The 2026 election may look like a fight between parties, but some of the biggest questions cut straight across those labels. In this episode of Independent Conversations, Graham H. Walker sits down with Phillip W. Magness and Williamson M. Evers to examine the policy fights beneath the ballot: tariffs, billionaire wealth taxes, government stakes in private companies, war powers, antisemitism and AI regulation. The bigger question running through the conversation is simple: when both the left and the right are finding new reasons to expand government power, what exactly are voters being asked to approve?

Is income inequality really worse than ever, or are influential statistics overstating the problem? In this episode of Independent Conversations, Graham H. Walker sits down with economist Phillip W. Magness to examine the research behind America’s inequality debate, including Thomas Piketty’s famous “U-curve,” disputed calculations of how much the wealthy pay in taxes and the case for California’s proposed billionaire wealth tax. Together, they ask a basic but consequential question: before the government tries to fix an inequality crisis, how certain should we be that the data actually shows one?

Does acoustic gunshot detection actually make cities safer, or does it send police chasing false alarms while draining resources from proven public safety work? In this episode of Independent Conversations, Graham H. Walker sits down with Jonathan Hofer and Brian Hofer to examine ShotSpotter-style technology, accuracy claims, false positives, AI hype, surveillance bias and why cities from San Diego to Chicago have walked away from the promise of “smart” policing.