The Glenn Show

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In this post-show conversation with my creative director Nikita Petrov, I review this week's episode with historian Daniel Bessner. We also talk about Trump's policy proposals, capitalism, Russia and Ukraine, NATO, and why I sometimes pull back from speaking my mind.

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

In this month's Substack subscriber-only Q&A session, we talk about Donald Trump's "Nazi rally" at Madison Square Garden, Martha Raddatz's comments about Venezuelan gangs in Colorado, Glenn's retirement, John's comments about Trump and Vance, my comments about Israel and Palestine, and, of course, Trump's victory.

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

This is the Post-Show episode following this week's conversation with John McWhorter. In it, Glenn sits down with his editor Mark Sussman and his creative director Nikita Petrov to talk about the election, why he understands where Trump's supporters are coming from, the meaning of voting, and the possibility that Trump might release sealed documents relating to the JFK assassination.

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If you subscribe only to the free version of this podcast, you’ll notice this episode has arrived a few days early. I figured that by Friday, when the episode normally drops for the general public, it will be out of date already, so we’re releasing it to everyone today. If you find you enjoy starting your week with The Glenn Show, consider becoming a paying subscriber, which will get you early access to episodes, along with a host of other benefits.

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[Note: In the episode, John mistakenly referred to the author of a biography of Ronald Reagan as George Will. He meant to reference Max Boot’s Reagan: His Life and Legacy.]

1:39 Pre-election jitters

3:23 Will Democrats contest the election if it goes Trump’s way?

4:44 A crisis for democracy, maybe, but not the end of democracy

10:02 John’s case against Trump’s proposed second administration

15:36 Ground News ad

17:28 The Obamas’ attempted intervention and post-presidential performance

26:58 The mind of the informed Trump voter

34:20 A revisionist history of the Trump presidency (or presidencies)

41:15 Is Trump losing it or just tired of campaigning?

44:25 The Washington Post and the LA Times decline to endorse

47:48 Glenn and John’s election night plans

50:48 The nightmare scenario

Recorded November 3, 2024

Links and Readings

Shelby Steele’s book, A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited about Obama and Why He Can’t Win

Jimmy Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid

John’s NYT column, “Donald Trump Is Bored”

Max Boot’s book, Reagan: His Life and Legacy

Everybody Loves Raymond: The Complete Series DVD box set

Douglas Murray’s Free Press piece, “Things Worth Remembering: Whoever Loses, They Should Lose Like Nixon”

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0:00 Rajiv’s report from the FIRE conference

3:11 Roland Fryer’s keynote address

13:26 Ta-Nehisi Coates’s humanist universalism

17:25 “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus”

18:50 Rajiv’s reading of Coates’s stand on “apartheid”

31:55 The gap between election forecasting models and prediction markets

36:52 The limits of models and markets

39:59 Rajiv: The markets show us a balance between narratives about the election

44:17 Is one crypto trader manipulating the prediction markets in favor of Trump?

53:12 Rajiv: Prediction markets may have sent early signals about January 6

55:19 Rajiv’s family history with Kamala Harris

57:45 The new prominence of Indian Americans in politics

1:03:07 The axiom of antiessentialism

Recorded October 27, 2024

Links and Readings

Rajiv’s Substack, Imperfect Information

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Lara Bazelon’s 2022 Atlantic essay, “The ACLU Has Lost Its Way”

Glenn’s 2021 conversation with Bazelon

Glenn’s 2023 conversation with Erec Smith

Eugene Volokh on the Hamline University-Prophet Muhammad painting controversy

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book, The Message

Coates’s 2010 Atlantic essay, “The Ghost of Bobby Lee”

Ralph Wiley’s book, Dark Witness: When Black People Should Be Sacrificed (Again)

Last week’s TGS debate about The Messsage

Orlando Patterson’s book, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study

Glenn’s book, The Anatomy of Racial Inequality

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

Polymarket

Recorded October 27, 2024

Links and Readings

Rajiv’s Substack, Imperfect Information

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Lara Bazelon’s 2022 Atlantic essay, “The ACLU Has Lost Its Way”

Glenn’s 2021 conversation with Bazelon

Glenn’s 2023 conversation with Erec Smith

Eugene Volokh on the Hamline University-Prophet Muhammad painting controversy

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book, The Message

Coates’s 2010 Atlantic essay, “The Ghost of Bobby Lee”

Ralph Wiley’s book, Dark Witness: When Black People Should Be Sacrificed (Again)

Last week’s TGS debate about The Messsage

Orlando Patterson’s book, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study

Glenn’s book, The Anatomy of Racial Inequality

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

Polymarket

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1:22 The Coates debate continues

3:18 John: Coates is a beautiful writer, but …

5:44 John: … The Message is suffused with incuriosity and simplistic thinking

13:45 Glenn: Coates is talking about humanism and power, not race

18:11 Ground News ad

20:25 Is it “all about whitey”?

22:11 Glenn: Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote this book. What am I doing?

27:40 What kind of historical imagination is at work in The Message?

34:11 Moral clarity or abdication of responsibility?

