Sep 4, 2026
Donald Trump has renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America” for federal purposes—but can a president actually rename a place, or only change what the government calls it? Andrew Heaton traces the strange history of who gets to control language, from ancient river names that survived Romans and Normans, to Cardinal...
Aug 28, 2026
The DSA recently released a policy platform establishing the goals of their political movement. In this episode we got through the main planks of that document, namely the bits about "socialism" and "democratic." We likewise go through a few articles and interviews of prominent DSA members to get an idea of what, in...
Aug 20, 2026
The Save Our Bacon Act, now repackaged into the Farm Bill, would upturn state rights in favor of federal prohibitions on animal cruelty laws. It’s being pushed, in large part, by Chinese-owned conglomerates irritated by federalism.
Lewis Bollard is the Farm Animal Welfare Managing Director at Coefficient Giving on...
Aug 13, 2026
What is The Odyssey actually about beyond a clever guy trying to get home? Classicist Isabella Reinhardt joins to dig into the poem’s deeper themes of civilization, hospitality, identity, belonging, and what it means for a warrior to return from war.
Then we turn to adaptation itself, and the choices involved...
Aug 5, 2026
It’s not that America won’t spend money on mass transit, it’s that we piss it away when we do. Our transit system is a mess, with a lot of problems in spending, procurement, NIMBYism and good ‘ol fashioned idiocy.
Will Poff-Webster is the Director of Infrastructure Policy at the Institute for Progress, where he...