I’m back with John McWhorter for the latest installment of our ongoing conversation. John hit some technical snags in the first ten minutes of the recording, so apologies if the beginning sounds a little jumpy. After that, things smooth out. On to the conversation. We begin by talking about my memoir , which is now, after years of false starts, humming along nicely. But the process has forced me to confront some very dark episodes from my past , and they don’t always cast me in the most flatteri...
Nov 04, 2022•1 hr 14 min
As I mentioned at the start of our latest subscriber-only Q&A episode, John McWhorter recently received the 2022 Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education , bestowed by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. According to the ACTA, the award honors “individuals who have made an extraordinary contribution to liberal arts education, core curricula, and the teaching of Western Civilization and American history.” Perhaps I’m biased, but I can think of no one w...
Oct 30, 2022•9 min
0:00 How Rafael came to the Manhattan Institute 7:33 Rafael’s new book, Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most 15:35 Is prison the right response to violent crime? 26:20 Why Rafael believes in three-strikes-type sentencing guidelines 31:42 Incarceration may lower crime, but is it just? 41:54 Rafael: Defunding the police is an indefensible idea 49:34 Should we worry about racial disparities in the non-deadly use of force by police? 1:...
Oct 28, 2022•1 hr 15 min
0:00 Is racist heckling at sporting events a real problem? 15:13 John: “If you can’t be made fun of, you’re not part of the group” 26:42 The LA County Federation of Labor racism scandal 34:10 Why is there no Latino Michael Brown? 41:22 Exalting (and exaggerating) the victim role 47:47 Glenn’s daughter’s upcoming appearance on The Glenn Show 49:48 Elite discrimination against Asians Links and Readings John’s NYT piece, “What a Report of Extreme Racism Teaches Us” Wilfred Reilly’s book, Hate Crime...
Oct 21, 2022•59 min
0:00 Matt’s profile of the artist Rahmaan Statik 11:26 Chicago’s “Great Unraveling” 20:41 Is Chicago slouching toward dystopia? 29:50 How will the near-end of cash bail affect crime in Chicago? 33:24 The responsibilities of teachers, parents, and the police 46:59 A snapshot of crime in Chicago 52:26 Matt runs the numbers on Illinois’s out-of-wedlock births 1:02:44 Lori Lightfoot’s prospects for reelection Links and Readings Matt’s book, What Next, Chicago?: Notes of a Pissed-Off Native Son Wirep...
Oct 14, 2022•1 hr 10 min
0:00 Is Florence Price’s music worthy of its current popularity? 12:20 The decline of blind auditions 18:27 Do diverse orchestras attract diverse audiences and musicians? 23:26 Why Don is protecting his real identity 27:00 Glenn delivers a soliloquy on humanity 32:06 John: Eliminating blind auditions is “bat s**t crazy” 38:22 Should John’s daughters benefit from affirmative action? Links and Readings Don’s Substack, The Podium Don’s series on Florence Price: Part One , Part Two , Part Three Flor...
Oct 07, 2022•55 min
This week I welcome Lara Bazelon back to the show. Lara is a lawyer, a professor of law, and the author of several books, including the excellent novel A Good Mother . Lara is also an energetic free speech advocate who has taken some principled stands that have, at times, put her at odds with other progressives. We begin by discussing Lara’s decision to represent a college student, “John,” who had been found culpable for the alleged rape of a fellow student . Lara explains how the Title IX regul...
Sep 30, 2022•1 hr 6 min
This week, John McWhorter and I welcome special guest Ian Rowe to TGS. Ian is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the founder and CEO of Vertex Enterprise Academies , and author of the new book Agency: The Four Point Plan (F.R.E.E.) for ALL Children to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative and Discover Their Pathway to Power . Ian is doing outstanding work establishing charter schools throughout New York City, so John and I invited him on to discuss his efforts, among other topics....
Sep 23, 2022•1 hr 9 min
Source post 0:00 Introducing Glenn Loury 8:50 What is “social capital”? 19:24 Racial inequality and self-segregation 30:01 Glenn: “The jig is up” on affirmative action 39:45 Balancing preferences and colorblindness 45:35 Rethinking the welfare state 55:41 Why Glenn’s forthcoming memoir is titled The Enemy Within This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe...
