The Glenn Show

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0:00 Zohran Mamdani’s win in the NYC Democratic primaries

12:07 Ground News ad

14:05 The War on Terror and the War in Gaza

28:54 Should Trump fear Mamdani?

32:02 Glenn: Trump is running the table

42:26 John: Glenn, you’re getting caught up in the Trump Show

48:05 Buckley, Reagan, Goldwater, and the legacy of conservatism

53:56 Glenn’s encounters with Willian F. Buckley

59:30 Remembering Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom

Recorded July 7, 2025

Links and Readings

John’s NYT column, “Wokeness Will Always Be with Us”

Peter Beinart’s NYT guest essay, “Democrats Need to Understand That Opinions on Israel Are Changing Fast”

“One Last Time” from Hamilton

Adam Clayton Powell’s “What’s in Your Hand” speech

Sam Tannenhaus’s new book, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America

Glenn’s 1991 appearance on Firing Line

Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom’s book, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible

Glenn’s 1997 Atlantic review of America in Black and White

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My latest book, Self-Censorship, is coming out in a couple weeks, and I’m excited to share it with you. As a kind of apéritif, Mark Sussman and I livestreamed our wide-ranging discussion of all things self-censorious. We talk about the book, of course, but also the economics of addiction, the trouble with streaming music, the best and worst of airplane socializing, and many other topics. It’s a good introduction to the book, which you can preorder now on Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your books.

In this stream, Mark and I discuss the incoherence of racial and ethnic nomenclature, the utility of self-censorship in political coalition-building, uncovering consensus within the spiral of silence, objectivity in public discourse, the joy and pain of in-flight chit-chat, the truth-seeking value of debate, de gustibus non disputandum est, the paradox of choice, what we’re self-censoring about today, anti-antisemitism, Václav Havel and the power of the powerless, minor and major self-censorship, speaking your mind without tenure, Israel and self-censorship, risking deportation for self-expression, the return of Old Glenn / New Glenn, and the line between cowardice and strategic silence.

Anybody can tune into our livestreams as they happen, but if you’d like to watch the video later, you’ll need 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 less than the cost of an IPA at your local dive bar, 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.

Become a full subscriber at https://glennloury.substack.com

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

Video Links

0:00 The return of the “speech is violence” argument

6:05 Who’s the arbiter of “misinformation” and “disinformation”?

8:06 The University of Virginia topped FIRE’s college free speech rankings

14:08 The Victorianism of the Woke

22:10 The comedian as gadfly

24:40 Do we need to “protect” Jewish students from pro-Palestine speech?

31:23 Harvard Derangement Syndrome

37:13 FIRE’s defense of Amy Wax

39:59 Using Title IX to restrict speech

46:24 Complicating the left-right speech distinction

49:34 FIRE enters the AI debates

Recorded June 2, 2025

Links and Readings

FIRE

Greg and Nancy Strossen’s forthcoming book, War on Words: 10 Arguments against Free Speech—and Why They Fail

Lisa Feldman Barrett’s 2017 NYT op-ed, “When Is Speech Violence?”

FIRE’s 2025 College Free Speech Rankings

FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire Database

Rajiv Sethi’s post, “Under Fire”

Glenn’s forthcoming book, Self-Censorship

Musa al-Gharbi’s book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite

Greg and Rikki Schlott’s book, Canceling the American Mind: How Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us

The IHRA definition of antisemitism

Steven Pinker’s NYT guest essay, “Harvard Derangement Syndrome”

Greg’s Atlantic essay, “Trump’s Attacks Threaten Much More Than Harvard”

Cosmos Institute

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I’m back with my creative director Nikita Petrov on our latest livestream. As you may know, Nikita is Russian. He’s spent some time in the US, but he’s still got a lot of questions about how we do things here and why. This was recorded the day before the Independence Day holiday, and we thought it would be a perfect opportunity to address some of Nikita’s questions (and yours) about the strange folkways of the American people

In this installment, we talk about the meaning of the American flag, ChatGPT’s 50 unique facts about the US, voter ID laws, the validity of the 2020 election, border security and immigration, ICE, the attempted assassinations of Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide (if that’s what it was!), Christian Zionism, advice for aspiring authors, free speech, the Big Beautiful Bill, taxes, spiritual conflict within the family, the X-Files, and third-party politics.

