Are Democrats Actually in Disarray?

[0] Hello and welcome to the Reason Roundtable, the podcast of free minds, free markets and free takes.

[1] We have a great show for you today.

[2] We're going to start by asking what is dividing Democrats?

[3] Do they have a plan for Donald Trump?

[4] And is there anything they can learn from libertarians?

[5] And since today is the three year anniversary of the war in Ukraine, we're also going to talk about Trump's posture towards Ukraine and Russia and what that means for Europe and the global order.

[6] We're also going to cover a bunch of other stuff.

[7] Javier Malay's meme coin mess, the Doge dividend, a listener question about sovereign wealth funds, and so much more.

[8] I'm your host, Peter Suderman, and today I am joined by my esteemed colleagues, Nick Gillespie, Matt Welch, and Katherine Mangy -Ward.

[9] Katherine, Matt, Nick, say hello, maybe even in that order.

[10] Howdy.

[11] Hello, maybe even in that order.

[12] Yeah, thank you.

[13] Hello.

[14] Happy Monday to everyone who thinks the TV show Severance is actually a workplace romance.

[15] Hey, Reason Roundtable listeners, Peter Suderman here.

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[29] Okay, so we have spent every podcast since the inaugural talking about President Donald Trump.

[30] And with good reason.

[31] Just about every headline is about Trump.

[32] He seems omnipresent in the news cycle.

[33] He is the duly elected main character of America today.

[34] But there's another conversation happening on the left.

[35] Democrats are facing a cultural and political moment in which they are down and out.

[36] Their brand has been rejected by the American people.

[37] And now Democrats are wondering, What is it that they stand for?

[38] What exactly should they do?

[39] And what I want to propose today is maybe, just maybe, there are a few things they could learn from libertarians.

[40] Catherine, let's start with you.

[41] Seems to me like there are kind of two sides to the inter -democrat argument right now.

[42] On the one hand, there are hardcore progressives, leftist radicals who want to lean into some combination of identity, politics, and welfare state socialism, you know, the old big government model, but maybe even more so.

[43] And then there are the centrists, the moderate.

[44] the non -radicals, and they want Democrats to be more normie in their politics.

[45] They want to back away from DEI and identitarianism and from the Biden presidency in many ways.

[46] The normies tend to embrace some version of the abundance agenda with its emphasis on eliminating regulations in order to increase supply rather than subsidizing demand.

[47] And a lot of what they say seems at least kind of libertarian.

[48] They say America needs more energy production, needs more market rate housing, fewer regulations on construction, and it needs to dig.

[49] I see it as a gorgeous oasis in the desert, ultimately an illusion that will leave me sad and thirsty.

[50] I just want to believe I want to believe that like Matt Iglesias on zoning is the future of the Democratic Party.

[51] But that's stupid.

[52] It's not.

[53] I mean.

[54] It's just not.

[55] I think the dichotomy ends up being much more like the progressives who want a progressive harder in order to win and people who want to do watered -down populism because it looks like the American people like populism.

[56] They just elected a populist.

[57] And the watered -down populism will occasionally contain things that have the shape and form of stuff like, hey, maybe we could make housing cheaper.

[58] by doing X, Y, and Z that look a little bit like our list.

[59] And I would be happy if that happened, but I simply cannot let myself get excited about the idea that the abundance agenda will rule the day because it seems a little too good.

[60] Before we go to the other folks, Catherine, on the housing cost issue specifically, don't you see a possible future in which Democrats have to adopt just a Matt Iglesias, Christian Britschke style agenda on housing simply because they are losing people in the big blue enclaves too fast because it just becomes a problem for them in terms of population, in terms of votes and in terms of their tax base?

[61] I think they will have to be perceived as doing something about that.

[62] But I don't see any reason to believe the thing they would do would be productive and in line with my understanding of how the world works.

[63] Wait, you're saying we can't trust the politicians to do good stuff?

[64] We're going to get Kamala Harris being like, for some reason, here's $25 ,000 for first time homebuyers.

[65] Or we're going to get like whatever is happening in L .A. with affordable housing.

[66] Or we're going to get like there are so many other models to be perceived as doing something about housing costs that would not, in fact, be the thing, I think.

[67] we should do about housing costs.

[68] Matt, I want to ask you about what's happening in L .A. with affordable housing, except it seems like maybe what's happening in L .A. with housing is that it's all being burnt down.

[69] Actually, what I want to ask you about.

[70] Sorry.

[71] Actually, what I want to ask you about is Josh Barrow, who wrote a column last week about how Democrats need, in his words.

[72] DEI perch.

[73] And I thought it was an interesting column because he went further than what most folks are saying.

[74] There's all this talk about how, you know, DEI has become this kind of arcane language, right?

[75] That you got to figure out exactly what words to use.

[76] And it's really just off -putting and Democrats need to ditch that language.

[77] And what Josh wrote was that.

[78] It's not just a language problem.

[79] The language problem is actually a symptom of a much larger problem, which is that Democrats are out of touch.

[80] And if they're out of touch linguistically, then they are also going to be out of touch on their policy ideas, too.

[81] And that seems to make sense to me. What do you think that?

[82] Well, I mean, I think that there's it's obvious that there is a broad sense of annoyance with Democrats.

[83] I should hasten to add this was a pretty close presidential election.

[84] We have two political parties as James Carville, who granted hasn't navigated a successful political campaign in the United States since Netscape was a browser, said over the weekend.

[85] But he was awesome as Billy Bob Thornton in Primary Colors.

[86] That is true.

[87] He said over the weekend that Democrats should just say nothing for 30 days and let Trump become less popular by the minute.

[88] And there's something to that because tariffs are unpopular.

[89] People are much less excited about the economy right now.

[90] And I think, and we'll talk about this later, I presume, I think that Trump's plans for Ukraine might not prove to be very popular either.

[91] Elon Musk is wandering through the halls of the world just doing insane things.

[92] And I don't imagine that's going to become - He is taking a chainsaw to government.

[93] No, he's sniffing ketamine like it's going out of business.

[94] I mean, you know, let's let's not shame.

[95] Kink shame, Nick Lesby.

[96] But maybe we need subsidies for the ketamine industry.

[97] Yeah.

[98] OK.

[99] So any who, I think one of the biggest problems with Democrats is that every single space that Democrats dominate is annoying.

[100] That speaks to the heart of your question, I think.

[101] So it could be Democratic.

[102] Polities, places that are dominated by Democrats are governed very badly, including Los Angeles, very badly.

[103] New York, where I live, very badly.

