The Dispatch Podcast: "That’s A Wrap | Roundtable"

Date: December 23, 2025
Host: Steve Hayes
Panelists: Jonah Goldberg, Megan McArdle, Michael Warren
Topic: 2025 Year in Review – The stories, trends, and people that defined, dominated, or slipped under the radar in politics, policy, and culture.

Episode Overview

This Dispatch Podcast roundtable offers a deep-dive retrospective on 2025’s pivotal stories and cultural undercurrents. Host Steve Hayes leads a lively, fact-driven discussion with Jonah Goldberg, Megan McArdle, and Michael Warren, dissecting:

• The year’s most consequential and overlooked news events
• People who received too much attention
• Standout journalism of the year
• Moments and progress that give hope for America and the world

The conversation is candid, accessible, and layered—ideal for listeners eager to grasp the major forces shaping the year and what they might mean for the future.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Most Important News Story of 2025

[02:21-15:25]

Michael Warren:

• Selected Trump administration’s immigration enforcement and deportation policy as the defining story.
  • Noted it’s one of the administration’s only campaign promises fully implemented.
  • Cited rapid escalation: aggressive border security, mass deportations—even into cities like LA, Chicago, Charlotte.
  • Connected these actions to a sharp political backlash among Hispanics (approval dropped from 49% to 29% in less than a year).
  • “It is the actual fulfillment of a campaign promise…He has sort of done exactly what he said he would do.” [02:49]

Megan McArdle:

• Flagged China’s breakthrough in high-end photolithography for semiconductor manufacturing.
  • Explained that ASML (Dutch company) dominates the hardware needed for highest-end chips.
  • China’s alleged development, through intricate clandestine efforts, signals a seismic shift in global tech and AI power.
  • Warned that this undermines U.S. export controls and may end America’s crucial compute advantage.
  • “If China can make its own compute, it’s very hard to see how we can catch up.” [06:50]

Jonah Goldberg:

• Pointed to the collapse of consensus on how to respond to climate change, especially in the West.
  • Noted the EU’s rollback of internal combustion bans and widespread re-embrace of coal/gas for energy capacity.
  • Tied this shift to AI’s massive energy demand, populist backlash, and climate fatigue.
  • Lamented loss of bipartisan, pragmatic approaches and Trump administration’s “pure vandalism” in removing scientific CO2 monitoring.
  • “The center of gravity on this stuff has just moved. And I think the inflection point came in the last year.” [11:31]

Steve Hayes:

• Argued erosion of the rule of law in the U.S., particularly tied to Trump administration’s overt targeting of political enemies, corrupt pardons, and foreign policy quid pro quos.
  • Feels the daily flood of these stories numbs the country to their lasting gravity.
  • “I think it’s contributing to increasing questions about the impartiality of justice today because of the stories that we’re seeing, because of the things that come out of the president’s mouth.” [17:31]
  • Wonders if the consequences will only become clear with time—draws Watergate analogy.

2. Most Undercovered Story of 2025

[28:05-45:00]

Michael Warren:

• The crack-up within the conservative movement and institutions.
  • Deepening battles over the meaning of "conservatism" post-Trump, spreading from think tanks (Heritage, ISI, Hillsdale) to local parties and college groups.
  • “A story…underappreciated and undercovered because so much of it is happening in these obscure, relatively obscure places…” [28:50]

Megan McArdle:

• Autonomous vehicles’ progress and potential.
  • Waymo’s rapid expansion and robotaxi fleet show remarkable safety; major resistance is bureaucratic, not technological.
  • Noted huge possible impact: 40,000 traffic deaths/year could be dramatically reduced, new freedom for elderly/disabled, future traffic management revolutions.
  • “Every human piloted car you take off the road is a serious reduction in the potential for accidents.” [34:19]
  • Chafed at disproportionate media focus on rare AV accidents; far less attention to human-caused carnage.

Jonah Goldberg:

• Escalating diplomatic crisis between Japan and China over Taiwan.
  • Media has missed the breadth of rising regional risks and the possibility U.S. might get drawn into a Taiwan war due to treaties with Japan.
  • “Tensions between Japan and China are pretty fraught right now…You can get on a cascade of geopolitical conflict because of our entangling alliances.” [41:31]

Steve Hayes:

• The national debt's dangerous growth.
  • Nearly $39 trillion, with bipartisan silence on entitlement reforms.
  • “Not enough people care about the debt now. And at some point soon, everybody will care about it.” [45:14]

3. Most Overexposed Person of 2025

[46:12-54:44]

Jonah Goldberg:

• Elon Musk.
  • Outsize media/cultural presence damages his actual achievements (“Shut up and make rockets.”).
  • “He is the only person that we know of right now that is already a household name, that has a non trivial chance of being remembered by name 5,000 years from now…But the guy…took his eye off the ball in ways that are just staggering.” [47:21]

Michael Warren:

• Olivia Nuzzi (journalist) and RFK Jr.
  • Grows weary of the endless media fixation on the messy drama of Nuzzi’s personal/professional life and the ongoing saga around RFK Jr., now a government official.
  • “There’s just been too much digital ink spilled on this story. And hopefully this is the last time that I ever have to professionally mention her or that whole mess.” [49:17]

Megan McArdle:

• Candace Owens.
  • Her brand of unfiltered, inflammatory antisemitism and bizarre conspiracy theorizing is not only toxic, but seems mentally unhealthy.
  • “She’s crazy…It is the kind of obsessive, spurious pattern matching that you see in people who are having serious breakdowns.” [51:26]

