The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast

On this week's episode of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast—the first since Charles got a haircut—Charles talks to Elbridge Colby about Taiwan. Among the topics discussed are why Taiwan matters more to the United States and the West more generally than, say, the Falkland Islands; whether Americans are prepared for an invasion; if China is our biggest geopolitical threat; and, if it is, what this tel...

Is free speech more at risk in the U.K. or the U.S.? Should Britain adopt a First Amendment? How can it possibly be legal for the police to place "non-crimes" on Brits' criminal records? Why is Scotland so censorious? And is it getting better? On Episode 27, Charles talks to Toby Young about these questions and more. He also discusses the delicious political candidacy of Calvin Ball (yes, really!)...

Episode 26 begins with a Q&A. The first question has to do with infringements on constitutional rights. “Why is it okay to infringe on a right when it comes to requiring voters to register, but it isn't okay to infringe on a right when it comes to requiring gun owners to register?” The second returns to a familiar frame: “As a well known rollercoaster aficionado, what four ‘coasters would be on yo...

This week's episode features another whole-show conversation, this time with Daniel Hannan, the writer, blogger and Conservative member of the British House of Lords. Charles and Daniel chat about William Shakespeare, the subject of Daniel's fantastic piece in the most recent issue of National Review .  On the table are whether Shakespeare invented the modern human, how Shakespeare wrote his plays...

On episode 24, Charles starts off by answering two questions. (1) "Were he alive today, would Ben Franklin be repairing old cars or modifying golf carts?" (2) "What do you think the practical end goal of judicial Originalism is supposed to be?" Then it's time for a conversation with pollster and strategist, Giancarlo Sopo, who answers questions about the GOP's challenges going into 2024. Is aborti...

On this 23rd—but not 22nd or 24th—episode, Charles starts by taking on the preposterous idea that if one thinks that Donald Trump ought to have been impeached for what he did in 2021, the unrelated criminal case against him in New York must therefore be correct. Afterwards, Charles talks to Stanford's Lanhee Chen about whether California is salvageable, and then, on the Color Supplement, discusses...

Overwhelmed by the number of questions he's received about his decision to emigrate, about the USA vs. the UK, and about whether he'd ever consider moving back to England, Charles asks Sam Negus, a fellow British Americaphile (and, now, a fellow American citizen), to chat with him about what it's like to move from the Old Country to the New World.  Among the topics covered by Charles and Sam are w...

In the wake of the second largest bank failure in American history, Charles eschews his monologue in order to chat to someone who knows what he's talking about: the economist, John H. Cochrane, who is the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a co-host of the show Goodfellows, and the author of the Grumpy Economist blog , and, most recently, of the book, The Fiscal...

Well, he waited for nineteen episodes, but eventually he let it all out. Charles explains why he is so worried about the constitutional crisis that President Biden has created with his illegal order "forgiving"—read: transferring—student loan debt. If it's not fixed, he argues, there is trouble ahead. After that, he asks Noah Rothman some tough questions about foreign policy and America's ideal ro...

The soufflé must be ordered with 24 hours' notice, but, as good luck would have it, this episode must not. This one shakes it up a bit and begins with a Q&A. "If you were to create a British Mount Rushmore, what four faces would it display?" Charles was asked by some rotter who then excluded "John, Paul, George, and Ringo" from eligibility. Charles tries to get through it nevertheless. Then it's t...

It's the day after the Super Bowl, and that means it's time for episode 18 of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast , which, this week, features a monologue about last week's remarkably embarrassing State of the Union address (which shouldn't exist), and an interview with Marian Tupy, co-author of Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountifu...

How many people can say they knew someone who assassinated a president? Charles's guest today is Paul Gregory, whose fascinating book, The Oswalds , relates his relationship with Lee and Marina. Paul tells Charles how he met the Oswalds, what he thought of them, why he still feels some "shame," why he thinks all the conspiracy theories are bunk, and why it took him six decades to put his story to...

It's Friday, and it's 5 o'clock somewhere. That means it's time for episode 16 of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast , in which Charles addresses everyone's favorite topic—how we can address our deficits and national debt, and why, despite their protestations, the Republicans aren't serious about doing so—and then chats with Vic Matus about his book on the history of Vodka in the United States, and,...