[104] Or, you know, it could just be.

[105] That Democratic dominated teachers unions in your school district send you a whole bunch of emails with a lot of claptrap jargon and weird stuff.

[106] And you're irritated by that in addition to the bad services provided.

[107] So, yes, Democrats should be less annoying and should stop this kind of.

[108] perennial bouncers.

[109] I've likened the split to being in the country of being trolls versus bouncers, right?

[110] The bouncers want to say who is allowed to come in and who is allowed not to come in to this hollowed establishment.

[111] This is where you get deplatforming and a bunch of other things, but you get a lot of stupid linguistic policing.

[112] I was just in California for the past week.

[113] And I was what was notable to me, among other things, was that one on the governance issue, people were complaining constantly about Trump because the Trump administration was coming into local schemes like, I don't know, the extension of the subway in Los Angeles and saying, like, we don't want to fund this anymore.

[114] And people were just like shaking their damn heads.

[115] How could this administration not understand that it's important to fund the subway?

[116] Democrats are masters at like creating all of these layers of bureaucracy, federal.

[117] state, local and whatever, getting money all the time and nothing comes of it.

[118] Nothing is ever built.

[119] A lot of spent and taxes are paid.

[120] That's all bad.

[121] And then on the other hand, there's just the social part.

[122] I just come from Florida and people like when I would mention that they would just visibly shudder like, oh, my God, are you OK?

[123] Is it poisonous?

[124] There's this.

[125] habit a tick among Democrats right now to huddle amongst themselves and reward themselves for their purity and to be appalled by the other side.

[126] And that is a pretty big, broad instinct.

[127] It's not going to be fixed by as many decent Josh Barrow columns as there are out there.

[128] I think because we have a pendulum swing in this country, they'll get power again someday, but they're not going to stop being annoying.

[129] Nick, since Matt brought up building stuff, I want to ask you about the tech world.

[130] And one of the big things that people have talked about after the election is all of the prominent defections.

[131] I don't know how much impact this made in terms of actual numbers of votes, but these are some pretty prominent folks who supported Democrats during the Obama era, who switched over to being...

[132] quite, quite supportive of Donald Trump, most notably Mark Andreessen, who gave a big interview to Ross Douthat of the New York Times recently.

[133] And part of what I think we see in that interview, but also just in this shift of the tech workers towards Trump is that.

[134] It's not that they cared that much about taxes.

[135] It's not that they cared that much even about kind of big government qua big government.

[136] What they cared about was that Democrats made it really hard for them to do stuff, right?

[137] There was Lena Khan at the FTC, just obsessed with stopping big tech companies from doing anything.

[138] Biden is.

[139] was was and is enthralled to labor unions.

[140] Right.

[141] He's the most labor union pro labor president in history, according to himself or something like that.

[142] Right.

[143] Like and what they cared about.

[144] He doesn't he doesn't remember saying that it's probably on the, you know, the record somewhere.

[145] Maybe we'll find we can find it.

[146] But what I think they cared about is, is that they were told you can't build that.

[147] You can't run your company that way.

[148] And they were told that by people who had.

[149] record of building useful things on their own.

[150] And it seems like that is actually a big problem for Democrats.

[151] Yeah, I think it is.

[152] And, you know, one of the problems for Trump is that his FTC head is not necessarily going to be doing things any different than Lena Khan.

[153] And his FCC head is just as interventionist or more interventionist into whatever.

[154] purview the FCC has left or is trying to make for itself.

[155] So that's down the road a bit.

[156] I think to hearken back to what Matt was talking about a little bit, Trump ultimately got less than 50 percent of the popular vote.

[157] Doesn't mean he's not elected, blah, blah, blah.

[158] But it's the idea that Trump has somehow won and there is a new sheriff in town and everybody is conservative is so over.

[159] you know, over -exaggerated.

[160] It's ridiculous.

[161] Trump also has an under 50 % approval rating, according to the aggregates, real clear.

[162] And it's going down from where it was a month ago.

[163] I think the Democratic Party freak out and, you know, is reminiscent of the 2012 Republican freak out after they lost, where it's been a month.

[164] OK, we're in an evenly, you know, an evenly split country and the future remains unwritten to get to the.

[165] Question that you open this with, what can libertarians teach the Democratic Party?

[166] It's this become libertarian, support free markets and free minds.

[167] Right.

[168] I want to and I want to talk about Pete Buttigieg as an interesting example of this.

[169] He was a mediocre mayor of South Bend, which is an inconsequential town.

[170] It's a Rust Belt town.

[171] You know, the big thing that he did was put bike lanes in one of the fattest cities in America.

[172] Not so good.

[173] I happened to see Pete Buttigieg very early before he really emerged as a national figure at a small gathering.

[174] And his pitch to that crowd, and this was an Upper East Side room of liberals, okay, who were pro -free markets and pro -social tolerance.

[175] And he said, And this would have been back in 2019, I guess.

[176] He said the Democratic Party has to stop talking about identity politics all the time.

[177] The Democratic Party has to be pro -business.

[178] And the Democratic Party has to be about the American dream and realism in foreign policy.

[179] That was a great package.

[180] What happened to Pete Buttigieg is what happened to the Democratic Party in 2020, is that as he became popular, he got rid of all of that.

[181] Bernie Sanders.

[182] who had started the 2020 election cycle talking about the need for class -based remedies to things, got pushed off a stage in Seattle and was reborn as an identity politics guy.

[183] They've got to get rid of that.

[184] And when I look at the people that everybody's talking about as possible avatars of a new Democratic Party, and it's Pritzker in Illinois, Whitmer in Michigan, and Gavin Newsom in California, they are governors of three failed states.

[185] These states suck.

[186] Everybody hates living there.

[187] People who can have been moving out of those states, particularly Michigan and Illinois, for decades.

[188] The model who is more successful than Pete Buttigieg because he doesn't have this back record of going DEI and all of that during a presidential run and being part of the failed Biden administration is Jared Polis.

[189] And Jared Polis is not.

[190] a pure libertarian by any stretch.

[191] He is libertarian -ish and he's right.

[192] You know, he's a businessman who loves business.

[193] He likes cutting taxes.

[194] He likes immigrants.

[195] He's anti -tariff.

[196] He's pro -gay marriage.

[197] He's pro -gay adoption.

[198] He's pro -school choice.

[199] And he was pretty good on COVID.

[200] That's the model, not just for the Democratic Party, for the Republican Party, because Trump is not overwhelmingly popular.

[201] And as I think...

[202] His first term in office kind of suggests, you know, the longer he sticks around.

