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Steve Hayward
Head of the Political Questions substack, author, occasional academic.
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John Yoo is back this week, but Lucretia is away for once, but in her place we have special giest Michael Stokes Paulson of the University of St. Thomas Law School in Minnesota, who is the author of, among many other significant legal articles, "Captain Kirk and the Enterprise of Constitutional Interpretation: Some Modest Proposals from the 23rd Century." It turned out to be very timely as we received the sad news of the passing of Patrick Stewart, which started off a fresh round of the SciFi equivalent of the debate between the ancients and the moderns, that is, Star Trek: The Original Series, or Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Captain Kirk versus Captain Piccard. (I'll merely note that Shatner Lives!) Prof. Paulson has some excellent and serious consitutional reflections from an Original Series episode called "The Omega Glory," and all three of us indulge our best Shatner imitations. But we also get a recollections of Paulson's role in the nomination of David Souter to the Supreme Court in 1990. So as Piccard might say, now that this episode has been posted, Make it so! to be on the top of your podcast queue.
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Ricochet
Steve and James embrace the Halloween mindset with a chat about a cast of characters who transcend space, time, and barriers of language and even reality. They brace themselves for the midterms, swap a couple scary movie suggestions, and offer a proper send-off to Sir Patrick Stewart. The inestimable biographer Andrew Roberts joins to discuss his latest work, Napoleon and His Marshals: Victory, Rivalry, Betrayal. Along with detailing the extraordinary talent behind the Grande Armée, the trio draws attention to parallels that contemporary expansionists, visionaries, and magalomaniacs would do well to remember. (And speaking of treats, be sure to get your code for a whopping discount on a Ricochet subscription for your first year!) Opening sound this week: The late Sir Patrick Stewart at Just for Laughs in Montréal in 2015. Closing music: "Space Journey," by Daniel Inrem via MotionArray.
With guest 
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This week's delayed episode is a throwback to the old days, with just Steve and Lucretia in attendance because travel schedules disrupted all three of the 3WHH bartenders. So the original dynamic duo just kick around some news highlights of the week and offer a couple book recommendations. Is "not to my knowledge" Ilhan Omar's version of Bill Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" (IF "Ilhan Omar" is her real name)? This appears to be one of those cases where the media's favorite mistaken cliché about Trump—"the walls are closing in"—appears to apply. And what's up with the polls? Hard to tell, even from the real ones, let alone the fake ones and the media's psyop that is trying to suppress Republican turnout. It's all very weird. Finally, Lucretia and Steve share two books currently on the top of their reading pile. Lucretia is reading Raymond Ibrahim's Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam, while Steve recommends Rupert Darwall's The Age of Error and the West's Undoing, just from our friends at Encounter Books.
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The great Douglas Murray, bestselling author of The Strange Death of Europe and On Democracies and Death Cults, joins James and Steve to discuss the mass immigration problem he's been sounding the alarm on for over a decade. As ever, Murray is unflinching in defense of civilization against the barbarous rioters and the myopic elites enabling them. Plus, James and Steve raise an eyebrow each at Ilhan Omar's uncertainty over an important detail about one of her marriages. The duo also talk about all kinds of food: fast, foreign, and regrettable. Opening sound: A French storekeeper pleads with rioters while Emmanuel Macron claims there’s nothing to see here and Abdul El-Sayed and Mike Rogers have their final debate (WXYZ - Detroit) Closing music: "Say Less," by sviridpavlov via MotionArray
With guest DMDouglas Murray
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John Yoo turns up this week, along with a cameo from our favorite classicist Alex Priou, for an episode that ranged widely from McDonald's to the prospective deportation of Ilhan Omar to women's "athleisure-wear" in the gym, but in the end resolves to a common theme: are we going to be able to save Western Civilization from those relentless attacks from the Left? (And if you don't think McDonald's is important to Western Civilization, you aren't paying attention!) We have our usual spectrum of views about the whole "civic education" enterprise, and our cameo conversation with Alex Priou of the University of Austin looks at the conservatives who didn't like Secretary Marco Rubio's speech in Athens last week. For the record, we liked it a lot.
