Episode 24 - Decentralization as an Answer to a Polarized Media

There are many who believe our fractured, hyperpartisan media landscape is hurting the country and hurting us.

Don Templeman is doing something about it. When most of us hear “blockchain,” we think of cryptocurrency, or maybe something involving Legos—not so with Don. As an undergraduate at Wake Forest University, he studied computer science and served as business manager for the student newspaper. In Ethereum’s blockchain technology, he saw the potential for a decentralized media platform—for independent journalism with all the funding of a traditional newsroom, but without the editorial direction.

The problem in 2016 was financial—Ethereum’s per-transaction cost was prohibitively expensive, and would have required subscribers to the new platform to pay hundreds of dollars a month for writers to see any return. Don put his idea on the backburner, and began working in finance in New York City.

But in the last couple of years, Ethereum’s per-transaction cost dropped precipitously, and what was only theoretically possible before became actually possible. Don left his job to begin Aemula, the company he’d been thinking about for over a decade.

Aemula, in Don’s own words, is “a decentralized protocol for independent journalism on a mission to reverse the trend of polarization in media. Writers, editors, and contributors can collaborate freely, access institutional-grade community resources, and publish directly to paid subscribers while retaining ownership and creative control of their work. Readers gain the freedom to explore new perspectives by accessing the work of all independent journalists through a single $10/month subscription. Everyone can trust that the entire ecosystem is verifiably neutral, free from outside influence, and governed by a robust moderation protocol. Aemula is focused on building a diverse, incentive-aligned community of real people sharing real news directly from the source.”

I’m not a tech guy, but I can get on board with “verifiably neutral” and “free from outside influence”—all of my articles are published on Aemula not long after they go out on Substack.

I had Don on to talk about all of it—about Aemula, blockchain, media polarization, using AI to write code, and much more.

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Episode 23 - Former Rep. Ben McAdams on Congressional Function and Dysfunction, Ideas for Reform, Pelosi, Biden, Trump, and So Much More

I hope he wouldn’t take offense to my saying this, but Ben McAdams is a wonk. He’s kind, he’s smart, he’s pragmatic, and he really, really knows his stuff. He represented Utah’s 4th District in Congress from January 2019 to January 2021 during the back half of President Trump’s first term. To get there, he ran through the gauntlet of an R+19 district, beating a popular incumbent by 674 votes. The flagrantly gerrymandered 4th District was the most conservative district in the entire country to be represented by a Democrat over those two years. He lost his race for reelection by a few thousand, which might seem like a large margin once you hear 674, but was the fifth-closest out of the 435 races run in 2020.

Born and raised in Utah, McAdams was bitten by the political bug in undergrad at the University of Utah, when encouragement from a professor and the free buddy pass of a friend who worked for Delta brought him to President Bill Clinton’s second inaugural address in January 1997. That prompted McAdams to intern for Ralph Becker, then a member of Utah’s state senate. After graduation, he attended Columbia Law School—as did his wife, whom he had known since high school and married before leaving Utah—and spent a few years practicing at one of Wall Street’s top firms, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, before returning to Utah. Not long later, he was poached from a new firm by his old boss, Becker, now mayor of Salt Lake City. McAdams served as a senior advisor to Becker, and spearheaded efforts to gain the conservative state legislature’s agreement to stand aside and let the mayor lead Salt Lake City in keeping with the more progressive politics of its residents. That led McAdams to his own stint in the state senate, and then to a term and a half as mayor of Salt Lake County—the second term being interrupted by the fact he needed to be sworn in as a member of the United States House of Representatives.

Now out of politics, McAdams is having what seems to be an awfully good time using his background in law and especially as a county mayor to advise state, county, and city governments on creating revenue and other public benefits from government-owned real estate through public-private partnerships. As it turns out—perhaps this isn’t a surprise—governments often hold millions and even billions of dollars worth of real estate that isn’t really benefiting much of anyone—and that they might not even know about. McAdams is trying to change that—to help other governments do what he did when he led Salt Lake County.

McAdams joined me last week to discuss his path to politics, what it was like running for and serving in Congress, why he didn’t support Representative Nancy Pelosi in her bid to again serve as Speaker of the House, and his views on the Biden administration and the Trump administration so far.

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Episode 22 - Zachary Elwood on the What, Why, and How of Depolarization

“America is deeply divided. We don't just disagree on the issues; we increasingly view people on the ‘other side’ as profoundly immoral and dangerous. This leads to many of us seeing ‘beating the other side’ as taking precedence over everything else. In our anger and fear, we can act in aggressive, unfair, and insulting ways ways — often without being aware of how our behaviors affect our adversaries.

To avoid worst-case scenarios of chaos, dysfunction, and violence, we need more people — from politicians to pundits to everyday citizens — to have a better understanding of how toxic conflict works and how it grows. We need more people to see that much of our contempt and fear is based on distorted, overly pessimistic views of the ‘other side.’ We need more people to see how our overly negative views of each other create a self-reinforcing feedback cycle of conflict.”

That’s from the book jacket of Defusing American Anger: A Guide to Understanding Our Fellow Citizens and Reducing Us-vs-Them Polarization, by Zachary Elwood. Zach is a former professional poker player, the author of three books on poker tells and two books on depolarization, and, in my view, perhaps the most consistent and productive depolarization advocate on Substack today.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Zach and I discussed why the point of depolarization isn’t to argue less, but to argue better, and walked through practical tips for people who want to help depolarize our politics while pushing hard to advocate for their views and expand their coalitions.

