The Dispatch Podcast - That’s A Wrap | Roundtable

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

Steve Hayes invites Megan McArdle, Mike Warren, and Jonah Goldberg to review the biggest stories of the year, people we don’t want to hear from in 2026, and the best writing not from The Dispatch. The Agenda:—Most important news story—Most undercovered story—Who is the most exposed?—Best piece of non-Dispatch journalism—Best good news of the year Show Notes:—Is the AfD Too Extreme for Democracy?—The Anti-Social Century—The Sierra Club Embraced Social Justice. Then It Tore Itself Apart—Donald Trump's Tariff Dealmaker-in-Chief—Revolutionary gene therapy brings hope of leukaemia cure Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, everyone, Steve Hayes with some big news from the dispatch. I want to tell you about dispatch hoontoes. Dispatch what? Honto, though some people pronounce it Junto, is the name Ben Franklin gave to the small gatherings he organized in Philadelphia taverns, starting in the 1720s. Franklin's Huntoes, Spanish for assembly or council, consisted of 12 members, each of whom was required to pledge that he, quote, loved truth for the truth's sake, unquote, and that he was dedicated to personal growth for himself and improving his community. These discussions at those junto meetings would contribute to the ideas that built our great country. We launched dispatch Hoontos without quite the same ambition, but with a deep conviction about the need for a place

where people can get together for civil and sane conversations about the issues of the day, without the kind of nastiness and posturing that's so prevalent on social media and elsewhere in our polarized politics. The dispatch has hosted events across the country and I've attended many of them. I've been blown away by the turnout and the enthusiasm. I've enjoyed having a beer or two with our members at each of these gatherings, and I think the real value for them has been the opportunity to meet one another. I remember Nashville lingering at the bar at a great wing joint called party foul with dispatch members after our hour-long program ended. Our group talked for another hour at least, and they were so happy to have met one another, nobody even noticed when I slipped

out. I can't tell you how many times I heard something like, it's so great to be reminded that there are other sane, normal people out here. We're looking for dedicated dispatch members to organize regular meetups in their communities at a local happy hour, restaurant, or coffee shop. We'll help promote and convene the group, but you'll run your honto your way. And if your gatherings grow large enough, we'll prioritize your town or city as we plan our next regional event or live podcast taping. So if you're a member of the dispatch and your interest, you're in your interested in leading a local junto, head to the dispatch.com slash honto. That's J-U-N-T-O. Thedispatch.com slash hoonto. And if you're not yet a dispatch member, this is a great reason to join at the

dispatch.com slash join. We can't wait to build this with you. Hi there. I'm Ross Anderson, editor of of the morning dispatch, and I'm back interrupting your favorite podcast again with some more news. We were blown away by the positive feedback from everyone who tried the morning dispatch for free last month, so I pulled even more strings to work out a special deal. For the rest of December, you can get a month of dispatch membership for just $1. Yes, a dollar. That means you get the full TMD delivered straight to your inbox every morning and unlock access to everything else we have at the dispatch.

That means for just $1, you get unlimited access to our newsletters, podcasts, and stories, plus the ability to listen to audio versions of our articles. You can also join our comment section, where you'll find me most mornings, and ask me questions about TMD for our behind-the-scenes section. Head over to www.thedispatch.com slash join and become a dispatch member for just, yes, one dollar. Happy holidays and happy reading from all of us of the dispatch. Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On this week's roundtable 2025, a year in review. We'll look back. at the most important and the most undercover stories of the year. We'll also discuss the most

overexposed people in the news over the last 12 months, as well as the best pieces of journalism we've read. And finally, some good news? What's the best piece of news this past year? Personal news for the United States, for humanity. Joining me for this important conversation on my dispatch colleagues, Jonah Goldberg and Michael Warren, as well as dispatch contributor Megan McArdle. Let's dive right in. Welcome, everyone, a bit of a different format this week for our year-end show. Full disclosure, I want you all to know that I shared these five questions with the panel beforehand, but we did not, of course, coordinate our answers. so we may have some overlap, and that is just fine. We're happy to have overlap.

Let's start at the top with what we think was the most important news story of 2025. And Mike, I'll start with you. So what I thought about the answer to this question, I wanted to think about sort of what was in totality had sort of the most impact and maybe even the longest tail as well. So I think the most important story is the Trump administration's immigration enforcement, border enforcement, and deportation policy. And as big and blanket as that is, I think it incorporates a lot. I think the first thing to think about is it is more than anything that the Trump administration has done in its first year. It is the actual fulfillment of a campaign promise. Donald Trump promised a lot of things on the campaign trail, and he has not really delivered on most of them.

But this one, he has. This is something that he has sort of done exactly what he said he would do and more. And we've seen that from, you know, the actual executive orders in the first week that he was in office, you know, all the way to the beefing up of the border security, the mass. deportation push going into these cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, Charlotte, North Carolina, or you have CBP and ICE out there rounding up people. There's the whole story of what to do with people that have been deported. And there's a lot of talk, even just this week, as 60 Minutes has spiked a story. story, potentially, permanently, potentially not. We don't know about that El Salvador in prison

that a lot of those people who we were deporting were sent to. And also, it's a story about the sort of political ramifications of that. There was a poll from CBS News this week, I think late last week, Trump's approval trends among Hispanics. In February of 2025, 49% approval, 51% disapproval of Donald Trump among Hispanics, and that is basically a sky high as you can get for a Republican. In December, this month, that same CBS poll, just 29% approval of Donald Trump, 71%. That's a 42 point difference and a 40 point swing against Donald Trump. If you look at the sort of political state of the Trump administration, a lot of reasons

why people are disapproving of it, but you've got to include this one. So it's got to be that. Yeah. I mean, I think if you, if we were to ask anybody listening today or people who do what we do for a living or people who cover the White House or people who pay attention to this stuff casually, I don't think there's any question that that would have to be, you know, if we ask people for a top five, at least in the top five. And I think, Mike, you've made a very good case for why it ought to be considered number one. Megan? This is a story that sort of just popped, hasn't gotten a lot of coverage yet, but it looks like China has basically managed to make a high-end photolithography machine for making semiconductors. Now, for the high-end semiconductors, more than 90% of the machines in the world come from one Dutch company called ASML.

they are extremely protective of their process the machines my understanding is they have to check in basically with headquarters once a day and if they don't they just brick them um china looks like played a long game had workers on the inside probably in multiple different verticals to get around that um they had a secret process writers reported where you know workers had fake names no one knew what they were doing in the building and Now it looks like they have gotten one of these machines. Why this matters, look, if you think that we're in an AI race where its winner takes all, where this thing is self-accelerating, doesn't necessarily mean it becomes super intelligent in the way some people talk, but simply where AIs can code other AIs and being ahead in that race means that the other people basically can't catch up. If you think that is the case, China has one big advantage, which is electricity. They've also got a lot of people.

And so that means more engineers to do stuff where America is ahead is in compute. So China developing the ability to make its own compute, that's why we've been doing export restrictions, or at least the most compelling argument for export restrictions on these chips. If China can make its own compute, it's very hard to see how we can catch up because we can't build electricity as fast as they do. We could, in theory, there is nothing stopping us, except. a zillion nimbies and bad regulatory laws. And so this is a major, major setback.

