Uncertain Things
91 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 month ago - ★★★★★ - 158 ratingsEverything is broken. Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk, two jaded journos, interview people far wiser than themselves and ask: "now what?"
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Episodes
Three Drunk Jews Refuting Jonathan Glazer (w/ Batya Ungar-Sargon & Eli Lake)
March 17, 2024 11:00 - 49 minutes - 45.7 MBWith Vanessa off for the weekend to explore the world of psychedelics, the podcast has been hijacked by a cabal of furious, loud, and lubricated Jews. Adaam, 3 martinis and a Laphroaig in, is joined by Newsweek opinion editor and author of Second Class Batya Ungar-Sargon, and Free Press reporter and host of The Re-Education podcast Eli Lake. The three have gathered to refute Jonathan Glazer’s Jewishness being worth hijacking by anyone. In proper Talmudic engagement, Batya spits fire, Eli pla...
What the Left Gets Wrong About Black History (w/ Charles Love & Wilfred Reilly)
February 19, 2024 18:25 - 1 hour - 72 MBAuthors and co-hosts of the Cut the Bull podcast, Charles Love (Race Crazy) and Wilfred Reilly (Taboo, Hate Crime Hoax) join us for a lively conversation/debate about race, history, and K-12 education — and Vanessa gets put in the hot seat. Questions covered include: Should Black history be separate from American history? Are we over-indexing on sex and gender in the classroom? Is social media an “environmental toxin” — or just another misdirection from the left? And, of course, what are the...
Zionism and the Refugee Machine (w/ Dr. Einat Wilf)
December 19, 2023 04:29 - 1 hour - 91.9 MBDr. Einat Wilf is an Israeli writer, speaker, former (and future?) politician, podcaster (We Should All be Zionisists), and co-author of The War of Return. In this episode, we dive into some historical context for the Israel-Palestine conflict, with Vanessa asking all the ignorant questions you were too afraid to ask: What/who was there in Israel before 1948? Was displacement a part of the Zionist vision? Why did displacement happen? Then we pivot to the subject of Dr. Wilf’s book: The right...
What Iran Wants (w/ Arash Azizi)
December 02, 2023 22:14 - 1 hour - 70.7 MBIranian historian and writer Arash Azizi comes on the pod to share his perspective on the Israel-Hamas conflict today — and why he believes ceasefire is the only viable path forward for Israel’s war with Hamas. Along the way, Azizi gives us on an overview of Iran’s politics since the Revolution of 1979 (i.e. how Soleimani became The Shadow Commander) and explains the country’s current stance toward Israel (which stands in contrast to the position of many Iranians). His second book about the...
Diaspora Palestinian to Hamas Apologists: Debate Me, Bro (w/ John Aziz)
November 12, 2023 21:22 - 1 hour - 56.9 MBJohn Aziz is a British Palestinian musician who has come into the public spotlight since October 7th for tweeting out for peace and against Hamas. In this conversation, we unpack why it’s so controversial for a Palestinian like John to be pro-peace, the trauma both sides aren’t acknowledging or addressing, and the overly-simplified, ironic, Star Wars narratives of the Western Left. Follow him on X and read John’s article in The Atlantic here. On the agenda: - John’s Background [0:00-08:3...
Disgusting 'Journalists' (w/ Batya Ungar-Sargon)
October 30, 2023 15:26 - 1 hour - 66.5 MBFriend of the pod Batya Ungar-Sargon, deputy opinion editor for Newsweek and author of Bad News, returns for a deep, contentious conversation about the responsibility of journalists covering the Israel-Hamas war, the people worth expending energy on (versus relegating as enemies), and the uncomfortable embrace of moral certainty. While much vitriol is expended on the “journalists” bringing shame to the (let’s face it, already pretty scumbag) profession, we also shout out the reporters doin...
How the Left Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Butchery of Jews (w/ Eli Lake)
October 12, 2023 23:33 - 1 hour - 77.3 MBNote: This episode is far more explicit — and way more rage-ful — than your average. As you have likely read by now in the news, last Saturday, a group of Hamas combatants infiltrated Israel and massacred about 1300 people, mostly civilians. Usually, Uncertain Things is all about embracing epistemological uncertainty. This conversation is not about that. To help Adaam process his rage and achieve some much-needed catharsis, he turned to returning guest, Eli Lake. Eli — host of The Re-Educ...
