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6 episodes with Charles Cooke
6 episodes with Charles Cooke
6 episodes with Charles Cooke
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2 episodes with Charles Cooke
2 episodes with Charles Cooke
2 episodes with Charles Cooke
We Like Shooting Episode 616 This episode of We Like Shooting is brought to you by: Midwest Industries, Die Free Co., Swampfox Optics, Night Fision, XTech Tactical, Rost Martin, Blue Alpha Welcome to the We Like Shooting Show, episode 616! Our cast tonight is Jeremy Pozderac, Aaron Krieger, Nick Lynch, and me Shawn Herrin, welcome to the show! GunCon PUBLIC EVENT - June 28th Location - Cleveland, Ohio at the Twist Drill Building (1242 E 49th St) Industry/Media Events - June 25-28 (Mixed locations around Cleveland area) https://guncon.net/event/guncon-2025/ use code wlsislife for $5 off Contest, win a shirt if you get selfies at both events with the cast. GOALS August 9th and 10th in Knoxville, Tennessee. https://events.goa.org/goals/ - Gear Chat Aaron - Squatchin' Around Sasquatch Nick - Guns and Kryon Vibes Guntology Kryon Nick - Sig P211 GTO Uncovered Sig P211 GTO Shawn - Glock Enhancements: Kiral Defense and LOK Grips Upgrade Kiral Defense has introduced a Reduced Angle Backstrap for Glock pistols, modifying the grip to resemble that of a 1911 for improved ergonomics and control. This U.S.-made accessory, tested by law enforcement, aims to enhance comfort and accuracy for various shooters, and its drop-in design maintains holster compatibility. The pricing ranges from $29.99 to $39.99, potentially attracting Glock owners looking to upgrade their firearms. Shawn - Flux Raider X Revamp! Flux Raider X update Wound packing Bullet Points - Gun Fights Step right up for "Gun Fights," the high-octane segment hosted by Nick Lynch, where our cast members go head-to-head in a game show-style showdown! Each contestant tries to prove their gun knowledge dominance. It's a wild ride of bids, bluffs, and banter—who will come out on top? Tune in to find out! WLS is Lifestyle Tactical Gear Gossip: Insights and Updates A correction facility recently published a photo of an inmate sewing tactical gear, which was quickly removed but saved by users. This has sparked discussions regarding the use of prisoner labor by prominent tactical gear brands like Ferro Concepts, raising concerns about quality control and ethical implications. The incident has led to mixed reactions within the gun community, with some questioning the morality of using low-cost inmate labor while others argue it is a legal and competitive strategy to produce quality products. Aaron's Alley Going Ballistic Windy City Woes: Gun Control Fail Chicago: At Least 23 Shot Friday Thru Saturday Alone Holy Collision: Church Shooter's Uber Michigan Officials: Deacon in Truck Ran over Church Shooter, Then Security Guard Shot Him Dead Texas: More Guns, Less Rules! Gov. Abbott Signs Bill Removing Short-Barrel Rifles from Texas Prohibited Weapons List Another Day, Another Gun Grab Rhode Island Democrats Ban Sale, Manufacture of ‘Assault Weapons School Zone Gun Battles Podcast: NRO's Charles Cooke on Challenge to Federal Gun Free School Zones Guns and Politics: Who Cares? Big Beautiful Bill updates 5th Circuit Withdraws Decision In Suppressor Challenge Ninth Circuit Unanimously Strikes Down California's “One-Gun-a-Month” Law: A Landmark Victory for Second Amendment Rights Justice Dept. to Cut Two-Thirds of Inspectors Monitoring Gun Sales Reviews ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - from HugMuffin Actual - Five out of Five Taurus Curves. As icons of masculinity, comparison between the WLS cast and 70's disco supergroup “The Village People” cannot be ignored. Shawn- The Cop. Keeps other cast members in line with a fair but firm hand. Jeremy- The Cowboy. Loves large belt buckles, leather chaps, and riding bareback. Aaron- The Native American. His people have historically been on the wrong end of the stick, but he is rising up to overcome.
Megyn Kelly begins the show with breaking news of Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis, the suspect timing as "Original Sin" is about to hit, the effort by Dem elites to use the news to attempt to suppress damaging coverage of the book and Biden's cognitive decline, and more. Then Dr. David Samadi, urologist, joins to discuss why it's hard to believe Biden just found out about the cancer diagnosis given how advanced it is, whether his cancer might have accelerated his cognitive decline, why it's either medical malpractice or a lie that Biden didn't know he had cancer for years, the tell in the Biden family statement involving "hormone sensitive" that reveals the diagnosis goes back long before Friday, and more. Then National Review's Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke join to discuss the lies that Democratic party operatives told about Biden's health for years, how he previously admitted that he had cancer in what was then thought of as a gaffe, why Biden's aides and his family don't deserve the benefit of the doubt that he just found out he has cancer, the real reason behind the timing of Biden's cancer diagnosis announcement, whether it was meant to garner sympathy or undermine the Tapper book, what to expect in Tapper and Thompson's book that's coming out tomorrow, the leak of the Robert Hur tapes with Biden, how bad he sounded and how much it's now clear the Dems lied about the interviews, and more. Samadi-https://www.amazon.com/Prostate-Cancer-Practical-Diagnosis-Treatment/dp/B0DG1X4FG7/Cooke- https://x.com/charlescwcookeLowry- https://www.nationalreview.com/ Everglades Foundation: Learn more about President Trump's Everglades support project at https://www.EvergladesFoundation.orgHome Title Lock: Go to https://hometitlelock.com/megynkelly and use promo code MEGYN to get a FREE title history report so you can find out if you're already a victim AND 14 days of protection for FREE! And make sure to check out the Million Dollar TripleLock protection details when you get there! Exclusions apply. For details visit https://hometitlelock.com/warrantyJacked Up Fitness: Go to https://GetJackedUp.com and use code MK at checkout to save 10% off your entire purchaseTuttle Twins: Go to https://TuttleTwins.com/history today
On episode 87, Charles asks Ross Douthat about his new book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, and, in particular, to explain to him why he, Charles Cooke, should be religious. The dial-up tone in the introduction was recorded by lintphishx and is used under a CC 3.0 License.
Charles C. W. Cooke, senior writer at National Review and host of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast, joined The Guy Benson Show to react to Illinois Governor JB Pritzker's aggressive remarks about Republicans. Cooke explained why this kind of rhetoric undermines any effort to seriously counter Trump's political dominance from the Democrats. Benson and Cooke also discussed new polling showing Trump slipping on economic approval nearly 100 days into his second term, and the Democrats' tendency to elevate deeply flawed figures as heroes of their movement. Cooke also discussed his skepticism toward Trump's proposed tax overhaul, which would eliminate all income taxes for those earning under $200k, funded entirely by tariffs. Listen to the full interview below! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
President Trump's far-reaching executive actions have given rise to a debate about whether the president is acting within the tradition of presidential power—or whether recent events represent a departure from the constitutional order and precedent. Melody Barnes of the University of Virginia Karsh Institute for Democracy, Charles Cooke of National Review, Joanne Freeman of Yale University, and Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute join Jeffrey Rosen to discuss the American tradition of presidential power and evaluate analogues to our constitutional moment from across U.S. history. This conversation was originally recorded on February 20, 2025, as part of the NCC's President's Council Retreat in Miami, Fla. Resources Yuval Levin, “A Rule of Thumb for the Executive Power Debates,” National Review Online (February 5, 2025) Melody Barnes et al., Karsh Institute of Democracy Statement of Principles Melody Barnes, Corey D. B. Walker and Thad M. Williamson, “Introduction: Can We Make American Democracy Work?,” in Community Wealth Building and the Reconstruction of American Democracy (2020) Charles Cooke, The Conservatarian Manifesto: Libertarians, Conservatives, and the Fight for the Right's Future (2015) Charles Cooke, “The American System Works, and It Will Work If Trump Wins Again,” National Review (Dec. 15, 2023) Stay Connected and Learn More Questions or comments about the show? Email us at podcast@constitutioncenter.org Continue the conversation by following us on social media @ConstitutionCtr. Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate. Subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen. Join us for an upcoming live program or watch recordings on YouTube. Support our important work. Donate
Megyn Kelly discusses the new narrative and talking point from the corporate media and the establishment Democrats that President Trump is bringing us to a “constitutional crisis,” their hypocrisy related to former President Biden when he said he defied a court order on his student loan forgiveness plan, and more. Then National Review's Charles C.W. Cooke and Rich Lowry join to discuss the legacy media's approved narrative about Trump's "constitutional crisis," the absurd overreaction and the reality of the situation, the outrageous things USAID has been paying for under past administrations, why Trump is so popular currently with Americans based on new polls, why the establishment and corporate media hates him, the "scholars" and "experts" who supported Biden, FEMA execs fired for defying Trump and sending funds, the executive order Trump signed to get rid of paper straws and bring back plastic straws, the hypocrisy from the left criticizing him for focusing on common sense issues, and more. Then Carol Swain, author of "The Gay Affair," joins to discuss former Harvard President Claudine Gay blaming racism for her plagiarism scandal rather than taking responsibility, what she plagiarized from Carol herself, the epidemic of plagiarism in academia today, how she overcame actual racism from white progressives in her past, CNN pundits whining and playing the victim in 2025, the targeting she gets as a black conservative, and more.Cooke-https://twitter.com/charlescwcookeLowry-https://www.nationalreview.com/Swain-https://carolmswain.com/ Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshowFYSI: Book your free business review today at https://FYSI.com/MegynJustThrive: Visit https://JustThriveHealth.com and use code MEGYN and save 20% sitewideCozy Earth: https://www.CozyEarth.com/MEGYN | code MEGYN
Tune in here for this Tuesday edition of the Vince Coakley Radio Program! Vince starts the show talking about the light snow in North Carolina last night, how wars and conflicts benefit the military industrial complex and little else, a trip to New York Vince took in winter and how different the same place looks in the spring, geography, Ukraine could cede territory to end conflict, comments from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy regarding a peace plan, and Iran seems to be backing away from attacking Israel. In the second half of the show Vince talks about leaving his keys at a hotel in Grenada a few weeks ago and used the "Find My" app to track them, along with his airpods, a Convention of States to raise term limit amendment discussion with Public Policy Reporter Brianna Kraemer from The Carolina Journal, President-elect Donald Trump makes comments on Truth Social regarding the Israel vs. Hamas war, President Joe Biden's blanket pardon of his son Hunter for over a decade of alleged illegal activities, comments from Rick Lowry about the pardon timing, comments from Charles Cooke regarding Hunter Biden's special treatment, homosexual couples rushing to marry before Trump is sworn in, listener emails, and the 2028 Presidential election: AOC floated as a candidate in Washington Examiner article.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Welcome to the latest episode of Lunch with Shelley with special guest Jim Geraghty. Jim is a National Review Senior Correspondent, and writes the “Morning Jolt” newsletter, as well as for National Review's magazine and web site. He is aptly considered one of today's must-read journalists. He is the author of "Heavy Lifting" with Cam Edwards, the satirical novel "The Weed Agency" (a Washington Post bestseller), the nonfiction study of the 9/11 attacks on American elections entitled "Voting to Kill", and an ongoing series of thriller novels.AND he is a professional podcaster! He appears weekly on "The Editors," National Review's podcast discussing current events with Rich Lowry, Charles Cooke and Michael Brendan Dougherty. He co-hosts "The Three Martini Lunch" podcast with Greg Corombos of Radio America, which is a fast-paced weekday podcast examining all the day's headlines, and he co-hosted a syndicated pop culture podcast with Mickey White called “The Jim and Mickey Show”.Grab a seat at our booth for a proper drink, a fabulous meal, and a wide-ranging conversation that includes international politics, domestic politics, 9/11, covid, Bob Costas, hilarious impressions and of course where Jim's favorite lunch spot might be!Check us out at www.lunchwithshelley.com or wherever you get your favorite podcast and in the meantime Peace, Love and Lunch!