On the fifteenth episode of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast, Charles looks at the case of hockey player Ivan Provorov, and argues that a tolerance for political silence should, in almost every imaginable circumstance, be the default position. Charles's guest this week is Billy Binion, a writer at Reason who tells him about the many disturbing cases of equity theft we are seeing in states such as O...

In this fourteenth episode of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast , Charles proposes that you should be deeply suspicious of anyone who picks up a cause, and, ten minutes later, sounds as if they’ve been fighting in favor of it for their entire life. Such people are impressionable, excitable, and ridiculous—and, ultimately, dangerous. After that, he asks Jonathan Adler, of Case Western Reserve Univers...

In the thirteenth episode of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast , Charles argues that the ongoing freakout over the House of Representatives's apparent inability to find a Speaker is silly. Perhaps the opposition to McCarthy is frivolous. But it's not a national security threat, or a crisis. Next, Charles talks to Andy Kaplan, a cardiac electrophysiologist, and Steve Pirris, a neurosurgeon, about the...

In this pre-Christmas edition of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast , Charles makes the case against conservative nihilism, even when things look really bad. Afterwards, Charles talks to Mike Rowe, of Dirty Jobs , about America's imperiled work ethic, the brilliant 50-year "PR campaign" in favor of four-year college degrees, and the likelihood that some balance will be restored to the workforce. The...

As promised, Charles sings all four operas from Wagner's 'Ring Cycle' — Das Rheingold , Die Walküre , Siegfried , and Larry's Giant Subs — while accompanying himself on the Mongolian nose flute. In between arias, he argues that the Republican Party's choice is obvious: it can either find candidates that are palatable to the majority, or it can keep on losing winnable races; talks to Steve Morris a...

This is Episode Ten of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast . Or, as the Founders might have written it: Epiſode 10. Why did English speakers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries do that? What did it denote? When did it stop? Charles starts the show by explaining what he's found.  Then, it's on to a debate with Michael Brendan Dougherty on the question of gay marriage: Charles is for; Michael is...

It's Thanksgiving, so Charles takes a break from complaining about this politician or that policy or the thing he just read in the newspaper and reflects upon the miracle that is the modern world. He could have been born in Sparta in 400BC, but he wasn't; he was born in England the 1980s, and got to live in America in the 21st century. How lucky is that?  Charles's guest this week is Ricky Cobb, t...

On Episode Eight of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast , Charles reflects on the Republicans' poor performance in last week's election, owns up to his incorrect predictions, and makes the case that there is no good reason for the GOP to keep indulging Trump. Charles's guest this week is Josh Sauerman , the Creative Director of Animax Designs, who joins the show to talk about animatronics. The dial-up...

On this Election Day episode of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast , Charles talks to RealClearPolitics 's Sean Trende about the best way to read the polls, the perils of polling in the Internet Age, and where Sean thinks the Republicans' high and low watermarks will be in the 2022 midterms. After that, Charles talks to George Mason University law professor, David Bernstein, about his fascinating boo...

On episode six of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast , Charles soldiers on with a much-depleted voice to bring you the first Husky Edition of the show. This week's guests are Mary Katharine Ham, who was punished by CNN for criticizing Jeffrey Toobin after he was suspended for . . . well, for "Toobining," and Jeff Blehar, who shows up again in the Color Supplement to discuss the remix of The Beatles'...

On episode five of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast , Charles confesses to his preposterous sports-related superstitions, reads aloud some of his correspondents' weirdest game-day habits, and invites Andy McCarthy to tell him why he's wrong to suggest that the time has come to dismantle the FBI. This episode of the podcast is diametrically striped, so if you have a capable phone or computer, please...

On episode four of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast , Charles breathes a sigh of relief that he managed to get through four days of being a Temporary Single Dad; chats with NBC's Marc Caputo about Florida, Ron DeSantis, and Val Demings; and answers questions about how English his children's accents are and what he, as an atheist, thinks of the Bible. The dial-up tone in the introduction was recorde...