The Dispatch Podcast - Can the State Be Trusted With the Death Penalty?

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

Steve Hayes is joined by Jonah Goldberg, Mike Warren, and John McCormack to discuss the botched execution of convicted murderer Christa Pike and Angela Paxton’s “endorsement” ad for Senate candidate Ken Paxton, her estranged husband. The Agenda: —Christa Pike’s execution —Catholic arguments against the death penalty —What should the state do now? —Iowa Senate race —Candidate selection matters —NWYT: Bowling Show notes: —New York Times/Siena poll —Campaign ‘all coming from DC,’ Paxton says —The death of third places—Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including audio versions of all our articles and newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This could be your ad, reaching a brand new audience on Spotify. Launch your first campaign in minutes today with Spotify Ads Manager. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Steve Hayes. On today's roundtable, we'll look at the case of Krista Pike, Tennessee woman convicted of murder in 1995, and her botched execution by the state last week. Can the state be trusted with the death penalty? Does this case prove the anti-death penalty crowd has been making the right argument all along?

Then a New York Times Sienna poll shows that Republicans continue to fall behind Democrats. We'll talk about the competitive Senate race in Iowa with two dispatch reporters who have spent time on the ground reporting from there. And we'll look at some telling developments in the Texas Senate race, including perhaps the most illustrative example of partisan brain rot we've seen this cycle. And then, not worth your time? Bowling? I'm joined today by dispatch editor-in-chief Jonah Goldberg, politics editor Mike Warren,

and senior editor John McCormick. Let's dive right in. Hello, gentlemen. Thank you for joining me. I want to start today with a story that's been of the news over the past week, and it involves this botched execution in Tennessee, execution of a 50-year-old woman named Krista Pike, who'd been convicted of a really gruesome murder of an acquaintance of hers

from college, as I understand it. There was some kind of a love triangle. The details of the crime, we will skip over. But it was a very gruesome murder. Fast forward to this past year, Krista Pike was scheduled to be put to death. She exhausted her appeals, and the state of Tennessee attempted to execute her last week.

It did not work. It did not take. And this has, I think, triggered a big debate nationally about the death penalty. about how to execute people if we agree that the state is going to execute them. So I want to spend a few minutes talking about this story. And Mike, let me start with you. I think the first question, certainly the first question that I had,

and the first question that people have had, what I've talked to them about this over the past several days, is how is it possible to botch and execution? I think a good question. It's the first question to ask. This is a responsibility that the, state of Tennessee has taken on itself and it's screwed it up royally. There's a lot to be said for the sort of Bush League approach that these executions have taken now with lethal injections

where you're really not getting the highest quality of pharmacists and folks who put these drugs together. And so there's a lot of guessing that goes along with it. Pieces of the sort of the cocktail, the drug cocktail that the executioners put together coming from different pharmacies. And it's ultimately, I think, just kind of shoddy work all around. And look, I say this is somebody who used to be pro-death penalty. My views on this have changed. I'm against it now. But I do believe that a state is going to adopt the death penalty as a punishment, as the final punishment for the most heinous of crimes. They should do it right. And the fact that Tennessee was unable to do it, I think, is sort of an institutional failure. And perhaps it raises some good questions

for the country to ask, is this a good practice to be doing death penalties at all, to be doing state-led executions at all? But again, at the very least, there's some pretty good evidence here that lethal injections can work if they are done with the right drugs and if they are done in the highest standards of the approach to this. The problem is that I think these states have cheapened things out. I think Jonah's actually talked about this recently, the sort of the pressure from anti-death penalty groups to sort of put all kinds of pressure on the execution, so to speak,

of these lethal injections has worsened them as well and has made it so that what you end up having here happen is this woman is now in a coma and the state is in a bind because now they can't execute her. I think there's a strong legal argument

that she is no longer in a state, you know, essentially we don't execute people who are in vegetative states who are in comas who are not meant able to understand what is happening to them. And the truth is that this botched execution has rendered her at the moment, at least, and certainly her lawyers are arguing this, has rendered her unable to understand what is going on around her.

And so not only was this botched, but it looks like at the end of the day, Tennessee is not going to be able to fulfill this obligation that they claimed they were able to do. And so it's just a real screw up all the way around. Yeah, John, it's hard to believe when you listen to Mike's answer there, the first part of his answer, that the state of Tennessee would not have taken the appropriate steps or had people who were not qualified or had the wrong mix of drugs. I mean, if you're ever going to do anything correctly, if you're ever going to take the extra steps to make sure you have qualified people in positions to do this the right way, you would think it would be in the context of the state putting an individual to death. then yet, I think Mike is right. A lot of the reporting has suggested that there were questions about the qualifications of people, that the mix may not have been quite right. I had listened to an interview with a professor at Emory University, who was a consultant for Krista Pike's defense team,

so certainly an interested party, who was asked about what it means to be qualified to conduct such an execution. And he said, well, it's one thing to be qualified sort of on paper. It's another thing to actually qualified, and he suggested that the state has difficulty getting people who are really qualified and know this stuff as well to do it. To Mike's point, there have been other examples of botched executions in the past. Should this be as easy to fix, a problem to fix, as it would seem, I think, if you're just coming to this issue cold. Yeah, I mean, leaving aside my own somewhat complicated views on the death penalty, I think the problem here is with lethal injection, this attempt to sanitize and medicalize something like an execution

and that there is an instantaneous and surefire way to execute someone that is more humane than this, which is a firing squad. Honestly, I don't mean this to be provocative or trolling or anything. I think if you're going to, if the states wants to kill someone, we know of a 100% effective way to do it. That happens instantaneously. And I can't imagine anyone who look at the details of this or other botched lethal injections with a pain that can be torridable. I can be torturous or the failed attempts and not think that why don't they just do something that would actually work and be more humane than this. By the way, Krista Pike requested a firing squad and was denied that request and not that we need to be in the business of meeting the requests of people

on death row, but it's interesting that that's what she requested and she was unable to get that. I mean, I think it's entirely reasonable to allow people, I mean, at the risk of seeming trite, if you're allowing people on death road to have a last meal or to do that, it seems reasonable that if you're going to put them to death to allow them to have a say in how that's going to be done. Jonah, this has obviously kicked off a massive debate across the country about death penalty. Death penalty opponents have made these kind of arguments, and this would seem to validate at least that narrow argument that they make. Set aside the moral questions and these other things, just on the ability to do the thing,

this validates the arguments they've been making. No, it doesn't. I have such contempt for the anti-death penalty bar. I have no problem with people who are opposed to the death penalty. It is a principled position to have, whether you're pro-life, whether you're atheist, whether you're Christian, Muslim, Jewish, whatever. Like, there are lots of legitimate arguments against the death penalty. I don't want to besmirch anybody's good faith.

