From the Speakeasy

Conversations with Leaders, Entrepreneurs, Artists and Thinkers

The Bill Walton Show

Episode 246: “What Really Happens at Burning Man: An Insider’s Story” with Kenny Reff

09/30/2023

Guest(s): Kenny Reff

Once a year, roughly 70,000 “Burners” gather two hours north of Reno in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to create Black Rock City, a temporary city “dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance.” Burners declare that Burning Man isn’t a “festival.” Rather, “it’s a city wherein almost everything that happens is created entirely by its citizens, who are active participants in the experience.”

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Episode 245: “Climate Catastrophe, or Simply the Weather?” with Jay Richards

09/21/2023

Guest(s): Jay Richards

In this episode I’m joined by Jay W. Richards, Ph.D. to talk about “climate change.”

We are both skeptical about the claims that man is causing abnormal changes in the climate, mainly by adding CO₂ to the atmosphere, and that we need a political solution – fast! – to somehow arrest the spread of this toxic combination of molecules. We’re even more skeptical that the solution is for governments or the UN coerce us do it, and along the way essentially shut down the modern economy.

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Episode 244: How Financial Regulators Have Become a (Progressive) Law Unto Themselves” with Todd Zywicki

09/13/2023

Guest(s): Todd Zywicki

In this episode I’m talking with Todd Zywicki, the George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law in the Antonin Scalia Law School and former Executive Director of the GMU Law and Economics Center. 

He is also one of the most engaging and clear thinkers about the vast and complicated world of consumer financial services. He was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law and served as Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review. 

Todd’s recent article “Restoring the Rule of Law in Finance” served as our launching point for a fascinating – and disturbing – conversation about how financial regulation has become a key weapon in the progressives arsenal to fundamentally change America.

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Episode 243: Capitalism’s Promise: Essentially Infinite Resources and Human Flourishing with George Gilder and John Tamny

08/31/2023

Guest(s): George GilderJohn Tamny

I’m talking in this episode with the upbeat and visionary George Gilder, one of America’s leading economic and technological thinkers, and the author of the groundbreaking books, Wealth and Poverty, Knowledge and Power, The Scandal of Money and now: 

Life after Capitalism: The Meaning of Wealth, the Future of the Economy, and the Time Theory of Money 

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Episode 242: The Surgeon General Now Wants To Cure Your Loneliness: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? with Stella Morabito and Mark Tapscott

08/21/2023

Guest(s): Stella MorabitoMark Tapscott

In one of our most talked about episodes, Stella Morabito came on the show in May to talk about her book The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer.

We talked about the dangerous tyranny of thought creeping into American lives. Government, social media and a new kind of “ruling class” are increasingly working to control speech and behavior and isolate us from one another. This effort is intensifying and spreading throughout society’s institutions.

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Episode 241: A Victory for Free Speech with Jenin Younes

08/15/2023

Guest(s): Jenin Younes

“America needs to come to terms with the reality and scale of the assault on free speech. Our government has established a vast system of censorship. By keeping it largely secret, it has been able to exert unconstitutional control over medical, scientific and political speech, suppressing debate over questions of great public importance. This is a shocking constitutional violation. All of us, not only the courts, need to recognize what is at stake.”

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Episode 236: “It’s High Time to Retire Senator Tim Kaine”: Talking with Senate Candidate Scott Parkinson

07/17/2023

Guest(s): Scott Parkinson

This show only occasionally gets into election politics but we now have a candidate for U.S. Senate from Virginia who is superbly equipped to run a substantive campaign articulating the real issues facing Americans.

In this episode I’m introducing Scott Parkinson, who’s running for the Senate in the Commonwealth of Virginia, to replace Virginia Senator Tim Kaine.

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Episode 235: “Defining a Man and a Woman: What’s At Stake” with Dr Jay Richards

07/11/2023

Until recently, no precise legal definition of sex—and especially the terms “male” and “female”—was needed because no one contested it. 
Up to now. 

Gender activists are rapidly moving to redefine sex in federal laws and regulations, such as Title IX, to include “gender identity.” If this succeeds, it will subvert all preexisting legal references to sex, contrary to their plain intent.

