Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast

Has the Heisman Trophy Become Meaningless?

What happens when two interceptions become more important than an entire football season?

Following Oklahoma's 27–24 victory over Texas, Dave Bowman takes aim at the media frenzy surrounding Arch Manning and the Heisman Trophy. Has college football's most prestigious individual award become little more than a publicity contest driven by television networks, betting markets, and manufactured expectations?

From NIL deals and the transfer portal to conference realignment and the disappearance of traditional rivalries, Dave examines why it's becoming increasingly difficult to enjoy the college football he grew up loving.

Then the conversation turns to Iran, where reports suggest Tehran is deliberately targeting commercial shipping to drive up oil prices and influence the November elections. Dave questions the credibility of those claims, the dangers of military escalation, and the political hypocrisy surrounding gasoline prices and American energy policy.

Plus, a morning of technical disasters, Windows 11 frustrations, and the challenges of producing a live radio show when absolutely nothing cooperates.

Plausibly Live: The Dave Bowman Show brings history, politics, sports, and common sense together with a healthy dose of skepticism.

#PlausiblyLive #DaveBowmanShow #HeismanTrophy #ArchManning #CollegeFootball #OklahomaSooners #RedRiverRivalry #Iran #ElectionInterference #EnergyPolicy

Two Ships Against an Empire: 251 Years of the United States Navy

On October 13, 1981, Dave Bowman reported to Navy boot camp in San Diego, California, exactly 206 years after the Continental Congress authorized the first vessels of the United States Navy. Forty-five years later, that personal anniversary provides the starting point for a special Navy birthday edition of Dave Does History on The Bill Mick Podcast.

How did thirteen colonies with almost no money, no warships, and no realistic hope of defeating the Royal Navy decide to challenge British power at sea?

Bill and Dave explore the remarkable history of the United States Navy, from Revolutionary War privateers and the first Continental warships through the age of ironclads, battleships, aircraft carriers, and nuclear-powered submarines.

Along the way, they examine why the Navy effectively disappeared after the Revolution, how it was reborn in 1794, and how changing technology transformed American naval power.

It's a journey through 251 years of American history, with a few personal memories from Dave's submarine service and an important lesson learned in boot camp: When the admiral comes to lunch, the food gets better.

Listen to Dave Does History on The Bill Mick Podcast at BillMick.com.

Was Christopher Columbus a hero, a villain, or something farmore complicated? On Columbus Day 2026, Dave Bowman challenges the popularmythology surrounding the voyage of 1492 and asks whether modern culture hasforgotten how to recognize human achievement without ignoring human failure.

Columbus didn't prove the Earth was round. EducatedEuropeans already knew that. His mathematics weren't necessarily as foolish aspopular accounts suggest, and he wasn't the first European to reach theAmericas. Yet his voyage aboard the Niña, Pinta, and SantaMaría helped transform world history.

On this episode of Plausibly Live: The Dave Bowman Show,Dave examines the real history of Christopher Columbus, the nineteenth-centuryorigins of the flat-earth myth, the extraordinary navigational challenges ofcrossing the Atlantic, and the darker legacy of conquest and colonization.

Why has Columbus become such a controversial figure whileconquistadors such as Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro occupy a differentplace in American public memory? Would someone else inevitably have sailedwest? And can we recognize Columbus's courage and seamanship whileacknowledging the suffering associated with his expeditions?

For Dave, a veteran submariner, the experience of going tosea offers a particular appreciation for the determination required to venturebeyond the familiar horizon.

Also in this episode: The Search for Noah's Ark

New reports from eastern Turkey have revived interest in theDurupınar formation near Mount Ararat. Researchers have reported unusualsubsurface patterns, soil chemistry, and other features that some believewarrant further investigation.

But what would actually constitute archaeological proof thatNoah's Ark had been discovered? Could such a discovery be scientificallyestablished? And would finding the Ark change anyone's religious faith?

Dave considers the distinction between archaeologicalevidence, historical interpretation, and religious belief, including his ownconviction that faith does not require the physical discovery of Noah's Ark.

From Christopher Columbus and the Age of Exploration to themountains of Ararat, today's episode explores the human desire to discover whatlies beyond the horizon and the difficult questions that follow.

#ChristopherColumbus #ColumbusDay #History #NoahsArk#PlausiblyLive

00:00 Introduction: Christopher Columbus and HistoricalMemory
02:10 Columbus Day and the Voyage of 1492
03:40 The Myth That Columbus Proved the Earth Was Round
06:20 Columbus's Mathematics and Geographical Mistakes
07:55 The First Voyage and Its Navigational Challenges
11:30 Columbus's Darker Legacy
12:55 Cortés, Pizarro, Magellan, and Selective Historical Memory
17:30 Would Someone Else Have Discovered the Americas?
20:00 Why Columbus Deserves to Be Remembered
22:00 Noah's Ark: New Research in Turkey
26:00 Archaeological Evidence and Scientific Skepticism
27:00 Would Finding Noah's Ark Change Religious Faith?

