Explore every episode of the podcast The Rational Nationalist

Why do ordinary voters empower bad leaders—and why do political movements so often elevate extremists?

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis uses optimal-arousal theory to explain the paradox of political passion: emotion drives people to act, but too much passion clouds judgment, rewards certainty over competence, and helps the personalities most likely to abuse power rise to the top.

The answer is not apathy. It is emotional discipline: fiery hearts guided by cool heads.

Leadership requires delegation. But every time authority is passed from elected leaders to unelected officials, democratic accountability becomes weaker.

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis examines the unavoidable tradeoff between effective government and public control—and explains how bureaucracies can become increasingly insulated from the voters they are meant to serve.

When someone refuses to play by the rules, should you keep following them—or fight fire with fire?

Constitutional societies depend on more than written laws. They depend on reciprocity, restraint, and a shared expectation that today's winner won't permanently rewrite the rules in their own favor.

In this episode, Lee Ellis examines why constitutional systems work, what happens when that reciprocity begins to break down, and why responding to bad-faith tactics by abandoning constitutional principles can ultimately destroy the very institutions we're trying to preserve.

Why do ordinary people become devoted members of increasingly extreme organizations?

This episode explores the psychology of gradual commitment—from harmless slogans and small acts of participation to identity, groupthink, and institutional influence. Using a fictional anti-bullying movement as a case study, we examine how individuals and organizations become radicalized, why these processes often emerge without a central conspiracy, and how understanding them can help us recognize similar patterns in the real world.

Most people assume the majority gets its way. This episode explores why group decisions are often determined less by numbers than by the willingness of competing factions to apply pressure, and what that means for politics, corporations, and modern institutions.

Most people believe they follow the evidence wherever it leads.

In reality, we often do the opposite.

When confronted with information that challenges our existing beliefs, we rarely evaluate it objectively. Instead, we rationalize it, reinterpret it, or dismiss it altogether in order to preserve our preferred theories, narratives, and worldviews.

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis examines why people cling to beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence, the incentives that encourage theory defense, and how public commitment, social pressure, and personal attachment can distort our judgment.

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis examines how individuals and societies create "windmills" to fight. Drawing on the story of Don Quixote, he explores the psychological and social forces that cause threats to be exaggerated, narratives to spiral, and well-intentioned responses to become overreactions. From evolutionary instincts and strategic calculations to ego needs and institutional incentives, this episode looks at why the dangers we perceive often grow larger than the realities that inspired them.

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis examines how personal incentives influence decision-making inside institutions.

Although individuals are expected to act in the best interests of the organizations they serve, competing pressures—including career advancement, ideology, comfort, relationships, and ego—often shape decisions in ways that diverge from an institution's stated purpose.

Topics include:

• Fiduciary duty and organizational purpose • Career incentives and high-profile prosecutions • The Asch conformity experiments • Bureaucratic inertia and institutional culture • Ideology, ego, and self-image • Why organizations often drift from their original mission

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis examines why governments often appear less efficient than other organizations and explores whether that outcome is inevitable.

Using socialism, bureaucracy, and institutional incentives as a case study, the episode examines how organizations develop interests of their own, how bureaucratic structures expand over time, and why the goals of institutions, offices, and individuals often diverge from their original mission.

Topics include:

• Government efficiency and public trust • Organizational interests vs. stated intent • Bureaucratic growth and mission drift • Personal incentives within institutions • Why voters often feel they aren't getting value for their tax dollars • Whether effective government is possible

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis examines forecasting, probability, and the challenges of political prediction through the lens of game theory, chaos theory, and mass psychology.

Using the 2028 election as a case study, the episode explores deterministic vs. probabilistic thinking, why simple models often outperform complex ones, the psychology of certainty, and how incentives shape political forecasting and political behavior.

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis expands the discussion of mass politics from the national to the global level, examining how ideological coalitions, institutional power, and competing political systems shape the emerging world order.