Megyn Kelly is joined by National Review's Charles C.W. Cooke and Michael Brendan Dougherty to talk about Kamala Harris' nonstop use of "ambitions" and "opportunity," her new push to reach black men through a "Shade Room" interview, her inability to think so she just memorizes canned lines like an actress, her repeating the same line about "the duality of democracy," Tim Walz's failed attempt to go hunting and look manly, the disdain Democrats have for the voters in America, President Biden taking a dig at Kamala during a White House staff meeting, the feud between the two camps spilling out into the public, Biden being used as a tool of the Democratic machine, JD Vance's on-air showdown with ABC News' Martha Raddatz, her claim that Venezuelan gangs are only taking over some apartment complexes and not whole towns, how out of touch the corporate media is with most Americans, and more. Then Allie Beth Stuckey, author of "Toxic Empathy," joins to discuss how progressives talk about abortion without thinking about the implications, the lack of empathy that's disconnected from how many Americans see the issue, actor Bryan Cranston campaigning for Harris over "reproductive rights" and Megyn's story about how he stopped being friends with a Trump supporter, Joe Scarborough's absurd spin during his interview with Doug Emhoff, the lack of questions about the assault allegations against Emhoff, journalists refusing to do their jobs because of political bias, the hypocrisy on the left about supporting women, and more.Cooke- https://podcast.charlescwcooke.com/Dougherty- https://www.nationalreview.com/author/michael-brendan-dougherty/Stuckey- https://www.toxicempathy.com My Patriot Supply: https://PreparewithMegyn.comLumen: Visit https://lumen.me/MEGYN to get 15% off your LumenGround News: Use the link https://groundnews.com/megyn to get 40% off the Vantage subscription to see through mainstream media narratives.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow
Hugh covers the news of the morning with audio clips and talks with Megyn Kelly, Salena Zito, Noah Rothman, Charles Cooke, Josh Kraushaar, and Dr. Michael Oren.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Charles Cook of the National Review, Melody Barnes of the University of Virginia, and Sean Wilentz of Princeton University explore the debate about the core values of the American Idea—liberty, equality, democracy, and federalism—throughout American history and model the way in which Americans of different perspectives can come together in the spirit of civil dialogue. This program was recorded live on February 9, 2024. Resources: Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2008) Sean Wilentz, The Politicians and the Egalitarians: The Hidden History of American Politics (2016) Charles Cooke, The Conservatarian Manifesto: Libertarians, Conservatives, and the Fight for the Right's Future Charles Cooke, “The American System Works, and It Will Work If Trump Wins Again” (2023) Melody Barnes, Corey D.B. Walker and Thad M. Williamson, “Introduction: can we make American democracy work?” In Community Wealth Building and the Reconstruction of American Democracy (2020) Melody Barnes (and others), “Hate-fueled violence is ripping apart our cities and nation. We need to stop it.,” USA Today (2022) Melody Barnes and Caroline Janney, “Opinion: In a civil war, accountability must precede healing,” The Washington Post (2021) Melody Barnes, “Opinion: It's time for Sally Hemings to show us the unvarnished Thomas Jefferson,” The Washington Post (2018) Stay Connected and Learn More: Questions or comments about the show? Email us at podcast@constitutioncenter.org. Continue today's conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr. Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly. You can find transcripts for each episode on the podcast pages in our Media Library. Donate
Another week, another wild series of events in the 2024 presidential race. This time, the Democratic ticket was entirely upended, and Kamala Harris all but wrapped up her position at the top. To discuss how this affects gun politics, we've got National Review's Charles Cooke back on the show for the first time in a while. Cooke said that Harris has been to the left of her predecessor, Joe Biden, on firearms restrictions. He noted she supported a more assertive approach to using executive power, and she backed a mandatory buyback of AR-15s. However, Cooke argued Harris probably wouldn't track further left on guns during the campaign. He said the incentive is to either stick with the already aggressive platform, centered on an "assault weapons" ban, or try to moderate. He said Harris is likely going to have to combat her image as a very liberal California politician if she wants to beat Donald Trump. He said he was less concerned about Trump backing away from gun policy in recent weeks. He argued Democrats are highlighting the issue to try and excite voters they're concerned won't show up to the polls whereas Republicans don't have to worry as much about that because they've already accomplished a lot of pro-gun priorities in recent years. Oh, and we talked a little bit about rollercoasters at the end for those interested lol. Special Guest: Charles Cooke.
Megyn Kelly is joined by Judge Joe Brown, former TV host and lawyer, to discuss the relevance of when Fani Willis' affair with Nathan Wade began, her paying Nathan Wade more than his peers, her lack of important disclosures to the court, her attitude while testifying last week, whether her comments about money could open her up to IRS violation issues, whether Willis lied while on the stand during her testimony, the key element of how she kept cash, and more. Then National Review's Charles C.W. Cooke joins to discuss President Biden finding a new way to move forward with his "student loan forgiveness" plan, his desire to override Congress and the courts, why this shows the Biden campaign and the Democrats are panicking, Biden's age as a major election issue, the death of Alexei Navalny, the Washington Post attacking Nikki Haley's high school, a biological male injuring girls in high school basketball, and more. Then it's Kelly's Court with Marcia Clark and Mark Geragos to talk about whether Gabby Petito's parents have a case against the parents of their daughter's killer Brian Laundrie, whether his parents were obligated to share what they knew, the Alec Baldwin movie set shooting case and how it will be affected by the "Rust" armorer on trial now, whose negligence will be found at fault, the orgasm cult criminal case, and more.Brown- https://jjbbbq.com/Cooke- https://twitter.com/charlescwcookeClark- https://www.instagram.com/thatmarciaclark/Geragos-https://twitter.com/markgeragos Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow
We've got a special number for ya, folks. Instead of a guest or even politics, Charles Cooke, James Lileks and Peter Robinson talk football and music. Tune in for a recap on the Super Bowl—get Charles' take on the season and theLileksian review of the game's ads; plus the two of them give Peter a serious crash course in post-Beatles pop music! Sound clips from the open are from the State Farm, BMW, CeraVe ads, along with The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964.
We’ve got a special number for ya, folks. Instead of a guest or even politics, Charles Cooke, James Lileks and Peter Robinson talk football and music. Tune in for a recap on the Super Bowl—get Charles’ take on the season and the Lileksian review of the game’s ads; plus the two of them give Peter […]
We've made it to number 666! Unfortunately among the three of them James, Steve Hayward and Charles Cooke haven't a single sinister plan to reveal. They do however have lots to say about Wednesday's debate; progressive love for Hamas and what it means for the intersectionality coalition; and they wonder why there are no DACA protections for beloved pandas!
We’ve made it to number 666! Unfortunately among the three of them James, Steve Hayward and Charles Cooke haven’t a single sinister plan to reveal. They do however have lots to say about Wednesday’s debate; progressive love for Hamas and what it means for the intersectionality coalition; and they wonder why there are DACA protections […]
Citizens of Philadelphia are the latest victims of "wilding nights," watching helplessly as chortling teens smash storefronts and ransack the goods inside. These aren't unheard of events, but they're becoming more frequent. To sort out the ideologies and policies that got our cities conditioned to this, and the hard work it'll take to get us back in shape, Manhattan Institute's Rafael Mangual — author of Criminal (In)justice returns to the Ricochet Podcast.On theme, James and guest hosts Charles Cooke and Jon Gabriel talk 70s vigilante flicks, and have a few words to say about Dianne Feinstein, John Fetterman's new attire and Wednesday's debate.
Episode 168 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Say a Little Prayer”, and the interaction of the sacred, political, and secular in Aretha Franklin's life and work. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-five-minute bonus episode available, on "Abraham, Martin, and John" by Dion. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Aretha Franklin. Even splitting it into multiple parts would have required six or seven mixes. My main biographical source for Aretha Franklin is Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz, and this is where most of the quotes from musicians come from. Information on C.L. Franklin came from Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America by Nick Salvatore. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom is possibly less essential, but still definitely worth reading. Information about Martin Luther King came from Martin Luther King: A Religious Life by Paul Harvey. I also referred to Burt Bacharach's autobiography Anyone Who Had a Heart, Carole King's autobiography A Natural Woman, and Soul Serenade: King Curtis and his Immortal Saxophone by Timothy R. Hoover. For information about Amazing Grace I also used Aaron Cohen's 33 1/3 book on the album. The film of the concerts is also definitely worth watching. And the Aretha Now album is available in this five-album box set for a ludicrously cheap price. But it's actually worth getting this nineteen-CD set with her first sixteen Atlantic albums and a couple of bonus discs of demos and outtakes. There's barely a duff track in the whole nineteen discs. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick warning before I begin. This episode contains some moderate references to domestic abuse, death by cancer, racial violence, police violence, and political assassination. Anyone who might be upset by those subjects might want to check the transcript rather than listening to the episode. Also, as with the previous episode on Aretha Franklin, this episode presents something of a problem. Like many people in this narrative, Franklin's career was affected by personal troubles, which shaped many of her decisions. But where most of the subjects of the podcast have chosen to live their lives in public and share intimate details of every aspect of their personal lives, Franklin was an extremely private person, who chose to share only carefully sanitised versions of her life, and tried as far as possible to keep things to herself. This of course presents a dilemma for anyone who wants to tell her story -- because even though the information is out there in biographies, and even though she's dead, it's not right to disrespect someone's wish for a private life. I have therefore tried, wherever possible, to stay away from talk of her personal life except where it *absolutely* affects the work, or where other people involved have publicly shared their own stories, and even there I've tried to keep it to a minimum. This will occasionally lead to me saying less about some topics than other people might, even though the information is easily findable, because I don't think we have an absolute right to invade someone else's privacy for entertainment. When we left Aretha Franklin, she had just finally broken through into the mainstream after a decade of performing, with a version of Otis Redding's song "Respect" on which she had been backed by her sisters, Erma and Carolyn. "Respect", in Franklin's interpretation, had been turned from a rather chauvinist song about a man demanding respect from his woman into an anthem of feminism, of Black power, and of a new political awakening. For white people of a certain generation, the summer of 1967 was "the summer of love". For many Black people, it was rather different. There's a quote that goes around (I've seen it credited in reliable sources to both Ebony and Jet magazine, but not ever seen an issue cited, so I can't say for sure where it came from) saying that the summer of 67 was the summer of "'retha, Rap, and revolt", referring to the trifecta of Aretha Franklin, the Black power leader Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (who was at the time known as H. Rap Brown, a name he later disclaimed) and the rioting that broke out in several major cities, particularly in Detroit: [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "The Motor City is Burning"] The mid sixties were, in many ways, the high point not of Black rights in the US -- for the most part there has been a lot of progress in civil rights in the intervening decades, though not without inevitable setbacks and attacks from the far right, and as movements like the Black Lives Matter movement have shown there is still a long way to go -- but of *hope* for Black rights. The moral force of the arguments made by the civil rights movement were starting to cause real change to happen for Black people in the US for the first time since the Reconstruction nearly a century before. But those changes weren't happening fast enough, and as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", there was not only a growing unrest among Black people, but a recognition that it was actually possible for things to change. A combination of hope and frustration can be a powerful catalyst, and whether Franklin wanted it or not, she was at the centre of things, both because of her newfound prominence as a star with a hit single that couldn't be interpreted as anything other than a political statement and because of her intimate family connections to the struggle. Even the most racist of white people these days pays lip service to the memory of Dr Martin Luther King, and when they do they quote just a handful of sentences from one speech King made in 1963, as if that sums up the full theological and political philosophy of that most complex of men. And as we discussed the last time we looked at Aretha Franklin, King gave versions of that speech, the "I Have a Dream" speech, twice. The most famous version was at the March on Washington, but the first time was a few weeks earlier, at what was at the time the largest civil rights demonstration in American history, in Detroit. Aretha's family connection to that event is made clear by the very opening of King's speech: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Original 'I Have a Dream' Speech"] So as summer 1967 got into swing, and white rock music was going to San Francisco to wear flowers in its hair, Aretha Franklin was at the centre of a very different kind of youth revolution. Franklin's second Atlantic album, Aretha Arrives, brought in some new personnel to the team that had recorded Aretha's first album for Atlantic. Along with the core Muscle Shoals players Jimmy Johnson, Spooner Oldham, Tommy Cogbill and Roger Hawkins, and a horn section led by King Curtis, Wexler and Dowd also brought in guitarist Joe South. South was a white session player from Georgia, who had had a few minor hits himself in the fifties -- he'd got his start recording a cover version of "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor", the Big Bopper's B-side to "Chantilly Lace": [Excerpt: Joe South, "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor"] He'd also written a few songs that had been recorded by people like Gene Vincent, but he'd mostly become a session player. He'd become a favourite musician of Bob Johnston's, and so he'd played guitar on Simon and Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme albums: [Excerpt: Simon and Garfunkel, "I am a Rock"] and bass on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, with Al Kooper particularly praising his playing on "Visions of Johanna": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Visions of Johanna"] South would be the principal guitarist on this and Franklin's next album, before his own career took off in 1968 with "Games People Play": [Excerpt: Joe South, "Games People Play"] At this point, he had already written the other song he's best known for, "Hush", which later became a hit for Deep Purple: [Excerpt: Deep Purple, "Hush"] But he wasn't very well known, and was surprised to get the call for the Aretha Franklin session, especially because, as he put it "I was white and I was about to play behind the blackest genius since Ray Charles" But Jerry Wexler had told him that Franklin didn't care about the race of the musicians she played with, and South settled in as soon as Franklin smiled at him when he played a good guitar lick on her version of the blues standard "Going Down Slow": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Going Down Slow"] That was one of the few times Franklin smiled in those sessions though. Becoming an overnight success after years of trying and failing to make a name for herself had been a disorienting experience, and on top of that things weren't going well in her personal life. Her marriage to her manager Ted White was falling apart, and she was performing erratically thanks to the stress. In particular, at a gig in Georgia she had fallen off the stage and broken her arm. She soon returned to performing, but it meant she had problems with her right arm during the recording of the album, and didn't play as much piano as she would have previously -- on some of the faster songs she played only with her left hand. But the recording sessions had to go on, whether or not Aretha was physically capable of playing piano. As we discussed in the episode on Otis Redding, the owners of Atlantic