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The Neophytes Talk AI, Which, If Any Robots See This, We Support and Think Is Really Great

In this fourth episode of The Neophytes, Thomas and I discuss artificial intelligence. Put briefly, I’m concerned. I’m concerned not just about what AI will do to the job market—in the long run, new technologies have historically created as many jobs as they destroyed or altered, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be short term pain—but about what it will do to us. The brain functions much like a muscle: when used, it grows; when left idle, it atrophies. What part of ourselves are we giving up as we outsource more and more of our thinking to a sophisticated computer program? What does that mean for K-12 education policy? What does that mean for adults in the workforce? What does that mean for seniors working to fend off age-related decline?

Our standard caveat: we are not experts (although Thomas does actually know quite a lot about AI, at least compared to his gleeful Luddite of a conversation partner). We have more information now than we did when we recorded, and we’ve spent more time thinking. Our conversation would be different if we held it again today. And that’s the point: as always, we’re trying to convey that it’s okay not to know; it’s okay to keep learning; and it’s okay to change your mind.

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Episode 20 - Jeff Howell on Knocking 5,000 Doors Running for State Office

Jeff Howell already had a lot going on: he was a father to three young boys (now four) with his wife, Caitlin; a sales manager at Workday; and an involved member of his Salt Lake community, volunteering at his sons’ elementary school and coaching youth sports teams. But, in 2024, he saw an opening and decided to follow in his father’s footsteps—Scott Howell served three terms in the Utah State Senate and was Utah’s Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in the 2000 and 2012 elections—by running as a Democrat for an open position in the Utah House of Representatives.

The campaign was grueling. Running for state office isn’t like running for national office, where campaigning is often a full-time job (Howell knew this from personal experience, having worked on Congressman Ro Khanna’s unsuccessful initial run for office in 2014). No—Howell somehow fit his very-heavy-on-door-knocking campaign into what were already full days—typically, by sacrificing sleep.

He didn’t win, losing a close primary in a Democrat-dominated district, but it doesn’t seem like Howell’s story ends here. I’m not placing any formal bets, especially on timing, but the sort of person optimistic enough to run for office in the first place is often the sort of person optimistic enough to give it another go. Howell and I spoke about why he decided to run, highlights from the campaign, what it felt like to lose, why he thinks a moderate approach is important, and how he feels about the current state of our national politics.

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Episode 19 - The Indispensability of Free Speech with FIRE’s Nico Perrino

Nico Perrino, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, is a busy man. For many of us who came of political age in the 2010s, FIRE first entered the scene as a stalwart opponent of campus speech codes and defender of students subjected to discipline on account of protected speech. With Democrats in the White House, free speech was often viewed as a Republican issue, and FIRE an activist organization dedicated to this conservative cause.

But that was never really accurate—it was founded by a liberal and is staffed by people from edge to edge of the political spectrum—and with President Trump again in power, FIRE has been busier than at any point since Perrino joined them full-time in 2012, working in the courts of law and public opinion to prevent the deportation of legal residents on account of their protected speech, oppose the president’s executive orders targeting specific law firms and rhetorical assaults on the media, and fight the implementation of new campus speech codes.

Perrino, the creator and host of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast, was kind enough to join me for an hour to talk about the early experiences that led him to FIRE, our shared appreciation as religious fellows for the great Christopher Hitchens, the most restrictive actions of the Obama and Biden administrations, the same of the Trump administrations, and why all of it matters.

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In this third episode of The Neophytes, recorded on April 23rd, Thomas and I discuss Katy Perry (the famed singer/astronaut), the symbolic value of an all-female space flight, William Shatner, the overview effect, and why we should or shouldn’t pay attention to celebrities’ views on politics, then ended with our reflections, as non-Catholics, on the passing of Pope Francis.

Our standard caveat: we are not experts. We have more information now than we did then, and we’ve spent more time thinking about it. Our conversation today would be different than our conversation held on the 23rd. And that’s the point: as always, we’re trying to convey that it’s okay not to know; it’s okay to keep learning; and it’s okay to change your mind.

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Episode 17 - Khaair Morrison on Malcolm X, Family, Activism in New York City, and the Moment for Democrats

Khaair Morrison is a man of multiple worlds.

In one, he’s an activist of notable talent and remarkable heritage: his grandfather, Abdullah Abdur-Razzaq, was a longtime friend and associate of Malcolm X, and served as his close aide and chief secretary in the last year of his life (in interview here); his grandmother, Ora Abdur-Razzaq, dissatisfied with the educational opportunities available to her children, began a home school in 1971 that grew into Cush Campus Schools, a private school for inner-city youth that was still going strong when Khaair was a student more than three decades later; and Khaair himself was making moves when he was just 15, heading a successful student-led push to prevent New York taking away free metro cards for high schoolers—here he is to the right of Jay Walder, then head of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

In another, he’s a corporate lawyer, an up-and-coming talent in a white shoe, white collar world. After law school at Howard University, he went to Skadden, where we met as summer associates and then became friends as first-year mergers & acquisitions lawyers. From Skadden, he jumped to Freshfields, another international powerhouse, and to Debevoise & Plimpton, again a top firm. Recently, he took the leap into private equity.

And finally, to the extent this is separable from either of the prior two, he’s a gifted political connector; Khaair knows everybody, and everybody knows Khaair. I attended a few political fundraisers during my time in New York—each time, at the invitation of one Khaair Morrison.

In a fun two hours that could have been four, Khaair and I touched on a portion of his family background, how he got his start in political involvement, his frustrations with and recommendations for the Democratic Party, why he tends to get along well with Republicans, and a whole lot more.

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