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 121: Killing Us Softly
May 22, 2020 15:49 - 1 hour - 53.9 MBGovernor Gavin Newsom’s focus on protecting everybody may have cost lives, a Trump-backed House candidate flips a Dem seat in SoCal, Kamala’s VP stock is dropping, and the New York Times’s problem with capitalism is now epidemic. Bonus track: Will talks with Williamson Evers about the dangers of AB5.
Episode 120: Zero to 60 to Texas in 2.1 Seconds
May 13, 2020 23:35 - 1 hour - 46.8 MBElon Musk’s battle with regulators reveals everything about the late, great state of California. In other news: Union leaders see hospital layoffs as evidence of capitalism's failure, and 150 economists beg Governor Gavin Newsom to let his people go. Bonus track: Will talks with the brains behind the free-market YouTube comedy series 'Love Gov.'
Episode 119: You Win Some, You Newsom
May 06, 2020 20:12 - 57 minutes - 33.2 MBGavin Newsom talks tough but bows to popular pressure to ease the lockdown. Meanwhile, progressives say emergency orders to shrink the prison population, house the homeless, and hand out free laptops are their proof of concept for future governance. The failure of California’s first-in-the-nation ban on puppy mills is a lesson in dumb legislation. Bonus: The return of the Kamala Harris Klock.
Episode 118: Emergency Podcast: California in Revolt over Virus Shutdown
May 01, 2020 22:01 - 24 minutes - 14.2 MBDavid and Will break into your life with this urgent message about protests throughout the state — and the state of our own outdoors!
Episode 117: The Incompetent Authoritarian
April 29, 2020 19:50 - 56 minutes - 32.3 MBGavin Newsom is governing by executive order, sometimes as a deregulating madman and sometimes as the Elizabeth Warren of the West. Who is he really? In other news: Will rants about journalists who support selective enforcement of the First Amendment. David says we can safely ignore headlines warning of the coming economic apocalypse.
Episode 116: Will Trump Save California?
April 23, 2020 15:09 - 51 minutes - 29.6 MBAs the economy slips into the red, Mitch McConnell says Senate Republicans won’t save the Golden State from its self-inflicted wounds, but David says Trump will order up 100 c.c.s of stimulus money stat. In other news: California government unions continue to press for advantage in the midst of a crisis, Governor Newsom has a $75 million relief check with your name on it — if you’re here illegally — and the real threat to America is utopian thinking.
Episode 115: See You Next Doomsday!
April 17, 2020 15:27 - 58 minutes - 33.4 MBWill talks with constitutional scholar John C. Eastman about the limits of a governor’s power to shut down an entire state economy. The bad news: We may be laying the legal foundations for another, more political shutdown in the future. Their conversation took place before a live audience of local elected officials -- socially distanced through the magic of the Internet.
Episode 114: In Us, Hope Is a Muscle
April 13, 2020 19:43 - 58 minutes - 33.4 MBYes, union leaders, and CalPERS are bad, and viruses are worse. So why are David and Will so bullish on California — on humanity? Bonus! San Francisco gives us hope.
Episode 113: Never Mind the Virus, Here’s the Venice Beach Homeless Party!
April 03, 2020 15:54 - 56 minutes - 32.4 MBSpecial guest Edward Ring describes homeless living on the beach during the plague, the financial crisis coming to your city, and his hope that the economic shutdown will lead to a transformation in California politics.
Episode 112: How to Handle a Bear Market
March 31, 2020 21:31 - 58 minutes - 33.3 MBElon Musk, Dov Charney, and many other Californians aren’t waiting for a government rescue. In other coronavirus news, Riverside County issues more debt to pay off other debts exacerbated by the Wall Street meltdown, and in serving the public’s health, we ask grocers to ban reusable shopping bags in their stores. Bonus: Explore David’s utter contempt for partisan politics.
Episode 111: The Emergency Is Here Now
March 18, 2020 21:38 - 59 minutes - 33.9 MBThe only CPA in the state capitol, state Senator John Moorlach (R., Costa Mesa) has been warning Californians about the return of a bear market and its impact on state finances. Will talks with the senator about the relationship between the pandemic, the stock market, public finance -- and the real threat facing California.
Episode 110: Did California Voters Just Get Smarter?!
March 12, 2020 16:06 - 57 minutes - 33.2 MBDavid and Will discuss the remarkable statewide defeat of historically popular union-backed bond proposals, an LA Times investigation that reveals the state’s campaign to silence whistleblowers inside its troubled high-speed rail agency, and the University of California’s Reaganesque response to a graduate-student strike at UC Santa Cruz.
