An emergency pod: “War, or something resembling war, is breaking out in the Middle East,” says Shadi Hamid . A year after the October 7 massacre, Israel has all but destroyed Hamas. Last month, it killed Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah, thus decapitating that terrorist organization. This week, it launched an invasion of southern Lebanon. In retaliation, Iran — the longtime backer of Hezbollah — has lobbed a barrage of ballistic missiles into Israel. We decided to release the podcast early th...
Oct 03, 2024•1 hr 21 min
What is human dignity? Is it a real thing, or merely an idea? If it’s real, then where does it come from? And why do only human beings have dignity? What about other intelligent beings? What about the octopus? These are only some of the many questions that Damir Marusic and Santiago Ramos talk about in a slow-burn, philosophical episode of Wisdom of Crowds . Because Santiago is executive editor of Wisdom of Crowds , Damir wants to learn more about his bedrock convictions. He cross-examines Santi...
Sep 29, 2024•1 hr 12 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live How does order emerge from anarchy? How do human beings create institutions? Can big problems — like climate change, income inequality, or AI alignment — find solutions “from below,” through collective action, rather than “from above,” i.e., imposed by regulatory bodies? Today’s guest is a fascinating economist. Professor Paul Dragoș Aligică is a senior research fellow at the Program for Advanced Study in Philosoph...
Sep 15, 2024•1 hr 3 min
A very special episode this week, completely free for all listeners. The world-famous philosopher Charles Taylor joins Wisdom of Crowds editors Samuel Kimbriel and Santiago Ramos for a conversation about his new book, Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment . Professor Taylor has spent a long and fruitful career trying to understand the basic questions of modern life. What does it mean to be a modern person? How do we form our sense of identity? How do we relate to the sacred? Wh...
Sep 07, 2024•1 hr 3 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live The Harris-Walz campaign is having a moment. It is polling well . Harris made a good speech at the Democratic National Convention. The Democratic Convention as a whole got better TV ratings than the Republican one. Harris’s campaign is all about joy . Even Shadi’s parents are feeling the vibes (and using the word, “vibes,” probably for the first time). But Shadi and Damir aren’t feeling it. No joy. No vibes. No exc...
Aug 30, 2024•48 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Elon Musk just started tweeting about the Iliad. But our guest, Twitter’s Audrey Horne , has been talking about Homer with Samuel Kimbriel and Damir Marusic for at least two weeks now — well before Elon turned his attention to these kinds of things. We figured this was an excuse to share some of the offline chatter with the Crowd. If Elon’s interested in it, it has to be relevant, right? Christians and Greeks both ...
Aug 25, 2024•59 min
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” goes the famous line from Joan Didion — but is it worth it? How do narratives help us make sense of our lives, and how might they be misleading? Advertisements these days are full of them, but can a company really have a story of its own? And could having “ main character energy ” actually indicate a fundamental philosophical problem? In this special live recording from the Lyceum Movement ’s Tallgrass Ideas Festival in Des Moines, Iowa, Sam was join...
Aug 17, 2024•1 hr 4 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live The international drop in baby-making is currently in the headlines, and it’s been constant preoccupation for us at Wisdom of Crowds (including in our latest edition of CrowdSource ). It concerns us not only because of the possible long-term economic consequences but also because a people’s inability — or lack of desire — to reproduce itself might be the consequence of serious moral or social problems. Enter philos...
Aug 09, 2024•1 hr 7 min
It’s a dog days of summer special! This week, we are releasing a live interview from last April, that’s more timely today than when it was first recorded. Dictators and their sychophants; democracy imperiled by foreign policy misadventures. Sound familiar? For almost a century, American intellectuals of different political stripes have been in thrall to dictators. They’ve either projected utopian ideals on to them, or been seduced by their charisma and alleged effectiveness. The story of left wi...
Aug 03, 2024•1 hr 8 min
That was fast. Just days after Joe Biden chose to remove himself from the presidential ticket, Kamala Harris is the unquestioned candidate of the Democratic Party. But was this a democratic process? Or was Biden bullied out of the ticket, and Harris shoehorned into it, without any attention paid to the peoples’ wishes? And who are “the people,” anyway? Joining us to debate these questions is the author Freddie deBoer — one of the most influential and provocative leftist thinkers writing today. F...
