National Review's Radio Free California Podcast
234 episodes - English - Latest episode: 4 days ago - ★★★★★ - 655 ratingsA show about the perilous state of the Golden State—and what that means for you, wherever you live. California is the hothouse lab of the Left, the nation-state creating the statist policies, art, and lifestyles of the future – and generating the political dollars to make them a reality in a community near you. Hosts Will Swaim (California Policy Center) and David Bahnsen (The Bahnsen Group, Fox Business News commentator, conservative activist) beam this weekly show internationally, from mostly undisclosed pirate-radio platforms west of the Sierra Nevada. [Intro music graciously provided by Los Angeles-based Metalachi, the metal/mariachi soundtrack of the near-future. Find them at Metalachi.com.]
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Episodes
Episode 171: A Tale of Two Bills
May 05, 2021 17:16 - 1 hour - 52.1 MBIt’s Teacher Appreciation Week, and in Sacramento that means killing a bill that would help teachers exercise their Constitutional right to leave the California Teachers Association. In the same week, teachers union loyalists in the statehouse moved a bill that makes it easier to shut down public charter schools — the only public option for kids trapped in failing union-run schools. In other news, David and Will discuss serious gubernatorial alternatives to Gavin Newsom in the upcoming recall...
Episode 170: Unleash the Whackin’
April 28, 2021 16:07 - 1 hour - 36.8 MBNewsom allies build their case against the recall not by building up the governor but by tearing down Republican challenger Caitlyn Jenner. In other news, David and Will consider California’s loss of a House seat following release of 2020 Census data, San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin’s role in the death of an infant, a victory for parents in the war against teachers unions, and what 'Judas and the Black Messiah' won’t tell you about the Oakland-born Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Will off...
Episode 169: Dog Returns to Its Own Vomit
April 21, 2021 22:19 - 1 hour - 35.3 MBTwelve years after the Great Recession, California lawmakers lay the groundwork for another global real-estate crisis. In other news, David and Will discuss Representative Maxine Waters’s call to violence during jury deliberations in the George Floyd murder case, ethnic and Marxist studies in K–12 schools, and Tucker Carlson’s problem with Ronald Reagan.
Episode 168: Caitlyn Jenner for Governor?
April 14, 2021 20:57 - 1 hour - 35.5 MBWe mark the April 14, 1939, publication of Grapes of Wrath with belated criticism. Recalled and recently reelected state senator Josh Newman wants to make recalls harder. Joe Musgrove pitches the Padres’ first no-hitter. Biden taps former SoCal congressman and literal Lottery winner Gil Cisneros to lead Pentagon department. Gavin Newsom screw-up on trash reveals everything stupid about California. Caitlyn Jenner says she’s got what it takes to run deeply troubled California. The teacher union...
Episode 167: Glengarry Glendale
April 07, 2021 15:32 - 1 hour - 40.2 MBIf she’s really from California, why does Kamala Harris think water is nonpartisan? Should teachers step over California kids in order to teach migrant children? Should the state supreme court really end California’s cash-bail system? Why are San Franciscans working to recall Chesa Boudin? All this and David Mamet, NCAA men’s basketball, Ben Shapiro, Major League Baseball, and the Biden administration’s dangerous plagiarism of failed California policies.
Episode 166: Untotal Recall
April 01, 2021 19:04 - 36 minutes - 20.7 MBA new poll shows California voters have short-term memory loss when it comes to Gavin Newsom. Tom Steyer thinks Tom Steyer would make a good governor. Cindy Marten ran San Diego Unified into the ground, and Joe Biden thinks that’s good enough for the No. 2 post at the U.S. Department of Ed. California’s teachers' unions refuse to get back into schools, but San Diego says it’s got teachers for undocumented minors just in from Mexico. California state agencies have lost billions to fraud, but s...
Episode 165: Intel Outside of California
March 24, 2021 16:17 - 1 hour - 35.9 MBCalifornia-born Intel announces a massive, multigenerational investment in new manufacturing -- in Arizona. Guaranteed basic income gets a media boost out of Stockton. Hackers declare open season on state government computers loaded with personal data and access to billions of dollars, and Gavin Newsom declares open season on recall opponents.
Episode 164: To Serve Man
March 17, 2021 16:19 - 1 hour - 37.8 MBWhen they’re not spreading disinformation about COVID to keep schools locked down, California’s teachers' unions are promoting an ethnic and gender studies curriculum based on ancient hatreds and tasty Aztecs entrees. In other news, Newsom celebrates Biden’s catastrophe at the border, Iran criminalizes California hip-hop artist Sasy, and San Francisco finds new ways to make homelessness worse.
