Finding Common Battle Grounds

Ryan Cragun
  • 4.7 (3)
  • 政治
  • 一月一更

Finding Common Battle Grounds is an attempt by two brothers - one conservative, the other progressive - to have civil conversations about politics, with a little help from their friends.

  1. S05E03 - Trump vs Kimmel: Is free speech dead in America?

    4天前

    S05E03 - Trump vs Kimmel: Is free speech dead in America?

    In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds we tackle free speech under Donald Trump. We start with Trump's quote that he wants major broadcasters to lose their licenses for criticizing him. We then turn to a discussion of Brendan Carr, the head of the FCC, threatening Jimmy Kimmel over a comment he made about the person who has been arrested in the killing of Charlie Kirk and the resulting removal of Jimmy Kimmel from the air (though we recorded the podcast the night Kimmel returned to the air). We all agree that Trump (and Pam Bondi) seem to very clearly want to end free speech in America. We note that politicians on both sides of the political spectrum called these actions terrifying. Ryan then compared Trump's desire to stop the media from criticizing him to what the Nazi's did after they took over, as detailed in this Holocaust Encyclopedia article; it became illegal to criticize Hitler at all. We all agree that Trump wants to be like Hitler in this one specific respect.

    1 小时 11 分钟
  2. S05E02 - Media Bias and Ryan's Desire to Be a Vulcan

    8月20日

    S05E02 - Media Bias and Ryan's Desire to Be a Vulcan

    We tackle an often discussed topic on the podcast head-on: media bias. Ryan gets Tom and Josh to agree that bias is not an either/or but a continuum, ranging from completely neutral factual information (0 on a 10-point scale) to pure propaganda and lies (10 on a 10-point scale). We start with that point of agreement. Then, everything goes haywire. We turn to an article from thehill.com about a recent Wall Street Journal poll that found Democrats have a very low approval rating to explore bias. Ryan doesn't see any bias in the article because it is factual, while Josh and Tom immediately rate the article somewhere between 3 and 5 in terms of how biased it is, assuming that it is a right-leaning article that is being critical of Democrats (independent evaluations of the website put it as center and neutral, with maybe a slight left-leaning bias). We compare that article to one from NPR and one from Newsmax as well. Regardless, we end up realizing that Ryan approaches mainstream media outlets from the perspective that they are not biased, while Tom and Josh insist that "everyone is selling something" and everything has a bias. We agree that all people have biases, but Ryan is convinced that you can report things in a factual, objective fashion, while Josh and Tom are very dubious of this claim. Ryan's approach is, in part, a result of his occupation - he's a college professor who tries to be objective in the classroom and his professional writing. Josh moonlights as a novelist and sees his goal as trying to get people to feel what he wants them to feel, leading him down a different path. Ryan wants to be as objective as possible in his approach to the world, leading to Josh and Tom calling him a wannabe Vulcan, which Ryan fully embraces.

    1 小时 36 分钟
  3. S05E01 - Sideboob, Sesame Street, and Statistics

    8月7日

    S05E01 - Sideboob, Sesame Street, and Statistics

    We start our discussion in this episode with a "quick" conversation about the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ad in which she talks about her good "jeans/genes." Josh argues that this is why the left lost to Trump and conservatives, because they turn everything into identity politics and racism. Ryan argues that many on the left realized that as well. We then discuss Trump's threats to fire Jerome Powell and the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer. Tom argues that Trump is playing a smart long game, but Josh and Ryan both agree that this is classic authoritarian behavior - fire people who tell the truth because you don't like the truth. Finally, we discuss the defunding of public media, particularly the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which will be shutting down at the end of the year because of the cuts. Ryan argues that it generated wholesome content that taught kids important values, and the people who claim to care about those values - conservatives - are the ones who defunded it. Josh and Tom agree, but they don't think public money should be spent on that. Wholesome content needs to stand on its own. We kind of admit that Sesame Street doesn't really stand a chance then... Unless Sydney Sweeney goes on it and shows some sideboob.

