This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live We welcomed a truly important thinker onto the podcast this week. Walter Russell Mead joined us to discuss his latest book The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People . Many critics of American foreign policy have long pointed to our long-standing relationship with Israel as proof of the power of the "Israel Lobby" to influence American politics. Mead's latest book shows that...
Aug 05, 2022•57 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week, we had writer Nick Burns on the podcast. Nick's recent essay , "Why Live in America?" prompted Shadi to write his Monday Note for July 4th. We delve into the ways America is different than Europe, for good and for ill. Size, geography, culture, dynamism—all these twist and disfigure many European imports when they land on our shores. When educated Americans pine for a more European lifestyle, are they si...
Jul 29, 2022•54 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live We return to a question that the Crowd has been chewing over for the last month or so: why do things– political systems, regimes, parties– change? Do ideas really change the world? And can individual actions really have any effect on larger systems? Climate change, and whether we think world governments can mend their ways in time to avert the worst of the crisis, begins the discussion. We discuss whether governmen...
Jul 21, 2022•58 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week was a first for the podcast– we welcomed two guests, Michael Wear and Jane Coaston. Michael is a rare fish, an Evangelical Christian and a Democratic political strategist who worked as President Obama's director of faith outreach in the 2012 campaign, going on to lead Evangelical outreach for the Obama White House's faith based initiative. An article he recently wrote for his Substack, "This is How to End...
Jul 15, 2022•51 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week we sat down to debate America's greatness—or lack thereof. Somewhat to our surprise, we found a source of agreement between us: our belief in American exceptionalism, even if we have very different conceptions of the role of morality and "progress" in forging the American idea. Countries in Europe may have a more leisurely pace of life and higher levels of reported happiness, but is that really what Ameri...
Jul 08, 2022•41 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Jamie Kirchick joins us to discuss the triumph and sorrow of the gay experience in the nation's capitol. This is the story of The Secret City , Kirchick's genre-defining and panoramic history of the gay men and women who served in the halls of power, all the while in constant fear that they would lose their jobs and perhaps even their lives. It got worse before it got better. We discuss how the national security st...
Jun 24, 2022•48 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live A few weeks back, a book title caught our eye. It was called Two Billion Caliphs , written by Haroon Moghul. Mixing personal narrative and theological ruminations, it promised to offer a bold new vision for Muslims living in the 21st century. Being that we frequently talk about the importance of religion in the modern world, inviting Haroon on was a no-brainer. A rich episode ensued. We talked about how 9/11 did (a...
Jun 17, 2022•1 hr 1 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week we invited the author Oliver Traldi on the podcast to talk about the role of experts in society and how we assess different kinds of skill, talent, and truth. Oliver, a writing fellow at Heterodox Academy and a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, is one of the most exciting young thinkers and writers around today—as evidenced by his recent tour-de-force of an essay titled " W...
Jun 12, 2022•52 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Ideas have consequences. From the early 2000s Matt Continetti, the author of the fascinating new book The Right , has worked at some of the leading institutions of American conservatism. He has seen firsthand how many of them fallen or lost their way. But where conservatism's critics see a movement that has become unrecognizable and even dangerous, Continetti sees instead a rich, vibrant, and messy war of ideas, in...
Jun 05, 2022•45 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week Shadi and Damir sat down to discuss the Uvalde mass shooting and its aftermath. Tragedy has struck the American psyche once again. The murder of innocent children has Americans groping for answers but the seemingly scripted discourse in the wake of such tragedies provides anything but solid answers. Are there really any viable legislative paths to prevent such terrible shootings? Must everyone “read the r...
May 30, 2022•41 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Shadi has been curious about whether he has diverged from the left since Bernie Sanders' campaign, so he invited the socialist thinker Daniel Bessner onto the podcast this week for a spirited discussion of first principles. Bessner is one of the most influential and important leftist intellectuals writing on foreign policy today. He is the Joff Hanauer Honors Professor in Western Civilization at the University of W...