36:30 Pro-Palestinian writers John considers acceptable

41:54 The next entries in Glenn and John’s book club

42:04 Coates’s now notorious interview on CBS Mornings

48:45 What is the black intellectual’s role today?

52:16 The counterexample of South Africa

Recorded October 19, 2024

Links and Readings

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book, The Message

Glenn and John’s previous conversation

John’s NYT column, “Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Myth of Black Fragility”

Michael Chabon’s novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

Jeffrey Sachs on YouTube

Judge Andrew Napolitano on YouTube

Trevor Noah’s conversation with Coates

Ezra Klein’s conversation with Coates

Peter Beinart’s conversation with Coates

David Greenberg’s new book, John Lewis: A Life

Karen and Barbara Fields’s book, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life

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

James Baldwin’s essay, “Letter from a Region in My Mind”

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

Order Glenn's memoir, LATE ADMISSIONS: CONFESSIONS OF A BLACK CONSERVATIVE. Available here or wherever you get your books: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393881349

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1:41 Penn’s sanctions against Amy

7:47 What’s at stake in the charges against Amy?

14:03 The trouble with “hate speech”

17:48 Should we abolish the nation-state?

21:38 The debates that can’t happen in the university

26:44 Ethnonationalism and group differences

33:11 Amy’s defense of maintaining an “Anglo-Protestant” American majority

42:32 Amy’s concerns about Asian migration

47:52 Are immigrants bringing lax attitudes toward property rights with them?

52:52 Glenn: Immigrants impart dynamism to a culture that’s always been in flux

1:01:13 Glenn and Amy talk about porn

1:07:51 The absence of virtue in political discourse

1:13:05 Amy’s next steps

Recorded October 12, 2024

Links and Readings

Amy’s Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed, “Paying the Price for the Breakdown of the Country’s Bourgeois Culture”

Glenn and Amy’s 2017 conversation, “The Downside to Social Uplift”

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book, The Message

William Vogelei’s Claremont Review of Books review of Robert Kagan’s Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart—Again

Coleman Hughes’s book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson’s book, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

Daniel Di Martino’s recent appearance on The Glenn Show

Irving Kristol’s 1971 essay, “Pornography, Obscenity, and the Case for Censorship”

Glenn’s essay, “The Case for Black Patriotism”

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1:12 The Vance-Walz debate

4:28 Glenn: Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book is brilliant

13:16 John and Coates’s ancient beef

15:31 Coates’s “blistering” critique of Zionism

18:22 Ground News ad

20:39 Do you have to solve the problem of “apartheid” in order to criticize it?

33:10 Glenn’s reappraisal of Coates (and John’s bemusement)

34:53 ACTA ad 36:39 Will the race card play for Eric Adams?

42:31 What has Eric Adams accomplished?

43:57 Why John defends Amy Wax

49:17 Glenn: Amy Wax gets to have her opinion

Recorded October 5, 2024

Links and Readings

The Vance-Walz VP debate

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book, The Message

Coleman Hughes’s Free Press review of The Message

Coates’s book, Between the World and Me

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

Glenn and John’s in-person TGS episode

Andrew Yang’s Newsweek piece, “I Ran against Eric Adams. I Saw This Coming.”

John’s NYT piece, “She Is Outrageous, Demeaning, Dangerous. She Shouldn’t Be Punished.”

Amy Wax’s December 2021 TGS appearance

Wax’s August 2022 TGS appearance

Wax’s March 2024 TGS appearance

Richard Sander’s Stanford Law Review article, “A Systematic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools”

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1:15 Why Daniel immigrated to the US

5:14 What went wrong in Venezuela?

8:45 Daniel: Both the Biden administration and global trends are to blame for the border crisis

11:19 Trump promises to deport record numbers of illegal immigrants. But can he?

13:00 What’s it take to fix immigration? Money.

18:39 The flawed strategy of making immigration into Mexico’s problem

20:48 The bad information and rumors fueling asylum-seekers

23:18 Should residency visa programs prioritize the richest immigrants?

32:13 The labor market consequences of immigration

37:27 Daniel’s large-scale proposals for national immigration policy

43:00 How many unauthorized immigrants are in US right now?

45:23 The political realities of immigration reform44:08 The political realities of immigration reform

Recorded September 23, 2025

Links and Readings

Daniel’s writing for City Journal

Daniel’s report for the Manhattan Institute, “The Lifetime Fiscal Impact of Immigrants”

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A couple weeks ago, I did my own solo Q&A session. Now John is back, and I decided to put him in the hot seat. Let’s get into it. Yan Shen asks our opinion of the contretemps between Nancy Mace and Michael Eric Dyson. Stan asks if we’ve seen Matt Walsh’s film, Am I Racist?. Eli, noting the rampant grade inflation at many institutions, asks if we have a way of fixing the problem and wants to know if our own grading standards have changed over the years (here’s the Yascha Mounk post she references). RAO wants to know what we think of alternative education, like home schooling, micro-schools, charter schools, and so on. Jerry Zuriff wants to know why John likes hip-hop. Given that, on average, American girls perform better than American boys in high school, Michael asks if colleges should give preferences to males over females. Or would that run afoul of SFFA v. Harvard? And finally, DG wants to know why John never got interested in sports.