[203] And Elon Musk, who has, you know, his little, you know, organ grinder monkey baby boy.

[204] following him around.

[205] The longer these guys are in front of you and dominating the, you know, dominating the crowd and saying all of us are non -player characters in their drama, like their approval ratings are just going to go down.

[206] Even if I like, and I know we'll talk about this, a lot of this stuff that they're doing in terms of foreign policy, even as well as Doge.

[207] Yeah.

[208] So the organ grinder, baby monkey boy thing, I think I don't know what that means, though.

[209] I'm very excited to watch that sequel to the monkey movie that's in theaters right now.

[210] But I do know what you mean when you talk about Biden's failed presidency.

[211] And Catherine, that's what I want to ask you about.

[212] Josh Barrow's piece was mostly focused on things like affirmative action, right, sort of identity politics, that kind of policy.

[213] But it seems to me like almost everyone is underrating how much disaster.

[214] economic policies, some of the big picture policies doomed Democrats in the most recent election.

[215] Bidenomics, right?

[216] This was something that Biden ran on, that he pitched to the American people.

[217] It was a big spending, big government agenda, and it just didn't work, didn't deliver tangible results.

[218] There's a great recent piece actually by the former Obama econ advisor, Jason Furman, about the tragedy of Bidenomics and the ways it failed on its own terms.

[219] Doesn't it seem like there's a lesson there, maybe, even if it's just don't waste trillions of dollars and then have nothing to show for it and pretend it was awesome.

[220] Yeah, I mean, I do.

[221] I would like to imagine that we are entering an era where the very, very on the simplest possible level, the strategy just like dump a trillion dollars into the economy every time things get hard.

[222] is at least moderately out of favor.

[223] Like that's the most I'm willing to say because nothing has come due in terms of the debt.

[224] Nothing has come due in terms of, you know, where did that money come from?

[225] I think there is a kind of shift in the understanding of like, did that money do anything, right?

[226] Like it didn't work, whatever we were trying to do with that money.

[227] But still the like, the flip side of that, the consequence of like, but we spent it anyway and now we owe it.

[228] That just still feels like theory.

[229] That just still feels like the stuff of guys like us on this podcast saying, this is going to be a problem in the future.

[230] It sounds a lot like what happened when Bush left office, right?

[231] Yes.

[232] Bush spent a huge amount of money.

[233] And what did we have to show for?

[234] Right.

[235] And of course, Trump did the same at the end of his first term.

[236] gushers of money into the economy because why not it doesn't even if it doesn't work no harm done and like i just think we still have to wait for the harm to be done before that orthodoxy fades entirely i really like your impression of what guys on this podcast sound like guys on this podcast includes me as i've said but yes like something something percent of gdp something something bad news depression you know uh peter the the The discussion of business regulation, which really activated a lot of Silicon Valley people, or at least a half dozen very high profile people like Andreessen and Elon Musk, as well as the all in podcast guys.

[237] That is worth keeping in mind because, you know, the things that Trump was good on and that differentiated him from both Biden and Harris, who also ran a terrible campaign because she's a terrible politician with no good track record and no core beliefs.

[238] from 2019 to 2024, she reversed herself without explaining why.

[239] And she was convincing in neither of those instances.

[240] But they were saying like, okay, AI, I mean, the conversation that Andreessen talks about having with Biden regulators, it was like, okay, no, we're not going to let you do AI.

[241] We're not going to let you do this.

[242] We're not going to let you do that.

[243] That also played out in things like supermarket mergers and things like that.

[244] There comes a point where the - business community is going to say, you've got to be fucking kidding me. Let me at least operate in a marketplace.

[245] Trump was very good on that.

[246] Trump embraced Bitcoin, which whether it comes to fruition as a true micropayment system, blah, blah, blah, it's symbolic that he's embracing the future in a way that the Democrats and certainly Biden and Harris absolutely refuse to.

[247] I think that's really important.

[248] Okay, so let's switch topics then and talk about Trump in the present.

[249] I think this is a good transition.

[250] It has been three brutal years since Russia invaded Ukraine.

[251] Has the conflict finally reached a turning point?

[252] President Trump seems to be reorienting America's position on the war and on the global stage.

[253] Last week, the Trump administration participated in talks with Russia about possibly ending the conflict, talks that Ukraine notably was not part of.

[254] Meanwhile, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky says he is willing to resign if it brings peace.

[255] Matt, I want you to help us understand what's going on here, because it seems to me like the United States and Russia are getting together to arrange a Ukrainian peace deal without Ukraine or Europe being involved.

[256] Well, it's really right.

[257] And if so, what do you think about that?

[258] They certainly weren't involved in the meeting in Saudi Arabia last week, nor in the one that's scheduled for Riyadh on Tuesday, I believe, of this week.

[259] The Trump administration over the weekend at CPAC, the White House spokeswoman, said that she thinks that we could have a peace deal as soon as this week, which seems fantastical.

[260] But who knows?

[261] Life is strange and strange things can happen.

[262] There's also talks and a lot of country toms.

[263] about a mineral rights.

[264] deal.

[265] The US, the Trump administration is pushing very hard for Ukraine to give the US a 50 % of profits of all rare earth minerals.

[266] I think the quote is, we're asking for rare earth and oil, anything we can get.

[267] They're negotiating with this country that's under siege from Russia.

[268] So a lot of interesting things happened over the past week.

[269] It's probably the most significant.

[270] week that we've seen when Zelensky squawked about not being invited.

[271] Trump's response was, today I heard, oh, well, we weren't invited.

[272] Well, you've been there for three years.

[273] You should have never started it.

[274] You could have made a deal.

[275] I'm talking about Zelensky there.

[276] He then referred to Zelensky as did Elon Musk, noted U .S. official Elon Musk as referred to Zelensky as a dictator, called for Zelensky to have new elections, said falsely that his popularity rating was four percent and so on.

[277] There was a couple of diplomatic moves that the U .S. blocked language saying that Russia was primarily responsible.

[278] for the invasion of Ukraine.

[279] Trump suggested that they were provoked, etc. J .D. Vance, I think, had a pretty notable back and forth with Neil Ferguson on Twitter, of course, and elsewhere, in which the key takeaway for me was that this quote here, Russia has a massive numerical advantage in manpower and weapons in Ukraine, and that advantage will persist regardless of further Western aid packages.

[280] Basically, the Trump administration is saying, hey, look, These people don't have a plan to the people who want to support Ukraine don't have a plan to end the war.

[281] We're going to bring the plan to end the war.

