The Ricochet Podcast - The Editor's Podcast: I ❤ Hamilton

Episode Date: June 19, 2015

This week, we’re giving the regular crew off so we can bring you this special edition of the Ricochet Podcast featuring our entire editorial staff. Troy Senik, Jon Gabriel, Claire Berlinski, Tom Meyer, and Rob Long gather together (well, virtually though the magic of Skype) to opine on Trump and how he harms Jeb’s (!) chances at winning the nomination. Also, the future of education... Source

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another in our occasional series of podcasts from the Ricochet editors. And because we're in the Ricochet flagship podcast slot this week, we're taking their sponsors. So I'm happy to tell you that we're brought to you today by our friends at Casper Mattresses as well as by The Great Courses. I'm Troy Sinek, the editor-in-chief of Ricochet, talking to you from Nashville. And you've sort of got a seat around our conference room table this morning because I am joined by the rest of our editorial staff. Guys, just say hello so people recognize your voice. There's no mistaking Claire Berlinski in Paris. Hi, hi.

Hello, everyone. John Gabriel is with us from Phoenix. Hello. And Tom Meyer joins us from Boston. Hi, everybody. And Rob Long may be along at some point from Points Unknown. Rob, it's a little bit, I guess, like what it was like being one of Teddy Roosevelt's friends. Rob may be somewhere in a Tony location in New York, or he may be in the Amazon Wrestling Anacondas.

That's always kind of the 7-10 split. So if he can take the time away from either one of those, we may see him later. But in the meantime, why don't we start with kind of the news of the week, guys? Here's my first question. If you are Jeb Bush this week, are you angry that Donald Trump stepped on your announcement? Are you just happy that for a few days you don't have to talk about staff changes and exclamation marks on your logo and whether you agree with your brother and whether you agree with your father? I think no one wants Trump stealing the oxygen. It's just a nuisance. It does no one any good except me because I'm so entertained by it. You're somewhat bullish, aren't you, on Trump, Claire?

I have seen you – this concerns me because I have seen you a few times. For people who don't know, some of our readers are aware of this, but we use a program called Slack at Ricochet, which allows all the editors to sort of tiptoe around what seems to be maybe kind of a little bit of an affinity for the Trump campaign. Well, you know, it's just this sort of a fantasy of just how much it would scare the world. Maybe it would scare them straight. You know, sometimes I think that's really what a lot of the world needs to see this vision of America as completely, absolutely insane. And who could project that better? Just from a game theoretic point of view, have them wondering for a change. Sure. Well, this is part of the appeal, right? I mean, we saw this actually in a few comments at Ricochet this week, that there were some people willing to

defend Trump on the grounds that, you know, at least this guy isn't qualifying every single thing that comes out of his mouth. At least this guy doesn't seem scared to be in front of an audience. At least this guy doesn't seem scared to deal with the wider world. I don't think that gets you around the substantive problems, but I do understand why that may have sort of gut-level appeal to some people at some level. Yeah, I think it is kind of cathartic for many people who just feel shut down and shut out. You're not allowed to joke about this.

You aren't allowed to say this. You just have Trump go crazy like Bullworth in a china shop, just rampaging through, doesn't care who he sets on fire, what he breaks. And I think for some people that is cathartic. The problem for the Republicans and the other candidates is it's the Todd Akin thing. Whoever the lowest competent nominee or Republican the press can find, that represents all Republicans everywhere. And so I'm sure the press, every time he says something dumb, they're going to be asking Jeb or Marco or Walker or whomever just, oh, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? And I think they should just kind of laugh it off and stick to their message.

Yeah, you've got to treat the crazy uncle. And Trump kind of makes that case for himself that way. Nobody's pretending that Donald Trump is the insider Republican establishment candidate. So he's easy for everybody else to dump on that way. So I think it's kind of fun. I wonder to what extent the campaign is serious because there's been a couple of things that I've seen in the press over the course of the week. One is that NBC is apparently still moving forward on the assumption that they're going to produce Celebrity Apprentice in the fall, which Trump can't do if he's still a candidate because it ends up subjecting the network to all the equal time standards for other candidates. The other thing is I saw a report the other day that there are delays that you can employ on some of the financial disclosures for the campaign

where Trump could stay in through – I think it's August or September without having to go public about any of the sort of details of his finances that might cause him to think twice. I wonder if this is a matter of we're doing it for press attention for a couple of months. He maybe shows up in one debate and that's it. I mean if for no other reason, then the show probably gets tedious after a while. I mean I think you tune into the first debate to see the novelty of that. After that, we're just probably annoyed by it. I would love to see him run as a candidate and have his show on NBC and kick in the equal time rules because then every GOP candidate would get their own reality show.

You could do like Fishing with Marco Rubio and Walker could go around kicking union members out. So that would be good. Ben Carson, high-stakes surgery show. Yeah, that's really good. That would be good. Well, here's the issue. That would be good. Well, here's the issue. Here's what everybody has sort of been – you can ignore Trump when he's off doing his own events.

I mean the press won't, but everybody else can. I think the concern that a lot of people are limiting participation to the top ten people in the polls, which is – we can get into this in a minute, but it's a system that I actually really hate. But the idea is that right now Trump would be in that group, and you'd be losing – you could be losing somebody like Carly Fiorina. Exactly, yeah. leafy arena or you can be using somebody like john casick or bobby jindal at at that point do you if you're in rnc headquarters at that point you're thinking we've got a we may have to jigger the rules here we may have to find a way to get trump out of this or you're thinking you know what that's just that's just going to cause a bigger hang up and we'll leave it alone and hope that it just sorts itself out i don't know how i would play that. It's really tricky. You don't want him sucking up all the media oxygen. You really don't. It is a waste of time. And obviously, he is not going to

be the president of the United States. It's just a fantasy that people like to think about. So you kind of do want to just get rid of him as quickly as possible, but not in a way that is more media attracting. It's a tricky thing to manage. Yeah, because then you have this interesting situation where the billionaire is playing a mortar. Right. I think the trick here is to try to figure out how to get Trump to get himself out as quickly as possible. Maybe offer him what he really wants, which is probably a cabinet position, right? I mean like a really dull one. I am told from our producer,

the Blue Yeti, that Rob Long is now on the line with us. Rob, is that right? Yeah, I just was here. I don't know why I joined. You guys are talking about Trump. I came at the wrong time. We can move on now.

