Give Them An Argument

On a recent episode of his show, professional advocate for the 1% Ben Shapiro lays out his "foreign policy worldview" so we're bringing on one of our favorite foreign policy analysts, Mean Djene Bajalan, onto the show to break it down. Before that, Ben Burgis and the GTAA crew watch Ben's recent appearance on News Nation in which Ben and host Dan Abrams argue about whether the...

Victor and Ethan join Ben Burgis once again for a Thursday Night Debate Breakdown. This week they're watching Ben Shapiro's debate with "Cosmic Skeptic" Alex O'Connor about religion and society. Check out Victor and Ethan's podcast (with Matt McManus and Gordon Katic) "Academic Edgelords"): https://academicedgelords.com/ Follow Ethan on Twitter: @anontwtuser...

Zero Hour host RJ Eskow joins Ben Burgis to talk about RJ's Current Affairs essay "The Dystopias of Yesterday": https://www.currentaffairs.org/2024/02/the-dystopias-of-yesterday Before that, Ben and the GTAA crew watch some of a bizarre-even-by-the-standards-of-Alex-Jones conversation about hive minds and "the AI agenda" between evil clown Alex Jones, enemy-of-lizard-peopl...

Matthew Whalan joins Ben Burgis for another Thursday Night Debate Breakdown. This time, they're watching a brand-new one--Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (who's somehow both an ardent apologist for Israeli war crimes and an occasional just-asking-questions advocate of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories) debating libertarian podcaster Dave Smith on Kennedy's position on I...

Current Affairs magazine's "House Economist" Robert Larson joins Ben Burgis to continue the weekly series of Thursday Night Debate Breakdowns by watching left-liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith's 1981 appearance on William F. Buckley's Firing Line. (There might also be a surprise bonus mini-breakdown at the beginning of the show.) Read Rob at Current Affairs: https:/...

Tucker Carlson interviewed Vladimir Putin. Pro-war libs think Carlson should be locked up as a "traitor." Actual Putin apologists--few and far between in the general population, but if you look in the right corners of the internet you can find plenty of them!--ignored a lot of what Russia's ultra-right-wing, militaristic president had to say. Our resident expert on Eastern European...

Ben Burgis and Deep State Kuba continue the weekly series of Thursday Night Debate Breakdown's by watching Dr. Lobster spar with Oxford students. Follow Kuba on Twitter: @DrKuba2 Follow Ben on Twitter: @BenBurgis Follow GTAA on Twitter: @Gtaa_Show Become a GTAA Patron and receive numerous benefits ranging from patron-exclusive postgames every Monday night to our undying love and gratitude for...

The great RM Brown stops by at the beginning of the show to join Ben Burgis and the GTAA crew for some Valentine's Day content with Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. (They're very concerned about sexual boredom!) After that, we're joined by immigration lawyer Matt Cameron to break down a debate between Breaking Points hosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti on immigration. (Think of it...

Victor Bruzzone and Ethan from the Confronting Capital channel come back to watch the second half of this trainwreck of a debate. Check out Victor and Ethan's podcast (with Matt McManus and Gordon Katic) "Academic Edgelords"): https://academicedgelords.com/ Follow Ethan on Twitter: @anontwtuser11 Follow Victor on Twitter: @victorbruzzone Follow Ben on Twitter: @BenBurgis Follow GTAA...

Matt McManus and Daniel Tutt join Ben Burgis to talk about Daniel's new book "How to Read Like a Parasite: How the Left Got High on Nietzsche." Before that, This is Revolution host Jason Myles joins Ben and the GTAA crew to talk about Jason's new article "Same As It Ever Was: The Ilusion of Political Discourse in American Media" and talk about the get-together Ben and...

Victor Bruzzone and Ethan from the Confronting Capital channel are BACK for another Thursday Night Debate Breakdown. This week they have the privilege of watching the folks from this video's title debating the meaning of the January 6th riot.  Check out Victor and Ethan's podcast (with Matt McManus and Gordon Katic) "Academic Edgelords"): https://academicedgelords.com/ Follow E...

Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson joins us to break down New York Times columnist Bret "Bedbug" Stephens's article "The Genocide Charge Against Israel Is a Moral Obscenity": https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/opinion/israel-hamas-war-genocide.html Before that, Ben and the GTAA crew watch Ben's appearance on Novara Media to talk about the New Hampshire results...

Jacobin columnist Luke Savage joins us to talk about Luke's article "Modern Liberalism Has Become a Defense of Hierarchy and Deference to Elites" and the incoherent 34-point lib manifesto in the New York Times Luke was responding to--Cass Sunstein's "Why I Am a Liberal."  Before that, host Ben Burgis and the GTAA crew talk Trump, immigration, Biden sleepwalking us int...

