Today my guest is Andrew Shelley, author of the book, “American Butterfly”, an excellent exploration of the roots of the American culture wars through the lens of a deep-fried southern fish out of water. We explore Andrew’s transition from a boy born to a conservative southern family to a northern liberal living in Boston and how that has helped him empathize with and find value in the conservative voices that are increasingly shut down in our divided political environment. Don’t miss this fascinating dialogue between a liberal and libertarian searching for common ground in America.

BTC has far and away been the best performing asset class in the last decade, increasing over 8 million percent. However, the landscape is much more than BTC with six thousand other crypto projects in the marketplace. The most important of those is Ethereum, which differs from BTC in that its coin’s value is rooted in the utility of its blockchain as a development platform for other projects. Think of it as a programming language like Java or Python, where the developers can build really useful applications and be rewarded for success. Like BTC, Ethereum has grown exponentially since its introduction, to a market cap of over $267 billion over the last 7 years. If it were a stock, ETH would rank as the 40th most valuable company in the world, in between Netflix and Oracle. My guest Putnam from Stormborn Partners and I will try to unpack all this and more. Join us!

The fact is that middle ground in America is to the Right of where we are now, not further Left. The pendulum swings back and forth in politics but a razor thin Democrat majority in the House and an equally divided Senate, is NOT a mandate to discard the Constitution and re-do America as a socialist utopia. At best this is going to continue to alienate a least half the country and that is not unity by any definition. Doing what I say, or else, is not a negotiation. I pray that Joe Biden shakes off his obvious cognitive decline long enough to resist his party’s worst impulses.

Anti-discrimination laws have historically targeted a company’s intent but in 2015, a Supreme Court ruling allowed certain types of outcomes to be considered discrimination even if there was no explicit intent to discriminate. This is called disparate impact and we think this is really bad policy. It has the opposite affect of what our government intends. My guest Werner Kruck talks about how this dynamic actually raises costs and limits choices in the financial services industry for poor and minority folks. There are better ways to address inequities in our country. Join us in this fascinating “root cause” analysis.

Don’t miss this episode as I dissect all things Bitcoin and Crypto with my guest, Putnam Kling of the exciting new digital asset fund, Stormborn Partners.

Jim brings in his buddies Cecil Grant and Ted Zwijacz to provide an analysis of Biden's unprecedented 50 executive actions from the perspective of "the average Joe American."

I published my book, Locally Grown: The Art of Sustainable Government, in October 2019 thinking that I was at the forefront of a movement to restore America’s bottom-up constitutional design and its power to make government more responsive, holistic and sustainable. Silly me. I discovered a couple months ago that Charles Marohn has been turning grassroots principals into real action with his Strong Towns organization for more than a decade. This is one of my favorite interviews with someone who is a true kindred spirit. Our bottom-up movement just got a helluva lot stronger now that Locally Grown and Small Towns have discovered each other. Don’t miss this thought provoking conversation that will get you thinking about how to get involved in your own community to counter the crazy top-down thinking that has infected our country.

For those of you who have been listening to my podcast and reading my blogs, you know that I periodically focus on making a stronger more sustainable you, by bringing in interesting, smart guests who can help you make money. Last year I had Whitney Tilson to help you align your investments with the macro-trends he sees in the world. This week I am continuing that effort focusing on you, albeit from maybe a little different direction. My guest, Lyn Alden’s investment service, was introduced to me a really smart friend of mine, Dave Baggett who was also a guest on this show.

Lyn’s background lies in the intersection of engineering and finance. What a great combination. She has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in engineering management, with a focus on economics and financial modeling. She has been doing investment research for over fifteen years in various public and private capacities. Her work has been featured in Business Insider, Marketwatch, The Daily Telegraph, The Street, CNBC, US News and World Report, Seeking Alpha, Kiplinger and many other media outlets. You can subscribe to Lyn’s newsletter for free at www.lynalden.com, which is how I got started. This led to me joining her very reasonably priced premium membership, where I get access to her model portfolios and proprietary investment research.

Joseph McCarthy was a Republican Senator who became the public face of anti-Communism in the midst of the 1950's Cold War by using smear tactics to root out communist spies and sympathizers that had infiltrated government, academia and the media. Unfortunately, we are at the beginning of another era of persecution of political opponents using McCarthyism.

Christmas is a joyous time that calls us all to be grateful, enjoy family, and think about others. But there is also no denying the fact that Jesus was a revolutionary who was unafraid to speak truth to power. He had the ultimate skin in the game. So let's get out of our comfort zones, help our fellow man, speak truth to power and keep the flame of liberty burning bright. My New Year's resolution is to put more skin in the game.

