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It’s our last regular episode of 2021, but fear not! We’ll be back…
With us today is historian Andrew Roberts, author of The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III. Roberts takes us through the many inaccuracies that have captivated modern imagination and loomed over his legacy. We get into George, the man; why Great Britain lost; how the Georgian records are relevant to contemporary culture war debates; as well as some fascinating ‘What ifs?’
Also, the fellas go over Progressive leaders beginning to talk tough on crime; they wonder why after two years, nobody really knows much about Covid; and they look ahead to 2022 with some hope.
And be sure to join our co-founders Peter Robinson and Rob Long on Tuesday, Dec. 21, 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT for a members-only Q&A! For those of you who haven’t already, join the party by signing up here!
Music from this week’s podcast: You’ll Be Back by Jonathan Groff and Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton and Happy Holidays by Bing Crosby from the 1942 film, Holiday Inn.
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Really? Not Yule Be Back?
Rob thinks COVID is the biggest world conversation etc, since WW II? Did he forget how many people around the world died from AIDS? The figure I find is over 36 million.
The world was not shut down by AIDS.
Are you saying it should have been, or what?
I do remember lots of people claiming that EVERYONE – even married couples who wanted children – would have to practice “safe sex” in the future, FOREVER. Because EVERYONE was at EQUAL RISK.
Sounds like masks and stuff, doesn’t it?
Big fan but Andrew R. still won’t say how he can write STORM OF WAR and not ever mention Gen. Curtis LeMay, not even a reference…at least be critical—NO?
My understanding is that the Minneapolis police budget is 100% restored, now. lol
My point is that the economic shut down is what is different. Everyone on the planet was significantly effected. That is why the Wuhan Virus is a much bigger deal than AIDS.
But you do bring up the point that medical authorities falsely claimed the general population had a significant risk from AIDS. I think they knew this was false, and they lost a lot of credibility with a lot of people.
LET’S MAKE THIS LONG! lol
The evidence suggests it was actually somewhat similar for covid too. Everyone was NOT at equal risk, it’s primarily the elderly and otherwise infirm. And yet everything was clamped down as if the risk was largely equal. The result of which killed a lot more people.
Merry Christmas, boys!
Thanks for another year of interesting, informative, entertaining podcasts. That goes for the behind the scenes personnel, too.
Aren’t we in the fix we’re in with COVID because “the smart people” were in charge?
DeSantis may have gone to Yale but he’s not the best Governor in the US because he’s smart. He’s the best Governor because he 1) took the time to understand COVID data instead of relying on advisors and 2) is humble enough to remember that the government can and probably will make everything worse by trying to help.
How I wish you (and others) had the conversation about not knowing much about COVID in 2020…and thus decided to do NOTHING. Science is not about assuming the worst and employing the precautionary principle. Science is about assuming that the null hypothesis is probably true: that if I do X, it will not affect Y. Thus, we should have assumed that there was nothing we could do about the introduction of a new coronavirus. There would be a couple of bad winters, then the disease would adapt to humans, which it actually wants to do, because if we stay upright, we pass it around more. Sealing the deal is that we knew from the beginning that this virus did not seriously affect most kids or working age adults. Assuming we could stop outbreaks from happening was always a fool’s errand.
Now is the time to focus only on treatment for the sick. But that’s not what the “smart” people want to do, and it will cost more lives until they are removed from power through elections or because the average man on the street won’t listen to them anymore. How ironic it will be if the NFL and the NBA and the NHL (not thought of as the “smart” people), brings this about.
Agreed. The point of clarification that I would add is that COVID did not shut down the world, the government’s failed response policies did that, often rather maliciously, when you consider things like: big box stores open, local hardware stores closed, etc. x 1000. If properly investigated and recorded, this will go down in history as the greatest public health policy failure of all time, worldwide. And its the “smart people” that caused it.
Lileks is not being honest about young people in the skyways in Minneapolis. I work in the building immediately next to his (and saw him not too long ago at Andrea Pizza in case he doubts my story) and am in the office three days a week. I too walk the skyways when I’m there. The majority of young people who are back to work are wearing masks and appear happy to do so. If you see someone without a mask it’s more likely to be an older person; the recent college graduates usually wear them. There is no refusal to comply by any meaningful measure. Most of the people at my Fortune 500 company are upset they had to come back to the office at all and whined their way into forcing the company to give them special treatment. Not sure why Lileks feels the need to paint a false picture of his beloved hometown, but he did a similar thing when he wouldn’t answer Peter when asked about the defund the police measure that was barely rejected by a slim majority. Speaking of beloved hometowns, I was similarly dumbfounded after Lileks returned from my home state of California and essentially declared that things weren’t really bad out there because he hadn’t see anything upsetting in the places he visited. Gee, I wonder why. Strange that these podcasts are receiving fewer and fewer comments these days…
I suspect that’s mostly because we aren’t arguing about DJT anymore.