Episode 109: California’s Not-So-Super Tuesday
March 06, 2020 21:50 - 45 minutes - 26.2 MBCalifornia’s Dem voters go for Bernie Sander but conversely appear to have killed a teachers-union-backed $15 billion bond. Meanwhile, California lawmakers tackle the state's decline with proposals to end gender segregation in toy stores, eliminate price disparities between men’s and women’s products, and replace the phrase “at-risk” with “at-promise.” Bonus! Will California do for pre-K education what it has done for K–12 (please, God, no!), and David breaks down a Supreme Court case that le...
Episode 108: Industrial-Scale Porn
February 26, 2020 23:27 - 1 hour - 37.7 MBThe San Diego assemblywoman behind AB5 now wants the state Department of Industrial Relations to train porn stars. Seven local officials have sued the state over a 2018 ban on speech that might encourage workers to think about leaving their unions. Hoping to solve homelessness, Governor Gavin Newsom just made it worse. Bonus track: Will talks with two real-estate developers about their encounter with California Environmental Quality Act, the biggest hurdle to new home and commercial construct...
Episode 107: Pardon
February 19, 2020 22:52 - 1 hour - 34.8 MBDavid makes the case for President Trump’s pardon of California investor Michael Milken. Meantime, California’s ruling class condemns the inherent body-shaming of PE classes, an LA councilman wants to confiscate apartment buildings as the next logical step in rent control, and YouTube says it’ll ban “misleading political content.”
Episode 106: Here’s Wishing the Governor Didn’t Love Us So Much
February 05, 2020 22:57 - 52 minutes - 30.4 MBGovernor Gavin Newsom introduces a record-setting state budget he says proves what “big-hearted government” can do and proposes a state takeover of private utilities, including PG&E. In other news: we'll discuss the case against Assemblyman Bill Brough (R., Dana Point), and school kids dousing themselves in fake oil to fight climate change in Sacramento.
Episode 105: An Especially Deep Episode
January 29, 2020 20:33 - 1 hour - 38.1 MBSan Diego County GOP boss blasts congressional candidate Darrell Issa for anti-gay messaging, Trump threatens California for requiring insurers to cover abortion, and reflections on the death of Kobe Bryant, the family man and neighbor. Bonus: A serious question about the moral origins of taxation.
Episode 104: The Unfettered State
January 22, 2020 22:49 - 59 minutes - 34.3 MBThe internal contradictions of squatters’ “rights” in Oakland, the limits of “free” community college, and implications for California’s poor of the U.S. Supreme Court case Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. Bonus! The role of government in Major League Baseball’s Houston Astros scandal, “conservatives” who love corporate welfare, and California’s showdown with the NCAA goes national.
Episode 101: Bloomberg Is Goofy-Footed on California
December 12, 2019 20:39 - 43 minutes - 25 MBFormer New York mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg parachuted into California, entirely missing the landing zone. In other news, Google’s hiring of an anti-union consulting firm reveals the internal contradiction in Silicon Valley businesses, and what to make of religious imagery deployed on behalf of illegal immigrants.Former New York mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg parachuted into California, entirely missing the landing zone. In other news...
Episode 100: Kamala Harris Is Gone, Girl
December 05, 2019 20:41 - 1 hour - 37.9 MBWill and David celebrate this landmark episode with a dramatic reading of Charles C. W. Cooke’s funeral oration over the defunct Harris presidential campaign, consider the implications of Planned Parenthood’s victory over reporters in the “Baby Body Parts” trial, and discuss Victor Davis Hansen’s revisionist take on how Republicans lost California.
Episode 99: Gavin Newsom a Moderate?
November 26, 2019 10:00 - 13 minutes - 7.74 MBWill talks with top statehouse staffer Lance Christensen about claims that Governor Newsom's actions in the most recent legislative session indicate the gov is not quite as liberal as his backers might have hoped.
Episode 98: Left, Right, and Crazy
November 19, 2019 23:19 - 50 minutes - 29.2 MBAnti-Semites troll Donald Trump Jr. at UCLA. Silicon Valley firm will pay employees to leave high-priced California. The U.S. Forest Service capitulates to government unions, calls for an end to 60-year-old volunteer firefighting team. Kamala Harris wins an endorsement she might want to refuse.
Episode 97: How Not to End California’s Death Spiral
November 13, 2019 15:47 - 42 minutes - 24.6 MBSilicon Valley giants say they’ll spend billions on affordable housing, Kamala Harris proposes lengthening the school day to 6 p.m., Dems insist we’ll be carbon-free by 2045, the governor says the state should take over California’s utilities, and the LA teachers union says it’s backing Bernie. None of it will make anything better — and will likely accelerate the state’s decline – but David and Will see signs of hope.
