As much as I enjoy the articles at The Dispatch, Nellie Bowles has THE BEST column on the internet, namely TGIF on The Free Press. I haven't had time to read her book yet, but I have it, and it's on my to-do list. Looking forward to Jonah's conversation with her.

I really appreciated all the incredible insights I got from this, and most of it made a lot of sense to me. The part about COVID, not so much. I was a Chicago City Council member during that time period and I remember when the beaches and parks were closed. The witnessing of large gatherings of people partying together and not wearing masks was what led up to closing these areas. Our hospitals' ICUs were full and we were panicked about more people needing ventilators to breathe when they got sick. During the protests that broke out after George Floyd was killed, we all fully understood those protest marches would increase the spread of COVID, but we also understood people were too angry to care. Our public health department used objective parameters (# of people testing positive, # of people dying in hospitals, # of hospital beds available, etc) to determine when public areas, businesses, and schools could open up. We wanted the schools to open up sooner, but it was the public school's union that refused to have teachers go back to the classroom. Mayors called one another for feedback because they also understood the pushback they got from the community that would cause more chaos and they wanted ideas from others about how to address a situation with very angry residents. We were all scrambling for rules based on a disease that we knew little about, but it was believed acting out of precaution was required given the # of people dying. I remember people insisting on knowing the origin of COVID. At the time, I frankly didn't care... I was too focused on people not coming down with the disease.

Jonah, please straighten the picture behind you.

I dont understand why The Dispatch get more viwers/listeners. They are smart and funny, and have such a great vibe with each other.

The reason people hate to hear that people aren't naturally good, is because they are a person and that means that they are not good. The prideful person cannot stand the thought that they might be sinners like the rest of humanity. It is unconscionable, because it is so clear that they are made of finer clay lol

If that's her with pregnant brain, she's doing pretty damn good. Great guest.

Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and John Oliver also amplify the movement.

You dont have to say people are bad. But at least 10% of people are bad

As an unemployed man in his late 50s, who doesn’t have the luck in America to claim a status of hypoagency, it became very painful to live through this neo-Gnostic Revolution (2013 - 2023). I would pick up The NY Times and see the words “white supremacy” over and over. I stopped reading The NY Times completely five years ago. Imagine how painful it would be to either of you to see the words “Jewish Supremacism” repeatedly in newsprint or in Big Media. The institutions failed out of a refusal to stand up to shaming, whether the shaming had a basis or not. A shaming culture will eat itself alive. With regard to Trump, he was and remains an old style NY liberal. Think through how he really sees abortion, gun control, gay normalization, Social Security, etc. He isn’t far from George McGovern. Without Operation Crossfire Hurricane, which was 100x worse than Watergate, I would never have voted for him. Because the FBI and Intel agencies have not been held accountable, I will hold my nose and vote (again) for the Orange Monster.

What a great discussion. So tired of having these topics being dismissed as MAGA propaganda. Scary times.

"We can't win campaigns by saying get rid of the police" What about the safety and well-being of the PEOPLE? Tells you all you need to know...

Great interiew thanks

No police= no government, no socialism.

Who the hell thought Candace Owens was part of the ' intellectual dark web'?!!

The reason you think Trump is evil is because the media told you so.

Ho can students hold in their head that cyberbullying is a huge issue and all people are inherently good and there is no danger?

So the sign to Boston doesn't have to mske it to Boston unless you're Michael Moore.

that starting analogy of her being a hat was a bit strange.

Great podcast!

The only bad thing about this is the thumbnail almost gives the impression that Nellie was the author of that awful piece! :) But great podcast!

Great video

Fun podcast!

I have a lot of respect for the work Fauci did during the pandemic, but it blows my mind that while testifying before Congress he's still clinging to this BS fish market explanation and not that the virus was leaked by the lab due to poor security protocols. I don't get it--I assume he's just too proud to say "I was wrong." It's a serious issue, we've got the second most powerful country in the world with a completely opaque government and who's to say this doesn't happen again in the near future. It's scary.

Sam Harris is one of the "good ones"? Hahaha, that is beyond ridiculous. Stefan Molyneux is definitely better. Kirk does suck though

How many capitol steps have they stormed?

Do we care about peer review now?

don't you think its knd of silly to take one article claiming to speak on behalf of everyone, proposing a hypothetical, and turning that into your entire veiew of what the left believes is the definition of reactionary? this is the kinds of silly behaviour that makes me stick with the left even when i disgaree with an indivdual proposal because we don't get these kinds of silly bad faith reactions that make people change my entire politics.

“How an opinion piece broke my very small brain, and made me start carrying water for authoritarians”

Congratulations, the number of strawmen slain here is truly impressive. If you dig deep, I think you can find more pressing issues that are troubling our democratic republic.

Culture is emergent from a people, the appeal to univeralism is embedded within a mono-theistic, disproportionately protestant, form of law developed and embodied by a people. Expecting its abstraction to be embodied by another people is like expecting their way of being to be embodiable to you - possible but an intergenerational commitment by both parties to integrate into one or create and entirely new ethnogenesis, not a fleeting project. If segregation - my preference is [bio]-cultural (national traditionalism) - is not a de jure concern it will become a de facto concern, with far less transparent and mutually beneficial solutions which will only reinforce hostile forms of ethnocentrism in a 0 sum politic

Drives me a little crazy, that some (feels like a lot) of the analysis here, engaged in something similar to the analysis being criticized. If you don't get your scientific analysis from talk media, the opinion section etcetera... You would at no point have concluded that "Lab Leak" was almost certainly correct or incorrect, regardless of what partisan culture was going on about. At least I didn't, and I wasn't living under a rock or uncurious. I just dismissed arguments that focused on racism, geopolitics, and nationalism as ridiculous and of very little significance one way or another as to the reality. Others making some bad arguments aren't evidence for or against, they're just clouding the analysis. Don't misunderstand, I'm not saying we shouldn't object to poor arguments. Just that they do little to support the contrary POV. Example: I recently heard some smart people proclaiming the idea that aliens buit the ancient pyramids was racist. Seems to me that's an incredibly silly and unnecessary argument. However that such a silly argument was made doesn't make it any more likely, or unlikely, that aliens were involved. 🤪🙃🫣 BTW... The current "article" in the NYT is in the editoral section, and makes a strong assertion in the title, but provides little more than surface evidence of plausibility. Something of that order should have been permitted long ago, and the moralized attacks against it were wrong. In the end, both just clouded complexity of getting true understanding, when there are so many incentives to obscure.