Power Line

Conservative Fight Club!

November 16, 2018 22:50 - 52 minutes - 71.5 MB

Now I know what you’re thinking, and you’d be wrong: the first rule of Conservative Fight Club is that you never shut up about Conservative Fight Club! In this recent lecture for the William F. Buckley Jr Program at Yale (originally titled “Varieties of Conservative Experience” in homage to the famous William James title), Steve Hayward explains the five major subdivisions on the right... Source

On the Firing Line with Ammo Grrrll

November 12, 2018 04:34 - 49 minutes - 67.4 MB

Scott Johnson joins host Steve Hayward this week for a podcast book party celebrating the launch of a collection of columns from “Ammo Grrrll,” Power Line’s Friday morning humor writer, Susan Vass. Ammo Grrrll Hits the Target is a collection of the first year of Susan’s Power Line columns, which have become a hit with readers. Susan is a retired stand-up comic, and this episode talks about the... Source

Henry Olsen's Midterm Outlook

November 01, 2018 19:20 - 34 minutes - 46.7 MB

We’re up early with this week’s edition of the Power Line Show, because Steve Hayward (his voice finally back to about 90 percent) cornered Henry Olsen to get Henry’s Jedi-like outlook on the mid-term election next week. Henry’s not ready yet to make many specific calls—his detailed race-by-race forecast will go up at National Review Online this Sunday night or next Monday morning—but right how he... Source

Edmund Burke: The First Conservative

October 28, 2018 18:21 - 50 minutes - 23.1 MB

While Steve Hayward continues to nurse his voice back to full strength, this episode of the Power Line Show offers another of Steve’s Yale lectures on conservative philosophy, this time on the topic “Edmund Burke: The First Conservative.” Unfortunately Burke wasn’t available for an interview, so it’s just Steve’s introductory thoughts on why Burke’s writings remain highly relevant to our own times... Source

Conservatism and Its Enemies

October 20, 2018 23:04 - 49 minutes - 22.8 MB

A slight departure for the Power Line Show this week: Steve Hayward has lost his voice (bringing cheer to his critics and enemies), and couldn’t do the author interview planned for this week, so John Hinderaker stepped in to host this episode with special guest. . . Steve Hayward! Just how does that work, you say? Well, Steve is currently giving a series of periodic lectures on conservatism at... Source

"We can win this thing!" Revisiting the Cold War with Herbert Meyer

October 13, 2018 20:26 - 46 minutes - 21.4 MB

Herbert Meyer, a senior CIA official during the Reagan years and occasional contributor to Ricochet, suffered a serious bicycle accident recently and remains hospitalized. Herb was one of the first persons in the Reagan Administration who began to think out loud what Reagan had thought more privately—we can win the Cold War with the Soviet Union! With several new books about Reagan and the Cold... Source

The Deep End of the (Lord) Liverpool

October 06, 2018 16:11 - 49 minutes - 22.9 MB

The Power Line Show takes a break from the All-Kavanaugh-All-the-Time format of recent weeks, and sits down with historian William Anthony Hay, author of a brand new biography of Robert Banks Jenkinson. What? You’ve never heard of Robert Banks Jenkinson? You might recognize him better by his “stage name,” Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1812-1827, during the windup of the... Source

#NotMeToo!

September 21, 2018 20:12 - 50 minutes - 23 MB

With the Kavanaugh-Ford sexual assault controversy reaching a climax in the next few days, Steve Hayward decided to check in with “Lucretia,” Power Line’s “International Woman of Mystery,” and Julie Kelly, frequent contributor to American Greatness and other sites, to see what they make of the situation. To say they are “not impressed” with Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh would be a Cat 5... Source

"Breaking Away" with Reagan, Trump, and the Midterms

September 15, 2018 19:24 - 37 minutes - 17.3 MB

This episode features the address Steve Hayward delivered this week to the Friends of Ronald Reagan at the California Club in Los Angeles, reflecting back on how Reagan weathered two tough mid-term elections and what lessons it might hold for Trump and Republicans this November. Dennis Quaid, who has signed recently to star as Reagan in an upcoming biopic, was in the audience... Source

She's Ba-aack! "Lucretia" on Cyber-Security

September 10, 2018 00:00 - 46 minutes - 21.1 MB

Between the incessant controversy about Russia hacking our elections, and the recent recommendation of several U.S. science academies that we return to paper ballots, we thought it was high time to devote an episode to cyber-security issues. And we have just the person for the topic: “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery. In addition to being an expert on the Constitution... Source

The Power Line Show Ep 86: November's Coming!

