The Hanania Show

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comI just did a livestream with Daniel Di Martino (X) of the Manhattan Institute. He immigrated to the US from Venezuela ten years ago and has a PhD in economics from Columbia University. I temporarily pulled him away from TV appearances and getting protein drinks to talk about what just happened in his home country. We go into the history of Venezuela, its relationship with Cuba, where Chavismo comes from, who actually is going to run the country now, what Maduro’s former vice president is up to, why Trump seems not to like María Corina Machado, and more. The conversation also touches on the conservative wave that seems to be spreading across Latin America. There are a lot of ways Venezuela can go bad. But I’m sick of pessimism. There are also a lot of ways this can go right, and certainly at least be better than the government that was there before. We remember all the regime changes that led to disaster and forget Grenada and Panama because we’re so overwhelmingly biased towards negativity these days. Whatever happens tomorrow, today is about congratulating the administration and the people of Venezuela. In case you missed it, see my article from this morning on why Trump made the right call. Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comMichael Tracey joins me on the livestream to discuss the latest Epstein file drop. He reminds me of how I thought this thing couldn’t keep going on forever during the summer, and yet we are still here. I acknowledge Michael’s prescience on this. We go through various reveals making their way on social media and he explains why they don’t actually show anything. Near the end we get distracted and start chatting for some time about video games, which people may enjoy. He wants to know why there aren’t more games he likes on the Switch 2. I’m still getting through Donkey Kong Bananza, which we both recommend. Michael has been tweeting about the big “reveals” in the latest documents. See, in particular, the hoax Epstein letter to Larry Nassar and the document on the crazy person claiming to have been Trump’s driver.

In this discussion, Scott Sumner, an esteemed economist and author, delves into the complexities of monetary policy and its impact on the Great Depression. He advocates for government intervention to solve coordination issues in a free market. Sumner explains how monetary shocks can lead to unemployment, and discusses the implications of nominal debts during financial crises. He also proposes nominal GDP targeting as a more effective approach than inflation targeting, while linking economic sentiment to political stability.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comJust did a livestream discussing my recent article, “JD Vance Is the White Kendi.” I elaborate on the essay a bit, and explain why I think that Vance is overwhelmingly likely to be the Republican nominee in 2028. I also give some advice on how to attack Vance from either the left or right. People are yet to fully dig into the disconnect between the author of Hillbilly Elegy and what he has become. No one is paying close enough attention to this, but I’m going to keep harping on it as we get closer to 2028 and the spotlight shifts more and more to Trump’s presumptive heir. I go on to discuss anti–Erika Kirk Twitter, a rabbit hole I just fell into. I explain why she triggers a certain kind of person. Finally, someone asks me why Trump’s Rob Reiner “Truth” caused such a backlash, and I explain the divide between MAGA influencers who have some shame and those who have none. Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comMichael Tracey joins me to discuss the latest Epstein revelations.Watch me show him how to open the documents that were just released. We begin by talking about my discussion with Tara Palmeri. He has a beef with her, but I found her lovely. You can watch that conversation on the MAGA Civil War here. I wonder how long this can go on. It’s Groundhog Day. The Epstein birthday book came out, there was a press conference, people in Congress made noises. Now some emails that mention Trump come out, and we’ll have press conferences and members of Congress making noises? At some point this must get old, right?

There are few (if any!) people alive whose work I think more highly of than Steven Pinker, or whose books have done more to shape my worldview. As he was in Los Angeles as part of his latest book tour, I took the opportunity to invite him on the show for an in-person interview. I did a podcast with him on Rationality, his last book, and wrote the following at the time: “One of the best parts of becoming (sort of) famous in the last year has been getting to meet and form relationships with some of my intellectual heroes. Seeing those I’ve looked up to for years not only become friends but in many cases return the admiration has been extremely rewarding.”That remains true, and although we’ve corresponded over the years, this discussion was the first time we met in person. The topic was his new book When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.We begin by discussing the Aumann Agreement Theorem, which I thought sounded trite from the book but came around to believing was endlessly fascinating after hearing Steve explain it. We spend a bit of time on humor, which is such an important part of social relations but rarely given the scholarly attention it deserves, or else we might say the theories that do exist are usually unsatisfying. I liked our discussion of how presidents and leaders engage in self-deprecating humor, and different public figures that either poke fun at themselves or the other side. I feel like the topic of politics and humor could make a fascinating PhD dissertation. If I had time, I would listen to podcasts and classify when people laughed and according to what criteria, and try to theorize about differences between groups like conservatives and liberals, or centrists and extremists. I think AI could probably help with that at this point. As I told Steve, perhaps we should all decide to support political movements that engage in more self-deprecating humor on the grounds that they are less