This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Are Muslim communities increasingly tilting to the right ? After about two decades of being alienated by Republicans, American Muslims continue to align themselves with the Democratic Party. But as the country polarizes and the progressive agenda makes gains, writers like our guest find it increasingly untenable for Muslims to continue nodding along with the left’s conceptions of gender identity, sexuality, and sec...
Jul 28, 2023•1 hr 1 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Does the United States Supreme Court’s legitimacy hang in the balance — or is it itself the balance keeping the union centered? After handing down blockbuster decisions this term on gerrymandering, executive authority and affirmative action, the highest court in the land is facing fierce criticism from progressives in the media and in elected office. This week, we welcomed Washington Post columnist Jason Willick ba...
Jul 14, 2023•52 min
Shadi, Christine, and Sam head to Aspen to record a live episode of the show. The crowd gets involved. The broad topic of the conversation was decline. We don’t always know how to express it, but many of us feel it: There’s something wrong with America today. The mood is tense. More Americans say they won’t have children because of climate change and other future catastrophes. But are things really as bad as they seem? Is decline something we need to accept—or is there a case for a new optimism?...
Jun 30, 2023•1 hr 6 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live There is the Europe of politics. There is the Europe of ideas. But there is also the Europe of actual people, who live, love, die, and dream. How they live and how they hope is shaped by mass migration, climate change, the war in Ukraine, and any number of other disruptions. Who are they and what do their lives actually look like? This week, British journalist Ben Judah talks to Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic about ...
Jun 16, 2023•1 hr 2 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live How important are ideological labels and how might they change over the next generation? A lot is on the minds of Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic this week as the two go on a winding discussion about political identity and ideological shifts amid a tribalistic political culture. The guys discussed the rarity of prominent figures publicly changing their political identity and the friction among Americans in mixed ideo...
Jun 09, 2023•42 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Why is therapy replacing God on dating apps? If bad things happen, were they “meant to be”? When we say that everything happens for a reason, what do we even mean? This week, Shadi and Damir are back on the podcast together with close friend and guest Rachel Rizzo to discuss her stunning new essay , “ Do Liberals Have a God Problem? ” Recently, Rachel noted a striking contrast on dating apps: men who openly state t...
Jun 02, 2023•1 hr 2 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live As organized religion declines, particularly among younger Americans, a constellation of spiritual and sense-making phenomena appear to be taking its place. This week, Damir Marusic and Editor-at-Large Christine Emba are joined by the author Tara Isabella Burton whose upcoming book Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians , chronicles how our sense of self has evolved over time alongside ...
May 26, 2023•52 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Are big ideas still possible? Are there any “new” ideas left—and what makes an idea new in the first place? If we need new ideas to shake ourselves out of decadence, we should be careful what we wish for. Wokeness is one such “comprehensive framework.” Others might prove similarly frightening. This week, Shadi is joined by New York Times columnist and author of The Decadent Society Ross Douthat and the political ph...
May 21, 2023•44 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week, Damir stages an intervention for Shadi. Lately, Shadi’s become gradually detached from the world of current events and political media. Damir probes to understand why, therein unraveling an episode that goes off the beaten path to discuss progress, happiness and meaning at a time when everything feels existential. Shadi maintains that while he isn’t divorcing himself from the commentariat, he’s recognizi...
May 12, 2023•52 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Can a cohesive nation survive without a common identity or shared values? That question is at the heart of this week’s podcast with political theorist David Polansky . Last week, David’s essay in Wisdom of Crowds rebutted the claim that the Israelites can be understood as a modern nation. Throughout history, various peoples, David argues, have coalesced around a shared sense of “peoplehood” without a claim to a nat...
May 05, 2023•48 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Why is Trump such a formidable candidate, despite everything? How can someone who lies so readily be seen as authentic? With the Republican presidential campaign heating up, Sam Adler-Bell —co-host of “ Know Your Enemy ” and one of the most fascinating leftist writers around today—returns to the podcast to argue that Trump has something special that Ron DeSantis doesn’t have and likely never will. Pundits often arg...
Apr 28, 2023•1 hr 6 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live An anti-natalist subculture has flourished for years online. These days, it feels like it’s taking hold in the real world. This week, writer and internet historian Katherine Dee and Editor-at-Large Christine Emba join Shadi and Damir to make sense of this underground phenomenon—and its broader implications for how we live today. Do people really believe that suffering makes life not worth experiencing? And what is ...
Apr 21, 2023•51 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live With the world feeling increasingly unstable, Damir and Shadi turn to foreign policy. Can the United States can back its bluster abroad, including in defense of Taiwan? All of this is happening as Donald Trump re-enters the national spotlight. The guys contrast the former president's manic approach to deterrence with the current and preceding administrations. Shadi is comforted the White House is staffed by vaguely...
Apr 14, 2023•50 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live With artificial intelligence threatening to take over our imaginations, Shadi and Damir this week decided to talk through some of the philosophical quandaries with none other than political philosopher and Wisdom of Crowds contributing writer Samuel Kimbriel. The Crowd takes on ChatGPT, existential risk, "the simulation", navigating uncertainty and whether we can know what is real. After a recent encounter with Cha...
Mar 20, 2023•47 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live With Ron DeSantis embracing an aggressively illiberal agenda of cultural reaction, how worried should we be? This week on the podcast, The New Republic's Osita Nwanevu—one of the most original leftist thinkers working today—joined us to debate the future of the Republican Party and the dangers of 2024. Very quickly, the conversation morphed into a spirited exchange on whether it's American institutions—or the madne...
