Wisdom of Crowds

Against the backdrop of Trump’s breathtaking snatch-and-grab operation against Venezuela’s nasty dictator Nicolás Maduro, Shadi and Damir debate the complexities of global politics, focusing on the tension between power and morality. They explore the implications of U.S. foreign policy decisions and debate the role of values in international relations.

Shadi pushes Damir about the implications of his commitments, who in turn says ugly things you probably won’t like.

Required Reading:

* “Venezuela and the End of Hipocrisy,” by Shadi Hamid (WoC).

* “The Great Unraveling Has Begun,” by Oona Hathaway...

As the year winds down, Shadi and Damir hosted Michael McFaul, a professor at Stanford University and former special assistant to President Obama and U.S. ambassador to Russia. His new book, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder is as good a start as any in trying to figure out how U.S. foreign policy could — and should — develop in the wake of a second Trump presidency.

Required Reading:

* Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder, by Michael McFaul (Amazon).

* The Case for American Powe...

This week, we have a special live episode for you. Wisdom of Crowds, in cooperation with Aspen’s Philosophy and Society program, threw a holiday party in DC, celebrating the release of our friend Osita Nwanevu’s new book, The Right of the People. Samuel Kimbriel sat down with Osita and the great Sam Goldman of the Hamilton School at the University of Florida, to kick off our celebration of America’s 250th with a debate of whether the constitution was a bad idea.

Osita argues that it is time for a new American founding. The clash betwee...

This week, the great Nils Gilman joined Damir Marusic and Samuel Kimbriel on the pod to unpack the complexities of American foreign policy and its implications for Europe — and beyond. The conversation starts by trying to make sense of Trump’s latest National Security Strategy as a jumping off point, before pivoting into a discussion of populism.

Why do some causes, projects — and people — provide meaning while others fall flat? For example, why is Trump’s nationalism more politically effective than calls to global climate action? And is there a better way to create meaning in an increasing...

Damir’s back from Ukraine, still buzzing — and feeling weird about it. He and Christine talk about the thrill and guilt associated with reporting from war zones, the ethical implications of war tourism, and the psychological toll on both journalists and civilians.

The conversation then shifts to Trump and a possibly looming war with Venezuela. The Trump administration has cowed many a politician, but the fear seems to be ebbing. But have we gotten over our addiction to the thrill of political populism?

Required Reading:

* Damir Marusic, “My Night in Dnipro” (WoC).

* Chris...

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A few years ago, Lea Ypi was scrolling through Facebook when she came across a family photo she had never seen before. Someone had discovered a photograph of Ypi’s grandparents on their honeymoon and posted it on a public Facebook group. Ypi — a philosophy professor from Albania who teaches at the London School of Economics — was dismayed by the comments on the photograph, which ranged from inaccurate to judgmental to just plain mean. Were the husband and wife in this photo Albani...

After Friday’s meeting between Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani, everyone is asking: who is Zohran Mamdani really? What motivates him: is it progressive cultural issues, or economic populism? Is he woke, or a pragmatist? He won the mayor’s seat in New York City with just over fifty percent of the vote, when even the leaders of his own party refused to endorse him. What makes this guy tick?

Today’s guest is one of the best people, apart from Mamdani himself, to answer these questions. Ross Barkan is a political commentator and novelist who, in a prev...

This week’s episode is a live recording of Wisdom of Crowds, where we celebrated a very special occasion: the publication of Shadi Hamid’s new book, The Case for American Power. The book is a soul-searching study about American power as a force for good in the world, and it combines memoir and foreign policy analysis. Shadi’s thesis is that if we want to make the world “more just and more moral, more democratic and more respectful of human rights,” then backing the United States is both the “last best hope and the least-bad option.”

Joining Shadi...

With Shadi out promoting his new book, Damir sat down with WoC friend Jamie Kirchick to debate the influence of media figures like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes on conservatism on America.

Anti-semitism may be the oldest hatred, something different feels afoot today. Generational shifts in attitudes on Israel, partly fueled by the Gaza war, have given unscrupulous charlatans an opening into the mainstream. But why are mainstream conservative institutions not fighting back? And what does this say about the future of the Republican Party once Donald Trump eventually leaves the scene?

Required Reading and...

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Are human beings by nature suspicious of each other? Or is harmonious communal life our default mode? The answer to this question has implications for politics. Today’s episode is a live discussion about just this question, recorded last summer at the Aspen Ideas Festival. The guest is philosopher Tamar Gendler of Yale University, whose work deals with …

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We need to get better at asking for help.

So argues author Leah Libresco Sargeant in her new book, The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto. The core thesis of the book is that “women’s equality with men doesn’t depend on their interchangeability with men.” But the book also has many insights that apply to men as well as women. All of us need to get better at asking for help.

Hosting this episode are Shadi Hamid an...

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“This is one of the greatest historical eras mankind will ever see.”

So says Tyler Cowen, economics professor at George Mason University, renowned author and chairman at the Mercatus Center, a think tank. He is also a writer, and famous podcaster whose books, like The Great Stagnation and Average is Over, which for over a decade have helped readers under…

Yesterday, the philosopher Michael Sandel won this year’s prestigious Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture. The million-dollar prize is a lifetime-achievement award given to an individual “whose ideas have profoundly shaped human self-understanding and advancement.” We were lucky to have Professor Sandel on our podcast last summer, along with his son, fellow-philosopher Adam Sandel, and Wisdom of Crowds’ resident philosopher, Samuel Kimbriel. To celebrate Professor Sandel’s award, we are re-releasing the episode. Enjoy!

