The Glenn Show

John McWhorter is back for our first conversation of 2022. Let’s get into it! We begin by discussing the death of the groundbreaking black actor Sidney Poitier . Portier was best known for his roles in films like The Defiant Ones , Lilies of the Field, In the Heat of the Night , and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner . John puts forward the fascinating theory that Poitier’s Caribbean origins and manneri...

This week I’m honored to have the distinguished Robert Woodson on the show. Since joining the civil rights movement as an activist and organizer in the ‘60s, Bob has dedicated himself to finding solutions to the problems of poverty and dysfunction in America. Through the Woodson Center, Bob helps fund and advise programs that are on the ground and working to solve some of the toughest problems in...

It’s been a big year here at The Glenn Show. So as 2021 draws to a close, I thought it would be a nice idea to round up some choice selections from the conversations I’ve had with John over the past year. This episode is a kind of “best of” compilation of segments that got a big response from viewers or that I personally thought were important or noteworthy. I couldn’t include all of the highlight...

On this week’s show, I talk with Professor Amy Wax of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As you might have guessed, we get into some very controversial territory. But that’s why I enjoy talking to Amy—she doesn’t pull her punches. Amy begins by talking about her position at Penn Law, where a group of alumni are attempting to get her fired . It’s not the first time people have tried this—as...

The “common sense” of the Woke Left sees so many issues, from the historical effects of redlining to the relationship between race and IQ, as matters that no longer require discussion. “Redlining is responsible for present-day racial wealth disparities, period. There is no relationship between race and IQ, period. End of discussion.” But the discussion is not over, these matters and many others ar...

The audiovisual experiments continue here at The Glenn Show. In some of our recent conversations, John McWhorter and I talked about how we would reply to “Simone,” a fictionalized version of one of my students at Brown who believes that systemic racism causes most or all of the racial disparities in the US. I think Simone is wrong about that, but this idea is so widespread that John and I agreed t...

This week on TGS we’ve got Rav Arora. He’s a compelling writer on race matters in the US. He’s also a college undergraduate , though it would be a mistake to underestimate him. He’s already published in a number of widely read outlets, including the New York Post , Quillette , and City Journal . He’s also got a Substack called Noble Truths , where he writes about psychedelics, meditation, and cult...

John and I often talk about how we feel about race in America, but we rarely delve into why we feel the way we feel. What factors in our own lives primed us for those emotional responses? While John and I often agree about where the politics of race have gone wrong, we just as often experience very different feelings about these matters. I start the discussion off by raising a question a friend pu...

In this week’s TGS, my old friend Larry Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University, is back to talk about some of our most pressing economic concerns. Chief among them is the inflation rate, which has hit a 30-year high. By some accounts, inflation is now threatening to do major, possibly longterm damage to the US economy. But are things as bad as they seem? Larry will take us through his analys...

A couple weeks ago in this space, I published an autobiographical sketch called “The Double Life.” It elicited such a strong reaction from readers that I wanted to revisit it, so I recorded an audio version and Nikita Petrov, my creative director, created a video feature to go along with it. I plan to do more of these audio/video pieces in the future, mostly for subscribers. Let me know what you t...

This week, John and I continue our discussion of systemic racism, which was kicked off when one of my students wrote a searing critique of some of my positions. John and I agreed that “Simone” (not her real name) deserved a real, intellectually serious response. We can’t just blow off Simone and people like her—that is, sober-minded, sincere, intelligent progressives and leftists who happen to thi...

Recently, I was asked to deliver a speech at the National Conservatism Conference, which was held in Orlando, Florida. It was high-profile affair with many prominent conservative intellectuals, media figures, and politicians speaking and in attendance. And I don’t mind saying I had a prime speaking slot! I used the speech to develop some ideas I’ve aired here on TGS, and I think many of you will b...

This week’s TGS features two incomparable guests: John McWhorter and Randall Kennedy. John, of course, needs no introduction. Randy is a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of many books, the latest of which is Say It Loud!: On Race, Law, History, and Culture . In this episode, we get into it pretty much immediately. Randy admits to being “ thrown” by Donald Trump’s election and to find...

