The Neal Larson Show

Send us Fan Mail Today’s show was one of those “no time to breathe” mornings: Neal Larson and Julie Mason set the stage for a live, in-studio legislative debate—complete with Facebook Live, listener texts, and a back-and-forth candidate question segment—because they genuinely believe these races deserve real scrutiny beyond campaign mailers. Before the debate, Neal and Julie also talked candidly a...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s show was one of those “hold on, a lot is happening” mornings. We kicked it off with the optics (and comedy) of King Charles showing up to Congress, the standing ovations, and the way President Trump and the White House lean into trolling narratives—because, like it or not, the left reliably takes the bait. From there, we dug into the bigger subtext: Americans can enjoy the...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s show centered on the disturbing reality that we’ve now seen multiple credible assassination attempts against President Trump in a short span—and what that says about where our culture is headed. We tried to “reverse engineer” why this keeps happening, and landed on a mix of factors: overheated political rhetoric (especially the casual, joking “we’ll be happy when he’s dead...

Send us Fan Mail Neal Larson and Julie Mason spend the morning processing a heavy weekend: a third public assassination attempt against President Donald Trump and the death of Idaho statesman Dirk Kempthorne. We talk through the whiplash of covering high-stakes national news while also being knee-deep in an unusually intense legislative election season. On the Trump attempt, we push back on the “f...

Send us Fan Mail Today on the show, Neal Larson and Julie Mason bounce between big headlines and very local stakes. They hit the latest on Iran and President Trump’s posture of “peace through strength,” then pivot hard into Idaho’s May 19 primary season—why they’re prioritizing legislative races, what’s coming up in candidate interviews and debates, and why Neal is skeptical of voter initiatives a...

Send us Fan Mail Today felt like one long group-therapy session about politics—how exhausting it is, how obvious some of the games are, and how hard it can be to stay sane when you’re watching people run as one thing and govern as another. We talked about the weird reality that you can genuinely like candidates as human beings (Marco Erickson and upcoming guest, Jalene Berger, got called out as pr...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s show was a mix of pre-debate commentary and a full-on District 31 rematch debate between Representative Rod Furniss and former Representative Karey Hanks. Before the candidates came in, we previewed the format (including a little “AI gotcha question” twist), then pivoted into two big statewide punching bags: allegations involving the Southern Poverty Law Center (framed as...

Send us Fan Mail Today was one of those shows where we admitted up front: the news cycle is a mess, and it’s hard to even know what deserves attention anymore. We talked through the flood of conspiracy-laced clips people send in (often with a weird demand that we *have* to watch them), and why confirmation bias is basically supercharged right now—especially online. We don’t have unlimited time, an...

Send us Fan Mail Today we bounced between the global and the hyper-local, which is kind of where life actually lives right now. Neil unpacked the volatility in the Strait of Hormuz and why “deals” with Iran are so hard to trust, arguing that protecting U.S. interests may ultimately require something closer to regime removal—even if nobody wants to call it that. We also hit the pace of the news cyc...

Send us Fan Mail Idaho’s getting “discovered,” and with the population growth we’re seeing, we’re also getting a flood of out-of-state money and national agendas trying to reshape what makes this place work. We talked through what that looks like on the ground: dark-money mailers and attack ads aimed at conservative lawmakers (with Rep. Barbie Hart as the first big target), a likely marijuana init...

Send us Fan Mail Neal Larson and Julie Mason check in with U.S. Senator Jim Risch for a fast-moving update on Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, and where things go next. Risch argues Trump deserves major credit for finally forcing a decisive moment after decades of Iranian aggression, says the military phase is largely “winding down” because so much of Iran’s military and government capability has been...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s show had that “debate day” energy right from the start—Neal Larson and Julie Mason set the table for a live legislative debate in Idaho House District 32B between appointed incumbent Representative **Aaron Bingham** and challenger **Brian McKellar**. Before bringing the candidates in, they walked through the bigger news cycle too: cautious optimism that the Trump administr...

Send us Fan Mail Today we spent a good chunk of time on the social-media firestorm over President Trump sharing (and then deleting) an AI-generated image with heavy religious symbolism—something a lot of people took as “Trump portraying himself as Jesus.” We didn’t defend the post (it was a boneheaded move), but we also talked about how our cultural outrage gauge is totally busted: people rush to...