I do not think that the organized anti-death penalty industry operates in good faith. I think they have a philosophy of any means necessary is justified because they are so confident that they are on the morally correct side of this issue, that, you know, short of violence or anything else, they think any argument, any PR campaign, any legal strategy is self-justifying because they are 100% right, and anybody on the other side is 100% wrong. And as a result, we have the situation that we have here. I'm not trying to forgive or let off the hook, Tennessee,

for screwing things up. I'm sure they screwed things up. There's a lot of opacity. We're not allowed to know, according to state law, who the actual technicians were or really what their qualifications were. Right. I have some grace for the American Medical Association, which prohibits doctors from participating in,

in death penalty cases because first do no harm and all of that kind of thing, I keep meaning to look into what their actual position is on euthanasia. But since I brought up euthanasia, it is preposterous to argue that we don't know

how to medically execute somebody. Euthanasia is a booming industry in Canada and parts of Europe. You do not hear story day after day of botched euthanasia cases throughout North America or throughout Canada or from Europe because they know what they're doing. They have access to medical professionals. They have access to the right chemicals and drugs.

Because of lobbying, a lot of pharmaceutical industries will not, businesses will not sell the ideal drugs for this stuff. Medical technicians, doctors cannot participate. The anti-death penalty bar or crowd makes it as difficult as possible. to do the death penalty. They throw wrenches in the machinery all over the place, and then they claim, see, they don't know how to do a death penalty. I agree with John that, ideally for purposes of moral hygiene, we shouldn't probably medicalize the death penalty.

You know, it's funny. People think of the guillotine as this incredibly barbaric thing. The whole reason it was invented was to make executions efficient and scientific, and it was a machine of the future. It was invented by a guy, a doctor, guillotine, whatever. Similarly, the electric chair, when everyone was sort of jazzed about how awesome electricity was at the beginning of the 20th century, they thought, okay, this is like the modern way to do. We don't have to be barbaric with hangings and all these kinds of things. Turns out the electric chair is friggin really barbaric.

But I just have a lot of contempt for people who consistently organize to make it difficult to do this humanely. And then when it turns out to be done inhumanely, say, see, this proves that the death penalty, is inhumane. It's bad faith. It's a bad result. And by the way, this woman did evil, heinous things. Yes. And the way the death penalty bar argues about this stuff is like, oh, it's cruel, unusual punishment, and she doesn't deserve this. They want to turn everyone on death row into a victim. Now, some of them, I'm against anyone wrongly getting the death penalty. I'm against anyone spending a day in jail for something that they did not do. But they blur this, they feed all sorts of crap through Hollywood to make it sound as if we have

nothing but political prisoners on death row and that we don't know what we're doing and that we're incredibly incompetent. And it fuels cynicism and doubt and paranoia. And that's the strategy. And I have contempt for it. So fair enough. I take your point on the strategy and the means for discrediting the death penalty as a means of punishment. But the reality is, if you can't do it successfully, it does.

Even if it's validating an argument that they set up seeking that validation, it still nonetheless validates that argument, don't you think? So we'll get out of humane conscience clearing behind closed doors, executions, medical executions, and instead we'll go back to firing squads. And the simple fact is that there's just no interpretation of the constitution that makes the founding fathers did not intend for the possibility of executions of the death penalty plausible. And so you get all of this bootstrapping through things like cruel unusual punishment where we're defining things that would have been seen as extraordinary

measures to assure the comfort of people on death row are now seen as evidence of cruel and unusual punishment. And look, I've known a bunch of people who want to be fully opposed to the death penalty. When every time they try to engage in the arguments and look at the real facts, they get so disgusted with the bad faith of the opponents of the death penalty that they say, I just can't do it. And I mean, like, I don't want to get them in trouble by giving them their names, but it's like people we all know who like really want to be consistent pro-lifers. And they start looking at the data and they start looking at the arguments. And they're just like, I can't deal with these people and I have a difficult time getting on their side because the lies and distortions

that are used to turn murderers into martyrs is so gross. And again, I don't want one additional death penalty or one additional execution beyond what is necessary and it's a perfectly legitimate debate to say what's necessary and what's not. It's a perfectly, again, I think the actual moral arguments mount up on both sides. But I just, I'm so loathe to say that a strategy of making a mess proves that it's a mess. And that's what the anti-death penalty people have done at scale for three decades now, four decades. Mike, you mentioned that you have evolving views on the death penalty. Why? And what are they? Well, I'm a practicing and failing Roman Catholic. And so this is something that my church's catechism teaches is that life

begins in the womb and it ends with natural death and only God can create life and rightfully destroy life. And so it comes from my religious background and my understanding of what my church teaches to be correct. And it's not that much more complicated. I find what Jonah describes as sort of making a mess of the policy to prove the policy or the approach of the practice is wrong. I agree that it's a very bad faith move. I think that the position that I hold very much increasingly like the position I hold on abortion is a lonely position in many ways because it has some very strict moral outlooks that are not popular. They're certainly not populist and I understand why it's an unpopular position. And I think it's a position that you should argue in good faith and not in

bad faith. And if you argue in good faith, you're likely to lose a lot of the time. But I think you sort of retain your soul when you argue in good faith. It's the honest way to argue. And so I'm perfectly happy to say, I oppose the death penalty. And I know I'm in probably a pretty big minority of people, particularly for these heinous crimes. And I don't know. It's not much more complicated than that. It's, it has to do with my own personal faith. John, I have to say, I'm sympathetic to Mike's evolution on the death penalty, although probably for different reasons. You too are a practicing Catholic.

Maybe you've practiced more than Mike and you're a better Catholic as a result of all that practice. Just because he's older than me. 10,000 hours, man. That's right. Mike is the godfather of my eldest child, so I think he's a pretty decent...

We're a pretty decent bad Catholic as we all go. You mentioned John in discussing this. I think it's interesting that each of you, as I asked you questions, allowed that you had, I think, John, the way that you phrase it was, complicated views on the death penalty. What are they? Oh, man, I don't want to say this publicly,

because I would actually like the time to, you know, be thoughtful and dispatching way. But, hey, it's a podcast. So I'll say, this is public. By the way, people will hear this. In my gut, I do think, in my gut, like, my moral intuition is that, yes, there are particularly heinous cases, particularly where people are, you know, tortured and killed children that they deserve the death penalty. the more modern teaching, I think, from popes like, to bring my Catholicism into it, John Paul

the second was that, well, you know, in modern societies, we have the capability to put people in prison for the rest of their lives, the same argument for, you know, in just war theory, if you can, you know, stop someone without killing them, you just capture them. I'm willing to accept that, but I do think, I mean, this idea that people will sort of try and put this trump card on, you know, people against abortion and say, well, you have to be against both. I mean, you can definitely be against both. I think I am. But I always go back to this piece. P.G. O'Rourke quote that, I don't know if I should quote the whole thing, but he says, you know. It's P.J. O'Rourke. You should feel free to go. Okay. Okay. So he says this is from Give War a Chance.