Now, that doesn't mean they're going to be, you know, pumping out semiconductor chips tomorrow, but it does mean that America just suffered a major blow in the race to win AI. So I guess we better hope it's not one or take all. Yeah, that's extraordinary. And I might have to amend my answer for most undercover story because I have not been paying attention to that story,

but you've convinced me that it's as significant as you suggest. Jonah, most important news story of 2025. Okay, just with the caveat, I've made this point a bunch of different ways that in the past, but like the future often changes our understanding of the past and it is entirely possible that news events in six months will make it seem like something that seemed like a fairly minor story, all of a sudden we'll look back in hindsight

and say, oh, it should have been obvious that it should have been a major story. Now, that's BS. I mean, we expect you to know right now what the most important story is. No caveats. Who knew that Obama making fun of Donald Trump was going to turn at the White House correspondent's dinner?

That is a perfect. Was going to turn into such a consequential story. That's right. But your harangues and expectations roll off me like water off a duck, Steve. So all that said, I think we're going to look back on 2025 as the year that the climate consensus, not in terms of whether climate change is happening, but how to respond to it completely fell apart. It's a moving date. I'm sure you can find some symbolic thing in 24 or 23 or 22. But if you just look at the broad sweep of things, the EU has just punted on its, you know,

it had planned to basically get rid of internal combustion energy just by 2035 and now they're like, never mind. You're seeing coal power plants and gas power plants look much more attractive in a lot of places in the U.S. and elsewhere just to maintain the capacity. A lot of this is driven by the AI stuff that Megan is talking about. we didn't go to the big climate conference, meaning the United States. And you can go down sort of a long list of backlashes about high energy prices, particularly in Germany with like these crazy policies that make home heating crazy

expensive and all these kinds of things. And I think it maps over the broader sort of population. nationalist backlash stuff that, you know, we're seeing in the UK and throughout, you know, the West, really, and none of those movements are going to be climate change, you know, like let's throw a wet blanket and switch entirely to solar. The irony is that solar is actually now becoming a competitive thing in its own right, which I know is frustrating a lot of people. So I think when you think about what the international order looks like,

And the international economic order looks like when you remove the peer pressure to do this sort of fundamental reorganization about climate change, it just makes things in one way look a lot more normal, but another way, a lot more sort of unpredictable. And I think many of the things the Trump administration has done to dismantle are the scientific work on climate change has been outrageous, like getting rid of stuff that. Measures, you know, CO2 and whatever in the atmosphere. Like, we should know that because we should know that, whatever you think about climate change. Some of that stuff, I think, is just pure vandalism. But I also don't think all of it can be restored, not to the status quo ante. I think the center of gravity on this stuff has just moved. And I think the inflection point came in the last year.

I really hope this means that this issue is going to be less stupidly polarized, right? I drove a Tesla across Washington State a couple weeks ago. And it was great. Charging was a little nerve-wracking in that I was worried that something would go wrong. Nothing did. It was great. I went in. I had a coffee.

It charged. I came out. I went on with my day. And I think, you know, there are still lots of wrinkles to be ironed out. But this shouldn't be a political issue. Who likes smog? Who likes internal combustion exhaust? Who likes noisy vehicles?

I mean, people in them and like car enthusiasts, but most of us. I like noisy, noisy muscle cars or, yeah. Sure, sure, sure. But I'm like, but it shouldn't be about banning them. It should be about like, this is a cool product that solves some problems. It, you know, does make long range trips a little more challenging logistically at the moment as we build out the EV charging infrastructure. But on the other hand, when was the last time you got to gas up your car at home overnight while you slept? Right.

This is true on solar and wind. People, it's one thing to not want to subsidize it or to quarrel about how much we should subsidize it. It is another thing to just be glad that we're killing solar projects because you hate the environmentalists, which has been a real issue. And so on and so on. On the environmentalist side, the polarization against nuclear, totally ridiculous, right? It would be nice if, as environmentalists realize, what a complete dead end, the whole degrowth strategy is, if they stopped being so, like, I am taking away your toys, you will eat the mulch and like it, and started promoting actual solutions like nuclear, like renewables in lots of cases, like EVs that aren't jammed down your throat, but that we enable by, for example, reforming permitting for electric vehicle charging stations. then I think conservatives might be more amenable to, like, yeah, I guess I actually don't like pollution. It's not my favorite.

And I hope that this means that we are actually looking forward to a better, less, like, what's really important is that I hate you and your way of life kind of political debate over this. I'm going to short civility in this discussion. That's just, that's just going to say, that's my position. If we're getting to the point where facts matter more than emotions in our political arguments, that could be the story of the year, actually. The big news story of the year. No, I agree. I agree. I mean, look, I think we've seen, you know, just in the past several months, we've seen some progress on that score where some people who I think we would have long regarded as climate alarmists have kind of stepped back from that and said, well, okay, some of.

of the things that we warned about didn't come to pass, and it's worth taking a second look at this. I do hope that it occasions a smarter, more thoughtful discussion of this. I have to say, just listen to the three of you with your answers. I think we need to lead to this show at this time next year by revisiting these three, actually. Not as a sort of, you got this right, you got this wrong, but I think that would be really interesting just to see where we are. And I do want to clarify something that I think I didn't say, and I should have said, which is that this machine that the Chinese have, it's a prototype. They have not, as far as we know, produced any chips with it.

So maybe we'll come back to a year and be like, well, actually, they couldn't make it work. And then Megan will have egg all over her face. And it will be the most gloriously joyful egg I will ever wear. That's good. I would be with you if that happened. So my most important news story of the year is bringing us a little bit back to what Mike said, but going broader. And it's the erosion of the rule of law in the United States. We've seen this in so many stories that we've written about at the dispatch that we've discussed on this podcast, on advisory opinions on the remnant.

But whether it's the blatant corruption of the Trump administration's personal deals, all the deals, the undisguised targeting of political enemies by the president who goes out in public in speeches and brags about his targeting of his political enemies by government entities, prosecutors, et cetera, the nakedly political pardon regime we've seen over the last year, beginning with the blanket pardons of the, the January 6th attackers who showed many of them zero contrition, there was no question that they had done what they had done. We saw them on video doing it. But they were pardoned largely because they did what they did on behalf of Donald Trump. I think you can extend this argument to the unapologetic quid pro quos in foreign policy. If you look at the Qataris giving us a plane for potential Air Force One to permanent security guarantees. We will give you something like what we've provided NATO. We've seen this, I think, pretty dramatic erosion of the rule of law, and it's so hard

to keep up with on a day-to-day basis. I think there's just a scramble of people who cover the White House or cover politics, covered these stories generally on a day-to-day basis. It's so hard to just keep up with that, that putting it proper perspective, I think is virtually impossible. I think it's hard to know, to Jonas' point earlier, just how significant this erosion has been, but we're seeing it on a near daily basis. There are stories, they're good reporting about it on a near daily basis. And I think, you know, it's contributing to increasing questions about the impartiality of justice today because of the stories that we're seeing because of the things that come. out of the president's mouth, but I don't think it's at all possible to assess the longer-term

damage to the rule of law and to our sense of the rule of law and to sort of the collective American experiment that we're seeing. And I don't think we'll probably even be able to appreciate that at this time next year when we revisit some of these stories. Yeah, Steve, I have a question about that because the Trump administration and certainly its allies seem to act as if nobody cares about this, right? I would say that they seem to be doing all the things you're talking about with impunity. There's nobody's going to come after them. They're not going to face any political retribution for it.

