Bloggingheads.tv

By Bloggingheads.tv

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Smart people talking about politics, policy, culture and other stuff

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The (Foreign Policy) Blob S...

10.27.2021

How Tom and Bob wound up talking about the Blob ... Why Tom wants to retire the term "the Blob" ... Is the "Restrainers vs. the Blob" framing useful? ... Chomsky's misunderstood view on how money corrupts discourse ... Tom ...

Bloggingheads.tv episodes:

10.27.2021 The (Foreign Policy) Blob Strikes Back (Robert Wright & Thomas Wright) How Tom and Bob wound up talking about the Blob ... Why Tom wants to retire the term "the Blob" ... Is the "Restrainers vs. the Blob" framing useful? ... Chomsky's misunderstood view on how money corrupts discourse ... Tom ...
10.23.2021 Preempting MAGA 2024 (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus) Mickey: Sinema’s tax plan is screwing up the infrastructure bill ... Bob: It’s a political mistake to cut free community college ... Did Biden accidentally commit to defending Taiwan against attack? ... Why you shouldn’t worry about China’s new missile ...
10.22.2021 The NYC Exam School Controversy (Glenn Loury & Wai Wah Chin) What are NYC exam schools? ... The recent attempt to change exam school admissions ... Wai Wah: Changes to exam schools will discriminate against Asian students ... Wai Wah's attempts to expand the Gifted and Talented Program ... Are exam ...
10.22.2021 The Looming Infrastructure Deadline (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis) Matt's recent conversation with Ross Douthat ... Can Democrats get BBB done by the end of October? ... Are progressives onboard with the bipartisan infrastructure bill? ... Matt: The Virginia governor's race point the way for national Republicans ...
10.19.2021 Why Rationality Matters (Robert Wright & Steven Pinker) Steve’s new book, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters ... Are humans inherently logical? ... What is “motivated reasoning”? ... How attribution error distorts our public discourse ... How Steve deals with criticism of his ...
10.18.2021 "Dead Jews" and Living Jews (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Dara Horn) Dara's new book, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present ... Anne Frank, Jewish self-erasure, and the actual lessons of the Holocaust ... Unique features of Jewish literature and history ... The case for Jewish anger ... The ...
10.16.2021 Donald Trump and Dave Chappelle Walk into a Bar … (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus) Trump finally crosses the line for Mickey (again) ... Why is Trump threatening to undermine Republicans in the midterms? ... Mickey: It’s smart politics to dump the child tax credit ... Are some of Dave Chappelle’s jokes antisemitic? ... Ruth ...
10.15.2021 Authentically Black (Glenn Loury & John McWhorter) John's linguistic adventure in Brighton Beach ... The complex racial and economic dynamics of redlining ... The problem with John's NYT "megaphone" ... A progress report on Glenn's memoir ... The temptations of playing to the crowd ... What, if ...
10.14.2021 How Serious Is Dave Chappelle? (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis) Matt: We've become overly sensitive to potentially offensive comedy ... Is Dave Chappelle making jokes or a serious political argument? ... Is Chappelle an "equal opportunity offender"? ... Bill: The Democrats' approach to reconciliation is incoherent ...
10.12.2021 The Culture of American Media (Robert Wright & Aryeh Cohen-Wade) Aryeh's new YouTube channel ... The early technological innovations of Bloggingheads ... Bloggingheads's curatorial principles ... How the #Resistance media further alienated Trump supporters ... Is journalistic neutrality an obsolete concept? ... Why did the "cool kids" in the US ...
10.11.2021 The Bard of Twitter (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & William Shakespeare) A new YouTube channel for Culturally Determined ... Meet the man who tweets as William Shakespeare ... The most secret and most grave truths of @Wwm_Shakespeare ... Spying a kind of hope in Shakespearean ambiguity ... Have you heard the ...
10.09.2021 How Do You Solve a Problem Like Joe Manchin? (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus) Joe Manchin’s infrastructure shell game ... The Monty Hall problem explained ... What does Bernie want from the infrastructure deal? ... If the Taliban collapses, can Biden count it as a win? ... The exaggerated claims about China’s “incursion” into ...
10.08.2021 The Case against "The Case for Reparations" (Glenn Loury & David Kaiser) The post-Vietnam reevaluation of the Cold War ... David: Academic historians largely have abandoned the idea of objective truth ... Were black people really excluded from the New Deal? ... The fortunes of black veterans after WWII ... Why redlining ...
10.07.2021 Sympathy for Kyrsten Sinema (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis) Matt is crazy about Kyrsten SInema's freewheelin' attitude ... Are hardball tactics working out for progressives? ... How bad are Biden's poll numbers? ...
10.06.2021 Death, Quantum Physics, and Mushrooms (Nikita Petrov & John Horgan) ...
10.05.2021 Waging Humane War (Robert Wright & Samuel Moyn) Sam's new book, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War ... The murky legal standing of the Forever War ... Obama’s transition from traditional war to “humane” war ... Are presidents incentivized to keep war going forever? ...
