Tiny Cars and 70’s Problems with Ben Sasse

Two institutional sectors are in both steady and rapid decline in terms of public trust: Congress and academia. Ben Sasse, former US senator from Nebraska and president of two universities, joins GoodFellows to discuss what ails Congress and how to fix it (based on his eight years in the Senate), plus how America’s educational system has set a low bar for readying students for higher learning and life after college.

Next the three fellows weigh the merits of the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy and what strategy there is (or isn’t) regarding Venezuela and drug trafficking; the shortcomings of fuel-efficiency standards; whether they’d buy an American-made “tiny car” (no way, says our resident former tank driver); and, with the World Cup coming to America in 2026, how to clear up the confusion between US-brand “football” and the international “beautiful game” that goes by the same name (Sir Niall’s solution: Change US football to “armored rugby”).

Recorded on December 8, 2025.

00:25 - Ben Sasse on Congress and Universities
09:35 - Congress and Decades of Collapsing Institutional Trust
18:57 - Entitlements, especially Medicare
26:46 - UC San Diego's Remedial Math Spike Exposures Failures from K-12 to Admissions
38:47 - Hamilton School Model Rebuilds Serious Civic-Minded Humanities
44:44 - Boards Should Own Curricula and Measure Real Life Impact
50:27 - Trump's New Security Strategy: Gaps on Russia, China & Allies
57:11 - Tiny Car and Fuel Standards
01:03:15 - Football vs Soccer vs "Armored Rugby"

Watch previous episodes of GoodFellows by visiting: https://www.hoover.org/publications/g...

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The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution or Stanford University.

© 2025 by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University.

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