The Neal Larson Show

Send us Fan Mail We’re officially in that “two-and-a-half weeks to Election Day” stretch, and it feels like the volume keeps turning up—forums everywhere, social media at peak car-wreck energy, and a lot of people showing sides of themselves that aren’t exactly their best. We talked through why we keep coming back to voting records and scorecards, even when people hate them: it’s the scoreboard. Context matters, sure, but pretending the score doesn’t exist just protects politicians from accou...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s show was one of those “hold on, a lot is happening” mornings. We kicked it off with the optics (and comedy) of King Charles showing up to Congress, the standing ovations, and the way President Trump and the White House lean into trolling narratives—because, like it or not, the left reliably takes the bait. From there, we dug into the bigger subtext: Americans can enjoy the ceremony without “welcoming a ruler,” but it also raised the question of why some on the left se...

Send us Fan Mail Neal Larson and Julie Mason spend the morning processing a heavy weekend: a third public assassination attempt against President Donald Trump and the death of Idaho statesman Dirk Kempthorne. We talk through the whiplash of covering high-stakes national news while also being knee-deep in an unusually intense legislative election season. On the Trump attempt, we push back on the “false flag/actors” narrative and point to how constant demonization and normalized calls for unres...

Send us Fan Mail Today felt like one long group-therapy session about politics—how exhausting it is, how obvious some of the games are, and how hard it can be to stay sane when you’re watching people run as one thing and govern as another. We talked about the weird reality that you can genuinely like candidates as human beings (Marco Erickson and upcoming guest, Jalene Berger, got called out as prime examples of “nice people you still have to scrutinize”), while still being fed up with the sy...

Send us Fan Mail Today was one of those shows where we admitted up front: the news cycle is a mess, and it’s hard to even know what deserves attention anymore. We talked through the flood of conspiracy-laced clips people send in (often with a weird demand that we *have* to watch them), and why confirmation bias is basically supercharged right now—especially online. We don’t have unlimited time, and we’re not interested in being dragged into an outrage treadmill. Instead, we focused on what *i...

Send us Fan Mail Idaho’s getting “discovered,” and with the population growth we’re seeing, we’re also getting a flood of out-of-state money and national agendas trying to reshape what makes this place work. We talked through what that looks like on the ground: dark-money mailers and attack ads aimed at conservative lawmakers (with Rep. Barbie Hart as the first big target), a likely marijuana initiative on the November ballot, and a broader strategy where groups that can’t win with Democrats ...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s show had that “debate day” energy right from the start—Neal Larson and Julie Mason set the table for a live legislative debate in Idaho House District 32B between appointed incumbent Representative **Aaron Bingham** and challenger **Brian McKellar**. Before bringing the candidates in, they walked through the bigger news cycle too: cautious optimism that the Trump administration might be nearing a deal with Iran, discussion about leverage around the Strait of Hormuz an...

Send us Fan Mail This episode was one of those “it’s Monday but it doesn’t feel like Monday” shows—because everything hit at once. We walked through the collapse of the Iran peace talks after a marathon 21-hour negotiation, with J.D. Vance central to the effort and both sides stuck on a non-starter: Iran’s nuclear future. From there, the conversation shifted to what happens next—Trump signaling the war is back on, focusing immediately on the Strait of Hormuz and using Truth Social as a tool t...

Send us Fan Mail Today we bounced between the global and the hyper-local, starting with the messy reality of an Iran ceasefire—how it’s not a clean “light switch,” and how a so-called “10-point deal” making the rounds was basically a media-fueled ghost document. The core point stayed the same: Trump’s red line is still no Iranian enrichment, and the chatter about him accepting an Iranian “wishlist” doesn’t line up with what VP JD Vance and Karoline Levitt said. From there, we pivoted back hom...

Send us Fan Mail Today was a real whiplash kind of show—in the best and worst ways. We spent a lot of time sitting in the wonder of NASA’s Artemis II mission: four astronauts (three Americans and a Canadian) pushing farther past the moon than humans have ever gone, including that surreal stretch of radio silence on the far side. For a lot of us, it hit the same emotional nerve as the old shuttle days—one of those rare moments where you can just feel proud of what America can do when we aim hi...

Send us Fan Mail The session is finally signed sine die, and it feels like a relief—but also like we’re closing the book on a year that was all over the map. We walked through the rough spots (budget turbulence, cultural bills, and the frustration of basically nothing meaningful getting done on immigration), while also acknowledging a few wins—like ending the flow of taxpayer dollars to teachers unions. The biggest “wait, what?” moment was the viral clip of Janie Ward-Engle King saying, “When...

Send us Fan Mail This episode was a whirlwind look at two big, very “right now” stories: the Supreme Court’s oral arguments on birthright citizenship (with President Donald Trump in the chamber) and the ongoing partial government shutdown centered on DHS funding. We listened in as U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer laid out the administration’s argument that “subject to the jurisdiction” in the 14th Amendment should be read through an allegiance/domicile lens—meaning not everyone born on U.S. ...