Tim Talks Politics

Joseph Eptstein is back on the podcast to discuss recent events in the Middle East. As listeners of my podcast and readers of my newsletter know, Syria has undergone a seismic change in the last month with the collapse of the Assad regime, and the emergence of a new government composed of elements of a Turkey-backed rebel coalition. Where do we go from here?

Joseph and I unpack this question as we explore the events that led up to Assad’s ouster, the groups and people now seeking to build a better Syria, and the broader regional and global implications of one of 2024’s biggest black swan events.

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Disclaimer: Since we’re talking about bitcoin, cryptocurrencies in this podcast, and I reference my work as a financial advisor, I must emphasize that the content of this podcast is for information and educational purposes ONLY. Nothing discussed here should be taken as personal financial or investment advice for any individual or group. Onwards!

Bitcoin keeps pushing close to the $100,000 mark, which is a long way from where the world’s most prominent cryptocurrency started in 2010. The crazy thing is that, relatively speaking, bitcoin is still in its infancy, yet it is making a mark on politics and economics alike. From recalibrating the political economy of El Salvador to its use as an alternative source of money for Russian dissidents and Ukrainian refugees, bitcoin is carving out space for itself in the global economy.

To help unpack bitcoin, how it works, and its growing use as “resistance money,” I’ve brought on friend and colleague Andrew Bailey from Yale-NUS to discuss Resistance Money: A Philosophical Case for Bitcoin, a book he recently published with coauthors Bradley Rettler and Craig Warmke. 

In this discussion, we explore Bitcoin’s evolution, its use as resistance money, the El Salvador experiment, and how Bitcoin mining is contributing to developing green energy infrastructure around the world. It’s a fascinating discussion that helped me broaden my view of what had been a somewhat mysterious topic to me prior to reading Andrew’s work.

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There was a time not too very long ago when the so-called Global War on Terror dominated American national security and foreign policy thinking. Not so today as the doyens of American grand strategy fret over great power competition with Russia and China, and the return of nuclear proliferation with Iran and North Korea. So what happened to global terrorism? What became of Al-Qaeda and ISIS? They never went away, in fact, in some respects, these two organizations have never been more active. They’re just not that focused on the US and the US is not that focused on them. What shifted in the politics and geographic footprint in global terrorism and its main actors? To help me unpack this fascinating topic, I welcome Dr. Steven Childs to the show.

Dr. Childs and I are friends and colleagues. We both got our doctorates from Claremont Graduate University where we studied under the same professors, and we’ve collaborated on multiple writing projects, including one on terrorism. Dr. Childs is currently the director of the Masters in National Security Studies program at Cal State San Bernardino. 

In this wide ranging interview, we discuss the geostrategic shift in world politics towards great power competition and what that means for the ongoing fight against terror groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, then we dive into an overview of the current status of terrorism and its major organizations today. 

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It’s a week after Election Day and what a fascinating election it was. You can see my initial assessment of the election in my newsletter (link below), but in this podcast I’m going for a bit of a palette cleanser. If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed or generally weary with all the election coverage, may I recommend the Gettysburg Address? 

Arguably one of the greatest speeches, if not the greatest, in American history, Abraham Lincoln’s brief words memorializing the Gettysburg battlefield present us with enduring lessons on the nature of the American state, and casts an expansive moral vision for the future of the republic. 

Today on the podcast, I’m joined by Lincoln scholar Dr. Matt Van Hook who is an Assistant Director and Associate Professor in the Torrey Honors College at Biola University. We recorded this podcast before the November 5th election, but it’s a timely walkthrough of a timeless work of political thought and prose.

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We’re less than a week away from Election Day and the presidential race looks as tight as most people anticipated. However, recent media appearances by Kamala Harris have again failed to move the needle in her favor, and may even be accelerating a sense of alienation between independent voters and the Democratic Party as well as growing frustration within the Democratic base.

In this second of two episodes looking at the major party platforms, I sit down with my friends and colleagues in Biola University’s Political Science Department to break down the party platforms of 2024. In this episode, Drs. Scott Waller and Darren Guerra cover the Democratic Party’s platform, which is very different from the GOP platform we covered last time. 

Admittedly, all three of us are conservative voters who generally vote Republican, but we’re also scholars who are interested in pursuing truth and wisdom. So, even though we bend a rather critical eye on this document, we’re working to understand the reasoning behind the Democratic Party’s choices in terms of format, length, policy options, etc. that show up in this platform.

