The Brian Calaway Podcast

Brian Calaway & Brandon Alexander
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  • Politics

Join Arizona candidate Brian Calaway and co-host Brandon Alexander as they bypass corporate-approved talking points to have real, uncorrupted conversations about our communities without forgetting to have a laugh or two along the way. Drawing on Stoicism, FDR’s Second Economic Bill of Rights, pop-culture references, and grassroots action, they tackle the issues that hit closest to home—from corporate housing and healthcare to AI and local organizing. Featuring local advocates and candid campaign-road stories, this is the blueprint for a ground-up representative future.

  1. 5d ago

    Number Fourteen | Digital Permanence, Door Knocking, and Self-Governance

    Number 14: Precedent, Productivity Porn, and the Permanent RecordBrian and Brandon start with books, crash courses, and learning on your own terms, then dig into what they call productivity porn, the false promise that any skill can be mastered in twenty hours. They talk about Parkinson's law, the sophomore curse, and why a list of things you are fixing matters as much as a list of things you have done. From there the conversation turns to the campaign. Brian has knocked on thousands of doors in Mesa and his conversion rate has doubled since he started. They talk about the number of votes needed to flip the district and why Brian believes turnout shifts could matter more than anyone expects this cycle. The back half covers a harder topic: old social media posts being used to end careers, using a Portland Trail Blazers broadcaster and a Michigan congressional primary as examples. Brian and Brandon argue that judging adults by things they posted as teenagers sets a dangerous precedent, and that grace and context still matter. Mail-in ballots arrive October 7thEarly voting begins soon. Make a plan with your family, vote your values, and return your ballot or drop it at a polling place within 72 hours. Subscribe to the podcast for new episodesShare this episode with a friendPut up a yard sign if you support the campaignCheck our voter guide for information on every candidate on your ballotVisit the campaign site

  2. Oct 9 ·  Bonus

    Number Thirteen | Part Two | 9/11, Surveillance, Trauma, Short Memories, and Media Manipulation

    Number Thirteen | Part TwoBrian and Brandon close out the two-part conversation marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11, covering the post-9/11 surveillance state, the media's complicit framing to direct our anger, and failures in modern government and corporate culture. They open with the origin of the baker's dozen, then Brandon reflects on his freshman year of college in 2001 and the search for clarity 25 years later. Brian recounts seeing Come From Away, the story of 7,000 airline passengers diverted to Gander, Newfoundland, and contrasts that solidarity with the long-term effects on American life. They recall the morning of 9/11, lingering post-traumatic hallucinations, and the silence over Phoenix Sky Harbor's flight paths. The conversation covers how fear shaped the Patriot Act and NSA surveillance, why Flight 93 and Todd Beamer are rarely memorialized, and a Gallup poll where voters responded differently to Obamacare than to the Affordable Care Act, the same policy under different names. They also discuss the claim that government should run like a business, elite capture, corporate R&D cycles, anomalies in the Epstein files, and 1990s gifted education programs, closing with the final stretch before Election Day. Topics covered: The baker's dozen and the origin of 13 as an unlucky number25 years after 9/11: personal memories and Sky Harbor's silent skiesCome From Away and the people of Gander, NewfoundlandFlight 93, Todd Beamer, and civilian agencyThe Patriot Act, NSA surveillance, and security theaterMedia framing: Obamacare vs. the Affordable Care Act in Gallup pollingThe claim that government should run like a businessElite capture and insecurity in leadershipCorporate R&D cycles and deregulationAnomalies in the Epstein filesGifted education programs and the final stretch before Election DayGet involved: volunteer, sign up for the newsletter, request a yard sign, check your voter registration, or share this episode. Learn more at BrianCalaway.com