— Santiago Ramos, executive editor

A special treat from the Aspen Ideas Festival: a panel discussion about American community and politics, featuring a...

This week we have a very special guest: Robert Malley, a veteran American diplomat and Middle East expert. From advising President Clinton at Camp David to serving as President Obama’s top White House official for the Middle East and then as Biden’s Special Envoy for Iran, Malley has spent decades at the heart of U.S. diplomacy. Today he joins Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic to discuss his new book, Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine.

Malley begins the discussion with an arresting suggestion: that the war in Gaza...

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Last week, Wisdom of Crowds philosopher-in-residence Samuel Kimbriel wrote an essay about the political use of Christianity within MAGA, contrasting the sincerity of Erika Kirk’s piety with the propagandistic use of the Lord’s Prayer in a recent military recruitment video. Shadi Hamid reflected on Samuel’s piece and more, writing a column about it for the Washington Post. Today, we bring both men together to discuss the central questions of both articles: do Christianity and politics mix?

Damir Marusi...

Today we have a return guest: Jordan Castro. Jordan is a writer and the deputy director of the Cluny Project, a think tank of sorts for cultural entrepreneurs. The last time Jordan appeared on Wisdom of Crowds, we discussed his first novel, The Novelist. Now Jordan has a second book, Muscle Man, about a disgruntled middle-aged academic who tries to find an answer to his frustrations in weightlifting and strength training. It is a hilarious satire of our time, a novel that speaks to our political moment without being political per se.

Shadi Hamid and Santiago Ramos...

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Today’s guest is Geoff Shullenberger, the managing editor of Compact and a writer whose articles and reviews have appeared in American Affairs, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New Atlantis, UnHerd, and more. Last week, after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Geoff wrote an incisive piece titled, “The Return of the Assassin.” In it, he observes that the nature of violence has shifted in recent years, away from the mass shooting and towards the targeted political assassination. Why this is the case...

Our episode this week is more on the serious and somber side. Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic discuss the assassination of Charlie Kirk and speculate about its consequences. What are we learning about America and American politics in the wake of that horrible shooting? Is America heading toward low-grade civil war—like the Years of Lead in Italy during the 1970s? Does the Right control the culture and the media—and will it use this event to expand its political power? Does the Left have a problem with violence? Do we even have an opposition party?

In ligh...

The Lyceum Movement is a nationwide grassroots organization that aims to build a healthier public discourse by bringing diverse groups of people together to investigate first principles. Every August, Lyceum hosts a big event in Des Moines: the Tallgrass Ideas Festival. And for the last three years, Wisdom of Crowds has been there, hosting a live taping of our podcast.

This year, the Festival’s theme was trust. We hosted an episode about trust and technology, a topic on everybody’s mind. Our two guests were Daniel Corrigan, a philosophy professor at Iowa State University who focuses on t...

A special treat from the Aspen Ideas Festival: a panel discussion about American community and politics, featuring a father–son philosophical duo.

Michael J. Sandel is a professor at Harvard University, where he teaches political philosophy. His famous “Justice” course has been viewed by tens of millions worldwide. His son, Adam Sandel, is a philosopher, award-winning teacher, and holder of the Guinness World Record for most pull-ups in one minute. Together with Samuel Kimbriel, Wisdom of Crowds’ in-house philosopher, they discuss community, democracy, the evolving nature of justice, the importance of constructive visions for community, and the role of...

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American Primeval on Netflix. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives on Hulu. Ballerina Farm on Instagram. American culture is living through a Mormon moment. It is a sign that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is growing in confidence and strength. But what are the drawbacks to becoming mainstream? What are the trade-offs involved in American liberalism? What can those of us who are not part of the LDS Church learn from the Mormon moment?

Here to discuss...

President Donald Trump federalized DC law enforcement this week, raising all sorts of questions — about democracy, authoritarianism, sovereignty and legitimacy — that are natural fits for us to discuss here at Wisdom of Crowds.

Yes, Trump’s use of emergency powers to justify the takeover is constitutional, even if he is stretching the concept of what counts as an emergency. But Damir Marusic feels like things took a much darker turn this week, and nobody seems to have noticed. Weren’t people in the streets at the mere suggestion that Trump would deploy troops to American cities four years ag...

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“ ‘Barbarism’ is a word that keeps coming to my lips lately,” writes Damir Marusic in a brilliant new article this week. Barbarism seems to be the only real word that describes what comes after the liberal international order. But Damir isn’t pointing to the supposed barbarism of our enemies. His article points to the ways that we in the West — and in the United States — are becoming coarser and more egocentric. Like the poet said, barbarism begins at home.

Shadi Hamid in...

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Women and men are having a hard time finding each other. A lot of women are giving up on finding a mate. Some women with mates are worried that their men don’t have any friends. Everyone hates dating apps. People are having fewer babies.

These are among the many depressing stories that the media is telling about love and marriage today. How true are they…

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Dead almost six years, Jeffrey Epstein is back in the news. The sordid details of his crimes, and the elaborate conspiracy concerning elites that he may or may not have been a part of, have become a central issue within the MAGA coalition. Conspiracy theories in general are now a part of daily political life. None of us can escape them. Most of us probably half-believe in at least one of them. Why is that?