Liberals Against Identity, Round 2 (w/ Yascha Mounk)
October 02, 2023 14:55 - 57 minutes - 52.3 MBYascha Mounk returns for round two! If you missed part one of our conversation with the political theorist, writer, and podcaster about his latest book, The Identity Trap, stop now and listen to that episode first. We pick up where we left off last time and get deep into debate about strategic essentialism, the privileging of marginalized voices, and the incoherencies of standpoint theory. We also ask Yascha why he disagrees with John McWhorter’s theory that the proponents of the Identity ...
The Identity Infection, Round 1 (w/ Yascha Mounk)
September 18, 2023 17:32 - 1 hour - 63.7 MBPolitical theorist, writer, and podcaster Yascha Mounk returns! Last time, we spoke about Yascha’s last book: The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure. This time, Adaam got to air his personal grievances as we dove into the thorny topic of his latest book: The Identity Trap. Yascha covers a ton: he traces the intellectual history of the postmodern ideas that captured the academy in the 2010s; he explains how these once-fringe ideas subsequently infil...
Big Tech VS Democracy (w/ Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami, & Jeremy Weinstein)
September 12, 2023 00:04 - 1 hour - 59.2 MBWe bring in the fall with a big conversation about big tech, with the authors of System Error: Stanford professors Rob Reich (expertise in: political science, philosophy, ethics, democracy, digital technology), Mehran Sahami (software engineering, in particular machine learning and AI, and VC funding), and Jeremy Weinstein (political science, government, social impact). We cover the systemic drivers in tech (VC-capital, utopianism, and the “optimization mindset”), bemoan the resulting declin...
The Pros and Cons of 'Queer' (w/ Jamie Kirchick)
August 11, 2023 15:58 - 1 hour - 102 MBJames (Jamie) Kirchick is an author, columnist for Tablet magazine, historian, podcaster, and staunch believer in/defender of liberal values — and he’ll speak up against any party/group currently trampling on them. He began his journalism career writing about domestic and foreign politics; his first book, The End of Europe focused on the rise of populism in the continent (paid subscribers — stay tuned for some bonus content on this topic!). The first part of this conversation is all about ...
A Huge Outpouring of Human Misery (w/ Peter Turchin)
July 08, 2023 13:40 - 1 hour - 64.7 MBScientist-turned-historian Peter Turchin returns! Peter first came on the pod a few months ago to discuss the famous prediction he made in 2010 that we were headed for crisis, circa 2020. Last time, we covered the controversy he’s stirred up within the historical discipline, the methodologies behind cliodynamics/his data-based predictions, and the drivers of social unrest (in particular, elite overproduction). This conversation — recorded on the heels of the publication of his new book End T...
The Long Shadow of Complexity (w/ David Krakauer)
June 06, 2023 13:28 - 1 hour - 65 MBDavid Krakauer is the President of the Santa Fe Institute — an academic institution that conscientiously bucks the overly-siloed and ideological bents of most universities these days. Krakauer is an evolutionary biologist who studies “the evolution of intelligence and stupidity on Earth.” He joined us on the pod for a wide-ranging conversation covering the history of complexity science, the inadequacies of the academe, the aesthetic “third way” between maximalism and minimalism, and the ar...
Welcome to the Content Age (w/ William Deresiewicz)
May 08, 2023 20:41 - 1 hour - 68.4 MBWilliam Deresiewicz — author of Excellent Sheep, The Death of the Artist, and The End of Solitude — has lived many lives. He’s been an orthodox Jewish boy who lost his faith; a journalism school student unimpressed by the pretensions of the profession; a literature professor who (blasphemously) loved books and teaching. Today, he’s an author, essayist, and nostalgic ex-New Yorker. No matter where he’s been in life, Deresiewicz has often been on the outside looking in, which is maybe why he’s...
San Francisco Burning (w/ Nellie Bowles)
April 11, 2023 18:56 - 1 hour - 50.7 MBNellie Bowles is one of the few journalists who lives and writes in the Venn diagram of both Adaam and Vanessa’s interests. For years she was the tech reporter for The New York Times and her epic 2022 piece on San Francisco’s decline for The Atlantic deservedly kicked up a lot of attention, including from your podcast hosts — for different reasons, of course. In 2021, she left “mainstream” media and started the independent media outlet The Free Press with her wife Bari Weiss (where she writ...
Doom of the Public (LIVE w/ Niall Ferguson & Martin Gurri)
March 17, 2023 21:30 - 1 hour - 55 MBBehold! The recording of our first ever live event! We were graced by the thoughts, arguments, and non-English accents of Niall Ferguson — economic historian, fellow at Stanford, and author of many books, including Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe — and Martin Gurri — a former media analyst for the CIA and author of The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium (a.k.a the Uncertain Things bible). We dug into all manner of apocalyptica: the collapse of our media ...