Episode 163: Green Eggs and Censorship
March 10, 2021 23:17 - 1 hour - 39.2 MBSan Diego-based Dr. Seuss Enterprises announces the premature deaths of several Seuss titles it deems offensive. It’s no accident that Meghan and Harry settled in California, the engine room of American woke politics. Fact-checking Gavin Newsom’s feckless State of the State speech. The Biden administration surprises nearly everyone with a SCOTUS filing that says California officials, including Kamala Harris, violated the First Amendment rights of nonprofits by demanding lists of donors.
Episode 162: RFC’s Committee on Stanford’s ‘Committee on Committees’
March 03, 2021 01:51 - 1 hour - 42.4 MBStanford University’s lefty professors work overtime to take down the affiliated free-market Hoover Institution. David says if the ACLU is to mean anything, it ought to at least stand for each of the nouns in its name. Will says public-safety unions are more concerned about conservative lawmakers than lefty Defund Police campaigns. California’s auditor says the state air-resources board isn’t hitting its own goals and has turned to alternative facts to say that it is. Also: Teachers' union lo...
Episode 161: The Engine That Devours America
February 24, 2021 22:32 - 1 hour - 37.7 MBThe death at 101 of San Francisco poet and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti has David and Will thinking of the conservative response to California's revolutionary artists. Xavier Becerra faces Senate judgment day. Newsom could kill the recall movement by ending school lockdowns. As business flees California, state lawmakers entertain bills to kill those that stay behind.
Episode 160: Eine Klein Not Music
February 18, 2021 16:45 - 58 minutes - 33.7 MBKevin D. Williamson educates New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, who just wants California to stop embarrassing the progressive project. Gavin Newsom’s gift to campaign contributors. Joe Biden’s nominee for the No. 2 spot at the Education Department runs into some criticism for her incompetence at San Diego Unified. All this and prophylactics, maskless brides, and more.
Episode 159: The Internal Contradictions of the Progressive State
February 10, 2021 22:36 - 1 hour - 35.4 MBIn the controversy over reopening schools, Gavin Newsom finds himself in a knife fight with the California teachers union that brought him to the governor’s mansion. San Francisco mayor London Breed reveals her mettle. State lawmakers give businesses a new reason to flee California, pushing legislation that would increase “intersectional protections” in the workplace.
Episode 158: Frickin’ Laser Beams & Other California Conspiracies
February 03, 2021 22:19 - 1 hour - 38 MBGeorgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene says Jewish financiers used satellite-mounted laser beams to spark catastrophic NorCal wildfires. As Gavin Newsom’s popularity plummets, Van Jones and the LA Times echo false claims the recall effort is “tied” to QAnon and white supremacists. David and Will celebrate a bill to unionize state capitol staffers — because why should legislators escape the punishment they inflict on others? — and they examine the governor’s ban on evictions. Charter sc...
Episode 157: Shocking, Not Shocking
January 27, 2021 21:07 - 1 hour - 38.9 MBGovernor Gavin Newsom eases COVID restrictions as the recall effort gathers strength, but he’ll have a tough time persuading his allies in the state’s teachers union that it’s safe to reopen schools. Kiss frontman Gene Simmons leaves California for income-tax-free Washington, John Sutter was a very bad man, Kevin Faulconer’s bungled effort to move left, and Henry “Hank” Aaron is an American hero. Bonus: Will and David go deep on one powerful police union’s readiness to smear its political ene...
Episode 156: So Close to Newsom, So Far from God
January 21, 2021 16:21 - 1 hour - 39.8 MBGavin Newsom adds “failed vaccine rollout” to his catalogue of failures. Monarchical power saves ex-congressman Duncan Hunter. Census data reveals California’s population growth is slowest since 1900. David and Will consider new state laws, the precarious state of free speech, and Bridget Mason, the freed slave who remains a California hero.
Episode 155: The Clampdown
January 13, 2021 20:54 - 1 hour - 37.6 MBDavid and Will consider California reactions to the pro-Trump mayhem at the U.S. Capitol, including Trump-free Facebook and Twitter, the electronic shutdown of a nonpartisan policy conference in Sacramento, new legislation to recreate a California Patriot Act, and the California Democratic Party’s attempt to label the Recall Newsom campaign a “California coup.”
Episode 154: The Madness of Crowds
January 08, 2021 16:10 - 1 hour - 38 MBDavid and Will discuss the relationship between this week’s events in Washington, D.C., and California’s ongoing dysfunction. How do people of good faith talk to one another?
Episode 153: Not the Book of Revelation, but a Remarkable Facsimile!
