The Political Orphanage

When does a successful company become a dangerous monopoly? Heaton traces the strange history of American antitrust law, from railroad barons and Standard Oil to Hollywood studios and Big Tech, before diving into the intellectual cage match between Louis Brandeis and Robert Bork. Should regulators worry about corporations getting too big and powerful, or only step in when consumers actually get hurt? Along the way, Heaton encounters natural monopolies, vertical integration, glitter cartels, cowboy boots, suspiciously powerful coffin companies, and the surprisingly difficult question of what even counts as a market.

Alex Mayyasi of NPR's Planet Money joins me to explore some of the stranger forces shaping the economy. Why did the federal government create a legally mandated raisin cartel? Why are so many American corporations technically from Delaware? Should companies exist solely to make money? And are there times when price controls actually work? We also dig into Baumol's cost disease—the counterintuitive reason that as society gets richer, childcare, healthcare, restaurants, haircuts, teachers, and live performances can become increasingly expensive. Plus: how rising labor costs might be contributing to the loneliness epidemic, and how Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz helped invent the modern television business. His book: "Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life"

Are we racing toward an AI-powered golden age—or building something we won't be able to control? Justin Robert Young joins to explore the emerging philosophical divide over artificial intelligence: accelerate innovation and reap potentially enormous benefits, or slow down before we unleash risks we don't understand. We discuss OpenAI and Anthropic, the politics of AI regulation, competition with China, whether the AI boom is a bubble, the strongest case for the AI doomers, and the possibility that advances in AI could transform medicine, work, and even human aging. Plus: Justin explains why the best way to prepare for the AI revolution is surprisingly simple—start asking it dumb questions.

Dr. Steve Fuller of Warwick University says the meaningful split in society is not Leftwing vs. Rightwing, but rather Upwing vs. Downwing. Both have radically different attitudes to both risk and human nature, which informs their policy decisions and the direction they want to steer society. SUPPORT THE SHOW! www.patreon.com/andrewheaton Dr. Fuller's book at: www.mightyheaton.com/featured Referenced in the show today: TPO: "Was Abraham Lincoln Leftwing or Rightwing?" https://politicalorphanage.libsyn.com/hyrum-lewis "Transcendant Man" – Documentary by Ray Kurzweill about the Singularity https://www.amazon.co.uk/Transcendent-Man-Ray-Kurzweil/dp/B016V7WCLA ATA: The Bioethics of Gattica – Discussed on Alienating the Audience https://alienating.libsyn.com/gattaca ATA: How Cryonics Works – Interview on Alienating the Audience https://alienating.libsyn.com/we-can-freeze-you-how-cryonics-works ORIGINAL AIR DATE: August, 2023

Healthcare in America is more expensive than anywhere else in the world—but what are other countries actually doing differently? Physician and Slice of Life MD author Sally Primus joins me to tour healthcare systems from Germany and Britain to Japan, Australia, and Estonia. We look at single payer, private insurance, wait times, doctor shortages, drug prices, bureaucracy, and the strange economics of American healthcare—and ask which ideas the United States might actually want to steal.

Donald Trump has renamed Lake Ontario "Lake America" for federal purposes—but can a president actually rename a place, or only change what the government calls it? Andrew Heaton traces the strange history of who gets to control language, from ancient river names that survived Romans and Normans, to Cardinal Richelieu's Académie française, to Noah Webster, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and America's long refusal to appoint an official authority over English. Along the way: French language purism, loanwords, bad translations, official English, and why language usually belongs less to governments than to the people who actually speak it.

The DSA recently released a policy platform establishing the goals of their political movement. In this episode we got through the main planks of that document, namely the bits about "socialism" and "democratic." We likewise go through a few articles and interviews of prominent DSA members to get an idea of what, in their own words, they're actually up to. (Spoiler: it's socialism.)