Send us Fan Mail This episode was one of those “it’s Monday but it doesn’t feel like Monday” shows—because everything hit at once. We walked through the collapse of the Iran peace talks after a marathon 21-hour negotiation, with J.D. Vance central to the effort and both sides stuck on a non-starter: Iran’s nuclear future. From there, the conversation shifted to what happens next—Trump signaling th...

Send us Fan Mail We kicked off by laying out the next month of political coverage—four straight weeks of candidate debates, plus the usual logistical chaos that comes with trying to get everyone in the same room at the same time. And honestly, we meant what we said: we’re grateful for the lawmakers willing to show up, take tough questions, and explain themselves. That set the tone for a busy show...

Send us Fan Mail Today we bounced between the global and the hyper-local, starting with the messy reality of an Iran ceasefire—how it’s not a clean “light switch,” and how a so-called “10-point deal” making the rounds was basically a media-fueled ghost document. The core point stayed the same: Trump’s red line is still no Iranian enrichment, and the chatter about him accepting an Iranian “wishlist...

Send us Fan Mail Neal Larson and Julie Mason spend most of the show working through two big themes: how to interpret President Trump’s public threats and how much weight we should give our own emotional reactions to politics. Neal argues that people keep making the same mistake with Trump—taking his hyperbolic language literally instead of looking for the negotiating objective underneath it, espec...

Send us Fan Mail Today was a real whiplash kind of show—in the best and worst ways. We spent a lot of time sitting in the wonder of NASA’s Artemis II mission: four astronauts (three Americans and a Canadian) pushing farther past the moon than humans have ever gone, including that surreal stretch of radio silence on the far side. For a lot of us, it hit the same emotional nerve as the old shuttle d...

Send us Fan Mail Today felt like one of those “how is all of this happening at once?” mornings. We’re following Artemis II as it closes in on the moon—about 10 hours out from the big loop around the far side—with a real focus on scouting for water, because if we’re serious about a future lunar base, that’s the whole ballgame. Neal nerds out (in the best way) about how unreal it is that we can send...

Send us Fan Mail The session is finally signed sine die, and it feels like a relief—but also like we’re closing the book on a year that was all over the map. We walked through the rough spots (budget turbulence, cultural bills, and the frustration of basically nothing meaningful getting done on immigration), while also acknowledging a few wins—like ending the flow of taxpayer dollars to teachers u...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s show had that late-session “everybody’s a little saucy” energy—Neal Larson and Julie Mason were feeling it, the listeners were feeling it, and the Idaho Legislature was absolutely feeling it. We dug into the end-of-session maneuvering (including a “radiator cap” move that sparked Rep. Britt Raybould’s frustration), and then shifted into the bigger policy fights: immigratio...

Send us Fan Mail This episode was a whirlwind look at two big, very “right now” stories: the Supreme Court’s oral arguments on birthright citizenship (with President Donald Trump in the chamber) and the ongoing partial government shutdown centered on DHS funding. We listened in as U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer laid out the administration’s argument that “subject to the jurisdiction” in the 14t...

Send us Fan Mail Today we worked through a packed slate of Idaho policy and a few national flashpoints, with the big focus on the Senate moving bills that have been stuck in the pipeline. We dug into House Bill 822—framed as closing a loophole in Idaho’s vulnerable child protections—aimed at preventing schools, counselors, and health care professionals from keeping a child’s social transition secr...

Send us Fan Mail Neal Larson and Julie Mason kicked off the week sizing up a busy weekend in East Idaho—especially the “No Kings” protests—and the bigger point they kept coming back to was this: if you’re going to rally, at least be clear about what you’re trying to accomplish. Neal argued that “No Kings” functions more like a shared expression of anger than an actionable goal, and that without a...

Send us Fan Mail We spent the first part of the show chewing on the TSA/DHS funding standoff and how it feels like Democrats are deliberately leveraging airport misery—especially during a heavy travel week—to force unrelated outcomes like targeting ICE. The conversation dug into why immigration enforcement has become such a political obsession, including the argument that counting illegal immigran...