Category: Interviews

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Mike talks with Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and blogger at Bet on It. He’s the author of multiple books, including four that we’ve previously discussed on the show: The Myth of the Rational Voter, The Case Against Education, Open Borders, and Labor Econ vs The World: Essays on the World’s Greatest Market. On this episode, Mike and Bryan talk about his most recent book, How Evil Are Politicians?: Essays on Demagoguery.

Topics Mike & Brian Discuss Include:

– The meaning of evil – is it more than just self-interest?
– Bryan’s contention that the vast majority of politicians are, in fact, evil
– Why we should hold politicians to a higher standard
– The almost utter lack of “moral due diligence” on the part of politicians
– If people don’t know or just don’t care about evil politicians
– Demagoguery as the politics of social desirability
– Liberal vs Conservative forms of evil
– The extent to which evil politicians are a result of a bad system
– The pragmatic case for pacifism
– If any US hostilities since WWII were justified
– What, if anything, we can do about evil politicians

Bryan Caplan on Twitter

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• Why business and politics are inseparable
• How the interaction between business and government is like football
• Policy regulation and deregulation as public goods
• Why living in Florida would be impossible without government subsidies
• Why so many corporations give China a pass on its authoritarian policies
• Why Harley Davidson workers voted to axe their own jobs
• Tony Chocoloney and the problem of moving away from slave labor chocolate
• The instability of the current tri-polar trade bloc system
• The reality that ‘no brand can remain apolitical for too long’
• Markets as essentially political constructs

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Mike talks with Matt Sienkiewicz, an Associate Professor and Chair of the Boston College Communication Department. He’s the co-author, along with Nick Marx, of That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them.

Topics Mike & Matt Discuss Include:
– why most political comedy is left of center
– the main types of right of center comedy
– “punching up” vs “punching down” in comedy
– conservative humor challenging liberal pieties
– the biggest names in right wing comedy
– why right-wing comedy matters, even if you don’t think it’s funny

Right-Wing Comedy Links
The Political Orphanage. Andrew Heaton
Greg Gutfeld
Ryan Long
Michael Malice

Matt Sienkiewicz on Twitter

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Mike talks with Will Moravits, a former police officer who became a college professor, earning his Masters in Political Science from Texas State University and a PhD in Public Policy and Administration from Walden University. He’s the author of the recently published book The Blue Divide: Policing and Race in America.

Topics Mike & Will Discuss Include:
– Will’s unique perspective as a former cop / current academic
– effectiveness of police use of force training
– understanding how humans respond in high-stress situations
– myths and misconceptions surrounding police use of force
– what Will learned from studying multiple high-profile police shootings
– the case Will makes for a lack of racial bias in police shootings
– defunding the police
– President Biden’s Executive Order concerning federal law enforcement
– Will’s thoughts on how to improve policing

Will Moravits on Twitter

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Ken breaks out his extensive Cold War spy knowledge in this conversation with journalist and New York Times best-selling author Howard Blum. They discuss his recently released book, The Spy Who Knew Too Much: An Ex-CIA Officer’s Quest Through a Legacy of Betrayal. Formerly a reporter for the The Village Voice and the New York Times, Blum is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. While at the Times, he was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

Topics Ken and Howard cover include:
– the uses of intelligence
– moles, traitors, spies
– big moles vs little moles
– the war within the CIA
– Angleton, Golitsyn, and the “Monster Plot”
– the suspicious “suicide” of CIA agent John Paisley
– human vs signal intelligence
– if human intelligence really matters
– spying in the US/ Russia / Ukraine conflict
– and lots more!

Howard Blum on Twitter

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Trey talks with Adam Probolsky, President of Probolsky Research, a full service opinion research firm specializing in market research and opinion research on elections and public policy, working on behalf of business, government, non-profit, special interest and media clients.

Trey and Adam’s conversation includes:

• A conversation on political and public policy research.
• Adam’s overview of quantitative data and polling.
• How qualitative measures can help create better polling data.
• Probolsky research on political identification and predicting voting behavior.

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Trey talks with Paul Brandus, independent member of the White House press corps and founder of West Wing Reports (@WestWingReport), columnist, and author of books including Under This Roof and This Day in Presidential History.

Trey and Paul’s conversation includes:

• Paul’s assessment of former President Donald Trump’s communication strategy
• Paul’s thoughts on President Biden’s communication strengths and weaknesses
• Discussion of what makes a better presidential communication strategy
• The effect of social media on presidential communication

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Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo, we’re @PoliticsGuys.

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Northern Kentucky University political scientist Kimberly Weir talks with Jennifer Sciubba, political scientist at Rhodes College and author of the recently released 8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death, & Migration Shape our World.

Topics Kimberly & Jennifer discuss include:

• Why people don’t think about demography when considering politics
• Global fertility, mortality, and migration patterns
• Why demographics isn’t destiny
• How power transition theory explains Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine
• China’s aging and shrinking population challenges
• Why we don’t see ‘Gray Pride’ T-shirts, but should
• Why HALE matters more than life expectancy
• Demographic engineering as a political strategy
• Why the future is much more optimistic than the sensationalist ‘doom and gloom’ reports

Jennifer Scuibba on Twitter

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Mike talks with Chris Brady, a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, humorist, and businessman. His latest book is The Bitcoin Bride: A Rascal Money Story.

Topics Mike & Chris discuss include:
– what cryptocurrency is and how it works
– Bitcoin as “freedom money”
– the inevitability of traditional currency losing value
– “Gold Bugs” and cryptocurrency
– President Biden’s recent Executive Order on cryptocurrency
– whether the cryptocurrency needs more regulation
– if Russia can use cryptocurrency to evade sanctions
– Friedrich Hayek and the philosophical underpinnings of cryptocurrency
– the future of cryptocurrency

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Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo, we’re @PoliticsGuys.

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Mike & Trey talk with Isaac Saul, a political reporter who shares our belief that information bubbles are a big problem. Instead of just bemoaning this and encouraging people to try and somehow break out of their partisan bubbles, Isaac decided to do something about it – he founded Tangle. If you’re a fan of The Politics Guys, you’ll really appreciate Isaac’s work. which we talk with him about in this episode, as well as problems in the media more generally.

Topics we cover include:

• media’s treatment of Obama vs Trump
• political opinion that masquerades as “news analysis”
• the challenge of getting real political diversity
• why “When is the last time you changed your mind?” is such an important question
• what Tangle is, how Isaac and his team put it together, and what they cover
• the economic model of news and the future of political media

Check out Tangle here.

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Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo, we’re @PoliticsGuys.

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