Wisdom of Crowds

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This was one of the richest conversations we've recorded in a while. Our guest this week is Robert Nicholson, the founder of The Philos Project , an organization that promotes Christian engagement with the Middle East, and host of The Deep Map , a new podcast that explores the religious and historical roots of confli...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live The boys are back in town! Damir is back from yet another globetrotting trip, so the Crowd is returning to podcasting after a brief hiatus. Beginning with Kanye West's recent antisemitic interview with Alex Jones and dinner with Donald Trump, we discussed the success Democrats have had with pinning crazy candidates a...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This podcast came after a whirlwind few weeks for the Crowd– Damir returned from his odyssey through the Balkans, and Shadi was the recipient of several Twitter pile-ons. Oh, and the Queen died. Before getting to all that, though, we ramble through a potpourri of other subjects. Damir gives relationship advice.  Shad...

We did something a little unusual for this week: a crossover episode. We sat down with Susannah Black Roberts and Peter Mommsen—the hosts of Ploughcast, from Plough Quarterly , a Christian magazine of ideas and culture—for a conversation about the "post-liberal" movement as well as broader questions of the "common good" (does it exist?).  All four of us are coming from vastly different perspective...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live The FBI's surprise "raid" on Donald Trump's residence in Mar-a-Lago this week has been hailed in some quarters as a triumph for the rule of law, and seen in others as signs of a slide into banana-republic status. We invited Jason Willick, a Washington Post columnist who writes on legal issues, to sit down with us and...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live We welcomed a truly important thinker onto the podcast this week. Walter Russell Mead joined us to discuss his latest book The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People . Many critics of American foreign policy have long pointed to our long-standing relationship with Israel as pr...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week, we had writer Nick Burns on the podcast. Nick's recent essay , "Why Live in America?" prompted Shadi to write his Monday Note for July 4th. We delve into the ways America is different than Europe, for good and for ill. Size, geography, culture, dynamism—all these twist and disfigure many European imports w...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live We return to a question that the Crowd has been chewing over for the last month or so: why do things– political systems, regimes, parties– change? Do ideas really change the world? And can individual actions really have any effect on larger systems? Climate change, and whether we think world governments can mend thei...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week was a first for the podcast– we welcomed two guests, Michael Wear and Jane Coaston. Michael is a rare fish, an Evangelical Christian and a Democratic political strategist who worked as President Obama's director of faith outreach in the 2012 campaign, going on to lead Evangelical outreach for the Obama Whit...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week we sat down to debate America's greatness—or lack thereof. Somewhat to our surprise, we found a source of agreement between us: our belief in American exceptionalism, even if we have very different conceptions of the role of morality and "progress" in forging the American idea. Countries in Europe may have...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Jamie Kirchick joins us to discuss the triumph and sorrow of the gay experience in the nation's capitol. This is the story of The Secret City , Kirchick's genre-defining and panoramic history of the gay men and women who served in the halls of power, all the while in constant fear that they would lose their jobs and...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live A few weeks back, a book title caught our eye. It was called Two Billion Caliphs , written by Haroon Moghul. Mixing personal narrative and theological ruminations, it promised to offer a bold new vision for Muslims living in the 21st century. Being that we frequently talk about the importance of religion in the moder...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week we invited the author Oliver Traldi on the podcast to talk about the role of experts in society and how we assess different kinds of skill, talent, and truth. Oliver, a writing fellow at Heterodox Academy and a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, is one of the most exciting you...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Ideas have consequences. From the early 2000s Matt Continetti, the author of the fascinating new book The Right , has worked at some of the leading institutions of American conservatism. He has seen firsthand how many of them fallen or lost their way. But where conservatism's critics see a movement that has become un...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week Shadi and Damir sat down to discuss the Uvalde mass shooting and its aftermath. Tragedy has struck the American psyche once again. The murder of innocent children has Americans groping for answers but the seemingly scripted discourse in the wake of such tragedies provides anything but solid answers. Are the...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Shadi has been curious about whether he has diverged from the left since Bernie Sanders' campaign, so he invited the socialist thinker Daniel Bessner onto the podcast this week for a spirited discussion of first principles. Bessner is one of the most influential and important leftist intellectuals writing on foreign...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week we were joined by Molly Ball, bestselling author of Pelosi , to talk about how the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade will (or won't) change American politics for decades to come. Until a few days ago, Americans could act politically under the assumption that Roe was permanent. But it may not be. Ending Ro...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Much of the freakout about Elon Musk buying Twitter is based on an assumption that social media is integral to democracies and a critical tool for dissidents living in repressive regimes. But what if that assumption is overblown? Are the dustups over Twitter's new ownership really just a proxy war for the broader fre...