[282] And the last thing that was a very significant that happened over the weekend, Germany, Germany held the elections and the Christian Democratic Union won.

[283] And the incoming presumptive chancellor, Frederick Murs, said basically like NATO might be over.

[284] The US is now tilting towards Russia and we need to create a European security structure, perhaps even a nuclear umbrella, maybe as soon as this June.

[285] Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer are coming to the US this week to talk to Trump more about all of this.

[286] So it's all very significant.

[287] I think what it means for Ukraine is that Ukraine is going to be pushed into a deal sooner rather than later.

[288] The U .S. and Russia cannot dictate terms to Ukraine.

[289] And this is something that it'll be very interesting to see what European Union countries do.

[290] The damning chart that you can see anywhere is just the...

[291] differing levels of aid to Ukraine during the war U .S. compared to European Union countries.

[292] The U .S. has donated a lot more than the EU.

[293] Ukraine is not in North America.

[294] And the Trump administration is quite correct in pointing that out.

[295] Europe has had two years.

[296] to take a lead role in this.

[297] They've had 35 years to come up with a post -NATO idea of security guarantees and arrangements in Europe.

[298] And they've had 80 years of basically being shielded by the US.

[299] It is clear that the era of security guarantees guaranteed by Washington is now over.

[300] That has really profound implications, not just for Ukraine and for Europe, but also China and Taiwan.

[301] Where there is a large regional power that has ideas about it's near abroad.

[302] And that includes the United States, too.

[303] I think that's where the Trump administration wants to go.

[304] I think that that world will be less stable and more dangerous, more bloody.

[305] Other people are more optimistic.

[306] I think that it is.

[307] Ultimately, a bad idea for the future of an independent small country to be arranged at by meetings in which they are not invited.

[308] There's a long and very, very bad history about that.

[309] And not just the Munich Agreement, but the Yalta Agreement, which presidents and administrations have apologized for serially for decades now.

[310] But we've moved beyond that.

[311] So if Europe wants to be serious about this, there's an option available to it.

[312] Anyone who is back.

[313] on Europe to take responsibility for its own actions has lost that bet now for 75 consecutive years.

[314] So I am not bullish on a long -term future for anything except for Ukraine giving up a lot of territory and for the idea of sovereignty to be greatly lessened in the future.

[315] You know, one of the things to think about is that American opinion towards Ukraine is pretty mercurial.

[316] Less than a year ago, most people wanted the U .S. to do more.

[317] Now a majority favors a quick end to the war.

[318] You know, again, wait, you know, wait another couple of weeks and things might change.

[319] What I want to stress, and Matt and I, I think, are on opposite sides of this or on differing sides of the fence, I think it is time for Europe to take control and to take responsibility for Europe much more than the United States.

[320] We have had 20 plus years of disastrous foreign policy.

[321] We don't know what we're doing.

[322] And we are spending lots of money, not as much as Trump says or Elon Musk says, but we're spending lots of money.

[323] on something that is not directly relevant to our standing in the world and our interests.

[324] Having said all of that, I think the fact that Trump and Elon Musk perpetuate lies about the idea that somehow Zelensky himself started this war.

[325] Trump said that we have spent $350 billion on Ukraine.

[326] That is off by almost double of what the higher estimates of what we've spent on Ukraine.

[327] And it's like we need to be able in this country under Trump, especially when it comes to foreign policy, separate absolute lies from reality and then start building from that.

[328] I think it's a good sign to see what happened in Germany and the way that the new German leader is talking and the way that Macron is.

[329] We needed a realignment after the Cold War ended and NATO's basic reason for being was done.

[330] It should have been rechartered then or disbanded or something like that.

[331] It's a bad thing and it's a horrible thing for Ukrainians.

[332] But this is what's going to happen.

[333] And one of the things that the U .S. can do now, hopefully, although Trump is a horrible apparition in all of this, is to make the best settlement possible, given all the complications and what's happened over the past couple of years.

[334] Catherine, it seems like the best argument for a peace deal is that it ends the bloodshed.

[335] There are, by some estimates, thousands of people dying in this war every day.

[336] Ukraine is running low on troops.

[337] It's not at all clear, even amongst the most hopeful analysis, that they can win back their territory.

[338] At the same time...

[339] This was a war of Russian aggression.

[340] Russia started it, no matter what Trump says, right?

[341] It feels wrong to let them win anything at all.

[342] And if this deal is being brokered by Trump, by the United States and Russia, without Ukraine really having much involvement, that also seems wrong because they are a sovereign nation.

[343] How should libertarians, how should people who sort of have hold your priors and values about the world navigate this?

[344] On the one hand, we want peace.

[345] And on the other hand, we don't want to see wars of aggression result in, hey, you won something that worked out pretty well for you.

[346] Yeah, I think I mean, Matt and I have long debated the question of when to say politicians are lying as their primary sin.

[347] And one thing that I'm struck about in Trump's characterization of what's going on between Russia and Ukraine is like he's.

[348] factually incorrect, but he believes it's true in a way that I think is super important.

[349] Like he his whole career is like, listen, if somebody offers you a deal, if I offer you a deal and you don't take it, you started it.

[350] Like that's how he operates.

[351] And he identifies with Russia in this scenario.

[352] Like he's like, I am I identify with the big hostile actor who has offered you a very, very unpalatable deal.

[353] And if you say like, what?

[354] No, then like you started it.

[355] And that I think is how it looks to him.

[356] You know, getting the numbers wrong, getting the facts wrong is standard Trump business.

[357] I think that worldview is pretty deep in.

[358] And I also think Zelensky is like his shadow self, right?

[359] Like he's a TV star who's got in over his head in politics, who's like due for an election, but isn't going to do one.

[360] And like, does he have legal cover for that?

[361] I don't know.

[362] Right now, Trump says that's bad.

[363] And it's true that under Ukrainian law, if you're in a state of military emergency, you can't hold an election.

[364] I don't even know how they would hold an election right now.

[365] So it's blurry.

[366] But I think the Trump -Zelensky psychodrama is so interesting.

[367] And I get why a lot of the coverage has been around that.

[368] But ultimately, I think it doesn't matter what deal the U .S. and Russia broker while sitting together.

[369] in saudi arabia or whatever like ukraine has to be a part of it like they can just keep doing the war like they can they might have to do it with wildly less resources they might have to do it at a huge disadvantage they might have to do it by somehow scrounging some funding from norway or whatever but like they Like this just isn't a thing we can settle for Ukraine because Ukraine can keep firing guns in the direction of the Russians and they're gonna.

