Beer and Conversation with Pigweed and Crowhill

Pigweed and Crowhill drink and review Big Red Norm American Red Ale and review *Run Hide Fight: Infidels*, the new action movie from the Daily Wire. Critics have called the movie Islamophobic and propagandistic. Is that fair? The guys consider where the movie exaggerates, where its critics may have a point, and whether its basic premise reflects uncomfortable realities that Western societies would...

More than 60 years after Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty, how should we judge the results? Pigweed and Crowhill drink a homebrewed "Texas Imperial Brown Ale" and take a look at Johnson's creations -- the Great Society and the War on Poverty -- and discuss the ideas behind them. How much progress against poverty was already underway before the programs began? Did welfare prog...

It’s another P&C Five for Five: five topics, five minutes each. Pigweed and Crowhill start with a Festbier and then race through ... * Personalized pricing, * The mania for renaming things, * What the most common words in rap and country music say about the cultures behind them, * The controversy over maps that make Africa look too small, and * The growing effort to separate the T from the LGB...

Twenty-five years after 9/11, Pigweed and Crowhill look back at the attacks, where they were when they happened, and what America did in response. They revisit the confusion and fear of that day, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, expanded government surveillance, immigration, and America's complicated relationship with Islam. They also ask w...

For the first time in decades, rap has disappeared from the top of the charts while country music is surging. Has rap simply exhausted itself—or is something bigger going on? Pigweed and Crowhill trace rap's evolution from the relatively harmless early days of hip-hop to gangster rap and increasingly explicit music, and compare its treatment of sex, crime, rebellion, and regret with rock and o...

We tend to think of democracy as the natural state of a modern society. But what if it's actually a historical anomaly that depends on a surprisingly fragile set of conditions? In this episode, Pigweed and Crowhill discuss what makes democratic government possible in the first place: trust, civic virtue, respect for the rule of law, acceptance of political defeat, shared cultural assumptions,...

The Lindsay Clancy trial ended with a hung jury after one juror refused to join the other eleven in voting for acquittal. And then things got really interesting. Pigweed and Crowhill discuss the remarkable reaction to the holdout juror, the outrage that he wouldn’t go along with the majority, the revelation that he was a black man, and the media’s efforts to identify him and dig into his personal...

Giants are everywhere. They appear in fairy tales and mythology, in the Bible, in ancient legends, and even in modern stories from Afghanistan. Why are stories about giants so common? Crowhill, Longinus, and Pigweed explore the Nephilim of Genesis, Goliath and the giants of Canaan, the famous Cardiff Giant hoax, and the bizarre modern legend of the Giant of Kandahar. Then they ask a more practical...

For this installment of P&C’s Shortcut to the Classics, we turn to one of America’s earliest great writers: Nathaniel Hawthorne. We discuss four of Hawthorne’s short stories — “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” “The Birth-Mark,” “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” and “Young Goodman Brown” — and find a surprisingly consistent vision running through them. Can age make us wise? Can science perfect human nature?...

What if civilization didn't begin the way we thought it did? For generations, the standard story was fairly straightforward: hunter-gatherers settled down, developed agriculture, built permanent communities, and eventually created cities, temples, art, writing, and civilization. Then archaeologists discovered Göbekli Tepe. Built around 9,500 BC in what is now southeastern Turkey, Göbekli Tepe...

What happens when people stop believing the justice system will deliver justice? Pigweed and Crowhill start with the banned movie Citizen Vigilante , but quickly move into a much bigger question: Why do vigilante stories become popular when people believe crime is out of control and the authorities aren't doing their job? From Charles Bronson and Falling Down to Batman, John Locke, the social...

Pigweed and Crowhill drink and review Cape May Brewing Company’s Coastal Evacuation Double IPA and ask a deceptively simple question: When are we going to live on Mars? Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Tesla, and even the Boring Company can all be understood as pieces of his larger vision of making humanity a multi-planetary species. And there’s a compelling argument behind it: Earth is humanity’s single point...

