Tony Abbott served as prime minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015 as a member of the Liberal Party. In this episode, recorded during the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Conference in London, Abbott talks about the geopolitics of energy, the qualities of a good politician, and why he believes the world is more dangerous than ever. (Recorded October 31, 2023.)

Travis Fisher has worked at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy and is now the director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. In this episode, Fisher explains why the energy-related provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act could ultimately cost taxpayers close to $3 trillion, the “Californication” of our electric grid, the mess in Congress, and why federal subsidies for wind and solar, combined with the EPA’s proposed rules are undermining the reliability of our electricity system. (Recorded October 25, 2023.)

Jimmy Lai, the 75-year-old pro-democracy leader and publisher of Apple Daily, has been in Hong Kong’s Stanley Prison since 2020 on trumped-up charges lodged against him by the Chinese government. In this episode, Jimmy’s son, Sebastien, who lives in Taiwan and is leading the campaign to have his father freed from prison, talks about the Umbrella Revolution that swept through Hong Kong in 2019 and 2020, his father’s remarkable life and career, why he was motivated to promote democracy after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, and why China continues to see Jimmy Lai as a threat. (Recorded October 23, 2023.) 

When Jeff Sandefer and his wife, Laura, started Acton Academy in 2010 with a single school in Austin, Texas, they had no idea that their network of schools would grow to 325 campuses in 26 countries just 13 years later. In this episode, Sandefer, a former oil and gas executive who has taught entrepreneurship at the college level, explains why every child is a “genius” who must embark on their own “hero’s journey” and why he believes Acton’s model has gained so much traction among “parent entrepreneurs.” (Recorded October 23, 2023.) 

Jimmy Glotfelty has spent more than 30 years in and around the power sector, including stints at the state of Texas, Department of Energy, the private sector, and now, as a regulator at the Texas Public Utility Commission. In this episode, Glotfelty explains how the Texas Advanced Nuclear Reactor Working Group hopes to incentivize the construction of new reactors in the state, why federal tax incentives for wind and solar have created an “uneven market,” why it’s hard to build high-voltage transmission projects, and the role of batteries on the electric grid. (Recorded October 9, 2023.) 

Patrick Brown’s interest in climate and weather goes back to his childhood, when, as an eight-year-old, he set up a home weather station. In this episode, Brown, the co-director of the climate and energy program at the Breakthrough Institute, talks about why he left academia, how the “climate doom narrative” dominates climate science, how “cliques and clubs” within the science community affect what gets published in prestigious journals, and how much of the reporting on climate change “leaves out the full truth.” (Recorded September 18, 2023)  

Jane Menton is a lifelong New Yorker and current resident of Queens, where she sits on the board of her co-op. In this episode, Jane, the mother of two young children, explains why New York City’s Local Law 97, which mandates huge emissions reductions from buildings, is an “electrification monster” that will be “ruinously expensive” and could result in electricity shortages and a “humanitarian nightmare.” (Recorded August 29, 2023.)     

Yonatan Dubi is a physicist and one of the founders of the Israeli Forum for Rational Environmentalism. In this episode, Dubi talks about the history of Israeli energy including the massive offshore natural gas discoveries, the recent Druze protests against wind energy in the Golan Heights, why solar, even in sunny Israel “fails completely,” and why he is pushing hard for nuclear energy in his home country. (Recorded August 17, 2023)  

Judith A. Curry is a climatologist, the founder of Climate Forecast Applications Network, and the author of a new book: Climate Uncertainty and Risk: Rethinking Our Response. In her third appearance on the podcast (the last was December 27, 2022) Curry talks about her new book, the “oversimplified analysis” of climate that’s being used by legacy media and policymakers, censorship, the importance of Twitter, and why we need to see the global climate as a “complex, chaotic, non-linear system.” (Recorded August 18, 2023.)

Jessica Weinkle studies climate science and how interpretations of it affect the financial sectors and public policy. In this episode, Weinkle, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, explains why insurance is “ubiquitous in society,” how climate models affect insurance rates, the “protective wall” around the NGO-climate-industrial complex, and why the catastrophic dialogue around climate change is “clickbait.” (Recorded July 7, 2023.)