What We Were

Jacob Siegel is a writer and editor at Tablet and author of The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control . A U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, he is also a co-host of the Manifesto! podcast. We discuss his book and what it means for the present and future of the West in the midst of a transformation from the form of representative government we have always known...

The first proposed amendment to the Constitution was not about speech, religion, or guns. It was about the size of the House of Representatives—and if it had passed, Congress today might have nearly 7,000 members, not 435. In this episode, we explore the forgotten apportionment amendment, why it failed, what James Madison feared, and how America’s lower chamber gradually drifted away from the peop...

Can "Braver Angels" save America? Bill Doherty and I discuss the causes of America's political divide and how Braver Angels is working to bridge it. Bill Doherty is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota where he taught marriage and family therapy. He focuses on couples on the brink of divorce and on political stress in relatio...

Joseph Ellis is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Founding Brothers , about the collaboration of America's greatest political generation, which is the focus of this conversation. In his latest book The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding , Ellis confronts what he calls the central paradox of the American founding: the same generation that articulated the most power...

Mustafa Akyol is a Turkish writer, journalist, and senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, where he explores the intersection of public policy, Islam, and modernity. He is the author of several books on religion and freedom, including The Islamic Jesus, The Islamic Moses and Islam without Extremes , Akyol also teaches on Islamic history and thought at instit...

Environmentalist and documentary filmmaker Jeff Gibbs joins us to discuss his film Planet of the Humans, which pulls back the curtain on the "green energy" movement to reveal a for-profit industry that has tricked us into believing its technological solutions will save us from climate change, and that climate change is the only environmental issue that matters. We discuss reaction to his film on t...

Justice Clint Bolick sits on the Arizona Supreme Court, originally appointed by Governor Doug Ducey in 2016. In this episode, Justice Bolick and I discuss the legal system, his experiences on the Court, and the state of American politics. Braver Angels is the national nonprofit I mention, and an organization I encourage every American to donate to and become a member of.

Happy Independence Day, American listeners! Professional sports in America has become a racket. Taking advantage of patriotic sentiment and our civic duty to be sports fans, corporations have seized the commanding heights of the sports economy to squeeze Americans when they're at their most vulnerable. In turn, Americans simply tolerate it. Ticket prices are up 300%—but wages aren’t. Beers for...

Sports betting and marijuana have been broadly and rapidly legalized in much of the United States. What have been the consequences thus far and what does the future portend for America's growing population of gambling and marijuana addicts? Is America still mature enough to handle dramatic expansions of personal freedom? And are we capable of distinguishing between something being legal and be...

Zaid Jilani is an American journalist and author of the popular Substack The American Saga . Follow him on X: @ZaidJilani In this episode we discuss the state of journalism and the War in Gaza. I encourage everyone to pray for the people of Gaza and for peace in the wider region including Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and beyond. And to donate if you're able to an organization like Medical Aid f...

Jeff Shaara is the author of the American Civil War epics Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure . His father, the late Michael Shaara, is the author of The Killer Angels , a historical fiction novel about the Battle of Gettysburg and winner of The Pulitzer Prize. The Killer Angels and Gods and Generals were made into the major motion pictures Gettysburg (1993) and Gods and Generals (2003). J...

Dr. Iain McGilchrist is the author of The Master and His Emissary and The Matter With Things . A psychiatrist by training, Dr. McGilchrist is a leading expert on the brain and hemispheric differences. He is, I believe, the most important thinker of our time. In this episode we discuss hubris, the scalability of languages, empathy, and the intrinsic value of asymmetry. Check out his website at ⁠htt...

In his book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World , Dr. Iain McGilchrist paints a picture of our brains and the world in crisis. This episode is meant to be a primer on "McGilchristian thought" in advance of an upcoming conversation with Dr. McGilchrist himself. My hope with this is to establish some of the "basics" about Dr. McGilch...

The Fentanyl Project 's Brock Bevell and I cruise the streets of Mesa, Arizona to talk with the growing number of fentanyl addicts who have been relegated to the streets. America is now losing 100,000 citizens in their prime to drugs every year,. Why is this happening? Why is it not being talked about more? And what can be done about it? Follow The Fentanyl Project on Instagram at @fentanylproject...

We sit down with author and historian David O. Stewart about his book The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution . How did America get the Constitution it has? What timeless or transient issues informed their decision-making? And who were these men who painstakingly deliberated for months while away from their homes to reach a compromise that would hold the Union together and set it...

Angel Oakley is a consummate independent if ever there was one, so why did a political party marshal its resources to intimidate her supporters and ultimately block her from getting on the ballot in Illinois? We talk about her run, the cancer of partisanship in America, and everything We the People are up against to achieve a more perfect Union.

By surviving an assassination attempt, former President Trump had a golden opportunity to have a reset with undecided voters in the 2024 Election. Instead, he delivered another partisan stemwinder to his base. We discuss what would happen if an American politician, equal parts hated and loved, were to be killed in front of our eyes, and our conclusions are as unsettling as the act itself.

With help from William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, we examine the ominous parallels between the early days of Nazi Germany and America's own creeping totalitarianism.

In this conversation I talk to Senator Nancy Barto, a longtime state legislator in Arizona. We discuss what the job of a state legislator is, why so few people are even aware of our democratic institutions, and the state of politics in the Grand Canyon State.

I sat down with Jeff Taylor to discuss prison reform efforts in Arizona as well as his own harrowing experience in "the system".

While serving as Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, Rusty Bowers found himself at the center of a high-stakes political drama for his decision to hold firm against President Trump and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's pressure to decertify Joe Biden's election victory in Arizona in 2020. We discuss those events and more in this episode.

Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all trace their lineage to the same prophet, Abraham, and share many of the same beliefs and practices. Why, then, has Islam been left out of what should be a tripartite alliance on many of the issues facing the world? I make the case for a renewed effort to unite these three religions by building new institutions that reflect their shared heritage and philosophy i...

In this conversation with Dr. Richard Harris, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Rutgers University, we discuss the upcoming presidential election, the political realignment we're now witnessing, and freedom of speech in the midst of the war in Israel and Gaza. Arrow's Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem#:~:text=Say%20there%20are%20three%20choices...

Our political representatives have increasingly lost the courage to make unpopular votes, even when it's the right thing to do. Under pressure from forces seen and unseen, they're in need of a new institution that can help them expose what's wrong and what's right in pending legislation. They need Devil's Advocates.

What does the rapid loss of difference and asymmetry in the world portend for us? Does enforced conformity and uniformity clear a path for dangerous contagions to spread unimpeded? We discuss.