The Bill Walton Show

For the past year or so, I've been reading in a daily devotional titled the The Bard and The Bible. In it each day is a quote from William Shakespeare, a related passage from the King James Bible and a witty and wise reading of how they might relate to us today.

With Shakespeare, and of course anything related to the Bible, increasingly banned from American school curriculums, we are losing touch with these cornerstones of our western culture. The Victorians celebrated Shakespeare and the Bible as the twin moral underpinnings of British civilization. And when American pioneers headed west in their covered wagons, the two books that they brought with them were the King James Bible and the works of Shakespeare.

Joining me to talk about their importance is Bob Hostetler, the author of The Bard and the Bible and a font of interesting and fun facts. In particular, Shakespeare, once you get used to his language, is a surprising antidote to today's toxic politics.

Shakespeare distrusted the abstract, and disliked theory. He was in no sense an intellectual. His plays are essentially about people, not ideas. And despite the efforts of "critical theory" types, they are not remotely political in the left/right modern sense, which is why I find them such a breath of fresh air.

Join me as Bob and I explore the many reasons why the Bible and Shakespeare are by far the most quoted texts in the Western World. You don't need to know much about either to learn a lot and love this show.

How can you not be interested in a guy who wrote these stage directions:

'Enter three Murderers' and "Exit, Pursued By A Bear'

And who wrote this lines:

"All the world's a stage"

"A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

"Talkers are no good doers"

"How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!"

and

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of "sound and fury",

Signifying nothing."

During the last several years, I have had the great pleasure of getting to know a wonderful actor, Tony LoBianco. It's the 50th anniversary of his iconic movie "The French Connection" where he played Sal Boca, and a perfect occasion to invite him on the show to talk about the acting craft and working with other creatives.

A leading actor in films, TV and the stage, he's made over 100 films during the course of his career and along the way won an Obie, an Emmy, an Outer Circle Critics Award, and was nominated for a Tony award for Best Actor.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Tony and I talk about the days of Hollywood when it wasn't so woke. He shares stories of working with legends like Milton Berle, Richard Widmark, William Friedkin, Arthur Miller, Richard Gere, Alec Baldwin and James Gandolfini among others.

Some of his great antidotes include how he got the role of Raymond Fernandez in the cult classic "The Honeymoon Killers" by fooling a casting director into thinking he was Hispanic even though he doesn't speak Spanish. And what the very scary Richard Widmark thought about Tony's acting.

This is a truly fun and fascinating behind the scenes look at the movie industry of the 70s and since. I think you'll enjoy it.

In this episode, Mark Mills, Energy & Tech expert at the Manhattan Institute, and I go in-depth about the perils of so-called "green energy." Case in point: February's deadly blackout in Texas. Texas, with the most wind farms in the country providing 25% of its energy, learned what happens when the weather gets cold and the wind goes away. Just when you need electricity the most, it's not there. The National Academy of Sciences has declared the electrical grid the most important invention of the 20th century. But it doesn't work if it depends on unreliable wind and solar sources. Reliance on green energy "is a really, really bad idea. With it, we are going to switch America's energy from domestic production to imports. We're going to switch America's energy from liquids and gases which are easy to move and cheap to extract, to energy minerals, which are hard to move and energy-intensive to extract," according to Mark. "We're going to switch from a small footprint on the planet to a huge footprint on the planet because the land area required per unit of energy when it's green, compared to hydrocarbons, goes up tenfold. All bad." And of course, China is playing a clever strategic game having cornered the market for critical green energy components. Mark also clearly explains why nuclear is the smart green energy option, even though most so-called environmentalists oppose it. If you disagree with any of this, listen to Mark's fact-based explanations. It you want to truly understand why depending on green energy is a terrible idea, start here.

What are the evolutionary differences between men and women, and how do they survive and thrive through differing competitive strategies? In this episode, Dr. Joyce Benenson talks with Bill about her book Warriors and Worriers, which draws her extensive lifelong research on children's interactions. The result is a fascinating array of studies and stories that explore the ways boys and men deter their enemies, while girls and women find assistants to aid them in coping with vulnerable children and elders. Dr. Benenson, a retired professor of psychology at Emmanuel College and an associate member of the Human Evolutionary Biology Department at Harvard University, turns upside down the conventional wisdom that women are more sociable than men and that men are more competitive than women. E.O. Wilson of Harvard praises her work as "brave, thoroughly documented, and written with unusual clarity … her book explains more about the fundamentals of gender differences - and the meaning of human nature - than a library of conventional social science." An engaging conversationalist, Joyce quickly deconstructs the notion that being male, or female is simply a matter of "sex assigned at birth." Human history is a story of men and women genetically built to specialize in different behaviors necessary to ensure the survival of their children to adulthood.

