Bloggingheads.tv

The origins of Doug's "New York Times Pitchbot" project ... The "In this Ohio diner..." trope ... The NYT's de facto national status and the hollowing out of local journalism ... The Opinion page's lack of ideological and geographic diversity ... Aryeh: The NYT's real tribe is the wealthy ... Cillizza and Greenwald, Doug's bêtes noires/muses ... With Biden in power, a return to concern trolling by the media ...

Are democracies better at following international rules than autocracies? ... Eli: The world is better off with America in charge ... Debating US policy toward Cuba ... Bob: What's the difference between America's authoritarian allies and its authoritarian enemies? ... Does China see liberal democracies as a threat? ... The virtue of epistemic humility ...

John and Daniel Deudney's piece, "The Intellectual Foundations of the Biden Revolution" ... Debating FDR’s foreign policy legacy ... Patrick: Projecting power abroad undermines democracy at home ... Is there tension between promoting democracy and fighting climate change? ... John: Biden is trying to reinvent liberalism for a new era ... Should Biden focus on relations with like-minded nations? ... The limits of liberal internationalism in the Middle East ... Is America an empire? ... Assessing Biden's international efforts to 'Build Back Better' ...

Bob vows not to get flapped again ... A flood of reporting on the Trump Administration’s last days ... Will the billionaire space race help a wealth tax gain traction? ... Mickey: Democrats will get the soft infrastructure bill passed ... On the question of JD Vance’s degree of Trumpiness ... Mickey: The Child Tax Credit will produce a social disaster ... How Bush made war with Afghanistan unavoidable ... Why are we sanctioning Cuba (or anyone)? ... Parrot Room preview: a sad story from Bob’s youth, the subtext of Bob’s Eric Weinstein piece, further work on the Bret side of the Weinstein equation, an empirical observation about black employees in public-facing jobs, the Aspen Information Disorder Commission, apologies of Abigail Shrier’s book, Ashli Babbitt, Richard Lewontin, Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and Mickey’s Law of Success Stories ...

John McWhorter, master of his craft ... Is John a “Black linguist”? Is Glenn a “Black economist”? ... Al Sharpton and Benjamin Crump address police violence against white victims ... Defining CRT ... Is the CRT debate comparable to other debates in education? ... Glenn: It is tyrannical to ban the teaching of CRT ...

Assessing Biden's foreign policy ... How unusual was Trump's approach to international affairs? ... When should the US be willing to work with authoritarians? ... Tom: Restrainers ignore America's greatest foreign policy successes ... Does the US need troops in the Middle East? ... Stephen: We need a narrower view of US interests abroad ... Two approaches to democracy promotion ...

Matt: Worry about electoral subversion, not voting access ... Bill's indirect solution to electoral subversion ... Is the left responsible for the culture war's escalation? ... The populist realignment over the rights of business owners ... Will CRT in the schools provide significant political wins for Republicans? ...

Tim's academic background ... Tim responds to Eric Weinstein's claims against him and his co-author ... How Tim first came into contact with Weinstein ... Tim: Weinstein is evading our critiques of his theory ... What would a "theory of everything" require and accomplish? ... Weinstein's attempt at a theory of everything ... The Shiab operator and its problems ... Tim's further objections to Geometric Unity ... The "aesthetic wish" for a unified field theory ... The difference between a mathematical and a physical theory of everything ... What frustrates Tim about Weinstein's presentation of GU ... The irony of Weinstein trying to squelch Tim's critique ... Pondering the crackpot question ...

The absurd exercise of ranking presidential greatness ... Aryeh: We all agree on Lincoln and Washington, but then it's a fight ... Daniel: George W. Bush was much worse than Trump ... Did America react hysterically to the storming of the Capitol? ... Ghostbusters as a cultural expression of Reagan's America ... Nostalgia and cultural decadence ... Critical race theory, 1619, and national mythmaking ... Daniel's new podcast, "American Prestige" ...

Branson aims to beat Bezos to space ... J.D. Vance flirts with delegitimizing the 2020 election ... Tucker suggests cameras in classrooms to root out CRT ... Bob makes progress toward a Unified Theory of the Weinsteins ... Is a new Alzheimer’s drug worth the astronomical cost? ... Is Haiti paying for Trump’s belligerence toward Venezuela? ... Why is China clamping down on a big Chinese ride-hailing company? ... Mickey: Democrats will abandon the bipartisan infrastructure bill ... Covid cases are up in the US. Will deaths follow? ... Searching for insight into Trump’s mindset on January 6 ... Parrot Room preview: A Hunter Biden development, Big Tech’s possible bias against J.D. Vance, Glenn Loury and Charles Murray’s recent conversation, Republicans oppose beefing up the IRS, a Jeffrey Epstein-Marty Peretz connection, Bob continues to hypothesize on the Weinsteins, Fellini’s La Strada, even more JD Vance, and Trump’s Waterloo ...