This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com Glenn welcomes back actor and writer Clifton Duncan to discuss the challenges facing artists in an era of intense political polarization. Clifton is currently developing a one-man show about the life and work of Thomas Sowell, and also writes about art, politics, and identity on his Substack, The State of the Arts . The conversation explores a delicate t...
May 18, 2026•1 hr 3 min
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com Taking a break from headlines, Glenn turns inward — reflecting on family as a source of stability amid political and personal upheaval. He's joined by his son, Glenn Loury II, for one of their occasional recorded conversations. Together they explore how family relationships evolve over time, keeping the memory of Glenn's late wife Linda Datcher Loury alive through a reading group with son Nehemiah, and looking ahead to Nehemiah's first ch...
May 15, 2026•55 min
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com Glenn hosted a cross-spectrum foreign policy debate featuring Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid, American Conservative writer Andrew Day, and University of Washington historian Daniel Bessner. The central question: what role should American power play in the 21st century? Hamid, author of The Case for American Power , defended robust U.S. military engagement abroad, while Day and Bessner — from the right and left, respectively — pushe...
May 08, 2026•1 hr 59 min
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com Scott Dolan asks what our best path forward is after Trump. Aaron Cara presents a theory about Glenn and John's disagreement over Trump’s presidency. Michael Maloney asks what Glenn and John think of a recent study of deceptiveness and claims of consciousness by AI . Jason proposes an intriguing parallel between AI and the cotton gin . Yan Shen asks what, if anything, the Dune novels can teach us about the Trump era . And finally, BB asks...
May 01, 2026•42 min
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com Glenn and John McWhorter reunite for their monthly conversation, starting with a familiar disagreement: Trump. John reduces Trump's governing philosophy to one word—"a*****e"—arguing his personality explains his chaotic, norm-breaking style. Glenn isn't so sure. He sees Trump as a more conventional figure responding to structural forces larger than any one leader, and argues that personality-based explanations substitute for the harder wo...
Apr 24, 2026•59 min
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com In this episode, Glenn hosts a virtual roundtable on incarceration, crime, deterrence, and community, drawing on two key texts. In the first hour, he spoke with Jeffrey Seaman, co-author of a Fordham Urban Law Review article arguing that true racial injustice lies not in the treatment of Black offenders but in the chronic under-provision of justice resources to Black victims. Better police clearance rates, they contend, would strengthen d...
Apr 17, 2026•1 hr 59 min
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com Glenn and Ben Peterson discuss his forthcoming book on how informal institutions — families, churches, neighborhoods — maintain social order where law and markets cannot. Peterson argues that reputation enforces norms more effectively than regulation: your neighbor's judgment carries more weight than a police citation. They explore criminal justice reform, where Peterson observes that "the left misses morality, the right misses grace"; ra...
Apr 13, 2026•1 hr 9 min
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com Last week's livestream featured Robert Cherry, emeritus professor of economics at Brooklyn College and author of a new book, Arab Citizens of Israel: How Far Have They Come? Bob is a labor economist who spent forty years studying discrimination in the U.S. labor market. His involvement with NGOs working in the Arab sector eventually led him to apply that same analytical lens to the situation of Arab citizens within Israel proper—not Gaza,...
Apr 03, 2026•1 hr 9 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com In this edition of Glenn and John's monthly Q&A sessions, they tackle subscriber questions about funding for the Iran War, Trump Derangement Syndrome, meritocracy, Israel, and other topics. The Glenn Show is almost entirely audience-supported , so to those of us who are already full subscribers, let me extend a heartfelt thank you. And if you’re not ...
Mar 29, 2026•1 min
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com Glenn and John McWhorter agree the war in Iran is a bad idea—so why can't they agree on anything else? On last week's livestream, the two clashed over what's driving the conflict, how it's being conducted, and whether Trump is capable of strategic thinking. John isn't troubled by targeted strikes on Iranian leaders like Ayatollah Khamenei; Glenn calls those strikes what they really are—assassinations—and warns that normalizing such a poli...
