Get Schooled

Hello faithful Ricochet Podcast listeners. It’s us. We have another show for you. It’s a good one. We have Ricochet Editor and Twitter celebrity Bethany Mandel sitting in for Rob Long. We have the WSJ’s Jason Riley as a guest. We have political strategist to the stars, Luke Thompson as the other guest. We also discuss aliens and Ricochet member Kephalithos wins this week LPoW for the very intriguing post American Architectural Geography: Part 1, Timing. It’s a good show. You should listen. And tell your friends. Because we want more listeners.

Music from this week’s episode: Gone Till November by Wyclef Jean

 

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  1. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Ricochet Podcast S-43E505

    wtf is that?

    • #1
  2. Mark Alexander Inactive
    Mark Alexander
    @MarkAlexander

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Ricochet Podcast S-43E505

    wtf is that?

    Season 43, episode 505.

    • #2
  3. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Mark Alexander (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Ricochet Podcast S-43E505

    wtf is that?

    Season 43, episode 505.

    Except Ricochet hasn’t been around for 43 years/seasons….  And even if it were, there haven’t been 505 episodes in season 43…

    • #3
  4. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Math is hard. Math in public even harder.

    • #4
  5. Blue Yeti Admin
    Blue Yeti
    @BlueYeti

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Ricochet Podcast S-43E505

    wtf is that?

    Just a test (see show title) to see if you were paying attention. You all passed with flying colors. Congratulations. 

    • #5
  6. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    If the school chaos leads to many more non-working parents with diminished incomes, there could be a long-term benefit when the economy adjusts to single-income households. Many working mothers today would like to be stay-at-home moms but rely on the dual incomes. 

    • #6
  7. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    It infuriates me that so many Republicans are willing to tolerate the possibility of a senile candidate for President. If voters are being offered a pawn, that makes a mockery of elections (again). It also means we don’t know who Trump is really running against. Who will define Biden’s policies and make his decisions?

    We might as well accept Putin on the ballot because we would be accepting just such a farce. Why are Republicans willing to tolerate the possibility that the person elected President of the United States of America, the so called leader of the free world, is not truly the person acting as President? That’s treason, plain and simple.

    Republicans cannot wait for impeachment. It is intolerable now, not only if Biden wins. If Biden is truly senile, Democrats must be made (by SCOTUS?) to choose a real candidate.

    Rioters are not only burning cities and murdering people by the hundreds. They have tried to trap federal officers and burn them alive, blinding and injuring others, and not a shot has been fired in self-defense. Our government is signaling to insurgents that it is weak.

    A majority of Americans now feel too intimidated to speak honestly in public — in politics, in business, in schools, in social gatherings, and everywhere. The most radical hatemongers of the Left are not so intimidated. They are in control.

    It looks as if many states and much of the economy will remain locked down through the year. Paranoia surrounds the virus, even if there are legitimate concerns. Schooling is in chaos and disrupting the lives of parents. Our district here expects kids to log in from home and remain online throughout normal school hours. How many parents can accomodate that plan without financial hardship? How many staggered economic effects have yet to reveal themselves or hit with full force?

    When will the “emergency” powers of so many local tyrants end and legislative due process resume? What will be the consequences of the Left’s “stormtroopers” narrative that claims President Trump has assumed dictatorship? How many teenagers and young adults, bitter about lost opportunities in the shutdowns and bombarded with hateful class warfare rhetoric, will join the rioting and intimidation?

    And Republicans will dump more fuel on that fire by okaying a senile pawn for President?

    This is an extraordinarily dangerous time. We haven’t even seen Democrats’ October surprise, which I’m guessing will be a doozy like Black Lives Matter mobs. Whichever candidate wins, the reactions will be severe and reflect a people coming apart at the foundations.

    At the very least, tell me we won’t tolerate a pawn to run for President.

    • #7
  8. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    Blue Yeti (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Ricochet Podcast S-43E505

    wtf is that?

    Just a test (see show title) to see if you were paying attention. You all passed with flying colors. Congratulations.