[370] And they've been very clear about that.

[371] Just the interesting thing will or would be.

[372] Then what would happen?

[373] I think we've already seen with the way that the Trump administration has been so kind of flexi with the mineral rights deal that the Trump administration would use leverage to try to make Ukraine settle and stop fighting.

[374] If in if in this perhaps fictitious world, Ukraine decides to keep fighting.

[375] That also speaks to something that I think that would be wrong.

[376] Yes, I don't think it's important to say like it would be very, very wrong for the U .S. to use leverage to to undermine the right of self -defense.

[377] Yes.

[378] And and I think that U .S. is the Trump administration is definitely tilting in that direction.

[379] I mean, back to Peter's original kind of set up for this.

[380] This is a pretty big ship.

[381] The White House has tilted towards Russia's interpretations of events and has tilted towards pressuring in one direction.

[382] At some point, I think it was J .D. Vance responded to someone who said, hey, why don't you call Russia Vladimir Putin a dictator?

[383] And something along the lines of like, you know, listen, that gets in the way of a deal.

[384] This is, to me, gross.

[385] Also kind of par for the course.

[386] But it speaks to that instead of just saying, hey, look, we don't want to be the main player in this anymore.

[387] We're going to withdraw funding.

[388] We feel like America has given enough and we have some advice for you, Zelensky.

[389] Here's our advice.

[390] Instead of doing that, I think we'll see.

[391] Trump wants to have a deal that he says that he forged.

[392] He's made himself in all of the statements like, I think Trump can get this done, says Trump.

[393] These types of quotes, he really wants to have this as a feather in his cap.

[394] And that's what I worry about the most is that he will extend the U .S.'s vast pressure.

[395] And instead of putting it on Russia, transfer it to Ukraine and U .S. right now is in the verges of with Marco Rubio of normalizing or talking about normalizing relations with Russia.

[396] So it's all going in that direction right now.

[397] You know, I support a negotiated end to the Ukraine, Ukraine, Russia war.

[398] I don't think Ukraine is going to get all of its territory back or depending on what you know, what we say the Ukrainian territory is.

[399] I think the most important thing is something that both countries can live with.

[400] the larger question is, what is Trump's actual foreign policy?

[401] Does he have a foreign policy vision that is going to allow our allies to understand where we stand in a predictable fashion?

[402] And is it going to curb aggression around the world?

[403] And so far, he has not articulated anything.

[404] He wants to be the main character in everything.

[405] He wants to be the main character in Gaza and Israel.

[406] It's not clear what we're going to be doing regarding time.

[407] or Chinese expansion.

[408] I tend to believe that neither China nor Russia are as expansionist as their most ardent enemies think.

[409] And I think it's worth drawing a distinction between Russia going back to the contours or the outlines of the Soviet Union rather than marching on Poland or Czechoslovakia or other countries that are part of both the EU and NATO.

[410] But the most important thing is that Trump and Vance, who has spoken a lot about this, they have not articulated any kind of foreign policy that makes it any different than what we were stumbling through with Bush and with Obama and with Biden, especially.

[411] And that's deeply, deeply disturbing and problematic, not from a foreign point of view, from an American point of view.

[412] I want to know.

[413] what our defense department, what our Pentagon strategy, what our costs are supposed to be, and why would we start sending weapons?

[414] Why would we start sending troops anywhere in the world?

[415] And Trump has no answer to that.

[416] He's just kind of whatever, you know, whatever blood sugar spike he's going through, that'll dictate what happens.

[417] That's not good.

[418] We should remember that when J .D. Vance went to the European Security Conference a week or two ago, his speech was not about Russia.

[419] He said Russia was not the biggest threat to Europe.

[420] Instead, he said the threat comes within and he pinned Europe's problems on European cultural issues, in particular, some free speech concerns that I think all of us actually have.

[421] But he basically said, look, Russia is not something you need to worry about.

[422] One theory for why he did that.

[423] What an asinine statement.

[424] by the way i mean we should we should call that out whatever else you can say about the eu it's like To talk about, oh, yeah, you know, the fact that maybe they are, you know, pro -Muslim migrant too much or they have speech concerns.

[425] It's like, yeah, I don't know.

[426] I think the invasion of a bordering country with middle Europe, that's kind of a big deal.

[427] It's just this is symptomatic of the overstatement and the idiocy and the stupidity that comes out of a lot of the Trump, you know, the Trump machine.

[428] So one theory for why JD Vance went that direction and didn't focus on Russia or Ukraine or what should happen there is that he doesn't know.

[429] What Donald Trump thinks about the situation, and he didn't want to get crosswise with the boss.

[430] And so he just decided to give a speech about something else.

[431] But there are theories about what the Trump administration might want out of all this.

[432] In particular, there was a column by Noah Smith on Substack recently, in which Noah Smith argued that Trump might, just might, be trying to set up a grand right wing authoritarian alliance with China and Russia, aligning America's interests.

[433] of worldview with these right wing revanchist sort of culturally conservative authoritarian nations.

[434] Catherine, do you worry about that?

[435] Do you worry about a kind of authoritarian alliance between Trump, Russia and China here?

[436] No, that sounds dumb.

[437] I mean, I don't know.

[438] It's just like if the big game plan is Trump becomes besties with China, this would be the most bonkers possible way to pursue that.

[439] And, you know, I never rule out bonkers, but.

[440] We haven't seen any bonkers methods of trying to get what you want and the thing that you want from Donald Trump at all.

[441] Right.

[442] Like he obviously does have respect for Putin.

[443] He does.

[444] Like he is.

[445] He's been consistent with that.

[446] Like he he like maybe doesn't agree with all his his goals and and vision.

[447] But like that guy really gets things done is for sure a thing that Trump believes about Putin.

[448] I haven't really heard that.

[449] from Trump or from the Trump administration about China.

[450] I've heard it about China from the left occasionally.

[451] Like, say what you want about China.

[452] They sure build a lot of infrastructure, that kind of thing.

[453] And so I think - I don't know if their trains are running on time, but they do have a lot of them.

[454] So many trains.

[455] They just fall off the bridges and tunnels that collapse, that they build very quickly.

[456] But does Trump have things in common with global authoritarians?

[457] Sure.

[458] Do I think today is the day for the conspiracy theory of an iron triangle of the U .S., Russia and China led by Trump's clear eyed march to authority?

[459] No. So just to defend Noah Smith a little tiny bit there, it's not so much a conspiracy theory as it is this idea that what Trump wants is sort of spheres of influence in which the globe is divided up between large country, large powers who have control over the small nations in their vicinity.

