Episode 20 - Jeff Howell on Knocking 5,000 Doors Running for State Office

Jeff Howell already had a lot going on: he was a father to three young boys (now four) with his wife, Caitlin; a sales manager at Workday; and an involved member of his Salt Lake community, volunteering at his sons’ elementary school and coaching youth sports teams. But, in 2024, he saw an opening and decided to follow in his father’s footsteps—Scott Howell served three terms in the Utah State Senate and was Utah’s Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in the 2000 and 2012 elections—by running as a Democrat for an open position in the Utah House of Representatives.

The campaign was grueling. Running for state office isn’t like running for national office, where campaigning is often a full-time job (Howell knew this from personal experience, having worked on Congressman Ro Khanna’s unsuccessful initial run for office in 2014). No—Howell somehow fit his very-heavy-on-door-knocking campaign into what were already full days—typically, by sacrificing sleep.

He didn’t win, losing a close primary in a Democrat-dominated district, but it doesn’t seem like Howell’s story ends here. I’m not placing any formal bets, especially on timing, but the sort of person optimistic enough to run for office in the first place is often the sort of person optimistic enough to give it another go. Howell and I spoke about why he decided to run, highlights from the campaign, what it felt like to lose, why he thinks a moderate approach is important, and how he feels about the current state of our national politics.

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Episode 19 - The Indispensability of Free Speech with FIRE’s Nico Perrino

Nico Perrino, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, is a busy man. For many of us who came of political age in the 2010s, FIRE first entered the scene as a stalwart opponent of campus speech codes and defender of students subjected to discipline on account of protected speech. With Democrats in the White House, free speech was often viewed as a Republican issue, and FIRE an activist organization dedicated to this conservative cause.

But that was never really accurate—it was founded by a liberal and is staffed by people from edge to edge of the political spectrum—and with President Trump again in power, FIRE has been busier than at any point since Perrino joined them full-time in 2012, working in the courts of law and public opinion to prevent the deportation of legal residents on account of their protected speech, oppose the president’s executive orders targeting specific law firms and rhetorical assaults on the media, and fight the implementation of new campus speech codes.

Perrino, the creator and host of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast, was kind enough to join me for an hour to talk about the early experiences that led him to FIRE, our shared appreciation as religious fellows for the great Christopher Hitchens, the most restrictive actions of the Obama and Biden administrations, the same of the Trump administrations, and why all of it matters.

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In this third episode of The Neophytes, recorded on April 23rd, Thomas and I discuss Katy Perry (the famed singer/astronaut), the symbolic value of an all-female space flight, William Shatner, the overview effect, and why we should or shouldn’t pay attention to celebrities’ views on politics, then ended with our reflections, as non-Catholics, on the passing of Pope Francis.

Our standard caveat: we are not experts. We have more information now than we did then, and we’ve spent more time thinking about it. Our conversation today would be different than our conversation held on the 23rd. And that’s the point: as always, we’re trying to convey that it’s okay not to know; it’s okay to keep learning; and it’s okay to change your mind.

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