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The midterm polls sure don't paint a rosy picture for Republicans. While Henry Olsen, Ricochet's in-house election analyst, isn't here to pretend the data suggest otherwise, he joins James, Charles, and Steve to add dimension to the GOP's bleak prospects. Listeners brave enough for the cold facts will hear important lessons about the Republican Party's growing pains, the value of persuasive speech during tough times, and the necessity of message discipline in getting through them. The gang at least finds some consolation in the fact that the ascendant progressive wing of the Democratic Party will likely weigh down the whole if (or when) they overreach. Ricochet 5 is here! Stay tuned till the end to hear Charles give a rundown of the new features. And check out the new site here: https://ricochet.com Opening sound this week: Susan Collins and Troy Jackson have their final debate interrupted (WCSH Portland), and the President weighs in on the El Sayed candidacy in Michigan. Closing music: "Rendezvous" by Dux, via MotionArray
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With each passing wild week in the West, it can feel like a tall order to request an unequivocal defense of it. But when there's a meme, there's a way, and if Marco Rubio has taught us anything, it's that he's always up for the job. James, Steve, and Charles celebrate his statesmanship displayed on Wednesday's Acropolis speech; wonder about the wisdom of the proposed live streaming of the firing-squad execution of the Fort Hood shooter; and bristle at Abdul El Sayed's response to being confronted with "dumb questions" about who our friends and enemies are. Despite it all, they find much to look forward to in our living, breathing, loud-talking and fast-walking civilization on a hill. Sounds from this week's open: The late televangelist Jim Bakker advises against self-pity; Marco Rubio "testifies to a debt that no lapse of time, no distance of space, can ever extinguish." Closing Music: "Reverie," composed by Robert Schumann, performed by Bruno Freitas
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Sitcom viewers will recall the "Soup Nazi" from Seinfeld, but the famous Soup Nazi needs to yield to the latest iteration of this low form of comedy, as this week's episode features the person who has been called "the Shampoo Nazi"—Charles Haywood. We would have thought that people named "EricKKK EricKKKson" (see how easy it is to be stupid?) would know Godwin's Law, whose most important corollary application is that the first person to resort to Reductio ad Hitlerum is immediately deemed the loser of the debate. Charles Haywood is a person of considerable controversy these days, and to be sure he has some exotic opinions, which listeners should check out for themselves at his capacious website, The Worthy House, in particular his Foundationalist Manifesto. Harry Jaffa, the person who wrote the infamous phrase "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice" for Barry Goldwater (and who got called a Nazi for saying this in 1964), also wrote: "'Provocative articles' are worthless unless they can be tested."
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Way back in the 1970s, Malcolm Muggeridge wrote a classic essay entitled "The Great Liberal Death Wish," but in recent years this formulation has become more pronounced. Forget abortion: the leading edge of Progressive "compassion" is "assisted" suicide, which, while claiming to be in the cause of "relieving suffering," looks to be much more insidious when you look closer at what is really happening. John Yoo is away this week, so Lucretia and Steve welcome Wesley Smith as the special guest host for this episode. Wesley is the director of the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism, a regular contributor to National Review, and author of more than a dozen books, several of them co-authored with Ralph Nader in his misspent youth! Wesley has been on the death-cult-of-the-left beat for a long while now, but the details of what is going on are truly shocking—and needless to say, ignored by the mainstream media. (Also, we should mention, he is a fellow podcaster, with a weekly show called Humanize. Put it in your rotation! In light of the seriousness of this week's subject, we decided to omit our usual Babylon Bee headline roundup at the end, but we do have a "cameo" toward the end this week from "Henry Kissinger," reflecting on what's going on with the Iran War.
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Sometimes life feels like a freak show, and the sane can either take it in or turn away. This week gave us more glimpses of horror than usual, which tends to make folks more amenable to harsh punishments. James, Steve, and Charles consider the death penalty in light of the heinous crime of an unsuccessfully executed Tennessee woman; they wade through the cloudy "Cornell Seven" case and draw important distinctions between moral depravity and criminality; and they look over to France, where the people of Paris swarmed the streets to see the Pope last week and which is today in flames as second- and third-generation immigrants riot. Makes you wonder whether la République and la révolution will ever square themselves in l’Hexagone. Plus, Charles has an announcement about Ricochet 5.0! Sound from this week's open: Marine Le Pen responds to the riots in France. And our own John Yoo talks about execution methods on Fox News. Closing music: "Waltz for the Elephants" by Ziv Grinberg
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September 2026
We don't know how to describe this episode. We start out by looking over the forthcomong docket of cases for the new term of the Supreme Court that begins next week, but then John Yoo, back from playing hookie last week, drops in a mischievous question about the "theological-political question," and proved anew that Pavlov's theory still works, as Lucretia and Steve bit, hook, line, and sinker, as the story goes. But the gang also goes on to the juicy media and higher education stories of the week, including the latest embarrasment of Nicole Hannah-Jones discovering that New York's public schools are really bad, and how Cambridge University predictably wimped out on the promised "investigation" of the Jason Arday scandal. This, and Steve's latest short-form book review, and much more!
