This episode features a clip from a terrific interview with Yuval Noah Harari on by Sean Illing on his Vox podcast The Grey Area. After Ezra Klein went to the NYT Vox slowly auditioned other people to fill the gap, renaming The Ezra Klein Show first to The Conversation with different hosts, of which Sean was by far and away the best, and they eventually gave him the feed and renamed it The Grey Area. I just never unsubscribed. Ezra is awesome, but I like the NYT incarnation of his show less than the old version, and I think The Grey Area is usually more interesting than EKS these days.
An extended series of clips stitched together from a recent episode of Sam Harris’ Making Sense podcast where Sam talks to subject matter expert Timothy Snyder about Russia’s war on Ukraine and he systematically knocks down bad take after bad take from the "do your own research" wing of the Twitterverse.
This episode features a clip from Coleman Hughes’ podcast Conversations with Coleman where music critic and historian Ted Gioia talks about where musical innovation comes from and the pattern of things from the fringe becoming mainstream.
This episode features a clip from Channel 4 News’ report on the truck bombing of Russia’s bridge connecting illegally annexed Crimea in Ukraine to the Russian mainland. The latest in a long series of colossal embarrassments for Putin.
This episode features a clip from The Michael Shermer Show where Michael talks to British satirist and commentator Andrew Doyle about the adoption by progressives of trans activist’s world-view, and how folly and unprogressive he predicts history will judge that to be. Call me a “TERF”, but I tend to agree, and I hope saying so doesn’t mean I lose a bunch of friends. Also, I’m personally more concerned with the elimination of sex-separated spaces for women and girls, as well as social contagion among teenage girls leading to irreversible medical interventions for them, than I am about gay boys, but ya know, yeah them too.
This episode features a clip from HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher where Bill predicts how the traditionally unifying event of an alien invasion would go down in present-day America.
This episode features a clip from Sam Harris’ Making Sense podcast where he explains why Donald Trump is a worse person than Osama bin Laden. His description here mirrors much of my own take and was a big part of why I felt so compelled to escape from post-Trump America.