The Ricochet Podcast - Upending Your Moral Universe

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

It's just James and Charles this week at the post: Post-elections in Florida, Minnesota, and South Carolina - post-mortem on l'affaire de Arday - and the post-partum madness of Lindsay Clancy, who is on trial in Massachusetts for murdering her three children and receiving an inexplicably large amount of support. Opening sound this week: Sen. Darline Graham on American foreign policy and hospital chaplain Sheila Cavanaugh testifying in the Clancy trial. Music this week: Enigma Variations: Nimrod (via Motion Array)Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-ricochet-podcast--5817275/support.

Um, I'm sorry. Could you repeat the question? Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States? And if so, why or how? I'm just going to be honest here. I'm not on national security. I'm not that informed on national security. So, but I do support the military. It's the Rickusay podcast with Charles CW. Cook.

I'm James Lillik's, and neither of us have falsified our resumes. We're not communist and we haven't killed our children. What do we got possibly to add to the world? Well, let's have a podcast and find out. She alluded to having heard a voice, and the voice, according to Lindsay, told her that if she did not follow the command, neither she nor her children would be safe. And in all of these notes that detail every time you interacted with her, you never once wrote that she told you she heard a voice or what that voice said, correct?

Correct. Welcome, everybody. It's the Rickettsay podcast, number 804. I'm James Lillick. I've been here for about, oh, I don't know, 803 of them. And I'm joined by Charles C.W. Cook in Florida, which is the center of some electoral news. Stephen Hayward is not with us because he's on a ship. It sank. Bad Internet. I don't know, whatever. I did get the particulars of the memo, but I'm sure he'll be back next week. Charles, how are you? I'm good. How are you?

I'm fine. I'm in Minnesota, not that anybody cares, except to note that the first tendrils of the emotions of autumn are starting. starting to creep in. There's football on television again. The sun goes down a little bit earlier and doesn't have the heft in the weight that it does. Elections are beginning. And you've just had one in Florida that the whole world was looking at and being our man on the ground in the epicenter,

the eye of the DSA hurricane, tell us exactly what happened and what you think it portends for both parties going forward. Having dropped that nickel in the jukebox, I'm just going to lean back and let you flap your gums for the next 20 minutes. Go. Well, I think that the Democratic Party is going to lose a Senate race in Florida, which I think was probably the case anyway, but is especially the case now that it is nominated a Democratic Socialist for the office. Florida is, as you know, full of Cubans and Venezuelans and Colombians for whom the word socialism is rather dirty.

It's also full of Jewish voters who, while they often vote Democrats, are not too thrilled by the direction of the Democratic Party. And Angie Nixon, who is the Democrats nominee in question, is famous in Florida for having been on the wrong end of 104 to 2 vote. A few days after October 7th in which she called for a ceasefire, condemned Israel. The Democratic Party in Florida was so embarrassed by this that they publicly asked her to withdraw. the motion, but she didn't. So they voted it down 104 to 2.

So I'm not sure this was the best move in a state with a 1.5 million person Republican voter registration advantage. So how much of this anti-Semitism do you see in the party? I mean, I'm not going to pretend that both parties don't have a problem with it because the idiot right people are going all A-PAC on us and flocking to Tucker Carlson as he tells them that it's all. the Jews and we never blew up an atomic bomb and all the rest of it. But Florida is known as a place where you, but let me ask you this, what is the current demographic characteristic of Jewish people in Florida? Because the cliche is they all move down from, you know, the northeast and they're all old. Is it still a demographic force to be reckoned with, or have they been equaled long ago and swamped by Mexicans, Venezuelans, et cetera?

That's a good question. I don't know how much of the population Jewish voters make up in Florida. I do know that we've had a lot more young people in general move into Florida in the last five or six years. And purely anecdotally, because I know a bunch of them, that seems to apply to Jewish voters too, and every voter type, really. The thing is with Jewish voters in Florida is that it's not the people. that they're all conservatives or Republicans, but they're not on board with a lot of this crap. And we did see that to the Democrats' credit in this primary.

Jared Moscovitz, for example, down in South Florida, won his primary against a DSA candidate. Define, I'll interrupt here, define the specifics of all that crap. Because all that crap is a lot of stuff, everything from nationalizing to eliminating to packing to all this. No, sorry, I meant specifically anti-Semitism or the barely disguised anti-Semitism that you see in certain DSAC circles where they insist that they're not anti-Semitic, they're just anti-Zionist,

but then they talk constantly about these dark, shadowy characters who secretly run our politics and imply that they may be related to A-PAC and then get very upset with. you suggest that that's a trope. The Florida Jewish voting bloc doesn't seem to like that. And unfortunately, there are some Jewish voting blocks that will put up with it. But this isn't one of them. Well, I'm going to confess my ignorance here, because when you say young people, I don't know exactly what young people believe anymore.

Because it used to be pretty odd. It used to be safe. You could fairly assume that somebody in their 20s coming out of college was probably of a liberal disposition, and that meant something different than it does today. With a lot less bloodthirsty, a lot less, let's reform and remake the entire nature of the country.

It was more sort of new republic style liberalism, if you wish. And the conservative side, that was also fairly easy. Now I have absolutely no idea what sort of matrix they're coming from, and how their personal Overton window has shifted to the left to accommodate ideas that the left in my 20s would have considered it to be out and out madness because I say it's communism into hell with it. So when you say the young people moving in, I'm wondering whether or not they get there and they say, oh, this is the result of more freedom, less government, a lot of sunshine.

