Never Close the Inquiry

Episode 48 - The Neophytes: In Which the President Adds Graham Platner to the US Men’s National Team The terrific and inspiring US Men’s National Team’s foray in the World Cup ended with President Trump-centered controversy and a thumping at the feet of foreign waffle-makers, the ceasefire in Iran has ceased, and Graham Platner is on the outs in Maine after having been accused of, among other thin...

Episode 47 - The Neophytes Learn Politics from Jalen Brunson and Exult in Their Newfound SpaceX Riches The Neophytes—each of whom invested in SpaceX at the age of 12—question who on earth would voluntarily wear Snapchat’s new $2200 Snap Specs, discuss the SpaceX IPO, and talk about what Knicks star and NBA champion Jalen Brunson can teach us about the limitations of using current metrics to foreca...

Episode 46 - The Neophytes Get a Tad Bleak About the Importance of Character in Politicians So what would you do in 2028 if it turned out one or both of JD Vance and Gavin Newsom (hypothetically, the candidates) were revealed to likely be responsible for a string of unexplained decades-old disappearances in a remote corner of the Ozarks or Sierra Nevadas? All else being equal, virtually everyone w...

Episode 45 - The Neophytes Masculinely Discuss Masculinity Warning: the audio is a tad echoey because the SD card, afraid of this conversation being made public, self-corroded and didn’t record anything. Sadly for the card, we believe in redundancies—in this case, the iPhone which recorded the video. On Saturday, I read “Progressives Don’t Understand Masculinity” by the Last Blue Dog here on Subst...

Episode 44 - The Neophytes Get Awfully Prudish About Prediction Markets Prediction markets, like Polymarket and Kalshi, allow users to purchase shares in certain real-world outcomes; or, in human speak, to bet on stuff. Like, all sorts of stuff. For example, a US special operations soldier recently made over $400,000 betting on the removal from office of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The so...

Episode 43 - Ultramarathons and the Joy of the Difficult Ultramarathoner, trainer, and nutritionist Jesse Rich and I have known each other since we were old enough to consciously know people. He was the one who unwittingly sparked my own love of fitness more than 25 years ago when he and a few of our fellow Cub Scouts could do more pullups than me on the bar at his house. More recently, Jesse has...

Episode 42 - Two of Three Neophytes Discuss Political Violence and Challenges to Norms Well, we had another topic ready to go, and then someone tried to shoot the President again. So, the original plan went out the window, and Channing and I discussed the attempted shooting and political violence generally, pushing norms, the lack of true dealmakers in political office, and the consequences of a s...

Episode 41 - The Three Neophytes Again Discuss Iran and Maybe Some Ideas for Fixing Everything Wrong with our Politics The Iran War/Conflict continues apace, and whether we have a clear objective and clear, palatable way to achieve it remains up for some debate. President Trump and Secretary of War Hegseth have yet to solve an increasingly severe communications problem, the President is feuding wi...

Episode 40 - The Three(!) Neophytes Discuss the Ongoing Conflict in Iran In this episode, recorded Sunday afternoon in Salt Lake City, Thomas and I are joined by our longtime friend Channing Elggren for a robust back-and-forth on the conflagration in the Middle East: we discuss what this means for the United States, what it means for Iran, and what it means for the region writ large. We don’t clai...

Episode 39 - The Neophytes Think the Feds Should Look into this Epstein Guy Well, it’s been a tough few weeks for wealthy perverts/possible sex criminals/people who groveled for the money and attention of a definite sex criminal. In the words of not Shakespeare, this kind of seems like much ado about something. Thomas and I spoke about a number of the people now linked to Epstein, whether there’s...

Episode 38 - The Neophytes: Trump, Emirati Bribes(?), and Why We Decided to Purchase the Remaining 51% of World Liberty Financial I’m not saying it was a bribe. It is entirely possible that it makes good business and political sense to provide American-made AI chips to the United Arab Emirates.  It is also possible that the rather shady Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the brother of UAE Presid...

Episode 37 - A Voice in the Conservative Wilderness: Ben Connelly on Venezuela, ICE, and Ice (Greenland) Ben Connelly—the podcast’s first non-Neophyte repeat guest!—is a brilliant writer and long-distance runner based out of one of Earth’s Top Cities Where Nick Hagen Once Lived, Charlottesville, Virginia. Though he spends most of his writing time working on the serialized novels, short stories, an...