The episode explores how the ideological divisions of the global populace correspond to the institutions shaping the current geopolitical order.

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis examines the internal divisions within the modern political Right, distinguishing between the Free Right and the Authoritarian Right.

Building on previous discussions of the Marxist Left and the Institutional Center, this episode explores nationalism, constitutionalism, political coalitions, and the growing tension between individual liberty and centralized power in modern politics.

The episode also introduces the “political megaphone” framework for understanding the relationship between government control, ideological extremism, and competing political movements in the modern world.

A look at how the global population had divided itself into transnational camps of Right, Left, and Center. We'll take a look at the Marxist Left and the Institutional Center, breaking down the transnational Right in our next episode.

We'll talk about how America never really won the Cold War - the enemy just transformed. We'll also distinguish between ideals and ideologies, and how the world's first capitalist Communist country is led by a honey-loving bear.

Throughout history, most people's level of political awareness was hoping that they would not get their crops burned and their families murdered by marauders.

During the Enlightenment, people learned to start thinking for themselves; during the Internet Era, they promptly stopped doing so. We'll examine the development of mass political awareness and activism that we see today.

People love dividing up into teams and killing each other, even when those teams are based on religions preaching pretty much the opposite.

We'll examine the Crusades and why Joan of Arc was willing to fight and die for a Dauphin who viewed people like her as little more than cattle.

We'll take a look to see what we'll need to get out of the Iran negotiations for it to have been worth risking a nuclear World War 3. Also, we'll start to make sense of the contours of a new global political system in which we're all players. 

Is Trump changing goals in the middle of the Iran War by substituting nuclear disarmament for "unconditional surrender"? Is he actually negotiating with anyone in Iran?

And, finally, is TACO (Trump Always Cowards Out) the sloganeering equivalent of poking a bear in the eye? Do we have answers, or just more questions? Find out on this week's episode.

Does Donald Trump's obsession with being the center of attention skew his views on the Iran War? What about the prosecutions facing Bibi, or the potential impact of the elections on the American midterms?

We'll explore the personal motives of both leaders and how they may impact their decision-making process, focusing on their decision to attack Iran.

The American public's position on the Iran War is surprisingly united and clear - do it quickly and cleanly, or don't do it at all. Trump is wagering his entire legacy on having this thing wrapped up by midterms. 

Trump clearly has reasons for his actions in Iran, but that doesn't mean they're good reasons. Just like weak evidence is still evidence, bad reasons are still reasons. We'll also evaluate the competence or lack thereof of the 'bros running the show' when it comes to Trump's foreign policy team.

Finally, we'll look ahead to the coming mental health pandemic as the TDS crowd tries to cope with the possibility of Trump leaving office in 2029.

The first in our series analyzing and drawing lessons from the latest Middle East conflict. We'll talk a lot about organized crime, since relationships between criminal organizations are, not surprisingly, similar to relationships among governments.

We'll also look at why it's important to keep your promises, zooming in specifically on Obama's Syrian "red line" and his inversion of TR's axiom. 

This episode examines the proper role of the judiciary, which, contrary to popular belief, is not to rubber-stamp the President's agenda or organize the resistance to it. In fact, it's surprisingly simple - just interpret the damn law.

The basic thesis is that Americans don't trust our institutions - the media, academia, and, in this case, medical professionals - because many of these institutions have been taken over by those driven by ideological agendas.

Restoring faith requires ensuring that those running these institutions are operating in good faith.

A lot of problems in this country could be fixed if a bunch of forty-somethings and older could figure out how to act like adults. Humility and emotional self-discipline are life skills this country desperately needs among its population.

It's not just TDS tearing this country apart - both the left and the right are so threatened by the tyrannical tendencies of their political opponents that they blind themselves to the threats coming from their own side of the aisle. On this episode, instead of pointing fingers, we'll examine the tactics used by totalitarian and authoritarian movements more generally.