Today’s guest is the wr...

What is happiness? Why are so many Americans — by their own admission — unhappy? These are the central questions in this special episode, live from the Aspen Ideas Festival.

At the festival, our house philosopher, Dr. Samuel Kimbriel, hosted a discussion with three distinguished thinkers. Adam Sandel is a philosopher and assistant district attorney in Brooklyn whose latest book is titled Happiness in Action: A Philosopher’s Guide to the Good Life. Agnes Callard is a philosophy professor at the University of Chicago who just published Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life. Finally, David Brooks is a well...

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It’s the summer doldrums, so this week, Wisdom of Crowds is taking a break from politics and war and Trump. Instead, we are talking about culture. Our guest, Paul Elie, is one of the leading culture and religion writers in the United States. His words have appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and the New York Times. Paul’s latest book, The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s, tells the story of artists in the 1980s who...

Last month, Francis Fukuyama was scheduled to come to Washington, DC for a live taping of Wisdom of Crowds. Unfortunately, as subscribers know, Frank lost his voice the morning of his scheduled appearance, and we were forced to cancel. However, we were able to record a bit of conversation with him and Shadi Hamid the following day, with a few colleagues asking questions.

The conversation ended up being a quasi-“state of liberalism” address, perfect for July 4th weekend.

The conversation begins with Frank discussing the current challenges to liberal societies, addressing why some in the...

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“War is the father of all and the king of all; and some he has made gods and some men, some bond and some free.”

So said the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus. In his essay this week, Santiago Ramos says the opposite: “… war is a necessary evil; it is not what preserves the great achievements of the human race. War threatens those achievements, and we are lucky that more has not been destroyed already.” Santiago believes that pro-war voices which emerged du...

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The Israel-Iran war is about to enter its sixth day. As of this recording — Wednesday evening, June 18 — President Trump has not announced whether the United States will join the Israeli war effort.

During this unpleasant lull, Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic invited Sohrab Ahmari to discuss what we can expect from the war and its aftermath. In recent days, Sohrab has emerged as an essential commentator on the Iran Israel war. His article, “The Regime Change Maniacs are Back” is one of t...

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The war between Iran and Israel is bound to determine the future of the Middle East and, possibly, the whole world.

The time is fitting, then, to release Shadi Hamid’s and Santiago Ramos’ conversation with Abbas Milani, professor of political science and Iran Studies at Stanford University. Professor Milani is a world-renowned authority on Iran, having published Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Modernity in Iran and The Shah, a definitive biography of Mohamed Reza Pahvalvi, the last Shah of Iran, among many...

It’s finally happened: Israel has attacked Iran.

Wisdom of Crowds executive editor Santiago Ramos joined Damir Marusic for a live-streamed emergency q&a about the latest Middle East crisis. What do we know? What can we expect in the near future? What does this mean for the Middle East in the long term? And why does Damir think that Israel is America’s “junkyard dog”?

For those who missed it, here is the video!

If you missed the live stream and wish you hadn’t: there’s never been a better time to subscribe...

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Why do artists try so hard to shock the public? Why is Kanye West singing about Hitler? Why are New York artists dabbling with fascism?

The novelist and cultural critic Țara Isabella Burton joins Damir Marusic and Santiago Ramos to discuss these questions and more. Last week, Tara published an essay on Wisdom of Crowds titled “The Point of Pissing People Off.” In it, she tries to figure out whether there is something positive at work in transgression and provocation — somethi...

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Is tech replacing humanity? Or is it sharpening the question of what it means to be human? What does it mean to live a good life — as opposed to passable life? What features of humanity become more important by contrast and necessity in the technological age? Is it possible to find a higher version of humanity in order to thrive?

For this week’s episode — a live taping of Wisdom of Crowds — we invited Santi Ruiz to discuss these questions, and more...

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We live in an increasingly weird world, where the weirdness is facilitated and accelerated by the Internet. We live in a world full of instantly-available bizarre pornography and terrorist attacks inspired by misanthropic ideologies whose manifestos are published online. Katherine Dee, an Internet ethnographer, writer and friend of Wisdom of Crowds, joins Christine Emba and Shadi Hamid to talk about the recent terrorist attack on an IVF clinic in California and Christine’s recent New York Times article about the social damage wr...

As subscribers of Wisdom of Crowds will know, the war in Gaza has preoccupied Shadi Hamid for over a year now, and has taken a central place in his political thinking. Damir Marusic begins this episode by challenging Shadi on this point. Is he giving too much importance to one political and moral cause over all others? And is he giving too much importance to morality as such in geopolitics?

The conversation eventually shifts when Damir tells Shadi that he is an “activist” when he writes in favor of a cause, and Shadi disagrees. Writers want to chan...

As subscribers of Wisdom of Crowds will know, the war in Gaza has preoccupied Shadi Hamid for over a year now, and has taken a central place in his political thinking. Damir Marusic begins this episode by challenging Shadi on this point. Is he giving too much importance to one political and moral cause over all others? And is he giving too much importance to morality as such in geopolitics?

The conversation eventually shifts when Damir tells Shadi that he is an “activist” when he writes in favor of a cause, and Shadi disagrees. Writers want to chan...

