Finding Common Battle Grounds

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Ryan and Josh hold down the fort without Tom, who’s mysteriously absent—prompting wild speculation about his whereabouts, from fighting in Ukraine to joining Elon Musk’s secret DOGE team. The duo dives into a discussion about recent left-wing criticisms of Tesla and Elon Musk. Josh questions the strategy of targeting Tesla to

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we discuss immigration. The launching point for our discussion is a recent increase in murders and shootings in Sweden that are mostly stemming from gang battles between immigrants from Eastern European and predominantly Muslim countries. We discuss the violence and then explore to what extent that violence is tied to the cultures o

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Josh, Ryan, and Tom explore one of the initiatives of the Trump administration and DOGE - Elon Musks destruction of USAID. We examine what happened - that their expenditures were put on hold and the roughly 10,000 employees were told they were going to lose their jobs. Josh celebrates this. Tom points out some of the programs that U

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Josh, Ryan, and Tom discuss the recent spate of Presidential pardons - Biden's pardon of family, friends, and people in his administration and Trump's pardon of nearly 1,500 people who were involved in the January 6th riot. We pretty much agree, though how fun would a podcast be if we all just agree and don't fight over

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Tom, Josh, and Ryan discuss the killing of United Healthcare's CEO, Brian Thompson, by Luigi Mangione. Josh starts out by saying that it is murder and wrong. Tommy and Ryan agree that it was murder but also recognize that many see Mangione as a "folk hero" because they are so upset with health insurers who deny coverage a lot to max

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Josh, Tom, and Ryan explore new gender/dating norms. We focus on a recently published editorial in the New York Times that argues the advances women have made in education, income, and independence have resulted in men feeling confused about how they are supposed to interact with women and how to be a "man." Women in the US increasi

The 2024 Presidential election just occurred and Donald Trump won convincingly against Kamala Harris. In this episode, we examine reasons people gave for voting for Donald Trump, including: immigration, wages, funding for the military, the federal deficit, government bloat, stock market volatility, and identity politics. We spend a fair amount of time discussing identity politics,

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we tackle two topics. First, we discuss whether the government should help people rebuild if their homes are in zones that will continuously flood, burn down from forest fires, or be destroyed by natural disasters. We all agree that the government should not and that people should assume that risk at their peril. The government's ro

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we are joined by Vance Reavie from the Independent Center. We start with a lengthy discussion about independent voters - how many there are, what they want in candidates, what issues are important to them, and why they often feel marginalized in US elections. We then turn to the primary question of whether independent voters will de

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, Josh, Tom, and Ryan discuss the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and the instances of censorship taking place around the world. Amazingly, we have clear agreement on the debate - Harris won by baiting Trump and then letting him lose the debate by looking like a fearmongering crazy old man. The memes that re