Mar 27, 2026•59 min
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com Glenn Loury welcomes Steven Pinker to discuss his new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . Pinker—author of The Language Instinct , The Blank Slate , The Better Angels of Our Nature , and Rationality —explains how “common knowledge” works in everyday life. Drawing on vivid examples—from a Soviet-era joke about dissent to the rise and fall of GameStop and crypto ads during Super Bowl LVI—Pinker shows how shared awareness shapes ...
Mar 20, 2026•59 min
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com Last week’s livestream presented a panel of guests whose political orientations and positions on the Iran War demonstrate the scrambling effect this conflict is already having on domestic political alliances. On the anti-war side, we have historian, foreign policy expert, and man of the left Danny Bessner of the University of Washington and the American Prestige podcast. He’s joined by Andrew Day, senior editor of the American Conservativ...
Mar 13, 2026•1 hr 31 min
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com In this segment from last week's livestream, Glenn and Boston University economist Larry Kotlikoff talk about the national debt, social security, personal finance, fiscal policy, and China’s seemingly inevitable path to becoming the dominant world economic power. Are Trump's tariff policies as wrong-headed as they seem? And should we be putting boots on the ground in Ukraine? Larry's Substack, Economics Matters The Glenn Show is almost en...
Mar 06, 2026•1 hr 35 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com On this livestreamed edition of the Q&A, John McWhorter and I took questions from full subscribers here at the Substack. Austin Ball asked for our thoughts on Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference. Art Eckstein asked for our thoughts on what he characterizes as the humanitarian left’s silence about the deaths of thousands of Iranian ...
Mar 01, 2026•2 min
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com On this segment from my latest livestream, John McWhorter and I are joined by journalist Tyler Austin Harper of the Atlantic . We discuss Tyler's latest piece for the magazine, which focuses on the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's influence over humanities research in the U.S. Tyler argues that the half-billion-plus dollars Mellon awards each year has allowed it to shift humanities scholarship toward an activist model, with identity-based so...
Feb 27, 2026•35 min
The Glenn Show is almost entirely audience-supported. If you’re not yet a full subscriber and want access to livestreams, Q&As, commenting, and other good stuff, click below to support TGS. We can’t do what we do without you. Click here to become a full subscriber. Video Links 0:00 Chloé’s theory of enchantment 3:54 Can a legal remedy solve a spiritual problem? 4:29 The human problem of stereotyping 8:26 Why Chloé thinks the rise of white identity politics was “totally predictable” 10:56 Gro...
Feb 20, 2026•34 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com In this episode of The Glenn Show , Glenn hops on the Friday livestream just hours after landing at Logan Airport following a Stanford lecture on self-censorship at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. Still running on adrenaline from the event, he talks with editor Mark Sussman about the influence of Kenneth Arrow, why self-censorship should b...
Feb 16, 2026•54 sec
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com In this excerpt from last Friday's livestream, Glenn formally introduces a familiar face to the audience: Robert Patton-Spruill . A regular presence on and off camera, Rob shares the winding personal and professional journey that shaped him, from growing up in a politically connected extended family in Boston to working in film and finding his own voice as a writer and director. He reflects on the influence of his father, James Spruill , ...
Feb 13, 2026•1 hr 5 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com On this edition of my monthly Q&A session with John McWhorter, we invited a handful of subscribers to record their video or audio to be played during our livestream. I think it worked great—I loved hearing everyone’s voices and seeing their faces. We’re definitely going to keep this feature around. And if you want to hear and see your fellow TGS fans...
Feb 04, 2026•1 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com This episode features a wide-ranging conversation on identity politics and global disorder. Glenn opened by discussing his recent UnHerd column on Elon Musk’s warnings about race war and calls for white solidarity, arguing that Musk exemplifies a troubling turn toward identity politics on the right and serves as a powerful “permission-granting” figure fo...
