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Ep. 57 Christopher Leonard, "The Lords of Easy Money" Apr 12, 2022

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The book is titled "The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy." The author is Christopher Leonard, the current director of the Watchdog Writers Group at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. On the dust jacket of the book it says: "If you ask most people what forces led to today's income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Reserve." Christopher Leonard explains why so few people understand the language or inner workings of how American money is managed by a seven-member board in Washington, DC.

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Ep. 56 University of Virginia Student Emma Camp on Self-Censorship at College Apr 05, 2022

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Emma Camp is a 22-year-old senior at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, home of Thomas Jefferson. She calls herself a liberal and has written opinion pieces for the school newspaper, The Cavalier Daily. Back in October of 2020, Ms. Camp had some strong things to say about the First Amendment. She wrote that: "The first amendment does not exist to protect reasonable opinions — it exists to protect the unreasonable, the offensive, and the unpopular." In March of 2022, she moved her opinions to a national platform, the New York Times op-ed page. We asked her to tell us what is behind her statement: "I went to college to learn from my professors and peers. I welcomed an environment that champions intellectual diversity and rigorous disagreement. Instead, my college experience has been defined by strict ideological conformity."

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Ep. 55 Jeffrey Hooke, "The Myth of Private Equity" Mar 29, 2022

Show notes

The list is long and, to a lot of people, confusing. We're talking about the language of money. How would you do if you had to define the following: stocks, bonds, private equity, index funds, leveraged buyouts, venture capital, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds, just to name a few. We asked Jeffrey Hooke, author of "The Myth of Private Equity," to give us some help in understanding the world of investment and finance. Mr. Hooke is a senior lecturer at Johns Hopkins Business School and has spent all of his adult life in and around money.

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Ep. 54 John Mearsheimer on Ukraine, International Relations, and the Military Mar 22, 2022

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During his 40 years in the political science department at the University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer has not avoided controversy. His article and subsequent book about the Israel lobby, for example, written with Harvard University's Stephen Walt, caused a stir in 2006 and 2007. More recently, at the beginning of March 2022, the New Yorker ran a headline that read: "Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine." We asked Prof. Mearsheimer to explain that and talked to him about being a realist, his military service, and his time in academia.

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Ep. 53 Mark Vonnegut, "The Heart of Caring" Mar 15, 2022

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In the dedication of his book, "The Heart of Caring," Dr. Mark Vonnegut tells his patients, teachers, and parents everywhere, "Thank you for letting me have such a good time when I go to work." Dr. Vonnegut is a pediatrician who graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1979. This was after he had been diagnosed, at age 25, with severe schizophrenia. He's had four psychotic breakdowns in his life, but has managed to successfully practice pediatrics for close to forty years. Mark Vonnegut, in his newest book, writes about patients, parents, insurance companies, and his late father, the novelist Kurt Vonnegut.

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Ep. 52 Willard Sterne Randall, "The Founders' Fortunes" Mar 08, 2022

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What is the financial history of the Founding Fathers? How did their personal finances affect the Constitution and the new United States? Historian and Champlain College professor emeritus Willard Sterne Randall puts the focus on how money shaped the birth of America in his book "The Founders' Fortunes." Prof. Randall has written books about Benjamin Franklin, Benedict Arnold, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Ethan Allen. He has now turned his attention on these and other Founders and how they made and lost their money.

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Ep. 51 Brendan Simms & Charlie Laderman, "Hitler's American Gamble" Mar 01, 2022

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The book "Hitler's American Gamble" recounts the five days in 1941 that upended everything. Starting with Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th and ending with Hitler's declaration of war on the United States on December 11th, British historians Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman trace the developments during the five days in real-time and reveal how America's engagement in World War Two was far from inevitable.

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Ep. 50 Clarence Lusane on the 1967 Detroit Race Riot, His Life & Work Feb 22, 2022

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July 23rd of this year will mark the 55th anniversary of the Detroit Race Riot. Forty-three people died and more than 1000 were injured during that chaotic week in 1967. Our guest, Professor Clarence Lusane was there. His mother and sister were shot. We talked to him about that experience and about his academic career and activism, which has taken him around the world. Clarence Lusane is currently a professor of political science at Howard University in Washington, DC.

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Ep. 49 Dwight Chapin, "The President's Man" Feb 15, 2022

Show notes

"I knew Richard Nixon well." At age 81, Dwight Chapin has decided, for the first time, to write about his years in politics and the Nixon White House. His book is called "The President's Man: The Memoirs of Nixon's Trusted Aide." In the first chapter, he writes: "I started working for him as an organizational field man during his 1962 California gubernatorial campaign….I became an advance man at the beginning of the 1966 off-year election cycle and then his personal aide in 1967. In the White House, as his appointments secretary, I had the office next to his." Unfortunately for Chapin, as he explains later, his time working for Richard Nixon didn't end well.

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Ep. 48 Andrew Roberts, "The Last King of America" Feb 08, 2022

Show notes

British historian Andrew Roberts, in the introduction of his latest book called "The Last King of America," about King George III, says the following: "This portrait of a heartless, absolute sovereign is repeated almost every single day in America's print and online media. Even two centuries after his death, hardly a day passes in the United States without some reference to George III where he is still held up as an…archetypal bogeyman, attacked in the same measure by Democrats and Republicans alike." Andrew Roberts, who says the Revolutionary War-era English king was misunderstood, has also written major histories about Napoleon, Churchill, and World War Two.

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