What existed before there was light? And what does Genesis really mean when it describes the Earth as "without form and void"?

For thousands of years, the opening words of Genesis have shaped humanity's understanding of Creation. But buried within the familiar English translation of Genesis 1:2 are two extraordinary Hebrew words: Tohu va-Vohu.

In this episode of Plausibly Live: The Dave Bowman Show, Dave explores a discovery that changed the way he understands one of the most familiar passages in Scripture.

The medieval Jewish commentator Rashi offers an interpretation of Tohu that goes far beyond the familiar idea of an empty, formless universe. His explanation introduces a remarkable concept: astonishing emptiness. Imagine witnessing the beginning of Creation, surrounded by a reality so unfamiliar that the human mind struggles to comprehend what it is seeing.

What might that experience have been like? And how does this ancient interpretation compare with what modern cosmology tells us about the earliest universe?

Drawing upon Jewish biblical commentary, the Big Bang theory, Einstein's relativity, and the Chassidic concept of Tikkun, Dave considers the relationship between science, faith, time, and the emergence of order from primordial chaos.

Along the way, he reflects on his lifelong fascination with the night sky, his experiences aboard a Navy submarine, and his conviction that understanding the physical universe can deepen our appreciation of Creation.

Can science explain how the universe developed while Scripture helps us consider why its existence matters? And are we sometimes so familiar with the words of Genesis that we overlook their extraordinary implications?

Sometimes two ancient Hebrew words are enough to change the way we look at the entire universe.

From the On Air Across America Studios in Silverdale, Washington, it's Plausibly Live with Dave Bowman.

#PlausiblyLive #DaveBowmanShow #Genesis #TohuVaVohu #Rashi #BigBangTheory #ScienceAndFaith #JewishTheology #Creation

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 line that even sports entertainment shouldn't cross.

After Johnson announced his retirement, citing family priorities and mental health concerns, Smith mocked his explanation on ESPN's First Take and suggested the Eagles' struggles were the real reason he walked away.

On Plausibly Live, Dave Bowman examines what went wrong, and why the controversy raises questions far beyond one commentator's bad judgment.

How does a major television production allow something like this to happen? Did anyone bother researching Johnson's well-documented mental health struggles or his family's circumstances? And has Stephen A. Smith become so powerful at ESPN that nobody is willing to tell him when he's wrong?

There's also the question of ESPN's changing landscape, including Pat McAfee's growing influence and whether Smith's position in the network's hierarchy is as secure as it once appeared.

As a longtime broadcaster, Dave understands the difference between something that sounds funny in your head and something that should actually be said into a microphone. There's a responsibility that comes with having an audience, and mental health should never become an easy punchline.

Stephen A. Smith has never ranked particularly high on Dave's list of favorite sports commentators. After this episode, he may have fallen below Dave Portnoy.

Free speech includes the right to say something stupid. It also includes everyone else's right to call you out for it.

#StephenASmith #LaneJohnson #ESPN #FirstTake #MentalHealthAwareness #PatMcAfee #PhiladelphiaEagles #PlausiblyLive #DaveBowman #SportsMedia

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 in self-determination when the people we love, including our own children, may reach conclusions we believe are profoundly wrong. If liberty means anything, it has to include the freedom to encounter bad arguments, offensive ideas, uncomfortable books, and competing versions of the truth. The alternative is allowing someone with authority to decide which ideas the rest of us are permitted to consider.

That raises an uncomfortable question for conservatives. When does protecting children become censorship? Dave argues that parental judgment and government suppression are fundamentally different things, and that conservatives who once distrusted government control of ideas should be especially wary when their own side acquires the power to exercise it.

Because the answer to bad speech isn't silence. It's better speech. The answer to bad ideas isn't making them forbidden. It's exposing them, challenging them, understanding them, and defeating them in the open. Suppression can transform foolish ideas into forbidden knowledge and cranks into supposed dissidents.

Then the conversation moves from intellectual liberty to something considerably more concrete: Washington State Ferries. When a crew shortage cripples a transportation system upon which an entire region depends, Dave asks what happened to redundancy, cross-training, planning, and the simple expectation that essential infrastructure should actually work. His own canceled VA appointment provides a rather personal illustration of the consequences.

From raising a son who can think for himself to building public systems capable of functioning when something goes wrong, this episode is ultimately about responsibility. Liberty requires more than slogans. It requires habits, preparation, persuasion, and sometimes the willingness to let somebody else be wrong.

#PlausiblyLive #DaveBowmanShow #FreeSpeech #Liberty #BookBans #Censorship #FirstAmendment #Conservatism #WashingtonStateFerries #CriticalThinking #SelfDetermination

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 extraordinary mission to a seventy-year-old Benjamin Franklin: cross the Atlantic and persuade France to gamble on the United States.

