Wisdom of Crowds

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week, Elisabeth Zerofsky of The New York Times Magazine joins us after recent reporting trips in Paris and Berlin. In Part 1 , we talked about the upcoming French election and the rise of the far-right in France. The West is looking on nervously as President Macron tries to fend off a challenge from Marine Le Pe...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week, Shadi and Damir debate whether the war in Ukraine is breathing new life into the liberal idea. It seemed like liberalism might stage a comeback, but Putin-adjacent rightwing populists are still going strong in France and Hungary. Shadi insists he's a liberal who's critical of liberalism, which pushes Damir...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week we were joined by Christine Emba, a columnist at the Washington Post and author of the fascinating new book Rethinking Sex: A Provocation . What resulted was the longest episode in Wisdom of Crowds history, delving into some uncharted territory. We discuss a lot of big topics—the perils of modern dating, th...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live In a classic wide-ranging episode, Shadi and Damir kick things off by noticing that the Ukraine War is no longer capturing “the discourse” as it did a week ago. Does how we consume media make it difficult for us to grapple with the moment’s most important stories? And does the same phenomenon make us overrate the imp...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live What’s the nature of our enemy in Ukraine? Is it Putin, Russia, or authoritarianism? What are the sources of the West’s strength and its capacities for revival? And how should we think about evil in the world? The political philosopher Samuel Kimbriel joins Shadi and Damir to help unpack these questions, and many oth...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live The firebrand journalist and author Glenn Greenwald joined us for a broad-ranging discussion on the war in Ukraine and the past few decades of American foreign policy. We tackled the comparisons between Russia's invasion, the Iraq War, and other disastrous American foreign policy failures. Does America's good intent...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week, Berlin-based journalist and New York Times Magazine contributing writer Elisabeth Zerofsky joins us to discuss how Russia's invasion of Ukraine has changed Europe. What explains the righteous fury of previously pacific Germans? Shadi asks Elisabeth and Damir what a "red line" in Ukraine could possibly be—o...

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

Shadi and Damir sat down to do a quick episode today as Russia commenced its invasion of Ukraine. They talk about how the world got to this point, what we in the West could have done differently, what could happen next, and what it means for the future of America. We hope you find this real-time attempt at analysis useful and helpful. Required Reading - "Negotiating with Madmen" by Damir Marusic (...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live From Leon Trotsky to Sayyid Qutb to the Founding Fathers, Shadi and Damir discuss revolution in all its forms. The guys argue about the importance of ideas, the role of violence, and how order is legitimized. Can democracy keep the peace? Part 2 of our conversation is available here for subscribers. Shadi and Damir t...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live In this week's episode, we were joined by our friend Aaron Sibarium, a reporter for the Washington Free Beacon . Aaron recently reported a piece showing how three states were rationing COVID drugs on race-based criteria. The article made a splash. Fox News covered the story, Trump referenced it in a speech (sloppily...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live It used to be called "political correctness." It had its heyday in the 1990s, then it went underground. While we weren't paying attention, an entire architecture of speech restrictions was being built on campuses across the country. Greg Lukianoff, CEO of FIRE and co-author of the bestselling The Coddling of the Amer...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live This week we were joined by Sam Adler-Bell, cohost of the Know Your Enemy podcast. We examined the New Right , their earnestly held belief that liberals have already won the battle for the soul of the country, and America's crisis of legitimacy. Is it even worth trying to bridge the gap between left and right on cult...

What was it like to live through the fall of Kabul? How should we think about the American withdrawal from Afghanistan? And with famine enveloping the country amid an unprecedentedly severe state collapse, how should we approach—and deal with—the ruling Taliban authorities? This week we are joined by Dr. Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili and Dr. Omar Sadr, both of the newly-launched Afghanistan Project...

As Biden struggles to get his massive spending bill passed, WoC's former Associate Editor Matt Winesett joins Shadi and Damir to talk about guns, gentrification, opera, the race for Governor of Virginia, and the sad state of the Republican Party. Required Reading: Matt's essays at WoC . " Trump's Look Backward Poses Peril for GOP ," by Gerald F. Seib (WSJ). The Citizen app . " Glenn Youngkin's Vir...

Damir and Shadi talk about health security theater during this latest phase of the pandemic, before going on to discuss how technocratic approaches tend to worsen and exacerbate polarization in democratic societies. Also: can anyone make a moral case for democracy without recourse to God? Required reading: The Islamic World Today: Issues and Perspectives (Brigham Young University) " The danger of...

It's no secret that the United States is in a bad place. Fiona Hill saw the chaos and blunders up close, as deputy assistant to President Trump and top Russia advisor at the White House. In November 2019, she was a witness in House hearings during the Trump's first impeachment. Fiona has a new book out There Is Nothing For You Here and is back at the Brookings Institution . She joins Shadi and Dam...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Elbridge Colby joins Shadi and Damir to talk about his challenging new book  The Strategy of Denial , an unflinchingly clinical argument for confronting China. Does China's authoritarianism make it our enemy, or is confrontation inevitable regardless? Will our allies stick by our side just because China is a bully? A...

Is America the most successful third world country on earth? Shadi and Damir welcome Samuel Goldman, author of the new book After Nationalism, onto the podcast for a raucous discussion on national identity, the likelihood of another civil war, and the possibility that, because it has more in common with Latin America than Europe, the United States may be the best place on the planet. Required Read...

This summer, the inherent ugliness of the world reasserted itself. And yet we Americans still found a way to make it all about us, who we think we are, and what we think we represent. Shadi and Damir sit down to talk about the remarkable frivolity of our politics today, and whether there's any way out. Required reading: Shadi's recent Friday Essay on Carl Schmitt . Damir's recent Friday Essay on t...

How did it all go wrong? Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, a leading scholar of Afghanistan, joins Damir and Shadi to dissect the Taliban's victory and discuss what it tells us about the failures of America's nation-building effort. Why did the Afghan government collapse so quickly? Have the technocrats and NGOs in the democracy promotion industry been completely discredited? And for the sake of the A...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Parents in the 1990s believed they were doing their children a favor by instilling in them the ethos “do what you like, follow your dreams, and things will work out.” But Michael Brendan Dougherty, author of   My Father Left Me Ireland: An American Son's Search for Home , argues that sometime in the 2000s, this promi...

Wisdom of Crowds associate editor Matt Winesett joins Damir and Shadi to debate Donald Rumsfeld's legacy and if his mistakes permanently discredited nation building and democracy promotion abroad. They also discuss how younger Millennials perceived the Iraq War, whether Bushism or Trumpism would better serve the GOP's future, how much politicians' personal character ultimately matters, and much mo...

Damir calls in from a conference in Slovakia and describes what life is like in a land without widely available vaccines. Shadi addresses why he won't just register as a Republican already (or convert to Catholicism). And they both discuss if Europe is in danger of sinking into irrelevance, whether George W. Bush should have sent troops to Crimea, the relationship between America's power and its v...

Damir and Shadi return to a familiar topic, but this time with a twist. Damir manages to sound like an optimist. He argues that the fad of wokeness will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, while Shadi thinks it's probably too late. They also discuss whether justice is possible without God, the rather odd fact that Shadi's first academic article was on feminist theory, why white pa...