The Save Our Bacon Act, now repackaged into the Farm Bill, would upturn state rights in favor of federal prohibitions on animal cruelty laws. It's being pushed, in large part, by Chinese-owned conglomerates irritated by federalism. Lewis Bollard is the Farm Animal Welfare Managing Director at Coefficient Giving on Substack. He joins to discuss the Save Our Bacon Act, and the economic tradeoffs of better animal welfare against higher meat prices. Senate switchboard number: (202) 224-3121 Prior Episode: "Big Ag's Meat Ethics"

What is The Odyssey actually about beyond a clever guy trying to get home? Classicist Isabella Reinhardt joins to dig into the poem's deeper themes of civilization, hospitality, identity, belonging, and what it means for a warrior to return from war. Then we turn to adaptation itself, and the choices involved in translating an ancient epic for a modern audience. Using Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey as our case study, we ask what an adaptation is free to change, what it has to preserve, and at what point a new version stops being The Odyssey at all. "All the Gods Suck Except Circe" https://alienating.libsyn.com/all-the-gods-suck-except-circe

It's not that America won't spend money on mass transit, it's that we piss it away when we do. Our transit system is a mess, with a lot of problems in spending, procurement, NIMBYism and good 'ol fashioned idiocy. Will Poff-Webster is the Director of Infrastructure Policy at the Institute for Progress, where he works on energy, transportation and housing policy.

Should you trust experts—or trust yourself? Richard Hanania, author of Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster joins to discuss why populism has become one of the defining forces in modern politics. We discuss whether elites really deserve their bad reputation, why expertise and institutions matter, where academia and the media have genuinely failed, and whether movements built around "the wisdom of ordinary people" inevitably drift toward conspiracy theories, corruption, and bad governance.

Why has trust in the news collapsed—and is it really all the media's fault? Tangle founder Isaac Saul joins for a candid conversation about the incentives driving modern journalism, from clickbait and audience capture to ideological groupthink and the collapse of local news. We explore whether readers are rewarding the very coverage they claim to hate, why viewpoint diversity matters inside newsrooms, whether AI poses a real threat to journalism, and what it would actually take to rebuild public trust. It's a nuanced discussion about media, incentives, and why fixing the news may require fixing ourselves first.

Is Rumpsringa real? Are Amish people happier than you? Let's visit Amish country! Heaton visits Muhlenberg County, Ohio, to investigate America's unique subculture of pacifistic, techno-phobic Anabaptists. We meet Marcus Yoder, the Executive Director of the Amish and Mennonite Heritage Center, and talk to him about all things Amish. Why do they have weird beards? Why eschew buttons, automobiles, and smartphones? And, crucially… are they onto something?

Brian Dunning of the Skeptoid podcast returns to The Political Orphanage for a spirited pushback episode on the modern non-profit industry. In a previous conversation, we argued that sprawling tax-exempt organizations can become bloated, unaccountable, and more interested in perpetuating themselves than solving problems. Brian arrives armed with skepticism, data, and counterarguments. Do non-profits actually dodge property taxes? Are giant charities a public good or just corporations with better branding? And when does cynicism about institutions become its own kind of ideological blind spot? This episode dives into philanthropy, incentives, tax policy, and the uneasy overlap between altruism and bureaucracy—with plenty of disagreement along the way. This interview was edited for purposes of clarity and brevity. When I significantly alter an interview I make the uncut version available, just in case: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1szkeykHYAmerFXpeDTww2o_uHyLsj1_2/view?usp=sharing

Why did the United States become a stable republic while so many revolutions ended in dictatorship? The answer lies in two men pivitol to the Revolution: George Washington... and Oliver Cromwell. A century before George Washington, Cromwell fought a king in the name of liberty, overthrew the monarchy, and then—step by step—became everything he opposed. Washington would later face many of the same temptations: an unpaid army loyal to him, politicians begging him to stay in power, even a proposal to become king. This is the story of two revolutionary generals, two republics, and why America stayed on the path of democracy instead of descending into a military junta. BECOME A PATRON! www.JoinTheOrph.com

What if history isn't a string of great man biopics or a struggle between conservatives and progressives? What if it's a battle of disciplinarians against drunks and harlots? Thaddeus Russell comes on to talk about his book, "A Renegade History of the United States."

The Founding Fathers were all children of the Enlightenment, and they agreed on kicking King George out, but they never agreed on how to run the country. Seth Radwell, author of American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing Our Nation joins on to discuss these two halves of our Founding, and how they are ultimately complimentary.

Jeffrey Rosen is a legal scholar and the President of the National Constitution Center. He's the author "the Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America."

Zuby is a British rapper who spent his childhood on a Saudi Aramco compound—a sprawling corporate community complete with schools, recreation, housing, and services. We discuss what it was like growing up in a place where one company effectively functioned as the local government, and whether company towns deserve their bad reputation. Then the conversation takes an unexpected turn. Having also lived in Dubai, Zuby reflects on how one of the world's most diverse and immigrant-heavy societies manages to maintain remarkably high social trust, low crime, and social cohesion. What can Dubai teach us about community, culture, and governance? And what assumptions do Westerners make about diversity that may not hold true elsewhere? It's a conversation about company towns, global cities, social trust, and the strange places that challenge our political priors.

Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing, built the modern automobile industry, and amassed one of the greatest fortunes in American history. Then he decided to conquer the Amazon. In this installment of our series on company towns, we explore Fordlandia—the bizarre Midwestern utopia Ford attempted to build in the Brazilian jungle. It had golf courses, square dancing, vegetarian cafeterias, anti-soccer policies, and enough cultural arrogance to power a small nation. It also had malaria, jaguars, vampire bats, riots, crop failures, and one of the most spectacular corporate disasters ever conceived. Join Heaton for the strange, hilarious, and cautionary tale of what happens when industrial genius collides with nature, culture, and the limits of human planning. HEAR THE FULL EPISODE: www.thepoliticalorphanage.com

George Pullman built his employees a sparkling company town with clean homes, parks, libraries, luxury trains, and some of the best living conditions in the country—but demanded obedience in return. When recession hit and workers rebelled against wage cuts and paternalistic control, the conflict exploded into one of the most violent labor crises in American history. Featuring Eugene V. Debs, federal troops in Chicago, luxury sleeper trains, class warfare, and a rogue alligator loose in South Chicago, this is the story of how America nearly tore itself apart over the question: can capitalism become humane without becoming authoritarian? SUPPORT THE SHOW! Patreon.com/andrewheaton www.thepoliticalorphanage.com PayPal: andrew@mightyheaton.com Venmo: @mightyheaton

Robert Owen was a factory owner, a social reformer, the father of British socialism… and possibly the nicest company-town tyrant in history. Long before Karl Marx called for revolution, Owen tried to build a kinder version of capitalism: humane factories, universal education, shorter work days, and workers treated like human beings instead of expendable machinery. His model industrial town at New Lanark became world famous, attracting kings, intellectuals, and even the Tsar of Russia. But success convinced Owen he could go further. So he sold everything and moved to Indiana to build a socialist utopia from scratch. What followed was a chaotic experiment involving communal child rearing, endless committee meetings, militant intellectuals, religious clashes, labor shortages, and eventually… the ghost of Thomas Jefferson. In this episode, Heaton travels to Scotland to explore the strange rise and catastrophic collapse of Robert Owen's alternate-universe socialism—and asks whether history might have looked very…

What if your landlord was also your boss, mayor, bartender, and moral hall monitor? This week, Andrew Heaton talks with Brian Brushwood about the strange history of company towns—from industrial utopias to corporate feudalism—and the thin line between benevolent planning and creepy social engineering. Then they venture into Walt Disney's original vision for EPCOT: not a theme park, but a living futuristic city under a climate-controlled dome, where corporations tested new technologies on actual residents. Was Disney imagining a dazzling city of tomorrow, or accidentally inventing a family-friendly version of Brave New World?

Mike is a twenty-year police officer and current sergeant supervising a squad of violent crime detectives. After Andrew's recent conversation with Naomi Brockwell about surveillance, encryption, and the slow erosion of privacy in the digital age, he reached out to offer respectful pushback from the other side of the badge. How much surveillance power do police actually have? What do warrants, metadata, and phone tracking look like in practice versus online panic? And are privacy advocates sometimes overlooking the realities of violent crime investigations? A nuanced, surprisingly civil conversation about policing, technology, civil liberties, and where the balance ought to be.

"Leftwing" and "Rightwing" don't mean the same thing anymore–the battle lines are redrawing. The twentieth century was about economics: low taxes or big government. The twenty-first century will be a fight over something else. Historian and political theorist Stephen Davies joins to discuss his book "The Great Realignment" and the reshaping Western politics, and the collapse of the old left-right order.

For decades, intellectuals warned that overpopulation would trigger famine, ecological collapse, and mass death. Instead, humanity may now face the opposite problem. In this episode of The Political Orphanage, Andrew Heaton talks with Dean Spears about his book After the Spike and the surprising reality of global depopulation. Why are birth rates collapsing across the developed world—and increasingly in the developing world too? What happens to economies, innovation, retirement systems, and civilization itself when populations begin to shrink? Along the way: Paul Ehrlich's failed predictions, the legacy of the Population Bomb era, why people stop having kids when they get richer, and whether humanity should actually be worried about a future with fewer humans.

