Show Notes
Why do elephants inspire more trust than engineers, and what do chicken carcasses have to do with safer airplanes? We discuss Dave Karpf and Nina Hall’s piece on Turning Point USA and MoveOn, make the case against the Paramount merger, and ask when Peter Loge last read a book.
How Test Engineers Decide What Counts as Good Enough | New Yorker Why Charlie Kirk Didn’t Build a ‘MoveOn of the Right’ | Stanford Social Innovation Review The MoveOn Effect | Dave Karpf Your political message does not matter if your target audience cannot hear it. | The Future, Now and Then Flying Toaster Screensaver Preorder: Vaporware, Inc. How Silicon Valley Sells the Future to Control the Present | Dave Karpf Office Hours is now on Bluesky! Give us a follow.
More from Office Hours with Karpf and Loge
On this week's episode of Office Hours, Loge is somehow still talking about bat ecologist certifications and Karpf is too busy marathon training to play D&D. They break down how Trump's $5,000 pledge to voters went viral on prediction markets and discuss the difference between moderate politics as a rhetorical style versus an actionable ideology. Also, Karpf and Loge read the pod's first AI-generated listener email!
Office Hours is back for the semester, and just in time, because Loge is getting a little too fascinated by bat ecologists. As a record high number of Americans say that government corruption is widespread, Karpf and Loge discuss why political elites get away with bad behavior, when voters will punish them and how political actors can effectively push back. Also, our hosts respond to their first listener email!
As summer ends and classes begin, Washington is offering plenty of material for a lesson in political theater: from Natalie Harp's expanding West Wing role to James Talarico turning Ken Paxton’s $1,000 pen into a campaign prop. Karpf and Loge dissect these stories, as well as why Trump's picks keep losing their primaries. They also discuss why a Peter Loge Bot is a terrible business idea, how an alien garbage can won 10,000 votes in Clacton, and their political predictions for this fall.
It's hot enough outside to make Karpf wear shorts on camera, inspiring a deluge of water metaphors. Karpf and Loge dive into the President's insistence through the Reflecting Pool debacle and the war in Iran, even as voters reward politicians focused on making government work. They also break down the latest midterm primaries, the lost DNC Autopsy chapter, and the lessons behind them: democracy is messy, local politics matter, and a good plan means nothing if you can’t execute it.
Going outside and salads are unhealthy now, the IRS has more pretzels than staffers, so Karpf and Loge are here to discuss how degrading institutional trust landed us in this mess...and how to dig ourselves out. Also: campaign staffers betting on their own races on Kalshi raises Karpf's blood pressure, while Loge delights in the World Cup's cultural exchange.