Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Jon welcomes the brilliant Kevin D. Williamson to discuss his latest book, The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics. He’s a roving correspondent for National Review who’s written for many other publications, including The Atlantic for a brief time. We chat about the toxic nature of social media and the intoxicating nature of outrage.
The intro/outro song of the week is “New Minority” by Jeen. And to listen to all the music featured on The Conservatarians this year, subscribe to our Spotify playlist!
Subscribe to King of Stuff in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
The smallest minority has no political power. They also lose big time in battles and war.
As Jon indicates, this “episode” was “on the shelf” for over a week, so he’s behind the times.
Mad Dogs And Englishmen is no longer (co-)hosted on Ricochet.
Also Jon, since you already know that your mic isn’t much good, why not get a better one?
Why?
When did it happen? I thought I recently listened to one through the superfeed.
It is still listed over at NR’s podcast site, but the last episode was 1/16/20 which was posted on Ricochet. However, it has been removed from the list of Ricochet-hosted podcasts. Maybe Jon needs to have Kevin back on, or do one with Charles Cooke and explain what caused the divorce (either between Ricochet and them, or between Kevin and Charles, if the podcast is no more, and NR just hasn’t pulled the link from its website yet).
It’s alive.
Ricochet has been jettisoning National Review podcasts for a while now. (Remember The Editors?) I’m not sure why. It either has something to do with copyright status (likely), or with the magazine’s increasing unpopularity among the more . . . erm, Trump-friendly members.
I remember The Editors. The one I enjoyed was the Bookmonger. I noticed it was gone after about two or three months and had to find the feed at NR. Curious why they drop off.
I suppose it could also be wanting to drive the brand to a certain access point for click/page view purposes, though you’d think if that was the case, the NR’s own page would have gotten the update at the same time it was posted to Stitcher, but as of 2 p.m. Eastern on 1/25/16, the last posting there was still nine days old.
One problem could be that NR re-hashes their site occasionally, which results in all the links from Ricochet suddenly being broken. Rather than put up with having to re-do everything when that happens, it’s easier to just let NR have it. But it seems if you subscribe through iTunes, it still works. There are just some podcasts I only listen to on the site, sometimes because there’s just too many of them and sometimes they’re so time-sensitive it doesn’t make sense to download and save them like I do with most that I get through iTunes. Three Martini Lunch for example.
The biggest problem for me with Mad Dogs… no longer being on Ricochet, is not being able to share comments on them with other Ricochet members.
I never did live interviews until recently, and the current mic works fine for Skype interviews. The last two interviews came up at the last minute. Working on a new set-up going forward.
Loved the intro, and agree. KW, to a certain extent Steeze, and guys like Walter Kirn (who has been so nice to me on Twitter) sometimes make me shake my head at the page/screen. They’re that good.
Long time ago in #PreviousLife I interviewed (and later met) a guitarist named Mike Keneally, whose best claim-to-fame at the time was being Frank Zappa’s last “Stunt Guitarist” on the 1988 Broadway The Hard Way tour. Beyond cool/nice, not famous-famous, but musicians know who these guys are. Believe he’s touring with Devin Townsend now.
Reason I bring him up is you reminded me of Andy Partridge’s (XTC) famous quote about him, “[Keneally’s] so good he makes you want to spit.”
It looks like Kevin was wrong about The New York Times doing well.
“The New York Times’ stock price tripled after Trump won outperforming the S&P 500 by six times. …
In May, the New York Times fell out of the top three, displaced by the Daily Mail. By November, it had fallen to seventh place. Its Facebook growth fell from 25% in 2017 to 3.5%. Its Twitter follower growth also dropped from 50% annually to only 5%.”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/impeachment-killing-trump-derangement-syndrome-daniel-greenfield/
As with CNN and MSNBC’s ratings, the failure of the Mueller Report to deliver the goods on Trump that had been hyped by the Times likely played a role in that decline. Viewers and readers who were expecting Trump to be frog-marched out of the White House by Labor Day last year stopped clicking so much, and have been wary of totally engaging again out of fear of being burned again with a less-than-hoped-for outcome (i.e. — Trump is impeached and is frog-marched out of the White House by President’s Day….)