Wisdom of Crowds

Shadi Hamid & Damir Marusic
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  1. Where's Your Red Line?

    hace 1 día

    Where's Your Red Line?

    Damir is back from a sweltering Europe, where some commentators seemed to treat air conditioning as a moral failing. He opens the show with a provocation: the European aversion to AC isn’t about strained grids or shuttered nuclear plants — it’s secular theology, Christian guilt repurposed for Gaia. Shadi, on a mini-sabbatical in New York City (thermostat set well below Mamdani’s recommended 78), mostly agrees, but argues that the new American Left isn’t like the sanctimonious European mainstream. It’s joyous, affirmative, and — in Zohran Mamdani’s case — ruthlessly practical rather than self-flagellating. That sets up the real debate. Damir presses Shadi on what he’s actually signing up for beyond Palestine: Progressive prosecutors? Wealth taxes? Bernie’s proposal for the government to take large stakes in AI companies? Shadi names his red lines — nationalizing industry — but wagers that America’s political culture of individual agency is too deeply rooted for even decades of democratic socialism to undo. Damir isn’t so sure. After Trump’s unchained second term, isn’t anything possible? Required Reading: * Shadi’s thread about the centrality of Palestine in Democratic politics (X). * Jonathan Chait on the DSA’s long march through the Democratic Party (The Atlantic). * Democracy for Realists, by Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels (Amazon). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wisdomofcrowds.live/subscribe

    52 min
  2. Anthropic's Jack Clark: AI or Democracy

    22 jun

    Anthropic's Jack Clark: AI or Democracy

    This week, we are bringing you a conversation, recorded live at the Times Center in Manhattan last Thursday, between Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, head of the Anthropic Institute and the man behind the Import AI newsletter, and our own Samuel Kimbriel. Clark opens with the uncomfortable premise: recursive self-improvement may arrive this decade — he’ll name 2028 if pressed — and with it a world where AI starts designing its own successors. That cracks open choices nobody has had to make before. Which sciences do we deliberately speed up? Where do we set the dial between individual liberty and collective control when anyone can summon what used to require a nation-state? And who gets to shape the “personality”—air quotes his—of a tool that talks back? It’s an engaging conversation about the big questions of our time. We hope you enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wisdomofcrowds.live/subscribe

    1 h 21 min
  3. What If We Fired All the Politicians?

    11 may

    What If We Fired All the Politicians?

    In this live taping — a partnership between Wisdom of Crowds, Aspen Philosophy and Society, and Yale’s new Center for Civic Thought — Samuel Kimbriel sits down with political theorist Hélène Landemore and writer Osita Nwanevu to hash out a deceptively simple question: what is democracy actually for? Hélène, whose new book Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule makes the case for sortition — randomly selected citizen assemblies replacing elected legislatures — argues that electoral politics is rigged for the loud, the ambitious and the power-hungry. Osita also wants to rejuvenate democracy, but is much more committed to the idea of elections, and politicians specifically. The disagreement sharpens as they dig into what divides us. Hélène sees most disputes as solvable — get people in a room with the right information, reshuffle constantly to prevent power concentration, and collective intelligence will do real work, even on moral questions like euthanasia. Osita counters that many of our deepest political conflicts are about values, not facts, and no amount of expert testimony resolves whether the state should have the power to execute someone. The conversation was made possible with support from the Gambrell Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wisdomofcrowds.live/subscribe

    1 h 3 min
  4. Church and Empire

    1 may

    Church and Empire

    The Iran war has produced an unlikely main character: the Pope. This week, our dear friend and former colleague Santiago Ramos returns to the pod. He joins Christine and Damir to unpack the escalating clash between the Trump administration and the Catholic Church over the war, Trump’s various blasphemies, and JD Vance’s remarkable journey from Catholic conversion to, well, rediscovering Protestantism. The conversation then turns to more interesting matters. What does the Catholic tradition actually say about just war, and does anyone in Washington care? Santi argues that the real story isn’t just about applying just war principles — it’s about the Vatican’s deeper commitment to a post-WWII global order that it sees every American war chipping away at. He draws a sharp distinction between just war and holy war, arguing that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s invocations of divine mandate are what really set off the Pope. Christine is fascinated by the public’s unexpected hunger for moral authority in a cynical age — and by the spectacle of a charismatic, English-speaking, social-media-fluentAmerican pope suddenly becoming the most compelling critic of the administration. And Damir, true to form, grants the Pope his due as a political operator while insisting that the real story is simpler: while this is a stupid war with no rationale, the savvy Pope saw an opportunity to play politics. The conversation ends with an unlikely convergence, as Christine gets Damir to all but confess his belief in original sin. Required Reading: * Christine Emba, “What a Catholic Church Unafraid of Donald Trump Means to the World” (NYT). * Ross Douthat, “Trump’s Blasphemy is a Warning” (NYT). * Jacques Maritain on just war (Commonweal). * Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris (Vatican). * Phil Klay on just war principles and the Iran war (YouTube). * Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, “How Trump Took the U.S. to War With Iran” (NYT). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wisdomofcrowds.live/subscribe