Why do nations struggle to strategically pursue their long-term interests, even when they're clear and obvious? It's because the nation is an abstract concept incapable of conscious decision-making; instead, the decision is made by a number of individual human beings, most of whom will inevitably be selfish assholes.

We'll examine how individual incentives undermine group interests in this episode.

We'll take a look at how a petty, partisan pissing match between Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell took the once respected, impartial judiciary and turned it into a carbon copy of their own institution - a partisan joke that's devolved from a deliberative decision-making body to a literal streetfight. 

A democracy is only as strong as its people, and the American people kind of suck right now. At least we aren't Europeans, I guess. In this episode, we'll look at how the moral fabric of the people, i.e., their willingness to put aside individual interests to work for the common good, is an underrated and often overlooked part of what makes nations great.

Why do smart people so often act stupidly? As is often the case, we’ve known the answer since the time of the Greeks – it’s hubris, dummy. We’ll talk about how smart people are often so in love with their own intellectual superiority that it nullifies whatever epistemic edge they may have (I just learned the word ‘epistemic’ and, thus, am using/misusing it all over the place).

Power is what it's all about - all of politics is nothing more than the pursuit of power. On this episode, we'll look at why power is so alluring and get a little bit more judgmental than usual, looking at why people SHOULD pursue power. 

Then, because what people SHOULD do doesn't matter, we'll look at what they actually do.

The Iranian people are at it again, rising up against the ayatollahs. How far will they take it this time, and what can/should we do to help? Also, how much should the US care about democracy and democratic principles in our foreign policy approach?

Note: There is a quip about Davos that was accurate as of the time of the recording; however, they have since expelled the Iranian minister.

We take a look at Trump's foreign policy and what we can extrapolate from the Maduro raid, Iran strikes, and the National Security Strategy. Basically, Trump loves a good bargain, likes to stay flexible, and isn't a fan of either Europeans or Congress.

A lot of people are saying that Maduro's kidnapping/capture/extradition/etc. violates international law; others say that international law is a joke and it's naive to care. On this episode, we'll look at this argument, where international law comes from, and how it coincides with basic social norms such as not farting in an elevator.

With Trump's push to redistrict everything under the sun controlled by Republicans - and Newsom's attempt to establish himself as the Democratic frontrunner by outdoing him - gerrymandering is more relevant in 2026 than ever before. Here's a look at how the process leads directly to our hyper-partisan political environment.

How do you know your boss is having an affair with his secretary? We talk about how we use our senses to form the reality we live in, which ultimately is nothing more than a mental construction of our minds, and the impact that communications with others have on this reality.

Facts may be facts, but they can be interpreted very differently. These differences account for the fact that Republicans and Democrats often seem to live in different worlds. Also, I'll take half an hour to discuss a single question and spend a lot of time insulting someone who probably doesn't deserve it.

What would happen in a world with no racism and no sexism? For one thing, a lot of people (activists, NGOs, academics, pundits, etc.) would be out of work. This episode looks at an industry of individuals making their living off fighting social injustice and the perverse incentives this creates.

We look at how Americans have divided political discourse into right- and left-wing silos, and how this makes it more convenient to hate one another with optimal efficiency.

We examine the importance of making decisions based on how things are, rather than how we think they should be, using the Russia-Ukraine peace plan as a case study.

On this episode, we'll consider whether it matters what other countries think of the US (it does), whether we should care (we should), and how much we should care (not THAT much).

We'll take a look at how President Trump has expanded executive authority, how his expansion of executive power compares with similar expansions under previous presidents, and the long-term implications for our country of ever-expanding executive power.

We'll examine how Trump has shifted the paradigm on trade, and the pluses and minuses of his tariff gambit

We'll examine how a bipartisan consensus on trade led to the rise of Donald Trump, focusing specifically on how the political class ignored the impacts globalization had on the working class.

We'll examine why people feel the need to have an opinion on every single topic, even when they're completely clueless on said topic.

A brief overview of Rational Nationalism, the philosophical framework used on this show.