September 02, 2018 16:05 - 24 minutes - 22.1 MB

With two more weeks of primary election results to pick over, Steve Hayward checks in with Henry Olsen to see how things look. Florida increasingly appears to be the most interesting battleground state, with very competitive races for both governor and U.S. Senator. Henry also puts down his political polling data and puts on his Bill James hat to look ahead to the baseball playoff season starting... Source

Vietnam Revisited, With Mackubin T. Owens

August 26, 2018 17:42 - 41 minutes - 57.4 MB

After receiving a query from a young person about why the U.S. didn’t aim for victory in Vietnam, Steve Hayward decided to put the question to Mackubin T. Owens, a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam and long time professor of strategic studies at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Mac has also written for National Review, the New York Post, and numerous other publications... Source

Blue Wave or Red Tide?

August 20, 2018 01:29 - 33 minutes - 46.5 MB

Will the November election produce a (Democratic) blue wave or a (Republican) red tide? Pre-election opinion polls this year seem more volatile than ever, and beyond the horse-race aspect, there are lots of problems with opinion polling in the age of cell phones and the internet. Steve Hayward sat down with Karlyn Bowman, public opinion specialist at AEI and author of recent article on “ Is... Source

The University We Need?

August 15, 2018 14:42 - 26 minutes - 36.8 MB

Steve Hayward, just back from a regional meeting of the National Association of Scholars, sits down with Warren Treadgold, author of brand new book, The University We Need, which offers a bold idea: because colleges and universities are so far gone and likely unfixable, the time has come to found a brand new elite university that not only departs from the dreary orthodoxy of campus leftism... Source

"Born American, But in the Wrong Place"—Remembering Peter Schramm

August 06, 2018 01:11 - 54 minutes - 25.1 MB

In this very special episode, Steve Hayward uses some unaired material from a long interview with the late Peter Schramm of the Ashbrook Center. Peter passed away in August 2015, and left a legacy of brilliant and inspirational teaching to a generation of students at Ashland University. This Hungarian immigrant is best known from his lecture and essay on how he became an American, “Born American... Source

Iran Primed for Revolution?

July 30, 2018 15:06 - 35 minutes - 48.1 MB

If a thuggish regime fell in the forest and the New York Times didn’t report it, did it make a sound? This week Steve Hayward talks with Kelly Jane Torrance of the Weekly Standard about what is going on in Iran, where the Trump Administration’s heavy pressure may be straining the regime to the breaking point. But the mainstream U.S. media seem to be ignoring the tidings of increasing unrest and... Source

The 14th Amendment at 150, Part 2

July 22, 2018 17:24 - 1 hour - 93.6 MB

Steve Hayward and his pseudonymous mystery guest “Lucretia” return for the second half of their conversation about the meaning and interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Building on last week’s analysis of the “equal protection clause,” this episode goes on to the other three important clauses in Section 1—the “citizenship clause,” the “privileges and immunities clause,” and the “due process clause. Source

The 14th Amendment at 150, Part 1

July 16, 2018 13:26 - 55 minutes - 25.6 MB

This month marks the 150th anniversary of the enactment of the 14th Amendment, which has been abused perhaps more than any other part of the Constitution. Steve Hayward welcomes back to the show the pseudonymous mystery guest from last week, “Professor X,” who knows more about the 14th Amendment than the Power Line crew has forgotten. In this first of a two-part series, Steve and “Prof. Source

Here Comes Da Judge!

July 09, 2018 00:29 - 42 minutes - 39 MB

With the ascent of “democratic socialism” in the Democratic party and a Supreme Court confirmation fight commencing this week, Steve Hayward checks in for the latest on how this may play out in the midterm election with Henry Olsen, and also introduces us to a new special, anonymous (and soon to be regular) mystery guest, “Professor X.” She teaches at a major public university, and argues that we... Source

Bulldog Edition

July 02, 2018 14:24 - 43 minutes - 19.8 MB

Steve Hayward talks with two proud Yale bulldog alumni—James Kirchick of the Brookings Institution and Jeremy Carl of the Hoover Institution, about the mess in higher education and the mess at our border. It’s a coin flip between which is the bigger mess today—immigration or college campus madness, and maybe there is a connecting thread. But stick around, we have a side dish of energy policy... Source

