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Since we’ve got the Thanksgiving holiday at the end of the week, I’m releasing the first half of the conversation to everyone today instead of this Friday. For access to the entire conversation, including the Q&A, become a full subscriber.

This episode's central topic: the vulgarity of our present discourse. Though “vulgarity” doesn’t quite capture what we’re talking about on this show. It’s not news to say that the tenor of public speech has coarsened over the decades—words and phrases that would have been utterly taboo in the media of the 1960s hardly give us pause today. But what does seem new is the sometimes shockingly racist, sexist, and homophobic sentiments that have become a part of “ordinary” political debate.

The Overton window is shifting, and it’s not doing it on its own. One force moving it is surely the wide availability of online platforms. Everyone has a camera and a microphone, and as more and more people avail themselves of the communication tools available to them, views that were once filtered out by mainstream and legacy outlets are finding their way to the center of the conversation. But another force moving the window is what’s going on in the world. While I may roll my eyes when, for example, Nick Fuentes touts the virtues of Jim Crow, he’s responding to items in the news, like violent crime committed by black youth, that do need to be taken seriously.

Then it’s on to our subscriber-only Q&A session, where John and I took questions about God and morality, the Democrats’ electoral prospects, Black English vernacular, China’s outpacing of American economic growth, AI and education, Looney Tunes, and socialism vs. social democracy, plus questions from the YouTube chat.

The Glenn Show is almost entirely viewer supported, so to those of us who are already full subscribers, let me extend a heartfelt thank you. And if you’re not yet a full subscriber, please consider becoming one. The Glenn Show can only do what it does through the generosity of viewers and listeners. For a mere $6/month or $50/year, you’ll get weekly episodes of The Glenn Show earlier than their public release, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, access to the full Substack archives, and other exclusive bonus content.

The Glenn Show is almost entirely audience-supported. To become a full subscriber and receive even more great TGS content, sign up here.

Video Links

0:00 Howard’s new book, The Projects: A New History of Public Housing

5:58 The failed utopianism of American public housing

12:04 The dispossession of urban African American communities

14:54 Ground News ad

16:40 Did reformers have a reason for demolishing the slums?

22:01 Changing the culture of public housing

30:13 What’s working in public housing

33:35 Trump’s plan for a two-year limit on public housing

35:25 Howard’s criticism of Zohran Mamdani’s proposed rent freeze in NYC

41:13 The causes of homelessness

44:21 The “Move to Opportunity” experiments

48:11 What does it take to ensure that poor neighborhoods are also good neighborhoods

Recorded November 19, 2025

Links and Readings

Howard’s new book, The Projects: A New History of Public Housing

Scott Davis’s book, The World of Patience Gromes: Making and Unmaking a Black Community

Le Corbusier’s book, The Radiant City: Elements of a Doctrine of Urbanism to be Used as the Basis of Our Machine-Age Civilization

Catherine Bauer’s book, Modern Housing

Herbert Gans’s book, Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans

HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration program

Zohran Mamdani’s “freeze the rent” ad

Matthew Desmond’s book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

UCSF’s homelessness study

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In my latest livestream, TGS contributor Robert Patton-Spruill and I talk about rising tensions with Venezuela, New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani and his proposed policies, Jeffrey Epstein wreaking havoc from beyond the grave, Nick Fuentes’s appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show and ideological rifts on the right, my conception of Black Patriotism, and the uses and pleasures of AI.

This recording of the stream is available to full subscribers. We’ll make a long-ish clip available for free subscribers on Friday. But if you want the whole thing, consider becoming a full subscriber. The Glenn Show is almost entirely viewer supported, so to those of us who are already full subscribers, let me extend a heartfelt thank you. And if you’re not yet a full subscriber, please consider becoming one. The Glenn Show can only do what it does through the generosity of viewers and listeners. For a mere $6/month or $50/year, you’ll get weekly episodes of The Glenn Show earlier than their public release, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, access to the full Substack archives, and other exclusive bonus content.

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

Video Links

0:00 Charles’s new book, Taking Religious Seriously

8:31 Why Charles finds the idea of divine creation plausible

13:54 Charles’s “road to Damascus” moment

19:25 The appeal of Christianity

24:51 The evidence for life after death

31:38 Charles: “The relative positions of science and religion have flipped”

36:42 The trouble with scientism

40:17 Glenn’s steps toward and away from religion

51:04 Was The Bell Curve putting making a deterministic argument?

