The Evening Jolt

Remnant Hall-of-Famer Jim Geraghty joins the show with the continually-put-upon David French, who is heroically ...

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Remnant Hall-of-Famer Jim Geraghty joins the show with the continually-put-upon David French, who is heroically guest-hosting as Jonah continues to galavant around in the land of [REDACTED]. On COVID, Jim gets to reminisce a little about the early weeks of reporting on the pandemic while also updating us. The guys then move on to the election, the “convention” (if you can call it that), and Best Spanish Language Heist Show of 2020 – a category with shockingly little competition.

Show Notes:

–Jim’s Morning Jolt

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  1. Avatar photo
    Angie

    I enjoyed that, I like Jim, he is one of the 2 or 3 people I can read without getting upset on National Review,,,lol..I had never heard him talk, like his voice and impersonations...and he is good on the virus...

    I have never seen a live convention, so I have nothing to compare it to, but, I enjoyed it, the Roll Call was awesome...and it got better as the days went on, and for me, the first time in four years, I had hope...I thought Biden's speech was awesome myself...yeah, I am a liberal...lol...but, it just suits my personality more than my politics. I like heartwarming stories about real people, regardless of politics and message of hope...

    I am actually not a member of the Democrats themselves...and they certainly are not perfect...but, I don't we are horrible either ( other than a few individual people might be), and don't always get why so many conservatives think we are, or at best, that we are worthless in politics?

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  2. Frank Pepp

    Listening to two human beings this amazingly rational, witty and polite is incredible. I've enjoyed Jim when I've read him, but I'm going to have to read his work more regularly. Thank you David for having him on.

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  3. Bob S

    David, I enjoy your contributions to The Dispatch and elsewhere but I think you talked too much and did not let Jim talk enough. Consider being more the host and less the guest.

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    Anne W (Raw5254)

    Another great one, and it makes me feel like David needs his own podcast.

    I also appreciated that on two occasions, David and Jim came back around and addressed my thoughts. First is the way the U.S. stacks up to other countries when it comes to the number of COVID cases. In hindsight, there were a number of things that could have been handled better, but we have 50 states, and each one has had a fair amount of autonomy in how they (their leaders) decided to proceed. (I’m not arguing about what Trump did or didn’t do, and wish more often than not, he would just shut up.) As a country, we also tend to give our citizens quite a bit of freedom in how they behave. When you start looking at most countries outside of the U.S., many of them are not any larger than a lot of our states. I don’t see why there’s any surprise that other countries have done a better job of keeping their numbers down. It’s a much smaller group of people in a much smaller area.

    And along with that, as was pointed out in the podcast, one of the reasons people have had trouble believing things were as bad as they were being told was exactly because of things like Y2K. Or maybe it was just Y2K, and how that set businesses and everyone else into panic mode that turned out to be completely off base.

    And then there’s social media, which does almost nothing but spread disinformation

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    Belt

    I just want to say that now I *really* want to hear Jonah co-hosting Advisory Opinions with Sarah one of these days. They could even subtitle it "... for Dummies."

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  6. Rodney Rubert

    I found the discussion interesting. I did find one piece of analysis a little sloppy. Many distribution systems have drastically different performance based on the direction of distribution. The internet performs better distributing to individual users than from individual users. Home solar panels are driving power companies crazy because power distribution was designed to move power from central sources to homes and not the reverse. People receive much more mail than they send. How would the USPS be impacted if that trend changed for a week or two?

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    BrettH

    Enjoyed the listen. Jim’s Trump impression is pretty good and I lost interest in Money Heist for the exact same reason Jim lays out.

    I’ve been in the same school of thought as David for a few years now that believes Trump’s presidency will likely have done generational damage to the GOP.

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    CynthiaW

    Nice chat. Lots of facts, some opinion - some I agree, some I don't - as is typical when I read articles or listen to podcasts.

    Then they start talking about pop culture, and I wonder if the lizard aliens moved in and ate their brains during the commercial break. "We live in the Golden Age of Television," says the alien who ate Jim Geraghty's brain, but all I'm interested in watching is The Great Courses and soothing British murders from at 20 years ago. Those old Sherlock Holmes shows from when Jeremy Brett was youngish are streaming again.

    Jonah ... please come back and use your new wilderness survival skills to save your friends from the lizard aliens!

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    1. Avatar photo
      Angie

      HA

      I am getting better at not getting upset with what I don't agree with because it is usually something that makes me feel terrible for being on the left...lol...but. proud of myself for not reacting now as much

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        CynthiaW

        That goes back to a discussion a few days ago, regarding the utility of "left" and "right." If we take various policies and positions one at a time, agreeing or disagreeing with each as it stands, it's easier to get a little distance and remember that it's not about "whether I'm a good person" or "whether I get to be in the group."

        Our brains and endocrine systems want us to react at an individual survival level all the time, but we'll go bonkers if we do. It's Jonathan Haidt's "elephant and rider" image: the physical, instinctive, pre-rational part of us is the elephant, and the part that can back off and say, "That alien on the radio isn't a threat right now!" is the little guy trying to control the beast.

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          Angie

          Good way to look at it

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      Anne W (Raw5254)

      I mostly agree with you, Cynthia. I was very excited to discover some of The Great Courses on Amazon recently. And some of those British murder mysteries are very good. Have you watched any of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher? Again, on Amazon.

      I’m a big fan of Jonah’s; however, have you listened to some of the things he likes to watch??!!

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        CynthiaW

        I haven't seen "The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher." The 1860s setting would be interesting; contemporaneous with Anne Perry's William Monk series. And I've been fond of Tim Piggott-Smith since "The Jewel in the Crown" in the 1980s.

        I worry about Jonah, too, when he talks about what he watches. The whole thing makes me wonder if people I actually know in real life who seem normal are actually lizard aliens as well.

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    Dante Longfellow

    Great to hear David and Jim together. If they've ever been on the same podcast before, I've missed it. Two of my favorite writers.

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    Jeff Walden

    Further on the "nobody's handling COVID-19 well" point, just for a snapshot-in-time sort of thing, simply comparing the number of deaths by day in the US to the number of deaths by day in many, many other countries makes clear how much worse we're doing than basically everywhere else. For example:

    https://twitter.com/ByMikeBaker/status/1293573604265795584

    "Reported coronavirus deaths yesterday:
    • France: 0
    • United Kingdom: 0
    • Canada: 4
    • Germany: 6
    • Italy: 6
    • United States: 1,450"

    (referring, I think, to August 11, tweet cites a NYT article that presumably wouldn't be drastically inaccurate) Even if those numbers are cherrypicked to make the US look bad, no way could they be cherrypicked to demonstrate *multiple orders of magnitude difference*. And adjusting them to be per capita isn't going to make up hundredsfold differences either.

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      RandyMc

      Your snapshot is of one point in time. Turn on the time lapse feature. It's a video, not a picture.

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      Jeff Walden

      (A followup to the tweet, that I hadn't seen, indicates the UK is around fifty deaths a day -- that was a one-day blip. You still have a large difference between the UK and the US per capita even after that.)

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