Episode 36 - The Neophytes Address Untimely Questions, Like Whether Lobbyists Are in League with the Forces of Darkness To be honest, we did speak about Greenland, but our conversation was uninformed even by our standards, so the topics du this jour are impeachment and lobbyists—we will return to Greenland sometime around when the Cuban government is toppled (which, apparently, could be soon?). Fo...

Episode 35 - Remaining Human in the Age of AI (Lawyering) Kimball Parker is one of the kindest, most thrillingly sincere people I have ever met. Aside from that, he is also the CEO of SixFifty, an AI-powered employment law compliance platform; head of operations at Paychex, a payment processor which now owns SixFifty; and head of the AI Lab at the University of Chicago Law School—students in the A...

Episode 34 - The Neophytes Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive, and…Dodge the Truth The government is still shut down, the sun sets not long after lunch, and the Dodgers won the World Series—oh, and BYU is undefeated. Things could be better. On this latest episode of The Neophytes, Thomas and I discuss the shutdown, the World Series, a Word from our Sponsor (capitalizations intended), the meaning of life, and...

Episode 33 - Prof. Jonas Anderson on Why We Should Be Concerned That Judges Are Competing for Cases I’m not completely sure how to convince you to listen to a patent law professor and a bankruptcy lawyer nerd out about why competition between judges for cases threatens to seriously damage already-fragile public trust in the judiciary, but here goes: In an ideal, utopian world, justice would be bli...

Episode 32 - The Neophytes Self-Diagnose: Why Are We Libs? In this episode, Thomas and I try to figure out where exactly our political beliefs came from: we have a sense of what we believe, but why do we believe it? Why do we want to believe it? Did we come up with everything on our own, or are we regurgitating something we were taught growing up? And if we can get to the root of why we believe wh...

Episode 31 - The Neophytes Have Never Been to Epstein Island And should we, for some inexplicable reason, show up in the Epstein Files, we direct all inquiries to our legal counsel (me). In this episode, Thomas and I discuss, well, the Epstein Files: the controversy, why President Trump is so reluctant to have them released, what we think is most likely in there, and whether there’s an upside to h...

Episode 30 - The Neophytes Talk the Big Beautiful Bill, Trolling, Trust in the Government, and American Pride In this episode, Thomas and I discuss the Big Beautiful Bill, my (perhaps hypocritical) hatred of trolling, diminished trust in the federal government, and Democrats’ cratering sense of American pride. We are not experts. We’re two friends trying to figure things out—two friends of particu...

Episode 29 - The Neophytes Talk Protests, Immigration, Political Violence, and More The Neophytes are back! Our many fan is overwhelmed with excitement. In this episode, Thomas and I discuss the latest in current events: protests against ICE and kings, Donald Trump’s birthday, political violence, and conflict in the Middle East. Let me reiterate our standard caveat with more force than usual: we a...

Episode 28 - K-12 Education Expert Karen Vaites On Reversing America’s Decline in Reading Achievement Since 1969, the National Assessment Governing Board has been conducting the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—the “Nation’s Report Card”. In 2024, fourth grade reading scores hit their lowest mark in 20 years, with 40% of tested students scoring “below NAEP basic”; eighth grade re...

Episode 27 - EU Parliament Member Johan Van Overtveldt on The Icarus Curse It isn’t every day you get to talk to one of the 720 members of the European Parliament, one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union. For me, it has happened once: a week ago, when I spoke to Johan Van Overtveldt, now in his second five-year term representing Belgium in the Parliament and serving as chair of the...

Episode 26 - Ben Connelly on Traditional Conservatism and Why It Matters What does “traditional conservatism” mean to you? How has conservatism changed since President Trump came on the scene? Did it need to change? One of the downsides of having just two mainstream parties, one of which has permanently claimed the mantle of conservatism and the other that of liberalism, is that those words come t...

Episode 25 - Griffin Gooch on Restoring Trust in Religious Institutions Trust in the government is low , and has been for a long time. Moral individualism , a sort of autonomy from traditional authorities, is high and rising. Where some have lost their faith in institutions, others never had it . A major part of that story is the decline of participation in religion. As of a 2021-2023 survey perio...

Episode 24 - Decentralization as an Answer to a Polarized Media There are many who believe our fractured, hyperpartisan media landscape is hurting the country and hurting us. Don Templeman is doing something about it. When most of us hear “blockchain,” we think of cryptocurrency, or maybe something involving Legos—not so with Don. As an undergraduate at Wake Forest University, he studied computer...