10.04.2021 War of Shadows (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Gershom Gorenberg) Gershom's new book, War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East ... How Gershom rediscovered forgotten heroes from Bletchley Park ... Fascist mythology and Italian colonialism ... The strategic importance of ...
10.02.2021 Pelosi’s Infrastructure Maneuvering (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus) Reconstructing Pelosi’s infrastructure dealmaking ... Does Biden actually need both infrastructure bills to pass? ... Time for some game theory (to explain infrastructure negotiations) ... Positive pandemic news: Declining US case rates, Merck’s new drug ... Is Havana Syndrome real? ...
10.01.2021 The Past and Future of Black Political Leadership (Glenn Loury & John McWhorter) Some posh new (temporary) digs for The Glenn Show ... The challenges and liberties of John's NY Times gig ... John's efforts to help mount an unproduced black opera ... The deracialization of "motherfucker" ... The erotics and economics of ...
09.30.2021 The Biden Agenda On the Line (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis) A birthday week recap ... Will BIB and BBB go bust? ... What are Manchin and Sinema up to? ... What happened to Glenn Greenwald? ...
09.28.2021 The Age of Secular Gurus (Robert Wright, Matthew Browne, and Christopher Kavanagh) Matt and Chris's podcast, Decoding the Gurus ... What makes a guru a guru? ... Are we living in an age of secular gurus? ... Chris: I have an issue with "unevenly applied" skepticism ... Scott Adams's selectively "pro-science" stance ...
09.27.2021 Returning to Roth (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Jacques Berlinerblau) How #MeToo shaped Jacques's new book, The Philip Roth We Don't Know ... Jacques: Roth aimed to obliterate the critic ... Is it unethical to write a nasty fictionalization of an ex? ... Three levels of analysis of the misogynist ...
09.25.2021 Biden: Not Dead Yet (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus) Pelosi preps for infrastructure vote with trouble all around ... The cost of zero sum politics: the wrath of the voters ... Throwing Biden into the ash heap of history ... What do Manchin & Sinema really want? ... Is ...
09.24.2021 Non-Zero-Sum Thinking on the World Stage (Glenn Loury & Robert Wright) Subscribe to The Glenn Show on YouTube ... The origins of Bloggingheads ... Non-zero-sum thinking on the global stage ... Bob: We’re not focusing on the most pressing foreign policy dilemmas ... Bridging the globalist vs. nationalist divide ... Could ...
09.22.2021 What Do Progressives Want from the Infrastructure Bill? (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis) Are we headed for a shutdown? ... The annual Bill birthday digression ... What's Al Franken up to? ... Will progressives sink the bipartisan infrastructure bill? ...
09.20.2021 Small Moments of Delight (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Sophie Haigney) Sophie's exploration of the use and misuse of "the Irish goodbye" ... The strange joy of watching a Picasso painting fall to the ground ... NFTs and the question of authentication ... What makes an object a valuable collectible? ...
09.18.2021 Wag the Submarine (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus) Mickey proposes a parking garage-based theory of everything ... Bob’s plan for passing Biden’s "soft infrastructure" bill ... Mickey does some Monday morning quarterbacking for Larry Elder ... Bob’s near-death experience with British food ... Was Mickey truly “in it ...
09.17.2021 American Empire before and after 9/11 (Glenn Loury & Daniel Bessner) Daniel’s new podcast. American Prestige ... Did the US needlessly prolong the Cold War? ... Daniel: The Cold War actually limited political liberty within the US ... The cultural logic of American empire ... Global inequities and existential threats ...
09.16.2021 Representative Democracy: Celebrity Edition (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis) Should AOC have worn that dress? ... Should celebrities make our healthcare decisions? ... The legacy of Norm MacDonald ...
09.13.2021 The Nickelodeon Generation (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Katie Baker) Katie's recent essay, "Nickelodeon’s Generational Divide" ... Children's entertainment that didn't pander ... The early '90s as a midpoint in the shifting cultural battle of kids vs. parents ... The ultimate childhood dream: the Super Toy Run ... The people ...
09.11.2021 A Mandate for All Seasons (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus) Mickey: Biden’s weakness is his strength ... Is Biden’s vaccine mandate constitutional? And will it work? ... A reason to root for the Delta variant? ... JD Vance urges people to resist the vaccine mandate ... Looking back at 9/11-inspired ...
09.10.2021 Reckoning with the Relics of Racism (Glenn Loury & John McWhorter) John's new gig writing for the New York Times ... Wisconsin students get a "racist" rock removed from campus ... Are present-day universities morally accountable for their involvement in the slave trade? ... Debating the legacy of Christopher Columbus ...
09.09.2021 The Many Messages of Joe Biden (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis) Are Democrats trying to do too much? ... Should we have more than two parties? ... What have we learned 20 years after 9/11? ...
09.08.2021 Reconsidering Online Disinformation (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Joe Bernstein) Joe's new essay on online disinformation ... Does advertising actually work? ... Joe: Maybe the real critique of Facebook is that it's a worthless product ... The ivermectin craze and the end of media gatekeeping ... How do you solve ...