May 15, 2022•52 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week we were joined by Molly Ball, bestselling author of Pelosi , to talk about how the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade will (or won't) change American politics for decades to come. Until a few days ago, Americans could act politically under the assumption that Roe was permanent. But it may not be. Ending Roe v. Wade would mean abortion would be decided by states, presumably according to the whims, desires...
May 08, 2022•52 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Much of the freakout about Elon Musk buying Twitter is based on an assumption that social media is integral to democracies and a critical tool for dissidents living in repressive regimes. But what if that assumption is overblown? Are the dustups over Twitter's new ownership really just a proxy war for the broader freedom of speech debate that has been ratcheting up recently? Just as Elon was talking up Twitter, Bar...
May 01, 2022•41 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week, Elisabeth Zerofsky of The New York Times Magazine joins us after recent reporting trips in Paris and Berlin. In Part 1 , we talked about the upcoming French election and the rise of the far-right in France. The West is looking on nervously as President Macron tries to fend off a challenge from Marine Le Pen, a populist with ties to Putin. Regardless of the outcome, French voters have veered to the right—...
Apr 22, 2022•45 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week, Shadi and Damir debate whether the war in Ukraine is breathing new life into the liberal idea. It seemed like liberalism might stage a comeback, but Putin-adjacent rightwing populists are still going strong in France and Hungary. Shadi insists he's a liberal who's critical of liberalism, which pushes Damir to question what exactly that means in practice. When is too much illiberalism too much? Also: Dami...
Apr 16, 2022•49 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week we were joined by Christine Emba, a columnist at the Washington Post and author of the fascinating new book Rethinking Sex: A Provocation . What resulted was the longest episode in Wisdom of Crowds history, delving into some uncharted territory. We discuss a lot of big topics—the perils of modern dating, the sex recession, consent, incels, marriage, porn, and Tinder hookup culture. If we have so much free...
Apr 05, 2022•1 hr 10 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live In a classic wide-ranging episode, Shadi and Damir kick things off by noticing that the Ukraine War is no longer capturing “the discourse” as it did a week ago. Does how we consume media make it difficult for us to grapple with the moment’s most important stories? And does the same phenomenon make us overrate the importance of things like wokeness? As the conversation proceeds, and talk turns to Biden’s democracy-v...
Mar 29, 2022•54 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live What’s the nature of our enemy in Ukraine? Is it Putin, Russia, or authoritarianism? What are the sources of the West’s strength and its capacities for revival? And how should we think about evil in the world? The political philosopher Samuel Kimbriel joins Shadi and Damir to help unpack these questions, and many others in a wide-ranging philosophical discussion. In the subscriber-only portion of the episode, the d...
Mar 18, 2022•1 hr 19 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live The firebrand journalist and author Glenn Greenwald joined us for a broad-ranging discussion on the war in Ukraine and the past few decades of American foreign policy. We tackled the comparisons between Russia's invasion, the Iraq War, and other disastrous American foreign policy failures. Does America's good intent set it apart from countries like Russia, or are we more similar than we care to admit? In the full s...
Mar 10, 2022•52 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week, Berlin-based journalist and New York Times Magazine contributing writer Elisabeth Zerofsky joins us to discuss how Russia's invasion of Ukraine has changed Europe. What explains the righteous fury of previously pacific Germans? Shadi asks Elisabeth and Damir what a "red line" in Ukraine could possibly be—or if it even exists. For example, how might the United States respond in hypothetical scenarios of l...
Mar 04, 2022•51 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Shadi and Damir sit down again, four days into the war in Ukraine, to look at where things stand, and where things could be going. We talk best- and worst-case scenarios, why the West can’t get militarily involved, and why the Europeans in particular are so white-hot furious about Putin's invasion....