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Our special guest this week, David Polansky is a political theorist and commentator who lives in Canada. A frequent contributor to Wisdom of Crowds, he joins Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic to discuss two excellent recent essays. The first one, titled “Does Canada Exist?” is about Canadian national identity, an issue that has become more relevant since Donald Trump has taken to calling Canada the 51st state, and while some in the western Canadian province of Alberta has floated the idea of sece...

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Trump has been in office for one hundred days, and Damir Marusic thinks America deserves him: “I do tend to intuitively see Trump and Trumpism as a correction on a social order that has lost its way and is somehow badly out of tune,” Damir wrote earlier this week. “Something is broken and unsustainable, and has been so for a while.”

Christine Emba and Shadi Hamid have questions. Why is Damir still “ebullient” (his words) and “giddy” (also his words) about the curren...

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This episode is a bit “meta”: it’s about what it means to keep an open mind, how to trust your conscience, why we should all avoid groupthink, and the phenomenon of “self silencing” — keeping your views to yourself when you’re afraid it might be too costly to say them out loud.

But of course, this being Wisdom of Crowds, we link these meta-topics to the politics of the day.

Jenara Nerenberg is a journalist, producer, speaker, and founder of...

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Is it possible to move up in this world? Are Americans stuck? Our guest today is Yoni Appelbaum, an American historian and staff writer at The Atlantic magazine. His new book, Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity, explores the various ways the American dream has been stymied — by the consolidation of property and wealth, the abuse of environmental regulations, the legacy of redlining, among other factors. But the book is not a diatribe; it offers a...

It’s been an exceptionally crazy week, even by Trump-era standards. So we decided to experiment with the podcast this week by doing a live-stream recording. Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic discuss whether there is a method to Trump’s madness about tariffs and everything else — or whether we have to accept that we are ruled by a Mad King, who himself does not know what he will do from one moment to the next. It’s free for all subscribers, so give it a listen!

Required Reading:

* Shadi’s interview with Oren Cass about tariffs (W...

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In 2012, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat published Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, a book about how mainstream American religion was devolving into the prosperity gospel, superstitious cults and other forms of heterodox faith. Thirteen years later, the American religious landscape has changed, and Ross wrote a new book tackling a much more basic question: why you should be religious at all. He joins Damir Marusic and Shadi Hamid to discuss that book, which is titled Believe: Why...

This week, we tried an experiment: a Substack live event! Matthew Gasda wrote a popular article about Romanticism, his contribution to an ongoing debate. Samuel Kimbriel had a few disagreements with Gasda’s piece. In the spirit of Wisdom of Crowds, we hosted our first-ever live-streamed Substack debate.

It went pretty well! We hope to host more.

By popular demand, here is a video recording of that debate. Please continue the discussion in the comments below!

— Santiago Ramos, executive editor

Required Reading:

* Matthew Gasda, “A Few Doubts About Neo-Romanticism” (WoC). Duration: 00:45:13

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Friend of Wisdom of Crowds and frequent podcast guest Samuel Moyn is a professor of law and history at Yale University, and author of several books, including Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War (2021, Macmillan) and Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times (2023). He is also the author of a recent article saying that no, sorry, the courts cannot save American democracy.

If you’ve been following our podcast lately, you’ll know...

Recent events suggest that the balance of power is breaking down. Trump is achieving executive supremacy. In less fancy terms, Trump looks like he’s becoming a dictator. Rule of law might be slipping away. Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic agree about all this. But they disagree about which recent event is the true inflection point.

Shadi thinks it’s the Mahmoud Khalil case: it’s a straightforward government action against freedom of speech, intended to have a chilling effect on the population. Damir believes it’s the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to Nayib Bukele’s megaprison in El Salv...

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Mana Afsari is a writer and sometime contributor to Wisdom of Crowds, whose career has taken her from the RAND Corporation, to a job as an assistant to a great American poet, to the position of Research Associate at the Aspen Institute’s Philosophy and Society Initiative. In January, Mana published an essay titled, “Last Boys at the Beginning of History,” a fascinating reported piece about the young men with intellectual ambitions who joined the National Conservative movement and voted for Donald Trump...

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With the Gaza ceasefire possibly collapsing any minute, we return to the topic of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks and the ensuing war in the Holy Land. Specifically, Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic discuss the tension between a belief in universal human rights, on the one hand, and allegiance to one’s ethnic and religious roots, on the other.

Joining Shadi and Damir is friend of the pod Peter Beinart, contributing writer for the New York Times and editor-at-large of th...

J. D. Vance delivers a seismic geopolitical speech at the Munich Security Forum. Vance, Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy get into a shouting match before television cameras. Relations between the United States and Europe are deteriorating before our very eyes. In one of our best episodes of the year so far, we invited the great Ivan Krastev to help us understand what is happening.

Ivan is one of the brightest minds in Europe — an incisive analyst, historian of ideas, and ever-present track-two diplomat who is always talking to absolutely everyone. He is chairman of the Centre fo...

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“Something is happening here and you don’t know what it is,” goes the Bob Dylan track from 1965. That song was directed at the squares who weren’t yet hip to the Sixties. It sounded foreboding then, and it sounds foreboding now, because something is happening, again — something perhaps as great and consequential as the cultural changes of Dylan’s time. For several years now, people have been speaking about a cultural “vibe shift.” The MAGA electoral victory appears to have been the culmination...