If it's possible to have a fun and entertaining conversation about political correctness, critical race theory and the state of being "woke", this is it. Joining me is James Lindsay, PhD, Co-author of Cynical Theories and founder of the newdiscourses.com website and podcasts. James, who has been called the Donald Trump of Intellectuals (meant as an insult), because of his courage to take on political correctness, guides me down through the stranger and stranger rabbit hole of "Theory." Also knows as Postmodernism, it first took root in America in the Yale University English Department and since then, like a virus, it has jumped from this laboratory to infect all American society. In the wide-ranging interview, he explains things like "anti-racist", systems of privilege, Queer theory and how all these theories start with the conclusions you want to reach. Thought experiment: You are a white shopkeeper and two customers enter your store, one black and one white. Who you serve first determines whether you are a racist. Be careful, the answer is not obvious. According to "critical race theory" it might be safest to serve neither. It is definitely worth taking an hour of your time to understand this world.

On this episode, our TBWS Roundtable discusses the push by the radical woke left to let transgendered boy/girl athletes participate in girls and women's sports. After coming out strongly against trans men in women's sports, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem recently vetoed a bill that would've banned it. Why? She says "it's complicated" and she may be right. The very woke NCAA would ban her state from staging its competitions. But allowing trans men in women's sports would gut Title IX. It seems that who and how you would define a boy or girl depends on your politics, not "the science." Where are the feminists on this when all the victims are girls? Martina Navratilova has been excoriated for coming out against it. Why is this seemingly only an American issue? What are the implications for our military? And is this just the opening salvo in the race to replace the binary? Did you know there was a "race to replace the binary?" It's a mess, and the Roundtable explores what it all means, and how we feel about it.

On this episode, we look into the life and presidency of Calvin Coolidge with Amity Shlaes, author of The NY Times bestsellers Coolidge, The Forgotten Man, The Greedy Hand and The Great Society.

Amity is also co-editor of a fascinating new edition of The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge revealing how he embodied the best of America's founding principles and the character of the American people.

In this wide-ranging interview Amity and I cover Coolidge from his early days growing up in Vermont to how his legacy impacted Ronald Reagan. The thing to remember about Coolidge is that the federal budget was lower after he left office than when he entered the Presidency. What a different time.

She also chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation and we talk about its scholarships and programs for young people.

On this episode, I'm talking with Yaron Brook, Chair of the Ayn Rand Institute, in a wide-ranging conversation that launches into the case for why the profit motive is a good thing. Capitalism gets a bad rap in the media and pop culture, but should business be epitomized by Gordon Gecko or Steve Jobs? Was the 2008 financial crisis caused by greedy Wall Streeters or by wrongheaded government policies? We agree that finance, properly understood, is about "win/win" strategies to move capital to more productive uses, but what about all the people left behind by capitalism's "creative destruction? Are Americans any longer willing to do what's necessary to create their own future. We also talk about his view that our moral purpose should be our own happiness and that self-interest is not wrong. We part company on trade with China and on Donald Trump, but wholeheartedly agree on the need for an optimistic freedom agenda that embraces America's founding ideas.

On this episode, I'm joined by John Allison, named one of the 100 most successful CEOs in the world by the Harvard Business Review. In this wide-ranging interview, we talk about how he went from growing up in a lower-middle income family in North Carolina to becoming the head of BB&T, the Cato Institute and author of "The Leadership Crisis and the Free Market Cure". John and I discuss some of the 10 principles for living your best life as outlined in his book, a must read for anyone interested in learning the ethical values necessary for individuals, leaders and societies to achieve real human happiness.

The TBWS Roundtable discusses former President Trump's CPAC speech, and what it means for Republicans going forward. Has he learned anything about shoring up his weaknesses? Will he attempt another run for President? Should he? And if not, where does the Republican party go from here?We also look at the future for Mike Pence. What role will the former VP play in the party? Plus, we look at the role social media will play in getting out the message of the GOP and get into the risky business of offering predictions for the mid-term elections.