Records were busily negotiating its sale to Warner Brothers in mid-1967. As Wexler said later “Everything in me said, Keep rolling, keep recording, keep the hits coming. She was red hot and I had no reason to believe that the streak wouldn't continue. I knew that it would be foolish—and even irresponsible—not to strike when the iron was hot. I also had personal motivation. A Wall Street financier had agreed to see what we could get for Atlantic Records. While Ahmet and Neshui had not agreed on a selling price, they had gone along with my plan to let the financier test our worth on the open market. I was always eager to pump out hits, but at this moment I was on overdrive. In this instance, I had a good partner in Ted White, who felt the same. He wanted as much product out there as possible." In truth, you can tell from Aretha Arrives that it's a record that was being thought of as "product" rather than one being made out of any kind of artistic impulse. It's a fine album -- in her ten-album run from I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You through Amazing Grace there's not a bad album and barely a bad track -- but there's a lack of focus. There are only two originals on the album, neither of them written by Franklin herself, and the rest is an incoherent set of songs that show the tension between Franklin and her producers at Atlantic. Several songs are the kind of standards that Franklin had recorded for her old label Columbia, things like "You Are My Sunshine", or her version of "That's Life", which had been a hit for Frank Sinatra the previous year: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "That's Life"] But mixed in with that are songs that are clearly the choice of Wexler. As we've discussed previously in episodes on Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, at this point Atlantic had the idea that it was possible for soul artists to cross over into the white market by doing cover versions of white rock hits -- and indeed they'd had some success with that tactic. So while Franklin was suggesting Sinatra covers, Atlantic's hand is visible in the choices of songs like "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "96 Tears": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "96 Tears'] Of the two originals on the album, one, the hit single "Baby I Love You" was written by Ronnie Shannon, the Detroit songwriter who had previously written "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Baby I Love You"] As with the previous album, and several other songs on this one, that had backing vocals by Aretha's sisters, Erma and Carolyn. But the other original on the album, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)", didn't, even though it was written by Carolyn: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] To explain why, let's take a little detour and look at the co-writer of the song this episode is about, though we're not going to get to that for a little while yet. We've not talked much about Burt Bacharach in this series so far, but he's one of those figures who has come up a few times in the periphery and will come up again, so here is as good a time as any to discuss him, and bring everyone up to speed about his career up to 1967. Bacharach was one of the more privileged figures in the sixties pop music field. His father, Bert Bacharach (pronounced the same as his son, but spelled with an e rather than a u) had been a famous newspaper columnist, and his parents had bought him a Steinway grand piano to practice on -- they pushed him to learn the piano even though as a kid he wasn't interested in finger exercises and Debussy. What he was interested in, though, was jazz, and as a teenager he would often go into Manhattan and use a fake ID to see people like Dizzy Gillespie, who he idolised, and in his autobiography he talks rapturously of seeing Gillespie playing his bent trumpet -- he once saw Gillespie standing on a street corner with a pet monkey on his shoulder, and went home and tried to persuade his parents to buy him a monkey too. In particular, he talks about seeing the Count Basie band with Sonny Payne on drums as a teenager: [Excerpt: Count Basie, "Kid From Red Bank"] He saw them at Birdland, the club owned by Morris Levy where they would regularly play, and said of the performance "they were just so incredibly exciting that all of a sudden, I got into music in a way I never had before. What I heard in those clubs really turned my head around— it was like a big breath of fresh air when somebody throws open a window. That was when I knew for the first time how much I loved music and wanted to be connected to it in some way." Of course, there's a rather major problem with this story, as there is so often with narratives that musicians tell about their early career. In this case, Birdland didn't open until 1949, when Bacharach was twenty-one and stationed in Germany for his military service, while Sonny Payne didn't join Basie's band until 1954, when Bacharach had been a professional musician for many years. Also Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet bell only got bent on January 6, 1953. But presumably while Bacharach was conflating several memories, he did have some experience in some New York jazz club that led him to want to become a musician. Certainly there were enough great jazz musicians playing the clubs in those days. He went to McGill University to study music for two years, then went to study with Darius Milhaud, a hugely respected modernist composer. Milhaud was also one of the most important music teachers of the time -- among others he'd taught Stockhausen and Xenakkis, and would go on to teach Philip Glass and Steve Reich. This suited Bacharach, who by this point was a big fan of Schoenberg and Webern, and was trying to write atonal, difficult music. But Milhaud had also taught Dave Brubeck, and when Bacharach rather shamefacedly presented him with a composition which had an actual tune, he told Bacharach "Never be ashamed of writing a tune you can whistle". He dropped out of university and, like most men of his generation, had to serve in the armed forces. When he got out of the army, he continued his musical studies, still trying to learn to be an avant-garde composer, this time with Bohuslav Martinů and later with Henry Cowell, the experimental composer we've heard about quite a bit in previous episodes: [Excerpt: Henry Cowell, "Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance"] He was still listening to a lot of avant garde music, and would continue doing so throughout the fifties, going to see people like John Cage. But he spent much of that time working in music that was very different from the avant-garde. He got a job as the band leader for the crooner Vic Damone: [Excerpt: Vic Damone. "Ebb Tide"] He also played for the vocal group the Ames Brothers. He decided while he was working with the Ames Brothers that he could write better material than they were getting from their publishers, and that it would be better to have a job where he didn't have to travel, so he got himself a job as a staff songwriter in the Brill Building. He wrote a string of flops and nearly hits, starting with "Keep Me In Mind" for Patti Page: [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Keep Me In Mind"] From early in his career he worked with the lyricist Hal David, and the two of them together wrote two big hits, "Magic Moments" for Perry Como: [Excerpt: Perry Como, "Magic Moments"] and "The Story of My Life" for Marty Robbins: [Excerpt: "The Story of My Life"] But at that point Bacharach was still also writing with other writers, notably Hal David's brother Mack, with whom he wrote the theme tune to the film The Blob, as performed by The Five Blobs: [Excerpt: The Five Blobs, "The Blob"] But Bacharach's songwriting career wasn't taking off, and he got himself a job as musical director for Marlene Dietrich -- a job he kept even after it did start to take off. Part of the problem was that he intuitively wrote music that didn't quite fit into standard structures -- there would be odd bars of unusual time signatures thrown in, unusual harmonies, and structural irregularities -- but then he'd take feedback from publishers and producers who would tell him the song could only be recorded if he straightened it out. He said later "The truth is that I ruined a lot of songs by not believing in myself enough to tell these guys they were wrong." He started writing songs for Scepter Records, usually with Hal David, but also with Bob Hilliard and Mack David, and started having R&B hits. One song he wrote with Mack David, "I'll Cherish You", had the lyrics rewritten by Luther Dixon to make them more harsh-sounding for a Shirelles single -- but the single was otherwise just Bacharach's demo with the vocals replaced, and you can even hear his voice briefly at the beginning: [Excerpt: The Shirelles, "Baby, It's You"] But he'd also started becoming interested in the production side of records more generally. He'd iced that some producers, when recording his songs, would change the sound for the worse -- he thought Gene McDaniels' version of "Tower of Strength", for example, was too fast. But on the other hand, other producers got a better sound than he'd heard in his head. He and Hilliard had written a song called "Please Stay", which they'd given to Leiber and Stoller to record with the Drifters, and he thought that their arrangement of the song was much better than the one he'd originally thought up: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Please Stay"] He asked Leiber and Stoller if he could attend all their New York sessions and learn about record production from them. He started doing so, and eventually they started asking him to assist them on records. He and Hilliard wrote a song called "Mexican Divorce" for the Drifters, which Leiber and Stoller were going to produce, and as he put it "they were so busy running Redbird Records that they asked me to rehearse the background singers for them in my office." [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Mexican Divorce"] The backing singers who had been brought in to augment the Drifters on that record were a group of vocalists who had started out as members of a gospel group called the Drinkard singers: [Excerpt: The Drinkard Singers, "Singing in My Soul"] The Drinkard Singers had originally been a family group, whose members included Cissy Drinkard, who joined the group aged five (and who on her marriage would become known as Cissy Houston -- her daughter Whitney would later join the family business), her aunt Lee Warrick, and Warrick's adopted daughter Judy Clay. That group were discovered by the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, and spent much of the fifties performing with gospel greats including Jackson herself, Clara Ward, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. But Houston was also the musical director of a group at her church, the Gospelaires, which featured Lee Warrick's two daughters Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick (for those who don't know, the Warwick sisters' birth name was Warrick, spelled with two rs. A printing error led to it being misspelled the same way as the British city on a record label, and from that point on Dionne at least pronounced the w in her misspelled name). And slowly, the Gospelaires rather than the Drinkard Singers became the focus, with a lineup of Houston, the Warwick sisters, the Warwick sisters' cousin Doris Troy, and Clay's sister Sylvia Shemwell. The real change in the group's fortunes came when, as we talked about a while back in the episode on "The Loco-Motion", the original lineup of the Cookies largely stopped working as session singers to become Ray Charles' Raelettes. As we discussed in that episode, a new lineup of Cookies formed in 1961, but it took a while for them to get started, and in the meantime the producers who had been relying on them for backing vocals were looking elsewhere, and they looked to the Gospelaires. "Mexican Divorce" was the first record to feature the group as backing vocalists -- though reports vary as to how many of them are on the record, with some saying it's only Troy and the Warwicks, others saying Houston was there, and yet others saying it was all five of them. Some of these discrepancies were because these singers were so good that many of them left to become solo singers in fairly short order. Troy was the first to do so, with her hit "Just One Look", on which the other Gospelaires sang backing vocals: [Excerpt: Doris Troy, "Just One Look"] But the next one to go solo was Dionne Warwick, and that was because she'd started working with Bacharach and Hal David as their principal demo singer. She started singing lead on their demos, and hoping that she'd get to release them on her own. One early one was "Make it Easy On Yourself", which was recorded by Jerry Butler, formerly of the Impressions. That record was produced by Bacharach, one of the first records he produced without outside supervision: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "Make it Easy On Yourself"] Warwick was very jealous that a song she'd sung the demo of had become a massive hit for someone else, and blamed Bacharach and David. The way she tells the story -- Bacharach always claimed this never happened, but as we've already seen he was himself not always the most reliable of narrators of his own life -- she got so angry she complained to them, and said "Don't make me over, man!" And so Bacharach and David wrote her this: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Don't Make Me Over"] Incidentally, in the UK, the hit version of that was a cover by the Swinging Blue Jeans: [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "Don't Make Me Over"] who also had a huge hit with "You're No Good": [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "You're No Good"] And *that* was originally recorded by *Dee Dee* Warwick: [Excerpt: Dee Dee Warwick, "You're No Good"] Dee Dee also had a successful solo career, but Dionne's was the real success, making the names of herself, and of Bacharach and David. The team had more than twenty top forty hits together, before Bacharach and David had a falling out in 1971 and stopped working together, and Warwick sued both of them for breach of contract as a result. But prior to that they had hit after hit, with classic records like "Anyone Who Had a Heart": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Anyone Who Had a Heart"] And "Walk On By": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Walk On By"] With Doris, Dionne, and Dee Dee all going solo, the group's membership was naturally in flux -- though the departed members would occasionally join their former bandmates for sessions, and the remaining members would sing backing vocals on their ex-members' records. By 1965 the group consisted of Cissy Houston, Sylvia Shemwell, the Warwick sisters' cousin Myrna Smith, and Estelle Brown. The group became *the* go-to singers for soul and R&B records made in New York. They were regularly hired by Leiber and Stoller to sing on their records, and they were also the particular favourites of Bert Berns. They sang backing vocals on almost every record he produced. It's them doing the gospel wails on "Cry Baby" by Garnet Mimms: [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms, "Cry Baby"] And they sang backing vocals on both versions of "If You Need Me" -- Wilson Pickett's original and Solomon Burke's more successful cover version, produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "If You Need Me"] They're on such Berns records as "Show Me Your Monkey", by Kenny Hamber: [Excerpt: Kenny Hamber, "Show Me Your Monkey"] And it was a Berns production that ended up getting them to be Aretha Franklin's backing group. The group were becoming such an important part of the records that Atlantic and BANG Records, in particular, were putting out, that Jerry Wexler said "it was only a matter of common decency to put them under contract as a featured group". He signed them to Atlantic and renamed them from the Gospelaires to The Sweet Inspirations. Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham wrote a song for the group which became their only hit under their own name: [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Sweet Inspiration"] But to start with, they released a cover of Pops Staples' civil rights song "Why (Am I treated So Bad)": [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Why (Am I Treated So Bad?)"] That hadn't charted, and meanwhile, they'd all kept doing session work. Cissy had joined Erma and Carolyn Franklin on the backing vocals for Aretha's "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You"] Shortly after that, the whole group recorded backing vocals for Erma's single "Piece of My Heart", co-written and produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] That became a top ten record on the R&B charts, but that caused problems. Aretha Franklin had a few character flaws, and one of these was an extreme level of jealousy for any other female singer who had any level of success and came up in the business after her. She could be incredibly graceful towards anyone who had been successful before her -- she once gave one of her Grammies away to Esther Phillips, who had been up for the same award and had lost to her -- but she was terribly insecure, and saw any contemporary as a threat. She'd spent her time at Columbia Records fuming (with some justification) that Barbra Streisand was being given a much bigger marketing budget than her, and she saw Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, and Dionne Warwick as rivals rather than friends. And that went doubly for her sisters, who she was convinced should be supporting her because of family loyalty. She had been infuriated at John Hammond when Columbia had signed Erma, thinking he'd gone behind her back to create competition for her. And now Erma was recording with Bert Berns. Bert Berns who had for years been a colleague of Jerry Wexler and the Ertegun brothers at Atlantic. Aretha was convinced that Wexler had put Berns up to signing Erma as some kind of power play. There was only one problem with this -- it simply wasn't true. As Wexler later explained “Bert and I had suffered a bad falling-out, even though I had enormous respect for him. After all, he was the guy who brought over guitarist Jimmy Page from England to play on our sessions. Bert, Ahmet, Nesuhi, and I had started a label together—Bang!