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“I am done saying, ‘impossible’,” announces Damir Marusic. At least, with regard to what Trump might do or could do in the near future. We are still in the midst of a major shakeup in the administrative state. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is combing through Treasury data and cutting government personnel. Trump is delaying the distribution of federal funds. Trump’s policies have full support of the GOP-majority Congress. Meanwhile, the White House foreign policy agenda has upended three years of s...

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Donald Trump and Elon Musk are moving quickly, so we decided to release this episode a few days early. In a half-week of alarming developments, Trump has announced that the United States might send troops to Gaza to transfer the Palestinian population to Egypt or Jordan, and to aid in reconstructing the country. Elon Musk has become the undertaker of government agencies, the wrecker of the civil service. Through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk has effectively shut down USAID, offered...

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“The weird right wing men are coming out to the fore in joy,” announces Shadi Hamid. “They’re strutting more than they did in 2016,” observes Damir Marusic. “The counter-elite is becoming the elite,” says Shadi. “There is gonna be a bloodbath,” says Damir: “They will soon be drinking from a fire hydrant of sewage.”

Two weeks have passed since the Trump inauguration, as well as its attendant galas, balls and parties. Damir and Shadi have trained their weary eyes upon the new class of upsta...

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Last week’s episode dealt with the state of the American Right post-election. Today we ask: Where is the American Left going? How will it respond to Trump? “There is a palpable sense of passivity on the Left,” says Damir Marusic. “What I’ve seen is resignation or weird, detached analysis,” says Samuel Kimbriel. Is there more going on than we see? We invited WoC contributor Osita Nwanevu, writer for the New Republic and author of an upcoming book about American democracy, to tell us m...

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On the eve of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic sit down to discuss the state of the Right and the Left in American politics. The conversation picks up where the last podcast episode left off, in a discussion about Damir’s apparent rejuvenation in the wake of Trump’s victory. Given that he didn’t vote for Trump — in fact, he didn’t vote for anybody — why is Damir smiling?

Shadi suggests that “Democrats needed this defeat to l...

A new year is before us, and soon, a new president will assume office. What does the future have in store? Trump supporters are happy, and his opponents are full of foreboding. Many people also feel that a new era in American history is about to begin — for better or worse.

Damir Marusic and Santiago Ramos discuss the nature of this new era. They begin with the question of fear: Are you afraid of the second Trump term? Santiago explains why the Trump phenomenon seemed more frightening in 2016 than it does in 2024. Damir asks whether finding historical an...

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For some people, “liberal socialism” sounds like an oxymoron. Liberalism is a political idea that promises to protect individual rights. Socialism, on the other hand, is about collective power: the power of workers to organize and, if not quite seize, at least have a say in the administration of the means of production. Liberalism is about freedom, while socialism is about equality.

Not so, argues Matthew McManus, political science professor at the University of Michigan. In his new book, The Poli...

Damir Marusic has been reading the Bible this year for the first time. So Christine Emba and Santiago Ramos decided it was the perfect occasion for interrogating him about what he’s learned and what he’s been thinking about.

In the ensuing conversation, the three discuss Freemasonry, Protestantism, Catholicism, Predestination and how Christianity is receiving new attention in Silicon Valley. Then, the conversation turns to Christmas traditions, and how the contemplative and party-going sides of Christmas complement each other.

In the spirit of Christmas, we have made this a free episode for all subscribers. The...

As election data analysis continues to pour in, we can be sure of one thing: a large number of working class votes which traditionally would have gone to the Democrats shifted in 2024 toward the GOP. As CNN reported last week: “Trump ran up large margins among White voters without a college degree who belong to labor unions and also significantly improved among unionized non-White workers without advanced education.”

So, did Trump’s victory signal a realignment for the working class? Or was it a one-off thing, an act of rebellion against a complacent Democratic establishment? In terms of fir...

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In 2024, over 77 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. Friend of Wisdom of Crowds Michael Brendan Dougherty, a writer and conservative commentator at the National Review, was one of them. However, MBD (as he is known) did not vote for Trump in 2020 nor in 2016. In fact, he was an early conservative opponent of Trump. In 2016, MBD wrote: “[Trump] is clearly a product of a decadent society, not the scourge or redeemer of one.”

MBD did not disagree with Trump on his main...

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In 2024, over 77 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. Friend of Wisdom of Crowds Michael Brendan Dougherty, a writer and conservative commentator at the National Review, was one of them. However, MBD (as he is known) did not vote for Trump in 2020 nor in 2016. In fact, he was an early conservative opponent of Trump. In 2016, MBD wrote: “[Trump] is clearly a product of a decadent society, not the scourge or redeemer of one.”

MBD did not disagree with Trump on his main...

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Last week, President Biden granted his son, Hunter Biden, “a full and unconditional” pardon for any and all offenses from Jan. 1, 2014, to Dec. 1, 2024. Because Hunter Biden has been a politically charged figure since the first Trump term, and because President Biden repeatedly promised that he would not use his power to protect his son, the presidential pardon was, for many, a strategic and moral mistake — an act of hypocrisy, in short.

In this week’s episode, Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic...

The headlines prove it: we live in turbulent times. Elizabeth Oldfield, our guest this week, recently published a book — Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times — about how to thrive during such a moment. “If we’re heading into (even more) turbulent times,” Elizabeth writes, “I want to be someone who is of use, not overwhelmed and panicking but steady and hopeful, able to contribute to weaving a canopy of trust under which other people can shelter.” Along with being a writer, a former think tank director and an accomplished broadcast journalist, Elizabeth is host of The Sacred, a podc...

