The Glenn Show

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...

Above you’ll find my conversation with University of San Francisco law professor Lara Bazelon. She specializes in criminal law and has won exoneration for wrongfully convicted incarcerated people. We discuss systemic racism in the criminal justice system and debate the pros and cons of various reform efforts. We go into the details of Yutico Briley’s wrongful conviction case in which Lara and her...

This week John and I have something a little different for you: An interview with Wall Street Journal columnist and Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Jason Riley about his recent book, Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell . We discuss Sowell's ideas , their influence, and his place within the pantheon of American (and black America), intellectuals . Among his innumerable contributions, Sowell's...

Here is my conversation with NYU law professor Richard Epstein . In this conversation, Richard talks about his involvement with a legal action aimed at stopping construction on the currently planned site of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago . We discuss the legal issues. We also talk about critical race theory —its origins in the legal academy of the 1970s and 80s, its foundational ideas ,...

Here is my latest conversation with John McWhorter. We begin with a review of our respective academic careers and how being black has affected our work . We also assess the recent involvement of Al Sharpton and Benjamin Crump in the case of a white Arkansas man who was shot dead in June, under suspicious circumstances, by a police officer during a traffic stop. We close with an extended discussion...

Today I’m posting something a little different than normal. This is a conversation with NYU political scientist Larry Mead . It’s part of his series “Culture and Poverty,” and he’s generously allowed me to repost it here at The Glenn Show. We discuss some ideas from Larry’s book, Burdens of Freedom: Cultural Difference and American Power . Larry argues, among other things, that one of the major di...

Here, John and I begin with an assessment of a sharp, thoughtful Quillette  piece  by black intellectual Aaron Hanna which is critical of black conservatives. (Both John and I have written responses which  Quillette  will publish.) This lead us into philosophical terrain, where we engage questions about free will, ethnic/racial differences in culture and so on. We go on to discuss critically a rec...

Here is my conversation with Charles Murray (of The Bell Curve fame) about his new book, Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America . We review the argument of his book—that the "American Creed" of f air play and equal treatment for all is imperiled by a failure to reckon with the actual differences across racial groups in measured intelligence and participation in violent crime. We explore...

Here’s my latest conversation with John McWhorter. Our talk ranges over a number of seemingly unrelated subjects. We discuss the decision by Princeton's classics department to stop requiring students to master Greek and Latin (which John sees as a lowering of standards). We analyze the general problem Black students face of deciding whether to "dispel" doubts about their abilities through outstand...