Mar 10, 2023•55 min
This week, we're bringing you something special: our first recording with a live audience! Hosted by the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Governance and Markets and moderated by the center's director, Jen Murtazashvili (a friend of the Crowd), we had a freewheeling discussion about Shadi's new book, The Problem of Democracy . Shadi made his case for decoupling democracy and liberalism—what he calls "democratic minimalism." Instead of viewing democracy as a means to other ends, it should be ...
Mar 03, 2023•2 hr
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week, we were excited to have author Luke Burgis on the pod, to talk about a hot topic: desire. Specifically, mimetic desire—the idea that desires are often generated through our human propensity to copy each other. He's written an excellent book, Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life , that affected both of us deeply. First theorized by the French philosopher Rene Girard, and present in everyt...
Feb 10, 2023•58 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live In recent months, Shadi has drawn a lot of online ire for saying that liberals were needlessly (and harmfully) catastrophizing ahead of the November midterms. We decided to talk to one of Shadi's smartest and most eloquent critics on this count—our friend Damon Linker, a former columnist at The Week and current author of the excellent Substack , Eyes on the Right . We argue about what's "normal" polarization, and w...
Jan 13, 2023•55 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This was one of the richest conversations we've recorded in a while. Our guest this week is Robert Nicholson, the founder of The Philos Project , an organization that promotes Christian engagement with the Middle East, and host of The Deep Map , a new podcast that explores the religious and historical roots of conflict in the region. We asked Robert about what he thinks Westerners misunderstand the most about Middl...
Dec 18, 2022•1 hr
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live The boys are back in town! Damir is back from yet another globetrotting trip, so the Crowd is returning to podcasting after a brief hiatus. Beginning with Kanye West's recent antisemitic interview with Alex Jones and dinner with Donald Trump, we discussed the success Democrats have had with pinning crazy candidates and viewpoints on the GOP. Shadi is concerned that overheated rhetoric about the death of democracy m...
Dec 09, 2022•46 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live The Crowd returns triumphantly this week, for a rollicking conversation with one of Twitter's brightest and most iconoclastic personalities, Phillippe Lemoine. Phillippe writes the War on Science newsletter for the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology , and is also working on a book on the recent history of Russo-American foreign policy. We begin the show talking about direct democracy, and whether "th...
Nov 18, 2022•55 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live The Crowd is back to two members this week, as we sat down to talk about Elon Musk's recent takeover of Twitter and what, if anything, it means. One of Musk's first posts as the owner of Twitter was retweeting a conspiracy theory about the recent attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband— is this a sign that Twitter will become more like Parler, or significantly less-censored corners of the internet? Liberals are furious ab...
Nov 02, 2022•51 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live American men are struggling across the board. Falling behind in school, rapidly shrinking as a share of students in higher education, overwhelmingly the victims of violent crime, males in the United States are increasingly alienated and disconnected from our economy and society. That's the argument of Richard Reeves, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and author of the acclaimed new book, Of Boys and Men: Why t...
Oct 14, 2022•47 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live It’s been a turbulent few months for the United Kingdom: the scandal-ridden departure of a prime minister, the death of a beloved queen, economic woes, and the accession of a less-beloved king. We decided it would be best to have an actual British person on the podcast to discuss it all with, so we invited Josh Glancy, columnist for The Sunday Times. We began by highlighting the strange contrast between the recent ...
Oct 04, 2022•51 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live The Crowd is flying solo (duo?) again for this week's episode, focusing on recent developments in the war in Ukraine, Iranian protests, and Europe's under-the-radar political upheavals. The Russian government recently declared a "partial mobilization" to aid in the war effort, and Vladimir Putin threatened to defend Russia's gains with nuclear weapons. How much affect will mobilization have on the course of the war...
Sep 26, 2022•45 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This podcast came after a whirlwind few weeks for the Crowd– Damir returned from his odyssey through the Balkans, and Shadi was the recipient of several Twitter pile-ons. Oh, and the Queen died. Before getting to all that, though, we ramble through a potpourri of other subjects. Damir gives relationship advice. Shadi tells us why he's against pets and hiking. A conversation about whether animals have souls turns in...
Sep 16, 2022•56 min
We did something a little unusual for this week: a crossover episode. We sat down with Susannah Black Roberts and Peter Mommsen—the hosts of Ploughcast, from Plough Quarterly , a Christian magazine of ideas and culture—for a conversation about the "post-liberal" movement as well as broader questions of the "common good" (does it exist?). All four of us are coming from vastly different perspectives and backgrounds, and that came out in our spirited conversation. Our conversation about the common ...
Sep 02, 2022•1 hr 33 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Just as it has a past, liberalism has a future. The only question is whether this future will be compelling enough for those who have lost faith. We have our doubts. Which is why we wanted to talk to Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man and perhaps the foremost thinker on the development of modern political order. In his new book, Liberalism and Its Discontents , Fukuyama mounts a compreh...
Aug 26, 2022•1 hr
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week's episode features one of Twitter's more controversial figures: Jason Stanley, a professor of philosophy at Yale and author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them . In true Wisdom of Crowds fashion, we wanted a more measured and wide-ranging exchange of views than Twitter could provide, so we invited Stanley onto the podcast to discuss Trumpism and the Republican Party, the use of the word "fas...
Aug 21, 2022•54 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live The FBI's surprise "raid" on Donald Trump's residence in Mar-a-Lago this week has been hailed in some quarters as a triumph for the rule of law, and seen in others as signs of a slide into banana-republic status. We invited Jason Willick, a Washington Post columnist who writes on legal issues, to sit down with us and discuss the deeper implications of the event. True to the Crowd's ethos, we focused on fundamental ...
Aug 11, 2022•53 min