December 29, 2020 10:30 - 1 hour - 51.1 MBDavid and Will review pandemics, wildfires, utility regulation, school lockdowns, the fall and rise of Kamala Harris, Father Junipero Serra, San Francisco, blackouts, Gavin Newsom, Kobe Bryant, George Floyd, porn-star licensing, on-and-off plastic bag bans, Elon Musk, Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf, John Wayne, John Sutter, Walter “Big Train” Johnson, the Book of Exoduses, and much (much) more.
Episode 152: Riding Shotgun with the Pope
December 23, 2020 16:30 - 1 hour - 40.8 MBState treasurer Fiona Ma wagers California cash in Pope Francis's misguided "inclusive capitalism" initiative; Sacramento's youngest assemblyman says the state's struggling business community needs a muzzle; Governor Newsom appoints Secretary of State Alex Padilla to fill Kamala Harris's U.S. Senate seat; and the growing multi-billion-dollar scandal inside California's unemployment department.
Episode 151: Eric Swalwell’s Hidden Dragon
December 16, 2020 21:21 - 51 minutes - 29.5 MBThe entire time he was blasting Trump on Russian involvement in U.S. politics, NorCal congressman and House Intelligence Committee member Eric Swalwell knew he had spy problems of his own. In other news, David and Will discuss the departures for Texas of Oracle and Hewlett Packard, how climate activists are pushing California cities into the utility business, Netflix’s love letter to Hollywood radicals in “Mank,” USC football, and more.
Episode 150: The Sesquicentennial Edition!
December 08, 2020 23:24 - 1 hour - 34.8 MBWelcome to episode 150 which, like each of its 149 forebears, considers the madness of California. This week, the masklessness of lockdown enthusiasts continues, entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Joe Lonsdale move to Texas, the path of destruction that led Xavier Becerra into the Biden administration, and Gavin Newsom’s golden opportunity to name replacements for state attorney general, secretary of state, and U.S. Senate. Bonus: Mark Zuckerberg’s role in the Biden victory.
Episode 149: Mea Culpa
December 02, 2020 21:58 - 55 minutes - 31.7 MBDavid and Will discuss the now-regular cycle of watching public officials who vote for COVID lockdowns quickly violate them, and then apologize for their great sin. What Janet Yellen didn’t learn while living in the Bay Area. The San Francisco Chronicle hopes Joe Biden will weigh in on California’s stupid lawsuits against oil companies. Bonus: Let us now praise Pacific Legal Foundation for its defense of Central Valley farmers vs. the State of California.
Episode 148: The Book of Exoduses
November 25, 2020 15:30 - 1 hour - 43.5 MBNever mind the flood of entrepreneurs leaving California for safer states, the Golden State’s political class is still bullish on failed policies. The Biden team wants to Make America California Again. Bonus: Listener letters!
Episode 147: And Now for a Break in the Unrelenting Propaganda
November 17, 2020 23:02 - 55 minutes - 31.7 MBThe Los Angeles Times turns over its letters page to Trump supporters for a single day. Governor Gavin Newsom locks down 95 percent of California under threat of COVID — but still finds time to celebrate with a lobbyist at French Laundry. Bonus: David and Will discuss waterboarding Will.
Episode 146: California Is the Specter Haunting America
November 11, 2020 21:59 - 1 hour - 35 MBWhat’s with the Biden team’s bottomless affection for policies tested — failed — in California? Who will Gavin Newsom name to fill the Senate vacuum created by Kamala Harris’s rapid rise? Why do California’s political elites hurt the working class they say they love so much?
Episode 145: This Just In: We’re Not All Nuts and Berries
November 06, 2020 16:19 - 59 minutes - 34.2 MBBallots are still being counted, but the data emerging from Tuesday’s California voting offer a fascinating possibility: Californians are conservatives who think they’re Democrats. Bonus: Two California members of Assembly persuade a state judge to limit Gavin Newsom’s constitution-busting emergency orders.
Episode 144: Mask Between Bites, Please
October 28, 2020 19:59 - 1 hour - 48.5 MBGavin Newsom rolls out new rules for the holiday table and quietly approves fracking even as he denounces it. Kamala Harris laughs off questions about her socialist inclinations while undermining faith in democratic institutions. Why the LA Dodgers pulled their third baseman just moments before they won the World Series. What to make of Facebook’s friendliness with authoritarian governments. News Flash: We're not pleased with a California Assembly bill to limit the power of police unions.
Episode 143: California’s Thrill Kill Kult
October 21, 2020 20:48 - 1 hour - 46.4 MBCalifornia’s political class continues its war on Californians, but nowhere is the fighting so lopsided as San Francisco. Gavin Newsom battles a virus only he can see. And we answer this question: When Kamala Harris tells a lie and there’s no honest media to check it, does it become true?