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What exactly do the fight to save Piddington in Oxfordshire, the public betrayal of Najya Hannah-Jones by her activist mom, Trump's deal with Greenland, Russia's cultural inferiority complex, and a "COVID-conscious" lesbian bar in Massachusetts have in common? For those of us who haven't worn an N-95 mask in at least five years, the distinctions are clear. Even so, they each command the attention of James, Charles, and Steve. The trio reunites to remind us that praxis rarely makes perfect. Opening sound this week: Nikole Hannah-Jones talks about her child’s school at the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 2018 and lesbians on TikTok say, “Keep it on the QT.” Closing music: "Revolution" by Willow McKenna via MotionArray.
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Sometimes our topsy-turvy world is more dizzying than usual—and in those times, it's best to stand on a firm foundation and in the company of dependable people. Rob Long returns to chat with Charles and Steve about controversies of all shapes, sizes and degrees of comprehensibility—from Bo French and the "NETTR" movement, a Republican admin talking about buying votes with $5,000 checks and a prudish left shocked by the... apolitical appeal of Sidney Sweeney. Sound clips from this week's open: Gavin Newsom hubris on Hollywood and Sydney Sweeney seduces the betting man Closing Music: "Can't Stop," by Wake the Wild via MotionArray
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So it happens that Francis Fukuyama, who became famous because of his of book The End of History and the Last Man back in the early 1990s, is having a moment in 2026. See, he really didn't mean it, and besides, he is no longer even a neo-con but has moved left because Donald Trump ruined his parade by restarting history. Or at least disrupting it. Or something. And suddenly he's getting glowing notices in the liberal media. Big surprise there. Glenn Ellmers of the Claremont Institute takes the truant John Yoo's place this week, and as the author of a book that is a sharp contrast to Fukuyama (The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault, and the Possibility of Political Philosophy) is the ideal person to assist our beatdown of Fukuyama. Not to worry, and don't be scared. We keep our mentions of Hegel and Kojève to a minimum, and use the occasion to beat down on Progressives—our favorite target. Our cameo segment this week is with comedian David Deeble, who has lately made his first comedy club appearances in . . . Germany. In German. Is this conceivable? As he likes to say, "There are two things Germans don't joke about: Hitler, and everything else." We talk about the whole comedy scene, and whether comedy clubs are in fact the front line of turning back wokery. And Sydney Sweeney is back in the news. What's not to like this week?
With guests DDDavid Deeble and 
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It's been a quarter century, but the fury and grief have not dimmed in the slightest. James, Steve, and Charles recall that fateful day and reflect on life in America since. A few recommended articles for commemoration: "The Martyred Towers," James Lileks - Substack "Look Back in Anger at 9/11," Charles CW Cooke - National Review "The Untold Pre-History of 9/11," Chris Naylor - National Interest "What Mohammed Atta Was Trying to Tell Us," Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Tablet Magazine Sound from this week's open and close: The Brooklyn Youth Chorus sings the national anthem at today's September 11th memorial in New York City.
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This week's episode is 100% ad-free, as we take up the somber subject of "memory against forgetting" (to borrow Milan Kundera's useful phrase) on the subject of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and we didn't want to risk getting an automated ad for "Jihadis-R-Us Truck Rental" or something. John was at the Dept. of Justice that day (and late into the night); Steve was four blocks from the White House (and due to meet there at 11 am that morning), and Lucretia was overseas in Germany toward the end of her stint there as a military spouse (and mom to young children that she never once thought about strangling). In addition to personal reflections, we go through a few of the key issues that became urgent that day, such as the necessary transition from regarding terrorist acts as criminal matters to seeing them more properly as acts of war, requiring a war-fighting mentality. This necessary shift remains controversial, of course. John recalls this in detail in a piece for Civitas Outlook, "Remembering 9/11 and the War We Fought." Don't miss it! We also wonder about the strange twists and turns that have happened in the intervening years (such as having a radical Muslim mayor of New York City today—something unimaginable in the immediate aftermath of 9/11), and finally take up the question of whether we and our Western allies are finally, slowly coming to grips with the problem of radical Islam, or even non-radical Islam, taking some of our bearings from Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Tablet article, "What Mohammad Atta Was Trying to Tell Us." We manage to end on an upbeat note with a modest suggestion for how to reform "land acknowledgements."
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John Yoo is off again this week (I know—many of you think he's "off" every week!), so joining us as a special guest is Titus Techera, who wears many hats, including executive director of the American Cinema Foundation; Distinguished Fellow at Hillsdale College; International Program Coordinator, Edmund Burke Foundation; and researcher in political philosophy, Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest. The Romanian-born Techera is one of those non-citizens whose love of liberty led him to become a deep lover of America. We cover a lot of ground with Titus, and since he is currently in Budapest, we get a report on what the new authoritarian government of Peter Magyar is doing to suppress all remnants of the supposedly authoritarian government of Victor Orban that voters turned out of office a few months back. This is not just a Hungarian problem; we also look at France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, where the EU establishment blob is trying to suppress the democratic will all in the name of "saving democracy." From there we take up the question of rising anti-Semitism, about which Titus has some novel suggestions. And finally, as a preview of his next visit with us, we do a lightning round discussion of our favorite John Ford and Whit Stillman movies.
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AI has many amygdalae flooding nervous systems with warnings; a rising share of Americans look toward digital technology with deep suspicion; and a data center revolt is underway. The worries are increasingly apocalyptic. But it's not that America has never experienced a transformation of comparable scale, only that no living American is old enough to remember it—or so argues today's guest: Mark Mills, author of The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s. Mark and the fellas cover everything from the cold realities behind development, construction, and energy considerations to productivity gains, labor participation, sociocultural cohesion, and cybersecurity risks. Plus, while on the subject of the tumultuous present, James, Steve and Charles reflect on Ryan Reynolds' thoughts on the traumatic 1980s; Steve thinks through a proposal to curb bad actors in the "non-profit sector"; and while they look forward to cutting the rug at the White House's new ballroom, the trio find themselves baffled by Chief Justice Robert's sudden fretting over standing. Opening sound this week: Jason Kelce and his friends at Garage Beer want you to send your pee to data centers, and Ryan Reynolds tells Variety he was traumatized by the tumultuous 1980s. Closing music: Radetzky March Op. 228 performed by the Budapest Art Orchestra (via MotionArray)
With guest MPMark P. Mills
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August 2026
The band is back together again this week as John Yoo ends his truancy, and we take up the fresh legal and constitutional disputes of the moment, starting with the Supreme Court's recent rulings about mail-in ballots and the Trump Administration's efforts to enlist the Postal Service on behalf of election integrity. From there we move on to the novel proposal to bring back prize courts and authorize old-fashioned "privateers" to capture Iranian shipping on the high seas and profit from their cargoes—something the United States hasn't done since around the time of Andrew Jackson (Trump's favorite president, perhaps not coincidentally). Then, on to the emerging controversy over Flock cameras, and whether we can trust the government not to abuse them or use them to spy on and harass us. This week's cameo appearance is from our favorite classicist Alex Priou, who joins us to discuss his terrifically cheeky recent essay, "How to Be an Elitist." And our listener question this week is: "Why does the president get to select the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? Shouldn't that be up to the members of the Court? The president doesn't get to appoint the Speaker of the House, after all, and the language on this matter in the Constitution is incomplete or ambiguous." Hmmm.