I can take this. I don't want this to be spoiled. Or as so many people do, walk in and say, well, this may be the result of lower taxes and fewer and less government, but it lacks these social beliefs that I find foundational to our civilization, so I'm going to enact things that will remake this place where I just came from. I don't know. I just don't know. You're going to laugh at me, James, but I did realize when you were speaking that I may be out of date and my self-conception, because I was actually talking about people of my age 40. Well, then again, to me, of course, as superannuated as I am.

I meant young relative to the reputation of Florida as a place where everyone is 70, not young as in 23 because I also find the emergent American politics of the young somewhat baffling. I don't see Florida as a God's Waiting Room anymore. I think that used to be the conception when people would look at a matchbook advertising a lot that could get somewhere in Coral Gables for, you know, 59 cents a week. But now, to me, it strikes me as much more dynamic and much more future-oriented. So Alexander Vindman turns out is not the salvation of the party. not take him to their bosom. I'm baffled again.

I thought this man was an absolute hero with the resistance. Well, I think a couple of things happen now. One is that I think the left is moving on from the resistance. This isn't a unique or brilliant insight of mine. Others have written about this. That's not where the party's energy is anymore. They're interested in other things. The TSA has absorbed a lot of that impetus.

And the other thing is that Vindman was just unbelievably arrogant. And to use a term that is often used in the South, seemed like a carpetbagger. He's not from Florida. Right. He didn't know anything about Florida. He didn't talk about Florida. He talked about himself.

And the problem with that is twofold. First, people don't like it generally because they're more interested in themselves. Second, he has no personality. No, he has absolutely none. If you had taken the Pillsbury doughboy and somehow with a syringe, extracted every single little aspect that would make somebody interesting to other people, you end up with this inert, doy, blobby guy standing there, staring at you with his little beady eyes saying,

I stood up to Trump, therefore vest me with all the power that you see fit. No, it was an absolute boring individual, right? And I'll give Angie Nixon this, because she's from near where I live. She worked really hard. He didn't. He thought he had it won. He said it as much. She worked and worked and worked.

And she ran up the numbers in North Florida. She ran up the numbers in Jacksonville. And you've got to credit that. That's what you want in somebody who's seeking elective office. Now, I would rather she weren't a communist. And I'm going to vote against it. But I do think that that. mattered to her voters.

Veneman strolled in between fundraisers in Nantucket, said he had it down, talked vaguely about himself and five, six years ago. And she didn't. She worked hard and talked about Florida. You know, when you say communist, and yes, we can describe that to many of these people. I enjoy the people who say, oh, are we returning to another age of McCarthyism? Well, you know, McCarthyism could be described as inaccurately calling somebody a communist when they weren't. It's not McCarthyism to accurately call someone a communist. And if they don't like the

label, I would, I would love for somebody to ask them repeatedly what exactly it is about communism that they don't like. What is it? Repudiated. Go ahead. I'd like to see. Because I know that you think that socialism is meant to give us a vision of a Nordic country without leaving out the details that it's, you know, an ethno state held aloft by oil revenues to. To, you know, to, you things that the modern socialists hate. But what is about communism you don't like? It sounds like that's the apotheosis of your particular beliefs. Well, we have other things going on as well.

Let's see. South Carolina had a Trump-endorsed candidate not do so well in a debate. Let me quote here. Her response to a question about whether Taiwan and the South China Sea were strategically important was, quote, I'm just going to be honest here. I'm not that informed on national security. So she added, national security is not my thing, not my area of expertise, but I do support the military. I expect a little more from our candidates, don't you?

Yeah. I don't know Darlene Graham. Perhaps she's a very nice person. A few weeks ago, I was extremely irritated. by a tweet from John Barrasso, the senator from Wyoming, who I like a great deal in general, who described Darlene Graham as an excellent senator. She'd been there eight days.

She was there because her last name was Graham. How could she possibly be an excellent senator? That doesn't mean that she was destined to be a bad senator, but she couldn't by definition. be an excellent one. She hadn't done anything. She hadn't rendered enough votes. She hadn't participated in enough debates. She hadn't introduced or co-sponsored any legislation. It was a nonsense phrase. And now we learn that she may not, in fact, be an excellent senator. Because although I understand we have over time in this country evolved into a place where the national government

concerns itself with things that really should mostly be the preserver of the states. The Senate, of all places, is supposed to be coherent on the question of foreign policy. The Senate is the body that decides which treaties we ratify. It's the body that decides which executive officials will serve as Secretary of State and as Secretary of Defense and so forth. So that's just not acceptable. It's a disqualifying position to take. I know.

I can say that, although even in my job, that's somewhat frowned upon. The guy who runs the milkshake stand over the road can say that. A potential six-year U.S. senator cannot. No. The campaign, I believe, came back and said that actually she's more concerned. preoccupied, you might even say, with kitchen table items, sort of stuff that South Carolinas really care about. The two are not mutually exclusive.

And I would say that the kitchen table items often depend on a free trade routes that are enforced by American power. So national security ought to be everybody's thing. I don't understand why it isn't. To say that it isn't is to sort of assume that we live in this received paradise here that was achieved, oh, I don't know, somehow. And we'll always go on like this until we're rudely surprised that. it doesn't. So no, I want an awful, awful lot more. On the other hand, you want to say that a

senator who hasn't done anything for eight days is a, is a good senator. You know, sometimes the less your politicians find themselves doing the better. The idea that we, you know, she hasn't passed any laws. Good. Good. I think we have perhaps enough. Well, another Trump endorsed candidate here in Minnesota, Mike Lindell did not win. the party's pretty much happy about that because he would have flamed out spectacularly. And now they're looking at perhaps Minnesota as the conservatives actually having a chance in Minnesota. A, nobody cares about Minnesota. But B, it would be interesting.