Well, you know, the other way to do it is attack dog style, right? Really drill down on the $8 billion. Drill down on what he says his assets are. Demand bigger disclosure. Treat just kind of like a scorched earth policy with him. It's very easy for scott walker to

tell you exactly how much money he has because he doesn't have that much but that's taking him too seriously already i mean it's a clown candidacy the more the more you treat it like a serious one the more you associate yourself with it but i mean but how else do you get around it you can we don't get to decide that that we don't get to pick the clowns i mean you know with herman kane was sort of a clown candidacy too but um but we don't get to make that determination um unfortunately i mean i look i agree with you but the problem is that uh he's he's decided he's thrown his hat in the ring now he has not yet filed papers right he and he's trump so right this could all still be this great shadow boxing uh in fact if you know if i were the RNC right now, I would be sitting there saying, okay, how do I not poke the bear? Maybe he'll just go away. But I feel like the one thing that

Trump, the one topic that Trump wants to talk about is Trump. And there's no reason not to, if he's really going to be in the race, I would make him be talking about Trump all the time rather than his secret plan to solve ISIS or to deal with Chinese currency devaluation. Well, I think part of what's – I think part of the saving grace in this is that whereas the fun with Newt was that he was crazy in a sort of unpredictable way, Trump's craziness is really predictable. You know exactly what he's going to do. So it's – I think – I can't imagine this is going to go on for too long. People are just going to get bored of it once they figure it out. It's a serious project of crazy liability, and Trump is just crazy. What's the – maybe this is explained by the fact that he's crazy. What I don't understand

is if this is some cynical exercise in sort of brand awareness, how is it supposed to work? I mean he's done this four or five times. He's hinted that he was thinking about running for president in the past. Now he seems to be slightly more serious about it. I still don't really get what the upshot of it is. I mean everybody kind of knows who Donald Trump is already. I don't know what he's expecting to get out of this. Well, he's still got a TV show. I mean, so far, that TV show is still scheduled, correct? I mean, right now, there's no move to take that TV show off the air. That's how you know you really are running, right?

That's when Mike Huckabee loses his Fox News Sunday slot, it means he's running for president. So that's one indication of seriousness. I mean, look, crazy. Claire, I don't know, crazy. The guy is a very successful real estate developer and huckster. That's not crazy. That's American. I mean he is the most American person right now in the race.

I'm not saying he should be. I mean I don't think P.T. Barnum should have been president or Ron Popeil or the – Ron Popeil or the you know, the or George Foreman grill guy. George Foreman should be president. There is a very, very, very sort of proud and specific, non crazy place for people like that in American culture. Absolutely. Absolutely. Don't get me wrong. We're crazy if we if we if we vote for him. But but I think he's not crazy to throw his hat in the ring. Well, it's win-win for him. He's not going to lose anything from doing it. It either raises his profile for all of his other business interests or by some bizarre, outlandish set of circumstances, he becomes president.

He doesn't have anything to lose. What's interesting about Trump – I wrote a piece about Trump last time he was thinking about running, and I did a little Trump research. I don't know if this is still true or not, but in the, not, I think, four years ago, Trump had brands of everything including tea.

You could buy Trump tea and Trump chocolates. And the Trump chocolates, I made this joke and nobody got it on Fox, but I made this joke. Trump chocolates actually come in three flavors. This is true. Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and then something called deluxe nut. And I always felt like if he did win the presidency, that would be his Secret Service code name, deluxe nut. He's not going to win. So the question is just how to make sure he doesn't suck all the air out of every other candidate's media time.

But here's what you do. All right. If you are running for student council president and there's a jokester person there, right, basically making a mockery of the process and joking around at the school assembly, you just double down on your seriousness and you don't engage. You just become a better candidate, and this is a chance for the top-tier candidates – well, first of all, for there to be – for a top-tier to emerge. It's probably Scott Walker, Mark Rubio, Jeb Bush. Probably Rick Perry will get there when he moves up a little bit. Those top-tier candidates are just going to have to be that much more presidential, which is not a bad thing. When we started this conversation, Rob, this is before you got on.

This actually started in the context of Trump announcing and kind of sucking all the air out of the fact that Jeb Bush announced at the start of the week. It's interesting. The more time goes by, it just – it seems to me watching this field that it is going to be prohibitively hard for Jeb Bush to get the nomination in a way that a lot of people in the press and a lot of people on Jeb Bush's payroll weren't thinking six or eight months ago because what has become more and more clear the more time passes is that they don't have a marketing problem. They don't have a policy problem that's reducible to the immigration or Common Core stuff. They have a problem with a dog food that the dogs aren't interested in, and I don't know how you get around that. Yeah, I actually think it how you get around that. And I say this as somebody who admires him greatly and thinks he was a terrific governor and would love to have the opportunity to vote for him for president in a lot of ways. But the problem with Jeb Bush is that the people who love him, his natural constituency, are the very people who think we don't need another dynasty. We don't need another Bush.

And that's a structural problem. When your leaders are uneasy, that's not great, and you overcome that by being inevitable, by being a juggernaut, by being that, well, he's a winner, so I'm going to back him even though – and if you're not a winner and you don't start – and I think he's got about two, three, four months before we can really say that he's not one. But if he's not an obvious winner, just basically crushing it out on the hustings. Nothing about him is saying juggernaut to me. Yeah, me neither. But what is the value proposition to the people who – the rhino squishes like me and the – he's a conservative guy, a conservative admirer is like me who still think, still think, well, I'm uneasy with this dynasty idea. I like Marco Rubio. I like what Marco Rubio is saying. I like what Rick Perry is saying.

