Putting Faces to Voices, Recommended Reading, Big Changes Coming

Putting Faces to Voices
When I teach online classes, one of the first things I do is post a picture of myself so that students can see who’s teaching them and to try to make more of a connection. Strangely, in the over two years we’ve been doing The Politics Guys, I’ve yet to do the same thing here.

Recently, a listener mentioned that we needed to get some pictures of ourselves up on the Politics Guys website, which finally prompted me to action. Here’s what The Politics Guys look like (for better or worse). I’m first, followed by Jay, then Trey.

What I’m Reading
I think I may have mentioned Jonah Goldberg from time to time on the show. If not, I should have, because he ‘s one of the most interesting and engaging conservative columnists around. For years, Jonah has been writing a column for National Review called ‘The G-File’. I frequently disagree with him, but I value his perspective and his humor – so much so that I’ve subscribed to The G-File in order to ensure that I see it every week.

As many of you know, Jay is a big fan of the Wall Street Journal. I have a subscription as well, but I understand that not everyone is interested in shelling out money to support a Murdoch-owned media outlet. So if you’re looking for solid, conservative commentary but you don’t want to get a WSJ subscription, I highly recommend National Review. They feature a range of interesting and thoughtful articles and they don’t have a paywall, like the Journal does.

Finally, I’m going to re-recommend Tyler Cowen – more specifically ‘Stubborn Attachments’, his recent long essay on morality and economic growth. I just finished reading it and ended up taking a ton of notes (I’m hoping to get Tyler on the show). In the essay, he makes what I think is the best ethical argument I’ve seen for focusing on sustainable economic growth over everything other than fundamental human rights.

Big Changes Coming to The Politics Guys
On February 8, our contract with audioBoom runs out, which means that we’ll be ad-free. It also means we’ll be free to pursue our efforts to turn The Politics Guys into a nonprofit organization. We’ve already chosen a name – the Bipartisan Political Education Project – reserved a web domain (bipartisanproject.org – which isn’t active yet, so you won’t see anything if you go there), assembled a board of directors, and filed for nonprofit status.

We’re still keeping ‘The Politics Guys’ name and there shouldn’t be any big changes to the podcast – at least not at first. There may be a few technical glitches as I move everything over from audioBoom, so if you run into any issues with shows not downloading or anything else, please let me know.

Our plan is to not only keep on doing the podcast, but to expand and improve our politicsguys.com website, branch out into video on YouTube, and even work with schools on helping to improve political media literacy.

It’s an ambitious agenda, and we’re going to be doing it without the support of advertisers. If this is something you’d be willing to get behind financially, we could most definitely use your help. To contribute, just go to politicsguys.com and click on either the Patreon or PayPal links you’ll find there.

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