Sep 16, 2022•1 hr 13 min
0:00 What’s on the menu for Glenn’s birthday party 4:49 John’s Twitter spat with Ibram X. Kendi 14:05 What do we lose by changing testing standards? 20:39 Glenn: If groups matter, then culture matters 32:04 How to prove a racist wrong 39:19 The ballad of Glenn and Woody 51:50 Mitchell S. Jackson’s Esquire essay about Clarence Thomas Links and Readings John and Ibram X. Kendi on Twitter, part one John and Ibram X. Kendi on Twitter, part two John’s NYT piece, “Lower Black and Latino Pass Rates Don...
Sep 09, 2022•1 hr 9 min
Normally this week I would post a conversation with John McWhorter. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, we were unable to record. He’ll be back next week. This week, I’m presenting my conversation with Steve McIntosh, President, Co-Founder, and Director of the Institute for Cultural Evolution . I’ve already spoken with two ICE fellows this year— Stephanie Lepp and Greg Thomas —so this TGS episode constitutes a continuation of the series. I ask Steve about his latest book, Developmental Pol...
Sep 02, 2022•1 hr 12 min
This week, one of the most controversial TGS guests of all time returns: Penn Law professor Amy Wax . She’s currently in a dire predicament. Her job is on the line. Whatever you think of Amy’s positions, there are issues at play in her case that have implications for people of all political persuasions, and she deserves to be heard out . Amy begins by recounting the events that have led up to her conflict with the administration at Penn Law and taking issue with the charges leveled at her by the...
Aug 26, 2022•1 hr 5 min
John McWhorter is back, reporting from his Catskills bungalow for the latest installment in our ongoing conversation. Let’s get into it. While I’m at home rather than a bungalow, I’m fresh off a wonderful vacation in North Carolina , which I spent surrounded by my wife, children, and grandchildren. Two of my granddaughters are now young women in college and law school, and they had some questions for me about some of the public positions I’ve taken. I recount the discussions I had with them abou...
Aug 19, 2022•1 hr 12 min
As I announced last week, we here at the newsletter and The Glenn Show have a new partner: the Manhattan Institute. I realize some of you may not be familiar with the Institute’s work and point of view, so today I’ve got Manhattan Institute President Reihan Salam on the show to talk about what the Institute does and how some of its scholars and fellows are thinking about the problems facing New York and other American cities today. The Manhattan Institute is often regarded as a conservative plac...
Aug 12, 2022•1 hr 4 min
This week on The Glenn Show, John McWhorter and I are joined by Richard Wolff , Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Visiting Professor of International Affairs at the the New School. Richard is Marxian in his orientation and I am not, so we do some debating here. And while we may not agree on much as far as economics goes, we do share some concerns about the direction of the left in this country. Before the conversation, I make an important announcemen...
Aug 05, 2022•53 min
This week, we’re getting into cosmic terrain here on The Glenn Show with my guest and Brown University colleague, theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander. Steph takes his inspiration not just from other physicists but from artists and musicians as well. And I can report from personal experience that he is a tremendous jazz saxophonist . For him, there’s nothing superficial about the relationship between science and art . His first book, The Jazz of Physics , explores the connection between music...
Jul 29, 2022•1 hr 17 min
John McWhorter is back again for one of our twice-monthly conversations. This is a hot one, so let’s get into it. In this week’s episode, we discuss three controversial figures: Herschel Walker, Clarence Thomas, and Amy Wax . We begin with John’s outstanding column about Walker, the Republican candidate for Senate in Georgia. John pulls no punches. He sees Walker as an insultingly underqualified contender meant solely to attract Georgia’s sizable black vote. John argues that Walker seems to have...
Jul 22, 2022•1 hr 22 min
My guest this week is my friend Rajiv Sethi. Rajiv is Professor of Economics at Barnard College, Columbia University and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and he writes an occasional newsletter at Imperfect Information . He’s published widely on problems of crime and segregation, among many other topics, and as you’ll hear in this conversation, he’s done some deep thinking about an area that is sadly pertinent to our society today: gun violence. I first ask Rajiv to catch me up on ho...
Jul 15, 2022•1 hr 24 min
Last month, John McWhorter and I participated in Heterodox Academy’s 2022 conference in Denver, Colorado. We spoke in front of an audience and discussed how to model constructive disagreement. But before that, we had a bit of a warm-up session with Zach Rausch, host of the Heterodox Out Loud podcast. Zach had us in to talk about our long relationship as conversation partners, civil discourse, and the purpose of the university. Newer listeners may be interested to hear about my “origin story” wit...
Jul 10, 2022•22 min
A couple weeks ago, The Glenn Show returned to New York’s Comedy Cellar . This time I was joined by John McWhorter and a trio of fantastic comics: Sherrod Small, Jon Laster, and Nimesh Patel . There were a lot of laughs and a lot big questions addressed, so let’s get into it. John and I begin with a comment left on one of our previous conversations from an economically disadvantaged white man who recounted his frustrated attempts to get into law school . Affirmative action helps elevate women an...