This is a discussion that seeks to understand how the Democratic Party views the voting public in the context of a significant political realignment. If you’ve felt a little confused over why the opposing parties seem so different this year, this is a great conversation to understand the political changes afoot in America, and I would highly recommend you listen to it in tandem with our discussion on the GOP platform.

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As America careens towards another presidential election, it’s already been a campaign season marked by once in a generation changes such as the pro-life movement getting marginalized inside the GOP, key blocs of voters breaking with the Democratic Party, assassination attempts on Donald Trump, and the list goes on. But what is it that Democrats and Republicans are trying to achieve in this election cycle, besides winning, that is? What does a vote for a Republican or Democrat even mean these days?

In the next two episodes of this podcast, I sit down with my friends and colleagues in Biola University’s Political Science Department to break down the party platforms of 2024. In this episode, Drs. Scott Waller and Darren Guerra cover the Republican platform, which is a very different kind of platform on many different fronts. As experts in religious liberty issues (Waller) and Constitutional thought (Guerra), Scott and Darren bring both a historical awareness of Republican politics as well as developments in the broader American political system to this conversation. 

This is a discussion that seeks to locate what appears to be a different kind of platform document in the context of a significant political realignment. If you’ve felt a little confused over why the opposing parties seem so different this year, this is a great conversation to understand the political changes afoot in America.

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As we hit the homestretch of the 2024 election, we’re witnessing significant changes to the demographics of the Democratic and Republican coalitions. Political scientists call this “realignment” and we haven’t seen one this big in a generation. Just this last week, a new report came showing that for the first time ever, registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats nationwide.

That expanding tent creates a more favorable electoral map for the GOP, but it also creates some difficult realities for constituencies that have long formed foundational blocs in the GOP.

One such group is the pro-life movement that has anchored the social conservative vote in the GOP for the last 50-plus years. This year, however, it’s different. As public opinion has shifted on abortion and pro-life sponsored legislation on abortion failed in battleground states (and even some red ones), the GOP platform for 2024 followed the lead of Donald Trump and visibly distanced itself from the pro-life position.

In this interview, I sat down to chat with Baylor University’s Matthew Lee Anderson and unpack a recent article he wrote for The Dispatch on the future of the pro-life movement. We discuss the shifting political realities that appear to have put the pro-life movement on its back foot, before delving into how the pro-life movement can use this time of being in the proverbial “political wilderness” to hone its outreach and messaging to the broader American culture.

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Christian nationalism has gotten a lot of play the last few years, particularly in the rhetoric of its opponents in journalism, academia, and even the White House.

According to its critics, Christian nationalism is a malevolent ideology that has allied itself with Donald Trump to capture conservative politics in America with the aim of bringing about a dystopian Christian theocracy akin to The Handmaid’s Tale.

Mark David Hall argues in his new book, Who’s Afraid of Christian Nationalism?, that such claims are overblown and that Christian nationalism is not the existential threat the critics claim. In fact, Christian nationalism may not even be a helpful phrase to describe the thinking of American Christians when it comes to politics in general.

In this interview, Mark and I chart the rise of the term turned pejorative, explore both journalistic and academic writing on Christian nationalism, evaluate the data connected with that research, and discuss how those (very) few Christians who do seek to make an affirmative case for Christian nationalism aren’t even representative of most Christians.

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Joseph Epstein is back on the show to give us an update on the regional conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Iran. While Hamas remains the main target of Israeli operations in Gaza, the conflict with Iran is increasingly coming to the forefront, which is raising fears of a broader war.

We discuss how the July assassination of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Syria and Iran is shaping Iran’s strategic calculus, and explore why, despite the high profile nature of Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran, Iran has yet to strike back at Israel as of this recording.

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OK, the title is a little dramatic, but I wanted to build off of comments I made in my last podcast as well a theme I’ve been developing this summer in my newsletter: The American news media is so caught up in the drama of the upcoming presidential election that it is not serving the American people well in keeping readers abreast of what else is happening in the world. 

To illustrate that point, I’m going to run you through the Council of Foreign Relations’ Global Conflict Tracker, and I’ll put a link to it in the show notes if you’d like to follow along. Or you can just open up Google maps, or a good old fashioned paper atlas if such a one still graces your bookshelf. 

Just a reminder

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Subscribe to Tim Talks Politics ⁠⁠ on Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ today and get 30% off for being a loyal listener!