The Lincoln Review Podcast
All audio Podcasts on Soundcloud here. Videos of some episodes here.
I did a political podcast with Jeff Semon, who had a vision to create something from the right that looked for inspiration to William Buckley's Firing Line, and not conservative talk radio. (I agreed.) The goal was intelligent talk, deep exploration of issues, no talking over each other, no talking points, no over-hyping what happened today. We sometimes have guests, but not always. We are both Republicans, but we have different issues and styles of advocacy. Topics are state and Boston politics, with occasional connections to national politics. We've been doing it for more than a year, with nearly 50 episodes since we started in 2015. I co-hosted until March of 2018, and now I am just a contributor to it. (Jeff still hosts.)
We record almost all of them at The Lincoln Bar and Grill in Brighton, right next to WGBH and New Balance. It's a working-class place full of quotes by Abraham Lincoln, and we thought that was the right environment for what we wanted to do. We record while the bar is open, and there is always background noise and people that don't interfere with hearing us, thanks to good equipment.
Jeff does a great job with the technical elements of the podcast, which is lightly edited. It's closer to a conversation than a scripted commentary show. Are we succeeding? I don't know. I know we aren't failing. We keep evolving, and now we usually release a video version as well.
Below are three episodes we have done where we have received very positive reviews.
Interview with Steve Koczela
Steve Koczela is president of MassINC Polling, and probably the best pollster in Massachusetts. He has tremendous insight into state politics andwe talked to him about the lack of competitiveness in state legislative elections, how that happened, and what might be done about that.
Interview with Dan Kennedy
Dan Kennedy is a professor of journalism at Northeastern University and is a prominent advocate for journalism in Greater Boston. He is a contributor on several WGBH programs such as Beat the Press, and is a Neiman Foundation Fellow at Harvard who is working on the future of journalism. We interviewed him about the state of journalism in this time of great disruption, especially in Greater Boston, and why it matters to our politics.
Interview with Mike Dukakis
Former Governor Dukakis is still a very involved advocate for public transportation in this state. We traveled to his office to talk to him about the politics of rail in Greater Boston, especially the proposed North-South Rail link.