There are women running for the gubernatorial position and the Senate, and it'll be fun to see what happens. But our state has become, I think, this sort of punchline for the rest of America. And I don't know, Charles, when you were in England, if you ever had any thoughts about Minnesota. When you lived in England growing up, what came to mind? California, New York, and its cojack badness, Florida, and its Disney-Fide Wonder, what did you think? I'm just curious.

Well, I'd been to Florida a good number of times by the time I was in my teens because it's the law in England that English people must visit at these ones. I had been to California and Arizona because we had family friends who lived there. So I'd seen the Grand Canyon and I'd been to the Getty Museum in Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm and what you will. I knew about New York, obviously.

Everyone knows about New York. It's in every other movie. I knew about Maine. Really? Because I had a friend from school who his mother, I think, was from Bangor. I'm trying to think where else I would have really known about. I mean, I'm really not saying this, James, to make you twitch.

But I had never heard of Minnesota until. Of course not. I guess I went to college. No, it's like asking people to identify Schleisvig-Holstein or something like that. You know, some other smaller polity in Europe. We don't. We know the broad strokes and that's about it. But it is interesting because the trajectory of this state in so many ways mirrors the trajectory of liberalism.

in the United States, in that we figured it out pretty much how to do it in the 60s and 70s. The state came up with, you know, what they called the Minnesota miracle, wherein we're going to tax you. Yes, we are. But the roads are going to be smooth.

The schools are going to be good. The courts are going to be fair. And everything is pretty much going to work. It's going to work. And the leaders of the major corporations, of which we had quite a few, because there's a lot of intellectual innovation going on up here. Scotch tape, for God's sakes. Post-it notes. You can only get posted notes,

which have a very slight adhesive character when you have a Lutheran culture that doesn't like to hug or linger with a shaking of the hand. So post-it notes are sort of perfect for our concept of physical contact. And these people said, yes, we will pledge a certain amount of our money for the arts, for charity, for the rest of this thing. And so you had a society that generally did it correctly. And then was open to people who did not share the culture and came simply for the benefits in the freebies. And eventually what happened is you got a nomenclature of state

power that was less interested in the people that they served than the maintenance of their own phony baloney jobs. And so now here we are. Here we are. And the state is not in good shape. And yet I stay. And yet I stay for the beauty and the four seasons and the rest of it. Ah, well, we'll see. Does the Constitution require a unitary executive in control of all things apportioned to the executive branch? John Yoo says yes.

The Constitution grants all executive power in the federal government to the president. One of those duties that the president also has is to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. He's the only official in the Constitution who has given that response. responsibility. George Will says no. It seems to me the unitary executive theory scratches what I would call humanity's rosetta stone itch. That is the desire to find something that decodes everything and answers all questions. The unitary executive theory coming up on conservative crossroads. Rickashay. Join the conversation. Other things going on the world decided from American elections, the biggest issue seems to have come from England.

In England, you have a lot of debate about immigration. You have a lot of soul searching, and you have a lot of simmering, painful anger, or you have people saying, you know, it's, our village was a fine and peaceable place. And now, and now it is going to be overrun by Harry and Megan. their entourage. I did wonder where you were going with that. A lot of people are irritated about that. Well, I think the return of the Royals is an interesting story, if you care about the Royals at all.

And I think I'm more interested in the reason that they failed over here, because it says something about the two cultures, does it not? Well, I wouldn't say that she's particularly popular in England either, at least not compared with Kate, who's beloved. Right. She is, of course, from here, which makes her failure here a little more embarrassing. Had she come from England, tried it in America and gone home with a tail between her legs, that would have been one thing.

But she was actress, right? Oh, yes. Suits, yes, that's her great credit. Yeah, you know, her being an actress and being on suits is sort of up there right now with Charles Manson wrote a song for the Beach Boys. I mean, it's like, yeah, okay, interesting historical. but I could really care much more about it. Yes, suits. But so some people are saying that he's trying to,

he's looking to a future in which the king dies and he doesn't, he wants to be sort of at the wedding, he doesn't want his brother to get, or at the funeral, doesn't want his brother to get all the attention. Or he is homesick, which I understand. I mean, you probably better than anybody I can talk to, have assimilated into this country and embraced it in ways that I can never possibly see you going back.

But you do imagine the ancestral pole of the old sod, don't you? Sure, sure. And I've written about this. If you play Nimrod from Algar, I get emotional. In fact, there is a moment in the movie Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan movie from 2017, in which Hans Zimmer brilliantly weaves the main tune from Nimrod, which is in the Enigma Variations,

if you want to look it up, into the soundtrack. And it just comes in on the soundtrack, like a ton of bricks, especially given what's happening in the movie. And I went to see that movie in IMAX with Kyle Smith at a preview. And I started weeping.

Just the second that that motif came in. And that's, of course, always going to be with me because I'm from there. And I consider myself American. I'm not a bit American or partially American. I'm an American. But that's in there. So, yes, I do understand it. But I think I have a healthy relationship with England than Prince Harry.

And I moved out of it and became a citizen here and I'm not going back. I understand. Believe me, I understand. I was at a wedding. and at the recessional, as everyone's leaving the church, I'm in tears. And somebody might have said, if you've really been moved by this wedding of your grandson

and his lovely bride, it's like, no, it's the middle portion of Jupiter by Holst. Yeah. Which is the most British theme ever. And, you know, I love England, but I'm not a native. But I can just only imagine how that would speak to somebody who actually was from there and from the culture because it sums up so much.