[460] And that's like Trump sees the world that way.

[461] Once America to have sort of had to have power over our like our neighbors, right, Mexico and Canada and Greenland or whatever.

[462] Right.

[463] Not.

[464] exactly neighbor but like close enough by right and that it is that it is actually there is a kind of working theory of like spheres of influence it's not just well uh i i like uh i like putin and i like the authoritarians this show is sponsored by better help what are some of your relationship green flags You often hear about the red flags we should avoid, but what if we focused more on looking for green flags in friends and partners?

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[476] Let's save this discussion for another episode.

[477] We need to move on to our listener question, which comes from.

[478] Dennis, who asks about sovereign wealth funds, which he finds intriguing.

[479] Dennis writes, much like Alaska, it seems to make sense for common assets for a country.

[480] However, now it seems that everyone from Trump to J .B. Pritzker is pushing the idea, which makes me extremely wary.

[481] Dennis, you are right to be wary when Trump and J .B. Pritzker are pushing something.

[482] What does the roundtable think?

[483] Nick, let's start with you.

[484] Sovereign wealth funds.

[485] Yeah, I'm against sovereign wealth funds, particularly for the United States.

[486] There's no need for it.

[487] And it leads to a politicization of investment opportunities and choices.

[488] We already have too much of that.

[489] So I'm a hard no on a sovereign wealth fund for the United States.

[490] Matt Welch.

[491] The sovereign in the United States is the individual.

[492] It is not the government.

[493] It is not the king.

[494] We need to stop acting like a monarchy and start acting like the Republican with a small r country, which was formed 249 years ago.

[495] Catherine, should we have a sovereign wealth fund?

[496] I associate myself with the definitive and spicy remarks of my colleagues.

[497] Like, no, we should not.

[498] It is a bad idea to have the government.

[499] Take money from people who could have invested it themselves and then invest it.

[500] But like a lot worse with a bunch of other political motivations, which is at least one way of metaphorically thinking about what's in there.

[501] Also, sovereign wealth funds are for countries that have surpluses.

[502] They're for countries that have wealth.

[503] Wait, are you saying that the United States isn't wealthy, that we that are budgeting problems?

[504] Do we have like a problem with our budget somehow or another?

[505] I would never imply such a thing, Peter.

[506] Yeah.

[507] All right.

[508] So a reminder, we love to answer your questions, to submit yours.

[509] Send your short, succinct, pithy, and otherwise not very long query to podcastsatreason .com.

[510] That's podcastsatreason .com.

[511] We do look at all of these emails.

[512] Okay, we're getting towards the end of the show.

[513] So it is finally time for our lightning round.

[514] One of the problems with covering the news in the second Trump term is that there is just too much of it.

[515] So from my perch.

[516] On Mount Moderation, I will play Zeus once again and zap each one of you with a question like the very first appearance of Electro in Spider -Man number nine, Amazing Spider -Man number nine.

[517] It is going to be electric.

[518] Nick.

[519] I want to ask you about Javier Malay's meme coin.

[520] Seems like he endorsed a meme coin and it went about as well for him as it did for Hak Tua.

[521] And I'm sorry that we all know what that means.

[522] What do you think of Javier Malay's meme coin mess?

[523] Well, one of the problems is we don't know if it went as well for him.

[524] Did he, you know, did he realize a massive gain on a rug pull operation on a shit coin?

[525] His apology for participating in it really is not good.

[526] enough.

[527] I mean, he's a great leader.

[528] He's a model for the Democrats and the Americans, you know, writ large, running a country, cutting government and growing the economy and things like that.

[529] But he basically said, oh, anybody who followed this shit coin or bought this shit coin that I promoted via tweet, which I later deleted, you know, it's too bad for them, but it's like playing Russian roulette and they got the bullet.

[530] That's just.

[531] That's pathetic.

[532] That's that's an old style of Latin American leadership that I don't think we want to go back to.

[533] Matt, President Trump and Elon Musk have raised the possibility recently of a Doge dividend to the tune of five thousand dollars per American.

[534] It's not a sovereign wealth fund.

[535] I do hope it will be paid in Dogecoin.

[536] What do you say?

[537] If Doge achieves trillions in savings, shouldn't it just give the money back to Americans?

[538] So this started out as a retweet.

[539] So that means it's probably serious.

[540] It's not 5 ,000 to every American.

[541] It's 5 ,000 to every federal taxpaying household.

[542] It's about 78 million households.

[543] So just to give you an idea, the budget deficit, the federal budget deficit last year is $1 .8 trillion.

[544] which is $23 ,000 per household.

[545] The debt is projected to go up a little bit this year and to double within eight years.

[546] Interest payments on the debt last year was $880 billion.

[547] That is $11 ,300 per household.

[548] That too is projected to double in size in eight years.

[549] If DOGE, if the federal government manages to stop doing that, then we can have that conversation.

[550] If we could get back to even 2019 spending levels, let alone 2016 or 12 or 08 or 1999 and 2000, back when the federal budget was $1 .8 trillion, not the annual deficit, then yeah, maybe we can have a conversation about a dividend check.

[551] But there's no indication that Doge or anything else is going to be serious about cutting spending until you do.

[552] This is just another indication of a fundamental lack of seriousness among people who claim to be wanting to cut government.

[553] Catherine, while we're talking about Elon Musk, he said on Twitter last week that all federal employees would be expected to respond to an email asking them what exactly they accomplished in the past week.

[554] Five bullet points.

[555] This is basically the Bob's routine from Office Space.

[556] What is it that you would say you do here?

[557] Musk said that those who don't respond risk losing their jobs.

[558] So my question is, will you be implementing this management tool for employees at Reason?

[559] Yes, I will.

[560] As soon as we finish taping this podcast, I will be sending out that note.

[561] Listen, it's a really fair question because I say this with all the love in my heart.

[562] I live in Washington, D .C., and I don't know what a lot of my friends who work for the federal government do all day.

[563] And they don't know what I do all day either, but they're not paying for my thing and I'm paying for their thing.

[564] So it's a fair question to ask.

[565] That's all.

[566] You know, the number of stories of people who in the last two weeks have been fired, fired, oops, ignore those last two emails, fired, fired, is like definitely too high, right?

[567] Like the way in which Musk and his team are going about this kind of cleaning of house is chaotic to say, you know, as charitably as possible.

[568] And the tell me what it is you do here email, I have reason to suspect that information gathered from that email might not be used in a systematic and efficient way to decide where the best places are to make cuts in.

