The Political Orphanage
Politics minus bile plus jokes. Comedian and avowed independent Andrew Heaton interviews authors and thought leaders about policy and big thinky stuff.
Episodes
What did people in the Dark Ages think about economics? Why did poverty exist, and how do you alleviate it? To find out, I took my time machine to 1282 and 1314, to speak to barflies and a priest.
Fr. Richard Kirby is a fourteenth century prior of Whitby Abbey and formerly the sacrist of St. Mungo's. He is a specialist in Just Price Theory, and joins the show to discuss how his fellows in the Dark Ages app...
Clayborne Carson is the Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education institute, and hand-picked by Coretta King to publish the letters of his late husband. He's one of the foremost historians on MLK and his legacy. He joins to discuss King, color blindness, and the three approaches of the Civil Rights movement.
Or... how to host a party if you have Asperger's.
Nick Gray is an entrepreneur and an author living in Austin, Texas. I met him roller skating. He started and sold two successful companies: Flight Display Systems and Museum Hack. His YouTube and short videos have been seen by over 55 million people. He's been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and New York Magazine calle...
How did Venezuela become an economic basket case? Not socialism. Or capitalism. Venezuela is a textbook example of a petrostate in the thrall of the Paradox of Plenty, or "the Dutch Disease."
Bonus: Norway's Big Bucket of Oil Money
https://www.thepoliticalorphanage.com/p/bonus-norways-big-bucket-of-oil-money
College students are increasingly registering as disabled–particularly at high-end universities, which often entails longer test times and extensions on papers. Does the growing rate of accommodation mean American universities are simply better at identifying disabilities; evidence of students and their families gaming the system for advantages; or a cultural shift wherein students increasingly believe they are disable...
Our Annual Christmas Comedy Special. In which, our intrepid heroes must save Christmas from a debauched algorithm, navigate treacherous honeypots, and escape a federal penitentiary in this modern yuletide spy epic.
Happy Holidays!
Starring:
Andrew Heaton
Josh Jennings
Andrew Young
Austin Bragg
Justin Robert Young
Kourtni Beebe
Brian Brushwood
Anna Gorisch
Brett Weaver
Brian Sack
...Former Cracked.com editor Jason Pargin explores the subject of how social media makes us insane and warps the universe we're in, in his new book "I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom." He joins to discuss.
Sarah Isgur is a senior editor at SCOTUS Blog, host of the Advisory Opinions podcast, and a contributor at ABC News. She is the author of the forthcoming book "Last Branch Standing," which available for pre-order on Amazon. She joins to discuss the recent oral arguments before the Supreme Court on whether or not the Trump administration can invoke IEEPA to levy emergency tariffs.
Freddie deBoer is a writer, academic, and cultural critic. He is a widely-read author on Substack, an old-school Marxist, who has previously been on the program to explain what Marxists actually think.
He's struggled with mental health issues and frequently discusses the intersection of culture and mental health. And he has a new book out which explores those issues, his debut novel, "The Mind Reels."
<...
The real story of Thanksgiving is stranger, darker, and far more interesting than what you learned in kindergarten (or college).
It's a tale of slavery, plagues, ecological engineering, diplomacy, betrayal, and realpolitik—and yes, an actual feast where everyone sucked down eel while negotiating an alliance that would hold for fifty years.
We dive into the world of Tisquantum—better known as Squanto—a kidn...
Thousands of people need kidneys, right now. They are either on the precipice of death, or suffering through dialysis and low quality of life. Jeremiah Johnson of the New Liberal Podcast joins to discuss the End Kidney Deaths Act, introduced to the House by Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York, and Democratic Rep. Josh Harder of California.
Tim Sandefur joins to discuss individualism in American culture. In this fun (but weird) conversation, we go through zombie shows, Westerns, and Star Trek, while invoking Hobbes, Ayn Rand, Epicurus, the Stoics, Plato and Aristotle. He is the author of the new book "You Don't Own Me: Individualism and the Culture of Liberty."
Past Sandefur chats:
ATA: The Last Policeman
Theater critic Clive Kripson of BBC Bolton joins to review "Shutdown: The Musical" in what is now the longest-running revival of the landmark Broadway favorite.
Legal and geographic quirks sometimes create "Terra Nullius"—land which no sovereign nation lays claim to. Literally, No Man's Land. In this weird geographic episode, we explore: Iceland, the Oklahoma Panhandle, Kowloon Walled City, Liberland, and the Kingdom of North Sudan.
Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton offered two contrasting visions of what America should be and how the Constitution applies to it. Jeffrey Rosen is a legal scholar and the President of the National Constitution Center. He's the author "The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton vs. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle over Power in America."
Can comedians ethically perform standup for a despotic regime without endorsing it? Recently the Riyadh Comedy Festival invited furor when some comics schlepped to Saudi Arabia to perform–at great expense–while others declined in protest of supporting human rights abuses. Turner Sparks and Michael Ira Kaplan join to discuss.
Space Tractor: And Other Short Stories, by Josh Jennings
Okay, so what constitutes "cruel and unusual"? Why was it okay to brand horse thieves in the face in old timey days, but it's barbaric now?
In the final installment of this year's Judge Week, we go over the history of cruel and unusual punishments; what scared the English into outlawing it in their Bill of Rights, and how America interpreted it for the first century of the Constitution. Then, landmark deci...
Pornhub ceased operating in the Lone Star State after Texas implemented an age verification law. Pornhub, and other adult websites, said the compliance was too onerous, and the potential fines too staggering. In response, the Free Speech Coalition sued Texas in court for an injunction to block the law, on the grounds that by burdening protected (if offensive) speech it violated the first amendment. Texas responded by saying that re...
In Mahmoud v. Taylor the Supreme Court affirmed parents rights to remove their children from LGBTQ material used in public schools.
The Court ruled that opt-outs preserve separation of church and state, and protect parental rights.
The Dissent maintains that exposure is not the same thing as indoctrination, and opt-outs are at best going to be an administrative nightmare, at worst a religious veto on acceptable content.
Anastasia ...
In Trump v. Casa the Supreme Court ruled that district judges cannot issue "universal injunctions" against the federal government… Well, what the hell does that mean? The ruling comes in regard to Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship. Is the Trump administration accurately "rediscovering" the true meaning of the Constitution, or just twisting and mangling it to make sure nobody here illegally can confer citizenship on ...
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