Jul 27, 2024•1 hr 22 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Greetings, dear Listeners! We are releasing our podcast early this week. We figured that an episode about the unity of the American people would sound good right about now, given the circumstances. Damir’s Tuesday Note — which will respond to a Provocation — will be published this coming Thursday. What holds the United States together? Three hundred million people of different races, religions, and histories, sprea...
Jul 16, 2024•50 min
Welcome to summer, dear crowd! This week, we have a live episode for you — live from the Aspen Ideas Festival. Sam Kimbriel recorded this episode with Tamar Gendler , a Dean and Philosophy professor at Yale University, and Erin McFee , a Future Leaders Fellow at the Latin America and Caribbean Centre in the London School of Economics. The subject, very broadly, is forgiveness . Is it good or bad? Do we know what it means? Can one forgive wrongly? And could forgiving foreclose the possibility of ...
Jul 13, 2024•52 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live On July 1, the Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump, as President of the United States, enjoys “absolute” immunity for “his core constitutional powers,” but that he “enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does if official.” The ruling has an obvious immediate impact on the upcoming presidential elections. But it also suggests far-reaching questions about political sovereignty,...
Jul 05, 2024•45 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live What happened on Thursday night was a debacle for Joe Biden and an embarrassment for the nation. About this, our three hosts — Christine, Damir and Shadi — all agree. And they are all angry about it. But who is to blame? Biden himself? The DNC? The media? Trump? All of us? Shadi, Damir, and Christine work through their post-debate anguish and anger — and try to figure out who is responsible for the predicament that...
Jun 29, 2024•45 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live You might have noticed that Wisdom of Crowds got a facelift this week. We touched up our homepage and added two new features: CrowdSource and Provocations (read more about both here ). In this spirit of renewal and relaunch, on the podcast we are getting back to our bread and butter with a classic Shadi and Damir episode. This week’s episode deals with the virtues of resignation. Is giving up ever the right choice ...
Jun 22, 2024•40 min
Morality and war. Two words that seem to have nothing to do with each other. Yet as recent events have shown, our conscience pricks us every time we hear news of an atrocity, smarts at every war and rumor of war. Can a war ever be just? Does talk about morality in the conduct of war make any sense? Joining Shadi and Damir to discuss this heady topic is Phil Klay, a novelist and essayist whose first book, the short story collection Redeployment , won the National Book Award in 2014. An Iraq War v...
Jun 15, 2024•1 hr 7 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week, Wisdom of Crowds hosts a fluid discussion about violence and sex in movies, where the “shoulds” of life come from, and whether liberal values can be based on something other than religion. The discussion is more meditative than contentious, an exploration prompted by recent pop culture hits and a probing comment from the Crowd. Violence is entertaining. That’s the conclusion that Damir draws after watchi...
Jun 07, 2024•1 hr 2 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Conservatives often argue that liberalism is not a neutral political system. Liberalism, they say, has values of its own. It sneakily promotes these values as normative, and even good, for the citizens of liberal societies — whether those citizens like it or not. The philosopher and self-proclaimed liberal Alexandre Lefebvre believes that, empirically speaking, this conservative critique is pretty much true. As the...
May 31, 2024•51 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live The war in Gaza is dividing Israeli opinion, but not along the same lines that it divides American opinion. What are Israeli priorities? How important is the return of hostages relative to total victory? What is Netanyahu thinking? What is the Israeli Left thinking? Is there an anti-war movement in Israel? Do American categories make any sense within the Israeli political context? Washington Post political columnis...
May 24, 2024•54 min
What does justice mean for animals? Is justice for animals the same as justice for human beings? Why should we care more about the rights of animals when the rights of humans are so often neglected? Martha Nussbaum teaches philosophy, ethics, and law at the University of Chicago, and is one of the most influential and cited philosophers of our time. She’s written dozens of books on Greek philosophy, the importance of emotions in politics, justice, feminism, and many other topics. She joins the p...