I'm curious if you think that's the case. You describe how sort of it's impossible to kind of distill it and follow it all. But do you get the sense that that has seeped out into the larger understanding of the Trump administration? that it's got this feeling of like, yeah, Trump's paying off his cronies or he's getting his kind of, he's getting people are coming to him and giving him what he wants. So he gives them what they want. I don't have a good sense of that. I don't know what you think. It's a good question. I don't know. I mean, you know, you'll hear, and we've talked about this before here, you'll hear defenses of what Trump is doing that essentially take the position that because he's doing it in public and because he's so aggressive about it, it makes it less suspect. We don't have to ferret it out. You don't need to invest. to find out that Trump wants to punish people because of their political party or their political positions. He tells us that that's what he wants to do. We had his chief of staff in the interview that we discussed last week, effectively saying, like, yeah, I thought that we'd give him a little time for retribution. I didn't think it was going to last this long, but she didn't deny that that's what he's doing.

And that's what he's doing. She's confirming it. It's the kind of single story that would have, you know, led to her resignation, would have led to impeachment proceedings against the president in the past. people do just shrug it off. I don't know that it's that people don't care, although I'm open to that possibly. Certainly people care less than I do. I mean, that I thought after January 6th, like, anybody who was sort of on the fence about Donald Trump by that point would be off the fence at that point, and he would have been sort of cast aside. Obviously, a lot of people didn't feel the way I felt about it. So it's definitely the case that people don't feel as strong about this stuff as I do,

many people don't. But I don't know that we can say that they don't care. I mean, we may see this sort of the cumulative effect of this show up in the November midterms, right? I mean, there may be some payback for Trump for some of this. I guess the, and again, not to revisit themes that are part of these discussions more often than I would like, I continue to be surprised. And I just, just admitting that makes me naive. But so few Republicans. seem to care. And this stuff is so obvious. And I understand that there's very little political upside for them in calling him out or raising protests. But I mean, at a certain point, on some of the obvious ones, don't you have to just register that this is improper? That we don't do

this this way? And the fact that they don't, I don't know if they're, you know, if that cowardice extends to a lot of Republican voters or most Republican voters. but I suppose we'll find out soon enough. But you see, like this is, I mean, like I, when you were talking about the stuff going on in the Caribbean, I was tempted to say that it may turn out that that's the most important story of the year because it's signaled that America has basically gone

to this Neo-Monroe doctrine nonsense and sphere of influence nonsense and is turning a blind eye on Europe. It's not clear it is right now, but it may be clear in hindsight going forward. Similarly, like, if we're, were doing this podcast in early, at the end of 1972, some of you wouldn't be born. I would be teething on the microphone, but, I would be waiting in my mother's womb.

But the idea that this obscure break-in at the Watergate would have been the most important story of 1972, it would be absurd, right? But by 1974, it was like, duh, right? Right. And so some of this lawless stuff, some of this foreign policy stuff, it takes time to mature and then people retroactively connect dots and say, oh, my gosh, this trend's been under our nose for a really long time. And, you know, I'd say of insights that I have repeated on this podcast the most, it's the, it's the observation that we say the straw that breaks the camel's back for a reason. And that's not because straw breaks camel's backs. It's because things accumulate. And then all of a sudden, this country's like, wait a second, look at what we had to put up with here. And then they get pissed off about stuff that they let go, you know, six months earlier.

think the British have a nice expression. It's like storing up trouble for the future. I think the trouble administration has been storing up a lot of trouble for the future for the GOP and for the country. I mean, I do think the corollary, I agree with you. I mean, and that's, I think it's a very important point. The corollary on foreign policy would be, in addition to the Korean boat strikes, in addition to the sort of deals for Qatar and others, you know, would obviously be Ukraine, in my view, where it's hard. I mean, I, I, we talk about it a lot. We spend time on it for a reason. I think it's a hugely important story. But, you know, will we appreciate that the United States has shifted its foreign policy from one that, you know, and

you could argue, you know, there's plenty to criticize about the bipartisan foreign policy establishment that's derided as the blob, you know, having some combination of morality and U.S. interests drive foreign policy. But, you know, the other big argument would be that we've shifted away almost entirely, in my view, from a morality-based foreign policy or a foreign policy that has much to do at all with Ralph. We're not even making those judgments. So it's not like Donald Trump is stopping and saying, wow, Vladimir Putin is really an evil person. And what he's done in the raping and pillaging of Ukraine, is morally reprehensible.

We don't even, like, that's not really part of the conference. We're having that conversation. Other people are having that conversation. The only person even bringing that up is Melania Trump in these very limited moments where she can kind of pull her husband back from the break. And it seems like such. Right. It's such a profound, profound shift.

And, you know, I think it's profound now in the moment. That's why we spend as much time talking about it as we do. But I don't think we'll really have appreciated that, you know, in a year, maybe even in five years. All right. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the Dispatch podcast. Canada can be a global leader in reducing the harm caused by smoking, but it requires actionable steps. Now is the time to modernize Canadian laws so that adult smokers have information and access to better alternatives. By doing so, we can create lasting change.

If you don't smoke, don't start. If you smoke, quit. If you don't quit, change. Visit unsmoke.ca. Hey, everyone, Steve Hayes with some big news from the dispatch. I want to tell you about dispatch hoontoes. Dispatch what? Hoonto, though some people pronounce it, Junto,

is the name Ben Franklin gave to the small gatherings he organized in Philadelphia taverns, starting in the 1720s. Franklin's Huntoes, Spanish for Assembly or Council, consisted of 12 members, each of whom was required to pledge that he, quote, loved truth for the truth's sake, unquote, and that he was dedicated to personal growth for himself and improving his community. These discussions at those junto meetings would contribute to the ideas that built our great country. We launched dispatch Hoontos without quite the same ambition, but with a deep conviction about the need for a place where people can get together for civil and sane conversations. about the issues of the day without the kind of nastiness and posturing that's so prevalent on social media and elsewhere in our polarized politics. The dispatch has hosted events across the country and I've attended many of them. I've been blown away by the turnout and the enthusiasm.

I've enjoyed having a beer or two with our members at each of these gatherings and I think the real value for them has been the opportunity to meet one another. I remember Nashville lingering at the bar at a great wing joint called party foul with dispatch members after our hour-long program ended. Our group talked for another hour at least, and they were so happy to have met one another, nobody even noticed when I slipped out. I can't tell you how many times I heard something like, it's so great to be reminded that there are other sane normal people out here. We're looking for dedicated dispatch members to organize regular meetups in their communities at a local happy hour, restaurant, or coffee shop. We'll help promote and convene the group, but you'll run your

Honto your way. And if your gatherings grow large enough, we'll prioritize your town or city as we plan our next regional event or live podcast taping. So if you're a member of the dispatch and you're interested in leading a local Honto, head to thedispatch.com slash Honto. That's J-U-N-T-O. Thedispatch.com slash Honto. And if you're not yet a dispatch member, this is a great reason to join at the dispatch.com slash join. We can't wait to build this with you. Hi there. I'm Ross Anderson, editor of the morning dispatch, and I'm back interrupting your favorite podcast again with some more news. We were blown away by the positive feedback from everyone who tried the morning dispatch for free last month, so I pulled

even more strings to work out a special deal. For the rest of December, you can get a month of dispatch membership for just one dollar. Yes, a dollar. That means you get the full TMD delivered straight to your inbox every morning and unlock access to everything else we have at the dispatch. That means for just one dollar, you get unlimited access to our newsletters, podcasts and stories, plus the ability to listen to audio versions of our articles. You can also join our comment section, where you'll find me most mornings, and ask me questions about TMD for our behind-the-scenes section. Head over to www.thedispatch.com slash join and become a dispatch member for just yes, one dollar. Happy holidays and happy reading from all of us of the dispatch. We're back.