Jeffrey Deskovic spent sixteen years in prison, from ages 17 to 32. Wrongfully convicted of raping and murdering a teenager. After obtaining exoneration he became an attorney, and now heads The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, which aims to free similarly falsely imprisoned innocents, while also pursuing policy changes aimed at stopping those injustices from happening in the first place. To hear the full episode, become a patron: www.patreon.com/andrewheaton www.thepoliticalorphanage.com

How can we make America safer and save money to boot? What approaches don't work and what can we steal from other countries? Jennifer Doleac is the executive vice president at Arnold Ventures in charge of criminal justice, and the author of "The Science of Second Chances, a Revolution in Criminal Justice."

Is it a charity or a tax loophole? That's what Steve Hodge, President Emeritus of the Tax Foundation, is concerned with. And if there are effectively large corporations, which get tax breaks due to superior branding, how much money is the government leaving on the table, and how does that warp the economy?

Naomi Brockwell is the President and Founder of the Ludlow Institute, a non-profit dedicated to advancing freedom through technology. She is a privacy advocate and expert, who has come on to scare us about online privacy, and how the government can bypass the Constitution through private companies' data.

The Supreme Court is significantly less partisan than advertised. And there are three blocs in it, not two parties. In her new book "Last Branch Standing" Sarah Isgur demystifies the Supreme Court, gives a basic primer on everything from certiorari to judicial philosophies, and identifies the threats to the courts independence, and possible solutions.

Why now? Why did the United States go to war with Iran this year, as opposed to last year, or ten years ago? Michael Tint is a data scientist and aerospace expert, and is here to talk about the Iran War–and why it's a different sort of conflict.

The World's Smartest Podcast Network returns to discuss: Universities dumping peripheral majors in favor of practical ones The trials, tribulations, and musical comeback of Afroman Lindy West, and Millennial Feminism TURNER'S COMEDY SPECIAL, "Turner Sparks: Buttoned Up and Unhinged: https://www.angel.com/watch/shared/f0106e78-f95b-4aad-91dd-65c43cf80c38

Sociopaths and narcissists are both drawn to politics. How do we spot folks with faulty moral compasses before they get elected, and what do we do when they slip by? Bill Eddy is a therapist, lawyer, and mediator. He is the Director of Innovation at the High Conflict Institute. He is the author of over twenty books on high-conflict behavior and how to manage it, but we will be discussing the most pertinent of these works, "Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths and How We Can Stop."

Randall Liberty is the Commissioner for Maine's Department of Corrections, overseeing the state's entire prison system, after previously serving as a warden, and a sheriff. He's largely responsible for implementing the "Maine Model," and shifting the state's prison resources away from punitive emphases to rehabilitation. Part V of Prison Week SUPPORT THE SHOW! www.patreon.com/andrewheaton www.thepoliticalorphanage.com

What's prison wine taste like? How's trade work? Where do people get the ink for prison tattoos? If someone sees you cry in the slammer, do you get beaten up? If they beat you up, can you whittle your toothbrush down and shank 'em later? And, crucially, how is prison debate different than high school debate, if at all?

How hard is it to raise kids when you're inside a penitentiary? How do you maintain relationships in general? In this episode, Part III of Prison Week, we head to the Maine Correctional Center's Women Prison to interview a resident. SUPPORT THE SHOW! www.patreon.com/andrewheaton www.thepoliticalorphanage.com

In Part II of Prison Week, we meet prison teachers, visit the computer lab, and check out Anime in the prison library. The "Maine Model" is focused on rehabilitation and trying to get residents prepped for life on the outside. It's a method contrasted to older penitentiary models in the United States, which focus primarily on punishment and deterrence.

In this special, host Andrew Heaton visits the Maine Correctional Center for a day to speak with residents, corrections officers and administrators. About life in prison in general, and the "Maine Model," focused on rehabilitation specifically. Part I of "Prison Week" SUPPORT THE SHOW! www.Patreon.com/andrewheaton www.thepoliticalorphanage.com

Brink Lindsey is the Senior Vice President at the Niskannen Center. He is the author of "The Permanent Problem: The Uncertain Transition from Mass Plenty to Mass Flourishing." You can find it at mightyheaton.com/featured

Brian Brushwood is by trade a magician, but of late has become a security expert. The FBI flew him to Quantico to brief agents on how scams work, and he's become a popular speaker and consultant for large corporations on how to shield against sophisticated scams. The host of "World's Greatest Con" joins to advise Heaton on how not to get screwed. On YouTube at: https://youtu.be/_5PnMjvxTDg

When was the last time the United States actually declared war? Why did it stop officially declaring war, if nonetheless bombing folks? And when is the president authorized to attack another country without explicit congressional authorization? What is the War Powers Act, and why did it piss of Nixon? All that and more in this history and constitutional deep dive.

