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Video Links

0:00 Intro

1:00 What is the “affirmative action myth”?

8:02 Black progress before and after affirmative action

11:41 Ground News ad

13:29 How far does Jason’s critique of affirmative action extend?

17:03 Contesting The Shape of the River

26:37 Respectability, responsibility, and upward mobility

32:40 Is Jason blaming the victims?

35:54 Jason: No one’s buying the reparations argument

43:26 How do figures like Ibram X. Kendi and Nikole Hannah-Jones end up at the center of progressive discourse?

Recorded May 7, 2025

Links and Readings

Jason’s new book, The Affirmative Action Myth: Why Blacks Don’t Need Racial Preferences to Succeed

Jason’s book, Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed

Jason’s book, False Black Power

Jason’s book, Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell

Derek Bok and William G. Bowen’s book, The Shape of the River: Long Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions

Melissa Kearney’s book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind

An Amos & Andy YouTube playlist

Julia pilot episode

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Atlantic essay, “The Case for Reparations”

Ibram X. Kendi’s book, How to Be an Antiracist

The NYT’s 1619 Project

The Woodson Center’s 1776 Unites Project

Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com

In this installment of my monthly Q&A with John McWhorter, we tackle questions about elite universities and wealth, the value of DEI, Trump's expansion of executive power, The Great Gatsby, and ethics in higher education.

Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com. Pre-order Glenn's forthcoming book, SELF-CENSORSHIP: https://www.amazon.com/Self-Censorship-Glenn-C-Loury/dp/1509567402/ref=sr_1_1?crid=223KUFY8BN0X&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ar6rmRPzp7pEiJss0o1eUeLbLwOgX_qrXHtWjMS3_m_GjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.goECGgv0OxAPgLR8kNnsISu5AK6OSVoa5qWVmqRNqwY&dib_tag=se&keywords=self-censorship+glenn+c.+loury&qid=1746808862&sprefix=self-censor%2Caps%2C237&sr=8-1

Video Links

0:43 Ross: Trump's economic policies are the worst I've seen in my life

7:36 Glenn's new book, SELF-CENSORSHIP

12:00 Trump’s bid to become the most powerful person in the history of the world

21:17 The disruptive effects of tariffs, financial regulatory manipulation, and extraordinary debt levels

27:58 Ross: Alienating our allies is only going to strengthen China

33:41 Glenn: Those who lost out to globalization are getting their way

41:04 Will Trump heed economic warning signs?

48:10 Can Congress constrain Trump?

Recorded April 19, 2025

Links and Readings

Edward Luce’s Financial Times piece, “Trump, Truss, and the ‘Moron Premium’”

Larry Kotlikoff’s Substack

Larry Kotlikoff’s post, “30-Year TIPS Are Looking Mighty Attractive”

Glenn’s most recent conversation with Larry Kotlikoff

Michael Sandel’s book, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?

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Video Links

0:00 Intro

00:31 Prefatory remarks

4:15 Glenn: The Trump administration’s defunding of the universities is mischievous in the extreme

9:06 Ground News ad

11:01 Doesn’t maintaining the preeminence of American universities require diversity of thought?

18:47 John McWhorter has entered the building

20:25 How did higher ed lose the general public’s support?

23:05 The university’s role in public discourse

26:26 Was affirmative action a success or a failure?

31:36 The partisan balance in education funding

42:21 The costs and benefits of tenure

50:09 Can education preserve democracy if students aren’t doing the reading?

1:01:59 Are we irrevocably polarized as a nation?

1:07:28 Q&A: You don’t seem as excited by Trump as you once were. What is disappointing you?

1:11:40 Q&A: If higher ed serves society, why do so many elite grads use their degrees to get rich?

1:16:01 Q&A: How do you teach diversity to students who’ve never spent time around people different from them?

1:19:15 Q&A: What’s the difference between contrarianism and provocation?

1:21:23 Q&A: Should fewer people go to college?

Recorded April 22, 2025

Links and Readings

Michael Sandel’s book, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?

John Stuart Mill’s book, On Liberty

John Milton’a Areopagitica

Alan Bloom’s book, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students

John’s new book, Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words

Glenn’s memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative

The Great Courses

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment

Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov

Leo Tolsty’s novel, War and Peace

Tolstoy’s novel, Anna Karenina

Plato’s dialogue, The Republic

Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com

In this bonus episode, I talk with my grandson Will Kelly about his weight-loss journey, which he is documenting on social media. We talk about his desire to live out loud, our family history of addiction issues, and his strategies for healthy, sustainable weight loss.