[569] And of course, if we just fire a bunch of people but don't eliminate the underlying departments or do anything about the obligations to spend funds as appropriated by Congress, that's not cutting government.

[570] That's just firing people who implement government orders.

[571] And, you know, having no one to unlock the bathrooms at the public parks is not the same thing as privatizing the public parks.

[572] I would like to privatize the public parks.

[573] But in the meantime, it's.

[574] This is the thing with so much of what Musk is doing.

[575] It's a fair question.

[576] The way he's gathering the answers isn't going to be usable.

[577] And if people if people's main complaint is like, how dare you?

[578] You lose.

[579] Like if you're a federal worker and you're just like, I refuse to answer that.

[580] Having said that, you know, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard have all supposedly told their workers do not comply with this.

[581] You know, it's an interesting showdown in the Trump White House, isn't it?

[582] Yeah, it seems like there are both practical problems here as well as potential legal problems.

[583] The practical problem is there are going to be tens or hundreds of thousands of emails that have these five bullet points if everyone complies.

[584] And how do you collate that information?

[585] How do you use that, right, like an email reply to actually make good and informed judgments about who should still be on staff?

[586] The AIs are getting real good these days.

[587] It's going to be fun.

[588] Grok can do it.

[589] It won't hallucinate at all.

[590] President Grok.

[591] Okay.

[592] And even if you have President Grok make all of those decisions, this email is coming from Elon Musk.

[593] Isn't the White House out there saying that technically Elon Musk isn't in charge of Doge?

[594] He's just a special government employee who is advising the president and doesn't have any real power.

[595] So who is doing the firing in that case?

[596] I think it's just, I mean, it's not obvious to me how you actually implement this and move this through the system.

[597] And I was thinking about this in the context of a tweet from a Manhattan Institute.

[598] budget analyst, Jessica Riedel, who was just like, imagine if Mitch Daniels was running Doge.

[599] And then there was all of this stuff that Mitch Daniels would have done already.

[600] And I just looked at it.

[601] It was like.

[602] That all looks really good to me. And that's not what is happening.

[603] And this is, I think, the frustrating thing for a bunch of us is that there are people who have studied how to do all of this stuff effectively and legally for decades now.

[604] And it's just a little bit odd.

[605] I can understand why Elon Musk and Doge might think, well, look, those folks don't have a great track record of cutting government.

[606] The government has grown, right?

[607] We don't have to pay attention to them.

[608] On the other hand.

[609] Don't you when you're starting a new project, when you're starting something that you haven't done before, shouldn't you go talk to the people who have been studying how to do it and like have been like, shouldn't you learn from the actual experts?

[610] And it seems like they are not doing that.

[611] And that's, I think, one of the reasons why it's not at all clear that they are making a really big impact here.

[612] OK, with that, we will move on to our final segment.

[613] What you watching?

[614] What you consuming?

[615] Catherine, what have you been watching or consuming in the cultural arena this week?

[616] I am doubling up on a recommendation of Nick's from a long time ago because I just got around to it.

[617] John Mackey's new ish memoir, which I read this week after seeing him at Students for Liberty, where he and I are both board members.

[618] at their annual conference in D .C. It's called The Whole Story, Adventures in Love, Life and Capitalism.

[619] And it's good, guys.

[620] I enjoyed it a lot.

[621] And I don't know how much I enjoyed it because of its extremely high degree of overlap with my interests, which is basically like John Mackey runs Whole Foods, takes psychedelics and tries to figure out how to live, maybe hiking.

[622] Question mark?

[623] Like, that's not an unfair summary of that whole life.

[624] Wait, Catherine, you're hiking these days?

[625] I told you.

[626] I became outdoorsy when the pandemic happened.

[627] I guess I'm still in denial.

[628] For sure go into the nature and walk around now.

[629] Like, am I going to hike the Appalachian Trail?

[630] No, sir.

[631] But, you know, John Mackey has done all of these things, I would say, with more zeal than I. I did not found Whole Foods either.

[632] It's a good read.

[633] It's just, you know, the story of somebody who takes capitalism really seriously in a way that I think, you know, it was just kind of refreshing.

[634] There's a little bit of ideology in there, but it's mostly just implementation.

[635] It's mostly just like a belief that you can use the tools of the accumulation and expenditure of capital to make the world a better place.

[636] And you love to see it.

[637] So the whole story, Adventures in Love, Life and Capitalism by John Mackey.

[638] I recommend it.

[639] You can just do things.

[640] Nick, what should we just be doing?

[641] I went to see a couple of weeks ago, I went to see Matthew Gazda's new play, Doomers, which is set in the boardroom of a company.

[642] That is very much like open AI, particularly during the moment when Sam Altman was bounced and then kind of came back.

[643] It's a two act play.

[644] It was briefly in New York.

[645] It's going to L .A. and San Francisco.

[646] It is very funny and interesting because it's a bunch of millennials and Gen Z sitting around with the occasional Gen Xer or baby boomer who was part of the Internet back in the day kind of coming in.

[647] talking about how great things used to be.

[648] It's funny.

[649] It's clever.

[650] Gazda is one of the playwrights or artists who's associated with the Dime Square movement.

[651] If I recall correctly, he actually wrote the play Dime Square.

[652] That's right.

[653] Yes.

[654] And it's fascinating to see.

[655] cultural moment, you know, kind of being discussed in real time.

[656] That's something that theater can do in a way that, you know, movies and TV shows take forever to come out.

[657] So it was very good.

[658] It's funny.

[659] I'm not sure there's an ultimate deep point there, but it also pushing back against the doomerism, not just of older people, but actually of younger people who seem to be much more pessimistic, not only about the current world, but the future world.

[660] It's exciting.

[661] and fun, and I recommend going to check out Doomers wherever you can find it.

[662] Matt Welch, what do you have for us?

[663] I went and saw a music documentary called Becoming Led Zeppelin at the IMAX Theater in Miami Beach, Florida.

[664] It's, I think, shown only in IMAX theaters if it is even still out there.

[665] For those who, like me, are just unreconstructed meatheads, at least there were in their youth.

[666] You will be happy to go watch the movie.

[667] I wish they would have turned it up even louder in the theater.

[668] Would have been really nice.

[669] It's great.

[670] It's directed by Bernard McMahon, who went to a lot of trouble and actually got the three surviving members to talk, which is not an easy thing to do.

[671] They're pretty notoriously secretive.

[672] Um, it's in this genre of music documentaries and books that I have lately become very fond of, which is like at the beginning of the career, because they're trying to capture, like part of it is this elusive attempt to capture how did this alchemy, how did the magic strike?

