Finding Common Battle Grounds

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Tom, Josh, and Ryan discuss the killing of United Healthcare's CEO, Brian Thompson, by Luigi Mangione. Josh starts out by saying that it is murder and wrong. Tommy and Ryan agree that it was murder but also recognize that many see Mangione as a "folk hero" because they are so upset with health insurers who deny coverage a lot to maximize profits. W...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Josh, Tom, and Ryan explore new gender/dating norms. We focus on a recently published editorial in the New York Times that argues the advances women have made in education, income, and independence have resulted in men feeling confused about how they are supposed to interact with women and how to be a "man." Women in the US increasingly have more e...

The 2024 Presidential election just occurred and Donald Trump won convincingly against Kamala Harris. In this episode, we examine reasons people gave for voting for Donald Trump , including: immigration, wages, funding for the military, the federal deficit, government bloat, stock market volatility, and identity politics. We spend a fair amount of time discussing identity politics, which we ultima...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we tackle two topics. First, we discuss whether the government should help people rebuild if their homes are in zones that will continuously flood, burn down from forest fires, or be destroyed by natural disasters. We all agree that the government should not and that people should assume that risk at their peril. The government's role should be to...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we are joined by Vance Reavie from the Independent Center . We start with a lengthy discussion about independent voters - how many there are, what they want in candidates, what issues are important to them, and why they often feel marginalized in US elections. We then turn to the primary question of whether independent voters will decide the Presid...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Josh, Tom, and Ryan discuss the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and the instances of censorship taking place around the world. Amazingly, we have clear agreement on the debate - Harris won by baiting Trump and then letting him lose the debate by looking like a fearmongering crazy old man. The memes that resulted from Trum...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Ryan, Tom, and Josh start with a discussion of Kamala Harris's entrance into the Presidential race in the US. Josh and Tom aren't fans. They argue that Biden was forced out of the race, that Kamala isn't competent, and that the media has basically been working for Harris to remake her image and give her a boost. Ryan disagrees with most...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Ryan and Tom tackle two topics. First, we start with the attempted assassination of Donald Trump . Tom asks Ryan a number of questions related to the attack, from whether he thinks the attack was staged (as some conspiracy theorists have started to argue) to whether this was a massive failing on the part of the Secret Service to whether Donald Trum...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we tackle two topics. Joe Biden's poor debate performance has been in the news a lot as of late. Rather than examine that, specifically, we discuss who is "pulling the strings" in the Democratic Party: who ultimately picks the candidates and who helps them get the nomination and get elected. This was spurred by a video clip from congr...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Ryan and Tom are again joined by Josh who may be more of a permanent fixture on the podcast. We tackle two topics. First, we explore Elon Musk's pay package which was recently approved by Tesla shareholders and would net him tens of billions of dollars. Ryan argues that his opinion isn't worth anything as he is no longer a shareholder, but...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we're joined by a special guest - Josh Cragun is back after a nearly two-year hiatus. (And he has hair!) We cover two topics in this episode. First, we start with the COVID-19 lab leak theory. We read an editorial from the New York Post editorial claiming that it is now definitive that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in China. Tom and Josh are now c...

In this episode of Finding Common Battlegrounds, we start the podcast with a discussion of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his candidacy for President . We discuss whether he will be more detrimental to Trump's campaign or Biden's. We also talk briefly about his anti-vaccination views and his advocacy for free speech. Tom concludes he'll vote for him over Biden or Trump but Ryan is discount...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we start with a discussion about a recent court case decided in Norway that resulted in the federal defunding of Jehovah's Witnesses because of their ostracism practices. We both agree that the Norwegian government is well within its rights not to give JWs money if they engage in practices that are deemed to be coercive. We then turn to a recen...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we are joined by a new guest, Sean Patrick Tario, who now runs https://mark37.com/ and advocates for security and privacy from "big tech." But before we discuss big tech, Tom wanted to discuss efforts by the US to get Israel to accept a ceasefire agreement with Gaza/Hamas. In the process, we find common ground that there is no "good&...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we have another guest: Ken W. Good, an attorney who specializes in bail bonds. We take advantage of Ken's expertise to discuss a movement spreading across the US to end bail bonds under the premise that bail bonds can result in poor people being imprisoned because they cannot afford even low bail amounts. We discussed a Politifact article that...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Ryan and Tom are joined by Sarah Sun Liew , a Republican candidate for US Senate for California. We discuss two articles related to immigration. First, we examine Governor Greg Abbott's violation of federal law in putting up barriers (i.e., razor wire, sawblades, etc.) at the US/Mexico border. We all agree that there are issues with immigration...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we tackle two legislative/governmental issues related to higher education ( article 1 and article 2 ). First, we discuss the recent legislative initiative in Utah to ban requiring diversity, equity, and inclusion statements as part of the hiring process at public universities in Utah. As we dug into the details on this topic, it became clear that t...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Ryan and Tom tackle two topics. First, thanks to legislation under consideration in the Florida House and Senate, we discuss rolling back regulations protecting children (really 16 and 17-year-olds) when it comes to the number of hours they can work while school is in session and the tops of jobs they can do. We agree that these laws are problemati...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Tom and Ryan tackle two topics. First, we discuss the fact that some individuals and groups have effectively been showing their support for the people of Gaza by calling for violence and even genocide against Israel. Tom pointed out that this seems to be a double standard on college campuses as they would not allow similar calls for violence agains...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Ryan and Tommy tackle two topics: trigger warnings and the military industrial complex. On the first topic, a review article examining the efficacy of trigger warnings was just published illustrating that they often have the opposite of the intended effect, increasing people's anxiety and making it more likely people will watch the content. The...

It's been a few weeks, but we're back. We talk about some of what we've been up to over the last month, then jump into two news items. First up is an opinion piece by NYTimes contributor David Brooks that suggests professionals (or the professional class) are condescending and dismissive of the working class, which has led them to feel disenfranchised and choose as their representative...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we tackled three topics. We started with the news that a social media influencer worked with a company to create a chatbot for her followers that, when prompted, turned into a sex chat bot. We then discussed the implications of sex chat bots and eventually sex robots for humans, with a little disagreement about the negative outcomes for humanity. W...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we (Ryan and Tom) tackled three topics. We started with a discussion of Trump's recent civil lawsuit by E. Jean Carroll, which ended with a verdict against him suggesting the jury was convinced that Trump sexually assaulted (i.e., raped) Ms. Carroll. Ryan was wondering how it is that people can support a rapist as President of the US, and Tom r...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we started with two topics but then led us off on two tangents. First, we discussed the Fox News settlement with Dominion Voting machines and Fox News's firing of Tucker Carlson. Tom wasn't as familiar with all of the revelations that resulted from the discovery part of the lawsuit that illustrated that the Fox News administration, personal...

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Tom and Ryan tackle two topics. First is the impending arraignment of Donald Trump in New York City. We both agree that Trump likely broke the law. But we also agree that this kind of media attention really only helps Trump as he works to destroy trust in American institutions in the US, like the media and the legal system. We also agree that Trump...