Check out this episode on Substack to see clips from Will's TikTok and instagram

Follow Will on Instagram and TikTok

Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com

Pre-order Glenn's forthcoming book, SELF-CENSORSHIP. Available here or wherever you get your books: https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=self-censorship--9781509567409

Video Links

0:00 Intro

1:10 Glenn meets the young Marx

2:32 The new wokeness of the political right

8:30 What is the democratic counterpart of foreign policy and national security run by experts?

17:04 Russia’s motivations: Fear of NATO or imperial ambitions

21:41 Danny: Zelenskyy made a huge misstep in the Oval Office

26:12 Does China have global security ambitions?

35:09 Ending the Middle East’s post-Ottoman redefinition

39:42 Danny: It’s gotta be rough to be Peter Beinart

43:46 Why we don’t need Hitler to explain Trump’s authoritarianism

56:29 Danny: We’ve been in the midst of a constitutional crisis since the 1940s

57:58 Can the nuclear taboo hold?

Recorded April 19, 2025

Links and Readings

Danny’s podcast, American Prestige

Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page’s paper, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens”

Walter Lippmann’s book, Public Opinion

Danny’s book, Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual

Transcript of Matt Lauer’s 1998 interview with Madeline Albright

Paul Thomas Chamberlain’s book, The Cold War Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace

Lindsey O’Rourke’s book, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War

Peter Beinart’s book, Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning

Glenn’s conversation with Peter Beinart

Glenn’s memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative

Danny’s Jacobin piece, “This Is America”

James Whitman’s book, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law

Carl Schmitt’s book, The Concept of the Political

Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com

In this bonus episode of The Glenn Show, I talk with Brown University sophomore Alex Shieh about Bloat@Brown, his website calling out Brown administrators whose roles, he says, may violate federal discrimination laws. We talk about why he started Bloat@Brown, diversity of thought on campus, class-based affirmative action, and the role of diversity on campus.

This bonus episode is available in its entirety to full subscribers, without whom The Glenn Show would not be possible. If you want to listen to the full version of this episode and our other bonus content—including monthly Q&As with John McWhorter—go to https://glennloury.substack.com and sign up.

Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com

Pre-order Glenn's forthcoming book, Self-Censorship. Available here or wherever you get your books: https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetai...

Video Links

0:00 Intro

1:12 Attacks on the university from within and without

9:50 Ground News ad

11:43 Reshaping institutions by force and by argument

20:56 Critiquing the Gaza War without antisemitism

22:30 Reforming para-academic institutions

32:07 Is there a potential conflict between commitments to truth and commitments to diversity of thought?

39:19 Caught between “casual relativism” and “fierce absolutism”

52:18 Cornel: There is no “mic drop” argument on Gaza or anything else

55:19 The straight-jacket of emotional over-investment

1:00:36 The role of faith in the search for truth

1:10:19 Finding faith beyond reason in Stephen Sondheim

Recorded April 12, 2025

Links and Readings

Robbie and Cornel’s new book, Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division

Plato’s Republic

Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Eugene Genovese’s book, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made

Antonio Gramsci’s book, The Prison Notebooks

William Blake’s poem, “London”

Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, Fides et Ratio

Genesis 22, King James Version

Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Glenn’s memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative

Mandy Patinkin sings “Finishing the Hat” from Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George

Support The Glenn Show at http://glennloury.substack.com

VIdeo Links

0:00 Intro

0:45 Why Trump’s tariffs alarm economists

8:18 Are the tariffs designed to offset Trump’s tax cuts?

11:30 Larry’s break with Senator Ron Johnson

14:16 Larry: We’re not in a trade war with other countries, we’re in a trade war with other people

22:44 Is Trump under the sway of a foreign power?

28:45 What measures should investors take to protect themselves from tariff-generated market volatility?

35:46 The possible silver lining in the economy under tariffs

41:32 The hypothetical third-party billionaire who could defeat Trump

44:46 The social security Ponzi scheme

54:50 Larry’s plan for fixing social security

57:29 Are other aging nations facing the same social security crisis as the US?

1:02:23 The failure of checks and balances

Recorded April 4, 2025

Links and Readings

Larry’s Substack

Larry’s company, Economic Security Planning

The MaxiFi Planner

TIPs Ladder

Rajiv Sethi’s Substack, Imperfect Information

Larry’s book, You’re Hired: A Trump Playbook for Fixing America’s Economy

For the March 2025 Q&A, John and I take questions on getting outside our bubbles, the first hundred days of the second Trump administration, the Department of Education, contemporary black writers, race and advertising, the assumption of good faith, and undocumented immigration.

The Glenn Show is supported almost entirely by listeners, viewers, and readers. If you're not year a full subscriber, please consider becoming one at https://glennloury.substack.com. You'll get access to monthly Q&As, commenting privileges at the newsletter, and lots of bonus content. And if you're already a full subscriber, thank you for all you do.