Episodes

David French graciously guest-hosts in Jonah’s place on today’s program, wherein he has a long-ranging conversation with a longtime friend , Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. David and Greg discuss some of the silliest and most sinister examples of censorship regimes on college campuses from recent history, the history of the campus free speech movement stretching back to the 1950s, David’s memories of being a conservative at Harvard Law School, and ...

Tevi Troy—presidential historian and all-around smart person—joins the program to talk about the mechanics of cancel culture, and what might be done to prevent it from taking hold in the future. Key to Tevi’s point is that “cancel culture is actually a distinct phenomenon from political correctness, which everyone largely disliked in the ‘90s.” They also talk about the larger culture of censorship in America before moving into the most vitally important topics of our time: Marvel vs. DC, in both...

In the midst of carving a path to Yosemite, Jonah has graced us with a Ruminant that provides a weekly roundup of his writing – from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to an example from his past that indicates why our radicals should Czech their privilege. He moves into a rumination on subconscious conservative messages embedded within Hollywood entertainment before discussing the unintended consequences of the Senate re-embrace of earmarks as well as the perks of sleeping in Walmart parking lots. It...

Live (well, at the time of recording) from Park City, Utah, Jonah is joined by his AEI handlers, Nick and Guy, for a pop culture-filled conversation with the help of listener-provided questions. Why does Jonah go on trips fit only for Survivorman? Why is Pam Grier so fascinating? Was Angel actually better than Buffy? And, the most important question of all, which one of Jonah’s former coworkers in conservative news media does Guy sound exactly like? Show Notes - Onion: “Markle seen holding Pri...

Pinch-hitting for Jonah today is his vocal double Chris Stirewalt, who talks with his old friend from their shared years at Fox News’ Decision Desk, Daron Shaw. Chris and Daron go on a “mythbusting” expedition, explaining why the conventional wisdom that high-turnout elections benefit Democrats isn’t true (and has never been) as well as why campaign finance efforts have historically failed to attack corruption in favor of simply dismantling the “appearance of corruption.” It’s a punched-up episo...

In this weekend’s Ruminant, Jonah has a lot rattling around in his mind, and now you're gonna hear about it. Why are elites inevitable? What explains the transformation of the Democratic Party into an ideological party? Stay for Jonah's thoughts on Covid relief, and President Biden's first prime-time White House address. Show Notes: -The Friday G-File -The members-only midweek “news”letter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steven Hayward enters the ranks of the three-timers on today’s Remnant, as he and Jonah engage in a discussion of the American right that manages to be both wide and deep. Jonah and Steve get the “dark clouds out of the way” (such as a pervasive illiberal cancel culture and the reappearance of especially nasty tribalism) first to make room for Steve’s heartening optimism. Such greener pastures involve an investigation into what remains of the old fusionist mindset among conservatives, why the ri...

On today’s show, Jonah speaks to Manhattan Institute fellow and CCNY professor Daniel DiSalvo (an expert on public-sector unions and their history) to find out how the sausage really gets made in the intra-organizational politics of these public-sector unions, and how their influence is often the result of “the breakdown of machine politics – especially within the Democratic Party – in big cities.” Show Notes: - Dan’s page at the Manhattan Institute - “The Trouble with Police Unions” - Dan’s l...

This weekend’s edition of the Ruminant is a little bit like Christopher Hitchens’ D.C. apartment: a little bit of one thing right next to a little bit of the complete opposite thing. There’s a lot of ground covered in this, a practically record-breaking long episode of the podcast in which Jonah discusses his dad’s work for the wonderfully-acronymed NANA (North American Newspaper Alliance), dynamic scoring (a system in which this episode gets an A+), the necessity of telling the truth at a time ...

Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution joins us for the first time. She and Jonah stray from pure rank punditry to instead discuss intra-party politics of primaries, the Democratic Party, and Elaine’s innate skepticism of the Electoral College. Jonah pushes back by saying that “When you start to dig under the surface, most people who oppose the Electoral College are really just saying that they don’t like the Senate,” to which Elaine has a great, balanced response (probably the best answer ...

In an effort to explain the current state of the economy as well as the political ramifications of some parts of the Biden agenda coming down the pipeline, Jonah invited Michael Strain, his colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, for a return appearance. Strain explains complicated issues without confusing the plebeians among us who can’t look at numbers for very long before developing a headache. Speaking of headaches, near the end of the podcast the guys get into a relitigation of the ...

Jonah joins us on a feature-length Relaxed Fit™ episode of the Ruminant in which he discusses his innate wish to continue speaking as a conservative without the sacrifice of genuinely-held principles. An important trait for a moment where that simply doesn’t happen often. In the first half, Jonah also addresses the “autoimmune problem” (both literal and figurative) of American youth as they continuously fail to prove themselves in tests of emotional fragility, and he makes a shocking claim about...