Recorded November 4, 2025

Links and Readings

Charles’s new book, Taking Religious Seriously

Charles’s book, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980

Richard Herrnstein and Charles’s book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life

Charles’s book, Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class

Charles’s book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010

Martin Rees’s book, Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe

James Q. Wilson’s book, The Moral Sense

C.S. Lewis’s book, Mere Christianity

Raymond Moody’s book, Life after Life: A Groundbreaking Exploration of Near-Death Experiences and the Transformative Insights into the Afterlife, Backed by Scientific Study and Personal Testimonies

Steven Pinker’s book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe

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The first half of the show consists of a pre-recorded interview with political scientist Charles Murray. He’s best known for books like Losing Ground and The Bell Curve—controversial though they may have been, they were grounded in the empirical methods that characterize modern social science. His new book, Taking Religion Seriously, is a somewhat surprising departure from social science into the realm of religion and religious experience. Murray has had, if not a conversion experience, then a kind of awakening regarding the claims of religion: the existence of a divine creator, miracles, and life after death. In this conversation, I ask him how a staunch materialist who, by his own account, doesn’t have a natural capacity for religious feeling has come to value metaphysics.

After that I bring on Robert Patton-Spruill to talk a little more about religion, the death of Dick Cheney, Zohran Mamdani's win in the NYC mayoral race, the government shutdown, and Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and the conservative schism over U.S.-Israel policy.

The Glenn Show is almost entirely viewer supported, so to those of us who are already full subscribers, let me extend a heartfelt thank you. And if you’re not yet a full subscriber, please consider becoming one. The Glenn Show can only do what it does through the generosity of viewers and listeners. For a mere $6/month or $50/year, you’ll get weekly episodes of The Glenn Show earlier than their public release, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, access to the full Substack archives, and other exclusive bonus content.

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

Watch and listen to the full, 2-hour episode: https://glennloury.substack.com/p/tgs-live-democrats-leadership-crisis

Video Links

0:00 John’s misgivings about Zohran Mamdani’s anti-Zionism

7:22 Is anti-Zionism reducible to “good black people vs. bad white people”?

11:53 Ground News ad

13:40 Democrats try to pull out of a death spiral

20:05 John: If Trump can end some wars, I’ll take it

22:49 What do Kamala Harris fans see in her?

30:09 Here’s what Obama should be doing in his post-presidency

40:11 Mourning the end of race

50:15 Glenn: Eliminating racial disparities requires developing communities

Recorded October 31, 2025

Links and Readings

Tressie McMillan Cottom’s NYT column, “A Nazi Tattoo Exposes Democrats’ Greatest Weakness”

Michelle Goldberg’s NYT column, “I Thought Graham Platner Was Finished. What I Saw in Maine Changed My Mind.”

Kamala Harris’s book, 107 Days

David Brooks’s NYT column, “Hey Lefties! Trump Has Stolen Your Game.”

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe

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Last Friday, John McWhorter and I took our ongoing conversation into new territory: we streamed it live. Eighteen years into our partnership, and we’re still finding ways to keep it fresh!

In the first half of the show, we talk about New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani’s position on Israel, which John believes is merely woke moralism. While I’m no fan of Mamdani’s plans for free grocery stores and rent freezes, I press John on whether Mamdani’s views on Israel are as simplistic as he makes them out to be. Perhaps Mamdani’s shocking success in New York is a sign that Democratic voters are sick of the party’s lack of direction and looking for an infusion of new blood. John and I agree that substance-free leaders like Kamala Harris aren’t going to cut it. Trump is running the table at home and abroad, and Democratic leadership seems overwhelmed or, in the case of Barack Obama, strangely passive.

Obama was at one time a community organizer, wasn’t he? What happened to that commitment to local communities? I recently witnessed the power of effective grassroots organizing—I tell John about my trip to San Antonio in honor of my friend Ernesto Cortés’s 50th anniversary at Communities Organized for Public Service, an extremely impressive organizing operation. Black communities need leadership like that, and it is in short supply.

