Conservative Conversation and Community
Is there a conservative case for smoking? No? All right, let’s move on, then. Kidding: In this episode, Young Americans Jack Butler and Alec Dent crashed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Friends, trying to turn it into the Department of Health and Human Flourishing as they make the case to two inveterate smokers that there is nothing bodily or philosophically defensible about smoking cigarettes. Their argument inadvertently becomes a Millennial vs. Gen X clash along the way.
More Does Kanye West’s latest album Jesus Is King mean he is a Christian now? If so, should Christians embrace him? Jack invites Free Beacon media analyst and freelance Kanye West expert Nic Rowan back onto the show to answer these and other questions.
More This episode of Young Americans is special for many reasons. For one, it is a crossover with the White Noise podcast, whose co-host, Joe Pappalardo, joins Jack. For…two, Jack and Joe attempt to discuss the effect that excessive technology use may be having on the ability of young people to focus on what matters. And for…three (?), they attempt this discussion…while themselves deliberately distracted by as many apps as they could have open while recording.
More In another first for this podcast, Jack gets a priest onto the show, Fr. Brendan Glasgow of St. Peter’s on Capitol Hill. Fr. Brendan is 27, only slightly older than Jack himself. So Jack asks this eminently trustable (since younger than 30) fellow what it’s like to be a Millennial priest, why he became one so young, and…whether he watched SpongeBob when he was growing up. The important questions, in other words.
More Will Brexit actually happen? Do young Brits want it to? William F. Buckley Fellow (and Scotland native) Madeleine Kearns rejoins the Young Americans to answer these questions (after a fascinating digression about her experience with study drugs). Also, stay tuned to the very end to experience several firsts for this podcast.
More In the latest episode, the Young Americans get super nerdy, with the help of real-life tech policy researcher Caleb Watney of the R Street Institute. He and Jack discuss the virtues of free markets vs. Millennial skepticism thereof, question the emerging conventional wisdom on tech addiction and Silicon Valley, rebut the Unabomber (!), and go full nerd with semi-related digressions about Blade Runner, The Matrix, and, of course, Dune.
More Should childlesss Millennials be banned from theme parks? Should Millennials have children? Are they ruining marriage? Relying too much on their parents for money? This special lightning round episode with Jack and Washington Examiner culture writer Madeline Fry attempts to answer all of those questions…in five-minute increments.
More On this episode, Jack and guest Anders Hagstrom discuss the rise of Area 51 memes, what they say about memes as a whole, whether this is Generation Z’s first meme, and if the U.S. government would actually kill millions of Internet weirdos if they showed up at the gates of Area 51 trying to get in.
More Well, maybe not everything. But in this episode, Jack invites a longtime friend, former running competitor, and budding cardiovascular expert for an episode (our longest yet) about running: Why people do it, whether it’s bad for you, how a non-runner would get into it, etc.
More For some reasons beyond his control and some that were not, host Jack Butler resorts to that most desperate measure of podcasts: a crowd-sourced, ask-me-anything-style Q&A episode. Topics include (predictably): running, aliens, Lord of the Rings, and more.
More Trying to solve the mystery of why kids these days are so unhappy, Jack enlists the help of leading purveyor of charts and Washington Free Beacon staff writer Charles Fain Lehman.
More Today’s guest, Chris Pandolfo, covers politics from beyond the Beltway, and Jack asks him what it’s like to observe Beltway bedlam from afar.
More We’ve all heard the stereotypes about Millennials: They’re jobhoppers, they’re unhappy, they’re unmarried, they’re obsessed with brunch, etc. But how many of these are true, and how many of them are just made-up? To find out, Jack invites Lyman Stone, himself a Millennial, onto the show to use his expertise in demography and sociology to sort fact from fiction.
(Closing music excerpts “Why Generation” by FILDAR.)
More As Massachusetts senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren tries to bribe college students into voting for her with promises of student loan debt forgiveness and free college, the Young Americans draw from their own experiences to discuss Warren’s plan, the student loan debt crisis, and what, if anything, we can do about it.
More The Young Americans bring their first young non-American onto the show, as National Review’s Madeleine Kearns, who hails from Scotland, discusses the ins and outs of transgenderism and young people with Jack.
More The Young Americans debate whether Americans even younger than they are should be able to vote, an idea that now has the support of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among others.
More As Facebook celebrates its 15th anniversary, it is coming into controversies on all sides: political, psychological, social, and more. Thus, Jack assembles a panel of youth to discuss their own experiences with Facebook and how it has affected them. They also reveal their thoughts about the site’s effect on themselves, their peers, and society as a whole.
More It’s a good question, isn’t it? To answer it, Jack invites actual young person journalist Philip Wegmann, now a political reporter for Real Clear News, to attempt to justify himself. They also discuss whether young people are consuming news correctly, and give advice for young people aspiring to be journalists and to be just generally informed citizens.
More What do young people think about abortion? Are Millennials turning into godless heathens? With abortion and religion in the headlines, Host Jack Butler explores where young people stand on these areas and speculates on how they will develop as issues in the future, with the help of National Review staff writer Alexandra DeSanctis.
More In a Young Americans first, Jack and co return to a previously-addressed topic: video games. But we’re not just running out of ideas; rather, inspired by the release of Kingdom Hearts III, which recovering gamer Jack is tempted to relapse to buy and play, the panelists discuss whether it is possible to game responsibly or if obsessive playing is inevitable.
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