The John Batchelor Show

TABLE OF CONTENTS THE JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW, 8-21-2026Jeff Bliss reports Las Vegas is planning major upgrades to Allegiant Stadium, with the Raiders seeking $75 million in taxpayer funding to resolve pedestrian choke points and add retail opportunities. In Los Angeles, incumbent Mayor Karen Bass faced criticism after a poor debate performance against challenger Nithya Raman, highlighting her perceiv...

Jonathan Marcus reports American universities are suffering from declining public trust, soaring tuition costs, and a looming demographic drop in enrollment tracing back to the 2008 recession. Schools that became financially dependent on high-paying international students face severe budget cuts and program closures as foreign enrollment drops. This financial squeeze has forced a shift, prompting...

Henry Sokolski warns that while nuclear negotiations focus heavily on Iran's uranium, Iran has a neglected second path to weapons: hundreds of bombs' worth of plutonium stored at the Bushehr plant. Sokolski also criticizes the geopolitical reliance on Elon Musk's Starlink, arguing that a private company should not make critical military decisions, such as approving Ukrainian drone strikes inside R...

Bob Zimmerman reports SpaceX is rumored to be expanding to Louisiana with a massive 130,000-acre launch and data center site, while aerospace startup Castelion is successfully building low-cost hypersonic missiles for the Pentagon. Internationally, China achieved a vertical soft landing of its Zhuque-3 rocket first stage, and Ukraine damaged a key Russian rocket factory. In space science, NASA and...

Lorenzo Fiori reports Europe's severe heatwave is finally breaking as heavy rain and storms across Switzerland and Northern Italy drop temperatures by up to 20 degrees. This rainfall offers critical, long-awaited relief for the dry Po River, which has reached record lows. To escape over-tourism, Fiori recommends Chieti, a historic hilltop town in the Abruzzo region boasting Roman ruins, scenic vie...

Jim McTague reports Lancaster County's diverse economy—spanning tourism, agriculture, light manufacturing, and healthcare—is showing signs of notable resilience. While heavy July rains and high fuel costs temporarily slowed business, economic activity stabilized in August. Local tourist destinations like Kitchen Kettle Village report strong traffic, attracting over a million visitors annually with...

James M. Scott, Part Two: The Potsdam Declaration offered Japan a choice between rebuilding or "utter destruction." President Harry Truman greenlit the atomic bomb on the back of a pink telegram sheet, leading to historic missions piloted by Paul Tibbets, who trained his crew using concrete-filled "pumpkin" bombs. Following the devastating atomic strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—where little was...

Richard Epstein examines the suit by Disney and ABC against the FCC, claiming that threats to review their local television station licenses constitute unconstitutional retaliation for their political late-night and morning show commentary. Epstein agrees ABC's case is strong, arguing that FCC Chair Brendan Carr is abusing regulatory power by treating public airwave licensing as a private property...

Jeff Bliss reports Las Vegas is planning major upgrades to Allegiant Stadium, with the Raiders seeking $75 million in taxpayer funding to resolve pedestrian choke points and add retail opportunities. In Los Angeles, incumbent Mayor Karen Bass faced criticism after a poor debate performance against challenger Nithya Raman, highlighting her perceived disconnect from critical city problems like expan...

TABLE OF CONTENTS THE JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW 8-21-2026Anatol Lieven discusses the war in Ukraine, highlighting Ukrainian drone and missile attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure like Black Sea resorts and a commercial center. He carefully examines the psychological impact of these infrastructure strikes, noting that while they aim to weaken Russian morale, history shows such strategies rarely suc...

Evan Ellis analyzes key regional political and security developments in Latin America. Ellis discusses EcuadorianPresident Daniel Noboa's visit to China to secure security, trade, and economic assistance, and explains how historical visa-free policies turned Ecuador into a major transit corridor for Chinese migrants entering the US. He details Bolivia's ongoing political instability and the danger...

James M. Scott traces the dramatic, complex final months of World War II in the Pacific. Scott details how Secretary of War Henry Stimson briefed Truman in depth on the secret atomic bomb, and praises General Leslie Groves' masterful management of the Manhattan Project's secret cities. He describes Japan's political division: Emperor Hirohito secretly sought peace while militarists prepared a fana...

