Mickey sparks up ... Mickey critiques the "Coalition of the Ascendant" ... Have Democratic positions on cultural issues turned toxic? ... Mike Pence’s defense of the RNC’s January 6 resolution ... Will the trucker protests go transnational? ... Bob: I don’t see Putin doing regime change in Ukraine ... Were defense contractors the prime mover of NATO expansion? ... Mickey: The great regreasing of the Biden Administration has begun ... Is Big Pharma funneling money to the CDC? ... Who is funding Sarah Palin’s libel suit against the NYT? ... The proposed changes to the Electoral Count Act ... Remembering P.J. O’Rourke ... Parrot Room preview: A settlement in the Epstein suit, Matt Yglesias and the demise of the Slate Pitch, the rise of Zemmour in France, are people in big cities scared of crime?, Bill Kristof sucks up to Ezra Klein, the previously untold story of how Slate started, how Jeff Zucker’s departure could lead to a better CNN, Bob’s plunge into the war in the Pacific continues, and Mickey discovers gender-inclusive bathrooms ...

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Playing Chicken in Kyiv (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

Steven’s recently reissued and updated book, The Economist’s View of the World: And the Quest for Well-Being ... Why is Steven, a political scientist, interested in how economists think? ... The virtue of markets ... Opportunity costs explained ... If everyone needs water and almost no one needs diamonds, why are diamonds more expensive than water? ... Prices, incentives, and compensation ... Would unlimited unemployment benefits help or harm unemployed people? ... Is it rational to expand our reliance on nuclear power? ... The difficulty of reducing healthcare costs ... COVID’s opportunity costs ...

The Economist's View of the World (Glenn Loury & Steven E. Rhoads)

Ben, author of a new book on Christopher Hitchens, gives us a brief history of Hitch ... Bob: Hitchens's argument in God is not Great was...not great ... Where was Hitchens’s Marxist materialism when it came to religion? ... Assessing Hitchens’s intellectual contributions ... Was Hitchens an “honest” arguer? ... Why did Hitchens become a hawk? ... Hitchens in light of the Intellectual Dark Web ... Ben gives his closing argument for why Hitchens is still worth thinking about ...

Why Hitchens Matters (Robert Wright & Ben Burgis)

Inflation takes a toll on Mickey’s supply closet ... Reviewing Jeff Zucker’s “contributions” to American democracy ... Do any Trumpist elites actually want Trump to run for president again? ... Who constitutes Kamala’s base? ... What Biden needs to say about Ukraine and NATO ... How Google is helping people break the law ... Mickey: Trump taking documents to Mar-A-Lago isn’t a big deal ... Why aren’t more people getting their Covid booster? ... Why are Republicans so good at controlling state legislatures? ... Was the Marjorie Taylor Greene “gazpacho police” comment intentional? ... Sarah Palin’s lawsuit against the NYT ... Mickey: How can Andrew Yang lament unemployment among men while supporting UBI? ... If waning Latino support for immigration doesn’t tighten border security, maybe robot dogs will ... Parrot Room preview: Wokeness, Mickey clarifies what he means by “corporatism,” why Mickey is waging war on meritocracy, affirmative action for different cultures instead of different races, birds aren’t real, Putin’s repulsive joke, Robert Trivers’s groundbreaking paper on sexual selection and a related joke, Joe Rogan and Spotify, war in the Pacific, news on the lab leak theory, decoupling from China, Bob becomes the Tom Friedman whisperer, and Bob learns a harsh lesson about Substack ...

Detaching Trump from Trumpism (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

Ilya Shapiro’s controversial tweet about Biden’s imminent Supreme Court nomination ... John dips out and Glenn delivers a soliloquy ... John returns and clarifies his academic resume ... Why John thinks that Georgetown shouldn’t fire Ilya Shapiro ... Why should race be a factor in Biden’s Supreme Court pick? ... Should Biden have announced the gender and race of his pick ahead of time? ... John: “There’s real ideological diversity in the Black community” ... How bad was Whoopi Goldberg’s statement about the Holocaust? ... Glenn and John agree that Joe Rogan’s use of the n-word is not cause for cancelation ...

Race, Representation, and the Supreme Court (Glenn Loury & John McWhorter)

Bill's struggles with the new puppy ... Assessing Mike Pence's primary prospects ... Mitch McConnell's shift away from obstructionist tactics ... The bipartisan road-not-taken for congressional Democrats ... Matt: The Ottawa trucker protests may spread to the US ... What are the long-term effects on children of masks and lockdowns? ...

Convoy Politics (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis)

How Bob and Tom wound up talking about the Russia-Ukraine crisis ... Tom says NATO should be willing to close its door to Ukrain ... The never ending “age of midgets” in US foreign policy making ... Tilting international relations in a positive direction ... Is Biden’s “democracy versus autocracy” framework counterproductive? ... Analyzing the nature of journalistic objectivity – and how to achieve it ... Bob and Tom agree we need non-zero thinking to solve global problems ...

