Plausibly Live

Arch Manning, the changing face of college football, and a very different kind of election interference. Two interceptions. One football game. And suddenly, according to some sports commentators, Arch Manning’s Heisman Trophy hopes are finished. Really? Oklahoma’s victory over Texas in the Red River Rivalry should have been a celebration of everything that makes college […]

Dave joins Bill Mick for the Tuesday podcast… Hey… at least it’s an hour later than it used to be… so Dave doesn’t have to get up until 3am for this… Dave Does History (Hour 2)Two Ships Against an Empire: 251 Years of the United States Navy On October 13, 1981, Dave Bowman reported to […]

Christopher Columbus, Noah’s Ark, and the Human Spirit of Exploration Columbus Day 2026 brings a fresh look at the voyage of 1492, the myths surrounding Christopher Columbus, and new archaeological claims concerning Noah’s Ark. Christopher Columbus has become one of the most controversial figures in American history. Once celebrated almost universally as a heroic explorer, […]

Genesis, Rashi, the Big Bang, and the Meaning of Tohu va-Vohu What if two words you’ve read your entire life suddenly changed the way you understood the beginning of everything? There are certain passages of Scripture that become so familiar we almost stop thinking about them. We know the words. We know the story. We […]

Free speech includes the right to say something stupid. It also includes everyone else’s right to call you out for it. Stephen A. Smith has built a career on outrageous opinions, confrontational sports commentary, and an ego large enough to fill an ESPN studio. But his remarks about Philadelphia Eagles star Lane Johnson’s retirement crossed […]

A conversation between a father and his son begins with a deceptively simple question: What do you think about banning books? The answer turns out to have very little to do with books and almost everything to do with liberty. On this episode of Plausibly Live, Dave Bowman considers what it really means to believe […]

A Secret Voyage, a British Spy, a Blue Velvet Suit, and the French Alliance That Changed Everything In October 1776, the American Revolution was in serious trouble. Washington was retreating, New York had fallen, the Continental Army was struggling to survive, and Congress desperately needed money, weapons, ships, and international support. So it entrusted an […]

Cost Engineering, the Death Penalty, and a North Korean Nuke That Moved a Mountain There is a wonderful line from Yes, Minister: “It is more expensive to do things cheaply.” Sir Humphrey Appleby meant it as satire. Government occasionally seems to regard it as an operating manual. Consider what happens when voters decide government is […]

If fentanyl kills thousands of Americans every year, why isn’t it used for executions? A listener sent me that question, and the more you think about it, the more reasonable it becomes. We constantly hear about the extraordinary lethality of fentanyl. Yet states that use lethal injection have struggled for years with complicated drug protocols […]

Tennessee claimed the authority to take a human life. It followed its approved lethal-injection protocol, administered two rounds of drugs and failed to execute Christa Gail Pike. That failure leads into another measure of government responsibility. A new Department of Veterans Affairs report says 6,488 veterans died by suicide in 2024, an average of nearly […]