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Episode 234: “The Chess Pieces are Moving: Russia, Putin, the Wagner Group, Ukraine, China, Xi, and Blinken” with Stephen Bryen

07/07/2023

Guest(s): Dr. Stephen Bryen

Two months ago I wrote “the war in Ukraine drags on at a terrible cost for all involved with no seeming end in sight. Ukraine is on the ropes and running out of manpower with its most of its elite forces destroyed. Missiles for its air defenses are depleted. Both sides are dragooning teenagers and old men for their armies. Russia’s military command is in disarray.” 

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Episode 231: “Reclaiming the Culture through Film” with Michael Pack

06/19/2023

Guest(s): Michael Pack

Global streaming services are projected to reach over 1.5 billion subscribers in 2025 with worldwide spending on TV, film and documentary production reaching over $220 billion a year. Netflix, Disney, Amazon Prime, and HBO Max alone account for more than $75 billion of that spend with almost all of it on woke progressive themed entertainment. Looking only at documentaries and small independent features, the Left spends tens of billions of dollars each year.

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Episode 229: “You May Not Be Interested in CISA, But CISA is Certainly Interested in You” with Ben Weingarten and Frank Gaffney

06/05/2023

Guest(s): Frank GaffneyBen Weingarten

“Overwhelming evidence suggests that federal agencies – led by among others, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), buoyed by senior executive branch officials and lawmakers, colluding with Big Tech, and a coterie of often government-coordinated and government-funded “counter-disinformation” organizations, have imposed nothing less than a mass public-private censorship regime on the American people.” 

Ben Weingarten, one of America’s leading investigative journalists, at a recent Homeland Security Oversight hearing. 

As you’ll learn in this episode, the evidence is overwhelming.

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Episode 228: “Google’s Utopian Vision and the 2024 Election” with Dr. Robert Epstein and Jenny Beth Martin

05/30/2023

Guest(s): Jenny Beth MartinRobert Epstein

Voter and ballot fraud may just be a small part of the problem that conservatives face in the upcoming 2024 elections compared to the power of Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube.

Using its “total data collection” systems it can sway the opinions of millions of people and influence how they vote.

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Episode 227: “It’s Time for the US to Use Its Power to Bring the War in Ukraine to an End” with Stephen Bryen

05/18/2023

Guest(s): Dr. Stephen Bryen

The war in Ukraine drags on at a terrible cost for all involved with no seeming end in sight. Some estimate that there have been almost 400,000 total Russian and Ukraine casualties so far, although both sides claim their losses are much lower.

Ukraine is on the ropes and running out of manpower with its most of its elite forces destroyed. Missiles for its air defenses are depleted. Both sides are dragooning teenagers and old men for their armies. Russia’s military command is in disarray.

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Episode 226: “The Weaponization of Loneliness” with Stella Morabito

05/10/2023

Guest(s): Stella Morabito

In this episode Stella Morabito returns to talk about her recently published book The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer.

Stella, a prolific author at The Federalist, writes incisively about the social fallout of propaganda, mob psychology, and the cult mindset, drawing in part from her years as an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency where she focused on methods of Soviet propaganda and disinformation, and its state-controlled media.

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Episode 225: “Protecting Investors from an Overreaching Regulatory State” with Chris Iacovella

05/04/2023

Guest(s): Christopher A. Iacovella

When Walmart went public in 1970 and soon thereafter listed on the New York Stock Exchange, its SEC disclosure prospectus was 20 pages long.

Today, a prospectus requires massive numbers of mostly obscure disclosures imposing very real liabilities for the issuing company – but which no one reads, except for lawyers who charge $2,000 an hour to read it and to write it – and which can run upwards to 300 pages or more.

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Episode 224: “The FBI’s Ambitious New Plans” with J. Michael Waller

04/26/2023

Guest(s): J. Michael Waller

Joining me to talk about the planned building, the FBI’s history and what it’s become today, is my frequent guest and astute observer of US intelligence agencies, Mike Waller.

J. Michael Waller, is a Senior Analyst for Strategy at the Center for Security Policy where he concentrates on propaganda, political warfare, psychological warfare, and subversion. Mike’s author of a soon to be published book about the CIA and the FBI.

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