Mar 01, 2022•42 min
Shadi and Damir sat down to do a quick episode today as Russia commenced its invasion of Ukraine. They talk about how the world got to this point, what we in the West could have done differently, what could happen next, and what it means for the future of America. We hope you find this real-time attempt at analysis useful and helpful. Required Reading - "Negotiating with Madmen" by Damir Marusic ( Wisdom of Crowds ) - "America’s role in the Russia and Ukraine situation" ( AP ) This is a public e...
Feb 25, 2022•58 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live From Leon Trotsky to Sayyid Qutb to the Founding Fathers, Shadi and Damir discuss revolution in all its forms. The guys argue about the importance of ideas, the role of violence, and how order is legitimized. Can democracy keep the peace? Part 2 of our conversation is available here for subscribers. Shadi and Damir turn their attention to the revolutionary impulses on both the conservative right and the woke left. ...
Feb 13, 2022•39 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live In this week's episode, we were joined by our friend Aaron Sibarium, a reporter for the Washington Free Beacon . Aaron recently reported a piece showing how three states were rationing COVID drugs on race-based criteria. The article made a splash. Fox News covered the story, Trump referenced it in a speech (sloppily as always), and Twitter tried to rebrand it as a right-wing talking point. Prioritizing woke ideolog...
Jan 21, 2022•59 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live It used to be called "political correctness." It had its heyday in the 1990s, then it went underground. While we weren't paying attention, an entire architecture of speech restrictions was being built on campuses across the country. Greg Lukianoff, CEO of FIRE and co-author of the bestselling The Coddling of the American Mind , joins us to discuss what he calls the " second great age of political correctness ." Whe...
Dec 29, 2021•54 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week we were joined by Sam Adler-Bell, cohost of the Know Your Enemy podcast. We examined the New Right , their earnestly held belief that liberals have already won the battle for the soul of the country, and America's crisis of legitimacy. Is it even worth trying to bridge the gap between left and right on cultural issues? Required Reading: - " The Radical Young Intellectuals Who Want to Take Over the America...
Dec 19, 2021•1 hr 9 min
What was it like to live through the fall of Kabul? How should we think about the American withdrawal from Afghanistan? And with famine enveloping the country amid an unprecedentedly severe state collapse, how should we approach—and deal with—the ruling Taliban authorities? This week we are joined by Dr. Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili and Dr. Omar Sadr, both of the newly-launched Afghanistan Project at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Governance and Markets, to talk about what lies ahead ...
Dec 02, 2021•1 hr 30 min
As Biden struggles to get his massive spending bill passed, WoC's former Associate Editor Matt Winesett joins Shadi and Damir to talk about guns, gentrification, opera, the race for Governor of Virginia, and the sad state of the Republican Party. Required Reading: Matt's essays at WoC . " Trump's Look Backward Poses Peril for GOP ," by Gerald F. Seib (WSJ). The Citizen app . " Glenn Youngkin's Viral 'Child' Ad is Missing Important Context ," by Glenn Kessler (WaPo). " Nice Woke Parents " (Wisdom...
Oct 29, 2021•1 hr 5 min
Damir and Shadi talk about health security theater during this latest phase of the pandemic, before going on to discuss how technocratic approaches tend to worsen and exacerbate polarization in democratic societies. Also: can anyone make a moral case for democracy without recourse to God? Required reading: The Islamic World Today: Issues and Perspectives (Brigham Young University) " The danger of bringing religious zeal to the political realm ," by Shadi Hamid (Deseret News). " One in 5,000 ," b...
Oct 22, 2021•1 hr 13 min
It's no secret that the United States is in a bad place. Fiona Hill saw the chaos and blunders up close, as deputy assistant to President Trump and top Russia advisor at the White House. In November 2019, she was a witness in House hearings during the Trump's first impeachment. Fiona has a new book out There Is Nothing For You Here and is back at the Brookings Institution . She joins Shadi and Damir to talk about whether she would would have agreed to work under Trump knowing what she knows now....
Oct 15, 2021•1 hr 1 min