So, yes, I get it. But the other way in which England has captured the national imagination is a story that's now about to be played out, and that is we have elevated Jason Ardei to the pantheon of those who have been unfairly lynched for the crime of being a smart black person in a white country. That was the natural end of all of this. That and the fact that it's Trump's fault for wanting to remake academia using federal money. We can get to that in a second here. But so now we've switched, and I see Simon Woolley, who's Cambridge Homerton College.

So the media scrutiny constitute a lynching and a public assassination. Charles, have they no shame to use a phrase that somebody levied against the man we were talking about before? I think their minds

have been turned into porridge. I think they can't think any more. of racial hierarchies. And I'm sorry, I understand this is provocative and I know that it is not identical. But in that sense, they are anti-deluvian and they are more like a clan member

than a modern member of society. If you can't imagine a world in which black people can be, both good and bad, both honest and dishonest, then you aren't treating black people like human beings. Because human beings, and I believe human beings are all the same, irrespective of their mutable characteristics, are all of those things, sometimes the same people, are those things. I think it is a bizarre step backwards. And now in England, more so than here, there are people who are demanding the arrests of journalists who wrote about this, or going forward, changes to the law.

One person, I love this, what person proposed that a law should be passed in Parliament that governed how many times on aggregate, so you'd have to have coordination, a public figure could be written about per week. Right. So if Jason Arde's lies came to the fore, and then the editor of the Daily Telegraph and the editor of the Daily Mail, both wanted to write about him, they'd have to, I don't know, would they be given tokens? Would it be like a carbon tax where they got refundable credits? Perhaps so. Talley marks on the wall, like in a cell where prisoners marking off the days. Yes, to be specific, the nonprofit, the good law project, which right there makes my skin crawl. They had an open letter, 122,000 signatures, which called for Prime Minister. Andy Burnham, that fine bloke from Manchester, to quote, commission an immediate public inquiry as to how to ensure a responsible press given its contribution to Dr. Arde's tragic death. I would say that the main contribution to Dr. Arde's death was Dr. Ardei. And that what the press did is what the press is supposed to do in any free society, which is to

ferret out to the bunkum and to expose those people who have been borne aloft by a golden wind and claimed all sorts of honors and financial benefits that they did not deserve. I thought that's what the press is supposed to be. But because the man had the sort of beatific smile of a children's television presenter, he was regarded as this marvelous story, and hence it was ethically wrong to question. Quote, self-regulation of the press has comprehensively failed, the letter said, and ergo it's got to be the gumment who goes to regulate it. So once again, you are rather contemptuous of your former countrymen and the way in which they just put up with it and take it.

Do you think if there actually is a means or an attempt to censor the press and to put in tokens, as you put it, do you think that people will go along and just say, well, they've got a point? Well, what are you going to do? Well, I was bored of reading that story anyway. Do you think they'll go along? I don't think they would go along with that particular one. I do think this is changing for the better. I do think the British, as they always have been relative to Americans, are too comfortable with the idea that the government should regulate the press.

I think this one probably wouldn't fly. For a few reasons, Britain's tragedy historically at least has been called. class where America's has been raised. And Cambridge University is not the sort of institution behind which populists would rally. I can't see a mass movement in England saying, we must censor the press to protect the reputation of Cambridge professors. Right. And the second reason is that Adé really did lie.

This isn't... A case about privacy where the press was, well, that's actually happened. It was hacking telephones to find out what Liz Hurley was doing this week, or some paparazzo was at Pizza Express behind the fern taking pictures of Hugh Grant. It was a guy. I'm sorry, I've got to stop you right there. Pizza Express for our American listeners, which of course I'm one, is a guy. chain of pizza restaurants known for its elaborate Art Nouveau logo, which literally, I don't think,

has changed since the chain was founded in the 70s or something like that. And I've never, ever, ever wanted to go in there. Because while you can get good pizza in Britain, it's as difficult as getting a good hamburger. I've given up long ago trying to get anything close to a good hamburger in England. They just can't do it. And while I've had good wood-fired pizzas out in the countryside, extraordinary stuff, it's still a little bit different than the ones in America. So I would no more go to Pizza Express than an Italian would go to Sabaro. Let's just just put it that way. No, no, you should try it. So it's a digression here. Pizza Express was founded in 1965 by a guy who looked jazz and he had, as you say, exactly right about the logo.

The whole interior decoration looks like that. Pizza Express sounds to the uninitiated as if it's a $3 pizza on a street corner sort of place. Actually, it's quite good, James. You might like it. I might, but the idea that I am in London and I'm eating at a chain pizza restaurant, I think everybody would look at me askance and never speak to me again about food because they would realize there was a creton with the appellate of a seven-year-old, and they might have a point. I did have a burger at Byron's just to be curious, but otherwise. Anyway, so you're right about burgers.

The English just absolutely can't do burgers. There was a thread on ricochet about this. So what's your coming home to America meal? Yes. When I was at Oxford, I was personally. accidentally on a hallway full of American visiting students. I was the only British person on this hallway. It was an accident, but it was a solitary one.

And we used to talk about this. I would say to them, what is it when you get back to America after you've been in Oxford for two or three months each time? Do you crave? And every single one of them said a hamburger, every single one of them. It is.

It's just something magical about it. I mean, I haven't the, the hearts. to tell my friend who's American. She's been over there for 20 years, but she's American that when she makes a hamburger. I mean, it may be the mince that they have.