Episode 96: No Longer the Nutty Ninth Circuit
November 06, 2019 19:46 - 57 minutes - 32.7 MBTrump Administration appointments have made the famously liberal federal circuit a lot less liberal, which is why the left has ramped up its weirdness around the latest nominee. In other news: Gavin Newsom will use regulatory authority to force weed shops to unionize; Trump beats Newsom on the battle over auto emissions standards; and the Kamala Harris presidential campaign continues to bleed staff, donors, and the support of prospective voters. Bonus track: David and Will answer a reader’s c...
Episode 95: California’s Year-Long Day of the Dead
October 28, 2019 21:31 - 1 hour - 37.5 MBIn this especially scary Halloween edition, David and Will discuss Gavin Newsom’s attack on California’s highly regulated electric utilities, the coming tech-sector correction, and the meaning of the Representative Katie Hill sex scandal.
Episode 94: California’s Role in Presidential Campaigns
October 23, 2019 15:50 - 33 minutes - 19.1 MBIn this economy-class edition (no peanuts!), Will and David discuss Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s assist to Mayor Pete, Elizabeth Warren’s betrayal of the poor, and Kamala Harris’s effort to bring to the White House the very policies that destroyed California.
Episode 93: Armagideon Time
October 15, 2019 21:07 - 1 hour - 38.7 MBPG&E turns out the lights on 800,000 Californians. Governor Gavin Newsom celebrates Indigienous Peoples Day. Mitch McConnell slips into Newport Beach to talk banking reform with weed retailers. Already legendarily profligate, California local governments can now establish their own “public banks.” Kamala Harris promises to think about the impact of every federal policy on LGBTQIA+ communities, while Tom Steyer says a GOP victory in 2020 will lead to Armageddon.
Episode 92: Suicide of the West Coast
October 10, 2019 18:40 - 1 hour - 41.9 MBCalifornia’s climate-change satellite; a non-ironic call by Democrats to discover the source of California’s rising gas prices; a tax hike that drove out the state’s biggest taxpayers? There’s so much self-inflicted damage in California right now that David and Will resort to lightning-round management -- 20 terrifying stories at just two minutes each. Play along!
Episode 91: The Meaning of the OC
September 30, 2019 20:22 - 1 hour - 42 MBDavid and Will consider Politico’s analysis of historically conservative Orange County’s swing to the left, Saturday Night Live’s takedown of Democratic presidential contenders, and get a contact-high from Kamala Harris’s on-again, off-again love affair with weed.
Episode 90: Rolling Stone Really Gets California — Really
September 25, 2019 09:00 - 1 hour - 43.2 MBDavid and Will hail Rolling Stone magazine’s coverage of the California housing crisis, critique the president’s decision to end California’s right to set its own auto emission standards, wonder at Governor Newsom’s resistance to the Resistance, and predict tough times for the state’s already troubled pension funds. Ad Music: "Dvorak Polka" by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Source: http://incompetech.com/...
Episode 89: Can Trump Fix California?
September 20, 2019 17:10 - 1 hour - 38.3 MBWill and guest Jeff Barke discuss the president’s promises to solve California’s homeless crisis, sue San Francisco for Clean Water violations, end the state’s right to set its own auto emissions standards, and end underage vaping. Bonus: We play “Fake News or Real?”
Episode 88: Six Summer Stories
September 11, 2019 20:32 - 57 minutes - 32.9 MBTrump threatens to break Sacramento’s headlock on the auto industry and trolls California lawmakers with a vow to fix the state’s homeless crisis. San Francisco declares NRA a terror group. The teachers union and Gavin Newsom just made public schools worse. Kamala Harris comes out against plastic straws, misfires on Exxon, and admits her campaign only barely survived a cruel, cruel summer.
Episode 87: It Was Never about Saving the Planet
September 03, 2019 19:22 - 1 hour - 41.6 MBHow trade unions use “greenmail” to make housing unaffordable. California Dems don’t know whether to oppose Silicon Valley giants or to accept their filthy, filthy money. How the NRA can solve California’s gun-violence problem. A lefty state senator from Berkeley gets it right on college football.
Episode 86: What Do You Say to the Gender Unicorn?
August 28, 2019 23:12 - 1 hour - 38.5 MBA California middle school teacher asks his students about their own unique takes on gender identity, Bill Maher celebrates the death of David Koch, and the state teachers union spends millions trying to murder charter schools.