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3 days ago | 
richardhanania.com | Richard Hanania
Imagine a world in which East Asians were both at the top and bottom of rankings in mathematical achievement. The countries where students scored highest on international math exams were biologically and culturally similar to those that scored the lowest. Now imagine someone comes along and says, “You know, I think East Asians have a propensity to be good (or bad) at math based on some combination of biological and cultural factors.
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1 week ago | 
richardhanania.com | Richard Hanania
Michael joins me for a spirited conversation about recent events. We start with the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, which I think is the most important thing going on in government right now for its civil liberties and rule of law implications.
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1 week ago | 
richardhanania.com | Richard Hanania
Note: I’ve know these people. And yes, it actually is this bad. Most nights, you can find the elite among the MAGA faithful at one of a handful of Capitol Hill bars. Walk in at the right time, and you will see their journalists, or what passes for such in Trumpworld, influencers, the smaller accounts whose role in the ecosystem is to influence the influencers, and secretaries and aspiring secretaries of various sorts – under, acting, deputy, assistant, personal deputy assistant.
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1 week ago | 
richardhanania.com | Richard Hanania
This is a podcast review of the book The Loudest Voice in the Roomby Gabriel Sherman (2014), a biography of Roger Ailes, and the miniseries based on the book, The Loudest Voice(2019). Ailes’ life story brings together many of my main interests. He created Fox News in 1996, and ran the network until 2016, the year before his death. Fox can be considered the beginning of modern conservative media.
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2 weeks ago | 
richardhanania.com | Richard Hanania
Michael Tracey is at a Senate hearing today like a real journalist, so I’m flying solo. My mood is becoming pretty dark, as reflected in my article on how Trump’s plan is to maintain a North Korea of the right. I discuss why things have gotten this bad, and the necessity of acknowledging where people who supported Trump went wrong. Someone asks about the difference between me today and me on November 5.
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2 weeks ago | 
richardhanania.com | Richard Hanania
If you told me in 2021 that Vladimir Putin could launch an invasion under false pretenses that resulted in hundreds of thousands of Russian casualties, I would’ve thought that this would have caused him some political difficulties and weakened his grip on power. The war in Ukraine has had no such effect, and if anything has strengthened his position. War means censorship, a population that rallies around its leader, and a central government with more control over the economy.
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2 weeks ago | 
richardhanania.com | Richard Hanania |Rob Henderson
Rob joins me to talk about the last two episodes of Season 3 of The White Lotus. Overall, I found the ending mostly satisfying. But the plot holes.
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3 weeks ago | 
richardhanania.com | Richard Hanania
The mad man has done it. He’s stopped listening to anyone who isn’t a complete sycophant or the market, and enacted a tariff policy more extreme than we would have seen under what most thought was the worst case scenario. The formula of “reciprocity” being used is so stupid I approach the topic with awe, and have an almost superstitious feeling that if I even describe it I’ll somehow become stupider myself, though you can read about it here. I don’t think this ship can correct course.
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3 weeks ago | 
richardhanania.com | Richard Hanania
Michael joins me again to talk about last night’s election results and Trump’s coming tariff announcement. Democrats won the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, and over performed in other races. Florida’s First District went from R+32 to R+15 according to the current count, while the Sixth District shifted from R+33 to R+14. We debate whether Elon was rational to put so much money and effort into the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
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3 weeks ago | 
richardhanania.com | Richard Hanania
You may have noticed I’ve been publishing fewer pieces lately. It’s not because I’ve gotten lazy or there isn’t much to talk about. Rather, I’m now working on a new book. You may be asking yourself what happened to the one on Elite Human Capital? Well, nobody wanted to publish it, and a friend in the industry convinced me that going the self-publish route was actually a bad signal if I wanted to write popular books in the future.