    I think during the future off-weeks for the podcast, you need to upload a few of the “Best of’ shows from Seasons 1-3 in the late 1970s (I’d really like to hear the one from ’79 with 14-year-old Rob Long griping about the Bonwit-Teller Department Store building being torn down on Fifth Avenue to build Trump Tower…)

    • #8
  9. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    Jon1979 (View Comment):
    I’d really like to hear the one from ’79 with 14-year-old Rob Long griping about the Bonwit-Teller Department Store building being torn down on Fifth Avenue to build Trump Tower…

    Oh, it’s a classic. “He says he’ll save the statuary. Does anyone believe that? It’ll end up in the backyard of some house he builds somewhere, probably Florida.” 

    • #9
  10. Taras Coolidge
    Taras
    @Taras

    @aaronmiller — Biden isn’t senile, just prone to having senior moments.

    • #10
  11. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    The first segment was incredibly interesting. Why is a simple dropping off and picking up of your kids such a big deal? Ultimately, I think it comes down to the left just wishes for stuff without thinking it through, and they can’t stand any evidence to the contrary  i.e. Bethany for two minutes out of the day. I have a PhD brother-in-law that is totally on the left and I win every policy argument with him. They just want to vote and steal money from people so they can put up all these stupid non-public goods that don’t improve anything. They can’t believe it doesn’t work. They can’t believe we need almost no government beyond non-public goods. That’s where all the problems happen. That, and the Federal Reserve pushing everything around.

    I would put heavy money on those “pods” actually developing human capital without all of the overhead and that is going to be a huge threat to the left, and the parents that want to believe in everything Democrat.

    • #11
  12. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Speaking of defunding the police. Keith Ellison really stepped in it last weekend when he was asked about this an interview. He sounded like a complete idiot. I swear every single talk radio show covered it. One of the most powerful people in the justice system hasn’t thought any of this through. Supposedly he got really bored with being a legislator, but that’s where he belongs. Total Huey Long BS-er.

    Some of those texts and emails weren’t from the actual campaign, not excusing that something should be done about it.

    The problem is a country organized under federalism is not ideal to handle a pandemic. I wish Trump would have just been Frank that the only thing we can do is save the medical system and protect the vulnerable while we wait for a vaccine. You cannot change the number of casualties under a flattened curve. Way too many people are acting otherwise which creates all kinds of problems that are worse than the pandemic.

    This is a very popular article about the problems with data control and reporting for the pandemic. I’ve seen it retweeted a million times. I really think public health “experts” are worthless.

    Writing at the American Mind, Angelo Codevilla recently argued if the CDC had used the same criterion for the SARS virus as COVID-19—primarily “severe acute respiratory distress syndrome”—total COVID fatalities in the US would have been 16,000 through June.

    Nobody knows the true count, of course. But the one thing left and right seem to agree on is the data we have are junk. And yet the lesson we keep hearing is “trust the experts.”

    • #12
  13. J Ro Member
    J Ro
    @JRo

    Blue Yeti (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Ricochet Podcast S-43E505

    wtf is that?

    Just a test (see show title) to see if you were paying attention. You all passed with flying colors. Congratulations.

    Nothing gets “the conversation” going like trolling with the episode ID number. 

    • #13
  14. Wolfsheim Member
    Wolfsheim
    @Wolfsheim

    The argument that with all the myriad planets in this and other galaxies, there must be many hospitable to life begs the baffling “origins” question. Furthermore, as has been pointed out so often, the vast distances of interstellar space mean that any intelligent adventurers capable of crossing them would have no trouble either simply inviting themselves in or evading any sort of detection. Though as an adolescent I was much fascinated by the idea of intellectually (if not morally) superior beings elsewhere (I read and reread Childhood’s End by the brilliant atheist mystic and personally loathsome Arthur C. Clarke), I have come in my old age to be of the mind that, celestial creatures aside, we on Planet Earth are alone.

    On a different note…Neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden has ever been articulate, and as one who falls between them in age, I cannot help resenting the suggestion that being past three score and ten explains their painful mangling of the English language. I routinely spend my day operating in four or five languages, though I confess that I often need a nap, hoping that later I won’t have nightmares of Joe Biden winning in November.