Protests are a form of protected free speech that is vital to our nation. Our founding documents were designed specifically to protect us from government over reach and tyranny and ultimately recognized the power and duty of the people to resist that government when it fails us. In his timeless essay "Civil Disobedience", American philosopher Henry David Thoreau exhorts us to get up off our butts and speak out lest we lose our precious liberty. America has a great tradition of using music as a form of civil disobedience. As a child of the 1970's, I appreciated those songs that spoke about injustice and immorality, whether it was classic rockers like The Who or the punk music of The Sex Pistols and The Clash. Our country finds itself once again in dangerous times and I think a little Civil Disobedience might be in order.

More than 23% of our population is within the education bureaucracy. If that bureaucracy is becoming less tolerant of free speech, how can we expect the adults that emerge from that system to be tolerant of free speech? As time goes by, it will feel increasingly normal for those adults to become intolerant of speech they don’t agree with, and that intolerance will permeate all corners of society.

One of the most important state powers is to make and enforce election laws. The result is a hodgepodge of different rules that can vary widely across states. Some states require government-issued ID to vote while others view ID as racist or discriminatory. It's hard to believe there is such wide disagreement on something like this. Some states, like Georgia, have runoff elections if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, a situation we just witnessed a few weeks ago. A run off election on Jan 5 will decide two Senate seats and thus the balance of power for the country. Like free speech, non-uniform voting rules are not always pretty but the last thing we should be doing is trying to federally regulate any more of our key liberties. Still, some state voting rules are better than others if transparency and integrity of elections is the goal. Today my guests are Leslie Swann, the Supervisor of Elections for Indian River County Florida . It's clear to me after this discussion that our processes are best practice should be a model for other states and counties.

Well, here we are! What looks like a very narrow contested Biden victory, we are still a sharply divided nation with three tumultuous months until January 20th 2021, the date that the Constitution mandates that a new President must be sworn in. We have already learned a lot of important things from this election including the fact a few swing states with a few swing counties determine federal elections. Proof that "local" still matters in the power game.

A few years ago when my son was looking for a summer league basketball team to join, he came across a local AAU team that was really outstanding. He wondered if he was good enough even to make the team. When he inquired, he was introduced to Coach Antoine Jennings who gave him the low down on the requirements for joining his crew. It wasn’t like other AAU teams where you just tried out and if you were good enough, you were in. Crossover was different. In order to play, you had to meet strict personal, academic and tutoring requirements. Marcus had to commit to becoming an academic tutor at the Crossover Mission for disadvantaged kids before he would be eligible to join the team. When he told my wife and I about it, we were curious. As we learned more, it became clear that their mission was incredible, and we encouraged Marcus to get involved. Before you know, our whole family got involved tutoring kids. It’s been a rewarding experience and we have learned so much, not to mention making new friends. So, it is with great pleasure that I welcome Crossover co-founders Cathy DeSchouwer and Coach Antoine Jennings to our show to tell their incredible story.

I have always found it ironic how spirituality is usually low on the list of priorities when times are good but when times become difficult, people turn to God for hope and solace. Who hasn’t said a prayer when something bad happens that goes something like this? “Dear God, if you just help me get through this, I promise be a better person.” Or some version of the great prayer from Saint Augustine, "Lord, help me be good and pure, but just not yet." Like insurance, cyber security and the military, we often don’t value God and spirituality until we think we need it. And God always seems to find a way to deliver. Join me in discussing the weighty issues of who we are, why we are here and how to make sense of difficult times, with Reverend David Johnson, Senior Minister at the Community Church of Vero Beach, Florida. I hope this show helps nourish your soul.

In April of this year, I wrote a blog post entitled “Coronapocalypse.” Back then, I suspected that the Corona virus pandemic was overblown reasoning that politicians, scientists and the media didn’t have enough data and were being super cautious with policy. Six months later, the data indicate that the pandemic is definitely overblown but the reasons for the hype have changed. For months now, certain “health” authorities, the political class and their media hand maidens have relentlessly promoted a fearful narrative about the COVID-19 pandemic as if the daily count of new cases were a major public health emergency.

If we have learned anything in the past eight months, it should be that that lockdowns have questionable benefits that are hard to prove, but they impose huge economic, health and societal costs which everyone can see for themselves. The notion that we can just close schools, businesses, churches and sports venues—with the unemployed being compensated with printed money—until someone develops the magic vaccination and not suffer huge consequences is as whimsical as the idea that if California bans fossil fuels, its wildfires will disappear. The financial and emotional stresses that come from lockdowns are harmful to both physical and mental health and the evidence is all around us.

This one is an exciting deep dive into the future of work, the raging Cyberwar, Big Tech friend or foe and game planning for the outcome of the 2020 election. Join me as I dig in with two really smart and successful guys. Serial tech entrepreneur Dave Baggett and S&P 500 C-suite executive and Lockheed Martin board member, George Bailey.

As promised, I had Whitney back to talk about a mutual passion we have: Public Education Reform. But before we get to that, we talk about what the betting odds are for the November 3 elections and how to plan your investments for that outcome. Jim and Whitney are joined in a lively Q& A, by seven of Jim’s subscribers, that includes sales and financial professionals and school teachers. Don’t miss this one.