Killer Tomatoes and the Electricity Grid

June 25, 2018 00:20 - 1 hour - 29.7 MB

What could the cult-camp classic “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” have to do with the electricity grid? A lot, as it turns out, and Steve Hayward ponders this gonzo crossover topic with three experts on energy policy, Lynne Kiesling of Purdue University, author Robert Bryce, and author/activist Tisha Schuller. Not only does this episode feature killer garden produce, but it also has Steve Martin... Source

The IG Report, and the Latest Big Wave Surf Forecast

June 16, 2018 18:12 - 47 minutes - 21.7 MB

Steve Hayward is joined this week by Power Line’s own John Hinderaker and Power Line’s eminence grise behind the curtain, Joe Malchow, to dissect the key takeaways of the Inspector General’s findings about the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton. The second half of this episode features Henry Olsen with his latest “surf report” about where the Democrats’ “blue wave” stands at the moment. Source

"The Suicide of the University" Revisited, with Charles Copeland

June 12, 2018 02:54 - 48 minutes - 22.3 MB

This week’s episode offers a conversation between Steve Hayward and Charles Copeland, president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute ( ISI) about the crisis of the university, especially Steve’s favorite theme that universities are slowly committing intellectual suicide. This discussion took place at the recent Western Conservative Summit in Denver. Source

Michael Walsh's Fiery Angel

June 03, 2018 18:04 - 59 minutes - 27.2 MB

Steve Hayward talks this week with author Michael Walsh about his new book, The Fiery Angel: Art, Culture, Sex, Politics, and the Struggle for the Soul of the West. Walsh has encyclopedic knowledge of high culture from Homer to Rocky IV, with detours to opera, novels, fine art, and classical music along the way, revealing deep layers of political and cultural meaning and explaining why the... Source

Is Progress Making Progress?

May 29, 2018 16:14 - 53 minutes - 24.5 MB

Steve Hayward caught up with the noted author Matt Ridley and energy entrepreneur Chris Wright in a hotel lobby in Denver last week, and decided to make a podcast of it! Matt Ridley (nowadays Lord Ridley!) is the author of many fine books, including The Rational Optimist and The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge. Ridley is one of the leading “lukewarmers”—the band of people who believe... Source

A Hard Look at Hard Power

May 22, 2018 18:55 - 53 minutes - 24.5 MB

Steve Hayward sits down with Rebecca Heinrichs of the Hudson Institute to survey the scene with regard to defense spending, middle defense, what Russia and China are up to, how the North Korea talks may go, and why Trump, like Mark Twain’s comment on Wagner’s music, is better than he looks when it comes to foreign and defense policy. Special shout out to Peter Schramm, our mutual teacher and... Source

The "Flight 93 Election" Comes in for a Landing

May 14, 2018 17:58 - 44 minutes - 20.5 MB

Steve Hayward and John Hinderaker interviewed Michael Anton, former senior staffer at Trump’s National Security Council and author of the controversial “ Flight 93 Election” article from September 2016, at the Ricochet Podcast Summit in Washington. Anton revisited the infamous article, shared his insights about Trump’s political character, and also regaled the live audience with a great tale of... Source

The Suicide of the University

May 07, 2018 23:00 - 44 minutes - 20.5 MB

This week Steve Hayward talks with . . . Steve Hayward! Well, not exactly. This special edition of the Power Line show features a keynote lecture Steve delivered at Arizona State University back in February on “The Suicide of the University.” Maybe coming next as a book and feature film. Source

Helping Henry

May 01, 2018 23:36 - 33 minutes - 15.3 MB

Who can make the connection between an obscure and bizarre British kids TV show and contemporary U.S. political analysis? The Power Line Show, that’s who! “Henry, were helping Henry and were telling Henry everything we know, Henry, were helping Henry, but we’ve still got a long long way too go!”—is the refrain of “Helping Henry,” but in this episode, Henry Olsen of the Ethics and Public Policy... Source

Speak Freely, and Other Heresies

April 26, 2018 17:58 - 45 minutes - 20.7 MB

The controversies surrounding free speech and academic freedom opened a new front last week with the execrable comments about the late First Lady Barbara Bush from Fresno State University professor Randa Jarrar. Steve Hayward talks here with Keith Whittington of Princeton University, author of a new book, “Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech.” But as Whittington is also a... Source