—where Bert produced Van Morrison's first album. But Bert also had a penchant for trouble. He courted the wise guys. He wanted total control over every last aspect of our business dealings. Finally it was too much, and the Erteguns and I let him go. He sued us for breach of contract and suddenly we were enemies. I felt that he signed Erma, an excellent singer, not merely for her talent but as a way to get back at me. If I could make a hit with Aretha, he'd show me up by making an even bigger hit on Erma. Because there was always an undercurrent of rivalry between the sisters, this only added to the tension.” There were two things that resulted from this paranoia on Aretha's part. The first was that she and Wexler, who had been on first-name terms up to that point, temporarily went back to being "Mr. Wexler" and "Miss Franklin" to each other. And the second was that Aretha no longer wanted Carolyn and Erma to be her main backing vocalists, though they would continue to appear on her future records on occasion. From this point on, the Sweet Inspirations would be the main backing vocalists for Aretha in the studio throughout her golden era [xxcut line (and when the Sweet Inspirations themselves weren't on the record, often it would be former members of the group taking their place)]: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] The last day of sessions for Aretha Arrives was July the twenty-third, 1967. And as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", that was the day that the Detroit riots started. To recap briefly, that was four days of rioting started because of a history of racist policing, made worse by those same racist police overreacting to the initial protests. By the end of those four days, the National Guard, 82nd Airborne Division, and the 101st Airborne from Clarksville were all called in to deal with the violence, which left forty-three dead (of whom thirty-three were Black and only one was a police officer), 1,189 people were injured, and over 7,200 arrested, almost all of them Black. Those days in July would be a turning point for almost every musician based in Detroit. In particular, the police had murdered three members of the soul group the Dramatics, in a massacre of which the author John Hersey, who had been asked by President Johnson to be part of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders but had decided that would compromise his impartiality and did an independent journalistic investigation, said "The episode contained all the mythic themes of racial strife in the United States: the arm of the law taking the law into its own hands; interracial sex; the subtle poison of racist thinking by “decent” men who deny they are racists; the societal limbo into which, ever since slavery, so many young black men have been driven by our country; ambiguous justice in the courts; and the devastation in both black and white human lives that follows in the wake of violence as surely as ruinous and indiscriminate flood after torrents" But these were also the events that radicalised the MC5 -- the group had been playing a gig as Tim Buckley's support act when the rioting started, and guitarist Wayne Kramer decided afterwards to get stoned and watch the fires burning down the city through a telescope -- which police mistook for a rifle, leading to the National Guard knocking down Kramer's door. The MC5 would later cover "The Motor City is Burning", John Lee Hooker's song about the events: [Excerpt: The MC5, "The Motor City is Burning"] It would also be a turning point for Motown, too, in ways we'll talk about in a few future episodes. And it was a political turning point too -- Michigan Governor George Romney, a liberal Republican (at a time when such people existed) had been the favourite for the Republican Presidential candidacy when he'd entered the race in December 1966, but as racial tensions ramped up in Detroit during the early months of 1967 he'd started trailing Richard Nixon, a man who was consciously stoking racists' fears. President Johnson, the incumbent Democrat, who was at that point still considering standing for re-election, made sure to make it clear to everyone during the riots that the decision to call in the National Guard had been made at the State level, by Romney, rather than at the Federal level. That wasn't the only thing that removed the possibility of a Romney presidency, but it was a big part of the collapse of his campaign, and the, as it turned out, irrevocable turn towards right-authoritarianism that the party took with Nixon's Southern Strategy. Of course, Aretha Franklin had little way of knowing what was to come and how the riots would change the city and the country over the following decades. What she was primarily concerned about was the safety of her father, and to a lesser extent that of her sister-in-law Earline who was staying with him. Aretha, Carolyn, and Erma all tried to keep in constant touch with their father while they were out of town, and Aretha even talked about hiring private detectives to travel to Detroit, find her father, and get him out of the city to safety. But as her brother Cecil pointed out, he was probably the single most loved man among Black people in Detroit, and was unlikely to be harmed by the rioters, while he was too famous for the police to kill with impunity. Reverend Franklin had been having a stressful time anyway -- he had recently been fined for tax evasion, an action he was convinced the IRS had taken because of his friendship with Dr King and his role in the civil rights movement -- and according to Cecil "Aretha begged Daddy to move out of the city entirely. She wanted him to find another congregation in California, where he was especially popular—or at least move out to the suburbs. But he wouldn't budge. He said that, more than ever, he was needed to point out the root causes of the riots—the economic inequality, the pervasive racism in civic institutions, the woefully inadequate schools in inner-city Detroit, and the wholesale destruction of our neighborhoods by urban renewal. Some ministers fled the city, but not our father. The horror of what happened only recommitted him. He would not abandon his political agenda." To make things worse, Aretha was worried about her father in other ways -- as her marriage to Ted White was starting to disintegrate, she was looking to her father for guidance, and actually wanted him to take over her management. Eventually, Ruth Bowen, her booking agent, persuaded her brother Cecil that this was a job he could do, and that she would teach him everything he needed to know about the music business. She started training him up while Aretha was still married to White, in the expectation that that marriage couldn't last. Jerry Wexler, who only a few months earlier had been seeing Ted White as an ally in getting "product" from Franklin, had now changed his tune -- partly because the sale of Atlantic had gone through in the meantime. He later said “Sometimes she'd call me at night, and, in that barely audible little-girl voice of hers, she'd tell me that she wasn't sure she could go on. She always spoke in generalities. She never mentioned her husband, never gave me specifics of who was doing what to whom. And of course I knew better than to ask. She just said that she was tired of dealing with so much. My heart went out to her. She was a woman who suffered silently. She held so much in. I'd tell her to take as much time off as she needed. We had a lot of songs in the can that we could release without new material. ‘Oh, no, Jerry,' she'd say. ‘I can't stop recording. I've written some new songs, Carolyn's written some new songs. We gotta get in there and cut 'em.' ‘Are you sure?' I'd ask. ‘Positive,' she'd say. I'd set up the dates and typically she wouldn't show up for the first or second sessions. Carolyn or Erma would call me to say, ‘Ree's under the weather.' That was tough because we'd have asked people like Joe South and Bobby Womack to play on the sessions. Then I'd reschedule in the hopes she'd show." That third album she recorded in 1967, Lady Soul, was possibly her greatest achievement. The opening track, and second single, "Chain of Fools", released in November, was written by Don Covay -- or at least it's credited as having been written by Covay. There's a gospel record that came out around the same time on a very small label based in Houston -- "Pains of Life" by Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio: [Excerpt: Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio, "Pains of Life"] I've seen various claims online that that record came out shortly *before* "Chain of Fools", but I can't find any definitive evidence one way or the other -- it was on such a small label that release dates aren't available anywhere. Given that the B-side, which I haven't been able to track down online, is called "Wait Until the Midnight Hour", my guess is that rather than this being a case of Don Covay stealing the melody from an obscure gospel record he'd have had little chance to hear, it's the gospel record rewriting a then-current hit to be about religion, but I thought it worth mentioning. The song was actually written by Covay after Jerry Wexler asked him to come up with some songs for Otis Redding, but Wexler, after hearing it, decided it was better suited to Franklin, who gave an astonishing performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] Arif Mardin, the arranger of the album, said of that track “I was listed as the arranger of ‘Chain of Fools,' but I can't take credit. Aretha walked into the studio with the chart fully formed inside her head. The arrangement is based around the harmony vocals provided by Carolyn and Erma. To add heft, the Sweet Inspirations joined in. The vision of the song is entirely Aretha's.” According to Wexler, that's not *quite* true -- according to him, Joe South came up with the guitar part that makes up the intro, and he also said that when he played what he thought was the finished track to Ellie Greenwich, she came up with another vocal line for the backing vocals, which she overdubbed. But the core of the record's sound is definitely pure Aretha -- and Carolyn Franklin said that there was a reason for that. As she said later “Aretha didn't write ‘Chain,' but she might as well have. It was her story. When we were in the studio putting on the backgrounds with Ree doing lead, I knew she was singing about Ted. Listen to the lyrics talking about how for five long years she thought he was her man. Then she found out she was nothing but a link in the chain. Then she sings that her father told her to come on home. Well, he did. She sings about how her doctor said to take it easy. Well, he did too. She was drinking so much we thought she was on the verge of a breakdown. The line that slew me, though, was the one that said how one of these mornings the chain is gonna break but until then she'll take all she can take. That summed it up. Ree knew damn well that this man had been doggin' her since Jump Street. But somehow she held on and pushed it to the breaking point." [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] That made number one on the R&B charts, and number two on the hot one hundred, kept from the top by "Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)" by John Fred and his Playboy Band -- a record that very few people would say has stood the test of time as well. The other most memorable track on the album was the one chosen as the first single, released in September. As Carole King told the story, she and Gerry Goffin were feeling like their career was in a slump. While they had had a huge run of hits in the early sixties through 1965, they had only had two new hits in 1966 -- "Goin' Back" for Dusty Springfield and "Don't Bring Me Down" for the Animals, and neither of those were anything like as massive as their previous hits. And up to that point in 1967, they'd only had one -- "Pleasant Valley Sunday" for the Monkees. They had managed to place several songs on Monkees albums and the TV show as well, so they weren't going to starve, but the rise of self-contained bands that were starting to dominate the charts, and Phil Spector's temporary retirement, meant there simply wasn't the opportunity for them to place material that there had been. They were also getting sick of travelling to the West Coast all the time, because as their children were growing slightly older they didn't want to disrupt their lives in New York, and were thinking of approaching some of the New York based labels and seeing if they needed songs. They were particularly considering Atlantic, because soul was more open to outside songwriters than other genres. As it happened, though, they didn't have to approach Atlantic, because Atlantic approached them. They were walking down Broadway when a limousine pulled up, and Jerry Wexler stuck his head out of the window. He'd come up with a good title that he wanted to use for a song for Aretha, would they be interested in writing a song called "Natural Woman"? They said of course they would, and Wexler drove off. They wrote the song that night, and King recorded a demo the next morning: [Excerpt: Carole King, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (demo)"] They gave Wexler a co-writing credit because he had suggested the title. King later wrote in her autobiography "Hearing Aretha's performance of “Natural Woman” for the first time, I experienced a rare speechless moment. To this day I can't convey how I felt in mere words. Anyone who had written a song in 1967 hoping it would be performed by a singer who could take it to the highest level of excellence, emotional connection, and public exposure would surely have wanted that singer to be Aretha Franklin." She went on to say "But a recording that moves people is never just about the artist and the songwriters. It's about people like Jerry and Ahmet, who matched the songwriters with a great title and a gifted artist; Arif Mardin, whose magnificent orchestral arrangement deserves the place it will forever occupy in popular music history; Tom Dowd, whose engineering skills captured the magic of this memorable musical moment for posterity; and the musicians in the rhythm section, the orchestral players, and the vocal contributions of the background singers—among them the unforgettable “Ah-oo!” after the first line of the verse. And the promotion and marketing people helped this song reach more people than it might have without them." And that's correct -- unlike "Chain of Fools", this time Franklin did let Arif Mardin do most of the arrangement work -- though she came up with the piano part that Spooner Oldham plays on the record. Mardin said that because of the song's hymn-like feel they wanted to go for a more traditional written arrangement. He said "She loved the song to the point where she said she wanted to concentrate on the vocal and vocal alone. I had written a string chart and horn chart to augment the chorus and hired Ralph Burns to conduct. After just a couple of takes, we had it. That's when Ralph turned to me with wonder in his eyes. Ralph was one of the most celebrated arrangers of the modern era. He had done ‘Early Autumn' for Woody Herman and Stan Getz, and ‘Georgia on My Mind' for Ray Charles. He'd worked with everyone. ‘This woman comes from another planet' was all Ralph said. ‘She's just here visiting.'” [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman"] By this point there was a well-functioning team making Franklin's records -- while the production credits would vary over the years, they were all essentially co-productions by the team of Franklin, Wexler, Mardin and Dowd, all collaborating and working together with a more-or-less unified purpose, and the backing was always by the same handful of session musicians and some combination of the Sweet Inspirations and Aretha's sisters. That didn't mean that occasional guests couldn't get involved -- as we discussed in the Cream episode, Eric Clapton played guitar on "Good to Me as I am to You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Good to Me as I am to You"] Though that was one of the rare occasions on one of these records where something was overdubbed. Clapton apparently messed up the guitar part when playing behind Franklin, because he was too intimidated by playing with her, and came back the next day to redo his part without her in the studio. At this point, Aretha was at the height of her fame. Just before the final batch of album sessions began she appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, and she was making regular TV appearances, like one on the Mike Douglas Show where she duetted with Frankie Valli on "That's Life": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin and Frankie Valli, "That's Life"] But also, as Wexler said “Her career was kicking into high gear. Contending and resolving both the professional and personal challenges were too much. She didn't think she could do both, and I didn't blame her. Few people could. So she let the personal slide and concentrated on the professional. " Her concert promoter Ruth Bowen said of this time "Her father and Dr. King were putting pressure on her to sing everywhere, and she felt obligated. The record company was also screaming for more product. And I had a mountain of offers on my desk that kept getting higher with every passing hour. They wanted her in Europe. They wanted her in Latin America. They wanted her in every major venue in the U.S. TV was calling. She was being asked to do guest appearances on every show from Carol Burnett to Andy Williams to the Hollywood Palace. She wanted to do them all and she wanted to do none of them. She wanted to do them all because she's an entertainer who burns with ambition. She wanted to do none of them because she was emotionally drained. She needed to go away and renew her strength. I told her that at least a dozen times. She said she would, but she didn't listen to me." The pressures from her father and Dr King are a recurring motif in interviews with people about this period. Franklin was always a very political person, and would throughout her life volunteer time and money to liberal political causes and to the Democratic Party, but this was the height of her activism -- the Civil Rights movement was trying to capitalise on the gains it had made in the previous couple of years, and celebrity fundraisers and performances at rallies were an important way to do that. And at this point there were few bigger celebrities in America than Aretha Franklin. At a concert in her home town of Detroit on February the sixteenth, 1968, the Mayor declared the day Aretha Franklin Day. At the same show, Billboard, Record World *and* Cash Box magazines all presented her with plaques for being Female Vocalist of the Year. And Dr. King travelled up to be at the show and congratulate her publicly for all her work with his organisation, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Backstage at that show, Dr. King talked to Aretha's father, Reverend Franklin, about what he believed would be the next big battle -- a strike in Memphis: [Excerpt, Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech" -- "And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy—what is the other bread?—Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying, they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right."] The strike in question was the Memphis Sanitation Workers' strike which had started a few days before. The struggle for Black labour rights was an integral part of the civil rights movement, and while it's not told that way in the sanitised version of the story that's made it into popular culture, the movement led by King was as much about economic justice as social justice -- King was a democratic socialist, and believed that economic oppression was both an effect of and cause of other forms of racial oppression, and that the rights of Black workers needed to be fought for. In 1967 he had set up a new organisation, the Poor People's Campaign, which was set to march on Washington to demand a program that included full employment, a guaranteed income -- King was strongly influenced in his later years by the ideas of Henry George, the proponent of a universal basic income based on land value tax -- the annual building of half a million affordable homes, and an end to the war in Vietnam. This was King's main focus in early 1968, and he saw the sanitation workers' strike as a major part of this campaign. Memphis was one of the most oppressive cities in the country, and its largely Black workforce of sanitation workers had been trying for most of the 1960s to unionise, and strike-breakers had been called in to stop them, and many of them had been fired by their white supervisors with no notice. They were working in unsafe conditions, for utterly inadequate wages, and the city government were ardent segregationists. After two workers had died on the first of February from using unsafe equipment, the union demanded changes -- safer working conditions, better wages, and recognition of the union. The city council refused, and almost all the sanitation workers stayed home and stopped work. After a few days, the council relented and agreed to their terms, but the Mayor, Henry Loeb, an ardent white supremacist who had stood on a platform of opposing desegregation, and who had previously been the Public Works Commissioner who had put these unsafe conditions in place, refused to listen. As far as he was concerned, he was the only one who could recognise the union, and he wouldn't. The workers continued their strike, marching holding signs that simply read "I am a Man": [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Blowing in the Wind"] The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the NAACP had been involved in organising support for the strikes from an early stage, and King visited Memphis many times. Much of the time he spent visiting there was spent negotiating with a group of more militant activists, who called themselves The Invaders and weren't completely convinced by King's nonviolent approach -- they believed that violence and rioting got more attention than non-violent protests. King explained to them that while he had been persuaded by Gandhi's writings of the moral case for nonviolent protest, he was also persuaded that it was pragmatically necessary -- asking the young men "how many guns do we have and how many guns do they have?", and pointing out as he often did that when it comes to violence a minority can't win against an armed majority. Rev Franklin went down to Memphis on the twenty-eighth of March to speak at a rally Dr. King was holding, but as it turned out the rally was cancelled -- the pre-rally march had got out of hand, with some people smashing windows, and Memphis police had, like the police in Detroit the previous year, violently overreacted, clubbing and gassing protestors and shooting and killing one unarmed teenage boy, Larry Payne. The day after Payne's funeral, Dr King was back in Memphis, though this time Rev Franklin was not with him. On April the third, he gave a speech which became known as the "Mountaintop Speech", in which he talked about the threats that had been made to his life: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech": “And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."] The next day, Martin Luther King was shot dead. James Earl Ray, a white supremacist, pled guilty to the murder, and the evidence against him seems overwhelming from what I've read, but the King family have always claimed that the murder was part of a larger conspiracy and that Ray was not the gunman. Aretha was obviously distraught, and she attended the funeral, as did almost every other prominent Black public figure. James Baldwin wrote of the funeral: "In the pew directly before me sat Marlon Brando, Sammy Davis, Eartha Kitt—covered in black, looking like a lost, ten-year-old girl—and Sidney Poitier, in the same pew, or nearby. Marlon saw me, and nodded. The atmosphere was black, with a tension indescribable—as though something, perhaps the heavens, perhaps the earth, might crack. Everyone sat very still. The actual service sort of washed over me, in waves. It wasn't that it seemed unreal; it was the most real church service I've ever sat through in my life, or ever hope to sit through; but I have a childhood hangover thing about not weeping in public, and I was concentrating on holding myself together. I did not want to weep for Martin, tears seemed futile. But I may also have been afraid, and I could not have been the only one, that if I began to weep I would not be able to stop. There was more than enough to weep for, if one was to weep—so many of us, cut down, so soon. Medgar, Malcolm, Martin: and their widows, and their children. Reverend Ralph David Abernathy asked a certain sister to sing a song which Martin had loved—“Once more,” said Ralph David, “for Martin and for me,” and he sat down." Many articles and books on Aretha Franklin say that she sang at King's funeral. In fact she didn't, but there's a simple reason for the confusion. King's favourite song was the Thomas Dorsey gospel song "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", and indeed almost his last words were to ask a trumpet player, Ben Branch, if he would play the song at the rally he was going to be speaking at on the day of his death. At his request, Mahalia Jackson, his old friend, sang the song at his private funeral, which was not filmed, unlike the public part of the funeral that Baldwin described. Four months later, though, there was another public memorial for King, and Franklin did sing "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" at that service, in front of King's weeping widow and children, and that performance *was* filmed, and gets conflated in people's memories with Jackson's unfilmed earlier performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord (at Martin Luther King Memorial)"] Four years later, she would sing that at Mahalia Jackson's funeral. Through all this, Franklin had been working on her next album, Aretha Now, the sessions for which started more or less as soon as the sessions for Lady Soul had finished. The album was, in fact, bookended by deaths that affected Aretha. Just as King died at the end of the sessions, the beginning came around the time of the death of Otis Redding -- the sessions were cancelled for a day while Wexler travelled to Georgia for Redding's funeral, which Franklin was too devastated to attend, and Wexler would later say that the extra emotion in her performances on the album came from her emotional pain at Redding's death. The lead single on the album, "Think", was written by Franklin and -- according to the credits anyway -- her husband Ted White, and is very much in the same style as "Respect", and became another of her most-loved hits: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Think"] But probably the song on Aretha Now that now resonates the most is one that Jerry Wexler tried to persuade her not to record, and was only released as a B-side. Indeed, "I Say a Little Prayer" was a song that had already once been a hit after being a reject. Hal David, unlike Burt Bacharach, was a fairly political person and inspired by the protest song movement, and had been starting to incorporate his concerns about the political situation and the Vietnam War into his lyrics -- though as with many such writers, he did it in much less specific ways than a Phil Ochs or a Bob Dylan. This had started with "What the World Needs Now is Love", a song Bacharach and David had written for Jackie DeShannon in 1965: [Excerpt: Jackie DeShannon, "What the "World Needs Now is Love"] But he'd become much more overtly political for "The Windows of the World", a song they wrote for Dionne Warwick. Warwick has often said it's her favourite of her singles, but it wasn't a big hit -- Bacharach blamed himself for that, saying "Dionne recorded it as a single and I really blew it. I wrote a bad arrangement and the tempo was too fast, and I really regret making it the way I did because it's a good song." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "The Windows of the World"] For that album, Bacharach and David had written another track, "I Say a Little Prayer", which was not as explicitly political, but was intended by David to have an implicit anti-war message, much like other songs of the period like "Last Train to Clarksville". David had sons who were the right age to be drafted, and while it's never stated, "I Say a Little Prayer" was written from the perspective of a woman whose partner is away fighting in the war, but is still in her thoughts: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] The recording of Dionne Warwick's version was marked by stress. Bacharach had a particular way of writing music to tell the musicians the kind of feel he wanted for the part -- he'd write nonsense words above the stave, and tell the musicians to play the parts as if they were singing those words. The trumpet player hired for the session, Ernie Royal, got into a row with Bacharach about this unorthodox way of communicating musical feeling, and the track ended up taking ten takes (as opposed to the normal three for a Bacharach session), with Royal being replaced half-way through the session. Bacharach was never happy with the track even after all the work it had taken, and he fought to keep it from being released at all, saying the track was taken at too fast a tempo. It eventually came out as an album track nearly eighteen months after it was recorded -- an eternity in 1960s musical timescales -- and DJs started playing it almost as soon as it came out. Scepter records rushed out a single, over Bacharach's objections, but as he later said "One thing I love about the record business is how wrong I was. Disc jockeys all across the country started playing the track, and the song went to number four on the charts and then became the biggest hit Hal and I had ever written for Dionne." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Oddly, the B-side for Warwick's single, "Theme From the Valley of the Dolls" did even better, reaching number two. Almost as soon as the song was released as a single, Franklin started playing around with the song backstage, and in April 1968, right around the time of Dr. King's death, she recorded a version. Much as Burt Bacharach had been against releasing Dionne Warwick's version, Jerry Wexler was against Aretha even recording the song, saying later “I advised Aretha not to record it. I opposed it for two reasons. First, to cover a song only twelve weeks after the original reached the top of the charts was not smart business. You revisit such a hit eight months to a year later. That's standard practice. But more than that, Bacharach's melody, though lovely, was peculiarly suited to a lithe instrument like Dionne Warwick's—a light voice without the dark corners or emotional depths that define Aretha. Also, Hal David's lyric was also somewhat girlish and lacked the gravitas that Aretha required. “Aretha usually listened to me in the studio, but not this time. She had written a vocal arrangement for the Sweet Inspirations that was undoubtedly strong. Cissy Houston, Dionne's cousin, told me that Aretha was on the right track—she was seeing this song in a new way and had come up with a new groove. Cissy was on Aretha's side. Tommy Dowd and Arif were on Aretha's side. So I had no choice but to cave." It's quite possible that Wexler's objections made Franklin more, rather than less, determined to record the song. She regarded Warwick as a hated rival, as she did almost every prominent female singer of her generation and younger ones, and would undoubtedly have taken the implication that there was something that Warwick was simply better at than her to heart. [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Wexler realised as soon as he heard it in the studio that Franklin's version was great, and Bacharach agreed, telling Franklin's biographer David Ritz “As much as I like the original recording by Dionne, there's no doubt that Aretha's is a better record. She imbued the song with heavy soul and took it to a far deeper place. Hers is the definitive version.” -- which is surprising because Franklin's version simplifies some of Bacharach's more unusual chord voicings, something he often found extremely upsetting. Wexler still though thought there was no way the song would be a hit, and it's understandable that he thought that way. Not only had it only just been on the charts a few months earlier, but it was the kind of song that wouldn't normally be a hit at all, and certainly not in the kind of rhythmic soul music for which Franklin was known. Almost everything she ever recorded is in simple time signatures -- 4/4, waltz time, or 6/8 -- but this is a Bacharach song so it's staggeringly metrically irregular. Normally even with semi-complex things I'm usually good at figuring out how to break it down into bars, but here I actually had to purchase a copy of the sheet music in order to be sure I was right about what's going on. I'm going to count beats along with the record here so you can see what I mean. The verse has three bars of 4/4, one bar of 2/4, and three more bars of 4/4, all repeated: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] While the chorus has a bar of 4/4, a bar of 3/4 but with a chord change half way through so it sounds like it's in two if you're paying attention to the harmonic changes, two bars of 4/4, another waltz-time bar sounding like it's in two, two bars of four, another bar of three sounding in two, a bar of four, then three more bars of four but the first of those is *written* as four but played as if it's in six-eight time (but you can keep the four/four pulse going if you're counting): [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] I don't expect you to have necessarily followed that in great detail, but the point should be clear -- this was not some straightforward dance song. Incidentally, that bar played as if it's six/eight was something Aretha introduced to make the song even more irregular than how Bacharach wrote it. And on top of *that* of course the lyrics mixed the secular and the sacred, something that was still taboo in popular music at that time -- this is only a couple of years after Capitol records had been genuinely unsure about putting out the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", and Franklin's gospel-inflected vocals made the religious connection even more obvious. But Franklin was insistent that the record go out as a single, and eventually it was released as the B-side to the far less impressive "The House That Jack Built". It became a double-sided hit, with the A-side making number two on the R&B chart and number seven on the Hot One Hundred, while "I Say a Little Prayer" made number three on the R&B chart and number ten overall. In the UK, "I Say a Little Prayer" made number four and became her biggest ever solo UK hit. It's now one of her most-remembered songs, while the A-side is largely forgotten: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] For much of the
The last domino to fall in President Joe Biden's gun agenda was toppled by a Fifth Circuit panel. So, we're bringing one of the best political writers in the country. Nationals Review's Charles Cooke is one of the top conservative analysts on both the legal and political side of guns in America. He joins the show to talk about why Biden's pistol-brace ban was tossed. Hint: It wasn't because of the Second Amendment. Instead, Cooke noted the courts have objected to the ATF overstepping its bounds when creating Biden's gun policies. He said that fact makes it very likely the Supreme Court would object on the same grounds. That's because, as presidents from across the political spectrum have taken to expanding the power of executive agencies, the Court has begun to pair back agency overreach. Cooke argued the losing streak is bad for President Biden's reelection. Despite what's shaping up to be an unprecedented 2024 election, which seems likely to include bump stock ban originator Donald Trump, Cooke said the constitutionally-deficient policies will drag Biden down. Especially because the majority of people who've heard about them are the ones they negatively affect. Plus, Contributing Writer Jake Fogleman and I talk about how a Memphis school's security procedures stopped a mass shooting. Special Guest: Charles Cooke.
