The Political Orphanage

This week bonus episodes are going on the main feed, past the paywall! Here's a rerun from last year, about Napoleon Bonaparte, and the pitfalls of "liberating" other nations. To support the show, go ...

15 Sep 202126min

The default position for politics is advocacy—promoting our team and opposing the other. Julia Galef proposes an alternate mindset, where we try to determine the reality of a situation even if it's un...

14 Sep 20211h 3min

The Khmer Rouge was a brutal communist regime that ruled Cambodia for only four years, but in that brief period entirely destroyed its economy, wiped out its intellectual class, and horribly murdered ...

8 Sep 202158min

Joe Biden's Child Tax Credit sends direct money to families, no strings attached. Is it cutting down on wasteful bureaucracy and reducing hurdles to financial aid, or enabling a culture of joblessness...

31 Aug 20211h 11min

Friday Release Valve (where we kick around the best, underserved headlines of the week) is returning--but moving to its own podcast. New episodes will appear on the new show titled "Friday Release Val...

27 Aug 202113min

Housing regulations have resulted in widespread urban sprawl, ethnic redlining, multi-generational poverty, and all manner of other ills.  Jeff Maurer of "I Might Be Wrong" on Substack and Jeremiah Jo...

25 Aug 20211h 2min

Winston Churchill dealt with evil by confrontation. What's his opposite? This is a bonus history episode from July of last year, in the context of the forthcoming 2020 election and the George Floyd pr...

19 Aug 202131min

Could we have fixed things if we stayed? Kabul fell to the Taliban on Sunday, which is quickly reorganizing their regime after getting ousted twenty years ago by the United States.   Was nation buil...

17 Aug 20211h 19min