You're listening to The Dispatch podcast. Let's jump right in. We want to get to our second question and we'll just go in the same order. Mike, I'll start with you. The most undercovered story of 2025. Well, this is a little self-serving because it's a story that I've been covering. So I just think everybody should be following my lead on it. But I do think it's a big story and it will be bigger. And I think the discussion right now that's happening online is a part of this, which is the kind of crack up or shake up within the conservative movement and within conservative institutions. John McCormick and I have written about this quite a bit over the past two months, things keep developing that keep confirming kind of my thesis about this whole thing,

which is that, you know, Donald Trump has not created more unity within conservative institutions and the conservative movement. He's just set things up so that when he leaves the stage, or actually even before he leaves the stage, but when he can kind of see the wings, you know, in the distance, he's about to walk off, those kind of infights and discussions and debates about what it means to be a conservative, what it means to be right wing, what it means to be and sort of down the line a Republican, that's the story that is, I think it's underappreciated and undercovered because so much of it is happening in these obscure, relatively obscure places like the Heritage

Foundation. Yes, it's a big, it's a big think tank, but sort of what goes on there doesn't necessarily have a lot of impact on sort of a normal American's everyday life, but it's happening there. It's happening in the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. It's happening at places like Hillsdale College. It's happening in local Republican parties and college Republicans. And all of these places where conservatives are sort of trying to figure out who they are and what. what they stand for and some of what some of those people are arguing for is getting pretty ugly and I just think it's a story we should we should keep following yeah I agree with you

entirely I hope you do keep following it I think it also has been undercover and I know we sometimes get into the details is it undercover or poorly covered because there is a difference right and I feel like we hear a lot about this stuff it's just that it's most of the stuff maybe it's Maybe poorly covered is, yeah, a better way to put it. Megan. I'm going to keep on the techno-futurist theme and say that I think the most undercovered story this year was autonomous vehicles, given how far they've come. And it's not actually that the vehicles themselves have made huge advances in the year, although it's more that Waymo, which is the leading company in this space in that they have now, they've been operating a robo-taxie, they keep expanding. They've been trying to expand to DC and have been blocked by some combination of our city council transportation committee or D.DOT, which was supposed to produce this report and do rulemaking.

And they just didn't. And then they've had years to make this report. And then they announced when people asked them where it was, they finally announced, oh, well, We were, when Trump cut our money, we didn't do that report. It's like really, really, it just, you've been working on it for years, but then Trump cut your money and you were like, why would we embrace the technology of the future? I think this story is undercover because the safety profile is incredible in these things. You were talking about like five-fold reductions in serious accidents. And not only that, when you dig down into the accidents as Tim Lee.

who, full disclosure, personal friend, also writes the fantastic Understanding AI newsletter. He dug into the event into the actual crashes, and it's basically they're almost all the fault of the other driver. And people, now, the Washington Post editorial board has, I should say, done some fine work on this topic. But in general, people are not paying attention to what a big deal this is. Forty thousand people a year are killed on American roads. If you could take that out of the equation, and we are, look, a long way from that, if you are terrified that they're going to come tomorrow and take away your car and make you use a robot, right now these cars are very expensive. They have high maintenance requirements, and it's going to be

a long time before they are widely deployed into people's homes. But nonetheless, every human piloted car that you take off the road is a serious reduction in the potential for accidents. And you could see kind of snowballing effects as when there are more of these cars on the road and fewer humans, you'll see even fewer accidents than the current numbers would suggest. Because often what you'll see is, for example, the cars will behave lawfully. And other cars that are not expecting a car to, for example, stop at a red light, will then crash into the back of them. But they've now done a million miles, which is about where we should start to see,

sorry, 100 million miles. It's about to see, they're close to that number, and that's about where we should start seeing whether we can reduce fatalities. We have so few fatalities. I mean, we just take a lot of trips, but you only get about one fatality every 100 million vehicle miles traveled. So they're now approaching the threshold where we can start to see are they also having fewer deaths? And this would be just an incredible advance for people. And it's not just about what it enables for reducing car deaths. It's about what it enables for electrification, which I do think is good.

And having fleets of these things or even a car that could just drive itself home to charge just changes the worries about range. If you think about other things it could enable, we don't even know yet the kinds of vehicle form factors it could enable. Eventually, it could do things like have convoys of trucks who can draft off of each other, which will reduce the amount of fuel needed to take them and make the truck. faster and more efficient. You can think about in some future 20 years from now what having a lot of these cars would mean for the ability to manage traffic condition, right? Like rather than letting Google Maps route you, you sort of just automatically adjust to traffic conditions, just a whole lot of stuff that can be done with this technology. It's incredibly exciting. I am incredibly excited. It's going to empower disabled people, old people who can no longer drive. Just an amazing advance for

humanity this year. I'm very excited about it. And while there was some coverage, a lot of it was like, a Waymo hit a cat in San Francisco. Do you know how many cats are killed in San Francisco every month by human drivers? A Waymo has killed one. And suddenly, this is a front page story. I was amazed. Steve didn't say not enough. I mean, I just, I thought, I don't do that. I thought that was coming. Like, you can't, I don't, I mean, I love cats, but I don't want them to die. Jeez, just harsh. But it's amazing, it's amazing, mega, to your point, we're here. Like, this is this moment.

Like, I spent a weekend in Phoenix this fall. And Waymos are everywhere. And if you haven't had that experience, I think a lot of people who haven't traveled or haven't been in a city where they're prevalent, it's hard to imagine it. And just being in the city walking around, it's like everywhere you go, people are being picked up and ferried about. by driverless cars. I mean, it's really happening.

And the experience is that I've written in one several times in San Francisco. You feel safer in it, and you can see, you know, sitting in the back of one how unsafe other drivers are around it. And it totally changed my opinion about them. Yeah, I mean, one thing, too, to contemplate for all the people who are like, they will take my car out of my cold dead hands is that you could go a lot faster in robot cars. than you can go in a human car, right? Because if no one's behaving erratically, and if everyone's obeying the law, you might actually be able to get traffic moving

quite a bit faster than we can safely allow it to move right now. I mean, there's all sorts of things. So, Megan, I feel like we've got to do this because we will hear from people if we don't. I get unalloyed technophilia and how awesome all of this could be. and I for one relish the days where I can go to a remote roadhouse and not worry about drunk driving or drunk drivers.

But like when a country were what, one in seven, one in ten people, men, particularly have jobs involving driving stuff, we should at least take a second and mention that the dislocations from this are going to be politically significant and royal we already live in an economy where men are getting, let's put it this way, feel increasingly screwed and the amount of jobs that pay well for a strong back and physical effort are deteriorating by the day, there's going to be some pain sociologically and politically that comes with this glorious era. There is always some pain, although I will say that like Boston has basically made this

argument directly and their city council is fighting basically for an ordinance that it would make it functionally impossible to operate a self-driving car within Boston city limits. The Teamsters are also pushing people to require a driver in a self-driving truck, which is like, what? And on the one hand, I'm sympathetic. It's like requiring an elevator man and elevators that are automatic. And on the other hand, imagine if we made this argument about medicine. Well, if we cure cancer, what about all the hospice nurses and what about it's like, I feel like we can find something better for those guys to do than doing a thing that kills 40,000 Americans a year.

