Plausibly Live

A radio program director once told Dave Bowman, “Less Dave, more Sean.” The assignment was clear enough: sound more like Sean Hannity. More yelling, more confrontation, more of the behavior audiences reward even while insisting they want a reasonable conversation. That experience sits underneath Dave’s discussion of anger as entertainment on Plausibly Live: The Dave […]

Free Speech and the Stories That Shape What We Believe A memorable movie scene can stay with an audience long after the details of the actual event have faded. Political language can work much the same way. Once a dispute has been framed as a struggle for freedom, questioning that interpretation can sound suspiciously like […]

For most of the year, Dave Bowman wears his identity as a Navy submarine veteran with pride. On November 11, he deliberately puts the veteran hat away. That choice comes from a growing discomfort with watching a day of recognition become an itinerary of free breakfasts, restaurant specials, and promotional offers. In this episode of […]

Dave Bowman knows the street. His son walks it regularly. So when an active-duty Marine was arrested in connection with an alleged attempt to abduct a 12-year-old girl there, the story carried a weight that a distant headline never could. It happened less than half a mile from his home, in surroundings where his family […]

Ben doesn’t usually want to talk politics. He dislikes confrontation, and politics offers plenty of that. When he brought up the election during our drive to lunch, though, it presented an opportunity to talk about something more lasting than which party had won: what winning actually entitles anyone to do. Winning an election puts people […]

The morning after an election brings no shortage of people explaining what happened, assigning blame, and predicting what comes next. On this edition of Plausibly Live, Dave Bowman has some thoughts of his own about the familiar midterm cycle, a Congress that immediately starts campaigning for its next election, and Washington State’s growing tax burden. […]

The Election of 1876: The Price of Winning In November 1876, the United States was celebrating a hundred years of independence while struggling over what that independence actually meant. Eleven years after the Civil War, the promises of emancipation and citizenship remained contested, often at gunpoint. The presidential election between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. […]

PRODUCERS NOTE: Shortly after the show today, Dave received a call from a very old friend, touching base about life and the world. The friend has a shipmate who is in the final stages of cancer and he was on his way to visit him when a change in plans caused him listen to an […]

Star Trek’s Lifetime of Lessons About Leadership and Truth Somewhere between watching Star Trek as a boy and serving aboard a Navy submarine, the people on the bridge of the Enterprise became familiar company. Their arguments, mistakes, and decisions stayed with Dave Bowman long after the closing credits. Decades later, a conversation with his son […]

Somebody Mistook the Comedy for a Campaign Manual There is a moment when a political story stops sounding like news and starts sounding like a movie you have already seen. Alaska’s Senate race, featuring two candidates named Dan Sullivan and allegations of a deliberate effort to confuse voters, has reached that point. Eddie Murphy made […]