On their recent trip to Mexico, Pigweed, Crowhill, and Longinus read Greene's novel set in Mexico -- a moral thriller about the relentless pursuit and persecution of a Catholic priest during the Mexican civil war. A paramilitary group has outlawed the Catholic Church and is executing the clergy. A humdrum, milquetoast, "whiskey priest" is on the run, and a determined officer is tryin...

Who was the greatest man who ever lived? Yeah, okay, Jesus. But who was called "the greatest man" by his enemies? That would be our first president, George Washington, who was declared the greatest man who ever lived by none other than his rival, King George. Why? Pigweed and Crowhill dive into that topic, and explore the amazing life and legacy of George Washington. But first, they drin...

Pigweed, Crowhill, and Longinus are back from Mexico with stories to tell. The trip takes them from the beach town of Sayulita to the sprawling metropolis of Guadalajara and finally to Tequila—where the agave fields are endless, the distilleries are fascinating, and the tour bus gets considerably livelier on the way home. Along the way, they encounter mariachi bands, Mexican craft beer, cobbleston...

Why do some cultural fads disappear while others hang around long after everyone seems to have moved on? Pigweed and Crowhill drink and review a hazy IPA and ask, “Are we still doing this?” From pronouns in bios, COVID-era leftovers and land acknowledgments to climate alarmism, corporate virtue signaling, Pride Month, recycling and other remnants of the great cultural craziness of the past several...

Pigweed and Crowhill review two versions of the same old ale and tackle Helen Andrews' provocative argument that much of what we call “wokeness” can be understood as the feminization of our institutions. As women have become majorities in fields such as education, law, publishing, and human resources, Andrews argues that traditionally feminine priorities — empathy over rationality, safety over...

America needs more data centers to power AI -- but communities across the country are starting to say, "Not here." In this episode of Beer and Conversation with Pigweed and Crowhill, we explore why counties and states are putting the brakes on new AI infrastructure. Data centers promise billions of dollars in investment, but they also consume enormous amounts of electricity, require vast...

Thomas Jefferson was far more than the author of the Declaration of Independence. He was a lawyer, architect, inventor, linguist, scientist, diplomat, president, and one of the most influential minds behind the American experiment. In this episode of Beer and Conversation with Pigweed and Crowhill, we trace Jefferson's remarkable life—from writing the Declaration of Independence and championin...

Foucault. Derrida. Lyotard. Three French philosophers walk into a cafe — and forty years later, American universities can't define what a woman is. In this episode, Pigweed and Crowhill dig into a viral French mea culpa: an apology, on behalf of France, for exporting postmodernism to the world. They trace the direct line from French theory's core claim — that truth is just a mask for power...

The 2026 World Cup brought millions of international visitors to the United States—and many of them experienced something they weren't expecting. For years they had been told America was dangerous, hostile, racist, politically unstable, and falling apart. Instead, many found friendly people, clean cities, incredible food, welcoming communities, freedom, abundance, and an atmosphere that challe...

As America approaches its 250th birthday, we fire up a (mostly) reliable time machine and imagine what the Founding Fathers would think if they could see the United States today. Would George Washington be amazed by America's military power? Would Benjamin Franklin marvel at electricity, space travel, and modern technology? Would Thomas Jefferson recognize the federal government they created—o...

As part of our America 250 series, Pigweed, Crowhill, and Longinus put each other to the test with a wide-ranging game of American trivia. How many people signed the Declaration of Independence? Which president served the shortest term? Why did George Washington's resignation astonish the world? Which four states meet at Four Corners? And could you answer the same questions that left some coll...

With special guest Longinus the boys review a Troegs Graffiti Highway Mosaic IPA and take a deep dive into Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, one of the defining novels of the Beat Generation. We talk through the plot, the major characters like Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, and the larger ideas behind Kerouac’s world: freedom, authenticity, rebellion, conformity, jazz, the open road, and the moral chao...

Genuine racism is a bad thing. That's why the word "racist" used to carry real moral weight — because real racism is a serious wrong. But the word has been misused, abused, overused, and trampled on. After decades of overuse, misapplication, and outright abuse, the accusation of racism has jumped the shark. Today, voter ID is racist. Advanced math is racist. Showing up on time is rac...