Episode 142: Check Your Brahmin Privilege
October 14, 2020 14:51 - 49 minutes - 28.2 MBProgressives open a new front in the identity politics war, demanding that Kamala Harris fight Indian caste prejudice in California. David and Will fact-check Harris on her Lincoln references. Special Bonus: The final Radio Free California assessment of state ballot propositions.
Episode 141: California Achieves Stone-Age Governance
October 07, 2020 20:59 - 1 hour - 46.4 MBWildfires have achieved what government could not, burning through California at a rate unseen since prehistory. Gavin Newsom appoints the first openly gay man to the state Supreme Court. Kamala Harris relabels “free” college tuition for black audiences. Disney’s Bob Iger bails on the governor’s business-reopening commission. Xavier Becerra wins and San Franciscans lose in the court battle over housing. Trump’s bizarre intervention in the federal COVID bailout, and California’s likely abuse o...
Episode 140: Another Atlas Shrugs
October 02, 2020 15:10 - 1 hour - 37.6 MBDavid and Will process investor Jeffrey Gundlach’s threat to exit California, the state’s multiple appearances in the first presidential debate, and Governor Newsom’s latest foray into corporate-board diversity and slave reparations.
Episode 139: Mental Exercises, Tackle Dummies, and Practicing against Air
September 24, 2020 15:31 - 1 hour - 38.5 MBDavid and Will discuss how state regulators and fretful college administrators destroyed the college football season in California. Governor Newsom’s latest executive order won’t stop wildfires but will slowly strangle the economy. Kamala Harris inflames water anxiety during a campaign cameo in Flint, Mich. Elon Musk thumps UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich.
Episode 138: Trousers Fully Engulfed
September 16, 2020 20:40 - 1 hour - 38.8 MBDavid and Will discuss the reigning narrative that California’s wildfire catastrophe are the result of climate change. In other news: Daily Wire leaving LA, and USC’s latest defeat in the woke wars.
Episode 137: Everybody Is an Idiot
September 09, 2020 19:31 - 1 hour - 34.8 MBDavid and Will review the politicization of human intimacy, this week starring Kamala Harris’s bedside ministry to Jacob Blake, state Senator Scott Wiener’s bill to legalize pedophilia, and the Oscars’ newest diversity initiative. Bonus: Nancy Pelosi fights for her most valued constituents (rich Californians in need of a federal tax break) and the San Bernardino gender-reveal party that literally sparked a social movement.
Episode 136: Not to be Confused with Janet Jackson
September 02, 2020 22:10 - 1 hour - 42.3 MBThe state’s bill-o-matic legislative session ended this week, and with it comes the end of Santa Barbara senator Hannah-Beth Jackson’s 14-year reign of error. David and Will consider Jackson's Constitution-busting legislative history, Donald Trump’s bizarre foray into the eviction-moratorium debate, and the profusion of California obituaries. Bonus: Respect for actor Chadwick Boseman. Music by Metalachi.
Episode 135: False Promises, True Miseries
August 26, 2020 22:07 - 55 minutes - 31.9 MBNearly four years into operation, the California Resistance has produced schools that won’t educate, an ineffective (when not destructive) response to COVID-19, million-acre wildfires, and government-imposed blackouts as a sacrificial offering to Mother Earth. David and Will discuss the week’s developments, and take a look at the highs and lows -- and Californication -- of the Republican National Convention. Music by Metalachi.
Episode 134: The Hottest Podcast on Record
August 19, 2020 15:26 - 50 minutes - 28.9 MBGovernor Gavin Newsom looks everywhere but the mirror for an explanation of this week’s “unacceptable” blackouts. In other news, David and Will consider the sideshow over Kamala Harris’s citizenship, the role of religion in politics, the National Football League’s canonization of Stephon Clark, and why two state lawmakers think their proposals to tax California’s wealthy will save the state. Music by Metalachi.
Episode 133: Kamala Harris, Authoritarian
August 12, 2020 19:40 - 44 minutes - 25.8 MBDavid and Will consider the record of Joe Biden’s VP nominee, lament the cowardice of West Coast college football, and discuss the resignation of Governor Gavin Newsom’s top doc.
Episode 132: Teachers Unions to Rich Parents: ‘Don’t Try This at Home — or Do, but Don’t Succeed’
August 06, 2020 15:11 - 1 hour - 39.4 MBDavid and Will wonder: Are “learning pods” a hate crime? What’s the meaning of the first COVID-19 death of a California child? Is LA’s distance-learning plan for fall a “smart start” or just a repeat of last spring’s dumb failure? Is the California Bar exam racist? Bonus: Entertaining ourselves (Netflix, Hulu, and the Great Books podcast) in the plague year.