Be My Guru (w/ Helen Lewis)
February 10, 2023 03:55 - 1 hour - 59.4 MBJournalist Helen Lewis spent much of last year knee-deep in gurus — the Steve Jobs, Russell Brands, and Jordan Petersons who captivate (and capture) audiences with their spiritual aura and (increasingly) podcasts — while reporting The New Gurus. She postulates that they derive their popularity, in part, to the decline of religion in our societies, a topic she explored in her reporting for The Church of Social Justice and The Roots of Woke Culture. In this convo, we cover religion, gurus, ge...
The City and the Citadel (w/ Michael Kimmelman)
January 20, 2023 12:03 - 1 hour - 57.8 MBVanessa has admired the New York Times’ architecture critic Michael Kimmelman ever since she was a starry-eyed youngster starting her urban journalism career. Now that his latest book The Intimate City is out, it was the perfect excuse to have him on the show. She and Adaam ask Michael what it was like at the Times in the late ‘80s when he started out, continue the conversation they started with Vishaan Chakrabarti about Progressives’ urban failings, discuss the non-profit journalism divisio...
Fragments of Meaning
December 30, 2022 14:30 - 41 minutes - 28.3 MBThe Personal, The Political, and The Urban. Adaam and Vanessa discuss the episodes from the year that stuck with them most — and reflect on the unexpected ways these conversations are thematically linked together. With Mark Lilla, they continued mulling on the questions they began considering back in season one with Tom Holland and Tomer Persico — i.e. where do we derive morality in a post-religious age? What are the socio-cultural and religious undercurrents that can help explain our curr...
What We Secretly Want (w/ Robin Hanson)
December 12, 2022 15:13 - 1 hour - 50.1 MBRobin Hanson is an economics professor who kept running across conundrums of human behavior in his research. Why do we spend so much of our GDP on medicine — even when studies show that more medicine does not lead to better health outcomes? Why have we spent years perfecting methods of instruction — yet educational institutions keep resisting the very reforms that would help us learn better? Along with his colleague, Kevin Simler, Hanson went to evolutionary biology to find a theory that he...
The Art of Being Offended (w/ Eli Lake)
November 18, 2022 19:01 - 1 hour - 157 MBEli Lake — host of The Re-Education Podcast, contributing editor to Commentary, and columnist for the New York Sun — is a Neo-Conservative, Neither-Trumper as comfortable talking about the FBI as the musical genius of Ye. Eli was game to debate ideas, have his opinions challenged, and cover a wide-range of topics — from the Israeli elections and American midterms, to the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of artist’s political opinions, to the merits of Love in the Time of Cholera, to the import...
Partisan Poison (w/ Andrew Heaton)
November 02, 2022 16:26 - 1 hour - 147 MBAndrew Heaton, host of The Political Orphanage and our favorite “tepid grab bag” of political punditry, returns to the pod to help us understand the big issues at stake before the midterm elections: abortion, inflation, and culture war stuff. Along the way, Heaton explains why having sex on the hood of a car isn’t always a good idea, why dating in our era of partisan politics is exhausting, and why we need electoral reforms (like rank choice voting and multi-party systems) to save us from ou...
The Coming Collapse (w/ Peter Turchin)
October 17, 2022 14:48 - 1 hour - 86.7 MBScientist-turned-historian Peter Turchin is best known for a dire prediction he made in 2010: we were headed for serious unrest, circa 2020. Peter came to this (as-so-happened) accurate prediction by treating the soft science of history like a hard one — what he calls cliodynamics. He and his team quantified indicators of social unrest in previous historical periods, generating a database of information, and then created a structural-dynamic model that could determine the biggest drivers of ...
How Progressives Ruin Cities (w/ Vishaan Chakrabarti)
September 27, 2022 15:16 - 1 hour - 148 MBUrbanist, architect, and professor Vishaan Chakrabarti joins us to explain how the f*** cities got so expensive — and, while we’re at it, ugly. Vishaan is both a doer and a thinker — he’s the founder and creative director of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism as well as a writer of books, talker of TEDs, and a collaborator of journalists (see: "Not Your Car"). In this conversation, we dig into the affordability crisis, why Progressives keep running cities into the ground, and what we nee...
