Lawyers, Guns & Money

We were thrilled to be joined by Marquette University political scientist Julia Azari to discuss her fantastic new book Backlash Presidents: From Transformative to Reactionary Leaders in American History. You don’t have to take out word for it — Backlash Presidents just won APSA’s Neustadt Award for the best book published on the American presidency in the last year. We had a very illuminating discussion about the Lincoln/Johnson, LBJ/Nixon, and Obama/Trump successions and what they tell us about American political development. For further background, here’s a gift link to Tom Edsall’s article about the presidency in political time.

We hope you will enjoy this podcast, which I think is one of the best we’ve ever done. If you like the LGM podcast and appreciate the work that goes into it, you can always drop a couple bucks into the Patreon. Have a great weekend everybody!

Transcript is here, cleaned by Co-Pilot. Any direct quotes should rely only on the original audio.

The post LGM Podcast: Backlash Presidents With Dr. Julia Azari appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

On the latest LGM Podcast Cheryl, Dan and myself talk through the varied and extensive implications of 9/11 for the evolution of the national security state. We discuss a number of counter-factuals, and track the changes (and not so changes) in the Republican Party after 9/11.

Transcript is here, laundered through Co Pilot. Please check the audio file for the accuracy of any quotes and speakers.

The post LGM Podcast: The National Security Legacies of 9/11 appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

Last night Paul and I sat down and talked through some thoughts on the cultural legacy of the 9/11 attacks. Commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the attacks feels surprisingly lowkey and seems to lack any political urgency. We work through the comparison of 9/11 as social event with other similar events, such as the sinking of the Titanic or the JFK assassination, spending quite a bit of time on the latter. We discuss the extent to which Trump as Catastrophe may have eclipsed 9/11 as Catastrophe, along with the memory-destroying aspects of the pandemic. Finally, we talk a bit about the Miracle in Ann Arbor, of which Paul has promised to write in greater detail.

Transcript is here, laundered through Co Pilot. Please check the audio file for the accuracy of any quotes and speakers.

Photo Credit: By Michael Foran, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11785530

The post LGM Podcast: 9/11 and Cultural Memory appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

Welcome to the second half of the 2026 NFL Season Preview podcast! This pod covers the NFC.

Transcript is here, laundered through Co Pilot. Please check the audio file for the accuracy of any quotes and speakers.

The post LGM Podcast: 2026 NFC Preview appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

It’s just about that time! On the latest LGM podcast Erik, Scott, and myself run through our annual AFC preview. As the image above indicates, we pay the Cleveland Browns all of the attention that they deserve. Take a listen.

Transcript is here, laundered through Co Pilot. Please check the audio file for the accuracy of any quotes and speakers.

The post LGM Podcast: 2026 AFC Preview appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

On Monday I sat down with Friend of the Blog Erin Petrey to discuss her recent campaign for the Democratic nomination in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional district. That race was won by Zach Dembo (website here; this is one where we really do have a chance in a Blue Wave) but Erin nevertheless considered it to be a successful effort. In the pod we discuss her learning curve as a candidate, her approach to the various social media channels and what she was able to derive from each (surprisingly, Threads good and both Bluesky and X bad), her relationships with local, state, and national Democratic organizations, how she handled interactions with opposing candidates on both sides of the aisle, the struggles associated with having conversations with often extremely enthusiastic BlueAnon types, the challenges of running as a progressive in a marginal district, and the problem of vetting. We close with yet another discussion of the political and legal realities of the McConnell Situation, which I’m sure you have definitely not heard enough about.

Transcript is here.  I have begun to take the liberty of running the transcripts through Co-Pilot, so it should be cleaner than usual and speakers are identified. I would not, however, quote directly from the transcript; if you need a quote it’s safest to find it in the audio.

The post LGM Podcast: Learning on the Campaign Trail appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

Our latest guest on the Oral History of the Blogosphere is long-time friend of LGM Lindsay Beyerstein. Lindsay’s blogging career began at Majikthise, which unfortunately seems to have been lost with the collapse of Typepad. Her work can also be found at In These Times, Salon, Alternet, and elsewhere. We work through all of the regular questions, with slightly more than the standard number of digressions. Of particular note to this conversation is the collision between digital space and meat space, and how the Old Blogosphere existed in both places.

Transcript is here. 

The post Oral History of the Blogosphere Part 15: Majikthise appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

On the latest episode of LGM’s Oral History of the Blogosphere, Dave and I spoke with Russell Arben Fox of In Media Res. This was a wide-ranging conversation on what discourse in the early blogosphere was like, with special attention to what amounted to “niche” blogging spaces, although of course we find that “niche” depends to great extent on the beholder. We also talk a bit about a recurring theme to these pods, the relationship between academic careerism and the early blogosphere. See also Russell’s substack, On Wichita, the Mittelpolitan, and More.

Transcript is here. 

The post Oral History of the Blogosphere Part 14: In Media Res appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

On the latest LGM podcast we return to our Oral History of the Blogosphere series! Joining Scott, Dan and myself in honor of our 22nd anniversary celebration was Dr. Jacob Levy, early blog pioneer and veteran of a great number of websites. Our discussion included his work at Jacob Levy and Bleeding Heart Libertarians, the now defunct Open University, and the Niskanen Center. At the latter he penned two very well-known essays alongside an array of other work, The Weight of the Words and Authoritarianism and Post-Truth Politics. Over the course of the pod we discuss the impact that blogging had on his career and intellectual development, as well as all the friends he made along the way.

Transcript is here. 

The podcast is quite rewarding, but consumes a great deal of time and effort! Please donate if you have the chance!

The post Oral History of the Blogosphere Part 13: Jacob Levy appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

On the latest LGM Podcast, I spoke with LGM alum Dave Brockington about the travails of Prime Minister Keir Starmer. We began with the heady days of July 2024, when Labour won a victory of historic magnitude and seemed to have clear sailing to build a new British politics. Dave pointed out that Labour’s victory was less substantial that it seemed, and that the stars and the selves have since conspired to produce a catastrophic drop in Labour’s popularity. Of the former, persistent economic difficulties and global anti-incumbent sentiment have served to restrict what appeared to be wide policy latitude. On the latter, Starmer and his core lieutenants have struggled with communication and have failed to establish either a political or a policy road forward. We then discuss the complexities of replacing Starmer, including the plausible candidates and how each might mount a challenge.

Transcript is here. The podcast is the most labor intensive component of Lawyers, Guns and Money, so Patreon support is appreciated!

Photo Credit: By UK government – https://civilservicelocal.blog.gov.uk/2015/02/26/learning-about-the-workings-of-parliament/, OGL 3, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61682470

The post LGM Podcast: The Starmer Endgame? appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.