Episode 131: The RFC Guide to 2020 Ballot Propositions
July 29, 2020 09:30 - 46 minutes - 26.5 MBDavid and Will offer recommendations on the twelve ballot propositions California voters will face this November -- complete with time-saving tips for less ambitious voters. Music by Metalachi.
Episode 130: Oakland’s Dog Diaper Day Afternoon
July 21, 2020 21:32 - 45 minutes - 26 MBDavid and Will discuss food fights over McDonald’s, Trader Joe’s, and foie gras, Governor Gavin Newsom’s cynical handling of COVID-19 data, the racist impact of teachers unions walking out of classrooms, and the return of Major League Baseball — now with pumped-in crowd noise.
Episode 129: Gavin Newsom’s Vertical Ambition
July 15, 2020 19:53 - 57 minutes - 32.8 MBDavid and Will discuss the governor’s renewed lockdown order and the LA teachers union’s ransom note to the public demanding higher taxes and terminating school police and universal health care in exchange for reopened schools. In other news: Bay Area Rapid Transit will defund police and hire unarmed “ambassadors.” We celebrate the anniversary of Negro League baseball with a memory of the day Walter “Big Train” Johnson (Fullerton High School and Washington Senators) lost to the Los Angeles Gi...
Episode 128: Cal Dems Show True Grit in Fit over 50-Year-Old Racist Quip
July 08, 2020 21:37 - 1 hour - 36.8 MBCiting evidence gleaned through arduous research in the Playboy magazine archives, state Democrats demand a name change for Orange County’s John Wayne Airport. (Next up: Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport?) Teachers union pet Joe Biden declares total fealty to NEA. SCOTUS defends LA Catholic schools. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers reward failing schools, and administer CPR to California’s illegal affirmative action system. Bonus: Can the NFL prove its anti-racist bonafides by insisting...
Episode 127: Que Sera, Serra
July 02, 2020 00:52 - 1 hour - 51.5 MBWill talks with historian Robert M. Senkewicz about Junípero Serra, founder of the California missions; object of veneration, admiration, and hate. In other news, Steve Greenhut talks about police reform, Dr. Jeff Barke says K–12 schools should open — no masks, no social distancing — and CPC’s own Ed Ring discusses one city’s revolutionary approach to the problem of fire fighting.
Episode 126: Goodbye, Columbus
June 24, 2020 20:00 - 58 minutes - 33.5 MBState lawmakers order the century-old statue of Cristoforo Colombo removed from the capitol, the FBI cracks widespread corruption in LA City Hall, the real John Sutter, what causes homelessness (a brief survey), Oakland’s mayor sees lynching where others see sports equipment, Vallejo’s real-time experiment in “defunding” police, and the Cal State faculty union’s dumb teaching of American history.
Episode 125: California Liberals Discover States’ Rights
June 17, 2020 19:59 - 1 hour - 39.7 MBIn his Supreme Court fight with the Trump Administration, California attorney general Xavier Bacera invokes conservative principles to defend the Golden State’s sanctuary state declaration -- and wins. In other news, police union leaders demand that they reform themselves, San Francisco transit officials refuse to give cops a ride, David unwinds the state pension agency’s “new” investment strategy, and Will talks with Reason’s Marc Joffe about the latest effort to derail High-Speed Rail.
Episode 124: The Left’s Problem with Police Unions
June 10, 2020 20:54 - 1 hour - 34.8 MBCalifornia’s Democratic leaders -- in Congress and Sacramento, and on Main Street -- are scrambling to appease public outrage over the police killing of George Floyd. But their solutions neatly avoid touching the Left’s unbridled affection for government unions, including police unions. Bonus: David and Will discuss how Californians are lifting the COVID lockdown without permission.
Episode 123: The Problem with Police Is Police Unions
June 04, 2020 15:07 - 1 hour - 41.7 MBOur problem with bad cops isn’t that they’re racist, it’s that they’re protected. State lawmakers seize the moment to resuscitate affirmative action. Justice comes slowly to Orange County assemblyman who offer political favors in exchange for sex.
Episode 122: Judgment Day for the Ninth Circuit
May 27, 2020 20:44 - 53 minutes - 30.9 MBDavid and Will spend too much time on Trump vs Twitter, and then consider the Ninth Circuit’s decision declaring the Bill of Rights a “suicide pact” to be suspended by judges “with a little practical wisdom.”