Jul 08, 2022•1 hr 22 min
As many of you know, Nikita Petrov , Creative Director of The Glenn Show and this newsletter, is Russian. He left his country after the invasion of Ukraine. Since then, the war and the role of Russian individuals in it have been weighing heavily on his mind, along with broader questions about responsibility and belonging. In this episode of The Glenn Show, Nikita and I discuss the problems of group affiliation and government action . When large-scale political and civil conflict fragments a soci...
Jul 01, 2022•1 hr 31 min
John McWhorter is back again for the latest installment in our ongoing, nearly decade-and-a-half-long conversation. Let’s get into it. John starts out telling us about his current whereabouts: a Dirty Dancing -style bungalow in the Catskills . We move on to a developing story out of Princeton, New Jersey, where a group of parents has written an open letter protesting the school district’s “dumbing down” of the math curriculum in the name of DEI. John and I are on the same page on this one: How m...
Jun 24, 2022•1 hr 10 min
For this week’s episode, I’m joined by NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt , author of several books, including (with Greg Lukianoff) The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure and The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion . Jonathan is also the co-founder of Heterodox Academy , where I serve on the advisory council. Despite that connection, this is our first extended public conversation. This is not, ho...
Jun 17, 2022
John McWhorter is back once more for an episode of The Glenn Show, so let’s get into it. I begin by reporting on my current “European Tour.” Last week I spoke at the London School of Economics, and I’m currently headed from Toulouse, France to Marseille to deliver the keynote address at the International Conference on Public Economic Theory. It’s been quite an enlightening experience so far, as I’ve gotten a look at how young black European economists are thinking about inequities within and wit...
Jun 10, 2022•1 hr 6 min
Earlier this year, I announced that I would be donating 10% of the net income from this newsletter to the Woodson Center to support the vital work that they do. I also want to use the newsletter and TGS as a platform to promote the work of Woodson Center-affiliated organizations that are making change on the ground in communities around the country. My first guest in what I hope will be a long ongoing series is Sylvia Bennett-Stone, Director of Voices of Black Mothers United, who is joined by Ro...
Jun 03, 2022•52 min
This week, I’m back with my friend John McWhorter. A lot has happened since we last spoke, so let’s get to it. We begin by discussing the horrific, racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo, New York . John states that, among other things, the event makes him wish we had a word besides “racism” to help us distinguish between truly racist acts like that shooting and situations where there may be racial disparities but no actual racism present. One of the shooter’s motivations was so-called “gre...
May 27, 2022•1 hr 7 min
This week’s episode is a throwback to 2015, when Daniel Kaufman, professor of philosophy at Missouri State University, editor of the online magazine the Electric Agora , and (at that time) a mainstay on bloggingheads.tv and meaningoflife.tv , invited me onto his show Sophia. I stumbled across this video again last month, and I think it remains an illuminating discussion that addresses some fundamental questions about economics and the social sciences. We begin by discussing the “science” part of...
May 20, 2022•1 hr 15 min
This week’s plan for the show was to have Edmund Santurri, professor of philosophy and religion at St. Olaf College, join John McWhorter and I to talk about his soon-to-be terminated appointment as the director of the college’s Institute for Freedom & Community . Ed’s situation is the latest instance of a college’s administration folding to pressure from left-wing activists (more on that below). Unfortunately, Ed was only able to join us for the very beginning of this episode before tech glitche...
May 13, 2022•1 hr 7 min
This week, I welcome Briahna Joy Gray to TGS. I’ve appeared on her podcast, Bad Faith , and now she’s here to return the favor. Briahna and I have some pretty pronounced political differences—she’s the former National Press Secretary for Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, after all. But we get along anyway, because we both believe in the importance of free speech and open debate. And make no mistake, there is a lot of debate in this episode. [Note: We recorded this conversation at Brown’s W...
May 06, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Normally I would post one of my bi-weekly conversations with John McWhorter today, but John and I had too many scheduling conflicts to find time to talk this week (he’ll return in two weeks). So in his stead, I’m talking with Greg Thomas , co-founder of the Jazz Leadership Project and senior fellow at the Institute for Cultural Evolution. We begin by discussing Greg’s work with the Jazz Leadership Project , which uses the principles of jazz to train leaders within businesses and organizations. H...
Apr 25, 2022•54 min