Fellow Dispatcher Declan Garvey joins Jonah on today’s program, wherein they discuss the parallels between the GOP’s current identity crisis and the last time that Americans witnessed a similar party realignment (the Whigs vs. Jacksonian Democrats). The guys discuss the prospects for a theoretically ascendant third party - “The people I spoke to said, ‘Yeah, I’d be happy to belong to a party that addressed my concerns even if I knew it might lose in the short term,’” says Declan - as well as ear...

Today, we confirm that Dispatch contributing editor Chris Stirewalt has indeed surpassed our gold jacket threshold while engaging in the rankest of punditry. Chris and Jonah discuss how Biden’s “poison pills” (Neera Tanden’s potential confirmation, a dogmatic insistence on a $15 minimum wage policy, et al) are quickly becoming … well, pills, simply put. While the administration continues to add progressive boxes to their checklist, Israel continues to speed ahead with vaccinations and, in the do...

Jonah welcomes Kevin Williamson to discuss their shared status as Americans trapped within the final layer of Dante’s Hell (aka, Texas in the midst of a large-scale winter weather disaster). From the corporatism on display to the “stunning lack of entrepreneurialism” in response to the issues the state is currently facing, to every issue in between - such as the pointless populism being proffered as an explanation for Texas’ woes - this situation is proving to be a microcosm of everything that i...

This week, Jonah brings The Remnant to you from the ice-wracked void of Austin, Texas. His guest is Stephanie Slade, the managing editor of Reason magazine. Stephanie and Jonah provide some helpful explanations of what the oldest coalition of modern conservatism (i.e. “fusionism”) really is, who its members were, and what its political motivations were. Then, in an instance of “violent agreement,” our two intrepid intellectual explorers refute the idea that this fusionist project is a “dead cons...

In this weekend’s Ruminant, Jonah figures that it is his duty to do what he can to clean the gigantic metaphorical Augean Stable that is Washington D.C. as recompense for missing a G-File. Thus, this is an episode filled with only the rankest of punditry: Grifters abound, both within Congress and in the fundraising and activism apparatchiks of both the right and the left. Not only is it the case that the grift was getting more intense on its own, but impeachment has just made it all the more sel...

This podcast is for those of us who feel like the state of our political parties makes us want a drink, or at least some reliable recommendations about what we should be drinking. Jonah is joined by AEI colleague Kevin Kosar, who writes on how Congress is failing to do its job - not simply because of populism and polarization, but also because “its smaller numbers of staffers mean that Congress is literally shrinking while the institution is being asked to do more than ever.” They discuss how to...

Astute listeners may remember Europe’s immigration crisis circa 2015, in which more than 1 million people, many of them refugees, made their way to the continent. Today, Jonah is joined by one of the most informed public intellectuals on the matter, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In addition to her first-hand account of leaving Somalia for the West, she also comes loded with information from her new book, Prey, which recounts many of the ways in which affected European nations have either struggled or outrigh...

Go down the rabbit hole of conservative eggheadiness on this weekend’s Ruminant, where Jonah discusses both the validity of “Trumpism” as an ideological construct as well as how that plays with the idea of conservatism as the “negation of an ideology.” Jonah also explains how we are seeing the ratcheting effect of increased government authority take place in real time, why Chris Stirewalt is the greatest, why right wing populism is the worst, and much more. Show Notes: -The Dispatch Podcast wi...

Given the state of… things (imagine us gesturing wildly as we say this) as they currently are, Jonah figured that this might be an apropos time to bring back a popular guest for his second showing: Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist and professor at the University of Miami specializing in how conspiracy theories spread. Buckle up for the discussion of Jewish space lasers, QAnon, Frazzledrip, and much more. They also discuss why the conspiratorial tendency never seems to go away, thanks to it...

Thanks to international supply chains, Scott Lincicome’s Five Timer gold jacket is in the mail today as he joins Jonah to discuss a whole panoply of economic trends. Scott and Jonah talk about some of his observations from his posts as a fellow Dispatch-er with his Capitolism newsletter, as well as through his role at Cato where he has just put out a ton of research refuting the too-clever-by-half idea that the government can seize the manufacturing industry for national security reasons. The gu...

On this Ruminant, Jonah explicates the sadly prominent “antisemitism in the gaps” theory of political history on both the left and right, his proud status as an ideologue of the lukewarmist school, and the GOP’s inability to take “yes” for an answer on winning cultural issues against the American left. He also touches on how the GameStop kerfuffle is really just a case where “the market should be left to sort it out,” and how it isn’t some kind of refutation of libertarian economics, in addition...

Will Saletan of Slate returns to discuss the looming possibility of a political conflict between the Biden administration and the public sector teachers’ unions who nominally support him, the ways in which the pandemic has shifted labor back into the private sphere of the American household, why both parties should be aiming to present themselves as “the ‘not crazy’ party” (and why they both seem to be doing the opposite), and much more. Will also provides a useful thought experiment as to wheth...