I’ve been listening to The Open Highway Podcast with Eric Erickson. He’s got an incredible talent for interviewing people, and he needed every bit of it today. Because he interviewed me. Some highlights: 1. That time I told him patriotism should be more like Tylenol and less like heroin. 2…

Franklin Roosevelt called him “one of the most dangerous men in America.” Huey Long, governor and then senator from Louisiana, was a champion of the poor at precisely the right time. The Great Depression had most of the country out of work and hungry. He advocated a massive redistribution of…

Sometimes a Republic on its way to becoming an empire could really use an intractable stick-in-the-mud to run things. (If you’d rather listen then read, check out this episode at The History’s Trainwrecks Podcast): 004 - Stubborn Nags of Ancient Rome, Part I | History's Trainwrecks Listen to 004 - Stubborn Nags of Ancient Rome, Part I from History's Trainwrecks. Meet Cato the Elder, a stick in the…shows.acast.com

Banks, apparently, are failing. Again. Banks failed in the wake of the Great Depression — before there were any regulations to prevent it, before there was any such thing as insuring deposits, before the government had any significant role in commercial finance. It was the Wild West out there. Since…

“China really is adorable, isn’t it?” — Me, This Morning. China is in the news today for a couple of things: Thing the First: The United States is pretty well convinced that the COVID-19 virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan Province and thereupon traveled throughout the world, killing millions…

“Are you walking with purpose toward the bedroom because of something you heard on the news, or do you really have to go to the bathroom?” — My Wife, This Morning. Being married is fun. And occasionally embarrassing. If any of you are fans of the I’m Not Allowed to…

Abigail Adams ran a farm, inoculated her children for smallpox, and was something of a real estate magnate, all while the British army and navy were besieging her town. Martha Washington spent the winter at Valley Forge right alongside her husband and their freezing army. Eliza Hamilton went to Wisconsin when it was a barely-settled frontier when she was 79 years old. Abigail Adams warned her husband John to “remember the ladies” or there would be big trouble.

It’s starting to look like I’m just not good enough. I’m not rich enough for Republicans to write legislation for me, but I’m not poor enough for Democrats to do it either. I’m going to be stuck with the old laws, the ones we’ve had since the first day of…

There was a very real possibility that Franklin Delano Roosevelt would be a one-term president. He had won the White House in 1932, elected in a landslide by an angry and desolate American citizenry that was quickly becoming jobless, homeless, and hungry. The Great Depression that had begun three years…