09.06.2021 "The White Lotus" and Black History (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & John Ganz) Why John hated The White Lotus ... Is the show more of a farce than a satire? ... Debating whether the staff was thinly characterized on purpose ... John critiques the show's treatment of race and class ... Why the ...
09.04.2021 A Vortex of Failure (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus) Bob and Mickey’s most erotic cold open yet ... Mickey mildly critiques Bob’s latest Afghanistan piece ... Eight ways Biden messed up the Afghanistan withdrawal (according to Mickey) ... Will Pelosi get the infrastructure bill she wants? ... Will the ...
09.03.2021 Psychedelic Economics (Glenn Loury & Nikita Petrov) Glenn's book leave ... A psychedelic experience inspires Nikita to talk to Glenn ... Healthy vs. unhealthy human connection ... Glenn: Critical race theory is "self-absorbed and small" ... Rising above "sectarian obsession" ... A brief history of Russian political ...
09.02.2021 Has Biden Returned Us to "Normal"? (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis) The Texas abortion law and the future of Roe v. Wade ... Do any conservatives oppose the Texas abortion law? ... Bill: The Texas law risks alienating the political center ... Matt: Biden has botched all aspects of the Afghanistan ...
08.31.2021 Realism and International Law (Robert Wright & John Mearsheimer) What is "realism" in international relations? ... How John predicted the disastrous outcome of the Iraq invasion ... How to convince neocons to respect international law ... John: Sometimes nations just have to break the law ... Bob: The US ...
08.27.2021 Lies, Damn Lies, and Narrative (originally posted 11/12/2007) (Glenn Loury & John McWhorter) Revisiting Glenn and John's first Bloggingheads conversation ... John's gig as a columnist ... The Black intellectual's challenge ... John: There is life outside the academy ... Disappearing factories and Black poverty ... Glenn calls for cross-racial working-class solidarity ...
08.27.2021 "The Netanyahus," a Novel (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Joshua Cohen) Joshua's new novel, The Netanyahus ... How Harold Bloom inspired a novel about Bibi Netanyahu's father ... Other influences: Philip Roth, classic sitcoms, and Yiddish anecdotes ... Jewish assimilationism vs. Jewish identitarianism ... The semi-forgotten history of Revisionist Zionism ...
08.26.2021 Learning to Live with the Taliban (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus) Bob and Mickey’s vaccination vacation ... American cluelessness persists in Afghanistan ... Can the Taliban be incorporated into the global community? ... Radicalized by Microsoft ... Bret Weinstein’s ivermectin crusade (cont’d) ... Has Pelosi outmaneuvered House moderates? ... Are Millennials ...
08.26.2021 House Moderates Strike Back (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis) Bill: Moderates got the better of the House budget resolution standoff ... Can the Democrats avoid a debt limit debacle? ... Matt: Biden failed to lead on Afghanistan ...
08.23.2021 The Intellectuals Who Went Trumpist (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Laura K. Field) Laura's essay, "What the Hell Happened to the Claremont Institute?" ... Background on Harry Jaffa and the West Coast Straussians ... Why did many East Coast Straussians become NeverTrumpers? ... Michael Anton, the cosplaying conservative intellectual ... A recent "crazy ...
08.21.2021 Afghanistan Withdrawal Symptoms (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus) Unmasked liberals in their natural environment ... The sharply rising Covid-related death rate in the US ... Should the US send vaccine doses abroad before giving boosters at home? ... Bob: The Afghanistan withdrawal could reduce the risk of domestic ...
08.20.2021 Are Disparities Caused by "Culture"? (Glenn Loury & Briahna Joy Gray) The bias narrative vs. the development narrative ... What are the causes of “behavioral maladies” in black communities? ... Will more funding for social services reduce violent crime? ... Glenn: The clock is ticking for the least advantaged African Americans ...
08.19.2021 Leaving Afghanistan (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis) Has Afghanistan shown Biden to be incompetent and callous? ... Will Afghanistan impact Biden politically? ... Do the Moderate Nine hold better cards than Nancy Pelosi in the budget resolution showdown? ...
08.17.2021 What Is Critical Race Theory? (Robert Wright & Mehrsa Baradaran) A prehistory of critical race theory ... What CRT isn't ... Why CRT gets so much pushback ... When (possibly) well-meaning jokes go wrong ... CRT and the language of the elite ... The shifting definitions of "racist" and "white ...
08.16.2021 Arendt, Trump, and Truth (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Rebecca Panovka) Rebecca's essay on how Hannah Arendt was misread during the Trump years ... A capsule biography of Arendt ... The real meaning of Arendt's famous line about "the ideal subject of totalitarian rule" ... Rebecca: Trump's lies were mostly "boardroom ...
08.14.2021 Bob and Mickey Sing the Delta Blues (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus) Meet the new virus, same as the old virus ... The confounding Covid numbers coming out of Florida ... Just a couple of cowards talking about JD Vance ... The Biden administration’s lackluster messaging on the Delta variant ... Hunter ...

