VR16 - This week on Vapid Response: it’s the Hat and the Hammer, with the return of both New York Times token religious conservative columnist Ross Doot-hat and Newsweek editor-at-large Josh Hammer. We begin with a savory amuse douche in which a Christian influencer preaches against making policy based on “toxic empathy” before reading Josh Hammer taking her up on the joke by explaining why the U.S. military has the absolute right to kill anyone Josh Hammer wants dead. Finally, Ross Douthat stops in from whatever planet he has been living on with some advice for the Trump administration on how to be better Christians.
The Daily Detail - The Daily Detail for 12.10.25
Alabama
- ALFA praises President Trump for $12B financial aid to farmers in US
- Special Master bill comes in at $240K for re-mapping two senate districts
- Sen. Tuberville says AL.com writer predictably calls him racist for opposing radical Islam
- Eli Lilly to build $6B manufacturing facility in Huntsville
- City of Madison votes to join lawsuit against AL Dept of Revenue over tax
- The Hangout Music Festival not coming to Gulf Shores in 2026
National
- 2 NJ brother arrested for threats of murder against DHS Tricia McLaughlin
- GOP in Senate offering bill to to restructure Obamacare subsidies
- DC appeals court rules that ban on transgenders in military is appropriate
- Border Czar Homan reviewing Somali visas in MN, and particularly congresswoman Ilhan Omar for committing immigration fraud
- Federal judge rules that docs surrounding Ghislaine Maxwell, accomplice to Jeffrey Epstein, can be released by DOJ
The Ezra Klein Show - The Contradictions of Gavin Newsom
Gavin Newsom is the 2028 Democratic front-runner. That’s what many of the polls and the Polymarket betting odds say.
It’s been widely believed that Newsom wants to run for president someday. But belief that he could be a front-runner was less common. A liberal white guy from a state that much of the country considers badly governed just didn’t seem like the profile the Democratic Party was looking for.
But as a Californian who has watched Newsom for a long time, I was surprised by him this year. After President Trump returned to the White House, Newsom started a podcast, interviewing people like Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon and Michael Savage, which made a lot of Democrats mad. At the same time, Newsom turned himself into the leader of the resistance — trolling Trump on social media and pushing a ballot initiative to end California’s independent redistricting to counter the partisan redistricting effort in Texas.
Newsom has been willing to try things and take risks. He has shown a feel for this moment — in politics and in the way attention works now.
But it’s still true that he runs a state that the country considers badly governed. California tops the rankings of unaffordable states, at a time when affordability has become a central electoral issue.
In this conversation, I ask Newsom about all of this — what he learned this year from talking to figures on the right, how he thinks the Democratic Party can win back voters it lost, why California is so unaffordable and what he’s doing about it.
Mentioned:
Applebee’s America by Ron Fournier, Douglas B. Sosnik and Matthew J. Dowd
“And, This Is Gaming Culture & Gen-Z Nihilism With Content Creator Brandon “Atrioc” Ewing”
“Newsom Says Trump’s Attacks Are ‘Not Normal’”
“Barack Obama 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech”
Book Recommendations:
Built to Last by Jim Collins, Jerry I. Porras
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
The Daily Signal - The Senate Struggles to Confirm Nominees Almost a Year Into Trump’s 2nd Term | Dec. 10, 2025
On today’s Top News in 10, Daily Signal President Rob Bluey drops in to discuss the consistent nomination and confirmation issues still plaguing the Trump administration almost a year into his second term.
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Money Girl - Navigating a Complex Health Insurance Landscape
981. This week, Laura reviews the history of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and options for purchasing comprehensive health insurance.
Find a transcript here.
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NBN Book of the Day - Michael D. Dwyer, “Tinsel and Rust: How Hollywood Manufactured the Rust Belt” (Oxford UP, 2025)
Tinsel and Rust: How Hollywood Manufactured the Rust Belt (Oxford UP, 2025) tells the story of Hollywood's role in the shaping of the Rust Belt in the United States. During the 1970s and 1980s, filmic representations of shuttered auto plants, furloughed millworkers, and decaying downtowns in the industrial heartland contributed to pervasive narratives of American malaise and decline--informing the wider cultural view of these cities and their people. Author Michael D. Dwyer (Arcadia University) untangles the complicated relationship between Hollywood and the Rust Belt, exploring how the sociocultural image of the region has become a tool to tell stories about America's mythic past, degraded present, and potential futures.