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The Declaration of Independence affirms that all human beings are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Yet the Declaration is silent about who this Creator is. Is it the Jewish deity or the Christian God? Or is it the god of the philosophers — the blind watchmaker of the Enlightenment? The Constitution, on the other hand, doesn’t mention the divine at all, except for the phrase, “Year of Our Lord.”

Mainstream liberals and conservatives, whatever they may think of the silen...

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Official WoC house philosopher Samuel Kimbriel joins Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic to discuss the role that ideas had in the recent elections. Specifically, they focus on whether it was bad ideas or bad political strategy that doomed the Dems.

Sam insists that the Democrats failed because liberalism as we understand it has become weak, devoid of ideas and moral persuasion. Liberals, Sam insists, constantly shift from wanting to be a player in the political contest, to a referee of...

Tuesday night’s election has left us with total Republican control of all three branches of government. What does this mean for the immediate future of the Republic? Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic get together to discuss. We are releasing this episode early and completely free for all subscribers.

Will Donald Trump become a dictator? What is he capable of? What might be the worst aspects of his second term? Damir discusses mass deportations as the biggest risk. Shadi worries about Trump’s foreign policy in the Middle East. More than that, Shadi worries about a Donald Trum...

On October 21 in Washington, DC, Wisdom of Crowds hosted a special live taping of the podcast. WoC editor-at-large Samuel Kimbriel joined WoC contributor and New Republic journalist Osita Nwanevu, along with Georgetown political theory professor Joshua Mitchell, to discuss “Happiness and Misery in America” on the eve of the general elections.

Joshua spoke from a more communitarian and conservative point of view, citing the drawbacks that come with the growth of the state: “When you have a regime founded on small government and mediating institutions, you have to develop personal and collective competence. … Early on, happiness is linked t...

For the past year, Shadi Hamid has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza — and the Biden administration’s complicity. Now he, like many others, is baffled by the Harris campaign’s disregard and seeming disdain for Muslim and Arab voters. In a week is election day, and he is wrestling with the moral and political implications of the choice at hand.

In our pages earlier this week, Shadi and Haroon Moghul debated the merits of voting for Harris or not voting at all. You can read their full exchange here. This podcast episode continue...

Damir Marusic and WoC executive editor Santiago Ramos get together to discuss Damir’s latest article, “Why We Need Nightmares.” In it, Damir writes about the the binding of Isaac — the chilling story from the Book of Genesis where God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son. Damir is fascinated both by the story and by a Caravaggio painting depicting it. “That’s the stuff,” he writes. But what is this “stuff”?

While searching for an answer to this question, Damir and Santiago cover a lot of ground. They discuss the story of Abraham and Isaac, as well as the different w...

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Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist and assistant professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. He joins Christine Emba and Damir Marusic to discuss his new book, We Have Never Been Woke: Social Justice Discourse, Inequality, and the Rise of a New Elite. Don’t worry: the book is not another culture war polemic. Instead, it’s something much more useful: a work of social science that explains what “woke” means in terms of class and culture in the Unit...

An emergency pod: “War, or something resembling war, is breaking out in the Middle East,” says Shadi Hamid. A year after the October 7 massacre, Israel has all but destroyed Hamas. Last month, it killed Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah, thus decapitating that terrorist organization. This week, it launched an invasion of southern Lebanon. In retaliation, Iran — the longtime backer of Hezbollah — has lobbed a barrage of ballistic missiles into Israel.

We decided to release the podcast early this week, before it is overtaken by the swiftly-moving events. What is this war about? What should the US do about it...

What is human dignity? Is it a real thing, or merely an idea? If it’s real, then where does it come from? And why do only human beings have dignity? What about other intelligent beings? What about the octopus?

These are only some of the many questions that Damir Marusic and Santiago Ramos talk about in a slow-burn, philosophical episode of Wisdom of Crowds. Because Santiago is executive editor of Wisdom of Crowds, Damir wants to learn more about his bedrock convictions. He cross-examines Santiago about his religion, politics, and formative experiences.

At first, Da...

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How does order emerge from anarchy? How do human beings create institutions? Can big problems — like climate change, income inequality, or AI alignment — find solutions “from below,” through collective action, rather than “from above,” i.e., imposed by regulatory bodies?

Today’s guest is a fascinating economist. Professor Paul Dragoș Aligică is a senior research fellow at the Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and a Professor of Governance at the Universit...

A very special episode this week, completely free for all listeners. The world-famous philosopher Charles Taylor joins Wisdom of Crowds editors Samuel Kimbriel and Santiago Ramos for a conversation about his new book, Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment.

Professor Taylor has spent a long and fruitful career trying to understand the basic questions of modern life. What does it mean to be a modern person? How do we form our sense of identity? How do we relate to the sacred? What does it mean to be secular? What happened to religion? In Cosmic Connections...

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The Harris-Walz campaign is having a moment. It is polling well. Harris made a good speech at the Democratic National Convention. The Democratic Convention as a whole got better TV ratings than the Republican one. Harris’s campaign is all about joy. Even Shadi’s parents are feeling the vibes (and using the word, “vibes,” probably for the first time).

But Shadi and Damir aren’t feeling it. No joy. No vibes. No excitement about the current moment in American politics...

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Elon Musk just started tweeting about the Iliad. But our guest, Twitter’s Audrey Horne, has been talking about Homer with Samuel Kimbriel and Damir Marusic for at least two weeks now — well before Elon turned his attention to these kinds of things. We figured this was an excuse to share some of the offline chatter with the Crowd. If Elon’s interested in it, it has to be relevant, right?

Christians and Greeks both agree that the world is cruel...

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” goes the famous line from Joan Didion — but is it worth it? How do narratives help us make sense of our lives, and how might they be misleading? Advertisements these days are full of them, but can a company really have a story of its own? And could having “main character energy” actually indicate a fundamental philosophical problem?

In this special live recording from the Lyceum Movement’s Tallgrass Ideas Festival in Des Moines, Iowa, Sam was joined by Hannah Kim, philosopher at the University of Arizona and associate editor of th...

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The international drop in baby-making is currently in the headlines, and it’s been constant preoccupation for us at Wisdom of Crowds (including in our latest edition of CrowdSource). It concerns us not only because of the possible long-term economic consequences but also because a people’s inability — or lack of desire — to reproduce itself might be the consequence of serious moral or social problems.

Enter philosophers Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman. Anastasia is a professor at University of California at Irvin...

It’s a dog days of summer special! This week, we are releasing a live interview from last April, that’s more timely today than when it was first recorded. Dictators and their sychophants; democracy imperiled by foreign policy misadventures. Sound familiar?

For almost a century, American intellectuals of different political stripes have been in thrall to dictators. They’ve either projected utopian ideals on to them, or been seduced by their charisma and alleged effectiveness. The story of left wing intellectuals falling for figures like Stalin or Castro has already been told. In a new book, Americ...

That was fast. Just days after Joe Biden chose to remove himself from the presidential ticket, Kamala Harris is the unquestioned candidate of the Democratic Party. But was this a democratic process? Or was Biden bullied out of the ticket, and Harris shoehorned into it, without any attention paid to the peoples’ wishes? And who are “the people,” anyway?

Joining us to debate these questions is the author Freddie deBoer — one of the most influential and provocative leftist thinkers writing today. Freddie runs an extremely popular Substack. His latest book, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, is about...

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Greetings, dear Listeners!

We are releasing our podcast early this week. We figured that an episode about the unity of the American people would sound good right about now, given the circumstances. Damir’s Tuesday Note — which will respond to a Provocation — will be published this coming Thursday.

What holds the United States together? Three hundred million people of different races, religions, and histories, spread out over half a continent — do we have a system that truly represents all of t...

Welcome to summer, dear crowd! This week, we have a live episode for you — live from the Aspen Ideas Festival. Sam Kimbriel recorded this episode with Tamar Gendler, a Dean and Philosophy professor at Yale University, and Erin McFee, a Future Leaders Fellow at the Latin America and Caribbean Centre in the London School of Economics.

The subject, very broadly, is forgiveness. Is it good or bad? Do we know what it means? Can one forgive wrongly? And could forgiving foreclose the possibility of achieving justice in this world?

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On July 1, the Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump, as President of the United States, enjoys “absolute” immunity for “his core constitutional powers,” but that he “enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does if official.” The ruling has an obvious immediate impact on the upcoming presidential elections. But it also suggests far-reaching questions about political sovereignty, and our system of government.

In this episode, Sam and Damir get together to hash out the theoretical implications...

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What happened on Thursday night was a debacle for Joe Biden and an embarrassment for the nation. About this, our three hosts — Christine, Damir and Shadi — all agree. And they are all angry about it. But who is to blame? Biden himself? The DNC? The media? Trump? All of us?

Shadi, Damir, and Christine work through their post-debate anguish and anger — and try to figure out who is responsible for the predicament that the country finds itself in today. “We are grip...

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You might have noticed that Wisdom of Crowds got a facelift this week. We touched up our homepage and added two new features: CrowdSource and Provocations (read more about both here). In this spirit of renewal and relaunch, on the podcast we are getting back to our bread and butter with a classic Shadi and Damir episode.

This week’s episode deals with the virtues of resignation. Is giving up ever the right choice to make, either in politics or in...

Morality and war. Two words that seem to have nothing to do with each other. Yet as recent events have shown, our conscience pricks us every time we hear news of an atrocity, smarts at every war and rumor of war. Can a war ever be just? Does talk about morality in the conduct of war make any sense?

Joining Shadi and Damir to discuss this heady topic is Phil Klay, a novelist and essayist whose first book, the short story collection Redeployment, won the National Book Award in 2014. An Iraq War veteran, his work has focused...

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This week, Wisdom of Crowds hosts a fluid discussion about violence and sex in movies, where the “shoulds” of life come from, and whether liberal values can be based on something other than religion. The discussion is more meditative than contentious, an exploration prompted by recent pop culture hits and a probing comment from the Crowd.

Violence is entertaining. That’s the conclusion that Damir draws after watching the movie, Civil War, which he thoroughly enjoyed. Christine questions Damir about his ta...

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Conservatives often argue that liberalism is not a neutral political system. Liberalism, they say, has values of its own. It sneakily promotes these values as normative, and even good, for the citizens of liberal societies — whether those citizens like it or not.

The philosopher and self-proclaimed liberal Alexandre Lefebvre believes that, empirically speaking, this conservative critique is pretty much true. As the title of his new book, Liberalism as a Way of Life, suggests, liberals should own up to the fa...

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The war in Gaza is dividing Israeli opinion, but not along the same lines that it divides American opinion. What are Israeli priorities? How important is the return of hostages relative to total victory? What is Netanyahu thinking? What is the Israeli Left thinking? Is there an anti-war movement in Israel? Do American categories make any sense within the Israeli political context?

Washington Post political columnist Jason Willick joins Shadi and Damir to answer these questions. He just returned from...

What does justice mean for animals? Is justice for animals the same as justice for human beings? Why should we care more about the rights of animals when the rights of humans are so often neglected?

Martha Nussbaum teaches philosophy, ethics, and law at the University of Chicago, and is one of the most influential and cited philosophers of our time. She’s written dozens of books on Greek philosophy, the importance of emotions in politics, justice, feminism, and many other topics. She joins the podcast to discuss her new book, Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility.

Do Arab Americans support pro-Palestine protests because of identity politics? What about American Jewish support for Israel? Are both groups being “tribal” or are they fighting for universal values — as they understand them?

Recently, policy guru and Ur-Blogger Matt Yglesias pointed out that some of the political thinkers who, just a couple years ago, were aligned in opposition to identity politics today find themselves on opposite sides over Palestine. One of the names Matt mentioned was our own Shadi Hamid. What happened?

Matt joins Damir, and Shadi to figure it out. In their conver...

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Last December, the highest court in the State of Colorado ruled that Donald Trump’s involvement with January 6 disqualified him from holding the office of president. On May 4, the Supreme Court voted unanimously to overturn this decision, clearing the way for Trump to appear on the ballot in all fifty states.

Naturally, at Wisdom of Crowds these events got us thinking about the big questions. When it comes to eligibility for office, who should have the final say — the Supreme Cour...

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Pro-Palestine protests have spread to college campuses across the country. Our social media feeds are flooded with images of chanting students and clashes with police. Meanwhile, Congress has passed a bill to deliver more aid to Israel, and there’s signs that the IDF is about to move on Rafah. In this episode, Shadi explores what it means to stand in solidarity with the protests, while Damir teases out their effect on brass tacks politics The two discuss what the right approach sh...

This week’s episode is a special collaboration with The Disagreement, a new platform that aims to “celebrate and normalize healthy disagreement.” (Check them out!) Wisdom of Crowds is 100% behind that mission statement, and so it was natural for us to agree to record an episode together. Fans of Wisdom of Crowds will know that Shadi has recently completed a book about American power, tentatively titled, “On Power.” Fans will also know that he debated the socialist writer Dan Bessner of the American Prestige podcast last summer, in our episode titled “Is a Better World Possible Without American Power?” A lot has happ...

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Christine and Damir kick things off by discussing a memoir about the fall of Communism in Albania. Damir reflects on his own post-Communist background, and ponders why Communist nostalgia affects only some countries, while others are not looking back. He wonders whether Christine is becoming a Communist herself after reading her essay about “Limitarianism,” a school of political thought that favors a cap on extreme wealth. Christine unpacks her own ideas about economic justice and democracy, and considers whether the Communist past in E...

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This week’s podcast is a recording of a live event. Rachel M. Cohen, a senior policy reporter for Vox, recently published an essay where she asks: “To our generation, being a mom looks thankless, exhausting, and lonely. Can we change the story?” As listeners know, this question speaks right to the heart of Wisdom of Crowds. Christine and Shadi invited Rachel to discuss her piece before a live audience in Washington, DC on March 20. The topics of conversation included marriage, singleness, hope...

America is badly polarized. It’s a fact so pervasively acknowledged that pointing it out starts to feel like saying the sky is blue. Unlike a blue sky, however, growing polarization in America presents a difficult challenge. Because America is both incredibly diverse and a vibrant democracy, polarization starts to eat away at our politics.

Many attempts have been made to deal with polarization. A lot of it has to do with putting people with diverging perspectives face-to-face in an attempt to try to find common ground. Here at Wisdom of Crowds, we have tackled the problem by...

Editor’s note: We haven’t done an episode quite like this before. I absolutely loved this conversation with the novelist Jordan Castro, one of the most exciting young American authors writing today. Because it was such a rich conversation, we’re leaving out the paywall so that everyone can have a listen.

—Shadi Hamid, co-founder, Wisdom of Crowds

What’s it actually like to be a novelist? And how does literary success—and some amount of fame and notoriety—change how people think of you?

Special guest Jordan Castro joins Shadi and Santiago to ta...

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In a late-night confab, Damir and Sam explore the meaning of experiences of wonder, which they each have written about for Wisdom of Crowds.

For Sam, these unique experiences are the foundation for his beliefs about the nature of the world and human life. Damir, on the other hand, does not believe that the experience of wonder necessarily leads to metaphysical questions. This freewheeling, stay-up-all-night fever dream of a conversation covers the pitfalls of therapy, the science of happiness, and...

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A recently-published memoir making headlines suggests a trend: Polyamory is going mainstream among high-status Americans. Culture critic and environmental studies professor Tyler Austin Harper joins Christine and Shadi to make sense of this fad, and explain why it’s both an upper-class luxury and a raw deal. Along the way they discuss happiness, self-expression, race, love, self-immolation, parenting, and a better way to live.

Required Reading:

* Tyler Austin Harper, “Polyamory, the Ruling Class’s Latest Fad.”

* Tyler Au...