Anybody can watch our livestreams as they happen, but if you’d like to watch the video later, you’ll need 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 less than the cost of three tacos at your neighborhood food truck, 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. Go to https://glennloury.substack.com

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

Video Links

0:00 How Jens got interested in American gun violence

2:45 What’s “unexpected” about the origins of gun violence?

5:29 Race and the culture of gun violence

9:30 Ground News ad

11:20 Are high rates of gun violence a cultural issue or an equilibrium?

17:09 Is urban gun violence the result of rational behavior?

24:34 The link between Kahnemanian “fast thinking” and violent conflict

36:46 Are gun violence interruptions scalable?

40:52 The role of urban design in reducing crime and violence

47:31 Jens: Gang-motivated crime may not account for as much violence as its seems

50:43 Rehabilitating “Broken Windows”

53:47 Jens’s “pathological pragmatism”

Recorded June 13, 2025

Links and Readings

Jens’s new book, Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence

Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow

William Julius Williams’s book, Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Social Policy

Jane Jacobs’s book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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

George Kelling and James Q. Wilson’s classic Atlantic article, “Broken Windows”

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In my latest livestream with my editor Mark Sussman, we talk about the state of the academic labor market, teaching writing to undergrads, Zohran Mamdani’s remarkable victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, the wisdom or folly of a federal minimum wage, the work of Thomas Sowell and upcoming conference in his honor, and race and economics. We take questions on libertarianism, self-censorship, black conservatism, AI and teaching, and how to coax Glenn to your town to read from his forthcoming book, Self-Censorship.

Full subscribers have access to the full audio and video of this recording. We at The Glenn Show rely on the generosity and support of our subscribers. So if you’re already a subscriber, thank you for all you do. And if you’re not one, consider becoming one. It’s about the cost of one beer a month, and less than that if you purchase a full year’s subscription.

Sign up at https://glennloury.substack.com

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This month, John and I tackle questions about grade inflation, the Great Courses, Chapt GPT, race and public art, Ta-Nehisi Coates on Palestine, the end of race-based affirmative action, Trump, Christopher Rufo, and my most recent appearance on the Tucker Carlson Show.

The Glenn Show is supported by listeners like you. To watch and listen to the full version of this episode and get all kinds of other benefits, become a full subscriber at https://glennloury.substack.com.

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Last week, I did my second ever livestream, this time with my editor here at the Substack, Mark Sussman. We covered a lot of ground: self-censorship in both intimate and public settings, the golden age of MIT, the death of the influential economist Stanley Fischer, political correctness then and now, the use of the term “blood libel,” immigration, labor disputes and anti-trust in the tech industry, and class-based affirmative action.

Full subscribers have access to the full audio and video of this recording. We at The Glenn Show rely on the generosity and support of our subscribers. So if you’re already a subscriber, thank you for all you do. And if you’re not one, consider becoming one. It’s about the cost of one beer a month, and less than that if you purchase a full year’s subscription.

Sign up at https://glennloury.substack.com

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

Last week we tried something new at TGS. I had a conversation with my lovely wife, LaJuan Loury, and my creative director, Nikita Petrov, live on three platforms at the same time: the TGS Youtube channel, the TGS Substack, and on Nikita’s Substack, Psychopolitica.

We went for two hours and covered a lot of ground: LaJuan and I reported on our visit to Tucker Carlson’s “barn” in Maine, and I speculated about why LaJuan and Tucker, contrary to my expectations, really hit it off. LaJuan spoke a bit about her religious upbringing, we reminisced about where The Glenn Show was four years ago, when Nikita and I started working together, and we tried to assess how we fit into the very different political and media landscape of 2025, which required us to first discuss how we see this said landscape. We capped it off with a short Q&A at the end, where we responded to questions asked during the stream.

I should also mention the conversation includes some very raw and emotional moments, especially when we discuss the dire situation in Gaza.

The experiment continues! I’ll be livestreaming again this Thursday, June 12, at 6:00 PM Eastern on YouTube and Substack. This time I’ll be joined by my editor, Mark Sussman. Planned topics include my forthcoming book Self-Censorship, the future of elite universities, how to get proactive on racial disparities in the wake of affirmative action and DEI rollbacks, faith and reason, and the recent death of Stanley Fischer, an economist I got to know back in MIT days. But it’s a live conversation—you never know what’s going to happen or what we’ll end up talking about.

The button below allow you to add the Substack version to you calendar:

And if you navigate to the YouTube page of the stream, you can add a notification to alert you when the stream starts:

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The Glenn Show will be taking a pause in the month of June. In this brief episode, Glenn explains why.

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