  3. Oct 7

    Number Thirteen | Part One | Clean Elections Debate Gap and AI Risk

    Brandon and Brian open with movies, Kevin Costner flops, and Waterworld before sliding into something more serious. The episode gets into corporate consolidation, banking deregulation, and why so many people feel stuck working harder for less. Brian shares door knocking numbers from the campaign trail. As of this recording he has logged over sixteen hundred doors this month alone. He talks about what he hears at the door, from people grateful just to have a candidate show up to people whose retirement accounts have convinced them nothing else matters. The conversation turns to the Arizona Clean Elections debate forum for Legislative District Ten. Brian was one of three candidates who showed up. Brandon breaks down the numbers across all twenty two legislative districts and finds a striking pattern. Far more Republican candidates statewide skipped the forums entirely compared to Democrats. They talk about why that might be, what Clean Elections funding actually is and where the money comes from, and how the two party system often operates less like genuine opposition and more like a shared ownership structure with different messaging teams. The episode closes on AI risk, the sixth extinction, and why neither party's extremes actually represent most of the people stuck in the middle trying to get by. Topics coveredClean Elections debate forum turnout across Arizona House districtsWhere Clean Elections funding comes fromDoor to door campaign numbers in Legislative District TenBanking deregulation and consolidationCorporate valuation versus real valueWage stagnation and household debtAI risk and emergent technology regulationWhy both major parties struggle with their own fringesIf you want to see the Legislative District Ten forum for yourself, Brian recommends watching it directly rather than taking anyone's summary of it. Get involved2026 AZ LD10 Candidate Forum: https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxpuHmrPR2dmZJ5YRJtxnfa_mBKNnWgbAz

  4. Sep 22

    Number Twelve | Arizona Mining Inspector Candidate Brian Matlock

    Number Twelve brings on Brian Matlock, who is running for Arizona State Mine Inspector. Most voters do not know this is an elected office. Brian did not either until he became a Pinal County precinct committee person and got asked to look into it. Arizona is the only state with an elected mine inspector, written into the state constitution in 1912. Brian explains why that independence matters. The office answers to voters and the legislature, not to a governor who can simply remove someone for asking hard questions. Brian is a mechanical engineer who spent his career in design, manufacturing, and inspection roles, including work with dragline chain used in strip mining and later hard rock mining wear products. He talks through his path from Tennessee to Oregon to Arizona, and how a foundry job making chipper discs led him into the mining industry. The conversation covers what he found when he started digging into the state office's public reporting. He compares it to what the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration publishes and explains why the gap concerned him enough to run. Other topics include in-situ copper mining at Florence Copper, the Oak Flat mining method and how it compares to open pit mines, abandoned mines across Arizona including uranium sites on tribal land, and ideas for community-based abandoned mine surveys. Brian also talks about the fifty-year run of Democrats not holding this office, the current appointed opponent, and why he believes safety oversight should not be a partisan issue. Listen to the full conversation for the details on mine safety data, the history of the office, and Brian's plans for community outreach and abandoned mine cleanup. Subscribe to the podcast, sign up for the newsletter, and share this episode with someone who has never heard of a mine inspector before. If you want to help the campaign directly, look into volunteering, requesting a yard sign, or checking your voter registr

  5. Sep 15

    Number Eleven | This Is Your Captain

    Brian and Brandon start with headphones and luxury goods and somehow end up at Anthony Fauci, gain of function research, and a fake moon colony from 1835. That is the whole show in one sentence. The first half is a long conversation about the things that made them feel like adults. Prada sunglasses found behind a bar. A pair of Ralph Lauren shorts bought on a Saturday off work. A set of Craftsman wrenches that still gets used forty years later. Brandon and Brian talk about what separates a trophy purchase from something you actually use, and how frequent flyer status turned into a strange kind of tribal knowledge once you learn the choreography of an airport. That leads into a real conversation about what changed after 2020. Brandon flew constantly before the pandemic and watched airlines consolidate flights, cut capacity, then hand out elite status to anyone who bought a credit card or a travel package. The seats did not get better. The lines did not get shorter. The math just got worse for everybody. From there the episode turns toward Anthony Fauci, who is back in the news facing congressional testimony. Brian and Brandon go back and forth on gain of function research, mask mandates, and how Fauci handled HIV compared to Covid. Brandon argues that fifty years in a position of federal authority means some decisions will look bad in hindsight, and that blaming one career official for a presidency's failures during a once in a century pandemic misses where the real breakdown happened. The conversation moves into media consolidation, monopoly power, and how few companies now control most of what Americans see and read. Brian makes the case for breaking up those monopolies and reinvesting in local labor instead of corporate consolidation. They close on the New York Sun's 1835 moon hoax, a newspaper that invented bat-winged lunar humanoids to save its circulation and never really apologized for it. Brandon connects it directly to the current media discourse then frames the difference between truth and lies in a way that can't be denied.