    • #14
  15. Blondie Thatcher
    Blondie
    @Blondie

    I throughly enjoyed this podcast. Jason Riley is alway s a treat. @jameslileks, I’ve said it before, but I love when you really engage in the conversation. You add so much, not just about the space stuff, but everything. Thanks to @peterrobinson for not letting you blow past more of a description of your house. I’m sorry @bethanymandel has to go through the experience with the “bad moms”. And from the supposed tolerant crowd. We deplorables welcome you to our group. @blueyeti, I’m assuming that was your touch with the injection of sound clips (or @ejhill). Very funny! Great job, y’all. 

    • #15
  16. JennaStocker Member
    JennaStocker
    @JennaStocker

    Great episode all around. Starting off with a deep dive into schools and the grassroots movement to give all kids a chance is a sleeper issue that really blossomed in the wake of the pandemic. I might humbly suggest Corey DeAngelis as a future guest on the topic of funding kids, not schools? And Bethany’s insight as a working mom (and an ostracized one!) really adds a new dimension to the discussion.

    The Cracker Jack prize came at the end with the outer-space topic. I wonder if the “Truth” is really outed as there being alien life or entities here on earth, what becomes of the conspiracy-theorists? Will a whole cottage industry now be deflated by the end of Area 51 believers? What will we do with all our tinfoil hats?!

    • #16
  17. Gazpacho Grande' Coolidge
    Gazpacho Grande'
    @ChrisCampion

    Great pod on a slow walk in the neighborhood with a bad back today.  As I walked past all these homes, the questions around schooling and pods discussion is basically front and center for us, too.  We’re going to do remote learning for the first couple of weeks of school for our 2 high schoolers, since there’s literally no significant reason to put them into the miasma of the high school right out of the gate.  They’ve done the remote learning thing already since late spring.

    I’m assuming there’s a ton of opportunity here for teachers to jump into a different model of employment.  Might be a small blessing in disguise that a “pod market” for teachers exists, individual tutoring one on one, etc – any flavors of teaching you like.  Considering how low the rate of pay is for teachers in my state (North Carolina), this might be a pretty welcome opportunity for someone willing to try a new model.

     

    • #17
  18. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Blondie (View Comment):
    @blueyeti, I’m assuming that was your touch with the injection of sound clips (or @ejhill). Very funny! Great job, y’all. 

    I think it must have been @blueyeti, since the co-hosts were aware of it at the time, so they weren’t added in “post.”

    • #18
  19. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    JennaStocker (View Comment):

    Great episode all around. Starting off with a deep dive into schools and the grassroots movement to give all kids a chance is a sleeper issue that really blossomed in the wake of the pandemic. I might humbly suggest Corey DeAngelis as a future guest on the topic of funding kids, not schools? And Bethany’s insight as a working mom (and an ostracized one!) really adds a new dimension to the discussion.

    The Cracker Jack prize came at the end with the outer-space topic. I wonder if the “Truth” is really outed as there being alien life or entities here on earth, what becomes of the conspiracy-theorists? Will a whole cottage industry now be deflated by the end of Area 51 believers? What will we do with all our tinfoil hats?!

    One theory, which could very well be true – although many others are plausible as well – is that the universe is actually teeming with life, but if the lightspeed issue is insurmountable, then we’ll never, ever meet each other.

    And that doesn’t even allow for possibilities such as that other civilizations might have grown up and become extinct already, millenia or eons ago, and the chances of any of them overlapping with each other in time, are negligible.  As might be the case with us too, vs some other civilization that won’t exist yet for additional millenia…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYvFHctr600

    • #19
  20. Eustace C. Scrubb Member
    Eustace C. Scrubb
    @EustaceCScrubb

    I was talking to my wife about the school pod process, and she, perhaps idealistically, suggested it would be a great thing if these pods could help sponsor a teacher to work with families that couldn’t afford a teacher themselves.

    • #20
  21. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Minnesota is the worst state in the union for Black people. A few years ago there was an economist basically recommending the pod. You would get a teacher to teach for inner-city kids in a homeschooling situation. The homeschooling situation is only 2 1/2 to 4 hours a day and you pay the teacher well. Then they spend the rest of their day doing other stuff. 