In the Q&A segment, we answer questions submitted by full subscribers and talk to a couple of them on camera. We take questions on black conservatism in American institutions, AI, race reductionism, test scores in college admissions, the Civil Rights Act, and the government shutdown.

The Glenn Show is almost entirely viewer supported, so to those of us who are already full subscribers, let me extend a heartfelt thank you. And if you’re not yet a full subscriber, please consider becoming one. The Glenn Show can only do what it does through the generosity of viewers and listeners. For a mere $6/month or $50/year, you’ll get weekly episodes of The Glenn Show earlier than their public release, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, access to the full Substack archives, and other exclusive bonus content.

Click here to subscribe!

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Last week’s conference in honor of Thomas Sowell was the culmination of a long year of anticipation, planning, reading, and thinking. In this long excerpt from my most recent livestream, I talk with my editor Mark Sussman about the conference events and my own contributions. I explain the importance of Friedrich Von Hayek to Sowell’s thought and work, and how Sowell extended Hayek’s work. The actor-writer Clifton Duncan drops in to talk about his experiences at the conference. And I recount a conversation that I sat in on between the former secretary of state and the Supreme Court justice that would leave their critics speechless. Legacies are about the resources—intellectual, material, and spiritual—the past leaves to the future. If what I saw over those two days is any indication, those of us who inherit Sowell’s legacy will be very rich indeed.

Today’s episode is just one segment from last week’s livestream. If you missed it and want to watch the full recording, click below to become a full subscriber. The Glenn Show is almost entirely viewer supported, so to those of us who are already full subscribers, let me extend a heartfelt thank you. And if you’re not yet a full subscriber, please consider becoming one. The Glenn Show can only do what it does through the generosity of viewers and listeners. For a mere $6/month or $50/year, you’ll get full recordings of our livestreams, weekly episodes of The Glenn Show earlier than their public release, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, access to the full Substack archives, and other exclusive bonus content.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe

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In this edition of TGS Live, I talk about the events of the conference, my contribution, and one of the ideas informing my new book project. The conference honored the past accomplishments of Thomas Sowell, but it also pointed to the future. I heard the effects of Sowell’s writing and thinking coursing through vital new work, I met the two young winners of an essay contest about Sowell’s ideas, and I sat in on a conversation between Rice and Thomas that would stun their progressive critics.

And speaking of the future, the actor-writer Clifton Duncan, who is working on a one-man show about Sowell’s life and work, came to the conference as well. He dropped into the stream to talk about what he saw and to let us know how his work in progress is shaping up.

From there, it's on to politics. Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to American cities may anger his detractors, but crime disproportionately affects black Americans, and some of them are saying they like what they’re seeing from Trump’s actions. Given the broad perception that illegal immigration is bad for black workers, it makes perfect sense that some of them are throwing their support behind Trump’s anti-immigration agenda.

We look over some pro-Trump clips from black content creators, and I note that market demand will incentivize the creation of supply. As long as Black MAGA remains a source of fascination for supporters, detractors, and the agnostic, creators will supply the market in search of clicks. It’s hard to say whether those creators are truly as dedicated to the cause as they seem, but they’re going to be here as long as people keep watching.

The Glenn Show is almost entirely viewer supported, so to those of us who are already full subscribers, let me extend a heartfelt thank you. And if you’re not yet a full subscriber, click here to become one. The Glenn Show can only do what it does through the generosity of viewers and listeners. For a mere $6/month or $50/year, you’ll get weekly episodes of The Glenn Show earlier than their public release, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, access to the full Substack archives, and other exclusive bonus content.

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

Tucker Carlson has been suggesting that a new civil war may be coming to the US. Is he trying to warn us? Or is he purposefully stoking the fire? Glenn takes Tucker to task.

Today’s episode is just one segment from last week’s livestream. If you missed it and want to watch the full recording, click below to become a full subscriber. The Glenn Show is almost entirely viewer supported, so to those of us who are already full subscribers, let me extend a heartfelt thank you. And if you’re not yet a full subscriber, please consider becoming one. The Glenn Show can only do what it does through the generosity of viewers and listeners. For a mere $6/month or $50/year, you’ll get full recordings of our livestreams, weekly episodes of The Glenn Show earlier than their public release, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, access to the full Substack archives, and other exclusive bonus content.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe