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Western elites have run into a recurring predicament over the past decade: In a democracy, you can't abolish the voters. Populist coalitions are on the march in Europe, and while they've yet to take over their respective governments like their American counterparts, they aren't going away. So Henry Olsen returns to the podcast to give us the scoop on everybody from the Romanians, who just had their delayed election, to the Poles and Hungarians who have some coming up, along with Reform UK and AfD. We also dig into Trump's so-far successful 'Dirty Harry' theory of justice and the limitations any politician's gotta know — even the transformational ones.
Plus, Lileks and Hayward yap about the latest with Harvard, the "stochastic terrorism" that killed two young Jews in DC, and Original Sin...
- Soundbite from this week's open: UK PM Kier Starmer pivots on immigration
James Lileks
Steve Hayward
Henry Olsen
Discussion (10)
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In Korea, the conservatives are red, the leftists are blue.
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Great discussion. I actually liked what Henry Olsen said about the European Union and elections. (I'm not convinced that polls give us as much information as he believes they do.)
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Henry Olsen is brilliant. He knows more about the intricacies of the politics of foreign countries than the "experts" on television and the NYT know about domestic politics. (OK, low bar, but you take my point.)
Steve and James spot on about the vile Joe Biden.
I agree with James about Perry Mason. I don't have regular TV, but I watch the old shows and movies on Prime and on YouTube. Perry Mason, Rockford, Columbo, etc. I am not too good at predicting the murderer on Perry Mason, but on Columbo, usually within the first 20 minutes I can figure out who the murderer is.
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Want to read some of the original Perry Mason books. Tried to watch the new Perry Mason tv series but just did not like it. The 30's movies were formulaic but enjoyable in my book. But then I tend to only like movies made before 1946 or so.
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It was different, if you were used to the classic Burr archetype in 50s / 60s LA. It would've been better if they hadn't traded on the Mason name. You got a momentary zing when you saw how they'd reinterpreted the supporting characters, but after that, it didn't matter. As a standalone story the first season was pretty danged good, and the period detail was spot-on.
The pre-war movie versions of Perry were all over the road - William Warren played him as a cheerful drunk, Navarro played him as the crusading outsider. The radio versions played to the loose-cannon / non-traditional lawyer / scrappy underdog-defender trope. The Burr version recast Perry as an establishment character, in a way, and his brooding, deliberate gravitas - at odds with the pulp incarnation in many ways - ended up being the Perry we know and love.
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