It may be something and maybe some ineffable quality of freedom that we attain here. I don't know. When I tell the Brits how I do it, that I take the bacon fat and I pour it in and I crack an egg and all the rest of it, you know, they look at me with, you know, horror, but also fascination. So, yes, I'm tempted actually to bring a good pound of 7327 over there and make them hamburgers proper, but it would probably never make it past customs. So, so we were talking about them accurately. I was just saying that there's just a difference between the press doing things that are illegal or immoral

and someone else doing things that are illegal or immoral and being called out for it in the press. And I think that's probably why the British won't get behind this one. The idea that the, I mean, the British press is so notoriously and celebrated as being hard, hard hitting and wide swinging and gutters and tabloids and the rest of it. It's a proud part of the national tradition. I think it's hilarious that the telegraph, which I read every day, because I get it on my Apple news feed without additional cost, which is great. The telegraph in person is a marvelous paper. It's huge.

It's the size of a horse blanket. It's thick. It's got all kinds of special sections. But the friend with whom I stay, a gentleman in his 80s, has always regarded himself as a laborite. He's always regarded himself as a good liberal. He's a telegraph man. And he loves the telegraph, and he agrees with it. And the Telegraph, I think in British conception is almost, isn't it almost like Dermer and V-Dair or something?

I mean, it's so far to the right. To me, it's just a moderate, sensible paper. But the things that you read today, I was reading a story in the Telegraph about how the newest regulations seem determined to destroy the British cigar industry. Not that they have one, but the selling of. They want new laws. And this just says everything. that turn the historically ornate, decorated beautiful cigar boxes that people buy,

you can't have a picture on them anymore. It must be plain. It must have the name of the product in a sand serif font without decoration, and it must have a hideous photo of medical consequence, a possible medical consequences somewhere in the box. So you go from the Romeo and Juliet box, which has this early 1920s illustration.

I used to have one. my wife gave it to me. Beautiful. And you go from that to this generic little box that you go from Churchill to this says everything about the people who run the place. Not the people who constitute the nation, but the people who run the damned place. And so when you say that British people wouldn't stand behind this,

and also not going to rally to Cambridge, because it's a bunch of empty head of boffins talking about, this. A lot of it has to do with people understanding that what they teach at Cambridge in sociology is nonsense. And what these people want to do is to remove the joy and the vitality from life in the name of health and safety and that they are a tiresome bunch of prudes that for some reason we can't seem to shake. Well, the other thing about the Ardei thing is that it's brought Ibrahim X. Kendi out of the woodwork. And I'm thrilled. I'm stunned. I hadn't heard from him in a long time and I was wondering what he was up to. Now we know. And now we can go back

into the woodwork. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said woodwork. People are going to make something with that. I'm Greg Carumbus. Join Jim Garrity of National Review and me each weekday for the three martini lunch podcast. We'll give you the good, bad, and crazy news of the day and lots of laughs too. Find us right here on the Rikoshae Audio Network at rickashay.com or wherever you get your podcasts. The other thing that happened to this week in tragic terms, there has been the strangest outpouring of young mothers on TikTok who are expressing sympathy for a woman who had a psychotic break

and strangled all of her children one at a time. This story itself is a horrible story. Any father can put himself in the shoes of that man. I'm not particularly interested in putting myself. in the slippers of that woman, but we're supposed to have a big conversation about postpartum depression. We're really supposed to have a big conversation

about how women aren't supported and that if we had better health care, the kids would be alive. But we're also supposed to have a conversation about the unjustness of this woman facing any sort of penalty at all. I'm sure you're not absorbed in this, Charles, but as a man of X,

I'm sure that you've seen this spill over into the discourse. What's your take? I hate all of these people and wish they would go away. Well, let me just, before I rant about this, let me just very quickly say that I don't like the attempts by some edgy people on the right to treat women. We're talking about Matt Walsh. Yeah, I am.

To treat women who have postpartum depressive. as if they're self-indulgent weaklings. My wife never did have it, but I know many women who have, and that's just a stupid attention-seeking, boreish view that I don't share. Now I can go after the people who are defending. What's her name, Clancy?

Lindsay Clancy. Lindsay Clancy. So, first off, the notion that she wasn't supported sufficiently is stupid in this case. Her husband seems to have supported her sufficiently to the point at which he got a nanny and bought her all manner of nice things. They had a nice life. So this is not, despite what the DSA insists is the case in every circumstance, the fault of poverty or neglect. second, while of course postpartum depression can be real, it's not an excuse for murdering people.

It is true that men are full of testosterone and that especially in younger men, this can lead to violence and can be quite difficult to master. But you don't get to say in court, well, of course, I was just full of testosterone and that's why I wiped out the school bus. No. Third, I really don't understand the argument against punishing her. Even if you believe that she's guaranteed not to offend again, which I don't, incidentally, and is contradictory given that the earlier argument was, well, she was just in depression and she acted out. Well, if she's that sort of person, let's keep her locked up. But I think that we ought to punish crimes for more than.

than merely a deterrent effect and for more than merely keeping people away from law-abiding citizens. I think it is an imperative in a society. And if that is someone's idea of playing God, so be it. She murdered three children. We write down laws in this country often for a reason, not always, but often for a reason. And this is one of of them. There's these two concepts in law, Malam Prohibitum and Malaminsay. Malaminsay means that something is illegal because it's bad, murder, rape. Malam prohibitum means that it's illegal because it's illegal. Now, that doesn't mean that everything is mal and prohibitum is useless. We have taxes, for example, but they're not intrinsically right or wrong. A 30% tax is not intrinsically better than a 25% tax. This is Malaminsay. In every society, in every moral framework,

in every religion in every country in the world. You do not murder your children. And if we can't punish those who do, I think that we've given up a society. I just don't see her justification as being an excuse. So I've found this outpouring bizarre. And last thing, I find it really, revolting that those women who are outside the courthouse in Massachusetts, I think.