I like what Scott Walker is saying. I have other choices and other choices of people who are pretty good at campaigning. So I think that's a structural – really, it's a structural problem. When your allies aren't enthusiastically behind you for reasons that you can't change, you're in trouble. Yeah, I think you're right. Well, Jeb's the guy – Jeb's problem I think in a lot of respects is Jeb is precisely the guy that a lot of conservatives want to be the Republican presidential nominee in the year 2000. That was the window. I mean if Jeb wins his first run for governor of Florida in 1994, which he lost, and he came back and won in 98.

But if he wins that first one – first of all, he's actually probably a worse politician. He learned a lot from that first loss. But if he wins that first one, it's him and not his brother that's angling for the 2000 presidential nomination, at which point I think a lot of these misgivings go away, especially because he's an active figure at that point. That's the other thing is that this guy hasn't held office for ten years. We've sort of moved on from him, especially because during that time we've had this enormous bumper crop of Republican talent that's coming. Right. Even if he didn't have that last name, he'd still kind of feel like yesterday's news. Yeah, I kind of feel like if – in a lot of ways, we could do a lot worse than end up in an arranged marriage with Jeb Bush.

But the fact is we have suitors knocking down the door, and I just – somehow that message hasn't sunk in hasn't sunk in there and i'm kind of like rob i it's at some level it's sort of really a shame because he was a really solid governor but there's also just the fact that in some ways and i'm usually the one who's saying no no governors are the way to go but uh the issues that jeb was really strong on as as a governor and the issues that he seems to be really weak on as president don't match, and that's just a really frustrating aspect. I think if you're a governor, a sitting governor, or a recently passed governor, not so far as Jeb, but a sitting governor, you face the problems for 2000 – the problems you faced for the past eight years since 2007, 2008, and the problems that you – that the country is going to face in the next eight years, those are the problems you've been grappling with, right? I mean if you're John Kasich or you're Scott Walker or you're Rick Perry, it's been jobs. It's been public sector unions. It's been a state budget. It's been crime. It's been urban renewal issues. It's been competitiveness in a competitive economy. I mean you're kind of – you're in the fray. I mean I put Marco Rubio in there, although he hasn't done any of that stuff because he's been a senator, and I sort of like Marco Rubio too.

But there are three governors out there who can say I did this, this, this, and this, and this is my list, my bill of accomplishments for the past four years in issues that matter to Americans today. And I think it's really hard. It's not impossible because it's really, it's only June. It's really hard though for a past governor who still is like, even for people who like him,

it's still like, oh, I don't know. We really have to have another, and that's not even another Bush. It's just that dynasty issue. It's like, what's still like, oh, I don't know. We really have to have another – it's not even another Bush. It's just that dynasty issue. It's like what are we now, Uruguay? This is crazy. This is America. We have talent to spare.

We have teenagers inventing apps. We have more talent in America. I could probably see more talented people in America than any other country doing crazy, great, enormously amazing stuff, and we have to go back to one family or two families for our chief executive, that's just embarrassing. I think Jim probably also has the problem too more than anybody in this field with maybe the exception of Chris Christie, that he's got probably the highest number of people amongst Republican primary voters who will not vote for him under any circumstances. I don't think he's a lot of people's second or third choice.

Let me ask you guys a question. This is for all of you. It's just interesting watching the field develop over the last couple of weeks and seeing the response from conservatives especially in places like Ricochet. If I gave you on one side of the ledger Scott Walker and Marco Rubio and on the other side, the rest of the field, who are Walker and Marco Rubio, and on the other side, the rest of the field, who are you betting on for the nomination? You mean do I believe it will be one of those two versus the rest of the field?

Yeah. In other words, one side of the proposition is the nomination could be – the nominee could be Scott Walker, Marco Rubio. The other side of the equation is it could be one of the 79 other people. I'd go 60 percent with Rubio Walker. I don't think I'd do anything. I agree with Claire. John?

Which is a really safe, boring bet of me. Do you guys hear my cats in the background trying to vote on this? Yeah, it's a little bit. Rubio gets them very excited. Yeah, I think my pick of the time is a Walker Rubio ticket I think would be ideal. So nobody's – Rob, what about you? Nobody's taking the field here, right? Everybody – so we've got this enormous field and everybody thinks it's down to two people in June of 2015. I don't know. I mean I won't take that. I don't think so. I still think it's wide open.

That's why it's at 60 percent. mean, we all know we can't make a better prediction than that at this point. I think, look, I think Kasich is a really good campaigner. I think Rick Perry is going to be a really good campaigner. I think Jeb Bush is a really good campaigner, and Jeb Bush has got the money. I don't know.

I think it's probably one of those five or six guys, and I would give them each the same chance right now. My three spot is Perry. Perry is really undervalued. I completely agree. Perry's my number two. I'm still sort of defaulting towards Walker number one, but I really want to keep hearing more from Rick Perry.

Oh, you guys just started reading the field. Push all your chips on the Pataki. All your chips on the Pataki. Pataki mania. Well, he's got the sex appeal, but these are serious times. Exactly. I'm not going to be happy, Claire, on this podcast if we don't hear the familiar French klaxon of an occupation police car going by.

That's how we'll know you're really in Paris when we hear that. It's not going to happen. Paris is so quiet and so boring right now. You read that post, maybe, where the cops are all on sick outs because they can't strike really because they're cops. They're on sick outs because they're so bored from standing around with these heavy bulletproof gear, which is giving them a skin rash apparently.

They're all having these anxiety problems because it's really ugly to skin rash. It's summertime coming up and what are they going to do? That's the most European problem I've ever heard. Exactly. Law enforcement incapacitated by dermatitis. That is the modern continent. Especially the French twist by the anxiety of it.