The Telos of Teles

April 16, 2018 22:01 - 56 minutes - 25.7 MB

Steven Teles of Johns Hopkins University is a rare liberal who writes with great perception and fairness about conservatism and conservative ideas. In this episode, Steve Hayward talks with Teles about his fine new book (co-authored with Brink Lindsay) “The Captured Economy,” and also about liberalism, intellectual history, and especially about the need for more conservatives in higher education. Source

The Lives of the Constitution

April 10, 2018 23:02 - 42 minutes - 19.5 MB

Claremont Institute fellow Joseph Tartakovsky is out this week with a fascinating new book that illuminates the Constitution with a unique approach: “The Lives of the Constitution” explores the meaning of our central political document through the stories of ten important figures in the story—some familiar, like Alexander Hamilton, but some less well known, like James Wilson and Stephen Field. Source

Finding Nino: A Celebration of Justice Scalia

April 03, 2018 21:15 - 39 minutes - 18 MB

Steve Hayward talks with Ed Whelan, president of of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, author of “Bench Memos” on National Review Online, and co-editor of “Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and a Live Well Lived.” In addition to recalling the rich legacy of Justice Scalia, Steve and Ed talk about the problems of jurisprudence today, and in this season of new controversy over the 2nd... Source

How Charles Murray Became Charles Murray

March 27, 2018 04:00 - 1 hour - 33.5 MB

In this very special episode, Steve Hayward gets an origin story out of Charles Murray, surveying the sweep of his life from childhood in Iowa through Harvard, the Peace Corps in Asia, and evaluating social programs in the 1970s where his growing doubts and misgivings started him on the road to his many pathbreaking books. Along the way, Steve and Charles also talk about NASA and the Apollo... Source

Help Us Obi-Wan Henry—You're Our Only Hope

March 19, 2018 23:15 - 18 minutes - 8.29 MB

In our regular bi-weekly checkup with Henry Olsen, the Obi-Wan Kenobi of election analysts, Steve Hayward and Henry cover the fallout from the special election in House district 18 in Pennsylvania, how the tariff issue might play out, what to expect in the aftermath of the recent chaotic Italian election, plus a look ahead to November, including some of the key governor’s races like Bruce Rauner... Source

American Women's Day

March 12, 2018 13:00 - 32 minutes - 14.9 MB

We decided to transcend the recent International Women’s Day by declaring our own American Women’s Day with Julie Ponzi and Julie Kelly, stalwarts of AmericanGreatness. Steve Hayward draws out their views on how to come to grips with Trump, why the culture wars are more important in the short run than the budget deficit, and who they hope the Democrats will be foolish enough to nominate in 2020. Source

The Future of Free Speech on Campus

March 06, 2018 00:57 - 13 minutes - 6.1 MB

In this short episode, Steve Hayward shares his recent short lecture at Claremont McKenna College on the campus threats to free speech, analyzing the pincer movement of the wholesale postmodernist rejection of the liberal tradition and recent social science that purports to establish that speech constitutes literal violence. If either of these attacks take firm hold, the liberal tradition is over... Source

Populism Sweeping Europe?

February 28, 2018 20:52 - 19 minutes - 9.04 MB

Steve Hayward catches up with Henry Olsen in London, ahead of the upcoming general election in Italy where populist parties are expected to do well, and where German politics remain in disarray because of the populist eruption in their last general election. Meanwhile, Brexit continues to be a non-stop agony for British PM Theresa May, while the best performing government in western Europe right... Source

CPAC Recap and Shooting Aftermath

February 26, 2018 15:49 - 41 minutes - 19.2 MB

Power Line co-founder John Hinderaker joins Steve Hayward to offer up a recap on the just-concluded annual CPAC meeting, and to analyze the aftermath of the Florida school shooting, where media distortion and liberal virtue-signalling are reaching Olympic gold medal proportions. Source

Fred Siegel Explains It All

February 20, 2018 03:41 - 48 minutes - 22.4 MB

Steve Hayward sits down with author Fred Siegel about a wide range of topics, from Trump and the Democrats, to how to think about leading intellectuals including H.L. Mencken, Arthur Schlesinger, Richard Rorty, Michel Foucault, and Mark Lilla, and the problems of the coastal elites in California and New York. Source