Older episodes

Bloggingheads.tv

What's Bloggingheads.tv about?

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Bloggingheads.tv episodes:

The (Foreign Policy) Blob Strikes Back (Robert Wright & Thomas Wright)

Preempting MAGA 2024 (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

The NYC Exam School Controversy (Glenn Loury & Wai Wah Chin)

The Looming Infrastructure Deadline (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis)

Why Rationality Matters (Robert Wright & Steven Pinker)

"Dead Jews" and Living Jews (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Dara Horn)

Donald Trump and Dave Chappelle Walk into a Bar … (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

Authentically Black (Glenn Loury & John McWhorter)

How Serious Is Dave Chappelle? (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis)

The Culture of American Media (Robert Wright & Aryeh Cohen-Wade)

The Bard of Twitter (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & William Shakespeare)

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Joe Manchin? (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

The Case against "The Case for Reparations" (Glenn Loury & David Kaiser)

Sympathy for Kyrsten Sinema (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis)

Death, Quantum Physics, and Mushrooms (Nikita Petrov & John Horgan)

Waging Humane War (Robert Wright & Samuel Moyn)

War of Shadows (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Gershom Gorenberg)

Pelosi’s Infrastructure Maneuvering (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

The Past and Future of Black Political Leadership (Glenn Loury & John McWhorter)

The Biden Agenda On the Line (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis)

The Age of Secular Gurus (Robert Wright, Matthew Browne, and Christopher Kavanagh)

Returning to Roth (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Jacques Berlinerblau)

Biden: Not Dead Yet (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

Non-Zero-Sum Thinking on the World Stage (Glenn Loury & Robert Wright)

What Do Progressives Want from the Infrastructure Bill? (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis)

Small Moments of Delight (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Sophie Haigney)

Wag the Submarine (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

American Empire before and after 9/11 (Glenn Loury & Daniel Bessner)

Representative Democracy: Celebrity Edition (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis)

The Nickelodeon Generation (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Katie Baker)

A Mandate for All Seasons (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

Reckoning with the Relics of Racism (Glenn Loury & John McWhorter)

The Many Messages of Joe Biden (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis)

Reconsidering Online Disinformation (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Joe Bernstein)

"The White Lotus" and Black History (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & John Ganz)

A Vortex of Failure (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

Psychedelic Economics (Glenn Loury & Nikita Petrov)

Has Biden Returned Us to "Normal"? (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis)

Realism and International Law (Robert Wright & John Mearsheimer)

Lies, Damn Lies, and Narrative (originally posted 11/12/2007) (Glenn Loury & John McWhorter)

"The Netanyahus," a Novel (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Joshua Cohen)

Learning to Live with the Taliban (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

House Moderates Strike Back (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis)

The Intellectuals Who Went Trumpist (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Laura K. Field)

Afghanistan Withdrawal Symptoms (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

Are Disparities Caused by "Culture"? (Glenn Loury & Briahna Joy Gray)

Leaving Afghanistan (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis)

What Is Critical Race Theory? (Robert Wright & Mehrsa Baradaran)

Arendt, Trump, and Truth (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Rebecca Panovka)

Bob and Mickey Sing the Delta Blues (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

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