Batya Ungar-Sargon, deputy opinion editor for Newsweek and self-proclaimed "vulgar Marxist," is still a lefty — even if the left no longer wants her. We talk to Batya about her upcoming book (Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy), debate the liberal media's criminal avoidance of class inequality (which, to her, explains the underpinnings of its current obsession with race), and even get into the differences between Israeli and diaspora Jews.

Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.

On the agenda:

* -Into the ickiness (why we started uncertain things) [6:09]

* -Intro to Batya [10:10]

* -Getting called out for calling out Anti-semitism [14:05]

* -What happened at the New York Times [23:05]

* -Misdirection, race, and moral panic [37:20]

* -Class and its dubious champions [47:35]

* -The betrayal of the left (on welfare and UBI) [58:43]

* -Trump's working class wins [1:09:05]

* -A perfect defense of the status quo [1:13:30]

* -The woke theology and bowling alone [1:19:00]

* -Israeli Jews, diaspora Jews, and anti-zionism [1:29:20]

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday ruminations, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.

Yuval Levin is a leading conservative thinker and political scientist who has, for quite some time, been contemplating the question: what’s gone wrong in America? We dive into his most recent book, A Time to Build, where he traces the long-term shriveling of our social institutions — from political parties to journalism to the academy — a process which, according to Yuval, supercharged the current trends of inequality, division, and political opportunism. Later on, we dare to get even nerdier than that and revisit Yuval’s historical study of Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, and the lessons they still teach us.

Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.

On the agenda:

* -The Hitler question [4:26]

* -Yuval, introduced [9:29]

* -The difference between the left and right [13:28]

* -Seeing things in institutional terms [16:36]

* -Conformity, cohesion, and resistance [21:20]

* -The strangeness of mid-century America [33:31]

* -The social infrastructure that shapes us [38:39]

* -The resilience of libraries and schools [42:30]

* -Journalism as an institution [45:00]

* -America's overly high expectations of the Academy [52:15]

* -From the political to the performative (or how to fix Congress) [57:16]

* -Being a conservative in the Trump era [1:12:14]

* -On Burke, Paine, beauty, and truth [1:20:03]

* -Space vs. Motion [1:27:28]

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.

Caitlin Flanagan has a taste for controversy. Over her decades writing for The Atlantic, she's covered everything from feminism (and the ways it lets women down) to porn to self-censoring in comedy to her own struggle with cancer to the darkest depths of the culture war. But are there any subjects she wouldn’t write about?

Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.

On the agenda:

* -Introducing Caitlin [3:53]

* -On writing and being dour [11:00]

* -The censorship and self-censorship of the young [20:46]

* -Touching touchy subjects [25:44]

* -On feminism, cruelty, and the culture war [31:47]

* -The left, the right, and the French [42:15]

* -Patriotism & the Patriot Act [47:32]

* -Our disembodied lives [49:53]

* -On porn, sex work, and loneliness [58:13]

* -Trauma and its new narratives [1:10:24]

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.

Professor Moshe Sluhovsky, who teaches history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, taught a young Adaam to appreciate the nuance, contradictions, and blind spots of the past. In this episode, he breaks down conflicting historical narratives that have pervaded the academe, gives his perspective on America's newfound historicism, and rants with us about the inaccurate historical movies he loves and we hate.

Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.

On the agenda:

* -Intro to Sluhovsky, the professor who taught Adaam why history matters [1:15]

* -The conflicting narratives of Colonialism [21:58]

* -History, the field that navigates "the complexities of possible stories that could be told" [24:30]

* -History, a field ill-equipped for images [40:18]

* -Historical movies: the good, the bad, the ugly [45:54]

* -The young, contentious project of re-writing American history [59:24]

* -On abstract thinking, morality, and politicization today [1:06:56]

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.

Back when Dr. Dawn Carpenter was starting out in the finance world in the '90s, she sought out the organizations trying to do some good in the world. It was an unusual decision back then — and one that allowed her to carve out a niche for herself. Now, the conscious capitalism movement is becoming far more mainstream, and as the host of the "What Does It Profit?" podcast, Dawn has a front row seat. We talk to Dawn about the morality of capitalism, her theological studies and how it applies to her work, and the mystical Oz-like machinations of our economy.

Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.

Oh, there’s merch, too: mugs, laptop cases, tote bags, t-shirts… the lot. And everything’s on sale. Hurrah for capitalism…?

On the agenda:

-The virtualized mind

-What does it profit?

-In the room where it happens

-A theological awakening

-Conscious capitalism (A podcast begins)

-Contributive justice

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.