We're baaaaack! In the first GTAA episode of 2024, host Ben Burgis debates op-ed columnist Will Cooper, a liberal Democrat who nevertheless thinks that Ron DeSantis is more "competent" than Biden or Trump. Ben wrote a Jacobin article a while back responding to Will and arguing that this zany take is an extreme symptom of a much larger problem with mainstream technocratic liberalism....

Ben Burgis and Slavoj Zizek talk about everything from Israel/Palestine to quantum physics to the triumph of a libertarian nutjob in Argentina and what kinds of social freedom are worth wanting. It's a *really* good conversation.  It had to be prerecorced because of the extreme time difference between Los Angeles and Ljubljana and it went long enough that the last portion couldn't be pla...

David Griscom joins Ben Burgis to continue GTAA's weekly series of Thursday Night Debate Beakdowns by watching a very short, brand-new one--the debate between Breaking Points hosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti on the legacy of Henry Kissinger. Follow David on Twitter: @DavidGriscom Follow Ben on Twitter: @BenBurgis Follow GTAA on Twitter: @Gtaa_Show Become a GTAA Patron and receive numerous...

The directors of the documentary "Israelism," Erin Axelman and Sam Eilertsen, come byto talk about the film itself and the recent rash of attempts to censor screenings of it with GTAA host Ben Burgis. Ben reviewed the movie for Jacobin earlier this year: https://jacobin.com/2023/06/israelism-documentary-pro-apartheid-indoctrination-israeli-occupation-palestine In the postgame for patrons...

Samuel Moyn joins us to talk about his fascinating new book "Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times." In it he argues that liberalism today is shaped by the shift made by many liberal intellectuals who turned their backs on the radical aspirations of earlier liberalisms during the Cold War. One of our favorite recurrent guests, Matt McManus, just re...

Ben Shapiro just debated...well, the only people he ever seems to want to debate these days--college students. But this time at a fancy setting! Ben Burgis and Victor Bruzzone break it down. Follow Victor on Twitter: @victorbruzzone Follow Ben on Twitter: @BenBurgis Follow GTAA on Twitter: @Gtaa_Show Become a GTAA Patron and receive numerous benefits ranging from patron-exclusive postgames every M...

One of our favorite guests, Ana Kasparian, returns for a conversation about the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Gaza and a variety of related issues. She and Ben Burgis watch some of a recent debate she did on the subject with the hosts of the PBD podcast. Before that, Ben and the GTAA crew break down a right-wing video about Rashida Tlaib's censure and talk about "from the river to the sea,...

Current Affairs magazine's House Economist Rob Larson and journalist Matthew Vernon Whalan join Ben Burgis to continue the weekly series of Thursday Night Debate Breakdowns by watching a brand-new one for once--Norman Finkelstein's debate on Gaza with Eli Lake. Read Rob at Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/author/rob-larson Read Matthew's Substack: https://matthewverno...

Jacobin staff writer Luke Savage joins Ben Burgis for a look at (among other things) the sad pointless writing of NYT columnist David Brooks & physicist and science educator Sabine Hossenfelder's late-career pivot toward apologetics for capitalism. Before that, This is Revolution host Jason Myles joins Ben and the GTAA crew to talk about Jason's upcoming show in the San Francisco Bay...

Matthew Whalan and Ben Burgis continue the weekly series of Thursday Night Debate Breakdowns by watching a debate on "Resolved: That the Death Penalty Is a Good Thing" from a 1994 episode of William F. Buckley's Firing Line. These names didn't all fit in the title but the guests are Ed Koch, Walter Berns, Susan Boleyn, Ira Glasser, Leon Botstein, Stephen B. Bright, Bryan Steven...

While Ben is away, Jake and Andy take over the show to watch some of the videos Andy found that we never shared with you. Andy brings on Rayyvana,  the Young Turks contributor and co-host of Taking The L, and Kristina, host of Cosmepolitics and co-host of Movie Night Extravaganza to join him in watching some of the strangest videos Andy has found on Rumble. Follow Rayyvana on Twitter: @RayyvanaTTV...

C. Derrick Varn, Jordan Dubin and Deep State Kuba once again join Ben Burgis to continue the weekly series of Thursday Night Debate Breakdowns by watching Sam Harris's 2007 debate with Chris Hedges on politics and religion. (Note that we initially mistakenly thought this was from 2011--the date on the video we were sharing--and some of the discussion reflects that assumption!) Follow Varn on...