Podcast
3 Whisky Happy Hour
Hosted by Ricochet · EN
Steven Hayward, John Yoo, and "Lucretia" bring you a whisky-sodden perspective on the week's big headlines, and occasional deep dives into law and philosophy.
Listen to the Three-Whisky Happy hour, along with more than 40 other original podcasts, at Ricochet.com. No paid subscription required.
Listen to the Three-Whisky Happy hour, along with more than 40 other original podcasts, at Ricochet.com. No paid subscription required.
35episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Jet Lag Edition
5d ago00:57:34Tap to summarizeSo your three bartenders are back from overseas, but still a bit jet lagged and struggling to keep up with the news. Was it a good week? The firing of Scott Pelley is certainly good news, as are the initial results of the California primary, where the energy and enthusiasm is clearly on the side of the outsider insurgent candidates. (Knock on wood: let's see how the "vote counting" goes over the next several weeks in the "incompetent" Golden State.) Not such a good week for John Bolton, nor for aesthetic sensibility, if the Obama library is any indication. Why does the left prefer brutalist ugliness? We have our suspicions. . .We do our longer dive this week into some meta-narratives about the Supreme Court, inspired by Paul Moreno's terrific Law & Liberty article, "Save the Last Branch for Me." It's a new day indeed.We also get in our licks at woke British policing, Star Trek, and the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, which has some rather uncommon Eucharistic forms. Oh, also McDonalds news, just to keep John Happy and well fed.
Transcribe →The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Tackling the Admin. State from Sicily
2w ago00:53:54Tap to summarizeThe end of this week finds the 3WHH crew in situ in Enna, up in the highlands of Sicily, visiting the University of Kore for a conference on, well, everything, though it is hard to tell since half the speakers are speaking in Italian and the rest of us arenspeaking in English. John Yoo's incoming plane was delayed—again—but it gave us the prompt we needed to have in John place R.J. Pestritto, the Dean of graduate education at Hillsdale College, but above all one of the most treachant critics of the Progressive revolution of the early 20th century, and the insidious administrative state it birthed. If ever you want to throw down on Woodrow Wilson—and what sensible person doesn't?—R.J. is your man.For this episode we consider R.J.'s recent short monograph for the Claremont Institute's "Provocations" series, Government by the Unelected: How It Happened, and How It Might Be Tamed. Settle in with your favorite chianti for this one, as "D.J.—R.J" as I like to call him when he gets rolling on this subject, really gets rolling on this subject with us.For this episode, recorded in a hotel lobby with some visitors wandering by our "field recording studio (which included Michael McConnell listening in for some of it), we decided to keep the "authentic feel" of the background noise, in case you get to wondering.
Transcribe →The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Rolling Road Trip Edition
3w ago00:53:53Tap to summarizeWe could have called this the jeg lag from hell episode, as John Yoo managed to spend 11 hours on a airplane yesterday that didn't fly anywhere, while Steve, already planted as an advance guard in Palermo ahead of next week's conference in Sicily where the 3WHH crew will be together in person at the University of Enna, is batting both jet lag and a airplane-acquired bug that left his voice raspy.So Lucretia hosts this week, and wonders whether both parties are a hot mess at the moment, what to make of the scene from the cashiering of Messy Massie to Der Platner of Maine to Ken Paxton in Texas, but landing on the breath of fresh air that is Spencer Pratt.In the middle of taping the news broke of the resignation of Tulsi Gabbard, so we pivoted to an impromptu discussion of the wider scene of dysfunction in the "intelligence community." Steve made a case for bringing back James Jesus Angleton from the dead, drawing the predictable guffaws from John. All just a warm up for our on-location episodes next week.
Transcribe →The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Gonzo Hybrid-Reboot Edition
3w ago00:56:56Tap to summarize[CORRECTED AUDIO]We've had some gonzo episodes before, and a couple of trainwrecks, but this is the first-ever episode that is actually two episodes edited together, with sequence changes, new sound effects, canned insults from John, etc. I explained in a Substack post our technical difficulties that arose in the livestream, and here is the fix. Let us know what you think!In fits and starts we do cover some breaking legal developments, whether Israel has any hope of a libal action against the New York Times (which richly deserves it), the surprising statesmanlike bearing of President Trump, some surprising remarks on anti-Semitism from T.S. Eliot, and more.So here we go!
Transcribe →The Three Whisky Happy Hour: From Plato to NATO
May 900:58:47Tap to summarizeAnother hectic week for your 3WHH bartenders, and John Yoo wasn't able to join us at all, so this week's episode includes a special guest Steve has long wanted to bring on, Alex Priou of the University of Austin, the bold, brash start-up that has generated lot of headlines and controversies in its early years of operation. He's also the co-proprietor of a rival podcast, The New Thinkery, which is on hiatus at the moment as the team is in motion to new assignments, but it can be thought of as an unofficial "Gulf Coast" Straussian podcast. (Check out some past episodes at the link here.)Needless to say, we spend a lot of time discussing the crisis of the humanities in higher education, about which Alex has finished a book that is not yet in print but hopefully coming soon. But as Alex is a premier Plato scholar, we also spend a good deal of time considering some aspects of Plato on the subject of education and mis-education, ending up with a brief look at Shakespeare.Interested listeners should also have a look at Alex's Substack, "The Close Read," his Twitter/X feed, and, for those interested in his academic writing, his Academia page.