He says, the second item in the liberal creed after self-righteousness is on accountability. Liberals have enveloped a whole college majors, psychology, sociology, women's studies to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions. But consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies, but not convicted murderers. A calist pragmatist might favor abortion and capital punishment. A devout Christian would sanction neither, but it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal view. So, I mean, that's kind of one way I look at this. Classic, classic PJ. Jonah, one of the questions, I think Mike made reference to it earlier now,

as people try to figure out what to do, regards whether the state should try once again to put her to death. What's the argument against putting her to death now? If the state had already determined that she should be put to death and screwed it up, isn't she still worth putting to death? I'm squishier here, right? I would need to know more about the actual details and stuff. But I'm pretty sure there used to be a thing, like in hanging that if the rope broke, you walk free in some places.

I'm not saying she should walk free by any stretch of imagination. All I'm saying is that the argument, I think a lot of the arguments that the process is cruel and unusual don't hold water. They hold more water when you start talking about what are in fact lots of do-overs. And there is something cruel and gross about that. And for all we know, she'll come out of this with brain damage. And then there's a whole, you know, sort of a Ricky Ray Rector kind of issue there. Riggory Ray Rector, before Steve asked me to explain, was the guy who, you know, Bill Clinton took time off from campaigning in 1992 to oversee his execution as governor of Arkansas,

Rector who had been shot. I can't remember if it was self-inflicted or when he was arrested, but he had been shot in the head and effectively lobotomized and rendered like a largely different person and a simpleton because of this who, I remember Christopher Hitchens used to bring it up all the time. It's terrible. I don't mean it as a joke because it is terrible. Rector told the guards to save his pie for him, and he'd, he'd, after he went off to the chair. And that's gross. Like, I think there are legitimate arguments about

whether or not somebody who is in a coma. Can you execute someone in a coma? I think there's something gross about that. Can you execute somebody who was mentally impaired after the act that they committed? These are all thorny, difficult questions. And so I kind of want to wait for what the actual investigation finds and what we know about her actual condition. But why should that matter? Let me push back on that. Why should that matter? She committed an atrocious murder. The details of this, I mean, they carved a pentagram into her victim. She apparently took part of her skull as a souvenir of the killing.

This was an awful, awful murder. She exercised her rights. She exhausted her appeals. The state still determined that she should be put to death. Why should she somehow get a reprieve simply because the state screwed up in the execution of the execution. Why does that change her moral standing? It doesn't change your moral status in my mind. All I'm saying is you can make a case. I said, I haven't made up my mind about what should go next. I want to know more.

That said, I think you'd agree that it would be gross and cruel and unusual if we brought people on death row in for mock executions a couple times a week. This may be the time. This may not be the time. Oh, nope, didn't work. We'll do. do it next week. That would be cruel and unusual. That would be torture, right? At some point, bringing people in, imagine the stress of going into the death chamber, at some point, repeated tries and failures does become cruel unusual in my mind. Now, whether this case qualifies as that, I'm not there yet, but I'm certainly willing to hear the argument for it. Yeah. No, I think that's, I think that's fair. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from

the dispatch podcast. And we're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. I want to move on to less existential questions and turn to politics in the 2026 midterms. Now, if you listen to candidates on either side of those elections, they would suggest that this is existential. It's existential for the country, maybe existential on a personal basis. It is most certainly not existential. But we've had some interesting developments in the top-tier races, particularly on the Senate side over the past week. There was a new set of polls out by the New York Times over the weekend that found that Democrats were increasingly well positioned, including in competitive red states.

There was, for the first time, really, I think, a legitimate poll of the Kansas Senate race, which, as we've discussed on this podcast before, there wasn't much polling, But we could guess from the actions of Roger Marshall, the incumbent Republican senator, who was acting like he was in a very difficult race. And there were other suggestive polling, partisan polling, I think, suggestive or less credible polling that suggested it was a competitive race. The New York Times polling over the weekend found that it is, in fact, a dead heat, if that polling is to be believed. One of the places, really the lone bright spot for Republicans in the Times polling over the weekend, And one of the only right spots for Republicans as we head into this last month of the midterms,

if you're looking at the Senate slate, is Ashley Hinson in Iowa. The Times found that Hinson holds a narrow lead in her contest to replace retiring incumbent Republican Joni Ernst. John, you were in Iowa this past week. What did you see? Yeah, I got to see Ashley Hinson, the congresswoman, running for U.S. Senate on the campaign trail. She had a campaign event on affordability and had something about what we call a pull-aside interview, you know, just one-on-one chatted with her afterwards. And yeah, I mean, that New York Times poll sort of just sets the stage for what you're seeing on the ground here.

I mean, it's Hinson, 48, Josh Turrick, the Democrat, 47, you know, and Republicans statewide and the congressional ballot, voters still say they prefer Republicans 48 to 44. But you look at Trump's approval, and Trump has won Iowa now three times in a row, most recently by 13 points. only 40% of Iowaans approve of his job performance and 58% disapprove. So that's why you see Hinson obviously trying to do the sort of delicate dance of, you know, creating some distance with Trump while not alienating him. When J.D. Vance was at a campaign event on September 18th, she did not show up to that, saying she had some unspecified scheduling conflict.

Then last Monday, she was in the Oval Office with the rest of the Iowa congressional delegation to announce this supposed plan to create steel plants for $15 billion in Iowa. Trump praised her. She said, I think the quote was, we're working hard and we appreciate your agenda. You know, so it's not exactly hugging Trump the way that she, you know, appreciate your agenda, love your passion. I don't know, it was a little bit of faint praise there. And on the campaign trail, so she sort of, she's made headlines on the Iran war saying that Trump needs to bring it to a swift and immediate end.

She's gotten a lot of attention for that. She actually had one Republican and said, well, I don't want this to be a debacle, just like Afghanistan. She said, no, no, I said swift and successful. I had it successful in there. So, you know, I mean, it wasn't a long interview, but I said, you know, how do you get from point A to point B? Are you calling for, you know, just a diplomatic end as soon as possible? But her diplomacy doesn't need to be more decisive military action. She said, whatever it takes. It just needs to be swift and successful. So, you know, it's not actually a policy. She did break with Trump also on this whole, you know, DHS is spending $20 million in TV ads effectively, just praising the Trump administration. She said, we shouldn't be doing that. That's not a proper use of money on tariffs. You know, there was sort of a conspicuous silence during the. this whole event on affordability. She's talking about Josh Turk's going to raise your taxes. When he's talking about raising the corporate tax rate, that's going to hit Iowa farmers who file his corporations.