L'anxiété de gendarmerie. L'ennui. And really, the complaint is very serious. And I see them. I see them standing around looking bored. And in fact, everything looks very peaceful. They're there for a reason, but you can kind of get where they're coming from.

It's not that often we have a terrorist attack, and it's vacation season, for goodness sake. This clothing is really heavy, and I feel like a dork with this rash. I can see their point of view. But no, you're not going to hear any sirens tonight. Just nothing exciting happening here. The cure for that boredom, if they were wise enough to use it, could be a course purchased from our sponsor, The Great Courses. The Great Courses – you see what I did there? That was almost – I mean it didn't have the manic sort of cocaine-addled energy of a Lilac Segway. That was pretty good though.

I got to say it was good enough that I couldn't even interrupt it. You know what? I think what it needs is for me to say The Great Courses. Tell me more. Oh, that's good. That's it. You know what? I think what it needs is for me to say the great courses tell me more. Oh, that's good. That's good. Do the Saturday morning PSA. Try that out for me, Claire.

Give me the prompt. The great courses? The great courses like what? Tell me more. Well, Claire, what the great courses does is brilliant. They get top professors on a wide variety of subjects, history, science, art, music, cooking. And then what they get from these professors is they have them record lectures from a full college course and then they make it available via video or audio. You can get them on CD, DVD, downloadable MP3s. And they pick people who are very smart. But more importantly, they pick people with a certain charisma.

They pick people who can really sell this stuff. So it's enjoyable. It's not boring to watch these lectures or to listen to them. And today we are recommending four lecture series which are geared towards professionals, Scientific Secrets for a Powerful Memory, How Conversation Works, Art of Public Speaking, and Influence, Mastering Life's Most Powerful Skill. These are very good. I've watched all of them. How does conversation work? This broadcast would not be a good sampling.

The art of public speaking one was very impressive actually. As somebody who has written speeches, I was very impressed with how they structured that. Because the great courses are celebrating their 25th anniversary, they are offering any of those four business and presentation courses for just $9.95. That's an enormous saving from the normal price on these. It's a limited time offer, however, so you need to act quickly. All you have to do is go to the greatcourses.com forward slash ricochet. It's greatcourses.com forward slash ricochet.

And check it out. It's a great product. I have been using the Great Courses for years, and there's these professional courses. There's also a lot of liberal arts ones too. In fact, there's a very good one. I believe the professor's name is Patrick Allitt, and he was at Emory when he recorded it. I don't know if he's still there, but they have this entire course on the history of conservatism. It's like 36 lectures I think. Very, very – 36 lectures for $9.99? No, that's not one on the sale price, but you can get those four

at the sale price. And all of these are actually fairly affordable if you go to the site. So greatcourses.com forward slash ricochet. I'm super curious about the conversation one, seeing as we are professional conversationalists. I wonder what we can learn from it. I was just waiting to leave that silence

Sit there to underscore Rob I was hoping you'd step on that segue there Yeah I'm sorry I only do that once a week I can't be stepping on segues left and right That's my other thing James would get He's actually genuinely irritated

when I step on the segways of the podcast. And then, if I stepped on Troy's segways, he'd then be jealous. Like, oh, so now you're stepping on Troy's segways too. So he'd be jealous that I do something with Troy that he hates when I do it with him. That's James right there. You know, honestly, did anybody read

the article Heather McDonald did a few years back about the great courses? Yes, she did. I think it was in City Journal, right? There was a long-form article about it, yeah. Yeah, and I've also been using them for years. I remember back when I'd get them from the library on tape, but i started buying them uh a while back but what's one of the one of the things that's fascinating about it and is how is how different their catalog is from what you would find at a liberal arts college at an actual college that's right right because it's

actually market driven and it turns out the things that people are most interested in learning are about professional are about professionalism like the ones that are on sale, and then on sort of broad survey introductory courses to liberal arts subjects or sciences or religion or what have you. And it's just sort of hilariously in opposition to the ultra-specialist tendencies that you get in academia now. I thought it was fascinating and hilarious simultaneously. And apparently some of these professors are making bank on these lectures that they can't teach at the schools they work at. What's interesting, you should be very happy about this if you're a conservative or a libertarian precisely because of what you couldn't sell most of the diaspora studies curriculum on a great courses website because there's not a market for it. And what is not being offered anymore in higher education that used to be is sort of foundational Western stuff.

These broad surveys of literature, these broad surveys of history, broad surveys of art. I mean these are the kind of things that the greates offers, and they found a market for it. And it turns out – I think you were going to see more and more of this, whether it's stuff like The Great Courses or whether it's technology affecting education at lower levels too. I mean at high school and grammar school because the system – it gets to a point, and I know that education reformers always deal with this. It gets to a point where you start to think, how many years do I want to fight the rearguard on this? How many years – if you're talking about high schools, how many years do I want to screw with trying to win inch by inch a little bit of ground back from the teachers' unions? How long do I want to deal with the bureaucracy in higher education? At what point do I just say, screw it. I'm going to go over here and do something different.

