B.N. Vinnie, those, that's California for welcome to the January 13th edition of National Review's

Radio Free California podcast. I'm Will Swain. I'm CEO of the California Policy Center. You can find my colleagues and me at California Policy Center.org. You can find my friend and co-host David Bonson right here. He's an economist. He's the host of the Capital Record podcast. Give that a listen. The author of the book, Full Time Work and the Meaning of Life, and of course, he's founder of the eponymous investment firm, the Bonson Group. Hello, David. Hello, Will.

How are you, sir? I'm good, man. Greetings from California to you in New York. We're going to

talk a little bit about the comparison, the compare and contrast part of the essay here.

You guys have Zoran, Momda. Boy, am I really struggling with this guy's name,

Mondami. And we've still got Gavin Newsom. So I think those represent two real distinctive features of

the current Democratic Party. Before we get into that, David, I wondered if you would allow me

just a moment to travel back in history just a wee bit here.

It has been a strange week for California obituaries.

You and I, David, have skipped, I think, the really important and somber news of Michael Reagan's death.

He's the eldest son, was the eldest son, of course, of President Ronald

Reagan, a longtime California conservative commentator and radio host. He died this past week at the age of 80,

long battle with cancer. God bless Michael Reagan. Then there was Doug Lamalfa, who is a very young

65-year-old Republican congressman representing the first congressional district in Northern California.

He's a fourth-generation rice farmer, big champion of agriculture, water, and wildfire policy.

He died in the past week or so, age 65, as I said, during an emergency surgery.

That has left his house seat open and

this big kerfuffle over who will get to replace him. And then in pop culture news and maybe just

American cultural news, Bob Weird died, David. He's the Bay Area born guitarist, singer, one of the

founding members of the Grateful Dead. Whether you love the Grateful Dead or you don't, they are a big seminal pop catalyst in the late 60s and then throughout the rest of their career.

Bob Ware, one of those guys where I couldn't believe that he'd survived all that LSD dying at the age of 78.

But I wanted to talk about the fact that 97 years ago today, David, you and I are recording

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