In this episode of Dave Does History, we follow Franklin from his dangerous voyage aboard the Continental Navy frigate Reprisal to the salons and secret diplomacy of Paris. Along the way, Franklin battles seasickness and gout while studying the Gulf Stream, cultivates his carefully constructed image as the homespun American philosopher, helps direct a shadow war against British commerce, and conducts sensitive negotiations from a headquarters thoroughly penetrated by British intelligence. His own secretary, Edward Bancroft, is secretly feeding information to London.

Then comes Saratoga.

The surrender of General Burgoyne gives Franklin what diplomacy alone could never provide: evidence that the Americans might actually win. France recognizes the United States and enters into alliance with it, transforming a colonial rebellion into an international war. Franklin marks the moment with what tradition remembers as a wonderfully personal gesture, wearing the same blue velvet suit associated with his public humiliation in London four years earlier.

The consequences ultimately reach Yorktown. French soldiers, money, siege expertise, and especially French naval power help trap Cornwallis and make the decisive victory of 1781 possible. The road to Yorktown ran through Saratoga, Passy, and Versailles, and began with an elderly American boarding a ship in 1776 on a mission that bordered on the impossible.

#DaveDoesHistory #BenjaminFranklin #AmericanRevolution #RevolutionaryWar #Saratoga #Yorktown #FrenchAlliance #FoundingFathers #AmericanHistory #HistoryPodcast

There is an old Yes, Minister observation that it can be more expensive to do things cheaply. Government seems unusually talented at proving the point.

When voters demand that government spend less, eliminate a perk, lower a tax, or change a policy, the result doesn't always resemble what they thought they were buying. Take away California legislators' taxpayer-funded cars and another expense emerges. Promise property-tax relief and local governments can adjust the numbers elsewhere. Declare that the death penalty costs too much and an uncomfortable question remains: Why does it cost so much in the first place?

That leads into a larger question about capital punishment. The issue isn't simply whether some crimes deserve death. It's what happens when the government assumes the irreversible power to impose it, then surrounds that power with decades of litigation, procedural safeguards, enormous expense, and an execution system that raises serious questions of its own.

And because this is Plausibly Live, somehow all of this eventually arrives in North Korea.

In 2017, North Korea detonated a nuclear device beneath Mt. Mantap with enough force to move the mountain roughly twelve feet sideways and nearly two feet downward. Scientists now say the resulting seismic activity didn't simply fade away. The blast appears to have awakened dormant faults, producing geological consequences that are still unfolding years later.

Government can make your alternatives more expensive. It can make taxes more complicated. And, apparently, if sufficiently motivated, it can move mountains.

Plus: why Dave doesn't read email, Washington's ferry troubles, and a movie called Digger that may be even harder to explain than government accounting.

#PlausiblyLive #DaveBowman #GovernmentSpending #Taxes #DeathPenalty #NorthKorea #NuclearWeapons #Politics #CurrentEvents #CostEngineering

A listener asks a surprisingly reasonable question: If fentanyl kills thousands of Americans, why isn’t it used for executions?

From there, we follow fifty cents through a convenience-store cash register and ask what happens when an overcharge isn’t just taking money from a customer, but from taxpayers and SNAP recipients.

Then there’s AI medicine. Can artificial intelligence really provide a “second opinion,” or is its better role helping patients understand what their doctors are telling them and ask better questions?

Fentanyl, 7-Eleven, taxpayer money, doctors, algorithms and a little Star Trek.

It all makes sense eventually.

Plausibly Live with Dave Bowman.

#PlausiblyLive #DaveBowman #Fentanyl #DeathPenalty #SNAP #SevenEleven #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Healthcare #TaxpayerMoney

Tennessee tried to execute Christa Gail Pike, administered every dose permitted by its protocol, and failed. Whatever one thinks of Pike’s brutal murder of Colleen Slemmer or of capital punishment itself, the state claimed the ultimate governmental power and demonstrated that it could not exercise that power competently. Dave examines the Eighth Amendment, the staggering cost and inconsistency of the death penalty, and whether Tennessee may constitutionally attempt the execution again.

Then the discussion becomes deeply personal. A new VA report records 6,488 veteran suicides in 2024, with most occurring among veterans who had not recently received VA health care. Dave talks candidly about chronic pain, service-connected injuries, anxiety, navigating the VA system and understanding why some veterans begin to believe they cannot continue.

This is an episode about government accountability, human suffering and finding a reason to get up tomorrow morning.

If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988, then press 1 for the Veterans Crisis Line.

#PlausiblyLive #DaveBowmanShow #DeathPenalty #EighthAmendment #Veterans #VeteransAffairs #VeteranSuicidePrevention #Constitution #GovernmentAccountability