And I was like, well, what about, you know, Trump has effectively raised taxes on people through tariffs. How have they hurt or helped Iowans? She basically dodged that issue. She sort of, you know, said, it's a long game. It's about fairness. We want to make sure China's not cheating. And I asked her if, you know, should the executive branch lose this authority, unilaterally raise in lower tariffs?

She actually has criticized Trump for lessening. tariffs or changing quotas on beef imports because that would hurt Iowa cattle ranchers. And she said, yeah, she wants the Congress to take back power from the executive branch on appropriations and on tariffs as well. But, you know, she's not exactly leading the charge on any of this, you know, so she's trying to create some

separation, but she's not leading the charge sponsoring legislation. She's not voting for the war powers resolutions. And then, you know, I asked two more questions, at least, I said, you know, what's the best part of the second Trump term? And she said that we are, this is at the end of the interview. We're changing the size and scope of government getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse. I mean, that's some pretty vague stuff

that's not really happening. I mean, in Trump, one, you could at least point to but Gorsuch. You could point to the Supreme Court, the federal judiciary being remade. This time around, I mean, that's a pretty weak argument. And I also asked her, you know, what are the most important reasons

over the next two to six years, sort of an invitation to talk long term, not just Trump, that Democrats shouldn't take over the Senate. And she just stuck to her talking points on, you know, well, Josh Turk is going to raise taxes and he's bad for Iowa hog, farmers and this, you know, there was an, I mean, I think the best argument is that, you know,

this is a six-year term that the last four years of this term are probably, and all likely, are going to be with a Democratic president. So all the things that a Democrat could do with an unchecked power. But that's a long-term thinking. And the short term, you know, she just focused on Iowa, Iowa, Iowa, you know, whether it works out for, I don't know. I mean, on the polling question, we have seen, you know, I mean, last time around there was that, you know, infamous Anne Selzer, who was a great pollster and had the

guts to at least put out her poll that was while way off. The former pollster for the Des Moines Register, often considered the gold standard. A really good track record and then a bad poll right before 2024, and Trump's tried to sue her over this, which is absurd. Which was dismissed recently. Yes, yes, yes. And then back in 2020, I mean, there were polls showing a close race with Joni Ernst, the outgoing Republican senator, ended up not being the case. So is there a similar difficulty in finding non-college white voters getting them, you know, getting this non-response bias problem, getting them on the phone or the pollsters having that same problem? this time around they've had in other recent elections, possibly, or it's also possible that, like,

$4.50 a gallon gas really is just, you know, turning Trump's base of voters, these non-voters who are white without a college degree that they're just souring them. They're not going to show up, or they might even consider voting for a Democrat this time. I think more likely they just won't show up. But that's sort of what things were like on the ground when I was there last Thursday. I mean, interesting to me that when you asked her, John, about what was the best thing about the second Trump term. She didn't point to any of the things, any of the policies. I mean, I suppose you could make an argument that what she meant by reducing the size and scope of government was a reduction in the overall size of the federal workforce, which is the one thing I think Donald Trump can say.

But that's a pretty traditional Republican old-school Reaganite response to your question. All of the things that somebody who's been supportive of the president might have offered in response to that question, she didn't use many of them. She sort of flipped back to that old school talking point. You have a chance to do any reporting, talking to her campaign team or voters she was appealing to about the fact that she's in this tight race, at least again by the polls that we're seeing today. You talk to national Republican consultants and they will tell you that she is really probably

the best candidate or one of the best candidates. to run in this environment. She makes an attractive case to voters. She's pretty good on her feet. She's sort of warm and appealing. She knows the policy well enough to talk about it in a compelling way, which distinguishes her, frankly, from a number of other candidates, I would say. Did you get any kind of feedback from voters about whether what they see or why they

would be motivated to come to a rally like this or to go out and try to bring voters to the on her behalf? Yeah, I mean, it was just a small event that I went to, you know, the downside of her not being able to go to this J.D. Vance rally is that she's focusing on this sort of small local retail elements, you know, just your typical traditional Republican voters. Actually, the one real sort of time that she got in a dust up with a voter, it was he was concerned about losing the Iran war.

He was like, well, I don't want to lose this war, you know, and she had to respond. Well, look at what Biden did with Afghanistan. I know it has to be swift and successful without giving any details of how it's going to be swift and successful. But yeah, I do think she's a pretty strong candidate. I think that, you know, someone like Johnny Ernst says the farm girl is a better fit for the state. Hinson is a former newscaster, so she's poised, but she's an Iowa newscaster and relates to people well. But it's just a tough environment, you know, like I said, with Trump being underwater by nearly 20 points in the state.

Yeah, Mike, you were in Iowa last spring and spent some time covering the Democrats there, including Josh Turek. Is it your sense that the race itself is as close as the time is polling and other polling suggests, or is it possible that we're seeing this gap? Is Turrick able to appeal to crossover? Republicans were frustrated with the Trump administration, or what's his main argument to Iowa voters? On paper, Turic is somebody who can make that appeal. He talks a lot about this. He talked about this in this competitive primary,

and I think it's part of the reason why Democrats went with Turich. He is from the western part of Iowa, which is a very Republican part of Iowa. The Democrats traditionally are in the eastern part. part. The Republicans are in the western part, and it's sort of the Duboyne area. That's the swing area. So he's from Council Bluffs. He represents in the state house, a district that Donald Trump won, and he has a sort of, it would be too strong to say a bipartisan appeal, but he's not from the party's progressive wing. He is from its more moderate wing, and your mileage may vary about how

moderate that is if you're, you know, from where you stand. And he defeated a progressive in the primary, in the Democratic primary, although he was one of the very first people that Barack Obama endorsed in this cycle, endorsed him very early after he won in that Democratic primary. Correct. And I don't know if you know your history, but Barack Obama and Iowa, there's a lot of history there. And Barack Obama was, of course, very successful Democrat in Iowa. So again, it all kind of points to, well, on paper, Josh Turquette is a good candidate. He's got a good personal story. He's in a wheelchair, and he is a parallel. Olympian and basketball. And so he's got a good personal story.

I think the more interesting race in Iowa this time around is the governor's race, because Rob Sand, who's the state treasurer, is the only statewide elected Democrat currently in Iowa, is, I think, a favorite to win the governor's race. He's running against a sort of maha-a-aligned, Make America Healthy again, aligned Republican. And there seems to be a lot of frustration. in Iowa with the state Republicans, the state-level Republicans, Kim Reynolds, pretty unpopular.

She's a two-term governor of Iowa. Iowa has had a Republican governor for quite a long time, ever since Terry Branstad's second run there and sort of the end of the Bush administration. And so it's a situation where the state-level politics may be also guiding things here. Is Rob Sand pulling along Josh Turk a little bit?