May 17, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Do Arab Americans support pro-Palestine protests because of identity politics? What about American Jewish support for Israel? Are both groups being “tribal” or are they fighting for universal values — as they understand them? Recently, policy guru and Ur-Blogger Matt Yglesias pointed out that some of the political thinkers who, just a couple years ago, were aligned in opposition to identity politics today find themselves on opposite sides over Palestine. One of the names Matt mentioned was our o...
May 10, 2024•1 hr 22 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Last December, the highest court in the State of Colorado ruled that Donald Trump’s involvement with January 6 disqualified him from holding the office of president. On May 4, the Supreme Court voted unanimously to overturn this decision, clearing the way for Trump to appear on the ballot in all fifty states. Naturally, at Wisdom of Crowds these events got us thinking about the big questions. When it comes to eligi...
May 05, 2024•43 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Pro-Palestine protests have spread to college campuses across the country. Our social media feeds are flooded with images of chanting students and clashes with police. Meanwhile, Congress has passed a bill to deliver more aid to Israel, and there’s signs that the IDF is about to move on Rafah. In this episode, Shadi explores what it means to stand in solidarity with the protests, while Damir teases out their effect...
Apr 27, 2024•47 min
This week’s episode is a special collaboration with The Disagreement , a new platform that aims to “celebrate and normalize healthy disagreement.” ( Check them out! ) Wisdom of Crowds is 100% behind that mission statement, and so it was natural for us to agree to record an episode together. Fans of Wisdom of Crowds will know that Shadi has recently completed a book about American power, tentatively titled, “On Power.” Fans will also know that he debated the socialist writer Dan Bessner of the Am...
Apr 19, 2024•57 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Christine and Damir kick things off by discussing a memoir about the fall of Communism in Albania. Damir reflects on his own post-Communist background, and ponders why Communist nostalgia affects only some countries, while others are not looking back. He wonders whether Christine is becoming a Communist herself after reading her essay about “Limitarianism,” a school of political thought that favors a cap on extreme...
Apr 12, 2024•1 hr 13 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week’s podcast is a recording of a live event. Rachel M. Cohen, a senior policy reporter for Vox , recently published an essay where she asks: “To our generation, being a mom looks thankless, exhausting, and lonely. Can we change the story?” As listeners know, this question speaks right to the heart of Wisdom of Crowds . Christine and Shadi invited Rachel to discuss her piece before a live audience in Washingt...
Apr 06, 2024•37 min
America is badly polarized. It’s a fact so pervasively acknowledged that pointing it out starts to feel like saying the sky is blue. Unlike a blue sky, however, growing polarization in America presents a difficult challenge. Because America is both incredibly diverse and a vibrant democracy, polarization starts to eat away at our politics. Many attempts have been made to deal with polarization. A lot of it has to do with putting people with diverging perspectives face-to-face in an attempt to tr...
Mar 30, 2024•1 hr 27 min
Editor’s note: We haven’t done an episode quite like this before. I absolutely loved this conversation with the novelist Jordan Castro, one of the most exciting young American authors writing today. Because it was such a rich conversation, we’re leaving out the paywall so that everyone can have a listen. —Shadi Hamid, co-founder, Wisdom of Crowds What’s it actually like to be a novelist? And how does literary success—and some amount of fame and notoriety—change how people think of you? Special g...
Mar 22, 2024•2 hr 49 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live In a late-night confab, Damir and Sam explore the meaning of experiences of wonder, which they each have written about for Wisdom of Crowds . For Sam, these unique experiences are the foundation for his beliefs about the nature of the world and human life. Damir, on the other hand, does not believe that the experience of wonder necessarily leads to metaphysical questions. This freewheeling, stay-up-all-night fever ...
Mar 15, 2024•58 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live A recently-published memoir making headlines suggests a trend: Polyamory is going mainstream among high-status Americans. Culture critic and environmental studies professor Tyler Austin Harper joins Christine and Shadi to make sense of this fad, and explain why it’s both an upper-class luxury and a raw deal. Along the way they discuss happiness, self-expression, race, love, self-immolation, parenting, and a better ...
Mar 02, 2024•51 min