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Canada is back in the news, but not in the good way like you want. So Steve and James find themselves weighing in on another renamed body of water while wading through the latest wave of weekly events. There's also curiously leaked info on CIA chief John Radcliffe's mission to Moscow, investigations into the Soros-backed Tides Foundation and the district attorneys responsible for catch-and-release criminal justice, and another rich-kid commie duty-bound to lecture from the family's waterfront property. This week’s opening sound: Al Michaels starts Prime’s Thursday Night NFL schedule from a city on the Great Lakes and Alice Weidel (AfD) declares Germany is finished with immigrants. Closing music: "County Waltz," by promusic24 (via MotionArray)
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We're a day and a half late with this episode, but better late than never. It's just Steve and Lucretia this week—John Yoo will be back for the next one—and they spend the first half of the episode updating some of last week's main stories while noting that instead of dying down, they have intensified. The Luigi Mangione Fangirl Murder Mob has extended its tender mercies to Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts wife who (allegedly) strangled her three children apparently—to listen to her demented sympathizers—in anticipation of what may become Fourth Wave Feminism. No, we're not making this up! The Jason Arday story continues to have legs, and some strange new permutations, one of which directly includes Lucretia and a strangely self-referential article in the Comical of Higher Education. This resolves into a discussion of what else the Trump Administration and the Republican Congress ought to be doing to force our East German universities into serious reform, and not just renaming their DEI operations and other evasions of the campus rot. (We also have positively identified who will replace Arday at Cambridge, and it's a familiar name.) After a brief intermission, we take up what may turn out to be the central legacy of J.D. Vance, and think other leaders ought to pay more attention to his latest core message. And then we visit one of Ronald Reagan's supposed most egregious gaffes—that "trees cause pollution"—in light of some new mainstream science findings that the Gipper was right after all.
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The shocking suicide of the fraudulent Jason Arday alongside the Atlantic cover story about how a mostly leftist scholar "of color" (Tyler Austin Harper) quit his tenure track job at Bates College because he couldn't stand "the insufferable hypocrisy of elite academia," ought to be the last straw for our nation's tolerance for a completely rotten education system, from K-12 through the colleges and universities. But it probably won't be, because the left is not going to give up these premier bastions of political power unless they are crushed. And that can't be done quickly or easily. Joining us this week to take the place of the truant John Yoo is Bates College alum Richard Samuelson, nowadays a professor of history at Hillsdale College, who adds some detail from his own experience as an undergraduate at Bates College, and you will wonder how he survived the place. We also have a brief cameo appearance from John, who notes the peculiar legal strategy being pursued by Luigi Mangione, the killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year.
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For once, we can all agree with AOC: Woke 1 was crazy. But rather than laugh it off and set the stage for "true woke has never been tried," perhaps we could ask the youths to learn from their mistakes. To that end, we were pleased to chat with Evan Barker, a former fundraiser who worked within the Democratic Party's establishment and progressive insurgent wing. Having left the party in disgust in 2024, she penned the just-released New York Times bestseller, Nothing Left. James, Steve, and Charlie sat down with Evan to hear her story. Plus, the trio discuss JD Vance's take on how to sway the youngins from socialism; the Trump admin's new childhood vaccination policy; and a coming Reagan biopic about the 1986 Reykjavik Summit with Gorby. Opening Sound this week: AOC laughs off “Woke I” on ABC’s This Week, and Karen Friedman Agnifilo, attorney for Luigi Mangione, talks about his“unfair” treatment. Closing Music: "Je Plante Mes Légumes," by Bamtone via MotionArray
With guest EBEvan Barker
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This week's episode features frequent guest Phil Munoz of Notre Dame University, sitting in for John Yoo, discussing his very timely new article in First Things magazine on "The Founders and the Common Good." His article is getting a fair bit of buzz on the interwebs, as it takes up the surprisingly hot topic of "post-liberalism" in particular to dispute the contention of some leading post-liberals that the American Founding was defective and therefore part of the problem. We also take up briefly an excellent article on the same issue by Andrew Walker in The Daily Wire, "The Neutrality Myth: Liberty, Order and the Common Good." Both worthy of your reading pile. (By the way, speaking of First Things, have I mentioned that I am thinking about starting a quarterly academic journal for the OnlyFans community, and calling it First Thongs? I'll show myself out. . .) This episode also features a short cameo appearance by "Henry Kissinger" (we summoned him by means of a Ouija board) to bring his legendary perspective to our current foriegn policy confusion, and we tackle a listener question about populism. Our new voice for the show opener is Colin McLean, a noted voice-actor in Britain, semi-retired from a distinguished business career in The City. You can read about his voice work at his website Vocal Flair, and I also recommend his YouTube channel, The Healing Voice, where he ranges widely from poetry, music, story-telling, and some sensible psychology.
With guest PMPhil Munoz
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