It's a question I have. I'm not really sure. Are voters being strategic and saying, well, I'm going to vote for Rob Sand. He is definitely appealing to Republican voters in his campaign, trying to run as a bridge candidate. I'll bring everybody together. And the truth is that these things can be easier when you're talking about state-level politics. And as opposed to federal-level politics, there is something about Iowa's long-standing Republican turn. Really, for the last 10 years, it's been a pretty strong and increasingly strong Republican state.

And I think that's very difficult for Democrats to run against. The fact that it's even this close, I think, tells you how bad things are for Trump. Exactly. As John has pointed out, how bad Trump's position is in Iowa, I am just skeptical that Turk has enough and that sand has enough coattails to bring him along in a federal election. Well, Jonah, if it's the case that Iowa, the competitiveness of Iowa tells a story about Donald Trump and his unpopularity, the same certainly must be said about a competitive. race in Texas. And as we've discussed on this podcast before, James Tala Rico, Democrat is, you know, by all accounts either even or slightly ahead, again, by looking at the polling today of Ken Paxton. There have been a number of developments over the past week in that race. We won't have time to

cover them all. But one of them, I think one of the most significant, is an ad that was released by Paxton's wife, they are in the middle of a divorce. She has said that these are for biblical reasons. She put out an ad that is not quite an endorsement of the man she's divorcing, but maybe the best example of what I would call partisan brain rot that we've seen from an elected official this cycle. Can we play that ad featuring Angela Paxton? I'm Texas Senator Angela Paxton. People have asked my thoughts about this election and turns out I have some. Let's talk about the elephant in the room.

In a general election, it's not as much about the individual players on the team. It's about getting the whole team across the finish line. Either we hold every Republican seat or we hand the future of Texas to the other team. That's why I'm voting for the Republican ticket on November 3rd. Let's hold the line together. Texas PAC is responsible for the contact of Texas. as advertising. So it should be said for people who are just listening to the podcast and not watching this on YouTube that at the end of the ad, it just says vote Republican November 3rd. She's not

actually endorsing. Despite the fact that she introduces her argument by saying, let's talk about the elephant in the room. She then goes on to avoid the elephant in the room, which is her husband and the divorce doesn't mention her husband. Joan, what do you make of the ad? I think it's, you know, it's sad. For those who don't know the reference, when she announced that she stood by her man during his impeachment because she was a state senator, right, during the impeachment. And then it became clear, I believe I had the chronology, right, shortly thereafter that he was definitely stepping out on his wife. And she issued a press release saying, I'm announcing the, I'm getting divorced on biblical grounds or on biblical reasons,

right? And it wasn't until now that it occurred to me that maybe that wasn't a religious reference, maybe it was just sort of an adjectival, sort of like, you know, we had a computer malfunction of biblical proportions. Like maybe, like, but anyway, the number of reasons why I'm divorcing this human gargoyle is biblical, right? It's just like, it's just too big to describe

in any other adjective. Look, I think you're right. It's partly about partisan brain rot. I also think it's very sad that she had to be asked. You know she didn't volunteer to do this, right? She doesn't like, hey, let me help out the ticket, right? And then let me give this ad where I say I'm confronting the elephant in the room, which is, you know, this horrible person that I'm divorcing from, and then not address it. Like the body language of it, the actual language language of it is clear she was encouraged to do this because what they're trying to do is pull over normie Republicans who are probably going to vote Republican for every other race but Paxton's and maybe Beau French's.

and I think the party is like we're losing Republican-leaning independence in such big numbers, and we're losing non-Maga Republicans in such big numbers that we need, and we're losing women, because I think Paxton holds moderately better than this new strain of mnemonic plague in Russia with women, but only moderately, like within the margin of error. And so I think that's part of what's going on here. I should also just back up to the Iowa conversation for just a second. What this shows, what Iowa shows, because it's really fascinating, the big New York Times Sienna poll that just came out, Nate Cohen was explaining it all.

What they're basically fine is that Republicans, the Democrats are overperforming in red, mostly Midwestern states and underperforming in a bunch of blue or lean blue states. And the reason for it, I think Cohen's right, you know, I mean, there are lots of reasons for we can you get deep in the weeds on it. But the main plot of the story is candidate selection really freaking matters. And we all, I shouldn't speak for all you guys, lots of people. When they saw Tala Rico, they're like, couldn't you find just a slightly like, like, I've told you this before.

I have a political consultant friend who likes to say Democrats could win a Senate seat or a governorship in Texas tomorrow. if they just nominated a Hispanic border county sheriff, you know, some law and order, Democrat, sort of pro-life, religious, family values, Hispanic, they could win an heartbeat. But instead they go with people like Tala Rico who are like this Austin kind of guitar and church pastor type,

and it kind of puts people on edge. But it turns out like he works, because he actually is doing the work as a candidate to beat Paxton. And then you look at places like Kansas. You look at, as you guys were talking about in Iowa, Democrats picked some plausible candidates who scan or index or code. That's the word I'm looking for. Code as sort of, I'm not one of those like crazy Washington Democrats.

I'm your neighbor Democrat. And that in a time when people cannot stand both parties, but they really want to vote against Donald Trump, that's really, really, really powerful. The problem with Paxton is that he's like a, like, if you could take the corruption and the ugliness of the Trump White House and concentrate it into a sort of black, sulfuric ooze, and then put it in human form, it would be Paxton. Like, I think I mentioned this before.

He's the one corrupt political. in my memory, who has no charm whatsoever. There's nothing like, normally when you get obviously corrupt politicians who are in on the joke about how corrupt they are, they're funny about it. Edwin Edwards, a great example. Edward Edwards is great, you know, going back to Huey Long, and people who had a little, you know, lilting panash to their corruption, right? He is just simply, I think he has hooves.

And so, like, he's not a great candidate at a moment where he's, personifies the things that people hate the most about the Trump administration, he personifies at a moment when the Trump administration is wildly unpopular. I can imagine that some people listening think, boy, Jonah's really being uncharitable to Ken Paxton in this context. And I have to say, I think you'd been rather charitable to Ken Paxton. I didn't want to be unduly harsh, just duly harsh. That's right. There were two other news stories, both regarding Ken Paxton, one last week and another out Monday about Paxton seeming to blame what he calls Washington Republicans.

