The Political Orphanage

Comedians Turner Sparks, Michael Ira Kaplan, and Paul Morrissey join the show to explore the week's best underserved headlines, including: a guitar made out of an uncle, and why Yoda is getting Saudi Arabian history textbooks yanked.

12 Mar 202133min

Caleb O. Brown of the Cato Daily Podcast guest hosts this week, moderating the topic: is politics the new religion? Just how terrible is that, and how can we fix it?

9 Mar 20211h 4min

NSFK - Nick Sperdute and Andrew Young rejoin the show to discuss the week's best, underserved headlines including: horrific Scottish street brawl and/or courtship injuries, corn flake narcotics, and the world's laziest guard dog.

5 Mar 202130min

Politicians fear their base, so they play to their base--and disregard moderates, independents, and members of the rival party. Elected leaders can store up campaign war chests, but they can't net excess votes or store them for the next election. What are the bad structural elements we've built into our system, and how do we rearrange them? Katherine Gehl is the author of "The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy"

3 Mar 202156min

We're gamifying funny headlines! Everyone on the show gets a funny headline, but some are real and some are fake news. Each team hears the headlines, asks probing questions, then guesses which is real and which is fictitious.  Host: Andrew Heaton Team Captains: Andrew Young and Jeremey Kareken Guests: Nicholas Sperdute, Brian Sack, Jack Helmuth, Andrea Jones-Rooy

26 Feb 202144min

I swear I'm not evil. I have good reasons for believing we shouldn't spike the national minimum wage to $15 per hour. I'll explain why, as the U.S. Senate deliberates on whether or not to double it.

24 Feb 202147min

Justin Robert Young returns to go over the week's best, underserved headlines, including an octogenarian newspaper boy, the cannabis lounge which saves the day, and ridiculous French labor laws.

19 Feb 202129min

Economist Steve Horwitz joins the program to talk about the limits of markets and the state: what problems can they solve and what are they ill suited for? When do either go off the rails? Steve Horwitz is the Distinguished Professor of Free Enterprise at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana; Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center, Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute, and Economics Editor at the Cato Institute. He's also the 2020 recipient of the Julian L. Simon Memorial Award.

17 Feb 202159min