[673] And, uh, you know, as Spinal taught us, it's about the mystery of role.

[674] You can't ever write quite.

[675] get there.

[676] But a lot of interesting backstory of Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones playing in, that's the guitarist and bass player respectively, playing in studios in 60s London.

[677] And then they sort of famously finally get together with Robert Plant and John Bonham and like play once at a rehearsal studio.

[678] And we're like, oh my.

[679] God.

[680] And then they rocket to stardom, mostly in the United States.

[681] It's very sweet of them looking back.

[682] It's very funny for people of Nick and my age because we associate Led Zeppelin with lots of just evil in addition to really great music.

[683] They're the Putin of 70s rock.

[684] I mean, it's really funny to see Jimmy Page as this sweet old grandmother figure, just like talking.

[685] They all do look like old lesbians.

[686] It's amazing.

[687] Plant still has a little bit of the male in him.

[688] But yeah, they pretty much like that.

[689] But I mean, Jimmy Page, like who had an occult bookstore for 25 years in London and was basically a junkie Satanist doing unspeakable things to underage girls.

[690] Now it's just sort of a sweet old guy reflecting about his.

[691] career uh i liked it a lot um i learned some stuff they they dredged up some uh interviews re -remembered some things that i had forgotten um very interesting to watch uh this really kind of remarkable band that dominated the 1970s and then disappeared um partly because they're very very good drummer uh decided to try to drink all of the alcohol in the universe and died in the bathtub and it was horrible um and uh but it's otherwise pretty uh pretty interesting so check it out if you can do they show peter grant their unbelievably fat manager in imax like is that yes like horrifying or the two main questions that people have asked me uh from watching it Do you see the horribleness of Peter Grant?

[692] And you do.

[693] He's a big, ugly apparition.

[694] Then, of course, like, what's it like to see Robert Plant's trousers in that?

[695] And it's amazing.

[696] The other thing that's of interest to and that I kind of forgotten about to just people who are interested in art is that Jimmy Page, who produced all of these records and arranged them and wrote most of the songs, they showed up with their first album.

[697] completely recorded, mixed, sequenced, arranged, done without a record contract.

[698] And they flew to New York and said, you want this?

[699] It's going to cost a lot.

[700] And here's this horrible Peter Grant character who's going to break your neck if you don't sign it.

[701] But it's a very interesting thing about owning your own masters and your own creativity and then showing the world like, my God, I better sign this because I want to make a lot of money.

[702] Catherine, does that strategy work on you with articles?

[703] You know, I actually was after reading this John Mackey book was thinking about how like a lot of his angst and struggles comes from the turnover in his leadership team.

[704] He's like so committed to someone and they work together and then he feels betrayed.

[705] It's really the great challenge of his life.

[706] And I was having some warm, fuzzy feelings about reason and about our leadership team and how we work together so well and share our goals and share our mission.

[707] And then you dumbasses were like, oh, is a fat manager in there?

[708] And I was like, I hate it here.

[709] So I don't know.

[710] I have mixed feelings.

[711] Not just a fat manager, a fat manager in IMAX.

[712] Which is Robert Plant's trouser snake was the original model for the sandworms in David Lynch's Doom.

[713] Absolutely.

[714] Please stop.

[715] Let me love you guys.

[716] Make it a little easier.

[717] I'm just in an effort to relate to you here.

[718] I will just say that I'm glad Matt saw that in IMAX because IMAX fun fact is the only format that I have ever felt like.

[719] This is actually too loud.

[720] Like you need to turn that down just a little bit.

[721] And there are times when IMAX, like I enjoy that I feel that way.

[722] And I'm like, oh, this is how it should be all the time.

[723] I should always want it to be just a little too loud.

[724] But there are times when I go see.

[725] Audio inputs are too loud.

[726] All audio is too loud.

[727] Except this IMAX loads up on sadly.

[728] Right now.

[729] Yeah.

[730] Well, in that case, Catherine, let me recommend to you the novel, the calculation of volume.

[731] Volume one by Solveig Bali, who is a Danish novelist who has written a seven part series about a woman who is basically stuck in Groundhog Day.

[732] It's like she has the 18th of November for forever.

[733] She just wakes up on the 18th of November, like over and over again.

[734] It's kind of Groundhog Day -ish, except that it's literary and soft and cozy and sort of Norwegian.

[735] And she's just like, well, I guess what I will do is at first I'll spend a bunch of days getting to know my partner better.

[736] At the same time, what's going to happen is we're going to drift apart because I keep having memories of those days and he keeps not.

[737] So then she's going to spend a bunch.

[738] of days not getting to know her partner better just like living in the guest room and avoiding him the entire day while it kind of rains outside and it's soft and sort of cozy right and it's just this sort of it's this fantastic uh like wonderfully lived in warm and philosophical novel of ideas about like what time means and how and how the experience of time changes yourself, your knowledge of yourself and your knowledge of your surroundings and your relationships with other people.

[739] And so it gets into this stuff in ways that are not sort of as overtly comic as as Groundhog Day.

[740] But it kind of takes this idea a little bit more psychologically seriously.

[741] What would it be like to experience time in a way that is totally different from everyone else?

[742] And to be stuck on that one day, which isn't necessarily a bad day, which isn't one where you are sort of having horrible or epic or major events happening.

[743] Just a day, kind of like every other day, except that it's the same day like every other day.

[744] And you know everything that's going to happen around you, but no one else does.

[745] And it makes you an alien in your own world.

[746] It is a wonderful, short, easy to read novel.

[747] You can read it in a night, maybe two at the most.

[748] the calculation of volume, volume one.

[749] The second edition is the second volume is already out in English translation, and I believe the rest of them are coming in years to come.

[750] That is our show for today, folks.

[751] Before we go, Nick, do we have any announcements, any events you want to tell us about?

[752] Yeah, on this Thursday, February 27th, doing a live interview taping.

[753] For the Reason interview podcast with Brian Doherty, who has a new book out called Modern Libertarianism.

[754] It's going to be a lot of fun.

[755] Go to Reason .com slash events to get details.

[756] And even better, go to Reason .com slash newsletters.

[757] Sign up for all our newsletters, including the NYC events newsletters, because we've got great events coming in March and April as well.

[758] OK, one last thing before we go.

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[770] Like those old pizza huts that everyone is nostalgic for, The Reason Roundtable will return.

[771] Return?

[772] Vern?

[773] Return?

[774] Can you say it with a V?

[775] The V is silent.