Rohan Naidu discusses the groundbreaking discovery of "black hole stars" at cosmic dawn using the James Webb Space Telescope. Naidu explains that these infant objects appear as mysterious "little red dots" but possess hybrid properties of both highly luminous black holes and stars. He explains how a young black hole surrounded by dense hydrogen gas absorbs blue and green light, creating a signatur...

Veronique de Rugy critiques California Representative Ro Khanna's proposal for a "one-time" 5% wealth tax on billionaires. De Rugy explains that several different European countries largely abandoned wealth taxes because they are administratively difficult, generate little revenue, and cause severe economic distortions. Highlighting a debate between Khanna and Mark Cuban, she details how taxing pa...

Jonathan Miltimore discusses the ongoing imprisonment of 79-year-old pro-democracy publisher Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, calling it the world's most overlooked story. Miltimore expresses his deep disappointment that Donald Trumpfailed to raise Lai's case publicly during his Beijing trip, instead repeating CCP rhetoric that Lai caused "bedlam." He describes Lai's deteriorating health inside his tiny, u...

Mary Anastasia O'Grady discusses the alarming rise of authoritarianism in Mexico under President Claudia Sheinbaum and her ruling party, Morena. O'Grady details how the ruling party has systematically consolidated power by taking control of independent electoral bodies, tribunals, regulatory commissions, and the judiciary through politicized popular elections. She warns that Morena's latest effort...

Peter Berkowitz reflects on the 30th anniversary of Alan Sokal's famous academic hoax, which exposed the intellectual decline within higher education humanities. Berkowitz critiques contemporary humanities departments for their ideological hypocrisy: professors claim objective truth is subjective while simultaneously insisting that their own political claims are absolute truths. He references a re...

Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft analyzes the multi-faceted, global strains of the Russia-Ukraine war. He discusses how Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian-adjacent sites like Sochi and the Wildberries warehouse aim to demoralize Russia, though historically such strategic bombing campaigns fail. Meanwhile, Russia is betting on a war of attrition, weaponizing Black...

TABLE OF CONTENTS THE JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW, 8-19-2026Rebecca Grant, Vice President of the Lexington Institute, discusses technological advancements on the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford. She details the transition from traditional steam-powered catapults to modern electromagnetic aircraft launch systems (EMALS), which offer superior, adjustable torque to launch both lightweight drones and heav...

Andrea Stricker of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies examines Middle Eastern nuclear proliferation and the mystery surrounding legacy materials. Stricker details a positive, US-brokered development in which the post-AssadSyrian government agreed to cooperate and turn over legacy yellowcake uranium stored at a covert facility known as Site 99. This material was intended for a North Korean-b...

Simon Constable, writer for the Wall Street Journal, discusses European climate anomalies and their severe impact on global commodities. Speaking from the south of France, Constable reports temperatures reaching 35 degrees Celsius, contributing to low water levels in the Danube, Rhine, and Po rivers. These climate constraints, alongside maritime blockades of Ukrainian ports, have driven up prices...

Peter Huessy of the Gold Institute for International Strategy critiques the Hollywood film House of Dynamite for its inaccurate depiction of US nuclear command and control. Huessy argues that the movie relies on flawed premises, such as the sudden, unexplained failure of Defense Support Program (DSP) tracking satellites and the total failure of US missile defense interceptors, to fabricate a helpl...

Michael Bernstam of the Hoover Institution warns of a severe global crisis in refined petroleum products, especially diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel. Bernstam explains that the "crack spread"—the cost differential between crude oil and refined diesel—has reached an unprecedented historical peak of over $102 per barrel. This crisis stems from a fifty-year systemic failure, during which no major new...

Caleb Weiss of the Bridgeway Foundation and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies examines the evolution of African jihadist movements. Weiss details the case of Jamal Chima, a Ugandan Guantanamo Bay alumnus who transitioned from Al-Qaeda to recruiting for the Islamic State Central African Province (ISCAP) in Kampala. Weiss explains that East African court systems frequently experience "catch...

Craig Unger, investigative reporter and author, explores President Donald Trump's unstable foreign policy toward Russia and Ukraine. Unger contends that Trump behaves as a Russian appeaser whose real estate-linked advisers take marching orders from Vladimir Putin. The discussion highlights how Ukrainian-manufactured drones have successfully targeted Russian oil refineries, causing severe fuel shor...