The Glenn Show

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On this episode of The Glenn Show, Ian Rowe, Bradford Wilcox, and Delano Squires argue that children generally fare best when raised by two married parents in the same household, and that this discussion is too often avoided. Ian and Brad point to a recent American Enterprise Institute report arguing that the National Assessment of Educational Progress should publish the family-structure data it already collects. Ian, Brad, and Delano contend that preparing kids for eventual marriage starts in childhood, through honest information about which choices improve life outcomes. But the debate is far from settled.

The Glenn Show is almost entirely audience-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 access to weekly livestreams, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, commenting privileges, access to the full Substack archives, and other exclusive bonus content.

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In this bonus episode of The Glenn Show, Glenn and TGS co-producer Robert Patton-Spruill talk about Sabrina Salvati's documentary Removed: Black Erasure in Boston, and how his own attempt to build affordable housing in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood. According to Rob, redlining isn't the cause of present-day housing problems for black Bostonians. It's often the community itself that stands in the way.

The Glenn Show is almost entirely audience-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 access to weekly livestreams, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, commenting privileges, 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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Earlier this summer, I had Tess Chakkalakal, professor of Africana Studies and English at Bowdoin College and author of A Matter of Complexion, a wonderful biography of the writer Charles Chesnutt, on the livestream. That stream was for full subscribers here on the Substack, but today I’m releasing this fascinating conversation for all to enjoy.

If you don’t know who Chesnutt is, you’re not alone. Chesnutt was a pathbreaking African American novelist and short story writer publishing in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Despite his accomplishments, his work fell into semi-obscurity after his death in 1932. Yet he is arguably the first major African American novelist. A subtle ironist and a significant figure in turn-of-the-century race debates, he was part of the first generation of black Americans to come of age post-Emancipation. His life and work provide a fascinating window into a period—“Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem,” as he calls the era in his last speech—that has received comparatively little attention in the literary history of African American literature.

So why don’t you know who he is? Tess talks John McWhorter and me through his work, his life, and his afterlife, and explain how this great writer fell out of favor and why he’s the object of renewed interest.

The Glenn Show is almost entirely audience-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 access to weekly livestreams, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, commenting privileges, access to the full Substack archives, and other exclusive bonus content.

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Last Friday, with Glenn still on the other side of the world, John McWhorter slid into the host chair for the weekly livestream. The major topic under discussion was the career and death of Jason Arday. As most of you probably know, we cut a segment on Arday from last week’s episode, because it was recorded the day before news of Arday’s death broke. Though British officials have not yet made public a cause of death, most commentators speculate that Arday took his own life. It’s a tragic end to a story that bordered on farce. We’re going to be talking about this for some time. In this episode, John weighs in with his early thoughts and takes questions on the subject from the Substack and YouTube chats. Near the end of the episode, we introduce some lighter topics, like John’s self-described Jewish-adjacency and whether bilingual people’s personalities change depending on which language they’re using.

Note: There was a glitch in Mark's audio recording that we could not get rid of during post-production. Apologies for the sub-optimal listening experience.

The Glenn Show is almost entirely audience-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 access to weekly livestreams, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, commenting privileges, access to the full Substack archives, and other exclusive bonus content.

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Due to travel, I wasn’t able to offer my thoughts on the Jason Arday affair as its sad final chapter unfolded. In lieu of a full-length conversation—which I hope to have soon—I want to offer these brief comments on Arday, meritocracy, and the academy.

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Glenn and John McWhorter sit down with Tyler Austin Harper, whose Atlantic cover story documents his decision to resign from a tenure-track position at Bates College. Harper offers an insider's account of an institution compromising scholarly standards and treating him as a token in the service of sweeping racial justice policies — a story of administrative pressure, faculty self-censorship, and mission drift. Note: this episode was originally recorded with an additional segment on Jason Arday, the former Cambridge professor who was found dead on August 14th. Out of respect, that portion has been withheld; a separate episode addressing the full Arday story is forthcoming.

The Glenn Show is almost entirely audience-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 access to weekly livestreams, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, commenting privileges, 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

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

Buy Norman Finkelstein's new book, Gaza’s Gravediggers: An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places

Nearly three years after October 7th, Glenn and John McWhorter host two guests with sharply opposing views on Israel and Gaza — in succession rather than debate, to prioritize clarity over conflict. First, Norman Finkelstein discusses his forthcoming book Gaza's Gravediggers, which examines failures within the international human rights community to protect vulnerable civilian populations. Then Free Press columnist Eli Lake argues that Israel's military response has been broadly justified and warns against the growing influence of anti-Israel sentiment in Democratic politics. Glenn and John interrogate both positions in good faith — not to reach a tidy verdict, but to model the kind of serious engagement the subject demands.

The Glenn Show is almost entirely audience-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 access to weekly livestreams, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, commenting privileges, 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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Glenn welcomes back Delano Squires, director of the Heritage Foundation's DeVos Center for Human Flourishing, to discuss his new book, The Vanishing Black Family: How Welfare and Feminism Made Marriage Optional and Children Vulnerable. Squires argues that failures of black political and religious leadership, combined with a welfare system that has done more harm than good, have contributed to the near-disappearance of two-parent households in many black working-class communities. Glenn pushes back on some of Squires's more ambitious claims — including his opposition to gay marriage and his framework of children's rights from conception — while finding common ground on the urgent need to strengthen the black family.

The Glenn Show is almost entirely audience-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 access to weekly livestreams, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, commenting privileges, 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

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

Glenn and John McWhorter open with John's recent New York Times column on Stuyvesant High School's vanishingly small number of black admits. Both reject calls to eliminate the admissions test as racist, arguing the problem is inadequate preparation — and that the real damage is done by those telling black students that academic excellence isn't for them. A wide-ranging subscriber Q&A follows, touching on AI, phonics, contrarianism, and Social Security. Then English professor Tess Chakkalakal joins to discuss her biography of Charles Chesnutt, the underappreciated African American writer whose opposition to racial categorization altogether makes him a provocative figure to reckon with in 2026.

The Glenn Show is almost entirely audience-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 access to weekly livestreams, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, commenting privileges, 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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Glenn sits down with political scientist Steven Teles of Johns Hopkins to discuss one of higher education's most stubborn problems: ideological homogeneity. University faculties lean dramatically further left than the broader population, and in some humanities and social science disciplines, the imbalance has become self-reinforcing — conservatives self-censor or don't enter the field at all, shutting down internal debate and compromising academic freedom from within. Teles is working to change that through Johns Hopkins's new Agora Institute and School for Government and Policy, building cross-ideological bridges with institutional backing. Glenn sees the effort as urgent: the Trump administration's funding threats have turned an epistemological problem into an existential one.

The Glenn Show is almost entirely audience-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 access to weekly livestreams, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, commenting privileges, 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