Yeah, that kind of disruption isn't that? If we cured cancer, it would also actually be a pretty significant economic dislocation for a lot of Americans. But first of all, the other thing we should remember, this is not going to happen overnight. This is going to be a gradual process. I agree with you. I just think recognizing that there'll be arguments, right? It's like if we cured cancer, anybody who said, oh, this is bad for the oncologists would be pelted with rocks. But we said we found a cure for truck drivers.

They now can go home and not drive trucks. The response is going to be different. In some ways, it would be fun to live in a world where we drove around on horses instead of cars. They are, I find them much more appealing in many ways. But also that would be ridiculous and we'd all be really poor. And I don't think that's on Nat a better world. And that's how I think about this is like, yes, it put horse grooms out of work, buggy whip manufacturers, all sorts of people had to learn, had to get entirely new jobs. Often people, you know, this was quite skilled work to be like a head groom at a stable. That guy lost his job. There was no benefit to him. He was probably

net worse off. But, I mean, how many of us want to go back and save that guy's job now? And if I can just weigh in as the curmudgeon in the group, the sooner this happens, the better because my semi-official assessment of the number of people driving while on their phones, it has tripled in the past three years. I mean, when I drive into Washington, it's amazing. It's unbelievable. And you now have increasingly people watching. watching shows while they are driving places. Have you actually seen this? All the time. Like all the time. I saw a guy parking. I will say I do sometimes pick up the phone and I do my, I switch a podcast really quickly.

But that's like a two second like next, you know, hit the next button. I know. This is a parking lot of a web watching a basketball game. He had the phone underneath the rearview mirror so that he could watch the basketball game while. As he was moving the vehicle. as he was like backing into a parking space. People are not even, people aren't even pretending anymore.

They will just have the phone out as they're cruising down the highway. I just did, as it turns out, I just did, let's see, it was only 18 hours and then 17 hours. So 35 hours of driving in the last four days. And the number of people who are just driving with devices out like they're reading a book is extraordinary. And I know that makes me sound like, like an old man, and maybe there's a reason for that. No, you can't watch anything but the road while you're driving. It's incredible. It is incredible.

That's what you think, Megan. I'll just very quickly make the point. We don't have to follow up on it. I say this personally because I kind of stumbled into it about how important it was. The Chinese-Japanese diplomatic crisis of the last 90 days over Taiwan. is really undercovered. I have not, and I do a lot of CNN punditry these days. So I'm also watching a lot of that stuff, you know, in the green room or like, whatever.

I haven't seen an ounce of analysis about any of this. And tensions between Japan and China are pretty fraught right now. And it's largely overstatements by the new prime minister about Taiwan. and the only thing I'll bring up is we talk about how, like, future events can change the importance of things. The debate about whether we defend Taiwan is always about whether we defend Taiwan. What if we have to defend Taiwan because Japan is fighting for Taiwan and we have to defend Japan? Like, some of these decisions can be made, I don't want to say, without, you know, without deliberation, But, like, you can get on a cascade of geopolitical conflict because of our entangling alliances, which I'm not using as a negative thing here, in ways that people are completely unprepared for.

No one's done any polling on should we protect Japan if Japan gets involved in a war with China. But, like, that's a real live question. And even if we said no, then we don't honor any security arrangements and also our economy. It goes, you know, careening into a ravine very quickly. And it just hasn't gotten the kind of coverage it deserves. Do you. And we probably haven't done enough at the dispatch. Jonah, you're the editor-in-chief.

Can you do something about that? I'll make a phone call. Can you assign some stories? Well, if only we had a writer with years of experience writing about national security stuff on staff. It was always going to go back there, wasn't it? Stop fighting. Stop fighting. It's Christmas time

Make Mike start smoking again We're going to take a quick break But we'll be back shortly We're back You're listening to the Dispatch podcast Let's jump right in Those are all very good Examples of Undrecovered stories

We should do more of them here at the dispatch We encourage our colleagues across the media To cover them more and cover them better The correct answer, is the national debt. We are approaching $39 trillion. We have two major political parties that aren't even interested in talking about entitlement reform.

This is driving the national debt. There's not really much discussion about it. We cover it pretty regularly, but we probably don't cover it as often as we should. I've said this a million times, feel like a broken record. Not enough people care about the debt now. and at some point soon, everybody will care about it. We should cover it more. Okay, now moving on.

I'm sorry, Jonah. You know, Jonah, since your feelings were hurt on that, I'm going to let you go first here and do this with my kids. Who is the person in 2025 who was the most overexposed? And the alternative version of the question is, who is the person you just don't want to hear from in 2026 or maybe in perpetuity? Oh, gosh. I mean, they're kind of different questions in some ways, right?

Because there's some people who just really annoy me personally. And then there are other people who were like wildly overexposed as a sort of political media matter. I would say, I hate saying, I kind of hate saying this because you could also argue he's the most important person alive, right? So like it goes both ways. but Elon Musk does not generally benefit from sustained media exposure and neither due to the people around him like you know it used to be this cliche among conservatives to say about Hollywood people just shut up and sing right just shut up and tell jokes don't stay in your lane in effect this is the guy who is the

The only person that we know of right now that is already a household name that has a non-trivial chance of being remembered by name 5,000 years from now, you know, after everything that we think of as civilization is gone, but the guy who launched us as an interplanetary species is the guy who got so red-pilled and distracted by Twitter. he bought it and took his eye off the ball in ways that are just staggering. And so, like, I feel like yelling at him, shut up and make rockets, right? I mean, that's what the guy is there for. And or since Megan is such a voluptuary of driverless cars, shut up and make Tesla's. But I think the rocket stuff is more important. And his involvement in politics hasn't been good for the Republican Party. I don't think on net it has been good for the deficit and debt that you were talking about, which was the ostensible reason why he did Doge.

And I don't think it's been necessarily good for Elon Musk. And I also just don't find him as fascinating a figure when it comes to his political opinions as a lot of people do. The guy ain't Tony Stark. And Tony Stark's political opinions were not particularly impressive to me either. I am really tired about hearing about Olivia Nuzzi and RFK Jr. We can't, we can't say that RFK Jr., we can't hear any more from him because he does lead the Department of Health and Human Services at the time, at the moment. And so he is an important government figure in that respect. but the whole sort of psycho drama of Olivia Nosey, who is a talented writer and someone who has gotten too caught up in mixing her personal life and her professional life.

There's just been too much digital ink spilled on this story, and hopefully this is the last time that I ever have to professionally mention her or. or that whole mess. Yeah, I will say the Newsy thing, Newsy-Lisa thing makes me sad. I have refused to read the either American Canto or Ryan Lizza's 98 million part subtext series on their relationship. I think they're actually both in many ways,

incredibly good reporters and journalists in terms of like they had flair and style and sources and they did the job and also that maybe the characteristics that made them so good at that job like a willingness, a brazen willingness to take personal risks or also the thing that has made them,

led them to this place, let us say. My candidate for over-exposed is Candace Owens. Because not that I don't think that it is important that there is a raging anti-Semite who is influential in the conservant, in the conservative movement or that she is, her raging anti-Semitism is amplified by other people in the conservative movement, that's a really important story that should be covered. But Owens herself, and like I say this to Maga-Conservative, 0% of Hume, watch this, listen to this

podcast, but she's crazy. She's not just an anti-Semite. I don't like, I don't want to suggest, you know, I don't want to suggest that there's something mentally healthy about other kinds of anti-Semitism. But when you watch what she does, this is disordered thinking. It is the kind of obsessive, spurious pattern matching that you see in people who are having serious breakdowns. I cannot diagnose her from afar.

I could not even if she were close because I am not a professional psychotherapist. However, I think there is something really, this is kind of Kanye West stuff, there is something deeper going on. Tucker Carlson, what he's doing is vile and despicable, but he is sane just making evil choices. She is in some other category of, you know, her stuff about Brigitte Macron, where she is claiming that she is a man and now being sued for it and doubling down. on it. And all of this, like when you watch it, it's like watching people who have a problem who are muttering to themselves as they accumulate, well, you know, and then the CIA, you can see it was the CIA because I read this, you know, the ingredients on this can of corn and they're sending secret messages. Although actually I will say that it turns out, I guess, that the CIA was in fact running a Star Wars fan site that was where informants could pass information

through the fan the fan site so like I guess I don't want to feed any of this but that's so crazy now is she wow I I so is that how we got plans the exhaust sports on the Death Star yes yes yeah you know if boffins had to die to get that website set up yeah so I just think like the like even if you want I guess this is not going to be taken well in the same way as when I tell the the left that blue sky is not helping them and they're like obviously blue sky must be the best thing ever because Megan McCartle hates it it's like no it's really not helping you also if you look at the data the site is slowly bleeding to death and is not going to be around for that long but I'm going to issue this advice anyway which is that having people like that who are not just bad or as you would good if you are a white supremacist and raging anti-Semite. But having people who are crazy, they will eventually blow out in some way

and take you down with them. It only ever ends one way because the craziness is not controlled. It's not strategic. It is totally sincere and it's going to go wherever it goes. So anyway, I would like to never... I would like her to get some help, actually.

And then I would like to hear from her when she comes back and it's like, I now realize that the anti-Semitism was a symptom of my mental health problems rather than and then recants it and tells everyone why she was wrong. But I'm not holding my breath for that. Yeah, the reinvention narrative leads nicely to mine and we won't spend much time talking about her because mine is Marjorie Taylor Green. I don't need to hear about her. I don't need to read about her. I don't need to hear from her. And I certainly don't need to hear from resistance types who are now embracing her and lionizing her because she's saying some negative things about Donald Trump these days. It's preposterous.

She's overexposed. I've already said too much. Let's move on. On that just, because it does show how some people are incredibly cheap dates politically. Yes. But if you just change one position that they really. really, really care about. All of a sudden, you're a hero. And I have to say that even repatorial mainstream journalism thinks that story about Green is so much more interesting than it

actually is. Totally right. Absolutely right. Okay. Next topic. The best piece of non-dispatched journalism in 2025. And Megan, I'll start with you this time. My favorite thing was something that Graham Wood wrote for the Atlantic on the AFD, which is the far right party in Germany. You went to some rallies, you talked to people. And I think the thing that Graham does that's so great is that he really has a quite firm moral center. But he also really goes out and attempts to put himself in the mind of people that he really disagrees with and try to see the world the way they do and show you the world the way they see it. It's a rare gift.

I thought this was a terrific piece, and I recommend it to everyone. We will put all of these pieces in our show notes, Jonah. Yeah, so I was going to actually say the New York Times, which they wanted to pull to a Pulitzer for explanatory journalism about Afghanistan. But actually, I got to say my favorite piece of the year was also a New York Times piece, favorite non-dispatch piece of the year, which was the retroactive autopsy of what happened to the Sierra Club insofar as the Sierra Club had decided amidst the George Floyd COVID era, peak wokeness era.

that they just couldn't be the Sierra Club, right? They couldn't just do Sierra Club stuff about like preserving wilderness and expanding green spaces and conservation. They had to be full spectrum fat burger progressive on every single issue. And, you know, we've talked about this phenomenon in the context of a lot of different things,

you know, about how much better off the NRA would be if there were pro-NRA people in the Democratic Party. How much better it would be for American capitalism if there are more Democrats, if support for sort of conventional chamber of commerce policies were in both parties, right? If you want to protect a mainstream basic issue is you want it to have broad bipartisan support in some way.

And I think that that applies to, a lot of these kinds of institutions is that if you make your institution sort of like what has happened with the ACLU into just a progressivism Inc. kind of thing, then you are only as popular as your least popular position. And you start roping in, you start shackling politicians and all sorts of things. People forget, I brought up here, maybe last week, but Like the reason why Kamala Harris got into so much trouble with that, you know, she's for they, them, he's for you stuff, is that the ACLU demanded that she fill out a questionnaire, along with all the other Democratic candidates in 2020.

And one of the questions was, do you support government-funded transgender reassignment, you know, transgender surgeries for illegal immigrants and for, prisoners and like that's not what the ACLU is for and it's not what the Sierra Club is for and I just think that like it was good that the New York Times recognized it and I'm hoping in some ways the New York Times applied the lessons of that piece to itself about you know asking what would you say you do here and not trying to get involved in things that the New York Times doesn't need to be involved in either. It has been really remarkable a close runner up to my favorite my favorite graham wood piece was the nick confessori piece on chase strangio and the ACLU

and how they basically allowed strangio to pursue this strategy that really backfired so for people who were not necessarily following all those report cases although i know many people listening to us probably also listened to the excellent advisory opinions where this was covered but uh you know activists sued the state of Tennessee to overturn their puberty blockers ban. They also sued Alabama. Alabama, for a state AG, had the best press operation I've ever seen. It was amazing. And one thing that they did was they got a ton of discovery, which then turned up in the Tennessee

case, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, and just did unbelievable damage. a lot of what we know about how bad the epistemic process on trying to figure out whether these treatments are good and help anyone comes from that Alabama case. These were phenomenal. This is possibly the worst own goal I can ever think of in constitutional litigation history, which is not to say that it is. I am unlike David and Sarah, not an expert on this, but they did such damage, not just to themselves legally, they pursued a case that there was, it was pretty clear very early on

0% chance they were going to win, right? The minute that Joe Biden didn't get re-election, that was the end of it. And even if he had, he could not like, he would have had to like expand the court in three weeks. And that was not going to happen. And so they did, the court upheld the ban, set them up for other bad things to happen to their goals in the future. And they produced bad discovery on these cases that they were bringing, just terrible, terrible, terrible for the ACLU, for trans rights. And the Nick Kornf Astoria did this incredible piece for the times on it. And I was reading that, I was like, would this piece have run three years ago? Right? And maybe three years ago, not four. It would never have gotten through editorial four years

ago. We will put that piece as well in the show notes. And just to echo Megan, your point about Graham, what he is unparalleled, that putting himself in a position to understand. He's so remarkable. You know, I have a list of writers who I need to kill in order to not feel bad about myself, and he's near the top of it. Yeah, yeah. I once asked him how he did it. What he does so well, which you specified, I asked him how he does it because I can't. I'm not good at it. You know, if I find people that odious, every part of me wants to not engage them. I do sometimes for reporting purposes, but I fear I don't do it as well and as convincingly as Graham does.

He's terrific. What is that? Mike. What's the secret? So I don't know. No, well, I was, I don't think. Graham knew that this would potentially be shared for public consumption. Oh, sorry.

So I know, but I mean, I don't think he would object to me saying basically be a really, really good listener. And we got into a philosophical debate about judging sources and not judging sources. And I tend to, if I'm sitting across from somebody and they're lying to me about something and it's obvious that they're lying to me. And I'm sort of insulted because. does they're lying to me, it's virtually impossible for me to not let them know that. Like, I want to say, like, you're so full of shit. Like, I know that you're full of shit. Like, don't do this to me.

It's insulting to me. It's degrading to you. And, you know, I think it takes real restraint to sort of nod your head along or ask the next intelligent question seeking some additional insight for why there is this lie. It was a fantastic conversation. The only problem with all this is, is like, I'm pretty friendly with Graham. I think he's a unique talent and all that. The problem with this, he's such a good listener stuff, is that when you sit there talking

to him and he just sits there quietly listening to you, you wonder, does he think I'm as crazy as like one of these like, you know, Taliban guys that he talks to? Because he's just listening. He's not responding. I'm trying to bait him. You know, it's very disorienting. It's good. I mean, I would think you would like that, just a one-sided conversation where you get to do all the talking?

I mean, it's basically like a ruminant, but with an audience. Friday on the random process. That's right. I actually, what I do is I have a little portrait right behind the camera on my computer of Graham. That's good. I do the ruminant straight to him. Very smart. That's good.

Graham is going to be so disturbed when he listens to this podcast. Mike, best piece of journalism. Not in the dispatch. Not in the dispatch. The New Yorkers, Antonia Hitchens wrote a story, a profile of Howard Lutnik. I think the headline is Donald Trump's tariff dealmaker in chief. And it is an example. There were so many good pieces this year, but this one just keeps sticking out to me because

more from as a practitioner of. of writing and reporting. I loved to read this story and pick up, you know, as we were just discussing, pick up ideas about how to do it better. She does a fantastic job. She spends a lot of time with Howard Lutnik, who's the Commerce Secretary, and was all over TV, cable news this year talking and defending, talking about defending Donald Trump's tariffs.

She spends a lot of time with him. and observes and sees and hears things that just make for great profile writing and magazine writing. And you should absolutely read the whole thing. There's a couple of moments where she's kind of with Howard Lutnik at some conventions or conferences. There's one where she's like walking away with Howard Lutnik from a green room. There's a CEO of a very big company, which she does not name, lingering and waiting for Howard Lutnik and, like, getting a, you know, having a discussion with him and this is what she writes. As he clasped Lutnik's hands, I heard him say something about a supply chain issue and $2 billion. Letnik who had just wrapped up a panel discussion was already running 10 minutes late for an evening reception at the White House.

They would settle the matter later. Lutnik held out his iPhone with the screen facing down. take a picture, he said. A sticker with Lutnik's phone number and email address had been printed with a label maker and affixed to the back of his phone. The CEO snapped a photograph. I mean, that is an anecdote that a writer just dreams of and the story is full of them. There's one where he's talking with, it's something called the Hill and Valley Forum, which is held in D.C. and lots of different policymakers. And Lutnik is waxing. about the trade deficit. You know, when I have a trade deficit with my barber, he said, saying that that was unfair. I have a trade deficit with my grocery store, right? I just buy stuff from them. That's ridiculous.

And that this was supposed to be a defense of tariffs. And she sort of describes the audience as being, these are like sophisticated economic and business folks who are very confused. But he was like doing the same schick in front of them as he does on cable news to kind of hawk for Donald Trump. It's great. It's terrific. I love a profile where somebody spends so much time with them. They get all of their little personal ticks and great anecdotes that you'd never get otherwise. It was just a masterclass. I loved it. It's funny. I remember reading excerpts of the piece when it ran, but I don't think I ever actually read the piece. So I will go

back and take it in. My entry is from Derek Thompson at the Atlantic, a piece that he published almost a year ago called The Anti-Social Century. And the subhead is Americans are now spending more time alone than ever. It's changing our personalities, our politics, and even our relationship to reality. And it's a big, long, thumb-sucker piece that combines, on the ground reporting with social science research, looking at long-term trends. It's certainly the case that Derek Thompson is not the first person to recognize this fact or write about it.

I mean, Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, it's an entire book looking at some of the same phenomena. But I thought this piece, it was one of these pieces that you read and it changes the way you think about something. You know, I had long thought there, I'd read Putnam, There was a drift away from socializing, away from friendships, particularly away from male friendships.

The pandemic accelerated this. I mean, this was sort of the slow drift and kind of an interest, isn't this interesting thing that we're seeing? And I think this article made it pretty clear that it's something that has to be really reckoned with and that it might require some real, societal pushback. And you can imagine all of the things that contribute to such a

such a thing. But one thing he wrote in the piece is that self-imposed solitude might just be the most important social fact of the 21st century in America. And the piece makes a very compelling case that he's right about that. So again, we will put that in the show notes for you. And finally, I want to wrap. We're not going to do not worth your time today. But want to finish by asking each of you for your thoughts on what is the best news that happened in 2025 or that you read in 2025 that we should be happy about for the United States, for humanity, even for you personally. Megan, I'll start with you. Gene editing for Huntington's disease. This is a terrible, terrible, you probably learned about it in high school biology because it is

an example of a dominant trait that is passed down from parent to child you have a 50 if your parent has it you have a 50% chance of getting it yourself and what it does is cause progressive decline very young loss of motor control destroys your brain and then eventually you die very young and it's just tragic because you know if this happens to you do not have children. Do you have children knowing that you might inflict this on them? It's a really, really terrible curse. And this year, researchers announced that they had done a gene editing in the brain treatment using CRISPR that did not totally eliminate it, but slowed it down by about 75%. Now, this is, we're in early innings yet. But the reason this is hopeful is not

particularly Huntington's, which is relatively rare. I mean, I'm thrilled for people with Huntington's. I hope this works, and we get it to all of them as quickly as possible. But it's that we are now working with harder and harder diseases, right? We're working with, instead of high blood pressure, which we've been controlling for decades, or cholesterol, or these big chronic killers, there's a lot of money in them. and we've hacked them pretty well. And we're now getting into smaller problems, often genetic problems. We're learning that Alzheimer's may have an element of an infectious disease element.

I don't know if anyone has seen this, but the shingles vaccine appears to protect against Alzheimer's. And if you have not got your shingles vaccine and you are over 50, get out there and get it. Not just because you don't want Alzheimer's, but also because you don't want shingles. It's really terrible. But we are in a biomedical revolution right now. And this is before AI, hopefully AI can help with it. But even before that, it's that cancer is getting more tractable in a lot of ways as we have developed these advanced kind of gene and biologic treatments for them that are much more targeted rather than just trying to poison someone and hope that the cancer cells die before you do. we are getting more and more targeted treatments for that but it's also for these genetic diseases we have almost cured cystic fibrosis in the past few years and there is we hope a lot more where that comes from if we don't kill off our biomedical research establishment by on the one hand putting price controls on their products and on the other hand killing off the basic research that is not as part of what they do right you know there's often a fight with especially

with lefties who hate the pharmaceutical industry, but increasingly with conservatives who hate the pharmaceutical industry, where they will say, well, you know, the taxpayer paid for all this research and all they did was monetize it. It's not all. These things are compliments. The things that research labs do are not the things that pharmaceutical labs do. They're different parts of the delivery chain. They're all really important. And they're helping us live longer, healthier lives to save kids to do all of these great things. And all I can say is more. please, but thank you for everything we have already to all the researchers, whether they're an industry or anywhere else. Amen. I'm going to jump in there because mine is the same.

Mine is overlapping with yours. Mine is revolutions and gene therapy and cancer. It is one of the big ones. The progress has been gradual. It seems to be accelerating in part due to AI and the kinds of things that these cancer researchers and oncologists can do. that would have taken them in some cases years to do. They can now do in months, perhaps even days. But the progress has been absolutely extraordinary. I will pop in the show notes a short BBC story about a young girl in England who is in near complete remission

from an aggressive form of leukemia because of what they've done with her, with donor cells that they provided her, They effectively trained herself to fight cancer and they're reprogrammed to fight what was mostly incurable cancer. And the results are incredibly promising with 70 plus percent of patients, particularly young patients, ending in either deep remission or complete remission. It's extraordinary. And there's no reason, I mean, we're not there yet, but there's no reason to think that these things can't scale. And if they can scale, they will truly be revolutionary. So I'm with you on gene editing and gene therapy.

I really hope that in 50 years, we will look back on the way we used to treat cancer, the way that we now look back on the people who used to treat syphilis with arsenic, which was not great, better than the alternative of nothing. Well, the bloodletting was, except in very rare cases, not a good treatment for anything. The arsenic, my understanding is, did kind of work also maybe. left people crippled and didn't work all the time. Or my grandmother had gold treatments for her rheumatoid arthritis. Those sometimes work and then they sometimes cause terrible, terrible side effects and they don't know how to tell which patient is which. So I hope that we will look back

as we did of like removing, you know, amputating limbs for gangrene without anesthesia, like that those are tragic things that used to be done in the primitive past, but now we have a better way. Mike. I'm going to take sort of some personal privilege here and just say there have been a number of births and pregnancies in my circle, people that I love, people in my family and friends. And it's just been wonderful, every single time it's been wonderful news. and it is uh it just warms my heart and it's a reminder that um you know for all the things you know people like to talk about how terrible things are in the world today um it's just you can't think that when you're holding or seeing um you know a new life that and and just in

my own circle i've been i've been blessed to be sort of witness to that and and will continue to be witness to that going into next year, and hopefully for many years after that. Babies are hope in a onesie. Absolutely. Jonah. Well, just as a reminder, the official policy of this media company is babies are good. Like, that's how we put it in the beginning was, how can we make up have policies that reflect the fact that we think babies are good? And little did we know that we would contribute to a baby.

baby boom it's been no it's true people have taken seriously so i like mike's correction or or qualification that a lot of the most important stuff is happening outside of also going with megan and and steve stuff outside of the realm of politics and whatnot um i think you could point to a whole bunch of good trends you know uh um fentanyal deaths continue to trend down homicides continue to trend down. The, you know, I know that this is something that concerns all Gen Xers who were fed a steady diet of fear mongering about it. The ozone layer continues to, I mean, the hole in the ozone layer continues to shrink.

In fairness, the fears were real and then we dealt with them. And then we dealt with them. Yeah, yeah. That's fair. Right. Like, it shows you that actually, this is my argument about climate change is like, I think climate change is a real problem. Work the problem, right?

Don't use it as an excuse to bring in ridiculous sort of wet blanket economic policies, like try to fix the problem. But we don't need to do geoengineering here. I will say someone who is been required to do a lot of talking and writing about politics in 2025. I'm tempted to just say the best thing about 2025 is it's almost over. but I will say that continuing on a theme here that I think this is the first time in 10 years other than right around January 6th where I don't feel like a fool for saying you can see the post-Trump era on the horizon and I don't think that will solve everything I don't think he's the cause of or source of all of our problems or anything like that some things will get

worse with whoever replaces him, including conceivably his vice president, but Trump has been singularly able to thrive in an environment, to contrive an environment that makes arguments feel like, serious arguments feel like a sucker's game, like you're the idiot for trying to have a real argument. And I don't think anybody who can replace him on the right can sustain that in the way that Trump can. And that, I think, is actually a really good sign of optimism for, not to get all fruffy, but of democracy in the future of the country.

Because another way of saying that arguments are going to matter again is to say that to some extent reason is going to matter again. And I don't mean the magazine, which is a wonderful magazine. I mean, the actual concept of reason. And so I'm entering 2026 a little bit more hopeful because you can kind of see how this is going to play out. I would also like to add that I am entering 2026 more hopeful because I joined the dispatch family this year. And it's been very exciting for me and thank you all. Thank you all for having me.

And I am looking forward to more in 2026. we are thrilled to have you as you know this was a long courtship and we're glad that she finally said yes I said to Washington Post with that boombox over my head for years it was a good look it was a good luck thank you all for joining us we have only one podcast episode this week we will have one podcast episode next week so we hope you will join us for that one as well. Happy holidays, everyone. If you like what we're doing here, there are a few easy ways to support us. You can rate, review,

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give away, access to exclusive town halls with our founders and a place in our hearts forever. Shout out to a few folks who joined his premium members this week, Michael Lawrence, Peter Sherwood, and Richard Maxton. We're glad to have you aboard. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns are correct. You can email us at Roundtable at the Dispatch.com. We read everything, even the ones, from people who want to hear more from Marjorie Taylor Green. That's going to do it for today's show.

Thanks so much for tuning in. And a big thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible, Noah Hickey and Victoria Holmes. We couldn't do it without you. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time. Hey everyone. Steve Hayes with some big news from the dispatch. I want to tell you about dispatch hoonto's. Dispatch what? Hoonto, though some people pronounce it, Junto, is the name

Ben Franklin gave to the small gatherings he organized in Philadelphia taverns starting in the 1720s. Franklin's Huntoes, Spanish for Assembly or Council, consisted of 12 members, each of whom was required to pledge that he, quote, loved truth for the truth's sake, unquote, and that he was dedicated to personal growth for himself and improving his community. These discussions at those junto meetings would contribute to the ideas that built our great country. We launched dispatch Huntoes without quite the same ambition, but with a deep conviction about the need for a place where people can get together for civil and sane conversation. about the issues of the day, without the kind of nastiness and posturing that's so prevalent on social media and elsewhere in our polarized politics. The dispatch has hosted events across the country, and I've attended many of them. I've been blown away by the turnout and the enthusiasm. I've enjoyed having a beer or two with our members at each of these gatherings,

and I think the real value for them has been the opportunity to meet one another. I remember Nashville lingering at the bar at a great wing joint called party foul with dispatch members after our hour-long program ended. Our group talked for another hour at least, and they were so happy to have met one another, nobody even noticed when I slipped out. I can't tell you how many times I heard something like, it's so great to be reminded that there are other sane, normal people out here. We're looking for dedicated dispatch members to organize regular meetups in their communities at a local happy hour, restaurant, or coffee shop. We'll help promote and convene the group, but you'll run your honto your way. And if your gatherings grow large enough, we'll probably

prioritize your town or city as we plan our next regional event or live podcast taping. So if you're a member of the dispatch and you're interested in leading a local hoonto, head to the dispatch.com slash hoonto. That's j-un-t-o. The dispatch.com slash hoonto. And if you're not yet a dispatch member, this is a great reason to join at the dispatch.com slash join. We can't wait to build this with you. Hi there. I'm Ross Anderson, editor of the morning dispatch and I'm back interrupting your favorite podcast again with some more news. We were blown away by the positive feedback from everyone who tried the morning dispatch for free last month, so I pulled even more strings to work out a special deal.

For the rest of December, you can get a month of dispatch membership for just one dollar. Yes, a dollar. That means you get the full TMD delivered straight to your inbox every morning and unlock access to everything else we have at the dispatch. That means for just one dollar, you get unlimited access to our inbox. newsletters, podcasts, and stories, plus the ability to listen to audio versions of our articles. You can also join our comment section, where you'll find me most mornings, and ask me questions about TMD for our behind-the-scenes section. Head over to www.thedispatch.com

slash join and become a dispatch member for just, yes, one dollar. Happy holidays and happy reading from all of us of the dispatch.