The Missing Linker

February 12, 2018 22:58 - 37 minutes - 17.2 MB

Is it possible to be a liberal but not a “Progressive”? Steve Hayward sat down with Damon Linker, author and columnist for The Week, to discuss this and related questions, such as why Linker defected from the right to become a moderate liberal (hence “the missing Linker”), and his thoughts about religion and politics. Source

Fee, Fi, Fo, FISA

February 08, 2018 01:37 - 12 minutes - 5.63 MB

With news breaking of the possible involvement of President Obama in the FBI investigation of Carter Page along with Sidney Blumenthal slithering from the sewer yet again, Steve Hayward asked John Yoo some questions about how the FISA process actually works—especially the three renewals of the Page warrant that required new probable cause. What could that evidence have been? Possibly nothing. Source

The Second Iranian Revolution?

February 06, 2018 01:03 - 35 minutes - 16.4 MB

Steve Hayward talks with Kelly Jane Torrance, deputy managing editor of the Weekly Standard, about the protests in Iran and the Iranian dissident movement in exile, which is being ignored by nearly all of the mainstream media. Torrance is one of the only journalists covering this story closely, while still making time to keep up her title as the Cocktail Queen of Washington. Source

Regarding Henry

January 29, 2018 19:02 - 37 minutes - 17.2 MB

Steve Hayward sits down with Henry Olsen, author and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, but also a premier practicioner of “psephology” (try pronouncing that fast three times—or just once!), which we define as reading the entrails of public opinion polls to figure out what the heck is going on. Henry was one of the very few to predict Trump’s 2016 victory in detail. Source

Getting Tired of All the Greatness!

January 25, 2018 00:18 - 30 minutes - 14 MB

Steve Hayward is joined by the triumvirate behind American Greatness ( amgreatness.com)—Chris Buskirk, Ben Boychuk and Julie Ponzi—to talk more about what the MAGA agenda means in practice, the shape of the fast-moving debate over immigration reform, whether the decline of California is irreversible, what lessons should be learned from the dramatic fall of Steve Bannon. And Steve debuts Power Line’... Source

The Lighter Side of Deeble

January 10, 2018 06:29 - 30 minutes - 13.8 MB

Steve Hayward reached all the way across the Atlantic to track down comedian/magician (and occasional Ricochet contributor) David Deeble to talk about comedy, why most comics (and actors and most other artists) are liberal, and the challenges of comedy in Germany, which isn’t exactly known for its appreciation of comedy. If you’ve never seen David in action, look him up at his website (... Source

Life After Franken in Minnesota

January 04, 2018 02:11 - 25 minutes - 11.6 MB

Steve Hayward and John Hinderaker take note of the exit of Al Franken from the Senate, and how it has thrown Minnesota politics into a state of turmoil, making it ground zero for the mid-term election later this year. Unnoticed by the national media, Minnesota has been slowly turning into a red state—Trump nearly won it in 2016—and this year will see two Senate races as well as a governor’s race. Source

Celebrating a Year of American Greatness

December 29, 2017 18:43 - 29 minutes - 13.5 MB

In this year-end episode, Steve Hayward checks in with Ben Boychuk, columnist for the Sacramento Bee and managing editor of the American Greatness website, about how to think about Trump—yes, we’re still trying to figure him out too—and looking ahead to next year. Conservatives are mostly pleased with Trump’s first year. What might go wrong for Trump in 2018? Source

Shedding Light on "Darkest Hour"

December 21, 2017 07:31 - 51 minutes - 23.7 MB

“Darkest Hour,” the new Churchill biopic that comes out in general release this week, has generated some controversy about its accuracy and depiction of Churchill in the crucial weeks of May 1940. Steven Hayward, who liked the film, and Scott Johnson, who disliked it, argue it over and break it down for us, and end with a list of Churchill books everyone should read. Source

Two Cheers for Tammany Hall!

May 17, 2017 13:00 - 32 minutes - 14.7 MB

Steve Hayward sits down with Jonathan Rauch of the Atlantic Monthly and Brookings Institution to discuss Jon’s latest ebook, Political Realism, and also the parlous state of free speech on college campuses. Jon offers the counter-intuitive thesis that decades of political reform have made our government worse! Then since Jon was visiting Steve at Berkeley, the conversation pivots to the problem of... Source

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