Beer and Conversation Podcast

More than 60 years after Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty, how should we judge the results?

Pigweed and Crowhill drink a homebrewed “Texas Imperial Brown Ale” and take a look at Johnson’s creations — the Great Society and the War on Poverty — and discuss the ideas behind them.

How much progress against poverty was already underway before the programs began? Did welfare programs create incentives that weakened families? And after trillions of dollars in spending, what did America actually get in return?

Along the way, they discuss Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, wealth creation versus wealth redistribution, the decline of two-parent families, the changing political loyalties of black voters, and a question that applies to far more than government programs: Should a policy be judged by its intentions, or by its results?

What if the Monroe Doctrine is making a comeback — this time as the “Donroe Doctrine”?

Pigweed and Crowhill start with James Monroe and the original idea of keeping European powers out of the Americas, then consider whether Donald Trump’s foreign policy represents a much larger strategic pivot: away from Europe and global entanglements and toward a more economically and strategically self-sufficient Western Hemisphere.

They discuss Venezuela, Greenland, the Panama Canal, Latin America’s political shift, NATO, Europe’s immigration problems, the Falkland Islands, and whether the United States should continue spending its resources defending countries that seem increasingly unwilling to defend themselves.

Plus, before all that geopolitical trouble: a 16% braggot and a brief excursion into the strange world of fermented honey.

It’s another P&C Five for Five: five topics, five minutes each.

Pigweed and Crowhill start with a Festbier and then race through …

• Personalized pricing,
• The mania for renaming things,
• What the most common words in rap and country music say about the cultures behind them,
• The controversy over maps that make Africa look too small, and
• The growing effort to separate the T from the LGB.

Then, after the timer runs out, they stick around for a little more on pronouns, the role of comedians as modern court jesters, and an unlikely candidate for Man of the Week: King Charles.

Pour yourself a beer and join the conversation.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, Pigweed and Crowhill look back at the attacks, where they were when they happened, and what America did in response.

They revisit the confusion and fear of that day, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, expanded government surveillance, immigration, and America’s complicated relationship with Islam. They also ask why, a quarter-century later, alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed still hasn’t been tried.

What did America get right after 9/11? What did it get disastrously wrong? And after 25 years, have we actually learned anything?

Plus, an Oktoberfest beer and the important distinction between Märzen and Festbier.

For the first time in decades, rap has disappeared from the top of the charts while country music is surging. Has rap simply exhausted itself—or is something bigger going on?

Pigweed and Crowhill trace rap’s evolution from the relatively harmless early days of hip-hop to gangster rap and increasingly explicit music, and compare its treatment of sex, crime, rebellion, and regret with rock and outlaw country. Why does Johnny Cash shoot a man in Reno and end up regretting his life, while gangster rap so often turns the outlaw himself into the hero?

Then we enter Conspiracy Corner. Record companies, private prisons, USAID, the CIA, cultural manipulation, fake digital popularity—could powerful institutions have helped push rap culture in a particular direction? There are enough strange historical precedents to make the theory interesting. But there’s a larger question underneath it all: Are cultural movements actually orchestrated from above, or do institutions merely amplify movements that are already happening?

Plus, we review a suspiciously inconsistent six-pack of Baykeeper IPA and ponder the enormous cultural distance between “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” and Cardi B.

We tend to think of democracy as the natural state of a modern society. But what if it’s actually a historical anomaly that depends on a surprisingly fragile set of conditions?

In this episode, Pigweed and Crowhill discuss what makes democratic government possible in the first place: trust, civic virtue, respect for the rule of law, acceptance of political defeat, shared cultural assumptions, and responsible government. From the American founders’ warnings about democracy to tribalism, immigration, institutional distrust, government fraud, and a national debt approaching $40 trillion, they ask whether we’re undermining the conditions that allow a free society to function.

Plus, they review Goatman, a malty Bock from Baltimore’s Guilford Hall Brewery.

As Benjamin Franklin supposedly put it: “A republic, if you can keep it.” The question is whether we still can.

Giants are everywhere. They appear in fairy tales and mythology, in the Bible, in ancient legends, and even in modern stories from Afghanistan.

Why are stories about giants so common? Crowhill, Longinus, and Pigweed explore the Nephilim of Genesis, Goliath and the giants of Canaan, the famous Cardiff Giant hoax, and the bizarre modern legend of the Giant of Kandahar.

Then they ask a more practical question: Could a 12- or 15-foot human actually exist? The square-cube law suggests there are some serious problems with simply scaling a human being up.

Along the way, they discuss mythology, biblical interpretation, P. T. Barnum, gullibility, Shaquille O’Neal, André the Giant, ants, elephants, and why giants make such enduring stories.

Plus, they review a Vermont IPA from Fiddlehead Brewing Company.

For this installment of P&C’s Shortcut to the Classics, we turn to one of America’s earliest great writers: Nathaniel Hawthorne.

We discuss four of Hawthorne’s short stories — “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” “The Birth-Mark,” “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” and “Young Goodman Brown” — and find a surprisingly consistent vision running through them.

Can age make us wise? Can science perfect human nature? Are our flaws an essential part of being human? And what happens when a man becomes convinced that everyone around him is secretly corrupt?

Along the way, we talk about Hawthorne’s Puritan ancestry, the Salem witch trials, his place among the writers of the American Renaissance, his uneasy relationship with Transcendentalism, and his recurring fascination with sin, the devil, and the darker corners of the human heart.