Steve Hayes:

• Marjorie Taylor Greene.
  • Overcovered, and now being cynically lauded by Trump-resistant media figures just for criticizing Trump.
  • “She’s overexposed. I’ve already said too much.” [54:21]

4. Best Piece of Non-Dispatch Journalism in 2025

[55:21-67:42]

Megan McArdle:

• Graham Wood’s Atlantic essay on Germany’s AfD (far-right)
  • Praises Wood’s ability to deeply understand—without excusing—the worldview of his subjects: “He really has a quite firm moral center, but he also really goes out and attempts to put himself in the mind of people that he really disagrees with.” [55:24]
  • Close runner-up: Nick Confessore’s New York Times piece on Chase Strangio and the ACLU’s legal strategy missteps on transgender care cases.

Jonah Goldberg:

• New York Times’s post-mortem on the Sierra Club’s wokeness.
  • Analyzes how the club’s move into all-encompassing progressive politics crippled its mission, and serves as a lesson for other legacy advocacy groups.
  • “If you make your institution…Progressivism Inc., then you are only as popular as your least popular position. And you start roping in…politicians in all sorts of ways.” [58:19]

Michael Warren:

• Antonia Hitchens’ New Yorker profile of Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce Secretary.
  • Masterful portrait brimming with telling scenes and revealing anecdotes, e.g., Lutnick’s phone number sticker anecdote: “She spends a lot of time with him and observes and sees and hears things that just make for great profile writing and magazine writing.” [64:44]

Steve Hayes:

• Derek Thompson’s Atlantic feature, “The Antisocial Century”.
  • Sober look at America’s retreat from in-person socializing and the profound effects on “personalities, politics, and even our relationship to reality.”
  • “Self-imposed solitude might just be the most important social fact of the 21st century in America.” [67:42]

5. Best News Story or Most Hopeful Trend of 2025

[70:11-end]

Megan McArdle:

• Breakthroughs in gene therapy for Huntington’s Disease and rare genetic disorders.
  • CRISPR-based brain treatments are slowing disease progression significantly—hopeful not only for Huntington’s, but as a milestone in treating other genetic conditions.
  • “We are in a biomedical revolution right now. And this is before AI—hopefully, AI can help…but even before that, it’s that cancer is getting more tractable…” [71:17]

Steve Hayes:

• Revolutions in gene therapy and cancer treatment, e.g. targeted cell treatments leading to high remission rates in childhood leukemia.
  • Cites BBC story of remission achieved by training donor cells to fight cancer.

Michael Warren:

• Personal, but universal: Celebrates the births and pregnancies among friends and family, a hopeful reminder “you can’t think that when you’re holding or seeing a new life.” [75:58]

Jonah Goldberg:

• Overall optimism as 2025 ends:
  • Noted downward trends in fentanyl deaths, homicides, and steady recovery of the ozone layer.
  • Political optimism: “For the first time in 10 years…I don’t feel like a fool for saying you can see the post-Trump era on the horizon…Once another way of saying that arguments are going to matter again is to say that to some extent, reason is going to matter again.” [79:09]

Panel consensus: Hope is found outside DC headlines—in science, medicine, everyday life. The Dispatch team underscores the quiet value of progress and resilience.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Rule of Law:

"Because he’s doing it in public and because he’s aggressive about it, it makes it less suspect...We don’t have to ferret it out. You don’t need investigations to find out that Trump wants to punish people because of their political party or their political positions. He tells us that that’s what he wants to do."
—Steve Hayes [19:04]

On Overexposure:

"Elon Musk does not generally benefit from sustained media exposure and neither do the people around him…Shut up and make rockets."
—Jonah Goldberg [47:21]

On Autonomous Vehicles:

"Every human piloted car that you take off the road is a serious reduction in the potential for accidents. And you could see kind of snowballing effects..."
—Megan McArdle [34:19]

On Hope:

"Babies are hope in a onesie indeed."
—Megan McArdle [76:58]

Important Segment Timestamps

• [02:21] — 2025’s Most Important Story (Immigration, China Tech, Climate Policy, Rule of Law)
• [28:05] — Most Undercovered Story (Conservative Crack-Up, AV tech, China-Japan tension, National Debt)
• [46:12] — Overexposed People (Musk, Nuzzi, Owens, Greene)
• [55:21] — Best Journalism (Atlantic on AfD, NYT on Sierra Club, New Yorker on Lutnick, Atlantic on Solitude)
• [70:11] — Best/Most Hopeful News of 2025 (Gene therapy, births, broader optimism)

Tone and Atmosphere

• Thoughtful, droll, occasionally exasperated but ultimately hopeful.
• Banter among close colleagues with occasional ribbing (e.g., joking about assigning coverage; jokes about “making Mike smoke again” or “babies are good” dispatch policy).
• The panel’s mix of deep experience, personal candor (on optimism, exhaustion, family), and sense of perspective keeps things brisk and substantive.

Summary

This roundtable is a nuanced, humane, and sharply observant look at 2025's world—balancing the weight of U.S. politics and global insecurity with the long-view of science, personal milestones, and the quiet but meaningful progress that rarely makes headlines. Whether dissecting foreign policy, marveling at biotech, or warning against celebrity overexposure, the Dispatch team offers clear-eyed analysis and, ultimately, a strong dose of measured hope for the future.