Transcribe →The Three Whisky Happy Hour: The Left Blows a Gasket
May 200:53:28Tap to summarizeThe left was already hysterical ever since Trump won a second term, but this week the left had a total meltdown after the Supreme Court scaled back racial gerrymandering under the Voting Rights Act. And the Three Whisky Happy Hour was totally there for it! The big question for us was, what took them so long? The gang also discusses some of the most recent revelations of perfidy over COVID and other matters during the Biden Administration, and whether another assasination attempt against President Trump is a sign that leftist rage is becoming a critical danger to domestic tranquility, and an ominous sign that wokeri is not going away any time soon.Plus the unveiling of our custom land acknowledgment at the end.
Transcribe →The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Thomas Derangement Syndrome?
Apr 2501:00:03Tap to summarizeMove over Trump Derangement Syndrome! The left is clearly afflicted now with a full-blown case of Thomas Derangement Syndrome—after Justice Clarence Thomas's speech last week about the Declaration of Independence, which, let's face it, gives leftists the heebie-jeevies with all that talk about how we are "endowed by our Creator" with certain inalienable rights. With the band back together again this week, we dissect the left's hysterical reaction which indicate to us that Thomas hit a raw nerve with "Progressives," who are actually quite regressive.We also divert briefly to John Yoo's typically idiosyncratic observations on executive power in the Declaration, and then conclude this segment with each offering our favorite quotes from Justice Thomas's speech.From there we turn to the big news of the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center (which Steve suggests should be known more accurately as the Southern Poverty Libel Center, but also wondering why there is no Northern Poverty Law Center, or Midwestern Poverty Law Center. Is there no poverty or racism in those regions?).
Transcribe →The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Almost Live from Tampa
Apr 1800:49:30Tap to summarizeFor the second week in a row, the 3WHH gang (minus one) were on the road, this time recording live in the corner of a hotel lobby before the annual meeting of the Philadelphia Society. The sound quality of this episode is . . . authentic. Yes, I'll go with that. John Yoo couldn't make the meeting, so we have a special guest, our old pal Glenn Ellmers. With John absent, we get our freak on about the Clean Air Act . . . actually we didn't do that. We did worse: We get down in the weeds of metaphysics, radical historicism, the theological-political problem (especially in the context of this week's feud between the President and the Pope), dishing on Laura Field's terrible book Furious Minds, contrasting Justice Sotomayor's jurisprudence of "feels" versus Justice Thomas's jurisprudence of principle—the principle of the Declaration of Independence. And finally, we take up the perennial question, what's the matter with kids today. And as such the exit music this week is "Kids," from moe:Kids will try to run you overKids will try to bring you downKids will never say they're sorryKids back then are older now
Transcribe →The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Live from Tulsa!
Apr 1101:05:12Tap to summarizeThis week the 3WHH podcast "went mobile people!", venturing to the University of Tulsa's College of Law for a live-taping before an enthusiastic audience of law students, faculty, and some loyal listeners. We departed slightly from our usual format, and focused on a single subject: the Declaration of Independence at 250. John Yoo decided to be more obstreperous than usual with his utilitarian-positivist-pragmatism, but it made for a highly entertaining episode. We had a wonderful time visiting Tulsa.Don't miss the YouTube version of the episode, which includes the "pre-game" introduction (not included in this audio episode) wherein Steve performed (an allegedy cheesy) magic trick illustrating the breakdown of the separation of powers.And needless to say, exit music is "Ten Miles to Tulsa." We can't wait to go back.
Transcribe →The Three Whisky Happy Hour: From Birthright Religion to "Lockistotle"
Apr 301:02:06Tap to summarizeNotre Dame's Tocqueville professor of political science, Vincent Phillip Munoz (Phil to his freinds and colleagues), joins this special episode which finds all three of your regular bartenders in the same room for once while on the road in Austin, Texas. Phil is one of the leading scholars of religious liberty in the U.S., and after a progress report on the Iran War (we're still winning), and a prolonged look at the Supreme Court oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case heard this week, we pick Phil's brain about the status of school prayer, and whether a restoration of organized prayer in public schools has a prayer of happening, taking as our cue Gerry Bradley's recent and provocative First Things article, "How To Bring Back School Prayer."From there we briefly (but alas because we were out of sufficient time) but inadequately treat Phil's terrifically concise CRB essay "Ancient and Modern: How Straussians Interpret the Founding," mostly to annoy John Yoo—and we succeeded!
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