Don't Blame Israel on the Jews (w/ Walter Russell Mead)
September 07, 2022 14:51 - 1 hour - 124 MBForeign policy expert Walter Russell Mead’s new book — The Arc of a Covenant — kept Adaam up at night with its unique insight into the American-Israel relationship and its gripping historical anecdotes (Stalin! Truman! Roosevelt, oh my!). In this conversation, we investigate the culpability of “THE JEWS,” explore why gentiles catalyzed the creation a Jewish nation-state, discuss the ways anti-Semites keep accidentally helping Israel, and break down the specter of Orientalism that keeps haunt...
Panic Porn and Trauma Creep (w/ Christine Rosen)
August 22, 2022 14:48 - 1 hour - 127 MBChristine Rosen is the best kind of opinion writer — one we love to disagree with. Senior fellow at AEI, senior writer at Commentary magazine, and co-host of the Commentary podcast, Christine joined us for a conversation ostensibly about trauma, a word/concept that is proliferating in art and life (and getting dangerously diluted in the process). However, this fun conversation sprawled over much contentious ground: history in public discourse, eugenics, human nature, the doomsaying of libera...
The Right’s Identity Crisis (w/ Matt Continetti)
August 08, 2022 15:21 - 1 hourIn his latest book, Matthew Continetti — the right’s pre-eminent intellectual historian — traces the rich history of America’s 20th century conservative moment. In this conversation, we don’t dive into the details of history itself (for that, pick up a copy of The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism), but rather discuss the origins and repercussions of some of the right’s more unsettling trends — from post-liberalism to populism to religious authoritarianism. As is our wont,...
The Right’s Identity Crisis (w/ Matt Continetti)
August 08, 2022 15:21 - 1 hour - 93.4 MBIn his latest book, Matthew Continetti — the right’s pre-eminent intellectual historian — traces the rich history of America’s 20th century conservative moment. In this conversation, we don’t dive into the details of history itself (for that, pick up a copy of The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism), but rather discuss the origins and repercussions of some of the right’s more unsettling trends — from post-liberalism to populism to religious authoritarianism. As is our wont...
The Veneer of Legitimacy (w/ Kreesa Lancaster)
July 26, 2022 11:03 - 1 hourThe yin to David French’s yang, lawyer and pro-choice activist Kreesa Lancaster gives us her perspective on how and why the Supreme Court came to the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling. Along the way, Kreesa breaks down the legalese, explaining such terms as substantive due process, stare decisis, and strict constructionism / originalism, for good measure. But we also discuss why all the legal wonkery can be a distraction from what’s really at play here — and what Americans need to be paying attention t...
The Veneer of Legitimacy
July 26, 2022 11:03 - 1 hour - 154 MBThe yin to David French’s yang, lawyer Kreesa Lancaster gives us her perspective on how and why the Supreme Court came to the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling. Along the way, Kreesa breaks down the legalese, explaining such terms as substantive due process, stare decisis, and strict constructionism / originalism, for good measure. But we also discuss why all the legal wonkery can be a distraction from what’s really at play here — and what Americans need to be paying attention to. Check out our ‘Ins...
America, The Lonely (w/ David French)
July 05, 2022 10:00 - 1 hour - 128 MBDavid French, conservative thinker, podcaster, and author of Divided We Fall, returns to the pod to talk about friendship, or the lack thereof, and why Americans are so goddamn lonely. David unpacks the link between loneliness and the rise of radical and authoritarian groups, and we ponder why Americans just don’t seem to prioritize friendship and connection (including in the built environment — bars that blare music, we’re looking at you). Stick to the end, and listen as we put our cross-pa...
Between Comedy and Pissing People Off (w/ Andrew Heaton)
June 17, 2022 20:59 - 1 hourBack from a delicious month-long detachment from the news cycle, Adaam sits down with political vagabond and comedian Andrew Heaton, host of The Political Orphanage podcast, to relearn how to do audio rambling. In a more light-hearted discussion than normal (still need to warm up!), we talk the subtle art of political comedy, the glory (and pains) of arguing, and the implacable hardships of having a euphonious voice like Andrew’s. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stit...
You Are Not Your Ideas (w/ Angel Eduardo)
May 09, 2022 20:29 - 1 hourAngel Eduardo, author and co-host of the Fair Perspectives podcast, insists that we can rise above this polarized moment and have real – difficult but vitriol-free – debates with each other. Steelmaning is for beginners. We’re talking starmanning! How to do that is what we try to figure on this episode. Adaam and Angel argue about the merits of compassion versus cognitive dissonance and how best to make people more comfortable about being wrong. Meanwhile, Vanessa worries that too much open-...