Peter, James and Charles Cooke sit down with the one-and-only Newt Gingrich to discuss his newly published March to the Majority and, in doing so, put the astonishing Republican Revolution of 1994 in the context of today's congressional abandonment of legislative powers, the concomitant executive overreach and the truly American boldness needed to start carving out strategies in the fight for our national revival.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5817275/advertisement
Earlier this year, the National Constitution Center hosted an event in Miami, Florida, featuring a series of meaningful conversations about the Constitution with speakers of diverse perspectives. In this episode, we're sharing one of those conversations with you. During an evening keynote program, five great constitutional experts were asked an important question: Should we break up with the founders? In other words, should we still look to the drafters of the Declaration and Constitution—from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison to George Washington—despite their moral and philosophical hypocrisies, such as ownership of enslaved people, or do they still have something to teach us? And was the original Constitution a flawed but meaningful attempt to realize the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, one made more perfect by Reconstruction—or is the original Constitution so fatally flawed by the original sin of slavery that it does not deserve respect? The five scholars you'll hear discuss and debate this question are: Akhil Reed Amar of Yale Law School, Caroline Fredrickson of Georgetown Law, Kermit Roosevelt of Penn Law, Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times, and Charles Cooke of the National Review. Host Jeffrey Rosen moderates. Resources: Kermit Roosevelt III, The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America's Story (2022) Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760–1840 (2021) Caroline Fredrickson, “A Constitution of Our Own Making,” Washington Monthly (2021) Jamelle Bouie, “We Had to Force the Constitution to Accommodate Democracy, and It Shows” New York Times (Oct. 2022) Charles C. W. Cooke, National Review, “America's Founding Changed Human History Forever” (July 4, 2016) Questions or comments about the show? Email us at podcast@constitutioncenter.org. Continue today's conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr. Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly. You can find transcripts for each episode on the podcast pages in our Media Library.
Megyn Kelly is joined by Charles C.W. Cooke and Madeleine Kearns of National Review to talk about former President Donald Trump's grenades being tossed at his potential opponent Gov. Ron DeSantis, whether DeSantis will fight back or continue to take the high road, whether VP Kamala Harris is smart or not and if she's a political liability, comparing Harris and Nikki Haley to Margaret Thatcher, Joe Biden's surrogates and wife trying to make him out to be Superman, Biden's supposed "epiphany" on gay marriage seeming to be a lie, Biden's actual record on "marriage equality," Drew Barrymore's incredibly cringe interview with trans celebrity Dylan Mulvaney where she literally kneels before Mulvaney, and more. Then Dave McCormick, author of "Superpower in Peril," joins to discuss what led to the Silicon Valley Bank debacle thanks to Biden's economic policy, Gov. Gavin Newsom's association with SVB, John Fetterman's ongoing absence in the Senate, China and Russia putting America's place in the world at risk, fixing America's biggest problems, and more.Find more about National Review's NR Plus here: https://nationalreview.com/nrplus-subscribe Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow
Stabbing at Roosevelt lightrail station. Pierce County homicide numbers down this year. National Review's Charles Cooke rips Biden's student debt forgiveness plan. // Producer Greg has been watching a livestream of a bald eagle's nest. Banking problems escalate in the U.S. // Lessons from history on war and peace.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Charles Cooke is back on the show this week. The National Review senior writer is an expert on gun policy and politics. He is also a Florida Man. So, he's the perfect person to come on and talk about Governor Ron Desantis's (R.) latest push to institute new gun reforms. Cooke said Desantis's push to implement permitless gun carry and banking reforms designed to pressure financial institutions into continuing to work with gun businesses is likely to succeed. Republicans have supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature and Desantis has worked more closely with lawmakers than previous governors. So, Cooke said the bills are almost certainly going to become law by the end of the session. He argued both reforms are good policies. But, beyond the merits of the proposals, he also said the move will help Desantis in the upcoming Republican presidential primary. He said Desantis needs those pro-gun accomplishments to fend off attacks from his right on the issue. He pointed to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Texas Governor Greg Abbott as contenders who could credibly go after him if he doesn't get these bills through. Of course, Cooke also stacked up the potential legislative accomplishments for Desantis against former president Donald Trump's record on guns. Permitless carry and pro-gun banking reforms would give Desantis a stronger legislative record than Trump. And Trump's infamous comments expressing a desire to take troubled people's guns and have due process afterward only helps Desantis. But Trump also appointed three Supreme Court justices who were in the Bruen majority, which is clearly a major trump card. Plus, Contributing Writer Jake Fogleman and I talk about the California city trying to charge people $1,000 for a gun-carry permit. And Reload Member Liz Mair tells us about how guns have played a role in her life and why she comes to The Reload for gun news. Special Guest: Charles Cooke.
Megyn Kelly is joined by Charles C.W. Cooke, senior writer for National Review, the New York Times' Jeremy Peters, author of Insurgency, and Dave Ramsey, host of The Dave Ramsey Show, to talk about whether we need a State of the Union spectacle at all, Biden's lies in the speech, the spectacle of Marjorie Taylor Greene and others yelling "liar," focusing on cultural issues rather than the economy, lack of commentary from Biden on foreign policy issues like China and Ukraine, the reality of the job market, whether we're in a recession, the true state of the economy, the housing market President Biden's age as a campaign vulnerability, knives out for VP Kamala Harris, the bizarre kiss between Dr. Jill Biden and Kamala Harris' husband, the value of hard work, and more.More from Cooke: https://charlescwcooke.comPeters' book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/586398/insurgency-by-jeremy-w-peters/More from Ramsey: https://www.ramseysolutions.com Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow
Vince Coglianese speaks with Charles Cooke, Senior Writer at National Review and author of "The Conservatarian Manifesto" about the morality of the Biden bailout of student loans paid for by taxpayers. For more coverage on the issues that matter to you visit www.WMAL.com, download the WMAL app or tune in live on WMAL-FM 105.9 from 3-6pm. To join the conversation, check us out on social media: @WMAL @VinceCoglianeseSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In the second hour of The Vince Coglianese Show, Vince speaks with Charles Cooke, Senior Writer at National Review and author of "The Conservatarian Manifesto" about the morality of the Biden bailout of student loans paid for by taxpayers. David Asher, Senior Fellow at The Hudson Institute joins the program to discuss Dr. Fauci's retirement and the fentanyl crisis exacerbated by China and Mexico. For more coverage on the issues that matter to you visit www.WMAL.com, download the WMAL app or tune in live on WMAL-FM 105.9 from 3-6pm. To join the conversation, check us out on social media: @WMAL @VinceCoglianeseSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Supreme Court's decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen is going to have a monumental impact on the nation's gun laws. So, we've spent quite a lot of time talking about it on the podcast. We've talked to analysts and experts, including National Review's Charles Cooke and Duke's Andrew Willinger. But we haven't talked to anybody who is directly involved in the legal fight. That's why Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) is joining the show this week. His group is involved in dozens of cases across the country. That includes a number of the most high-profile post-Bruen cases, such as the one against the California youth gun advertising ban. Gottlieb said Bruen has completely upended the legal landscape. He said gun-rights advocates have a tremendous opportunity to win many more cases. He explained SAF's strategy for approaching the newly-unsettled landscape. He said SAF has come up with a tier system with the ones it thinks it's most likely to win in the first tier and the rest moving down tiers from there. Gottlieb said there are a lot of cases in that top tier, especially with the new laws California and New York have passed as a seemingly purposeful affront to the Court's ruling. He said he isn't much concerned about governments coming up with coherent defenses of their strict laws in light of Bruen, but he does think a form of legal minimization may become more common. We also have a new members segment this week featuring Douglas Jefferson! Plus, Contributing Writer Jake Fogelman and I talk about New York's shocking court filing where they compared their gun laws to bigoted historical gun bans. Special Guest: Alan Gottlieb.
This week we're bringing in a fresh perspective on the Supreme Court's landmark decisions in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. I've talked with National Review's Charles Cooke and Cam Edwards of Bearing Arms about the case and its likely fallout on previous episodes of the podcast. It's only sensible to try and get another credible voice who looks at the situation from a different point of view. Andrew Willinger, the new executive director of Duke University's Center for Firearms Law, was gracious enough to fill that role. He gave his interpretation of what the court ruled in Bruen as well as its likely impact on Second Amendment cases moving forward. He argued the new text and tradition test leaves a lot of room for interpretation. He predicted there would be a lot of growing pains as the lower courts try to feel out how exactly to proceed with gun cases. Still, he said many modern gun regulations are at greater risk of being found unconstitutional under the Bruen standard. Plus, Contributing Editor Paul Crookston and I talk about the "assault weapons" ban just passed by the House. Special Guest: Andrew Willinger.
Megyn Kelly takes a deep dive into the Dobbs ruling on abortion and the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. She begins with a monologue on why the Supreme Court made the right legal decision in the case to send abortion back to the states, and the fight ahead on the issue. Then, Charles C.W. Cooke, National Review senior writer, Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, Lila Rose, founder of "Live Action," and Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of "Bad News," to talk about the political fallout on the Roe and Dobbs decisions, what may happen state-by-state, the "practical politics" of abortion, the legal implications and what may come next, the nuances to the discussion, the over-the-top hysterical media reaction, the left suddenly turning on institutions, the value of consensus and compromise, the truth about Americans' feelings on abortion, the deeply personal response on both sides to the issue, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow
Two of the biggest gun stories in decades came to a head this week. The Supreme Court's anticipated Bruen decision invalidate "may issue" gun carry permit laws nationwide just before the federal government passed its first new gun restrictions in a generation. These shifts are monumental. That's why this week we're joined by one of the top pro-gun thinkers out there: National Review's Charles Cooke. Cooke has already written extensively on the ruling and the legislation. He said both would have far-reaching consequences. He argued the ruling puts the Second Amendment back on par with the First Amendment. It will not only eliminate restrictive "may-issue" gun-carry permitting, but it will cast a shadow over all kinds of other modern gun laws. Any regulation without a clear place in the founding-era tradition of gun laws will have a difficult time in court. As for the new federal gun law, Cooke argues the bill was poorly drafted with multiple confusing provisions and apparent drafting errors. He questioned why domestic violence records for "dating partners" are expunged after five years but no other records are. He noted how expansive it will be to make it illegal to sell guns to anyone with a juvenile felony conviction or involuntary commitment or how precarious the new gun dealing license requirements could make selling even a single firearm. Plus, Contributing Writer Jake Fogleman explains a new lawsuit against Colorado police who killed a concealed carrier after he stopped an active shooter. Special Guest: Charles Cooke.
