Should employers have a say in what employees do on their own time?

The old standard, back in the 80s, was that the only thing that mattered was your ability to do the job. That was the standard progressive view. Bill Clinton's sex life was irrelevant as long as he was doing his job well.

The new standard is harder to parse, but the boys do their best to meander their way through it.

P&C drink and review Purple Monkey Dishwasher, by Evil Genius Beer Company, and then discuss the dread math of human life.

We like to say that every life is infinitely valuable, but do we mean it? Are we willing to eat better to extend our lives one year? Are we willing to reduce the national speed limit to 20 mph to save highway deaths? Should we all wear helmets all the time?

There's clearly a math to life. We're willing to spend a certain amount to save a life, but there are limits.

A "vertical" is a comparison of the same beer across several years. In this quick episode, Pigweed and Crowhill compare the 2019 and 2017 versions of Goose Island Bourbon County Stout to see if there's any point to cellaring a beer. Then they compare these beers to a homebrew version.

Post-modernist thinking is characterized by skepticism and the rejection of grand narratives. It questions the idea of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, science, or social progress. They call particular attention to the contingent or socially-conditioned nature of knowledge, and say that our knowledge claims and value systems are a product of historical or cultural discourse, or societal hierarchies.

Coronavirus has become much more serious than the boys thought a couple of weeks ago. But how do we evaluate this? What is an over-reaction, and what is an under-reaction? Can we compare how the virus behaved in South Korea and Italy? They're very different cultures, with very different populations. 

There are a lot of things we still don't know, but it seems there may be some lasting effects of coronavirus. The boys review and discuss.

St. Patrick's Day 2020 has got to be the worst. The bars were closed. It was surreal.

The boys drink Guinness and reflect on the classical Irish beer, and the day.

Leopold II, King of the Belgians, was one of the most cunning, intelligent, despicable bastards P&C have ever heard of. His burning desire to create a colony -- despite the prohibitions in the Belgian constitution -- led him to back-handed, sneaky and horrific tactics, using a famous explorer to carve Leopold's own personal kingdom out of the Congo River basin.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Leopold is being praised as a humanitarian.

It's a horrific story.

Who was the genius who decided to make the U.S. economy so dependent on China?

We brought these monsters into the World Trade Organization -- with "most favored nation" status -- on the silly hope that more capitalism would change them.

As a result of George Bush's foolish Chinese policy, we now have Huawei -- a Chinese telecom company -- installing spyware everywhere in the world.

1. Don't be a hypocrite. But isn't hypocrisy the tribute that vice pays to virtue?

2. Kissing cousins. Since we've allowed same-sex marriage, should we allow cousins to marry?

3. MLB, the NFL and "African Americans." Is an English black female an "African American"?

4. When are earbuds appropriate?

5. Pigweed's war on fun. If we're worried about energy consumption, we should eliminate things like cruises, vacations, second and third homes, etc.

Pigweed and Crowhill drink and review Manor Hill's Farmhouse Ale, then discuss the two political parties: Democrats and Republicans. Then there are the "big three" of other parties: the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, and the Constitution Party. But there are quite a few more. The boys review the list of also-ran parties, which includes about a hundred communist and socialist parties, then they discuss parliamentary systems and democracy in general.