Dwyer offers a reading in twofold: through the conventional lens of film and cultural studies, and through an interdisciplinary lens that pulls in elements of cultural geography and urban studies to understand the ways in which Americans learned to interpret the cities and towns of the industrial Midwest. Each chapter spotlights a different Rust Belt city--Johnstown, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Detroit--and considers how films and filmmaking processes helped shape audiences' cultural understanding of those cities. Over the course of the book, Dwyer also examines several films which offer notable representations of the Rust Belt, including Slap Shot, The Blues Brothers, Major League, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and It Follows. Finally, the volume highlights how in more recent years, cities like Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Cleveland have all attempted to remake their public image and revitalize their economies through film and media production.
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What A Day - Billionaires Brawl Over Warner Bros.
We’ve been talking about the Paramount Skydance/Warner Brothers Discovery/Netflix Billionaire Boys Club Spectacular for a few days now. But it’s really worth digging into the details to understand how all of this could reshape our media diets – and our politics. If Netflix buys Warner Bros. Discovery, that could be very bad news for Hollywood. But if Paramount buys Warner Bros. Discovery, the Trump-supporting Ellisons would own: CBS, CNN, HBO, Paramount, DC Studios, TNT Sports, Warner Bros., Oracle and a whole bunch more. It’s basically a big, complicated mess — so to unpack what it means for consumers and why on earth President Trump is involved, we spoke to Ben Smith. He’s co-founder and editor-in-chief of Semafor, and host of the Mixed Signals podcast.
And in headlines, Trump brings his economic message to the American people on the first stop of his affordability tour, the Supreme Court hears arguments over campaign finance limits, and will Americans follow Australia’s footsteps and ban social media for children?
Show Notes:
Check out Mixed Signals – https://tinyurl.com/ycxvkz6f
Call Congress – 202-224-3121
Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8
What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast
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The Indicator from Planet Money - Bitcoin miners are betting on AI over crypto
If you want to make Bitcoin, you need powerful computers and a lot of energy. Well, it turns out the same infrastructure needed for Bitcoin mining is pretty valuable in the era of AI. Today on the show, why some miners are starting to throw in the towel on crypto in favor of supporting AI infrastructure.
Related episodes:
Whose financing Meta’s massive AI Data Center?
This indicator hasn’t flashed this red since the dot-com bubble
For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.
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The Best One Yet - 👰 “r/bride” — Reddit’s wedding surge. 401k “Modest Millionaires”. Farmer’s $12B bailout. +Pickle pop.
Reddit’s wedding planning surge explains why the stock has 5X’d.
1k millionaires are minted everyday from 401ks… Here's our 3-step financial advice.
America’s farmers got a $12B Soybean Bailout… while China’s trade surplus is at ATH.
Plus, pickle demand just hit an #AllTimeHigh… (it’s a big dill).
$RDDT $MCD $SPY
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Hayek Program Podcast - Perspectives on Peace – From Milorg to El Salvador: Kenneth Boulding’s Lessons on War and Peace
On this episode, Chris Coyne speaks with Brigitta Jones, Nathan Goodman, and Karla Segovia about Kenneth Boulding’s insights on war, peace, and the political economy of conflict applied to contemporary questions about military organization and the dynamics of civil conflict.
First, Jones discusses her coauthored paper with Coyne, “The Political Economy of Milorg,” which uses Boulding’s concept of Milorg to examine the entanglement of public agencies and private firms in the military sector. She highlights how knowledge problems, incentives, and political processes shape what the military produces and how those decisions affect the broader economy.
Goodman and Segovia then join Coyne to discuss their paper, “Unstable Peace in El Salvador,” coauthored with Abby Hall. Drawing on Boulding’s framework, they examine how shifting expectations, beliefs, and “taboo lines” eroded the country’s fragile peace, highlighting how strains such as land concentration, poverty, repression, and escalating violence contributed to the outbreak of civil war.
Together, these conversations illustrate how Boulding’s insights illuminate both the functioning of the modern military-industrial landscape and the complex processes through which societies move between peace and war.
This is the third episode in a short series of episodes that will feature a collection of authors who contributed to the volume 1, issue 2 of the Markets & Society Journal or to a forthcoming special issue from The Review of Austrian Economics.
**This episode was recorded October 27, 2025.
Brigitta Jones is a PhD student in Economics at George Mason University. Her research interests include the welfare state of the United States.
Dr. Nathan P. Goodman is a Senior Research Fellow and Senior Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His research broadly focuses on political economy, public choice, market process economics, New Institutional Economics, and defense economics.
Dr. Karla Segovia is a program manager for Research & Programs and a Research Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where she works on the Markets & Society conference and journal. She is also an adjunct professor at Northern Virginia Community College.
Show Notes:
- Kenneth Boulding’s book, Stable Peace (University of Texas Press, 1978)
- Kenneth Boulding’s book, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society (University of Michigan Press, 1956).
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