Sometimes it's Donald Trump for his inability to sort of catch fire. The reason that he's having these problems in gaining support, Mike, the story out on Monday in Politico's playbook, they got for the second time in a week. It also tells you something about the number of Republicans who I think are leaking. stuff about Ken Paxton because they would be very happy to see him lose. Political Playbook had an audio surreptitiously taped of Paxton saying, I mean, it's really sort of a pathetic explanation of why he's not doing well. He says, I don't control my message. I can't even say what I want. This is all being driven by Washington and I'm sort of just floating along there,

you know, the river here. What should we make of the fact that there have been these two leaks of surreptitiously taped audio in a week, even as you're seeing Washington Republicans throw huge, huge piles of money behind Paxton to try to win this race and keep the majority. So first of all, let me say about the ad. I saw that ad with Angela Paxton on national TV, on football, I was watching football, and I saw that ad. And it's my understanding that the market in Texas media markets, they are so saturated with ads and things are getting so expensive that it ends of actually, in many cases, being cheaper to buy national ads that will be seen in Texas, but at the rates that are for national ads, which is also crazy if you think about how that

could be the case, but it tells you how much money is being spent on this on behalf of Ken Paxton to pull him over the line. I also think it's really pathetic. I agree with you that the man is saying, I can't control my own message. It's his campaign. What do you mean? he can't control his own message. He can't get, you know, I think that's just excuse making. I look at this and I look at all other kinds of these signs and signals of what people are doing and saying behind closed doors and what they're doing in public as much as I look at the polls because it tells me something about, again, as I've said before, how they think

they're doing, how these campaigns think they're doing. And I think it reflects a real urgency or a feeling of a feeling of. of almost helplessness that this is getting away from Ken Paxton. And I'm shocked to hear that because my head says, yes, Ken Paxton is a sort of historically terrible candidate. He's corrupt and all these things. And yet we hear about Texas turning blue so often. And it's just never able to happen because at the end of the day,

it's a Republican state. Republican leaners are likely to come home even for a guy like Ken Paxton. I keep thinking it's going to be like a one point. race where Ken Paxton wins, but it's going to be really, really embarrassingly close. There's a governor's race there as well. Abbott has sort of retaken the lead after a couple of polls showed him behind Gina Hinojosa, who's the Democratic nominee, and maybe Abbott will be able to pull Paxton across. And then I get like anecdot. Don't like, don't do this at all. This is bad reporting, but I just, I like to, like, survey people that I know in these places. And I have a very good

friend from college who lives in a pretty tony neighborhood in Dallas. Dallas is a pretty blue city these days, actually, but this is still a pretty Republican part. And I just said, are people voting for Paxton in your neighborhood or not? And my friend said, I would say that those who are voting for Tala Rica are much more likely to have yard signs. So I think looking at yard signs alone probably isn't a good gauge. As far as yard signs go, however, it's basically Beto level as Beto O'Rourke who ran against Ted Cruz and came close, but couldn't. do it. It's basically bedo level for Tala Rico, maybe a little more.

Maybe that little more is indicating that there's just a little bit more room here for Tala Rico to do well. Then my friend said this, I'd imagine in my immediate neighborhood, most will vote for Paxton, but won't be vocal

about it. I am inferring from that comment that there might be a lot of people in my friend's neighborhood voting for Paxton. But I wonder about their wives. And I wonder about whether their wives are going to be watching this ad on football, watching the Cowboys play and watching this ad,

and not being actually kind of turned off by it. I mean, I don't know. I don't know the psychology of all these things. But it's pretty cringe-inducing. And anything you know about Ken Paxton, it's one of those things where I do wonder if households might be splitting their vote here, Republican household splitting their vote, these are all signs that suggest things are not going well.

And my gut is arguing with my head on this. And my gut is saying, this could be a Talariko narrow win for all of those factors coming to bear. We should also just note that Trump is kind of winking and nodding, giving people permission not to vote for Baxter. Yes. I mean, he's not saying it. But what he now can't help himself. He doesn't intend it that way, do you think? I think he's doing it to make an argument so that because people are going to hold him.

responsible for Paxton, he doesn't want the blame. I think that's part of it. I think he thinks he's going to lose. And so he wants to sort of lay down a little marker that he, you know, isn't all that isn't all that great. But that little marker actually makes it more self-fulfilling, right? For sure. Like when you say, I don't like him.

He can't wear a suit. He's got a lazy eye, you know, or whatever it is. He's an ugly. He's an ugly guy. Yeah. I mean, like, like people read that. is I am non-enthusiastic about this guy and that can't help, right? I mean, how could it possibly help motivate anybody to vote for him?

Yeah. I mean, think about those two things together, right? On the one hand, you have Donald Trump taking these public shots, you know, seemingly in jest, but not really. And on the other hand, you have Paxton telling people now in a couple different of these leaked audio tapes that he blames Washington and Trump. you usually have this kind of finger pointing after a loss. Right.

It suggests that they're seeing numbers in their internal polling that might even be worse than some of the public numbers that we're seeing. But again, as I said here, the fact that we're talking about both Iowa and Texas, one month out from the 2026 midterms gives, I think, a pretty good indication of at least the environment, maybe not where things will end up in a month, but after the Republicans just pulled out of North Carolina, right, which gets the point about Canada quality. Right. And there's questions about,

Georgia as well and the viability of Mike Collins, the Republican nominee there. We're going to take an ad break, but before we do, please consider becoming a member of the dispatch. You'll unlock access to bonus podcast episodes and all of our exclusive newsletters and articles. You can sign up at the dispatch.com slash join, and if you use the promo code roundtable, you'll get a month free. Speaking of ads, if they aren't your thing, you can upgrade to a premium membership. No ads, early access to all episodes, to free gift, memberships to give away exclusive town halls with me and the other clownish founder Jonah Goldberg and more. Okay, we'll be right back. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion.

Finally, for not worth your time today, Mike, I understand that in my absence on Thursday, you had a discussion about hosting dinners and America coming together or the fact that people aren't really hosting dinners and we don't want to see other humans. I did not. I have not yet listened to that episode. I have gotten some emails that indicate that it went a little bit off the rails. I'm going to have to give it a listen. We had an email to Roundtable at the dispatch.com that suggested that the panelists were not well behaved in that discussion. Who could say. I'll have to check it out, but I wanted to pick up. I feel like I'm left out of that conversation. And I think it's an important one that we're having here. So I want to talk.

about something that's related. There is, there was an article from Bloomberg reporting on October 4th on this phenomenon that Americans are spending more time alone, shunning third spaces, and not going to places where they can find community. I think either private or in public spaces. Sam Roe, who has a popular substack on the stock market, posted something on social media. Bowling was once popular among all income groups because it offered relatively low cost and family-friendly, to socialize. League membership reached some 10 million in its heyday in the 1970s. It's now down to about a million. And he's got a chart that hopefully shows for sourcing the American time use survey, helpfully showing how few people these days are bowling. John, I'll start with

you since we both hail from the state. I believe the Bowling Hall of Fame is in Wisconsin, if I'm not mistaken. But bowling was a very popular sport in Wisconsin. In my gym class, my senior year, we went bowling twice a week. That was part of our physical education class. We got on a bus. We went to the local bowling alley. Have you ever been in a bowling league?

John, and if so, did you bowl straight at the pins, or did you try to affect a little spin to bring the ball in from the side? Never a bowling league, but in my hometown in Baldwin, Wisconsin, we, for gym class, there would be like a week a year. Going back to either middle school, middle school it was, we would go to Bowles Lane's B-O-L, the owner's last name was bowl. So it was kind of like, you know, nominative determinism, an action that he was destined to own a bowling alley someday. We also had a funeral home involved in a minute bowl. We had a funeral home named Dull. It was dull. The last guy's last thing was dull.

That was a dull funeral home. I mean, again, all these people who were just, like, were destined their entire life to do a certain thing. So, yeah, no, bowling was a lot of fun as a kid, but never, I could never get the spin on the ball. I'd always try and do whatever between, you know, the front pin on the right, you know, the front two. I can't even, I don't know the numbers, but I was never very good. Did you have the bumpers up? For, like, elementary school birthday parties. We did some bumpers, but, you know, I graduated from that probably in third grade or so.

Do you remember what your high score was? Highest score? Oh, I don't think I ever cracked 200, probably enough. good. How about you? Did you ever get a 300 close? Did you? No, no, never close in 300. And I do not have very good technique. Although I wasn't a bowling league in Northern Virginia when I lived in Northern Virginia, sort of earlier in my professional life. And it was great fun. I had my own ball. I had my own shoes. I got a few games up in the 200 area, maybe crossing that threshold, but I was not, I was not very good. I did not spin the ball either. It was sort of straight on do what you can. And my,

And the variance in my score was tremendous. You know, I could bowl in the upper two digits in one game and then, you know, close to 200 or maybe a little bit above in the next game. But, you know, it was a great place. It was mostly Wisconsin people who were in that bowling league. But it was a great place to just go and hang out. My wife was in my league. Everybody else's wives were in our league. It was Monday night.

So we'd go and we'd get dinner together. and then we'd bowl and then we'd watch Monday night football together. It was great. I miss it. Mike, did you grow up bowling? And do you think the dispatch should start its own bowling league? I did grow up bowling. I had at least one birthday party at the bowling alley and went to several parties.

And kind of later, when I was in middle school, cosmic bowling became a thing. It was sort of a way to sex up the bowling by turning on neon lights and having kind of loud music and getting the youths to come out. But like bowling was always a part of my life. I remember my grandmother used to kind of bowl with the senior center that she was involved with. And she was the one who taught me about like what a turkey was and all of that because she was, she was good. And she would get turkeys regularly. For those who don't know, that's that's three strikes in three frames in a row. And so bowling was definitely a part of my life. Bowling has been a part of my kids' life less, but it's still there. We have a bowling alley not far from where we live in

Northern Virginia. We've had one of our kids' birthday parties at the bowling alley. We've been to other birthday parties at the bowling alley. But it does feel like it's a bit of a place out of time. And I know things are changing and a little different, but we think back to bowling alleys. And maybe Wisconsin is just a different place entirely. But, you know, it's kind of an odd place for family entertainment because as far as I can remember, smoking was a very common part of the bowling alley experience. There were always people smoking cigarettes long after people had kind of stopped smoking in indoor places, right?

Like I remember the end of smoking sections at restaurants, but people were still smoking in bowling alleys. And so it has like an old-fashioned feel, even these days where I don't believe in my Northern Virginia bowling alley, you can see. smoke indoors anymore. There is, there has become something of a, of a, I wouldn't even call it a problem, but we have multiple times tried to go kind of casually bowling at just a random time, show up, right, and get some shoes and get some balls and go bowling with the kids. And we'll find out that no, actually, sorry, this is a league, a league afternoon. We're having

lots of league tournaments. And so the bowling alley is closed. And there's a bit of a, I think, a problem that you have, which is, it's become more niche and as more, you know, of an activity, it's actually harder to get in if you are casual or are interested in it. And then there's a whole, there's a lot, I think there's private equity is involved in some of these bowling alley corporations, and it's causing all kinds of grumbling. Bottom line, if the dispatch wants to have a bowling league, that's fine. I think we have a enough trouble. That's fine. You'll allow it. Well, like, fine, do what you want, go with God. I'm just saying we have enough trouble fielding a softball team every summer.

And so maybe we should wait until we win a softball game before we start a bowling league. But I mean, softball, like you need more skills to play softball. Nobody needs skills to bowl. You can get that little ramp. I probably, you probably used it every time you bowl. You get the little ramp and go down. You know, you can allow you to get into the low one hundreds. No, I mean, I think the other challenge with bowling in the COVID era,

It's like people are skeved out about putting their fingers down in the holes of a ball that might spread disease or flu or what have you. I do think bowling alleys in the past have been a place to, you know, you share shoes with people. It might be like sort of the kind of return to community. Oh, yeah, spray the stuff. It should should work. I am now wistful for secondhand indoor smoke, although I always hated secondhand indoor smoke. But yeah, the bowling alley, that's like the most distinct memory I have from. childhood. Oh my gosh, with like with like stale beer smell too mixed with it. It's very it's a very distinct

smell. But it was one of the only places that you could, I mean, you could go and you consider it being, you know, you're with community, you're participating in a sport and you can also drink beer at the same time. It is, I mean, in terms of community, I mean, the whole, if you've got a, you know, a bunch of people going at once, it is kind of, you know, it's easy to have conversation, you know, there's lots of stuff where it's not really that conducive to conversation. But, you know, it's one person up at a time. everybody else is sitting and talking, you're gone for, what, you know, two minutes, and then you're back sitting around talking. So it is a really good social.

Unless you're having a bad day, then like I'm bad, but like I was competitive enough that when I had a bad day, I was pissed about it. I didn't really want to talk to people. Can I ask, did you guys, you Wisconsinites, did you learn how to score by hand? Because I recall doing that in our physical education classes when we did our bowling unit. was you had to learn to do it. I mean, nowadays, it's all computers and it's all the screens and all that stuff. But did you ever learn how to do it by hand?

That was part of how they justified the whole school trip, I think. It was that we were doing math in addition to physical education. That's exactly. That was exactly what it is. The gym teachers would always make that point. It was never quite convincing, but I didn't much care. All right, we're going to get, Jonah had a step away from the microphone, but I'm going to get his thoughts on, I mean, dispatch bowling swag would be.

kind of cool. If we had like a dispatch bowling shirt, could be, could be solid. Sound off in the comments, folks. Yeah, exactly. Would you buy bowling swag? I mean, of course, a dispatch bowling ball. Wow. Okay, we'll get Jonah's thoughts and we will wrap it up after I talk to him. So Jonah, while you stepped away, I asked Mike and John, that's sort of a follow up to your question or your discussion last week about people not wanting to host dinners anymore and sort of disappearing community. There was a Bloomberg story about the disappearance of bowling and bowling leagues. And of course, Robert Putnam famously wrote bowling alone as a way to get into this question, what now, 20, probably 20 plus years ago. And the post from Sam Rowe, who has a substack that

looks at the stock market, noted that league membership in bowling reached 10 million in its heady the 1970s, it's now down to about a million. And my question to you is, one, did you ever bowl? Two, were you ever in a bowling league? And three, as part of our effort to heal the divides existing in America today, should the dispatch start a bowling league. Okay, so one, yes, I've bowled. I actually like bowling a lot, not a lot lot. I mean, I'm not like hugely into it, but I think bowling's fun. Lots of bowling birthday parties when I was a kid, that kind of thing. Never belonged to a bowling league.