  6. Sep 4

    Number Ten | The Show Gets A BIG CHECK

    Number Ten of the Brian Calaway Podcast opens with a long detour through Cast Away, Ridley Scott, and Christopher Nolan's Odyssey before landing somewhere useful. Brian and Brandon argue about the ending of Cast Away, geek out over the Trojan horse and the bow-stringing scene, and get into the internet outrage over casting choices that has nothing to do with whether the film is any good. From there it goes to butterflies. A ten year old researcher in Japan found that caterpillars can retain a scent memory conditioned before pupation, and that the avoidance passed to their offspring. Brian and Brandon spend a while working out what that says about instinct, predisposition, and how much of what we call memory might be inherited caution. The back half is the real point. To mark ten episodes, Brian and Brandon fact check nine episodes of their own conversations. Twenty two confirmed factual errors across roughly fourteen hours of unscripted talk, including a mixed up Hofstede individualism stat, a misattributed Warren Buffett quote, a wrong century on the Irish bank strike, and a badly garbled Teddy Roosevelt boxing story. They walk through each one, correct the record, and talk about why getting it right matters more than sounding right. Along the way there is the policy grounding this show is built on. Clean Elections in Arizona. SNAP and healthcare losses hitting Arizona families, many of them children. The gap between what public pre-K investment actually returns and the inflated number that keeps getting repeated. And a running frustration with cable news chyrons that bury real stories under manufactured distractions. Brian is running for Arizona House in Legislative District 10 as a Clean Elections candidate. Read the Economic Bill of Rights and sign up for The Weekly: briancalaway.comVolunteer or request a yard sign: briancalaway.comCheck your voter registration: my.arizona.voteShare this episode with someone in LD10.

  7. Aug 11

    Number Eight | The Tangerine Speedo Reveal

    Are we active citizens reclaiming our power, or passive consumers being fed carefully curated red herrings? In Number Eight of The Brian Calaway Podcast, Brian and Brandon pull back the curtain on the corporate media oligopoly and share hard-hitting personal stories about the harsh reality of living in an extractive economy. From Brian’s grueling daily campaign routine of knocking on doors of 200 voters a day in 110-degree Arizona heat to the psychological warfare of predatory banking fees, this episode is an unfiltered critique of the systems designed to keep the working class in a state of financial anxiety. Brandon finally corrects the record on his private moniker for President Donald J. Trump, Brian reviews a deeply moving local theater play on veteran grief, and they examine how the velocity of money, when bottom-up, is the true antidote to the cancer of modern wealth extraction.To wrap things up on a hopeful note, the guys discuss the collective belief that builds our economy, the upcoming legislative primary, and why you need to gather your friends, get in a car, and go see Christopher Nolan's newest 70mm epic as an act of community-building.Topics Covered in This Episode: • The 200-Door Campaign Grind: What Mesa voters actually care about vs. the national media distraction. • Reaganomics to Citizens United: Tracing the media monopoly back to systemic deregulation. • The Tangerine Speedo: Brandon's hilarious 2015 realization and a dramatic reading of Caviar's 90s hit. • Predatory Banking and Overdraft Grifts: The sheer immorality of usury and Brian's 6-week battle with "Mr. Candy boys". • The Velocity of Money: Why bottom-up economics is the rising tide that lifts all boats. • Tenet, IMAX, and Christopher Nolan: Reclaiming public spaces and celebrating cinematic art in 70mm. • The LD10 Primary and Rebuilding Community: The road ahead for the general election.To join the campaign for economic liberty and representative democracy, visit BrianCalaway.com and join the community on social media