Plus, we sample Dad Strength IPA and wonder whether 2.9% ABV is really an appropriate way to honor fathers everywhere.

The Lindsay Clancy trial ended with a hung jury after one juror refused to join the other eleven in voting for acquittal. And then things got really interesting.

Pigweed and Crowhill discuss the remarkable reaction to the holdout juror, the outrage that he wouldn’t go along with the majority, the revelation that he was a black man, and the media’s efforts to identify him and dig into his personal life. What does it say about our jury system if jurors know they may be publicly exposed and investigated for reaching the “wrong” verdict?

Along the way, we get into reasonable doubt, jury nullification, postpartum depression and personal responsibility, some uncomfortable implications for feminism, and the strange spectacle of a man being criticized because, as one fellow juror put it, he “couldn’t get past the fact that she brutally murdered her children.”

Plus, we open a two-year-old Goose Island Bourbon County Vanilla Rye Stout for a special occasion.

What if civilization didn’t begin the way we thought it did?

For generations, the standard story was fairly straightforward: hunter-gatherers settled down, developed agriculture, built permanent communities, and eventually created cities, temples, art, writing, and civilization.

Then archaeologists discovered Göbekli Tepe.

Built around 9,500 BC in what is now southeastern Turkey, Göbekli Tepe is more than 5,000 years older than the Sumerian civilization and more than twice as far back in time as the pyramids are from us. Its massive stone pillars, elaborate animal carvings, and monumental structures were apparently created by people who had no metal tools, no domesticated animals, and no established agriculture.

So who built it? Why did scattered groups of hunter-gatherers gather there and undertake such an enormous project? Why was the site eventually buried? And why does some of the older work appear more sophisticated than what came later?

Pigweed and Crowhill explore Göbekli Tepe, the Younger Dryas, the traditional story of the rise of civilization, and the strange questions raised by one of archaeology’s most fascinating discoveries. We also venture into the theories of lost civilizations and Atlantis—and ask how much mystery is left once the wild speculation is stripped away.

Plus, we review a pilsner.

What happens when people stop believing the justice system will deliver justice?

Pigweed and Crowhill start with the banned movie *Citizen Vigilante*, but quickly move into a much bigger question: Why do vigilante stories become popular when people believe crime is out of control and the authorities aren’t doing their job?

From Charles Bronson and *Falling Down* to Batman, John Locke, the social contract, and the state’s supposed monopoly on force, they explore the uneasy bargain at the heart of civilized society: We give up the right to take justice into our own hands because we expect the government to do it for us.

But what happens when that bargain breaks down?

Along the way, they discuss immigration and crime in Europe, censorship, the difficulty of talking honestly about politically sensitive problems, and why vigilante stories may be a warning sign that public confidence in institutions is collapsing.

Plus: Alpaca Riot IPA, the Streisand effect, and a surprisingly serious theory about the size of Batman’s ears.

Pigweed and Crowhill drink and review Cape May Brewing Company’s Coastal Evacuation Double IPA and ask a deceptively simple question: When are we going to live on Mars?

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Tesla, and even the Boring Company can all be understood as pieces of his larger vision of making humanity a multi-planetary species. And there’s a compelling argument behind it: Earth is humanity’s single point of failure.

But getting to Mars may be the easy part. What happens when we arrive? The boys discuss radiation, low gravity, Martian dust, atmospheric pressure, growing food, human reproduction, terraforming, and the uncomfortable possibility that people born on Mars might never be physically capable of living on Earth.

The problems are enormous. But perhaps that’s precisely why we should try. Even if Musk’s dream of a permanent Martian civilization never happens, attempting it could teach us things we would never learn otherwise.

On their recent trip to Mexico, Pigweed, Crowhill, and Longinus read Greene’s novel set in Mexico — a moral thriller about the relentless pursuit and persecution of a Catholic priest during the Mexican civil war.

A paramilitary group has outlawed the Catholic Church and is executing the clergy. A humdrum, milquetoast, “whiskey priest” is on the run, and a determined officer is trying to hunt him down. He’s stuck between duty and addiction, religion and survival.

Who was the greatest man who ever lived?

Yeah, okay, Jesus. But who was called “the greatest man” by his enemies?

That would be our first president, George Washington, who was declared the greatest man who ever lived by none other than his rival, King George.

Why?

Pigweed and Crowhill dive into that topic, and explore the amazing life and legacy of George Washington.

But first, they drink an IPA inspired by … Iron Maiden? What do they have to do with beer?

This show is part of our America 250 series. We hope you appreciate our efforts to highlight important parts of American history as we celebrate 250 years of this strange experiment in the American Republic.

Pigweed, Crowhill, and Longinus are back from Mexico with stories to tell. The trip takes them from the beach town of Sayulita to the sprawling metropolis of Guadalajara and finally to Tequila—where the agave fields are endless, the distilleries are fascinating, and the tour bus gets considerably livelier on the way home.

Along the way, they encounter mariachi bands, Mexican craft beer, cobblestone streets, scooters that would horrify an American safety inspector, mysterious walls topped with barbed wire, a spectacular rainstorm, and a culture that can feel simultaneously more relaxed and a little more dangerous than home. It leads to one of the recurring observations of the trip: part of Mexico’s charm is the feeling that nobody is quite in charge—and that’s both liberating and unsettling.

Pour yourself a beer and join us for a conversation about what surprised us, what we loved, and what Mexico looks like when you get beyond the resort.