    1 小时 10 分钟
  4. S04E20 - Epstein Diddles MAGA, measles, and USAID deaths

    7月18日

    S04E20 - Epstein Diddles MAGA, measles, and USAID deaths

    In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we tackle three topics. First, we discuss how the Trump Administration's failure to release any new information about the people who were involved with Jeffrey Epstein is tearing the MAGA movement apart. We then briefly discuss the rise of measles cases, which turns into a discussion of how different institutions have lost the trust of people. Our final topic is a discussion of a recent Lancet article that estimated 14 million people will die over the next 5 years because of the cuts to USAID. Somehow, we come back to Epstein. It's always about Jeffrey Epstein.

    1 小时 33 分钟
  5. S04E19 - LA Riots Over ICE Deportations

    6月12日

    S04E19 - LA Riots Over ICE Deportations

    We tackle just a single topic in this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds - the recent riots in Los Angeles that started as a result of the ICE raids and deportations. We find a lot of common ground in this one. We agree that riots are bad (phew). We agree that Trump and his administration over-reacted and were extremely heavy-handed in their response. We agree that the Trump administration's approach to deporting immigrants has been problematic. We even agree that Stephen Miller looks a lot like Goebbels, but only Ryan and Tom admit it as Josh doesn't want to get arrested for saying it. We don't agree on whose flag should be waved during anti-deportation protests and riots!

    1 小时 3 分钟
  6. S04E18 - Musk Leaves DC and American Exceptionalism

    6月4日

    S04E18 - Musk Leaves DC and American Exceptionalism

    In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Josh, Ryan, and Tom tackle four topics. We start with a discussion of Elon Musk leaving Washington DC, something Ryan partially predicted in November. We explore why and what it means. We then do some rapid fire questions on Biden's cancer diagnosis and Ukraine's sneak attack inside Russia. After that, we discuss whether America is exceptional, particularly as relates to its culture. We all agree that Americans are not morally or biologically superior to anyone else and have no greater moral worth, but Josh is insistent that American culture is superior, Tom seems to lean that way, and Ryan is skeptical.

    1 小时 54 分钟
  7. S04E17 - Trump's New Plane and a Biden Spending Spree?

    5月13日

    S04E17 - Trump's New Plane and a Biden Spending Spree?

    In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we start with a discussion of the new luxury plane the Qatari government has promised to Donald Trump. It takes a while, but eventually we all agree that if Donald Trump gets to keep a $400 million luxury plane after he is no longer president, that is clearly bribery and corruption. Josh insists that, even though that is true, it's not like this isn't "business as usual" in politics. We then turn to a NYPost article claiming Biden went on a spending spree right before leaving office. The article doesn't provide sufficient information to verify the claims (in classic tabloid fashion). But what we could find suggests that their estimates are off by at least a factor of 10. This leads us back into a discussion of the national debt and other topics we cover regularly. Josh then raised the recent event of a woman in Minnesota who used a racial slur in reference to a 5-year-old kid and used that to argue that both the left and the right are now rallying behind anyone on their side, including criminals. Ryan clarified that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not a criminal and not a member of MS-13, and Trayvon Martin was not a criminal either. But the bigger point is a good one.

    1 小时 23 分钟
  8. S04E16 – Trump’s Tariffs and Stock Market Volatility

    4月15日

    S04E16 – Trump’s Tariffs and Stock Market Volatility

    In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Ryan and Tom talk about how Trump's tariff chaos tanked the stock market. Josh was supposed to join us, but he ended up bailing at the last minute (leading us to speculate as to what he was doing instead). Tom and Ryan agree on most everything in this episode. They agree that the market was ripe for a correction and that Trump's tariffs were the catalyst. They also agree that there are indications that Trump may have been engaged in market manipulation and probably should be investigated for what he has done. They agree that Trump is primarily using tariffs as a means of bullying other countries. They spend a lot of time discussing how terrifying our national debt and deficits are, and that there is no will among politicians to fix it. And they agree that the market is likely going to continue to go down for a while as we head into an economic recession.

    1 小时 3 分钟
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Finding Common Battle Grounds is an attempt by two brothers - one conservative, the other progressive - to have civil conversations about politics, with a little help from their friends.

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