The Glenn Show

This week, I welcome Briahna Joy Gray to TGS. I’ve appeared on her podcast, Bad Faith , and now she’s here to return the favor. Briahna and I have some pretty pronounced political differences—she’s the former National Press Secretary for Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, after all. But we get along anyway, because we both believe in the importance of free speech and open debate. And make no...

Normally I would post one of my bi-weekly conversations with John McWhorter today, but John and I had too many scheduling conflicts to find time to talk this week (he’ll return in two weeks). So in his stead, I’m talking with Greg Thomas , co-founder of the Jazz Leadership Project and senior fellow at the Institute for Cultural Evolution. We begin by discussing Greg’s work with the Jazz Leadership...

On this week’s episode of The Glenn Show, I welcome my old friend Stephanie Lepp, the Executive Producer at the Center for Humane Technology. I first met Stephanie through her husband, Nathaniel, who was a student of mine at Brown. Stephanie produced a podcast called Reckonings, which told the stories of how people transform their worldviews. I went on the show in 2015 and told the story of the ev...

This week, John and I are talking about the ten-year anniversary of the Trayvon Martin shooting , one of the most politically consequential events of the 2010s. A decade later, are we in a better place than where we started? John and I begin by discussing the New York Times’s recent package commemorating the event , which features a written piece by Charles Blow and video interviews with Barack Ob...

Over the last couple years, I’ve been in communication with Noam Dworman, the owner of the Comedy Cellar in New York, which is one of the most influential comedy clubs in the country. He suggested that we collaborate and put together a show that would explore the relationship between truth, free speech, and comedy . After a lot of back and forth, we came up with the idea of putting non-comedian in...

This week I welcome Sam Harris to TGS. Sam is a neuroscientist and philosopher, the host of the podcast Making Sense , and the proprietor of the meditation app Waking Up . He’s a searching, truly open-minded thinker who follows the evidence where it leads, even if that means admitting that he was wrong about a previously held position. We begin by discussing Sam’s uncertainty about how to navigate...

This week on The Glenn Show, John McWhorter and I are joined by the journalist Matt Taibbi. Many of you are likely familiar with Matt from his many books , his political journalism for Rolling Stone (among other outlets), his Useful Idiots podcast, and now his outstanding Substack newsletter, TK News . Matt lived and worked in Russia and the former USSR for several years, so I thought he’d be an e...

With the war in Ukraine escalating, I thought it would be a good idea to bring on a guest with some expertise in international relations. So I called on Daniel Bessner, an intellectual historian, associate professor at University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, and a co-host of the American Prestige podcast. Daniel is a man of the left, so we spend a lot of time h...

It’s John McWhorter time once again here at The Glenn Show. Let’s get into it. John and I are both busy guys, but people might not realize how much juggling it takes to manage life as both an academic and a public intellectual . I talk about why I may soon wind down my role at Brown University and devote myself more fully to public endeavors. We then move on to discuss psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberm...

This week, I welcome Matt Rosenberg to TGS. Matt is a journalist who grew up in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood and the author of the recently published book What Next, Chicago?: Notes of a Pissed-Off Native Son . The book delves into the causes and effects of the city’s recent, alarming rise in crime and also chronicles those who are trying to address the problem. As a native of Chicago’s South...

John McWhorter is back, just like you knew he would be. This week we’re talking about the future of affirmative action. We begin by discussing Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner’s new film adaptation of the classic musical West Side Story . John argues that people who dismiss the musical as just “something some old white people wrote” are far too simplistic and limited in their view . I haven’t yet...

As many of you know, I’m in the midst of writing a memoir. I’m now calling it The Enemy Within, but its earlier title was Changing My Mind , an allusion both to my intellectual development and to my shifting political orientations. In the course of thinking through my past, I’ve wondered how much the new, more conservative Glenn would have to say to the more liberal Glenn of the ‘90s and ‘00s. So...

On this week’s show, I’m talking to the political scientist Steven Rhoads, author of the influential book The Economist’s View of the World , which was recently reissued in a substantially updated edition. Steven thinks the fundamental principles of economics can help even non-economists see the world in a more rational and solution-oriented way, and I have to say, I agree! I begin by asking Steve...

I’m back with my friend John McWhorter for one of our regular conversations. A lot has happened on the race and politics front over the last two weeks, so we’ve got a full docket of topics to discuss. And speaking of dockets, after overcoming some technical difficulties, we spend a good chunk of time on matters relating to the Supreme Court. Ilya Shapiro , the incoming director of Georgetown Unive...

Here at The Glenn Show, I’m taking a little break from politics and culture to talk dollars and cents. My good friend and former Boston University colleague Larry Kotlikoff is here to discuss his new book, Money Magic: An Economist’s Secrets to More Money, Less Risk, and a Better Life . In it, Larry brings his knowledge and expertise as an economist to bear on the everyday problems of spending, sa...

John McWhorter and I often find ourselves aligned on the issues we discuss on The Glenn Show. We’ve even received criticism for how much we agree with each other! This episode should please those critics, as John and I actually find ourselves in stark (though productive and friendly) disagreement on a few matters. Let’s get into it. We begin by talking about Joe Biden’s recent press conference . P...

This week we’ve got Heather Mac Donald on The Glenn Show . Heather is a fellow of the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor to City Journal , and author of several books, including The Diversity Delusion , The War on Cops , and The Burden of Bad Ideas . Heather’s writing combines meticulous research and sharp, uncompromising prose. Her positions on crime and policing have led some on the left...

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...