Vince Coglianese speaks with Charles Cooke, Senior Writer for National Review and author of "The Conservatarian Manifesto" about what's actually in the new gun control "deal." For more coverage on the issues that matter to you visit www.WMAL.com, download the WMAL app or tune in live on WMAL-FM 105.9 from 3-6pm. To join the conversation, check us out on social media: @WMAL @VinceCoglianese See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In the third hour of The Vince Coglianese Show, Vince speaks with Matt Finn about liberal DA George Gascon and his policies that are promoting crime. Charles Cooke, Senior Writer for National Review and author of "The Conservatarian Manifesto" joins the program to discuss what's actually in the new gun control "deal." For more coverage on the issues that matter to you visit www.WMAL.com, download the WMAL app or tune in live on WMAL-FM 105.9 from 3-6pm. To join the conversation, check us out on social media: @WMAL @VinceCoglianese See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Nearly 10,000 migrants are marching through Southern Mexico and heading straight for the U.S. border. The group is timing their journey to coincide with the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles this week. So what's the Biden administration doing to stem the growing border crisis? Sending billions of dollars to central America. Buck takes a look at the latest from the U.S.-Mexico border. Plus, the January 6th Committee is schedule to deliver it's findings to the American people this week. Claremont Institute Fellow Ben Weingarten gives his take on the coming dog and pony show. And National Review's Charles Cooke joins Buck to talk about the latest push for expanded gun control.Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Nearly 10,000 migrants are marching through Southern Mexico and heading straight for the U.S. border. The group is timing their journey to coincide with the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles this week. So what's the Biden administration doing to stem the growing border crisis? Sending billions of dollars to central America. Buck takes a look at the latest from the U.S.-Mexico border. Plus, the January 6th Committee is schedule to deliver it's findings to the American people this week. Claremont Institute Fellow Ben Weingarten gives his take on the coming dog and pony show. And National Review's Charles Cooke joins Buck to talk about the latest push for expanded gun control. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
President Biden finally addressed the nation on rising inflation and, shocker, he passed the blame on to others. Chief Communications Officer at America First Policy Institute, Marc Lotter, joins Buck to discuss Biden's failed attempt at outlining a plan to combat inflation and help the struggling economy. Plus, Senior Writer at National Review, Charles Cooke, joins Buck to discuss his recent article on Roe v Wade protests and the Left's unhinged response.Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
President Biden finally addressed the nation on rising inflation and, shocker, he passed the blame on to others. Chief Communications Officer at America First Policy Institute, Marc Lotter, joins Buck to discuss Biden's failed attempt at outlining a plan to combat inflation and help the struggling economy. Plus, Senior Writer at National Review, Charles Cooke, joins Buck to discuss his recent article on Roe v Wade protests and the Left's unhinged response. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In the third hour of The Vince Coglianese Show, Vince speaks with Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch about the latest in the Durham findings and a disturbing discovery about the NIH. The Biden admin is considering cancelling student debt. Charles Cooke, senior writer for National Review discusses why cancelling student debt is a bad idea. For more coverage on the issues that matter to you visit www.WMAL.com, download the WMAL app or tune in live on WMAL-FM 105.9 from 3-6pm. To join the conversation, check us out on social media: @WMAL @VinceCoglianese See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Florida is going to have a special session where Governor Ron DeSantis (R.) says he hopes permitless gun-carry is added to the agenda. So, who better to bring on the show to discuss this news than Florida Man Charles Cooke? The National Review senior writer joined the podcast to give some insight into the state of the proposal. He said it will likely be an uphill battle to get the policy through the legislature even with the backing of DeSantis. He also explained the unique nature of Florida's gun laws which lag behind those of other red states despite the Sunshine State's reputation as the "Gunshine State." Cooke also weighed in on the success of the permitless carry movement thus far. He said the momentum generated by the incredible sweep gun-rights advocates have been able to pull of in such a short period of time will generate enough pressure to get the policy passed in Florida. But, he said, it might not be until next year. We also look at what Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearings revealed about her views on the Second Amendment. She has a sparse record on guns, but she was nominated by a staunch gun-control proponent and the gun-control groups all support her. However, there is some reason to believe she may take a more expansive view of the Second Amendment than previous Democratic nominees. Plus, Contributing Writer Jake Fogleman looks at new data on first-time gun owners and we have another member segment! Special Guest: Charles Cooke.
This week on Breaking Battlegrounds, Chuck and Sam are joined by former Congressman and Fox News contributor, Jason Chaffetz and National Review senior writer, Charles C.W. Cooke.Jason Chaffetz is a contributor for the Fox News Channel and author of two New York Times best-sellers, Power Grab: The Liberal Scheme to Undermine Trump, the GOP, and Our Republic and The Deep State: How an Army of Bureaucrats Protected Barack Obama and Is Working to Destroy the Trump Agenda. Chaffetz was elected to Congress in 2008 and served until 2017. He was selected by his peers to be Chairman of the powerful Oversight & Government Reform Committee, where he led investigations into the United States Secret Service, the Department of Education I.T. vulnerabilities, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) data breach, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Benghazi terrorist attack, Fast & Furious and the IRS scandal. Prior to Congress, he was Chief of Staff to the Governor of Utah. A former placekicker on the Brigham Young University Football Team, he earned his BA in Communications in 1989 and then joined the local business community for 16 years before entering the public sector.Charles Cooke is a senior writer for National Review and the former editor of National Review Online. He is a graduate of the University of Oxford, at which he studied modern history and politics. His work has focused especially on Anglo-American history, British liberty, free speech, the Second Amendment, and American exceptionalism. He is the co-host of the Mad Dogs and Englishmen podcast, and is a regular guest on HBO's (Real Time with Bill Maher). He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.Connect with us:Twitter: www.twitter.com/Breaking_BattleFacebook: www.facebook.com/breakingbattlegroundsInstagram: www.instagram.com/breakingbattlegroundsLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/breakingbattlegrounds This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingbattlegrounds.substack.com
All eyes are on Ukraine. Now, Megyn Kelly is joined by Charles C.W. Cooke, senior editor of National Review, Eric Bolling, host of "The Balance" on Newsmax, and Jamil Jivani, independent Canadian journalist, to talk about Putin exploiting President Biden's weakness as he invades Ukraine, the way President Biden and VP Harris have appeared overmatched on the world stage, the economic impact for Americans when it comes to Russia and Ukraine, whether America should get involved in the conflict, the danger to America of Russia and China working together, Canada's authoritarian crackdown, tech censorship and Big Pharma, the Trudeau government's power grab and media response, what led to Jivani's exit from the corporate media, the social justice dynamics in the workforce today, remembering Bob Beckel, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow
Charles Cooke of National Review joins the show to discuss embattled podcast host Joe Rogan as the flashpoint between authoritarianism and free speech. And to elaborate on the difference between state censorship, and a culture of open expression against that of self-censorship.
Reload Founder Stephen Gutowski covers the latest gun business news as the June sales numbers come in and a major gun company breaks records. Plus guest Charles Cooke from National Review discusses President Joe Biden's recent claims about the history of the Second Amendment. Special Guest: Charles Cooke.
Charles Cooke is the senior writer for National Review. A graduate of the University of Oxford, at which he studied modern history and politics, Charles is a frequent guest on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher and has broadcast for the BBC, MSNBC, Fox News, and Fox Business. He immigrated to the United States in 2011 and became an American citizen in 2018.
Rod Arquette Show Daily Rundown – Thursday, May 20, 20214:20 pm: Ian Adams, spokesperson for the Utah Fraternal Order of Police joins the show to discuss a new Deseret News/Hinckley Institute poll showing 82% of those polled support law enforcement4:35 pm: Mark Huntsman, President of the State Board of Education joins the program to address the issue of critical race theory in the state’s schools and the rumors that it’s already being used in some districts6:05 pm: Steve Moore, Chief Economist for The Heritage Foundation, joins Rod for their weekly conversation about politics and the nation’s economy6:20 pm: Keaton Ems of the group “Move Oregon’s Border” joins Rod to discuss the passing of a recent election where five counties in Oregon voted to secede from the state and become part of the state of Idaho6:35 pm: Charles Cooke of National Review Online joins Rod for a conversation about how none of the accusations of fudging coronavirus numbers that have been made against Governor Ran DeSantis by the Florida Covid-19 whistleblower are turning out to be true
Almost a week after the CDC changed its guidance, many on the left continue to wear their masks outdoors. Buck takes a look at the mask hysteria that still grips much of the American left. Plus, colleges are dropping standardized testing from their admissions process, and the National Review's Charles Cooke exposes Florida's COVID-19 'whistleblower' who wasn't.
Episode 1 featuring Pediatric Dentist, Dr. Charles Cooke, DDS. Enjoy this week's episode focusing on building a successful dental practice, prioritizing patient care, and maintaining a work-life balance.
SUU APEX: https://www.suu.edu/apexSouthern Utah University: https://www.suu.edu
Today's guest is one of the leading and finest contemporary current events and culture writers in the US. He is from the Great State of TX, worked for newspapers in India and around the US, has been a longtime columnist for National Review, and has written a handful of books—most notably, The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics, and most-recently published in October, Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dark Woolly Wilds of the “Real America”. He not only writes broadly on politics, culture, and history, he is a sometime book and theater critic. Last on the writing front, Kevin writes a fabulous newsletter on Tuesdays for NRO about politics, culture, and language, called, well: The Tuesday. Finally, Kevin and his colleague, Charles Cooke host a must-listen podcast, called Mad Dogs and Englishmen. To live my best version, I have tapped into blinkist.com. I'm getting a burst of micro learning from over 3000 books in their non fiction library. My favorites have been Super Thinking by Gabe Weinber and Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neal Postman. Take advantage of blinkist.com/success and save 25% on the subscription.
Cooke describes his political philosophy that combines elements of conservatism and libertarianism. We also discuss the differences between these two temperaments. What do libertarians believe? Why does it seem like libertarians used to be Republican but have now shifted into the Democratic coalition?
On this week's episode, editor of National Review Charles Cooke joins the podcast to cover all the major topics: Biden's VP pick, the pandemic, cancel culture, the state of conservatism, and guns. Charles C. W. Cooke is the editor of National Review Online and a graduate of the University of Oxford His work has focuses especially on Anglo-American history, British liberty, free speech, the Second Amendment, and American exceptionalism. He is the co-host of the Mad Dogs and Englishmen podcast, and is a regular guest on HBO's (Real Time with Bill Maher). He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.She Thinks is a podcast for women (and men) who are sick of the spin in today's news cycle and are seeking the truth. Once a week, every week, She Thinks host Beverly Hallberg is joined by guests who cut through the clutter and bring you the facts.You don't have to keep up with policy and politics to understand how issues will impact you and the people you care about most. You just have to keep up with us.We make sure you have the information you need to come to your own conclusions. Because, let's face it, you're in control of your own life and can think for yourself.You can listen to the latest She Thinks episode(s) here or wherever you get your podcasts. Then subscribe, rate, and share with your friends. If you are already caught up and want more, join our online community.Sign up for our emails here: http://iwf.org/sign-upIndependent Women's Forum (IWF) believes all issues are women's issues. IWF promotes policies that aren't just well-intended, but actually enhance people's freedoms, opportunities, and choices. IWF doesn't just talk about problems. We identify solutions and take them straight to the playmakers and policy creators. And, as a 501(c)3, IWF educates the public about the most important topics of the day.Check out the Independent Women's Forum website for more information on how policies impact you, your loved ones, and your community: www.iwf.org.Be sure to subscribe to our emails to ensure you're equipped with the facts on the issues you care about most: https://iwf.org/sign-up. Subscribe to IWF's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/IWF06.Follow IWF on social media:- https://twitter.com/iwf on Twitter- https://www.facebook.com/independentwomensforum on Facebook- https://instagram.com/independentwomensforum on Instagram#IWF #SheThinks #AllIssuesAreWomensIssues See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Jonah and National Review’s Charles Cooke podcast with one another from the sunny paradise of Florida on this episode of The Remnant. Why is Florida so weird, really? What is to be made of GOP governors riding the Trump Train before promptly hopping back off? And what are people actually angry about regarding the Reade/Biden allegation? Tune in to witness a disagreement that sheds more light than heat. Show Notes: -Charlie’s author page at National Review -Take a wild guess: just how many alligators does Florida have? -What’s history’s biggest mistake? -Why did the FBI need to pin Capone on taxes? -Stealth-edits in NYT’s reporting on Tara Reade -ExpressVPN.com/remnant for an extra three months free See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Elizabeth Warren might be out of the running for the Democratic nomination, but that doesn’t mean that the most harmful parts of her agenda haven’t been assimilated into other Democrats’ platforms. David Bahnsen literally wrote the book on that bad agenda and asserts that the worst parts of it (i.e. an outright unconstitutional wealth tax) might still be coming down through a different nominee. David and Jonah also engage in some rank punditry, and they even ask the question that all the cool kids are asking: what’s the deal with Postmillennial Protestant eschatology? Show Notes: -David’s (somewhat ill-timed) book -John Podhoretz’s (equally ill-timed) book -Monday’s 2,000-point Dow drop -Saudi Arabia and Russia’s oil price shenanigans -Mohammed bin Salman behaving completely normally, for sure -The role of smoking in COVID-19 vulnerability -Charles Cooke’s great take on MSNBC’s math -“Did we lose a war?” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Nancy Pelosi should not have followed the advice of Adam Schiff. The Christianity Today article attacking President Trump. Charles Cooke's column in National Review, "CNN is not a news network." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Host Brian Wesolowski sits down with Steve Hollingworth, of the Grameen Foundation. Access to financing is a major obstacle to alleviating poverty for millions of people around the world. The Grameen Foundation leverages data and technology to address this issue and in this episode we hear from their president about how they are doing that. Then, Brian takes you into our just-wrapped 2019 Future of Speech Online. At the event led by CDT, we asked six speakers to share what the future of speech looks like for a diversity of speakers. Here's the second three of those speakers, with the others coming in our previous episode: * Charles Cooke, The National Review * Seema Sueko, Arena Stage * Lual Mayen, Junub Games. More on Steve: https://twitter.com/shollingworthgf More on the Grameen Foundation: https://grameenfoundation.org/ More on FOSO19: bit.ly/cdtFOSO19 Videos from FOSO19: bit.ly/2019FOSOvids More on our host, Brian: bit.ly/cdtbrian Attribution: sounds used from Psykophobia, Taira Komori, BenKoning, Zabuhailo, bloomypetal, guitarguy1985, bmusic92, and offthesky of freesound.org.
Charles Cooke is the editor of National Review Online (Interview begins at 19:55), and an author, pundit, and frequent television guest on programs like "Real Time with Bill Maher" and "Kennedy" on Fox Business. He joins Heaton for a discussion about gun control and the Second Amendment, in a surprisingly wonky but cheerful episode involving heavy analysis of the blunderbuss.