Ukraine and the Crisis of US Foreign Policy (Robert Wright & Thomas Friedman)

Did Jeff Zucker resign over business or pleasure? ... Bob: “The new Cold War almost became official today” ... A grand solution to the Ukraine crisis ... George Soros predicts the downfall of Xi Jinping ... Is the killing of ISIS’s leader really a big deal? ... Are we headed toward one metaverse or many? ... Joe Rogan for president? ... Mickey: It’s wrongheaded for the left to focus their animosity on the unvaccinated ... Is Democrats’ commitment to free speech softening? ... The power plays surrounding Stephen Breyer’s retirement ... Parrot Room preview: More Spotify, Bob and Mickey risk cancelation over Whoopi Goldberg, more Jeff Zucker, Howard Cosell, QAnon, corporatism and undemocratic institutions, Democrats lose their majority in the Senate, so what if Mark Zuckerberg gets another $200 billion, waiting for Biden’s Sister Souljah moment, the Biden crime plan, the electoral count plan, Mickey gets transgressive about Joe Burrow, the Washington football team gets a new name, the NFL’s resurgence, why can’t carbon cleaners end the climate crisis, and mail-in voter fraud ...

Saving Putin’s Face (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

Larry’s new book, Money Magic: An Economist’s Secrets to More Money, Less Risk, and a Better Life ... Why did Larry, a serious academic economist, write a financial advice book? ... Why investing in stocks may not be as safe as it seems in the long term ... Larry: If a personal finance product is complicated, it’s a swindle ... An economist’s guide to divorce ... Is a free online Stanford education more valuable than a debt-laden traditional degree? ... Why does the government offer student loans? ... Larry: “We’re all self-made people at some level” ...

Money Magic (Glenn Loury & Laurence Kotlikoff)

A teenage Bill overestimates his basketball skills and pays the price ... Can’t the writers just let Ted Lasso be a nice guy? ... Remembering Howard Hesseman ... How serious a transgression was Whoopi Goldberg’s Holocaust comment? ... Should Ilya Shapiro have been suspended from Georgetown Law? ... Managing identity politics on the Supreme Court ... Diversifying the Supreme Court ... Debating the problem of free speech and at-will employment ... Are progressives trying to censor Joe Rogan or control Covid misinformation? ...

Is Joe Rogan Uncancellable? (Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis)

How anti-tribal thinking formed the core of Arnold’s “Fantasy Intellectual Teams" (FITs) draft ... Was the pre-internet intellectual era really so great? ... Arnold lays out the details of the Fantasy Intellectual Teams draft ... Grassroots vs. institutional anti-tribal strategies ... Is a social media rebuild possible? ... The challenges in taking FITs to the next level ... Bob and Arnold contrast their approaches to anti-tribalism ... How bad could things get if we can't beat tribalism? ...

Identifying Anti-tribal Intellectuals (Robert Wright & Arnold Kling)

Hey hey, my my, Neil Young left Spotify ... Carrots and sticks in the Russia-Ukraine crisis ... What are Russia’s actual objectives in Ukraine? ... Bob: “I haven’t heard a single good argument for expanding NATO” ... Why nominating Kamala to the Supreme Court might actually be a good idea ... Are pundits overthinking Biden’s low approval rating? ... Is universal pre-K on the chopping block? ... Mickey adopts an unsettling new persona ... Parrot Room preview: A Doug Emhoff scandal?, the war in the Pacific, guess the Lou Reed verdict, let’s talk about headlines that start with “Let’s talk about,” Raymond Carver and Gordon Lish, affirmative action goes before the Supreme Court, William F. Buckley, Ilya Shapiro gets canceled, the metaverse and the Matrix, bizarre Black Lives Matter news, money liberalism, and why does Apple delay releasing this podcast? ...

The Ukrainian Thaw (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

What political values does Joe Biden represent? ... Do new election laws amount to race-based voter disenfranchisement? ... Glenn: Black people are free. But what should we do with that freedom? ... John changes his mind about Eric Adams ... John addresses linguistic informality and Sidney Poitier in his recent columns ... Amy Wax: heterodox thinker, provocateur, or racist? ...

The Burdens of Black Freedom (Glenn Loury & John McWhorter)

Does the Russia-Ukraine crisis justify the current sense of alarm? ... How concern for ethnic Russians in Ukraine shapes Moscow’s policy ... What the US and NATO can do to resolve the crisis diplomatically ... Can Europe help Biden by staging a diplomatic intervention? ... Russia’s next military steps if diplomacy fails ... Anatol estimates the odds of a Russian invasion of Ukraine ...

Assessing the Russia-Ukraine Crisis (Robert Wright & Anatol Lieven)

Looking for signs of decline in Biden’s press conference ... Is the child tax credit what swing voters want? ... Two possible inflation fixes ... What’s on the table in U.S.-Russia negotiations over Ukraine? ... How well is Biden handling the Ukraine situation? ... Mickey: There’s a chance we'll avoid a Trump 2024 run ... Bob’s plan to convince Biden not to run ... Meat Loaf would do anything for love (but would he get vaxxed?) ... Bob: I get why white males are under fire ... Parrot Room preview: The secret to Matt Yglesias’s success, the FBI searches Henry Cuellar’s home, Mickey’s beef with the Salvation Army, how the Parrot Room is like the TV show Yellowstone, Bob’s panel appearance with Jerry Brown, Robert Malone, active shooter drills, war in the Pacific, the Los Gatos Party Mom, exploring Bob and Mickey’s positions on China, Bob issues some corrections, Mickey critiques the Atlantic and David Remnick, and the time Katie Couric interviewed Bob ...

Ukraine and Biden’s Brain (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)

Smart people talking about politics, policy, culture and other stuff