Diversity Isn’t Destiny (w/ Yascha Mounk)
April 25, 2022 15:12 - 1 hourWe’ve been wanting to have political theorist, writer, and podcaster Yascha Mounk on the show for a while now, and the wait was so worth it: his new book, The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure, is not only timely, it’s quite Uncertain Thingsy. He explains the three main ways that diverse democracies fall apart — and to what extent the U.S. is already under their influence. Plus, we dunk on elites, bemoan our political status quo, and ask: could oppr...
Diversity Isn’t Destiny (w/ Yascha Mounk)
April 25, 2022 15:12 - 1 hourWe’ve been wanting to have political theorist, writer, and podcaster Yascha Mounk on the show for a while now, and the wait was so worth it: his new book, The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure, is not only timely, it’s quite Uncertain Thingsy. He explains the three main ways that diverse democracies fall apart — and to what extent the U.S. is already under their influence. Plus, we dunk on elites, bemoan our political status quo, and ask: could oppre...
NOT CANCELED (w/ Meghan Daum)
April 12, 2022 19:41 - 1 hourWhen writer and podcaster Meghan Daum released her book The Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars in 2019, she didn’t get canceled, per se. But its reception among her liberal friends was… frosty. Readers charged that Meghan had been captured by the IDW; reviewers painted her as out of touch; event organizers sent nary an email. Meghan has since made a new media home for herself, interviewing people and broaching topics on her “Unspeakable” podcast. Her fellow “het...
What History Reveals — and Hides (w/ Jody Avirgan, Kellie Carter Jackson, and Nicole Hemmer)
March 29, 2022 00:03 - 1 hourAfter covering the 2016 elections, podcaster and journalist Jody Avirgan (FiveThirtyEight, 30 for 30) was tired. Damn tired. Of the news cycle, the click bait, the politics. He felt pulled to history as a way of making sense of the present in a more complex, thoughtful way — and so he reached out to Nicole Hemmer, a historian who studies right wing media and occasional opinion writer/cable. The two created the podcast “This Esoteric Day in History,” and eventually recruited Kellie Carter Jack...
What History Reveals — and Hides (w/ Jody Avirgan, Kellie Carter Jackson, and Nicole Hemmer)
March 29, 2022 00:03 - 1 hourAfter covering the 2016 elections, podcaster and journalist Jody Avirgan (FiveThirtyEight, 30 for 30) was tired. Damn tired. Of the news cycle, the click bait, the politics. He felt pulled to history as a way of making sense of the present in a more complex, thoughtful way — and so he reached out to Nicole Hemmer, a historian who studies right wing media and occasional opinion writer/cable. The two created the podcast “This Esoteric Day in History,” and eventually recruited Kellie Carter Jac...
The Free Speech Recession (w/ Jacob Mchangama)
March 09, 2022 19:11 - 1 hourJacob Mchangama — author of Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media, lawyer, and founder and director of the Copenhagen-based think tank Justitia — has uncovered an unfortunate, though not too surprising, historical pattern, across cultures and societies: the second we feel under threat in a society, free speech (that supposedly sacrosanct value) goes swiftly by the wayside. In this conversation, Jacob takes us back in time and traces the history of free speech all the way from ...
Surrender to the Illusion (w/ Daniel Roy)
February 16, 2022 18:06 - 2 hoursAfter studying neurobiology in college, Daniel Roy became a professional sleight-of-hand artist slash YouTube magician. He joined us to explore how illusionists exploit our innate psychological and social tendencies in order to make us unwillingly suspend our disbelief. In this in-person conversation, we dive into the topics of misdirection, deception, and illusion — and the ways they resonate with politics, tech, and media today. But it wasn’t all intellectual debate: Daniel also graced us ...
How Much Morality Is Too Much? (w/ Mark Lilla)
January 27, 2022 20:28 - 1 hourAuthor and political philosophy professor Mark Lilla joined us to debate morality (what makes something good, and how much of it is enough?), innocence vs. ignorance, reactionary passions and nostalgia, the importance of maintaining a private sphere of moral inquiry, and the psychoses of current American politics. We usually ask our “blindspots” question at the end. This time, it captured the entire talk. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Check out our Patreo...
America's Sadness Problem (w/ Helen Russell)
January 13, 2022 21:12 - 1 hourYou’d think author and speaker Helen Russell — whose professional obsession for the past few years has been happiness — would be loathe to discuss the topic of sadness. Au contraire. As she’s learned more about what it takes to be happy, she’s discovered it relies on perfecting the lost (at least in America) art of being sad. We talk with Helen about her book How to be Sad, discuss why American culture is particularly bad at embracing melancholy, and discover what we could all learn from tho...