National Review Online editor Charles Cooke rejoins the Remnant to discuss The Beatles, roller coasters, Brexit, the Second Amendment, and more. Shownotes -Charles Cooke -The previous Charles Cooke episodes (here, here, and here) –Florida man throws alligator through drive-through window -Charles Cooke on roller coasters -Charles Cooke on the Beatles (here and here) -The Niall … Continue reading Episode 131: A Political Roller Coaster→ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Charles Cooke, David French, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and Luke Thompson discuss Jeffrey's Epstein's suicide, the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, and the Democrats' gun control plans.
Charles Cooke of National Review joins Cam to pick apart the New York Post's demand for an "assault weapons ban," and forensic psychiatrist Dennis Petrocelli talks with Cam about his issues with "red flag" laws and what could be both more effective, and respectful of civil rights.
Watch the Game 7 coming up between Portland and Denver and you will see a few players — Seth Curry for the Blazers, Torrey Craig for Denver — contributing for their teams, guys who were not highly sought after lottery picks, they weren't drafted at all. How does a guy like that get noticed? How does a player not drafted in the first 45 (if at all) get the attention of a team, make a Summer League or G-League roster? Enter Jake Kelfer and his Professional Basketball Combine, an event in Southern California later this month where players not at the NBA's Draft Combine or G-League Elite Camp get a chance to impress in workouts and other combine events. Kelfer joins Kurt Helin of NBC Sports to talk about the Professional Basketball Combine, it's success — players such as Antonio Blakeney and Charles Cooke have come through it, and 23 guys have picked up Summer League invites — and what it takes to get paid to play basketball for the guys not destined for the NBA lottery.
Today on The McCarthy Report, Charles Cooke -- sitting in for Rich -- and Andy discuss Bill Barr on Capitol Hill, the controversy over the Mueller letter, and much more.
Miffed by losing his British accent monopoly on The Remnant, NationalReview.com editor Charles C.W. Cooke returns to the show to discuss Trump’s declaration of emergency, our decaying constitutional framework, accents, and more. Show Notes: Charles Cooke’s National Review page Get NR Plus to listen to the last Charles Cooke episode Ace of Spades on MacGuffins … Continue reading Episode 88: A Faux-Declaration of Non-Emergency→ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Will Brexit actually happen? Why is England so weird? Why does America rock? Member of European Parliament (for now) and leading Brexiteer Daniel Hannan joins The Remnant to break Charles Cooke’s British accent monopoly on the show and to answer these and other questions. Show Notes: Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Invented the Modern World – … Continue reading Episode 85: Weird English, Awesome Americans→ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Where is the Mueller investigation at and where should it be? Charles Cooke asks Andy these questions and more on The McCarthy Report's first episode of 2019.
Why is Florida so weird? Can government unite us? Is Charles Cooke still a British citizen? The editor of NationalReview.com himself returns to The Remnant to answer these and other questions. Show Notes: DonorsTrust.org/Dingo National Review Editors’ podcast NationalReview.com Jonah on the Cylons Charles Cooke’s review of Daniel Hannan’s Inventing Liberty Charles Cooke against George … Continue reading Episode 74: Charles Cooke II: Cruise Ship Boogaloo→ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
As Carolina Journal Radio marks its 800th weekly episode, we look back at some of the most interesting guests who have analyzed political, public policy, and historical developments over more than a dozen years. You’ll hear from Fred Barnes, Arthur Brooks, Charles Cooke, Steve Forbes, Robert George, Jonah Goldberg, Mary Katharine Ham, Andrew McCarthy, Deroy Murdock, Charles Murray, Peggy Noonan, Michael Novak, P.J. O’Rourke, Ramesh Ponnuru, Virginia Postrel, John Stossel, Cal Thomas, and Walter Williams. New data released from the N.C. Department of Public Instruction help tell the story of student performance in the state’s public schools. Terry Stoops, John Locke Foundation vice president for research and director of education studies, analyzes the most important information emerging from the latest DPI report. The N.C. Historical Commission recently rejected Gov. Roy Cooper’s request to move three Confederate monuments from the State Capitol grounds to a historic battlefield site in Johnston County. But commission members hold a range of views about the best way to deal with the monuments. You’ll hear highlights from two members with contrasting viewpoints. UNC-Chapel Hill has attracted national attention after protesters toppled the Silent Sam Confederate statue just as the new school year started. The university system’s Board of Governors has ordered Chapel Hill campus leaders to develop a permanent plan by Nov. 15 for dealing with Silent Sam. You’ll hear Chancellor Carol Folt’s initial reaction to that timeline, along with concerns from BOG member and former state senator Thom Goolsby. State legislators have formed a new subcommittee to look into a nearly $58 million fund set up in connection with the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Rick Henderson, Carolina Journal editor-in-chief, explains why lawmakers have questions about Gov. Roy Cooper’s role in establishing that discretionary fund.
Hour 1 CNN, no responsibility in reporting?...'out of control hatred' of President Trump ...trusting BBC over American media?...'In the long run Democratic Socialist want to end capitalism'...destroying healthcare helps accelerate their goals ...'We are Q'...Who is Q?...conspiracy of overturning the deep state? Hour 2 Choosing the Bill of Rights or Civil War? ...'The Unserious Face of an Unserious Movement', with National Review Editor, Charles Cooke...should we be be taking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seriously?...'credentialism' kills? ...'The End is Nigh' with National Review Senior Political Correspondent, Jim Geraghty...we are losing ourselves in a virtual reality?...despite the mood, times are better than you think? Hour 3 The perfect heist, in broad day light?...Swedish police search for suspects in a crown jewel robbery ...Glenn recalls the time he went to see the pope (intoxicated)?...attending midnight mass, standing on a chair, while pointing at the pope? ...Good 'old' racist Tweets?...from the newest member of the NY Times Editorial board?...when 'outraged' mobs get what they want? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hour 1 A New Person To Hate...Before we call for blood...Something is wrong at the Broward County Sheriff's Office...Deputy Scot Peterson really blew it...was on campus armed, 4 of those 6 horrible minutes...What happened? PTSD?...Eric from Florida knows Sheriff Israel...says he's just another ‘politician’... ‘best friends’ with Debbie Wasserman Schultz? ...Fact-checking Sheriff Israel's 'excuses'...they knew shooter had guns, serious problems…. ‘a school shooter in the making’?...Problems were just swept under the rug Hour 2 France is no longer free?...Beware of the European far right…Marion Le Pen has nothing to do with American conservatism… ‘we’ve seen this in the 1930s’ …. ‘that’s how monsters are born’...CPAC just 'legitimized'...Common sense from a Canadian professor...Bestselling author Dr. Jordan Peterson joins the show to share why we all need a ‘vision’ for life...'we are not listening to each other at all’...how do we solve this?...definition of a ‘good man’...how the '12 Rules of Life' apply to Florida school shooting...accepting what life delivers us Hour 3 ‘Everyone is crying fake news’ but just wait…Information Apocalypse...with Buzzfeed senior writer Charlie Warzel...'fake news' rising...the new technology on the horizon...what is 'laser fishing'?...the art of digital manipulation...what you are seeing is not believing ...Ray Kurzweil: ‘all disease will be cured by 2030’ ...President Trump's self-deprecating tone at CPAC ...President Trump has had another great week ....Chris Cuomo vs. Charles Cooke on Guns…guess who won this round The Glenn Beck Program with Glenn Beck and Stu Burguiere, Weekdays 9am–12pm ET on TheBlaze Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Locked On Pelicans - Daily Podcast On The New Orleans Pelicans
The Pelicans have used up their two available two-way contracts for Charles Cooke and Jalen Jones. How do the contracts work and how do the players fit in with the team? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week we have Debbie Arnold from Sound Insurance on the show to discuss car insurance. We talk about how insurance companies determine your rate and what factors they look at. We talk about some of the easiest ways to save money and reduce your car insurance premiums. Debbie tells us which cars have the highest rates and which ones can have some of the lowest rates. And finally, we talk about what benefits you should consider including on your plan. For the second segment, Charles Cooke joins us to give us his review on the all-new 2018 Nissan Qashqai, which is Nissan's newest subcompact crossover.
This week we talk electric cars. Charles Cooke from Charles Cooke Law is joining us once again to discuss the state of electric cars in the market. We talk about charging stations, range, the cost of charging versus the cost of filling up with gas, and other topics surrounding electric cars. We also review the 2017 Mazda MX-5 RF. We compare Mazda's newes edition of their famous sports car with the competition and share our take on it.
This week we talk about Ontario's Drive Clean program. Eli Melnick from Start Auto Electric is joining us as our guest to discuss the detailed changes that have been made to Ontario's controversial emissions testing program. We go through each change to the program and what they mean for consumers. We also talk about the pros and cons to the program, and whether or not it should be changed further. For the second segment, Charles Cooke from Charles Cooke Law returns to discuss with us the 2017 Buick Encore. We give our review on the vehicle and more, all on this week's episode.
This week we have Charles Cooke from Charles Cooke Law joining us on the show to discuss the recent updates to the Volkswagen diesel settlement. Volkswagen diesel owners affected by the scandel have a few different options to choose from. We go through the details of each option and weigh in on whether they are reasonable or not. Being an affected Volkswagen owner himself, Charles shares his own experience on the process and whether or not he would consider purchasing another Volkswagen again. Finally, we review the 2017 Lexus IS200t and IS350 sport sedans. Which one is best and how do they fare against rival sport sedans from European brands? Find out on this week's podcast.
Guests include Gordon Chang on China and North Korea; Part 2 of Tim's interview with Charles Cooke; and Tim "chews the fat" with Scott Cosenza.
This week we have returning guest Charles Cooke from Charles Cooke Law joining us to talk litigation. We go through the entire process you should follow in the event of a car accident. We talk about lawsuits, how to prepare yourself, and the what you can expect. We also review the 2017 BMW Alpina B7 and answer an email about ongoing transmission problems with a Ford Focus. What should you do when you experience an ongoing problem that the dealer can't fix? What are you rights? All the answers are on this week's podcast.
Charles Cooke, editor of National Review Online, talks with Tim about what it means to be a Conservatarian; and it's "all things Trump" with Onar An in Norway. Scott Cosenza buttons up the show with some one-on-one with Tim.
This week we have our expert lawyer, Charles Cooke, on the show to talk about car accidents and litigation. We go through the steps you should follow in the event you get into a car accident. We also talk about legal rights in general when it comes to car accidents. Shari and Mohamed share their thoughts on the 2017 Jaguar XE diesel. And we answer our first email of the week about whether to go with a used Toyota Camry or Honda Accord.
Flyover Politik Podcast Episode 118 NEW STUDIO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Charles Cooke"Dems have ran out of Language to use against Republicans" 2- Brett Bair REPORTING Clinton Foundation 3- News and Social Media Nuggets
Episode #385 (Originally aired 04/22/16) - Bill's guests Lawrence Wright, Thomas Middleditch, Charles Cooke, Lesley Stahl, Van Jones.
Overtime – Episode #385 (Originally aired 04/22/16) - Bill and his roundtable guests Lawrence Wright, Thomas Middleditch, Charles Cooke, Lesley Stahl and Van Jones answer fan questions from the latest show.
Overtime – Episode #385 (Originally aired 04/22/16) - Bill and his roundtable guests Lawrence Wright, Thomas Middleditch, Charles Cooke, Lesley Stahl and Van Jones answer fan questions from the latest show.
Episode #385 (Originally aired 04/22/16) - Bill’s guests Lawrence Wright, Thomas Middleditch, Charles Cooke, Lesley Stahl, Van Jones.
The loose alliance among conservatives and libertarians needn't necessarily remain. Charles Cooke argues in The Conservatarian Manifesto for a conservative defense of free markets and limited government both robust and principled. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Today on the Larry Kudlow Show, Larry talks with Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), author of E-BOOK: "Why John Roberts Was Wrong About Healthcare." Also on the show is Steve Forbes, author of NEW BOOK: "Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy." Jack Bouroudjian, author of "Secrets of the Trading Pros" and Mike Ozanian, Co-host "Sports Money" on the YES Network join Larry. Avik Roy, author of Forbes blog "The Apothecary." As always the great money/politics panel with Kellyanne Conway, Steve Moore, and Charles Cooke. All this and much more on The Larry Kudlow Show!
Today on the Larry Kudlow Show, Larry talks with Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), author of E-BOOK: "Why John Roberts Was Wrong About Healthcare." Also on the show is Steve Forbes, author of NEW BOOK: "Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy." Jack Bouroudjian, author of "Secrets of the Trading Pros" and Mike Ozanian, Co-host "Sports Money" on the YES Network join Larry. Avik Roy, author of Forbes blog "The Apothecary." As always the great money/politics panel with Kellyanne Conway, Steve Moore, and Charles Cooke. All this and much more on The Larry Kudlow Show!
Today on the Larry Kudlow Show, Larry talks with Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), author of E-BOOK: "Why John Roberts Was Wrong About Healthcare." Also on the show is Steve Forbes, author of NEW BOOK: "Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy." Jack Bouroudjian, author of "Secrets of the Trading Pros" and Mike Ozanian, Co-host "Sports Money" on the YES Network join Larry. Avik Roy, author of Forbes blog "The Apothecary." As always the great money/politics panel with Kellyanne Conway, Steve Moore, and Charles Cooke. All this and much more on The Larry Kudlow Show!
National Review's Jay Nordlinger, Jim Geraghty, and Charles Cooke discuss the opening day of CPAC 2015. Source
CPAC #5: National Review's Jay Nordlinger, Jim Geraghty, and Charles Cooke discuss the opening day of CPAC 2015. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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