Plausibly Live

What do Washington State politics, an ancient biblical mystery, and a baseball playoff defeat have in common? More than you might expect. Sometimes the biggest arguments aren’t really about what we think they’re about. When high school girls walk away from a cross-country race rather than compete under rules they believe are unfair, is anybody […]

When does protecting children become government overreach? And what happens when an Apollo astronaut claims UFOs are actually demons? Two seemingly unrelated stories raise some surprisingly interesting questions on today’s episode of Plausibly Live: The Dave Bowman Show. Florida’s controversial social media law is back in the headlines after a federal appeals court cleared the […...

Arch Manning, the changing face of college football, and a very different kind of election interference. Two interceptions. One football game. And suddenly, according to some sports commentators, Arch Manning’s Heisman Trophy hopes are finished. Really? Oklahoma’s victory over Texas in the Red River Rivalry should have been a celebration of everything that makes college […]

Dave joins Bill Mick for the Tuesday podcast… Hey… at least it’s an hour later than it used to be… so Dave doesn’t have to get up until 3am for this… Dave Does History (Hour 2)Two Ships Against an Empire: 251 Years of the United States Navy On October 13, 1981, Dave Bowman reported to […]

Christopher Columbus, Noah’s Ark, and the Human Spirit of Exploration Columbus Day 2026 brings a fresh look at the voyage of 1492, the myths surrounding Christopher Columbus, and new archaeological claims concerning Noah’s Ark. Christopher Columbus has become one of the most controversial figures in American history. Once celebrated almost universally as a heroic explorer, […]

Genesis, Rashi, the Big Bang, and the Meaning of Tohu va-Vohu What if two words you’ve read your entire life suddenly changed the way you understood the beginning of everything? There are certain passages of Scripture that become so familiar we almost stop thinking about them. We know the words. We know the story. We […]

Free speech includes the right to say something stupid. It also includes everyone else’s right to call you out for it. Stephen A. Smith has built a career on outrageous opinions, confrontational sports commentary, and an ego large enough to fill an ESPN studio. But his remarks about Philadelphia Eagles star Lane Johnson’s retirement crossed […]

A conversation between a father and his son begins with a deceptively simple question: What do you think about banning books? The answer turns out to have very little to do with books and almost everything to do with liberty. On this episode of Plausibly Live, Dave Bowman considers what it really means to believe […]

A Secret Voyage, a British Spy, a Blue Velvet Suit, and the French Alliance That Changed Everything In October 1776, the American Revolution was in serious trouble. Washington was retreating, New York had fallen, the Continental Army was struggling to survive, and Congress desperately needed money, weapons, ships, and international support. So it entrusted an […]

Cost Engineering, the Death Penalty, and a North Korean Nuke That Moved a Mountain There is a wonderful line from Yes, Minister: “It is more expensive to do things cheaply.” Sir Humphrey Appleby meant it as satire. Government occasionally seems to regard it as an operating manual. Consider what happens when voters decide government is […]

If fentanyl kills thousands of Americans every year, why isn’t it used for executions? A listener sent me that question, and the more you think about it, the more reasonable it becomes. We constantly hear about the extraordinary lethality of fentanyl. Yet states that use lethal injection have struggled for years with complicated drug protocols […]

Tennessee claimed the authority to take a human life. It followed its approved lethal-injection protocol, administered two rounds of drugs and failed to execute Christa Gail Pike. That failure leads into another measure of government responsibility. A new Department of Veterans Affairs report says 6,488 veterans died by suicide in 2024, an average of nearly […]

There are days when I simply don’t want to be angry about anything. Politics, taxes and all the other things we’re supposed to be outraged about will still be there tomorrow. So today, let’s talk about Charlie Sheen. One of my guilty pleasures has always been the Charlie Sheen years of Two and a Half […]

Smallpox, Variolation, and the Battle to Save the Continental Army When we think about the American Revolution, we tend to remember the battles. Lexington and Concord. Bunker Hill. Trenton. Saratoga. Yorktown. Washington crossing the Delaware. Continental soldiers freezing in winter camps while British armies marched across the colonies. But George Washington was fighting another war, […]

What happens when something sounds so absurd that we stop checking whether it’s actually true? On today’s Plausibly Live, a viral headline claims a Columbia professor won an award for a book arguing that white paint is racist. There really is a book called A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint, but the headline […]

Lewis & Clark’s unlikely archaeological trail and the Revolutionary War story behind Charlotte’s Hornets History does not always survive where we expect to find it. Sometimes it is preserved in a journal or an archive. Sometimes it is buried in the dirt. And sometimes it is sitting right in front of us on a professional […]

The United States says it has a weapon in orbit, but has revealed little about what it does. Could the announcement deter an adversary, or could uncertainty make a confrontation in space more dangerous? On this episode of Plausibly Live, I look at the possibilities behind that announcement, from disrupted signals to damaged satellites, and […]

Ideological Alligators, Jellicle Cats, and the Limits of Appeasement What do a fiercely progressive lesbian bar, an angry online mob, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and my wife’s desire for a cat have in common? They all demonstrate what happens when you believe you are in control of the situation. In Greenfield, Massachusetts, the Last Ditch Bar […]

On November 16, 1776, nearly 3,000 American soldiers were lost when Fort Washington fell to British and Hessian forces. Almost 1,800 miles away, thirteen cannon shots sounded across a Caribbean harbor. Eleven guns from a Dutch fortress answered. Those eleven guns marked a turning point in the American Revolution. The Continental Navy brig Andrew Doria […]

Press Credentials, Due Process, and the Fifth Amendment Can a president revoke White House press credentials simply because he believes a news organization is dishonest or unfair? The First Amendment protects the freedom to publish, but it does not guarantee any reporter a seat in the White House briefing room. Once the government creates a […]

A newspaper headline I didn’t write introduced me to Bill Mick in 2006. What began as an awkward invitation onto his radio show became a friendship, a career in broadcasting, and, years later, the history segments we still share. Bill retired today after 25 years in radio. His last day has me thinking about the […]

On Constitution Day, Dave asks whether the Senate still works as the Framers intended. The Seventeenth Amendment gave voters the power to elect senators directly, ending a system troubled by deadlocks and corruption. It also removed state legislatures’ direct voice in Congress. What did the nation gain, and what did it give up? The question […]

It is easy to defend free speech when the speaker is sensible, the argument is sound, and everyone leaves feeling better about themselves. The test comes when someone says something you find ignorant, dishonest, or repellent. Macklemore has supplied that test for me. His account of Israel and Gaza leaves out too much to be […]

There are moments when diplomacy does not prevent a war. It merely reveals what the war is actually about. On September 11, 1776, three representatives of the Continental Congress crossed under a flag of truce to Staten Island. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge came to hear what Admiral Lord Richard Howe could offer […]

Technology is wonderful right up until it begins deciding who deserves to be watched, tracked, exposed, transported, or accidentally reduced to a screaming cloud of subatomic regret. In San Jose, a woman’s offensive public behavior became the justification for an extraordinary digital manhunt. Cameras followed her movements, strangers identified her, and the machinery normally associated […]