Hooked on Dead Jews (w/ Dara Horn)
December 26, 2021 19:42 - 1 hourPeople Love Dead Jews. That's the title of novelist and literary scholar Dara Horn's provocative book, which explores the ways in which non-Jewish societies exploit Jewish histories and atrocities to "flatter" themselves and erase Jewish realities. In an episode filled with more ghoulish humor than usual, we follow Dara’s journey of uncovering a troubling (and often truly absurd) history. We also can’t help ourselves and go meta: not only raking on the media (as we’re wont to do) but also ne...
The Media's Psychotic Break (w/ Matt Taibbi)
December 09, 2021 01:47 - 1 hourMatt Taibbi thrives on the absurd. He used to revel in journalism's culture: caustic, independent, collaborative, and adversarial to those in power. Now, the former Rolling Stone writer and author of Hate Inc. sees little to love in the toxic, "credentialist" media world. We discuss Matt's transition to Substack (the future!), the psychotic break Trump inspired in "mainstream" media, and the future of our broken industry. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Che...
Chillin' With the Philosophers (w/ Anthony Gottlieb)
November 30, 2021 17:31 - 1 hourAnthony Gottlieb is a historian of ideas, the former executive editor of The Economist, the author of The Dream of Reason and The Dream of Enlightenment, and the George R.R. Martin of the history of philosophy. He tells us why he kept a poster of Wittgenstein in his dorm, how journalism forced him to unlearn the bad prose of academia, what is the quality that defines a successful philosopher, and why he thinks the liberal foundations of the West remain firm (Adaam is less certain). Find us...
Escaping the Content Machine (w/ Lindsay Ellis)
November 19, 2021 16:14 - 35 minutesFilm critic, YouTube influencer, and sci-fi author Lindsay Ellis joins us to talk about her new novel and the complexities of human-alien relationships. But, in typical Uncertain Things fashion, we couldn't help but ask Lindsay about the f*ed up nature of today's social media landscape — one that cripples artists and rewards very bad behavior indeed. Plus, Lindsay gives us her guide for distinguishing between good and bad faith criticism, diagnoses Hollywood's TV problem, and hints that the ...
We're Addicted to Destruction (w/ Nancy Rommelmann)
October 30, 2021 21:52 - 1 hourNancy Rommelmann is a fiery (but mostly peaceful) writer and reporter. She’s also the co-founder (along with Matt Welch) of Paloma Media — a home for "the growing number of misfit creators who no longer fit neatly in our cramped categories of media, politics, and culture." Nancy made the trek to Queens for an in-person (!) conversation where she shared her journalism war stories, her ire about Donald MacNeill, Jr., and her musings on beauty as a commodity. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify...
Genes, Germs, & Justice (w/ Nicholas Christakis)
October 11, 2021 22:40 - 2 hoursWe live in a society enamored with divisions, but Nicholas Christakis lives by the outlandish idea that humans are fundamentally similar — and has devoted much of his career to uncovering the universals of social experience. (He's a lumper, not a splitter.) The Yale professor and author of many books — including Blueprint and Apollo's Arrow — unpacks his fascinating findings in evolutionary biology, describes the price we pay for the spread of ideas (namely, germs), and reflects on that now ...
Escaping the Gospel of Guilt (w/ Jacob Siegel)
October 01, 2021 16:24 - 1 hourTablet Magazine senior writer and irresistible baritone Jacob Siegel finds it impossible to be in America and write about America. He gave up on New York, his former haven, and moved to the provinces of the Empire (namely, Israel). What changed? We talk about fancy buzzwords — from gentrification to critical race theory — and how they all played a role in his disillusionment. Adaam and Jake also fly into a tangent argument about parenthood, child-rearing, and anti-natalism. Oh, yeah, and Afg...
F*ck Zeus (w/ Tomer Persico)
September 14, 2021 05:26 - 1 hourIn honor of our one year anniversary, our first ever guest, religious scholar Tomer Persico, returns to the pod for another intellectually and spiritually satisfying conversation — this time IRL. (Check out our original convo first if you haven't already). This time Tomer, author of Man in God’s Image, dives right into the ancient concept of the self, jumps to the creation of interiority/individuality, expounds on the isolation of America, and comes for a landing on the old, new, and ugly of...