     

     

     

    • #21
  22. Mark Alexander Inactive
    Mark Alexander
    @MarkAlexander

    kedavis (View Comment)

    Ricochet Podcast S-

    Except Ricochet hasn’t been around for 43 years/seasons…. And even if it were, there haven’t been 505 episodes in season 43…

    A season is not always a full year.

    • #22
  23. Blue Yeti Admin
    Blue Yeti
    @BlueYeti

    JennaStocker (View Comment):
    Great episode all around. Starting off with a deep dive into schools and the grassroots movement to give all kids a chance is a sleeper issue that really blossomed in the wake of the pandemic.

    This was a total audible from @peterrobinson (it was not on the rundown) and it was beautifully done. Someone should give that guy a TV show.

    • #23
  24. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Mark Alexander (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment)

    Ricochet Podcast S-

    Except Ricochet hasn’t been around for 43 years/seasons…. And even if it were, there haven’t been 505 episodes in season 43…

    A season is not always a full year.

    Years/seasons was an either/or thing.

    Even if seasons 1 through 42 only had one episode each, then season 43 could have only had 463 episodes.  No matter how you look at it, it fails.

    • #24
  25. Quintus Sertorius Coolidge
    Quintus Sertorius
    @BillGollier

    Excellent podcast as always!! Enjoyed all of it…especially the Jason Riley episode. I have read all of his books and watched several interviews with him….really enjoy his thoughts on issues. He hit the nail on the heads regarding the Republican Party and African Americans….there is a sizable percentage of African Americans who are just waiting for the Republican Party to bring them conservative alternatives and give them a reason to vote Republican….but it is not going ot just happen…the Republican Party needs to work at it…it is time for that to happen. If it doesn’t then this version of the Republican Party will eventually go the way of its ancestors The Federalists, The Whigs, and the Know Nothings.

    • #25
  26. Jim Wright Inactive
    Jim Wright
    @JimW

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    Jon1979 (View Comment):
    I’d really like to hear the one from ’79 with 14-year-old Rob Long griping about the Bonwit-Teller Department Store building being torn down on Fifth Avenue to build Trump Tower…

    Oh, it’s a classic. “He says he’ll save the statuary. Does anyone believe that? It’ll end up in the backyard of some house he builds somewhere, probably Florida.”

    Sounds like a perfect setup for a segue to a Lileks gold ad!

    • #26
  27. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Bethany, that is truly terrible.

    Whenever I go online to slag you, I am careful to disguise your identity by referring to you as @arahant.

    • #27
  28. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Mark Alexander (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Ricochet Podcast S-43E505

    wtf is that?

    Season 43, episode 505.

    Except Ricochet hasn’t been around for 43 years/seasons…. And even if it were, there haven’t been 505 episodes in season 43…

    The season number is given in base 5 notation, so it is actually season 23.

    • #28
  29. Mark Alexander Inactive
    Mark Alexander
    @MarkAlexander

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Mark Alexander (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment)

    Ricochet Podcast S-

    Except Ricochet hasn’t been around for 43 years/seasons…. And even if it were, there haven’t been 505 episodes in season 43…

    A season is not always a full year.

    Years/seasons was an either/or thing.

    Even if seasons 1 through 42 only had one episode each, then season 43 could have only had 463 episodes. No matter how you look at it, it fails.

    Well, they removed the tag so all better now. BTW, the podcast started Aug 2010, and that year they had 50 eisodes.

    • #29
  30. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Mark Alexander (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Mark Alexander (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment)

    Ricochet Podcast S-

    Except Ricochet hasn’t been around for 43 years/seasons…. And even if it were, there haven’t been 505 episodes in season 43…

    A season is not always a full year.

    Years/seasons was an either/or thing.

    Even if seasons 1 through 42 only had one episode each, then season 43 could have only had 463 episodes. No matter how you look at it, it fails.

    Well, they removed the tag so all better now. BTW, the podcast started Aug 2010, and that year they had 50 eisodes.

    I have 52 including a special about picking theme music, and a special with John Yoo.  54 including extended interviews with Fred Thompson and Haley Barbour.

    And the first one I have is from January 29.  It would be rather difficult to have 50 – 0r 52, or 54 – if they had started in August.

    • #30
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