The Get More Smarter Podcast - A Weekly Show About Colorado Politics

Send us a message! Really!This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, mild-mannered President Biden suits up as Dark Brandon to bring the ruckus, because enough is enough and it’s time to fight back. Self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives don’t want to pay public school teachers one more dime, but they’re fine setting $200 thousand dollars on fire to recall a State Senator because he left their broken, garbage party. Republican State Senator Dennis Hisey seems to have some issues remembering exactly where he lives, because he keeps changing his voter registration. That sound you hear isn’t the Colorado Republican Party scratching at the floorboards, it’s two of their top candidates erasing their positions on abortion from their websites. With Election Day just two months away, we tell you which of the five major statewide races concern us the most (or just not the least). And Charles Ashby, political reporter for the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, returns once more to update us on the continuing saga of (sorta) Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters and the weirdness of Lauren Boebert.

Send us a message! Really!This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Colorado Senate Democrats gain a seat without an election, thanks to Sen. Kevin Priola; our 7th favorite member of Congress from Colorado adds another Democrat to her list of people she wants to “IMEACH"; Republican candidates like Joe O'Dea and Heidi Ganahl keep running in the wrong election (psst...the Primary is over); and we interview University of Colorado professor Dr. Anand Sohkey about his upcoming book on Christian Nationalism and why it’s suddenly so pervasive in our politics. 

Send us a message! Really!This week on a special episode of The Get More Smarter Podcast, hosts Jason Bane and Ian Silverii are joined by not one, but TWO United States Senators! Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet stop by to chat about the 2022 election and the Inflation Reduction Act, including some of the lesser-known but equally-important parts of the IRA. Senator Bennet also discusses how he helped to make sure that drought assistance was included in the IRA for Colorado; his celebratory visit to Sen. Joe Manchin's West Virginia boat; his ongoing bet with Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar; and how he and other Democratic Senators actually talk about #HorseSushi. 

Send us a message! Really!This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Fox 31 livestreams a Colorado Republican Party press conference on the anniversary of last year’s Gas Station Disaster, and it somehow goes just about as poorly as that one. DARK BRANDON RISES and right-wing shills are losing their minds over Joe Biden looking like a badass, and having perhaps the most productive week in office of any president in history. The FBI raids Mar-a-Lago -- we’ll find out what’s in Trump’s safe, and if you guess, you get a prize! A new poll in Colorado’s most competitive congressional district show a dead heat, as long as the district stays where it is and Weld county doesn’t secede and join Wyoming between now and election day. 

Send us a message! Really!He’s a geologist, he’s a brewer, he’s a mayor, he’s a governor, and he’s the dude who cut the biggest deal on climate policy in the history of the country. Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper joins us for a special episode of the Get More Smarter Podcast so that you can get all the details of the historic Inflation Reduction Act straight from the source!

Send us a message! Really!This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, sure abortion is popular in Kansas, but how will it play in the heartland? It’s not November, but GOP candidate for Attorney General John Kellner already lost his race, and as a matter of fact Lang Sias probably did, too. Meanwhile, the top of the ticket is going nearly as poorly as the Ganahl campaign utterly implodes and the O’Dea campaign is doing absolutely everything they can to say as little as possible; the rest of the GOP ticket sucks too, and the national congressional generic ballot average has pulled to EVEN for the first time since last November. You can pack up your floaties because the 2022 red wave ain’t coming.*That Kansas joke is brought to you by friend of the show, Professor Seth Masket.

Send us a message! Really!This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Joe O’Dea is a unicorn! So was Darryl Glenn! We dive deep into Colorado election law to determine if mythical creatures meet the qualifications to run for U.S. Senate. Losing losers who lost their primaries are raising money for a recount that will show that they are in fact losing losers who lost their primaries, again, but not before wasting a whole lot of time and money proving what losing losers they are. As election denial is getting more expensive it’s also getting lazier as fake news websites try to peddle election conspiracy theories for races that were not even close. Ken Buck sucks and the state of Colorado should have revoked his law license back in 2020; Colorado media outlets finally catch up with the Get More Smarter Podcast to ask Heidi Ganahl how she plans on paying for her $9 billion income tax cut; and hateful bigots are trying to impose their religious values on an entire country whose main founding document makes it extremely clear that the whole point of the founding of the nation was to not fucking do that. 

Send us a message! Really!This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Heidi Ganahl picks a running mate, again, and somehow it goes worse than the time where she picked a running mate who didn’t end up being the running mate; a group of people calling themselves Democrats for Heidi appear out of nowhere and at least one of them is a Republican who ran for state senate like two years ago and is still a registered Republican; Mitch McConnell says Joe O’Dea is the key to getting him back in the majority in the US Senate, and for once we believe him; and our guest is Colorado State Treasurer Dave Young, who tells us what he does all day and the sort of priceless antiquities sitting inside a big vault near his office.

Send us a message! Really!This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Heidi Gah…Gah…Gah…not going to win the Governor’s race as she bungles yet another campaign layup; the Colorado Republican Party tries to convince voters not to vote for Jared Polis by spending quite a lot of time publishing his many accomplishments; GOP US Senate Nominee Joe O’Dea gets mad when people repeat the things he says, which is not how messaging is supposed to work; and our seventh favorite Colorado congressional representative’s gun-themed restaurant, Shooter’s Grill, finally stops trying to pretend that people want to eat there. 

Send us a message! Really!This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast...we were wrong! Turns out neither Jason nor I are infallible, and if you are, good for you! We unpack this week’s somewhat surprising Primary Election outcomes with our special guest, University of Denver Professor Seth Masket, who directs the Center for American Politics. We talk about what happened, why, and how the Primary might affect the General Election in November.