Feb 02, 2026•1 hr 31 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com Glenn and John examine the killing of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse shot by ICE agents despite video suggesting he had been restrained and disarmed. They debate whether ICE and CBP should be operating in city streets at all, the scope and priorities of immigration enforcement, and the tension between border security, limited resources, and proportional enfor...
Jan 26, 2026•1 min
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com Video Links 0:00 The crisis of belief and the crisis of speech 4:30 Michael: Deport the criminals, leave the gardeners 10:37 Michael’s list of the biggest, craziest, and most dangerous conspiracy theories 15:47 When trust in institutions breaks down 22:06 Why well-meaning people make absurd claims 26:01 Is Trump uniquely dangerous to American institutions? 29:04 Where Michael gets his news 31:49 How liberal institutions lost the plot 36:1...
Jan 23, 2026•1 hr 5 min
This conversation with Daniel Bessner is only one segment from last week’s livestream, which also included a conversation with my team about ICE’s action in Minnesota and an appearance by Murtaza Hussain, who came to talk about his reporting on the Epstein Files. The full show is available here , but only for full subscribers. So if you want access to everything—including viewing privileges for new streams and access to video and podcast versions afterward—consider signing up. The Glenn Show is ...
Jan 16, 2026•58 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com The Glenn Show kicks off 2026 with a strong episode featuring Murtaza Hussain on the Epstein Files and Daniel Bessner on U.S. actions in Venezuela. The episode opens with discussion of the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent, urging caution and fact-finding amid polarized reactions and official statements. Hussain explores Jeffrey Epstein’s opaq...
Jan 12, 2026•1 min
The Glenn Show is almost entirely viewer supported , so to those of us who are already full subscribers, let me extend a heartfelt thank you. And if you’re not yet a full subscriber, please consider becoming one . The Glenn Show can only do what it does through the generosity of viewers and listeners. For a mere $6/month or $50/year , you’ll get weekly episodes of The Glenn Show earlier than their public release, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, access to the full Substack archives,...
Jan 09, 2026•1 hr 2 min
Earlier this month, I recorded a conversation with my friend Patricia Agupusi, assistant professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an expert on insurgencies, political violence, and state capture, among other topics. She has lived and worked extensively in Nigeria, where her fieldwork included interviewing Nigerians displaced by political, ethnic, and religious violence. When I asked Patricia to come on the show, I was seeking some background on the Trump administration’s statements about...
Dec 29, 2025•1 hr 4 min
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com Video Links 0:00 The shooting at Brown University 8:09 The Hanukkah massacre at Bondi Beach 11:42 Ground News ad 13:34 Searching for a narrative in an information-thin environment 17:34 Is the pro-Palestine movement about “whiteness”? 23:26 Glenn: There’s more to Israel-Palestine than race 29:44 What does a representative American look like? 36:50 Trump’s inflammatory comments about the murders of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer 42:40 Trump...
Dec 26, 2025•1 hr 2 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com On this episode, shootings at Brown University and Bondi Beach, race or colonialism in the Israel-Palestine conflict, the tragic deaths of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer, Trump’s apparently poor health (and John’s speculations thereon), and John’s reasons for not writing a memoir. Plus, our monthly subscriber Q&A. Note: This episode was recorded befor...
Dec 22, 2025•3 min
Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com In this episode, in conversation with Robert Patton-Spruill, Mark Sussman, and Nikita Petrov, I provide an introduction to the life and work of Thomas Schelling and consider how a “Schellingesque” point of view might influence our interpretation of current events, like the Ukraine War , the “human shields” argument in Gaza , the Trump administration’s new national security strategy , nationalist and populist movements throughout the world...
Dec 19, 2025•1 hr 38 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com In this episode, in conversation with Robert Patton-Spruill, Nikita Petrov, and Mark Sussman, I pay tribute to Tom Schelling’s major contributions and the personal affect he had on me, as a colleague, friend, and, at times, surrogate father figure. We talk about Schelling’s understanding of battlefield commitment strategy , signaling , interstate conflic...
Dec 15, 2025•3 min
