot of problems in spending, procurement, NIMBYism and good ‘ol fashioned idiocy.

Will Poff-Webster is the Director of Infrastructure Policy at the Institute for Progress, where he works on energy, transportation and housing policy.

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Should you trust experts—or trust yourself?

Richard Hanania, author of Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster joins to discuss why populism has become one of the defining forces in modern politics.

We discuss whether elites really deserve their bad reputation, why expertise and institutions matter, where academia and the media have genuinely failed, and whether movements built around “the wisdom of ordinary people” inevitably drift toward conspiracy theories, corruption, and bad governance.

Why has trust in the news collapsed—and is it really all the media's fault? Tangle founder Isaac Saul joins for a candid conversation about the incentives driving modern journalism, from clickbait and audience capture to ideological groupthink and the collapse of local news. We explore whether readers are rewarding the very coverage they claim to hate, why viewpoint diversity matters inside newsrooms, whether AI poses a real threat to journalism, and what it would actually take to rebuild public trust. It's a nuanced discussion about media, incentives, and why fixing the news may require fixing ourselves first.

In this episode we go deep into the creative mindset, and why it predisposes people to reject chaotic, unfair, and boorish markets in favor of boards of experts.

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Is Rumspringa real? Are Amish people happier than you? Let’s visit Amish country! Heaton visits Muhlenberg County, Ohio, to investigate America’s unique subculture of pacifistic, techno-phobic Anabaptists.

We meet Marcus Yoder, the Executive Director of the Amish and Mennonite Heritage Center, and talk to him about all things Amish. Why do they have weird beards? Why eschew buttons, automobiles, and smartphones? And, crucially… are they onto something?

This interview was edited for purposes of clarity and brevity. When I significantly alter an interview I make the uncut version available, just in case: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1szkeykHYAmerFXpeDTww2o_uHyLsj1_2/view?usp=sharing

Brian Dunning, host of the Skeptoid podcast, returns to discuss his stint in “Club Fed” and what life in federal prison is like.

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Hello community!

I’m heading to Scotland shortly and figuring out Wallace’s dogsitter situation. I’ve got a good option lined up at a doggy summer camp, but my preference is that Wallace stay with a nice family.

If you’re in reasonable driving distance from OKC, and you’d like to have a canine sidekick for a couple of months, this would make me feel bett…

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Why did the United States become a stable republic while so many revolutions ended in dictatorship?

The answer lies in two men pivotal to the Revolution: George Washington... and Oliver Cromwell.

A century before George Washington, Cromwell fought a king in the name of liberty, overthrew the monarchy, and then—step by step—became everything he opposed.

Washington would later face many of the same temptations: an unpaid army loyal to him, politicians begging him to stay in power, even a proposal to become king.

This is the story of two revolutionary generals, two republics, and why America stayed on the path of democracy instead of descending into a military junta.

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The American Revolution fought for arguments first articulated during the English Civil War: No taxation without representation. Rule requires the consent of the governed.

This is the story of that first, epic conflict which erupted between the absolutist and tyrant King Charles I, and the republican forces of Parliament and Oliver Cromwell.

(A prequel, …

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What if history isn’t a string of great man biopics or a struggle between conservatives and progressives? What if it’s a battle of disciplinarians against drunks and harlots? Thaddeus Russell comes on to talk about his book, “A Renegade History of the United States.”

The Founding Fathers were all children of the Enlightenment, and they agreed on kicking King George out, but they never agreed on how to run the country.

Seth Radwell, author of American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing Our Nation joins on to discuss these two halves of our Founding, and how they are ultimately complimentary.

Jeffrey Rosen is a legal scholar and the President of the National Constitution Center. He’s the author “the Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.”