I know this week everyone is expecting one of my conversations with John McWhorter. But due to some unforeseen events, we ended up shifting things around a bit. Next week you can expect to see John and I speak with Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy , where we’ll engage issues of systemic racism , among other topics. Two weeks after that, John and I will be back to have our own discussio...

In this week’s TGS, we’re talking about an issue that seems local but has big national implications. Wai Wah Chin is the Charter President of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York, and she joins me to discuss an ongoing controversy in New York City’s exam schools . These schools are rigorous public high schools that focus on STEM subjects, and admission is determined by studen...

In this episode of The Glenn Show, I’m back with my friend John McWhorter, and we have much to discuss. John joins me fresh from a day trip to Brighton Beach , a neighborhood in Brooklyn where Russian language, food, and culture abound. He talks about teaching himself Russian and the benefits of the Glossika language-learning tool . Then, in a continuation of last week’s conversation with David Ka...

In this episode of The Glenn Show, I’m talking to David E. Kaiser, author of many books about American and international political history. As a distinguished professional historian, David has seen many changes in the way history is written both inside and outside the academy, not all of them for the better. In this conversation, David talks about why Ta-Nehisi Coates’s highly influential 2014 ess...

For this week’s episode of The Glenn Show, we’ve upped our production game a little. In late August, John McWhorter and I met up for an all-too-rare in-person conversation in Manhattan, and the filmmaker Rob Montz and his crew were on hand to record it. It was wonderful to be able sit face-to-face with John, and Rob did a wonderful job capturing the energy in the room. It wouldn’t have been possib...

For this edition of The Glenn Show, I’m joined by someone who may be familiar to long-time viewers: Bob Wright. Bob is a distinguished journalist and the author of many books, including The Moral Animal , Nonzero , and Why Buddhism is True . He also happens to be the co-founder of Bloggingheads, the platform on which The Glenn Show was born and has flourished. In our conversation, Bob walks us thr...

In this week’s TGS, I’m joined once again by intellectual historian Daniel Bessner. Given Daniel’s area of scholarly expertise—US foreign relations—it should be no surprise that the recent withdrawal from Afghanistan colors our discussion. But we range much further than that. We debate Daniel’s conception of “American empire” and its origins in the Cold War . He is quite critical of American forei...

John McWhorter is back for this week’s episode of The Glenn Show. In it, we discuss John’s new gig writing a newsletter for the New York Times. Anyone wondering whether he’s being stifled by the paper’s editorial sensibilities will be glad to hear the answer is a definite “no.” We spend a while discussing John’s recent piece about the removal of a “racist” rock from the University of Wisconsin-Mad...

Here’s something different for you. In this episode of The Glenn Show, I sit down with artist, writer, and TGS Creative Director Nikita Petrov to discuss two fundamental questions: “What the hell is going on?” and “What is to be done?” If those questions sound both deep and broad, there might be a reason. They occurred to Nikita in the wake of a recent psychedelic experience. Not your typical TGS...

Today, I’ve got a special treat for TGS fans: my first ever recorded conversation with John McWhorter, which occurred on (brace yourselves) November 7, 2007. People who started following John and me in recent years may not be aware of how long we’ve been at this, but it’s been almost 14 years. As you might expect, while the topics we discuss are familiar, our positions relative to each other have...

Recently I had a rich, deep conversation with lawyer, Current Affairs contributing editor, and former Bernie Sanders National Press Secretary Briahna Joy Gray on her podcast Bad Faith . Briahna and I occupy very different ideological spaces, so I thought TGS viewers would be interested in watching the discussion. She has generously given me permission to share it here. We begin by debating the pos...

On this edition of TGS, John McWhorter is back for one of our twice-monthly conversations. We take a long, critical look at the concept of "systemic racism" —what it is, what it isn't, and why it's become so popular in progressive discourses about race in the US. We focus attention on institutions of higher education , drawing on our own experience to question whether this concept really applies a...