Yes, in pink. Yes. I have seen, on X, as you correctly note, I have seen videos and pictures of them, and I have watched them in horror. And I have seen all of them expressing care and alarm about Lindsay Clancy. and not one of them doing so for her murdered children. No. Or even her husband.

No, I haven't said for him. That guy, that worm, that gormless guy who probably did it. I mean, his... But this is weird, right, James? I mean, I don't know if it's modern. I know it's tempting to say, gosh, the world's going to hell in a handbag. I'm not sure that's right, because these sorts of cases throughout history have attracted weirders. If you read about some of the high-proven.

for murders in the 1920s. They always attracted some guy who came in from St. Louis on a train and had decided that the accused was innocent. They always did. But these people are particularly weird to me, and maybe this is me being a patriarchy cult type, but it's especially weird to me to see women siding with a woman who murdered children. That seems to upend my moral universe. Well, it does accept that. You look at all of them and common amongst them, I'm sure, is the belief that the woman is, the woman's life and health and happiness comes first. And from that flows everything else. And if her children are happy and alive after that, great.

But she has to come first. And sometimes that's the case. She does. Other times the case, it certainly is not. But when you add to that, you add the strange sort of female fascination for people who do horrible things. You know, if Charlie Speck had been more handsome, there would have been a. fan club for him. And then you have a true crime brain, as they say.

I generally don't like affixing the suffix brain to things. It works here. If you steep yourself in true crime, a couple of things happen. One, you think that wives are being killed at a rate of probably exceeds the number of black people shot by policemen, which is to say five an hour. The whole true crime apparatus, I mean, nowadays when you listen to Dateline, sometimes they'll say, It was 1996. Oh, they ran out of stories.

They've run out of murders because they're just getting so good at catching people right away through DNA. They've got to go back to 96. But there is countless hours. And the audience for these things is overwhelmingly female for a whole bunch of reasons that I don't even want to begin to get into. But so part of them have seized onto this because it's, you know, the crime du jour, even though it happened three years ago. And they want to pick it apart.

They want to find the right thing. They want to tease out the element. But part of it is just solidarity with somebody who, if you have women who are photographing themselves and putting it up on social media with themselves with their baby and a pained look in the title, same, Lindsay, you are, if you volunteer to tell the world that you are contemplating infanticide, then something is deeply amiss because if a mother had put on a postcard, I want to kill my children and gone down to the grocery store and tacked it up to the community board, the police would have come round. But now you're applauded by the rest of these horrible people for understanding and for getting it out there. And for your empathy. That's going to be on the internet forever. So at some point, the child is going to grow up.

up. I know. I don't imagine if your mother just sort of said she had casual conversation. Yes, of course there was a three or four week period where I just wanted to kill you. Yeah. There was what? You can laugh about it. But yeah.

The other part, and I don't hear this talked about a lot, and that's probably because I'm not hanging out in the proper corners and just I'm not looking for it. But if they say, look, she had this break because she was on all of these medications. Okay. What does that tell us about the medication part? I'm not opposed to people finding some sort of relief from mental torment through chemical means. I think there are ways in which it works. And I've known people who have gone on some of these things and had a breathing space that allowed them to recapture themselves.

As long as you, I think, medicating children for personality reasons from the beginning of adolescence is to have them grow up not knowing who they are because they exist in a medicated state. but if she was on 20 drugs okay well a who put who put her on there and B what does that say about the way we treat people who have these problems and see if she goes to the bin instead of the gray bar hotel what are they going to do with her there they're probably going to give her more drugs and is the result of that going to be she's better she's cured and she can get out now? Mm-hmm. Because...

Go on. No, I was going to comment on something you'd said earlier, so... Go on. It's funny you say that dateline, you realize they ran out of stories, because when my first child was born, one of the shows, because, of course, you're up all night.

Yes. That my wife and I got hooked on was forensic files, which I think at the time was on Netflix. Okay. And we watched... hundreds of them. Yes. But right at the end of forensic files, they'd run out of good stories.

And so they would start with things like, Jonathan Simpson didn't know what had caused the mold on the wall of the bathroom. And you're like, and I can remember sitting there and saying to my wife, oh, no. And then realizing that this was actually not a good instinct. Like, I had got really into this show because it was so salacious. and then learning that someone hadn't been killed had disappointed me at 3 o'clock in the morning. Right.

This is probably not doing good things to my mind. I need to. No. It's good that he's dealing with mold. Right. It's not a serial killer. If Dateline is dealing with shoplifting, you know that something, you would, at the end of the show, you'd feel very cheated because there's no opportunity for somebody to lament a person

who lit up the room with their smile every time she came in. So yes. I mean, so true crime, it has so many manifestations. There's so many podcasts about it. I mean, one of the shows, the very title of which gives me the creeps is called My Favorite Murder. And I want to sit these two young women down and say, there's something wrong with you if you have a favorite murder. I'm going to start bringing that up. Next time there's a lull in conversation at some dinner I'm at, I'm just going to say, so what's your favorite murder?

But the problem is I can't keep a straight face. So I'll laugh. But if you could keep a straight face, that would be a good one. What's your favorite ghastly disemboweling that energy the person put into a pit of lime? And then when that didn't dissolve the body, they put it with its children into an oil tank.

Do you ever? Because I've got two. How about you? Yeah. No, so all those women standing up their lining, we stand with Lindsay and same Lindsay just, the best part about this, though, is that thanks to AI, which generally is a plague,

but also sometimes a blessing, when somebody finds a video, of somebody who's thrown herself onto the sofa, sobbing, and sets it to music, you can use AI to just zoom out, zoom out so you see the tripod and the ringlight. And then you realize that every one of these people has, wait, if you didn't know this before, has carefully staged their emotional breakdown to their moment of vulnerability. And I saw one the other day, and it was another one of those, we understand, we stand with you, Lindsay, in which a woman had documented,

apparently her postpartum depression over the course of two years. and was clever enough to do it with a variety of camera angles and distances so that the compilation looked actually cinematic. Now, there are laws being proposed. Facebook meta is being sued right now for something like $1.3 trillion, all told, that accused them of juicing the algorithm and of hooking people at a young age. And while I wish that social media did not have the effect that it did,

I wish that it wasn't the plague that it was. I'm also very hesitant about these things and attempt for the children to impose some sort of health and safety standards that end up doing nothing and inconvenience to everybody else. So do you think it's possible? I think that there's this strange object

called a parent which can intermediate, which can serve as an intermediary between the screen and the child. But that's just me. Do you support these age verification laws, these lawsuits to get the kids No. I have unpopular views on this. I am, as I've written, an internet hippie. I've been on the internet since 1993. I think the original conception of, yes, I know, but I'm 40, James. 41.

Full disclosure. 41. So that means I've been on since I was nine, which is less worthy. the internet at the moment and probably forever is far more centralized than it was supposed to be i grant that is largely the product of consumer choices people use gmail because it's easy there aren't 20 different email providers for every user and people don't self-host an email server unless the Hillary Clinton. But the idea of the internet was to be this decentralized system that, what was the famous phrase, sees censorship and roots around it as damage? As damage, right. Right. I think they're referring to DARPANET when they were the construction of DARPANET when they came up with that. So I don't like centrally imposed roadblocks.

I think that there are serious security problems with them for a start, but I also don't like them because it gets us closer to the internet being superintended, essentially, which I don't want. Now, I admit that I don't have an answer to a lot of the problems that the internet has caused, and I do think that most of the critiques of social media and its effect on young people are correct. But I am more of the view that this is a question for parents or that it will be solved by software at the client level, not service side. On the matter of this lawsuit, the lawsuit hasn't actually named a law that's been broken. and that means that it will be, in effect, a common law lawsuit,

and that therefore the jury has a huge amount of power simply to decide. Right. Well, there was a New Mexico lawyer who said that it was the equivalent of a smelter belching pollution over the neighborhood. Right, but I just raised that because if there were a law that had been violated, the law would have a lot of provisions and it would have penalties attached and limitations and contexts and so forth. This is more like an old common law, I think I'm right in saying, tort suit. And the jury can thus basically do what it wants.

Right. And I don't think that that's a very good model for a free country with a free market. it will of course be appealed if the jury does do something silly but much as the congress had to step in because this tack was tried against gun companies and in 2005 passed the protection of law for commerce in arms act that preempts this sort of thing i think if we're going to see juries awarding trillion dollar awards against tech companies in a America, then Congress may need to step in and set some rules, set some thresholds as to what is and isn't allowed, rather than just leave it a completely open question. Because if they don't,

you know, why would anyone bother? And of course I'm self-interested in this. As should our listeners be, because, I mean, I don't think ricochet is likely to receive the same attention. But what if it did? I mean, what if someone said this is a really terrible product that damages? is the mental health of those who use. It doesn't have to be children. It could just be anyone. It would bankrupt us. So I'm very, very skeptical of this stuff, yes.

I'm probably on the wrong side of public opinion on this, but so be it. Well, I'll be on the wrong side as public opinion as well. The more they want age verification, the more they want to make sure you are you on the internet. And I understand that. I mean, I do. It's one of the reasons that I've always used my own name on the internet because I don't want to behave in a way in public is, you know, in a way that I would be ashamed to live up to.

I would not want to have an altar or something where I can go and be scurrilous and then it gets exposed someday and I have to account for the things that I said in an ill-tempered moment. No. So I get that. I've always been up front with, this is my identity on the Internet, except for those, you know, a couple of sites. But the moment that you start to nail everybody down to a specific device, specific name, specific IP, you know, ban VPNs as they've tried to do in some countries. tie it to your digital ID and the rest of it.

I mean, we're surveilled enough as it is. Thanks to flock, thanks to cameras, thanks to ring. They can pretty much, thanks to my own car tattling on me. They can tell where you are.

They've got a pretty good database of you. I read a story today about McDonald's and what they know about this one guy who goes there all the time through the rewards program. They're able to figure out, A, he's never going to stop eating here. B, next time he comes, he's going to get this. And all the rest of it.

So you have, moment, some scattered and isolated databases out there, which are coming together, I'm sure. I'm sure that they're all probably in a big wad at the NSA somewhere for all I know. To this moment, to this day, I don't like the fact that when I enter England, the camera just looks at me and says, oh, you, okay, carry on, and I go through. So I wave my passport. Don't you want to, don't you want to see this? No, nope, nope, I mean, just put it on the glass, you know, as the man sang, and then walk right

through. I don't like that, but we're still not to the point where everything is funneled through a specific government sieve, distilled into a little knowledge about us that can be weaponized or used, or just for that matter, just collected. I just don't like that fact. Hi, I'm Ben Sass. And I'm Chris Steyerwalt. And this is not dead yet. We're all dying, but some of us have been brought face to face with that reality. However long, each of us have to do it, though, we all want to live a good life. One with meaning, love, and joy. And our guests are here to help us do exactly that.

Now available for download and streaming at rickashay.com. Rickashay. Join the conversation. One more thing to go before that we don't like the fact of Rocahn has come up with an economic patriotism, which is you might result involves taking property away from people and giving it to others. The new economic patriotism, it's a national strategy that combat, combat's extreme wealth inequality. Can't have that.

Can't have that. If you got one guy who makes $1 and one guy who makes $10, we've got to do something about the guy who makes $10 because that's inequity. Now, if everybody made $1, that'd be great because that's equal. He wants to revitalize, deindustrialized rust-built communities. Good luck. And rebuild domestic manufacturing with, are you ready for this? Public investments.

It's always investments. And trade schools, I'm for that. and of course an industrial investment bank. Sounds like a lot of 1930s three agency stuff that got tossed out or didn't work, right, Charles? I loathe that man. I loathe him. I think he is probably the most loathsome person in American public life across the board. This stuff is ugly.

It's ugly. And I really do think that he is engaged in this in large part because he feels guilty for being worth hundreds of millions of dollars having done absolutely nothing. I know. And he's projecting that onto people who have built things. I saw him last week talking to Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban raised a whole bunch of excellent objections to this billion air tax. California is trying to pass, which Roe Canner is very much in favor of.

And others who own companies in California piled in and said, yes, Mark Cuban is correct. This would have effects, A, B, and C. And Rocana on the fly invented this completely insane patch to the law that would have involved the government loaning people money so that they could pay the tax back to the government. And then if they don't repay the loan, then the government gets to take over their company. And I was sitting there, James, thinking, why not just not do it in the first place? Right, right. I wrote about this this week.

The same is true of Mamdani in New York. So Mamdani wants to run these grocery stores, and the purpose of his wanting to run the grocery stores seems to be that he wants to run the grocery stores. That seems to be the objection. It's not as if New York City doesn't have grocery stores are everywhere. It's not as if they're unaffordable, at least not insofar as all grocery stores aren't currently expensive. It's not as if they don't exist in certain areas. He just thinks the city should run them. So he came up with this idea.

There's going to be five government-run grocery stores. and the grocery stores are going to sell produce cheaper than the other grocery stores, and they're going to offset the imbalance by taxing New Yorkers. So New Yorkers are going to pay to be able to buy cheaper groceries from a government-run grocery store. But this week, the other grocery stores, the ones that actually have to stay in business, started to sue him. And in fact, inconveniently for him, they're all immigrants. So these immigrant grocery store owners started to sue him.

And his aide was asked about this. And his aide said, well, don't worry, what we will do is we'll give them money so that they aren't hurt by our running the government grocery store. So Mamdani's plan now is to run government grocery stores which require taxation as a subsidy. And to offset the bad consequences of that, they're going to then give money to the other grocery stores so that they can compete with the government grocery store that's being subsidized by taxation. why didn't he just go, I'm not going to run a grocery store? I know. Like, what is wrong with these people? And Roe-Kana is the same.

He's got this in his mind, and he just can't let it go. And so now he's building all of this Rube Goldberg scaffolding around it, rather than just saying, I'll go do something else. He is the worst person in American public life. Well, that's a great place to end, except we can't, because I have to fulfill my obligation to guess the albums that Charles has put up on the shelf in the back. Now, mind you, I am seeing things that from a distance here, and I just had an eye exam on Monday where I was informed that my glasses were completely wrong.

So I have new ones coming. But right now, I'm seeing some indistinct shapes. And I have to make out from these very indistinct shapes what they are. And it's killing me because I'm looking at the one that appears to be candles with the name of the group up in the right-hand corner. And I know it, but I cannot tell you what it is. I couldn't for the life of me tell you what it is. Now, let me get in here because I know you're doing a really, The picture just pixelated a little bit.

Okay, the one that is at an angle, I'm seeing a white shirt and a little black line that could be a tie and a coat slung over the shoulder. That would be sport by Huey Lewis in the news. Am I right? Correct. Okay. Hugh, good.

Now, the next one, the color of it suggests that it could have been dire straits, but I think we did that last week. So I think it may be, it may be Robin Trower. No, it's Tangerine Dream. Rubicon. Oh, there we go. So I don't know the one with the candles. What is the one of the candles?

That one's difficult. My dad gave me that. That's Melanie Safka. Okay, well, I had no bloody idea. And then I think, no, I don't. And then I see one, which I believe is love over gold by Dider Straits. Correct. Oh, well, two out of four, not bad.

That was pretty good. Considering how tiny these things are, for God's sakes. Well, the only thing that you can guess is that I have a towel on my wall from the broadside ale, commemorating the Battle of Solby, which was an inconclusive. of naval fight with the Dutch with bodies just washing up in the area for a couple of weeks. But they made a pretty darn good a lot of it. Yeah, for once

the English and the French fought on the same side in that era, which was rare. Well, yes indeed, but I mean, if you look at the Elizabethan period, you know, Bess was cozzening up to the French for some time there to allow herself give herself some power against Spain

and even though the Catholicism was a problem with France too. I mean, she almost married that guy before he kind of flounced off and tried to be king of Belgian or something like that. Anyway, anyway, anyway, ricochet, go there. Sign up. Sign up now. Sign up for the member site so you can see exactly what people are talking about.

And you will find a community that is warm and welcoming and sarcastic and smart and funny and all the rest of it. I'm there. Charles is there. Everybody's there. And Stephen Hayward will be back next week we expect, unless, of course, Rob Long or Peter Robinson flounces in and brings back the old times when I can never get a word in edgewise. That'll be great. But Charles, it's been a pleasure.

Thank you everybody listening for joining RICOchet or wanting to, and we'll see everyone in the comments at Ricochet 4. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Goodbye. RICOCHAY! Join the conversation.