The Glenn Show

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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.

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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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com

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

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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com

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

Note: Due to the AWS outage, many online services experienced disruptions throughout Monday. To ensure that everyone receives the episode, I thought it best to hold the episode until Amazon fixed the problem. Apologies for the delay.

In this edition of the livestream, we're talking about the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics, creative destruction, nuclear war, Trump's multi-billion-dollar currency swap with Argentina, military strikes on "narcoterrorist" boats, sending the CIA into Venezuela, a combination War on Terror and War on Drugs, Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, "This Week in White Crime," and Tucker Carlson's warning about (or attempt to incite) a new civil war waged over immigration and white Christian nationalism.

Recording of the full stream is available to full subscribers right now. An abbreviated episode will be available for free subscribers on Friday. The Glenn Show is almost entirely subscriber-supported. To those of you who are already full subscribers: thank you! If you like what you hear and want more, go to my Substack and become a full subscriber today.

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

Video Links

0:00 Happy 60th, John!

2:20 2020 in hindsight

12:05 Ground News ad

14:01 Are Glenn and John helping to shift the Overton window?

18:25 Is Charlie Kirk the George Floyd of the right?

29:53 Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s conversation about Kirk

34:14 Glenn’s new book idea

41:43 Kirk’s comments on Michelle Obama, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Joy Reid

48:05 The purging of the woke remnant

51:33 The responsibilities of the black intellectual

58:27 Glenn: There is meaning in blackness

Recorded October 6, 2025

Links and Readings

Glenn and John’s first discussion of George Floyd, from May 2020

Pete Hegseth’s speech before US military leadership

The Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”

Thomas Chatterton Williams’s Atlantic essay, “The Other Martyr”

Glenn’s October 3rd livestream, with Nikita Petrov and Robert Patton-Spruill

Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s NYT conversation following the assassination of Charlie Kirk

Coates’s 2015 Atlantic essay, “Letter to My Son”

Glenn’s recent conversation with Jason Riley on the life and work of Thomas Sowell

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

This week on The Glenn Show, Robert Patton-Spruill and I get into a detailed analysis of a conversation between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein. The show begins as a debate on their divergent reactions to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, expressed in a New York Times column by Klein and a Vanity Fair piece by Coates. I find Coates’s smug, morally hectoring characterization of Kirk as a hate monger hard to stomach. As much as I admire parts of The Message, his vision of African American history as a struggle against an apparently timeless and all-encompassing white supremacy cannot go unchallenged, and Klein was simply not up to the task. But I am.

This is a long segment from my Friday, October 3rd livestream, and there’s lots more in the full episode. To watch that, you’ll need to become a full subscriber. I’m doing another stream next Friday, October 17—we’ll post an announcement with links next week. And John McWhorter will return on Monday for a regular episode for full subscribers (free subscribers will have to wait until next Friday). John and I really get into it on some of the same topics: Charlie Kirk, the Coates-Klein debate, and what being a “black writer” means in the twenty-first century. It’s one of the best episodes of the year, if I do say so myself. You won’t want to miss it.

And you’ll want it as soon as possible! To get early access to episodes, video from my livestreams, and much more, become a full subscriber by clicking below. 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.

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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com

Last Friday’s livestream was a hot one. Today I’m posting the video for all who missed it (you have to be a paid subscriber to hear the full version now, but everybody else will get it on Friday). But trust me, this is appointment viewing. I’ll be at Stanford later this week for a conference on the work of Thomas Sowell. But the livestream will return the week following.

In the first half of the stream, Nikita Petrov, Robert Patton-Spruill, and I talk about …

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com

Note: Links and info for my next livestream, which is happening this Friday, October 3 at 1:00 PM EDT, can be found at the end of this post.

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

Normally, I release TGS episodes to full subscribers on Mondays and then to the general public on Fridays. But this conversation is a repost from my conversations with Bob Wright at his Nonzero podcast, so I figured I’d make this one an early public release. If you like starting your week off with The Glenn Show, and you’re not yet a full subscriber, consider becoming one by going here. We at The Glenn Show are almost entirely subscriber supported. We need your help to keep the show going. So if you’re already a paying subscriber, thank you for making The Glenn Show possible.

Video Links

0:00 A message from Glenn

1:34 How this conversation came to be

2:59 What surprised Glenn most about the Kirk killing

8:56 Who (or what) is driving our polarization?

17:36 Cognitive empathy for MAGA

25:24 Reacting to Charlie Kirk on affirmative action

45:04 Are we re-running the 1960s?

51:50 Glenn’s latest book, Self-Censorship

54:11 Why the Manhattan Institute dropped Glenn

1:04:02 Glenn on Gaza: “I can’t bear it.”

1:17:27 “Genocide” and other Israel speech code flashpoints

1:26:58 Has Trump’s anti-antisemitism push chilled campus speech?

1:36:58 A few kind and less kind words for Bari Weiss

1:46:44 Are Israel’s defenders hurting their cause?

1:52:14 Glenn’s next big project

Recorded September 15, 2025

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