We're just going to start an entirely new system. Online education is clearly the future, clearly the future, and not just in the US. I mean it's a wonderful thing to be thinking about investing in all over. Yeah, I mean a ricochet – we have a ricochet member and a good friend of mine. My college roommate is sort of in that space, and as they say in business, I'm in that space. And it is the most exciting thing, probably one of the most transformative things, if done right, and invested in and built out that I think is going to – could really radically change the way we think about education and continuing education and skills acquisition. I mean, like a lot of things, it will be this – I think it's going to be the silver bullet or the stake in the heart to the ossified, pompous, pretentious, really loathsome academic community right now

that has a stranglehold on credentials. And what happens when we live in a skill society where you know you can take you you gotta learn a skill you can learn it in six months and if you don't learn it or the instructions poor you don't pay uh right you know things change the market really does work in that respect i mean obviously there's abuses but what what i noticed now is in all the abuses now now in online and for-profit education center around what they tell students who are getting loans. So when you get a loan, you get a grant or whatever it is to go to a for-profit education, it's the promises they make to the students about you'll get a job, we'll guarantee you a job, all sorts of things. And that's really where the liabilities are now. And the Obama administration has been really,

really horrible about for-profit education. One of their things they've been trying to do is to stamp it out just by over-regulating it. But what it really means is that for-profit educators are now in trouble for making promises that non-profit educators would never dream of making, would never even deign to make. So I can go into debt for a million dollars and go to Harvard and get a BA, an MA, and a PhD in French existentialist literature. And at no point – and by the way, that's going to be a student loan subsidized by the taxpayer. And at no point is anybody going to tell me that I'm going to get a job. They'll just let me do it. Whereas if I go to University of Phoenix or someplace like that and they say, no, I think that there's a lot of opportunity in the dental hygiene, whatever it is, whatever that skill set world is. If they're wrong, I get to sue them. I have two daughters

junior high school age, so I just hope this revolution really kicks up in the next four years so I can afford it. Otherwise, I'm talking about the glories of welding school to my kids. Everyone else is thinking the same way. There's obviously a demand for it. There are a few problems to solve,

like credentialing properly so that you really understand who's done well and who hasn't and how to replace the value of these elite universities in terms of how they connect you to other people who are going to be elite people, which is, as far as I can tell, the big added value. Right. That's their primary value proposition in real terms. Yeah. But there ought to be some way to compensate for that. And I haven't thought about what it is yet, but there ought to be some way to say this product is so much less expensive and in exchange, in order to compensate for not having that experience, maybe you can go on some, I don't know, some elite two-week seminar that only elite people can get into in Washington that will say,

I'm an elite person at the end of it. You can compete to get into that. It won't cost so much. I'm just glad to see those two products separated out. On the one hand, the networking and that kind of stuff, and then on the other, the education. Yeah, exactly. Once people honestly admit these are two separate things and we can bundle them differently, I think we'll go very quickly. And the fact is that the education part of it, the actual learning, that's – especially with online stuff, that's turning out to be the cheap part. It's the rest of it that's actually expensive. Yeah, that and paying for everyone's sports teams, right? And dorms and so on. Well, the other thing that's heartening about this is the way that it blows up the – conceivably, that it blows up the temporal aspect of education, right?

Because you've had plenty of – you have lots of students, primary, secondary, higher ed, who have been caught either bored stiff because classes move too slowly for them or just totally left in the undertow because they're moving too fast. To me, that is one of the most appealing aspects of where you can go with the technological side is that you can actually – the fact that you can tailor the curriculum in such a way that you let people work at a pace that is going to be optimized for them to actually get it. I mean imagine – you can talk about really high-end students. You could be blowing through high school curriculum in 18 months and probably the same for college. I think that's all to the good. I mean if anything, I think the societal pathology that we've fallen into is probably treating people like children for way too long, like well into their mid-20s.

If somebody can complete their bachelor's degree by the time they're 19 and then go do whatever, go start – whether they're starting a business, they're going to work for somebody, I say I'm all for it. I mean because we have this incredibly sclerotic system right now that tells you – Especially because people are – I mean it's just biologically bright teenagers are capable of learning so much faster. It is a waste to have them warehouse high schools where they don't have access to a rapid curriculum.

And now you can teach them faster if they're able. And that's really important. You're not going to be able to do that. And part of that's just because with the way online lectures work, and I've done this both at the high school and middle school level through Khan Academy, and also I took an online course through MIT about two years ago that nearly killed me. But what's great about it is that because the lectures you can watch at your own pace, the ones that you get, you just blast through. And the ones that you really need to go back on because you didn't get it, you can loop through that 10 times without bugging anybody else.

It's not quite like giving everybody a private tutor, but it has a lot of the benefits of that. It's really amazing. And it's really revolutionizing. I live in Arizona, and here in high school level education, it's revolutionizing a lot of things because the state has been allowing a lot of programs, especially when you go to the more remote communities on the Navajo Nation and things like that, just this distance learning for high school.

You have these kids who would have to drive 30, 40 miles to get to the nearest school, and some of them do not have vehicles, and now they can have a course in anything the world has to offer. It's really expanding opportunity for all sorts of people who have been neglected for years. Rob, as a Yale alum, you have to be so proud of what Tom did there a minute ago.

Do you hear that very subtly? So I took an MIT class. Yeah, exactly. That's right out of New Haven. That's exactly right. And here's the thing. Obviously, there's the credentialing part, and there's this bizarre society we live in now that we need to break down, which privileges – to use that great progressive term – privileges people who have fancy degrees that don't mean anything. There's a couple other great – I mean revolutionary – this is great conservative revolutionary movements, right? Khan Academy. This is a guy – I mean if you don't know about it, you should look it up. Khan Academy, I guess you could have talked about it already, but everything you need to know about everything cousin with some math trouble, has built an online continuing education,

high school, early college, community college, and then a highly advanced math school on YouTube. Yeah, he's not the only one. I mean, there's Coursera, Udacity, edX. I mean, it's a really great industry. But he sort of started it and created it and made it real. I mean, this guy deserves the Congressional Medal of Freedom. I really mean that.

I mean that's sort of a extraordinary thing he did. Absolutely. And completely busted up this idea that some priests and ministers of education have some priestly ministerial magic that only they can teach our children and our students. And the second thing I'd say is that I can't – I've been stalling while I've been racking through Evernote to try to find this. There is a program, there's a company that teaches employment skills to predominantly minority – predominantly African-American and urban, Hispanic youth. Because what happens is they go to school and they don't, I mean, there's a whole bunch of like ways to fit in in a big company that don't, that they don't know. The subtleties of being an employee at a fancy place, they don't know. And employers pay, they pay for the tuition here. And you have to maintain some insane level of achievement to be in this program.

It's not for everybody, but its success rate – I can't remember the name of it. Its success rate is phenomenal. That progressives hate and I'm sure that the left of this country would despise, but it is teaching you how to be – how to act like an achiever, how to act like somebody who belongs in the boardroom and the cubicles, in the echelons of whatever it is that we call power in this country. And it is doing, of course, what no school would ever do. Schools used to do that, right? They used to teach deportment and handwriting and stand-up, sit-up straight. They used to teach it in public schools. Part of the public school curriculum

was how to be a civilized person and how to be a grown-up and how to make people think that you know what you're doing. We don't do that anymore, but now private industry is doing it, and it is remarkable. I mean, look, it probably brings up all sorts of really squirrely issues, but man, it's successful. Now I'm

embarrassed. I don't know the name of it. I'll search for it. Well, it's dangerously normative, which means it's not going to get taught in schools at this point. But it's an interesting approach because I do think that Republicans – Jeb Bush is a good example of this. There's a lot of them. There are a lot of Republicans who have spent a lot

of time focusing on how African Americans and Hispanics are underserved by bad public schools, and they're right about that. It has the virtue of both being right on the merits and being a little bit of a political wedge issue because a lot of those people are democrats, and the democrats are beholden to the teachers' unions in most states, and so there creates conflict there. But while they're right about all of that, a project like that is interesting because I think the thing that we miss is that it's not just the education, especially with the rates of fatherlessness in those communities. There's a lot of social capital that's not transmitted. There are a lot of norms that you don't pick up on. So those kind of efforts are just as valuable I, as serious sort of education reform. The other thing that crossed my mind is when Claire described the warehousing of students at a certain age. I understand where people are coming from who say this, but one of the objections that

you always get from the people who are opposed to online education is that you're going to tear apart the socialization value of school. And actually if you talk to a lot of the sort of conservative education policy experts, none of them – the vast majority of them anyway aren't really pulling – pushing rather – I'll get the verb – for exclusively online education. It's more blended education where you do some online and some in the classroom. But every time I hear that objection, I think, did you people go to high school? The social value of high school, good god.

I mean if you're a decent human being, that was probably the worst quadrennial of your life. I loved Detroit. I was very popular and I enjoyed it. I'm sorry you were a nerd. I don't know that you did anything there to upend my thesis. Glenn Reynolds made one of the best points on that. Hello? Yeah, go ahead, Tom.

Glenn Reynolds made a fantastic point on that, which is that the idea that we would put a whole bunch of young people exclusively together with just like one or two adults is one of the strangest ideas in human history. What we should be doing is putting kids with adults so that they can see, oh, that's what – we joke about how high school and college aren't the real world, and they're absolutely not.

But the reason is because you're around people within four years of your own age, and that's – This is the worst group that you could organize this way. The only two civil institutions that are organized around these principles are school and prison. It's an extremely bad idea. Yeah, I really actually – I couldn't agree more. It just doesn't make sense. I think the only reason we do it the way we do it is because we're used to it. Well, and that's the basis of a lot of these things. I mean people never tire of pointing out, I think, correctly that your typical school calendar is based around an 18th century agrarian model that doesn't really fit anymore. And it's always weird to me to have self-described progressives defending an institution that really hasn't – is working in the 21st century on a big, blocky 19th century industrial model. It's really amazing to me how nostalgic they get for these things.

But you know what? They're going to fight to protect them, and they're going to go to the mattresses for them. And if you need to go to the mattresses, you have to go to Casper. Hey, that's a good segue. Oh, that's a good segue. That happened. Well, you know what? Can I be honest?

That's not a great – it was not a great segue. But go ahead. Don't let me stop. You need a good night's sleep to think this one through? Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Wait. Hey, Troy, what if I've been listening to a lot of great –

I don't even trust the attorney. What if I've been listening to a lot of great courses and my brain is full and I'm exhausted and I need to sleep so I can listen to more? What could I do? That's called teamwork, Tom. I'll tell you what you can do. You can go to Casper Mattresses. We all know the deal with the normal mattress purchase. You go into a showroom, which is weird, and then you have to – a guy makes you lie down on a bed in the middle of a warehouse. It's strange. For like 45 seconds, that's no way to make a decision on a product that you're going to live with for years. And Casper has a better way of doing it. It's a way that's more affordable.

It's more convenient. And most importantly, it provides you with a better night's sleep. They have these mattresses that are obsessively engineered. They sell them at a shockingly fair price. They combine two technologies, which is premium latex foam and memory foam to give you a better night's rest on a bed that has just the right sink and just the right bounce. But you don't have to take our word for it. You can try it yourself. Casper offers a risk-free trial and return policy, and you can try sleeping on this mattress for 100 days with free delivery and painless returns.

These mattresses are made in America and made for an everyday American's budget. $500 for a twin and $950 for a king. Much, much better than what you're going to find on any showroom floor. So give Casper Mattresses a try. You can get $50 towards any mattress purchase by going to casper.com slash ricochet. That's casper.com slash ricochet. Terms and conditions apply, and we thank Casper for sponsoring the show. Thank you, Casper. Thank you, casper.com slash ricochet terms and conditions apply, and we thank Casper for sponsoring the show. Thank you, Casper.

Thank you, Casper. I just got a text. The name of the company I was talking about is KORU, K-O-R-U, KORU.com, and amazing. Just teaches job skills to recent graduates, which is itself an indictment of education. But there you go. Kourou. K-O-U-R. K-O-R-U. I feel like we only have a couple minutes left here. And in scanning the horizon, I feel like the thing that I should go to is the $10 bill controversy just because Tom's man crush on Alexander Hamilton has become uncomfortable for all of us.

Oh, it's even weirder than that because I also have a man crush on Aaron Burr. I think I'm the only one who likes them both. What the hell is going on here, Tom? Explain yourself. For another time. It's a long story. But you want to – I do have pictures of me at Hamilton's grave, but great.

Now it's getting weirder. Which I guess could be a Hamilton tribute or a Burr tribute. But you want to keep Hamilton on the tin, right? Absolutely. I mean first of all, we're talking about the first treasury secretary. So the fact that we even have bills is mostly due to Hamilton. But Hamilton comes in for – and deservedly for a lot of criticism on the right, especially among libertarians. And there's lots of reason to do it.

Also among whiskey drinkers. So, you know, I've got two reasons to dislike him. But that being said, the guy has got, as somebody else put it, if Hamilton died in his mid-20s, we would still know who he is. He was that important that early. And the fact that the guy managed to stuff that much living into 51 years and that much influence over the country, so much of it positive, is just absolutely astounding. Richard Brookhiser subtitled his biography of him alexander hamilton american and there's just no more american story than hamilton the guy showed up in boston in boston in like 1774 and rose solely on merit and and the fact that he worked harder and was smarter than everybody else and it's he's he's just an amazing story that way.

And you know what? The Hamilton haters – this is for Rob. Hamilton haters – Not a group. Not an actual group, Rob. There's two capital Hs in there. Yeah, the Hamilton haters. They don't provide any alternative scenario by which the United States manages its finances after the Revolutionary War, dispenses with its debt, and grows and then can raise extra money to do the things it needed to do. Hamilton correctly realized we would never be able to fight another war, another war, by the way, which we had to fight in 1812, without a currency, without a banking system,

without dispensing with the Revolutionary War debt. I mean you may not like it. You may not like any of that stuff. Nobody likes debt. Nobody likes the Federal Reserve. Nobody likes central banks. Why would you like them? But on the other hand, if you're trying to grow a country, what's the alternative? alternative. I mean, I still am baffled by the 1776 perspective of Alexander Hamel as anything

other than one of the core founders of the country. Well, you know, one thing I always point out in this context is a lot of people talk about how much, you know, the typical beef against Hamilton is like what you were saying, Rob, all the government growth under him. The thing is, the government only had one direction to grow in 1981. And I think at the height of his time as Secretary of Treasury, he had like, if you're not counting customs inspectors, which were the main source of revenue for the early republic, I think the Treasury office had like 18 employees. Right. Yeah. for the early republic i think that the treasury office had like 18 employees right yeah and i uh hamilton haters by the way are also known as baristas and my wife actually is a descendant of aaron burr uh just for the record so do not challenge her to a duel

wow it's the shame it's the shame of our family, but … I'm really okay with the proposition that Mona Charon put up on Ricochet yesterday, which is if you want your person on a new bill, fine. Leave Hamilton alone. Dump Jackson. I'd be okay with that. I'd be okay with that. I think we can discuss it. Yeah, I agree, and I think it would just be fantastic. I know they were talking before about maybe Harriet Tubman or someone like that. I think – I just hope that it's just – it seems like a sop to a constituency, which is why Obama is pressing this now. He says we're going to remove Hamilton for a woman. And it's like, OK, whoever this woman is, she should be important enough to say, hey, this woman has had more of an impact

than Alexander Hamilton. I think if anybody should go, though, it is Jackson. Yeah, I mean, you know, there are arguments for everybody to be on the bills. I mean, that's why they're on the bills, right? But, you know, if we're crowding people out, it can't be Washington, it can't be Lincoln.

I don't think it should be Hamilton. Grant, I would say Grant. You could get rid of Grant. Whoa, Rob. Yeah. Why Grant? I'm with him. It wouldn't break my heart at least. I'm sorry. What's the argument against Grant? First of all, I mean – Wow. This is where I'm planting my flag. Wow. Yeah, damn.

This man crush on Grant. Well, I mean disturbing. He didn't win the war. Apart from the military side of it, in my opinion, the Grant presidency is substantially underrated. There's a lot of corruption, which Grant wasn't really party to most of it. But Grant was – no, Grant was actually – to use a term that I prefer not to in this context. But Grant was probably the most progressive president of that area on racial issues. I mean they basically extinguished the Klan during the Grant administration and they were – it didn't really get implemented very well, but Grant was the first one to sort of plant a more humane marker for the treatment of Native Americans.

I think Grant is undervalued. Okay, maybe so, but he's on the $100 bill. I mean, okay. Fifty, right? Fifty, sorry, fifty. Yeah, Franklin's on the hundred. Wait, who's on the – isn't Wilson on? What's Wilson on? Haven't we moved to a credit on? I think it's the $10,000 bill.

I can't even remember. I think Wilson's the $10,000 bill. I'd say let's get rid of Wilson. It gets weird. Let me check my wallet. Yeah, he's on the $10,000. It gets weird once you go over the $100 bill because it's – I've forgotten about Wilson actually, but Wilson, William McKinley, Grover Cleveland, and I think Salmon Chase is on some piece of currency as well.

No, is he really? Yeah. No, I think he is. I would see that. I would spread those around. I would put like Oprah on one and Caitlyn Jenner on one. I just like – those should be rotating. Well, and if we want a woman, I'm a big Hayek fan, so I'm thinking Salma Hayek would be.

Bit of a misdirect there. Okay, so we've solved the problem. So Jackson is going and we don't care who goes. It's going to be Tubman. It's going to be Tubman because I think once that – to John's point, if it's about servicing a constituency, once you've put a name out there that's both a woman and African-American – I mean this is not to take anything away from Harriet Tubman, but I don't see how you can walk that back from there. So final – I'm cool with that. No problem. Or it could be Claire Berlinski. That would be fine too.

Yeah, yeah. With a cat in the actual portrait. Yeah, that's right. I'm trying to keep them quiet, but they are really interested in this conversation. So on the way out the door, folks, because we're out of time. The floor is open to anybody here. Anything that – I'll give you a moment to think about this. Anything that you particularly enjoyed on Ricochet this week, we should remind people that go to the site and get – you can try Ricochet free for a month.