  8. Jul 31

    Number Seven | The Bond Mesa Schools Actually Need

    A parent stands up to thank her school district for supporting her transgender kid. Someone in the crowd boos her. That's the school board meeting that convinced Josh Chilton to keep running.In Number Seven, Brian and Brandon sit down with Josh Chilton, a Mesa Girl dad, project manager, and candidate for the Mesa Public Schools governing board, for a conversation that skips the culture war noise and gets into what actually running a school district takes: The workings of a $449 million bond on this November's ballot, a school choice debate that has nothing to do with the usual talking points, and what it looks like when out-of-state groups show up to a local board meeting looking for a viral moment.In this episode:The Mesa School Board Race — Josh's path from project manager to two-time school board candidate, and why he thinks the job is less about ideology and more about being a reasonable, trusted voice for a district that spans fifty thousand students across wildly different communities.The $449 Million Bond — Mesa spends about $83 million a year maintaining its buildings and gets $28 million from the state, a $55 million gap. The last bond failed at the ballot in 2023. This one only made it onto the ballot by a 3-2 board vote, and the district itemized 13,000 funding priorities (roughly $1.2 billion of total need) to make its case for the $449 million ask.Redefining School Choice — Why "school choice" isn't just charters and vouchers. Josh walks through his own daughter's path between three different Mesa schools before a teacher caught signs of ADHD, and why one-size-fits-all doesn't work across a district this size.CTE and Career Pathways — Mesa's new career academy model, why rote memorization doesn't prepare kids for a job market that didn't exist when we were in school, and Brian's case for teaching everything through a single connective theme instead of disconnected subjects.Hostile School Boards — Josh's account of an out-of-state group hijacking a board meeting, filming it for YouTube, and booing a mother for thanking the district for supporting her kid. And why he thinks protecting a small percentage of vulnerable students shouldn't be treated as a wedge issue.The QWERTY Tangent and Odyssey of the Mind — a real digression about why the standard keyboard was built to slow typists down (Brian still uses Dvorak), plus Josh's fifteen years coaching Odyssey of the Mind, the creative problem-solving program started in 1978 by Dr. Sam Micklus at what's now Rowan University.Get Involved: Learn more and get in touch with the Calaway campaign, including the full Economic Bill of Rights, at:www.BrianCalaway.com. Learn more about Josh Chilton's run for Mesa School Board, and support his campaign directly at:https://www.ChiltonForMesa.com. Contact the show: BrianCalawayPodcast@gmail.comSearch Brian Calaway on any platform to follow along.Be Excellent To Eachother#ArizonaPolitics #MesaPublicSchools #JoshChilton #BrianCalaway #District10 #EducationReform #SchoolBond #CTE #SchoolBoard #LocalPolitics #EndTheOligarchy

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About

Join Arizona candidate Brian Calaway and co-host Brandon Alexander as they bypass corporate-approved talking points to have real, uncorrupted conversations about our communities without forgetting to have a laugh or two along the way. Drawing on Stoicism, FDR’s Second Economic Bill of Rights, pop-culture references, and grassroots action, they tackle the issues that hit closest to home—from corporate housing and healthcare to AI and local organizing. Featuring local advocates and candid campaign-road stories, this is the blueprint for a ground-up representative future.

Information

  • Creator
    Brian Calaway & Brandon Alexander
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    15
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Brian Calaway & Brandon Alexander
  • Show Website
    The Brian Calaway Podcast