The Glenn Show

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.comSupport The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.comLast week's livestream featured Robert Cherry, emeritus professor of economics at Brooklyn College and author of a new book, Arab Citizens of Israel: How Far Have They Come? Bob is a labor economist who spent forty years studying discrimination in the U.S. labor market. His involvement with NGOs working in the Arab sector eventually led him to apply that same analytical lens to the situation of Arab citizens within Israel proper—not Gaza, not the West Bank, but the two million Arabs who hold Israeli citizenship. In this episode, Glenn and Robert Cherry debate the status of Arab Israelis and the policies of the Israeli government.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 free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.comSupport The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.comIn this edition of Glenn and John's monthly Q&A sessions, they tackle subscriber questions about funding for the Iran War, Trump Derangement Syndrome, meritocracy, Israel, and other topics.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, access to the full Substack archives, and other exclusive bonus content.

Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.comGlenn and John McWhorter agree the war in Iran is a bad idea—so why can't they agree on anything else? On last week's livestream, the two clashed over what's driving the conflict, how it's being conducted, and whether Trump is capable of strategic thinking. John isn't troubled by targeted strikes on Iranian leaders like Ayatollah Khamenei; Glenn calls those strikes what they really are—assassinations—and warns that normalizing such a policy would destabilize the world. Glenn also pushes back on John's view that Trump is acting without foresight, noting that experienced military leaders are guiding operations. Despite deep misgivings, Glenn hopes Trump succeeds—because the alternative is too catastrophic to contemplate.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.comGlenn Loury welcomes Steven Pinker to discuss his new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows. Pinker—author of The Language Instinct, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Rationality—explains how “common knowledge” works in everyday life. Drawing on vivid examples—from a Soviet-era joke about dissent to the rise and fall of GameStop and crypto ads during Super Bowl LVI—Pinker shows how shared awareness shapes seduction, threats, markets, and politics. Loury and Pinker explore how strategic ambiguity, spirals of silence, hierarchy, and nuclear policy all hinge on a familiar question: not who knows what, but who dares to say aloud what everyone knows.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.comLast week’s livestream presented a panel of guests whose political orientations and positions on the Iran War demonstrate the scrambling effect this conflict is already having on domestic political alliances. On the anti-war side, we have historian, foreign policy expert, and man of the left Danny Bessner of the University of Washington and the American Prestige podcast. He’s joined by Andrew Day, senior editor of the American Conservative. I haven’t made a side-by-side comparison of their political views, but I don’t imagine they agree on much. This war is an exception.On the other side, we have my friend Larry Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University, a liberal, and an adamant defender of the war in Iran. His Substack post after the initial bombing runs in Iran effusively praised Donald Trump’s leadership, which might come as a surprise to those who know Larry’s work—he’s had few compliments for the president before now. Listen now to hear this (occasionally heated) debate.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.comIn this segment from last week's livestream, Glenn and Boston University economist Larry Kotlikoff talk about the national debt, social security, personal finance, fiscal policy, and China’s seemingly inevitable path to becoming the dominant world economic power. Are Trump's tariff policies as wrong-headed as they seem? And should we be putting boots on the ground in Ukraine?Larry's Substack, Economics MattersThe 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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.comSupport The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.comOn this livestreamed edition of the Q&A, John McWhorter and I took questions from full subscribers here at the Substack. Austin Ball asked for our thoughts on Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference. Art Eckstein asked for our thoughts on what he characterizes as the humanitarian left’s silence about the deaths of thousands of Iranian protesters last month (this stream happened before the U.S. and Israel’s strikes on Iran). TunaFortuna asked for our thoughts on originalism vs. the living constitution. BB asked us why so much of the black cognoscenti opposes respectability politics even as they embody it. Stan asked if the U.S. will someday “move beyond race.” And finally, Robert Patton-Spruill and Mark Sussman pop into the stream to suggest that I, Glenn Loury, may be the founding father of the “quarter-zip movement,” even though I’d never heard of it.Recorded February 21, 2026The 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, access to the full Substack archives, and other exclusive bonus content.

Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.comOn this segment from my latest livestream, John McWhorter and I are joined by journalist Tyler Austin Harper of the Atlantic. We discuss Tyler's latest piece for the magazine, which focuses on the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's influence over humanities research in the U.S. Tyler argues that the half-billion-plus dollars Mellon awards each year has allowed it to shift humanities scholarship toward an activist model, with identity-based social justice as its main concern.Tyler's Atlantic article, "What Is the Mellon Foundation Doing to Higher Education"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&As 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

The Glenn Show is almost entirely audience-supported. If you’re not yet a full subscriber and want access to livestreams, Q&As, commenting, and other good stuff, click below to support TGS. We can’t do what we do without you.Click here to become a full subscriber.Video Links0:00 Chloé’s theory of enchantment3:54 Can a legal remedy solve a spiritual problem?4:29 The human problem of stereotyping8:26 Why Chloé thinks the rise of white identity politics was “totally predictable”10:56 Ground News ad12:46 Derrick Bell’s case against Brown v. Board of Education14:49 The subject-citizen in Israel and the U.S.17:01 Chloé’s year of mourning19:09 Can a listening campaign help ease tensions in Israel?23:26 An “aha” moment in Bethlehem28:34 Chloé critique of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s analysis of Israel-Palestine31:56 Does race have a future?Recorded February 13, 2026Links and ReadingsTheory of EnchantmentChloé’s Substack post, “The First CRT President”Derrick Bell’s essay, “The Unintended Lessons in Brown v. Board of Education”Derrick Bell’s book, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of RacismChloé’s Substack post, “The G-Word”James Baldwin’s book, The Fire Next TimeTa-Nehisi Coates’s book, The MessageColeman Hughes’s book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind AmericaThomas Chatterton Williams’s book, Self-Portrait in Black and White: Family, Fatherhood and Rethinking RaceBáyò Akómoláfé’s home page 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.comSupport The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.comIn this episode of The Glenn Show, Glenn hops on the Friday livestream just hours after landing at Logan Airport following a Stanford lecture on self-censorship at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. Still running on adrenaline from the event, he talks with editor Mark Sussman about the influence of Kenneth Arrow, why self-censorship should be analyzed as a value-neutral phenomenon, and how the audience responded. In the second half, Glenn is joined by writer and Theory of Enchantment founder Chloé Simone for a wide-ranging conversation about race, identity, spirituality, and politics—from the effects of recent DEI rollbacks to Israel, Palestine, and the future of racelessness.