And then we hope you stay at that point. And I will – I'll go first. And I – the posts that our member Tabula Rasa put up on – the best posts on Ricochet a lot of the times are posts that pose a question. The original question and the person who posted answered that question is interesting, but then it's the 200 comments that come afterwards. Tabula Rasa put up a post on epic disappointments, which covered the horizon from politics to entertainment. There's a lot of nominations of the Star Wars prequels trilogy. Probably half the Republican Supreme Court justices have been nominated in the last 50 years. Just sort of everybody airing out their laundry list of kind of the worst things that have happened in American culture in the last 40 years.

I enjoyed that one. Anybody else? What was going on in Rick's day this week that you like? My favorite, my favorite. I asked last Saturday, I asked people what they did for a living. Everyone should go to that thread and just read it from start to finish and

think, okay, if we took all these people and dropped them on a desert Island, what would we get in 20 years? I mean, we would, we would have something with an economy of Singapore and a kick-ass airport. That's exactly right.

I like that. Probably not Jeb Bush's president. It would just be amazing. And you've got to go through that thread item by item and see what everyone does. And everyone who, who, who posted there,

who just posted a few words, everyone should turn that into a post about the top 10 things you wish people understood about your job, because that works really successfully as a post. the top 10 things you wish people understood about your job because that works really successfully as a post and it's fascinating what people on ricochet do they really do interesting jobs and they've had interesting lives and their contributions about what they've done specifically are really interesting to me and i think they're interesting to everyone on ricochet yeah my favorite thing oh go ahead well just because we had somebody do that we had somebody write the 10 things that your janitor wishes you knew. It was fascinating. Graphic but fascinating. Go ahead, Janet. Yeah, I didn't know most of that actually. I could have definitely guessed the part about the flushing, but I didn't know that about the bobby pins being Satan's spawn.

That was my favorite post. That was my favorite post. That was my favorite post on Ricochet this week was the Janet post. There are a lot more posts like that that could come out of that thread about what's your job. I saw a lot of things where I wanted people to just say just a little bit more

because what they do is really interesting. My favorite thing of the week, I had the privilege of attending the Kansas City meetup this past weekend. They graciously invited me, and once again, like we always say, always some of our favorite posts are always on the member feed or eventually promoted to the front page from the member feed. And just reading the comments is great, but meeting the people in person, it is the smartest group I've ever been around. And I went to nuclear power school and those had smart people, but the diversity of opinion and experience was kind of stunning. The first night, Friday night, I know I put on a comment on a post, kind of a Kansas City

meetup wrap up. We talked about fourth century heresies. We talked about Chilean free trade agreements. We talked about the origin of Uzo. It was just all over the place. So I just mostly shut up. I'm not an expert in any of those areas and just soaked it in. But a really impressive group of people and if any of you,

whether you're a member or not, if you aren't a member, you can sign up for the free 30 days, but they are fantastic to attend. Really impressive. A totally peaceful discussion about the origin of Uzo, only in America. Yeah, yeah, no fishnets. I really liked Western Chauvinist's post on Paul Newman the other day. Paul Newman, not exactly a famous conservative, shall we say. But basically, Newman started up a charity that's basically a summer camp for

kids with disabilities or medical conditions. And I just like that that kind of thing goes on, that nobody's in charge of it, and that nobody's making it happen. It's people choosing to make it happen. And these kids' lives are better for it. I also just like that she was sort of encouraging people to write about things that Americans are doing that nobody is trumpeting. I just think that's great. Yeah, that post was called Paul Newman, Admirable American. She was encouraging other people to write about other admirable Americans. And I like especially actually the fact that the – I hope other people do that. I'm available for interviews by the way.

I like that if that does become a series, which I hope it does. I hope people take her up on that invitation. I like the fact that we actually started with somebody who doesn't share our politics. Right, right. And that we can look at him and say, but look what this guy did for civil society. I mean because that's what we're supposed to be about. That's what a lot of Ricochet is about is that, yeah, we're all obsessed with politics, but there's a lot more beyond it. And I love those kind of stories.

I was delighted that she put that up. I do too. I think we need to do more of that kind of just as a community and say, okay, totally disagree with how you feel government should act and what you want to do with my tax money and how you want to take it. But that doesn't – that does not – what I love about what Paul Newman did, and I think she alluded to that, is he didn't think of his taxes or his politics as his contribution to society the way a lot of liberal progressives do now. They're like, well, that's my charity. He's the government. No, he knew he had to build something else, and that's a great admirable trait. Also, the only intact marriage in the history of Hollywood. For over 50 years, right?

I mean, that's unheard of, right? Yeah, unheard of. I don't know whether it was – from what I hear, I'm not sure it was monogamous, but they stayed married. Yeah, he was a very popular young – a very popular man. Put it that way. The other thing that I love about these posts is it's humbling. As a writer who, like many writers, has no other marketable skills is that you will look at the posts that members put up or the comments that they put up and think, my god. I mean between the clarity of thought and the eloquence like Ricochet and write something that could be published professionally. This is their hobby.

It's amazing what a cross-section of people we've attracted from all kinds of professions all over the world, all kinds of – I mean within the sort of broad center-right tent, all kinds of different points of view. It just makes it a lot of fun. It just makes it a lot of fun. It just makes it a lot of fun. Yeah, it does. It does. Yep. All right. Well, we have gone over an hour at this point, so we should probably wrap it up.

So I will say my thanks to Rob Long and to Claire Berlinski and to John Gabriel and to Tom Meyer, I'm Troy Sinek. Our thanks to Casper Mattresses and to The Great Courses for sponsoring us. We'll talk to you soon. Swing by RickShay.com and sign up today if you're not yet a member. Thanks for listening.