This blog post is part of AEI’s Best Podcasts of 2019 series. Click here to see other AEI podcast hosts’ favorite episodes of the year.
On The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, I talk to a variety of guests, some repeat, many new, and some who have to be there, like my beleaguered majordomo. We sometimes converse about rank punditry (i.e., the news of the day), other times about pure wonkery (i.e., how bad is the national debt really) … and, occasionally, about things nobody could predict (i.e., the case for acquiring Greenland). It’s a Remnant, so we embrace the idiosyncrasy of the project, as do our listeners.
1. Greenland Hipsters — Ep. #138, September 26
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) made his second appearance on the Remnant for a long-planned episode devoted entirely to “half-baked ideas”: the kind of idea that sounds good if you only think about it for about five seconds, but lacks significant follow–through. Among the ideas considered: making Greenland part of America, congressional barracks, airport pull-up bars sponsored by the Marine Corps, and more.
2. Basement History — Ep. #129, August 26
Taking advantage of a trip to the West Coast, I interviewed Hoover Institution Fellow Niall Ferguson, who brought impressive scholarship and dry humor to a wide-ranging examination of Western history, contemporary historical scholarship (and its many defects), and more.
3. JG Squared — Ep. #101, April 30
My wife, Jessica Gavora, will kill me if I don’t say that the episode we did together is one of my favorites of the year. But that’s not the only reason I’m putting it here. Though long-teased, I was hesitant to do this for reasons that ended up being void: All of our listeners enjoyed what seemed to them like a glimpse into our kitchen as we casually chatted about our respective pasts, how we met, John Ashcroft’s musical talents, and other such things.
4. The Sowell of Economics — Ep. #102, April 25
We had to do it by phone, and it took months to schedule, but it was all worth it when on the other end of the line was the legendary Thomas Sowell, who appeared on the Remnant to discuss a new edition of Discrimination and Disparities and other related topics.
5. Weird English, Awesome Americans — Ep. #85, February 8
It’s not every day that you get to talk about Brexit with one of its leading architects. But the Remnant is not an everyday podcast. And so we managed to get Daniel Hannan, a member of European Parliament representing the UK who wanted to get the UK out of the European Parliament, onto the Remnant. We talked Brexit, of course, but also discussed Western history, and the connection between America and England, all the while enjoying an accent later voted by listeners as the best Anglosphere tongue to appear on the show.
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