I have owned, like, in my high school years, do you remember, like, we're both a little young to have been in the thick of it, but there was a big thing about, like, Army surplus kind of, like it was kind of hip and cool sort of striped out of wear that stuff, right? That was closely followed when I was in high school, by an incredible vogue for bowling shirts. Yep, yep. And I wore a lot of bowling shirts.

And I love bowling shirts. I think one of the reasons why I like Tommy Bahama so much is because it's, it's upper middle class bowling shirts. And I like that stuff. And what can you just describe for people who aren't familiar with bowling shirts? What sets them apart? What makes them different? Well, first of all, they're made for fat guys. So let's just be clear.

I mean, even if you're super skinny. This is why I like them now. That's the same thing with Tommy Bahama, right? They are for comfortable, prosperous men. Let's just put it that way. But the kind of retro, they look like their very 1950s look to them, the way they have a trim their short sleeve. Like almost mechanic shirt. They button up the front, right?

Right. Yeah. And they have a logo on them. And they're sort of like, not surprisingly, they come out of the same era as the Hawaiian shirt, right? And there's a similar thing going on. And I will say, like, so I think the bowling alone thing is real. It's a problem. I've talked about a lot with like Ben Sass and other people.

It's, I think one way to think about it in a slightly different sense is Susan Mick Williams, a political scientist at Pomona was the first person I read to make this point about how, like 2007, 2008 was the first year. And if I'm butchering this stat a little bit, so I apologize, but was the first year. that bottled water sales exceeded beer sales. Wow. And her point was that this has a, there's a social factor to this that is underappreciated. People who drink bottled water,

they care about their health, obviously, right? I mean, there's nothing wrong with drinking bottled water. All I'm saying is that they care about their health, but it's not a social thing. No one ever says, hey, let's go out and get a couple bottles of water together, right? Right. It's something that, you know, in a lot of sense,

You do alone with, you know, AirPods in on a treadmill. It's something that you do because you're self-actuated, self-interested. And beer is something. There are lots of people who drink beer alone. I've been known to do it. But for the most part, beer is a social thing, right? Yeah. And it's something you do with each other.

And the fact that I think symbolically she was on to something there that's related to the bowling alone thing. We're now seeing a lot of, you know, like, like it's basically our generation keeping, it's Gen X, keeping the liquor industry alive right now because young people are moving away from it. In part because they don't get together as much. And part because they don't get together. Right.

Yeah. And so I think, and look, I mean, I think weed is not a social drug the way alcohol is. And I'm not saying it's all because of... When you smoke your weed, do you do it alone? You don't get together with people and do big bong hits together, group bongs?

Never been a social bong smoker. I think this doesn't shock anybody. I am not really a wake and big solo bond smoker either. But my own point is, I think this is a real problem. And I think one of the things that we're going to have to do as a culture is figure out, like my friend Tim AI colleague, Tim Carney, he was so moved by some of the data on this stuff. You know, he wrote a great book that got into the, called Alienation that got into some of this stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

And it is a great book. And he was so moved by the data on this that he resolved to bring a keg and to schedule regular keg appearances at like a t-ball games for his kids. So people could schedule around Red Solo Cups. I mean, I think it was a pony keg. It wasn't like a full-ball gig. And show up regular times, regular appointment, socializing, that kind of thing. It's a civil society thing. I think we just as a culture need to create more of those sorts of opportunities. whether bowling is the one for it, I don't know. Well, what can we as the dispatch, Jonah, do to bring more kegs to more events? I mean, should we have in-person editorial meetings?

No virtual, make everybody fly in, have a keg at every editorial meeting? No, we should not do that. Not every editorial meeting. But, I don't know, like, I think it would be good if we could figure out some way to, you know, incorporate more. sort of socializing, you know, face-to-face stuff with the dispatch. It's something that every institution I know struggles with to some extent, you know. AI also struggles with this in terms of like getting people to physically show up at the office and have those sort of organic conversations where you walk down the hall and, you know,

you meet at the lunch table and that kind of thing. NR had these kinds of problems. I mean, remote work was a challenge before COVID. And it's like really a challenge now because we now have new habits. of the heart that we've built up. Yeah, true. And it's just easier not to, I find. It requires an actual, like, affirmative step

to do these things in community. Yeah, I mean, before COVID, most episodes of the remnant, I tried really hard to do in the studio. Yeah. You know, and it doesn't even occur to me now to do that, in part because the convenience issue, but also guests understand.

Like, that's just not how podcasts are done anymore. for the most part. Yeah, no, I agree. My brother has taken this community thing very seriously and has thrown himself into our local community and helped to build the local athletic association. And he's gotten a ton out of it. I try to participate when I can.

I'm torn because I feel some compulsion to help build community. And I also increasingly don't want to spend time in community. Yeah. It is, it is, I'm pulled both ways. And I don't drink beer. the way that I used to be able to drink beer, which, you know, was something that brought people together. There's also a thing that happens, you know, which is why I'm better positioned for the dinner party thing than you are.

There is a thing that happens that everybody when they have kids, this is not a reason not to have kids. Having kids is a great thing to do. But you kind of have to disappear for a little while. Right. Like the idea of throwing dinner parties and stuff when you've got kids running around making a mess, having homework, having league. games and all that kind of stuff, it's just not possible. And then when you get out the other side of it, when they get a little older or when you actually become an empty nester, it becomes more doable. Right. And the trick is how do you sort of like jumpstart all that, you know, once you have the

ability to do it. Yeah. Well, at the very least, I think we should do a bowling night. I would love that. The dispatch staff and we can post pictures for our listeners. Thanks for coming back in. Appreciate it. And we will talk to you with Chris Steyerwalt on Thursday to take a deeper look at the 2026 midterms. Very excited. Finally, if you want to support what we're doing here, the most important thing you can do is become a member of the dispatch. But if you don't want to do that, you can rate, review, and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice. This helps new listeners find us, sends signals to the algorithm to boost us in the

distribution. So we'd appreciate it if you take a moment to do that. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, you can email us at roundtable at the dispatch.com. We read everything, even from the ones who don't really get into the elephant in the room. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in and thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible, Noah Hickey and Peter Bonaventure. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time. Turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street. Then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food.

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