Perched from his position as a media analyst at the CIA, Martin Gurri noticed — way before most of us — that change was afoot. Starting in the early 2000s, he noticed the new "tsunami" of information coming our way, and he began to see how it was changing, and would forever change, not just our means of communication, but our concepts of authority and power, and even our societies themselves. In 2014, he put down his reflections in a book — The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium — which might as well be the Uncertain Things bible.

Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.

On the agenda:

* The 20st century vs the tsunami

* From Cuba to the CIA

* On Authority, Truth, and Utopia

* The long march to somewhere

* The border infiltrates the center

* The sectarian mind and the force of negation

* The nuttiness of the Trump years

* What we can do

* There are no alternatives to liberal democracy

* Short-term pessimist, long-term optimist

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.

Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal returns to the pod in celebration of the release of the English translation of his book, Revolt: The Worldwide Uprising Against Globalization. We pick up where we left off last time, beginning with the role of the journalist, especially in this new vaccine-starved world, meander into Facebook's many failings, and then take a final, chilling turn to the state of the American empire post-Trump.

Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.

On the agenda:

* Journalists, vaccines, and the "toilet paper dilemma" [10:27]

* Facebook, Silicon Valley, and Freedom of Speech [24:10]

* "The West Crumbled in the Trump Years" [39:16]

* When the world wasn't watching... [47:15]

* "There is no organizing idea for an America-centric world any more." [54:59]

* Nationalism vs. populism [1:00:37]

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.

On Inauguration Day, with J.Lo's oddball rendition of America's favorite commie song still ringing in our ears, Matt Welch graced our uncertain pod with his virtual presence and cathartic rants. Matt — author, Reason Magazine’s editor-at-large, co-host of The Fifth Column podcast, master of "atrocious analogies," and Adaam's touchstone of sanity (among other roles) — joined us for a wide-ranging conversation about Biden, the truth, free speech, podcasts, and the consequences of so-called cancel culture.

Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.

On the agenda:

* Inauguration Day: "I'm not the target audience." [6:42]

* Living in truth and holding politicians to account [14:11]

* Journalists, do your job better [18:44]

* Consumers, consume better, too [25:37]

* A techno-hippie in the free speech loop hole (Podcasts v. Mass media) [35:03]

* Cancel culture and its tattle tales [47:45]

* In defense of common sense [1:19:49]

* The elephant in the country: the deficit [1:24:56]

* Trump and the right's delusional disarray [1:28:04]

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.

Adam Winkler, constitutional law professor at UCLA School of Law, joined us mere hours after Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol. We talk (fittingly) about our history of law and disorder, dive deep into his book We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights (Adam even spins some delightful yarns about Supreme Court high jinks of yore), and unpack all the ways in which corporations have consistently won (and in all likelihood will continue to win) more rights than the rest of us. At least America's future is bright for somebody...

Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.

On the agenda:

* Nation of law and disorder (5:33)

* Intro to corporate Rights and Personhood (13:45)

* Our corporate origin story (On, Jamestown, Charters, and the founding fathers) (17:40)

* Corporations and race (25:20)

* The narrative of the corrupt corporation (29:52)

* The landmark case of 1809 (37:45)

* Railroad (& supreme court justice) high jinks (42:05)

* The power of a personality (58:00)

* Citizens United, the capstone of a 200-year battle (1:04:27)

* "The future of corporate Rights is rosy" (1:07:02)

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.

Tamler Sommers, philosopher and co-host of Very Bad Wizards, joins us just a few days after the insurrection on the Capitol to explain how we got here (spoiler alert: liberalism's over-emphasis on individualism and dignity seriously failed us). He also walks us through some of the controversial arguments in his book — Why Honor Matters — and describes the ways in which honor cultures actually have a lot to teach us (especially in these crazy Covid times) about courage, community, and responsibility.

On the agenda:

* Diagnosing Trump's army

* Honor: What is it?

* Honor v. Religion (see: our interviews w/ Tom Holland and Tomer Persico)

* Anti-Maskers: Freedom fighters or Trump tribalists?

* Honor's bad rap

* What Liberalism Has Wrought — Mass Incarceration

* Conflict Resolution in Honor Cultures

* Restorative Justice in Theory (See “Can Forgiveness Play A Role in Criminal Justice?” and “Conflicts as Property”)

* Vaccine envy, just desserts, and other American depravities

* Restorative Justice in Action (Tamler’s inspirations: ”Forgiveness in Justice” & “Conflicts as Property”)

* Interrupting violence with honor (and a cameo from The Godfather)

* Safety, risk, and damned bicycle helmets

* On Covid theater and authoritarian control

* Tamler's beef with philosophy

Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.