likely to violate the rights of others! If you’re a graduate student or professor who is interested in doing such work, please reach out, as I would like to help find ways to make it happen. Moving on from the new book, I got to ask Steve something I’ve been wondering about for a few years, which is whether recent events, particularly the war in Ukraine, have shifted his views on what maintains peace in the international system. As it turns out, we were both surprised that under contemporary conditions you could see two European countries kill each other in such large numbers. Maybe the great run of peace we’ve had since 1945 isn’t a result of, as John Mueller has argued, people realizing that war is stupid, but rather has depended on Western military, economic, and diplomatic power. Were the dreaded neocons perhaps correct? As international norms look a lot more fragile than they did fifteen years ago, this is a question we probably should be asking.We close with some discussion about the Trump administration’s war on the universities, particularly Harvard. I loved the essay Pinker published in the NYT on “Harvard Derangement Syndrome.” The key passage is here. Why does this matter? For all its foibles, Harvard (together with other universities) has made the world a better place, significantly so. Fifty-two faculty members have won Nobel Prizes, and more than 5,800 patents are held by Harvard. Its researchers invented baking powder, the first organ transplant, the programmable computer, the defibrillator, the syphilis test and oral rehydration therapy (a cheap treatment that has saved tens of millions of lives). They developed the theory of nuclear stability that has saved the world from Armageddon (Arguable! – RH). They invented the golf tee and the catcher’s mask. Harvard spawned “Sesame Street,” The National Lampoon, “The Simpsons,” Microsoft and Facebook.Ongoing research at Harvard includes methane-tracking satellites, robotic catheters, next-generation batteries and wearable robotics for stroke victims. Federal grants are supporting research on metastasis, tumor suppression, radiation and chemotherapy in children, multidrug-resistant infections, pandemic prevention, dementia, anesthesia, toxin reduction in firefighting and the military, the physiological effects of spaceflight and battlefield wound care. Harvard’s technologists are pushing innovations in quantum computing, A.I., nanomaterials, biomechanics, foldable bridges for the military, hack-resistant computer networks and smart living environments for the elderly. One lab has developed what may be a cure for Type 1 diabetes.This was published only ten days after my own piece in The Economist touching on many of the same themes. Given the range and depth of the conversation, I walked away from it wondering how I would summarize Pinker’s career, or how to make sense of my intuition that there’s a line that extends through his books on psychology, linguistics, interpersonal communication, the history of violence, behavioral genetics, and political philosophy. If there is a unifying theme to his career, it’s a belief in reason to illuminate the most important human phenomena, from seemingly trivial – but actually quite deep! – questions like what makes us laugh or blush, to topics as weighty as, at an individual level, what determines the content of our personalities, and, from a more macro perspective, the causes of genocide and how we should arrange our political life. There’s been a progression from embodying enlightenment values in addressing important scientific questions regarding human nature, to explicitly advocating for those same principles in some of his more recent books, most clearly in Enlightenment Now. His two-front war against both wokeness in universities and the creeping authoritarianism of the Trump era is part and parcel of the same story. As liberalism seems to be on the decline, at least in the short run, there’s never been a better time to delve into Pinker’s articles and books if you haven’t already. Not only for the overt defenses of what Western Civilization has built, but also for his non-political books that show us how the acquisition of knowledge can itself be joyful and life affirming. You will breeze through a joke from Curb Your Enthusiasm or a Woody Allen film (yes, the books are very Jewish), and before you know it you will have grasped a deep insight into the human condition – in a way that is understandable and relatable, but never dumbed down. I hope that this conversation encourages listeners who are not familiar with Pinker’s body of work to decide that it is worth exploring. Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

Bryan Caplan joined me on the livestream today to discuss my recent article, “Economists Should Do More to Fight Misinformation.” We begin by splitting some hairs about whether the misinformation label misleads us about the ultimate origins of false beliefs, and also the difference between something being emotionally unappealing and intuitively incorrect. He ends up agreeing with me though on the major points of the article. We both encourage economists out there to take more pride in their work as intellectuals and fight false beliefs regardless of where on the ideological spectrum they come from. We then go into his experiences traveling to the Gulf Arab states and Japan. Bryan’s article on the UAE as utopia has stuck with me since I read it almost a year ago as demonstrating how well humans could be living if we simply were able to move beyond commonly held beliefs about markets and nationhood. Arabs built something this amazing! All it took was them believing in freedom. Or maybe just being rational. Bryan mentions to me that when you talk to their government ministers off the record, they believe the story that they’re exploiting the workers, which I found very amusing. There can sometimes be an incredible divergence between intentions and consequences that most people find difficult to fathom. I also bring up Laurenz Guenther’s recent article on immigration explaining the rise of populism and ask Bryan how he would address its findings in the context of his commitment to open borders. I bring up global demographic trends and ask if they frighten him, which leads to a discussion of South Africa. Somewhere in there we talk about the theories of Daron Acemoglu on why nations become rich or poor. Finally, the conversation closes with me asking Bryan for an update on what’s going on at GMU and his lonely struggle against attempts to make it woke.Overall, a very stimulating conversation, as always with Bryan. I encourage everyone to follow him on X and subscribe to his Substack. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comMichael Tracey joins me to talk about the Charlie Kirk memorial service. The conversation somehow devolves into us disagreeing strongly on which parts of the Christian Nationalist spectacle on display were strangest. Michael’s inner new atheist comes out, as we play clips from Erika Kirk, RFK, Pete Hegseth, and others. He notes how out of place this kind of overt sectarianism would have been in any previous administration. I argue that this is one of the signifiers of the right leaning into identitarianism, of which strict restrictionism and all the talk we’re getting about “Heritage Americans” are a part. One doesn’t have to be a Christian or even believe in God to be a member of the movement in good standing; it’s just about fighting the left. But fighting them on what? Consider how the second Trump administration has completely lost interest in abortion, which has traditionally been the main issue for the Christian Right. Is trans in women’s sports worth all this apocalyptic rhetoric? The dangers of crime in inner cities most Republicans don’t live anywhere near? The conversation also touches on the future of the conservative movement, and whether conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk’s death are going to be a fixture on the right going forward.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comI just did a livestream on the latest in the Charlie Kirk investigation, my article yesterday on the killing, and my piece on anti-Indian hate. As soon as I got off, I saw that a Congressman had just tweeted that he will try to permanently ban from social media anyone who “belittles” the Charlie Kirk assassination. He also says such people should not have business or driver’s licenses or be allowed to attend schools. This is by far the most authoritarian thing I can ever remember hearing an elected official say. People who complained that I shouldn’t have had a take so soon after the assassination should look at the kinds of rhetoric that Republican officials and conservative influencers are engaging in. One cannot cede the floor to these people. It would be different if there were a broad norm to not express political opinions on the news of the day in times like this. But that’s not where we are. I discuss the two-step conservatives engage in, where they:* Point to crazy things said by online leftists on Bluesky and TikTok who have no positions of power or influence* Use that as an excuse to call for repression of mainstream Democrats, even though literally 0% of them talk or act like the leftists the right complains aboutThis is completely dishonest, and facilitates hysteria by telling conservatives that deranged leftists are half the country rather than a small and isolated minority. You can’t make some mentally ill communist the avatar for an entire side of the political spectrum. The trick is to start by calling something bad “the Left”, and then declaring half the country responsible for anything they say or do. From the perspective of judging the Democratic Party and mainstream liberals it’s actually impressive that a movement can, among influential figures, be 100% in lockstep in terms of not celebrating the death of a political opponent. Again, that is much more than can be said for conservatives when they face similar circumstances. This is the human capital difference, which applies not just to intelligence, but also ethical norms.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comGhislaine speaks! And as it turns out, there is still nothing to the Epstein conspiracies. Michael Tracey has a nice breakdown of how it went, pointing out that there is no indication she is lying, even when you might expect to see signs of her doing so. He joins me to discuss. I went into this conversation thinking I had learned almost everything important about the Epstein saga. I was wrong. There are so many threads to pull here. But they’re not the ones people expect. The whole case against Ghislaine appears to have been drummed up by trial lawyers who recruited the “victims,” conducted the PR campaign, got journalists on board, and, according to Ghislaine and evidence presented by Alan Dershowitz, were engaging in a blackmail ring that involved threatening to drag more people into the story.It’s all rotten from top to bottom. It’s always easy to see a moral panic in retrospect. A hallmark of moral panics is that groups normally at odds unite to condemn a target. As Michael alludes to, podcast bros, CNN, and Fox are all on the same side here, making him a rare beacon of truth. They’re still wrong. We also talk about the role that taking high doses of testosterone might have played in Epstein’s behavior, something that came out during the Ghislaine interviews. He was clearly acting recklessly, which led to his downfall, and we now finally have an explanation of why.There are some video and audio problems near the middle of the conversation, and Michael disconnects at one point, but he comes back on and we finish the discussion.Note: I’ve heard from some of you who are paid subscribers that you don’t know how to get the full episodes via your podcast apps. It’s very simple. Just go to the episode page on the newsletter website on your phone or desktop. Don’t do it through the Substack app; it must be a browser. At the top, there will be a tab that says “Listen via…” Choose that, and then pick from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc. It should then allow you to add the show to your feeds, where you’ll automatically get the full versions of all episodes when they come out. Note that you need to do it separately for both shows associated with this newsletter: The Hanania Show and The H&H Podcast.