Tennessee gave Christa Pike two lethal doses, and she survived. The Pentagon planned to livestream a firing squad execution until President Trump called it off.
Criminologist Dr. Matthew Robinson of Appalachian State University, author of Death Nation, joins me to explain what these stories reveal about capital punishment in America. He discusses why public opinion rarely shifts for long, how Pike could argue she can’t be executed twice, and why pickpockets once worked the crowds at public hangings. He also explains why lethal injection, the method that looks the most clinical, fails more often than any other.
Robinson isn’t arguing about whether some people deserve to die. His question is whether the death penalty works as government policy, and the evidence suggests it doesn’t.
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14 Oct 2026
From the Wright Brothers to Chuck Yeager in Only 44 Years
In the span of a single human lifetime, humanity went from wondering if flight was possible to breaking the sound barrier. This episode of Sidequests tells the story of that extraordinary leap — and the moment it all came together over the Mojave Desert.
But this isn’t just a story about one pilot and one flight. It’s about the compressed, almost unbelievable pace of change that made that moment possible — and what it says about what human beings can do when the circumstances demand it.
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8 Oct 2026
The Reality of Modern Deployments and Military Leadership
The USS Abraham Lincoln spent ten months at sea. It left port in peacetime and came home from a war, and port calls were ruled out because every nearby harbor was within range of Iran. Rich Kolko, a former Navy P-3 pilot and retired FBI agent, joins Keith Conrad to separate fact from viral photos. Kolko explains why the deployment's toughness was circumstantial rather than a failure of planning, and why social media is showing Americans what sailors have always gone through. He also weighs in on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's agenda, including cutting admirals and generals, creating a new autonomous warfare command, and bringing in outsiders to fix procurement. His verdict is that some ideas are overdue and others need a second look, but the drone war won't wait. The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle, and so does the work.
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