The Supreme Court just struck down Donald Trump's sweeping emergency tariffs, but this case is about far more than slinkies and sombreros. When Congress passes an ambiguous law, does the president get broad discretion, or only the specific powers clearly granted to him? We unpack the Major Questions Doctrine, Justice Roberts' loaded-gun theory of taxation, Gorsuch's blistering concurrence calling out judicial inconsistency, and the surprising dissents from Kavanaugh and Thomas. This is an episode about tariffs — but it's really about who holds the power to tax, and whether the Constitution still means what it says.

Burning Man is a giant, 80,000-person party in the desert, complete with a crazy amount of neon, bicycles, and narcotics. Grover Norquist is a powerful Republican, alternately famous or infamous for compelling GOP leaders to pledge never to increase spending, who attends Burning Man every year. He joins the podcast to talk about Burning Man, influential secret societies, his foray into standup comedy, and of course, taxes. Original air date Sep 5th, 2019

Jonathan Hillis is the founder and caretaker of Cabin, a network of co-living spaces which link up and vet members in other communities via blockchain technology. His "neighborhood" of intentional living is in beautiful Texas Hill Country an hour outside of Austin, where he lives with friends in a hub-and-spoke model of private accommodation surrounding communal social spaces. He's the former CTO of Coinbase, and you can see how his tech background influences his obsession with scalability (we talk about Metcalf's Law, and the optimum size of "one sauna teams") as well as the non-financial elements of blockchain to that end. It actually reminds me a bit of Neil Stephenson's Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities or "burbclaves" in Snow Crash. Cabin strikes me as a kind of libertarian commune (though neither Hillis nor myself ever uses the term). It's big scattered geographic network of modular co-ops you can plug into and out of. Vetting community members is a big thing in communes, and Cabin relies on…

If you wanted to live with a bunch of buddies in a house, how would you do it? What are the mechanics of setting up, financing, and socially maintaining a commune? Samwise Rodriguez runs a commune—which combines their skills as a philanthropist, entrepreneur (and to some extent, as a polyamorist). This week we explore: how do you build your own commune?

What happens when Trump leaves office? Do the Republicans reform or catalyze? Jeff Flake is the former Executive Director of the Goldwater Institute, Ambassador to Turkey, and representative and then Senator from the great state of Arizona. He is also a Knight of the Kingdom of Sweden. He joins to discuss what a post-Trump Republican Party will look like.

Colin Woodard posits that America is not really a country, it's a dozen or so distinct nations with their own cultures and ideologies which are constantly battling for supremacy. His new book "Nations Apart: How Clashing Regional Cultures Shattered America." In it he argues that argues that deep-seated cultural divisions, stemming from different colonial settlement patterns, are the root cause of modern American political polarization, inequality, and threats to democracy. The book uses historical and data-driven analysis to show how these regional cultures clash on issues like gun control, immigration, and abortion, and proposes a renewal based on the unifying ideals of the Declaration of Independence. "America is Eleven Different Countries" https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/america-is-eleven-different-countries/id1439837349?i=1000646222225 SUPPORT THE SHOW! Patreon: Patreon.com/andrewheaton Substack: ThePoliticalOrphanage.com

Rudyard William Lynch is the host of WhatifAlHist, a popular history channel on YouTube. He joins to discuss how the origins and circumstances of America's regions permanently imprinted on its cultures and political outlooks. Colin Woodard's Map: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-11-nations-of-the-united-states-2015-7 Rudyard's Map: https://preview.redd.it/cultural-map-of-america-done-by-whatifalthist-on-youtube-v0-7clddg9nunpa1.jpg?auto=webp&s=663b38b9434bdf7791fac983f0d5e5beb643b779 Relevant Book: American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, by Colin Woodard

What did people in the Dark Ages think about economics? Why did poverty exist, and how do you alleviate it? To find out, I took my time machine to 1282 and 1314, to speak to barflies and a priest. Fr. Richard Kirby is a fourteenth century prior of Whitby Abbey and formerly the sacrist of St. Mungo's. He is a specialist in Just Price Theory, and joins the show to discuss how his fellows in the Dark Ages approach economics.