    1 h 11 min
  5. Did We Get Hungary Wrong?

    19 abr

    Did We Get Hungary Wrong?

    This week, Damir and Shadi are joined by Julian Waller, Professorial Lecturer in Political Science at George Washington University and co-author of Autocrats Can’t Always Get What They Want: State Institutions and Autonomy under Authoritarianism. The occasion is an awkward one for a certain kind of democracy discourse: Viktor Orbán was last weekend thrown out in a landslide by Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party, ending a sixteen-year run. So — was Hungary ever really the dictatorship Western liberals spent the last decade insisting it was? If a supposed autocrat loses a vote and walks away, what does that tell us about the category we put him in? The three dig into Orbán’s media capture, why the Hungarian-language internet routed around it, and whether Magyar’s improvised anti-corruption coalition can hold. They then turn to Magyar himself — a former Fidesz insider who ran the Navalny playbook of anti-corruption populism with a nationalist twist — and ask whether his improvised negative coalition can actually govern. Will unwinding Orbán’s institutional capture require exactly the kind of authoritarian hardball the new guy was elected to stop? The final stretch turns to moralizing, on both sides. Why did both the Right and the Left make such a symbol out of a small European country? Required Reading: * Autocrats Can’t Always Get What They Want: State Institutions and Autonomy under Authoritarianism, by Nathan J. Brown, Samer Anabtawi, Steven D. Schaaf, and Julian G. Waller (Amazon). * Julian’s pre-election epic thread handicapping the Hungarian vote (X). * “A Last Chance for Hungary,” by Bálint Madlovics and Bálint Magyar (Foreign Affairs). * “Authoritarianism, Reform, or Capture? Democracy in Trump’s America,” by Dima Kortukov and Julian G. Waller (American Affairs). * Péter Magyar’s post-election appearance on Hungarian state television (Euronews). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wisdomofcrowds.live/subscribe

    1 h 7 min
  6. Anti-Politics and the Counter-Revolution

    14 abr

    Anti-Politics and the Counter-Revolution

    Samuel Kimbriel was in Italy the other week, where he sat down with Rome-based political theorist Giovanni Orsina to talk about European populism. The conversation starts with Giorgia Meloni, who, Orsina argues, is more a pragmatic traditional right-wing politician than a true populist. It then turns to a deeper things. Previewing his upcoming book Counter-Revolution, Orsina claims that after the 1960s, people became both revolutionary and utopian, turning away from politics to morality, law, and markets. But after 2008, populism emerged as a counter-revolutionary force seeking re-politicization. He warns Europe’s institutions were built for depoliticized times and now are struggling to meet the moment. Can they survive? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wisdomofcrowds.live/subscribe

    59 min
  7. Peter Beinart on Why the "Right to Exist" is the Wrong Question

    1 abr

    Peter Beinart on Why the "Right to Exist" is the Wrong Question

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live Last week, Shadi wrote a controversial essay over at Wisdom of Crowds titled “Does Israel Have a Right to Exist?” This week, we had our friend Peter Beinart on to the show to unpack the question some more. Peter is, among many other things, a contributing writer for the New York Times and the author of Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. And last year he pen…

    34 min
  8. What Ails the Left?

    17 mar

    What Ails the Left?

    This week, Shadi and Sam sat down with Jonny Thakkar, an Assistant Professor in Political Science at Swarthmore College and one of the founding editors of the invaluable The Point magazine. In a recent essay in The Point, Jonny argues that the left’s organizing framework — reducing injustice and pursuing equality — is inherently negative and distributional, and therefore fails to inspire the kind of longing that drives political movements. This is a topic that we’ve chewed over frequently here at Wisdom of Crowds. The conversation goes on to weigh whether liberalism can offer a genuine vision of the good life or whether it is structurally committed to a neutrality that empties politics of meaning. The group debates Rawlsian liberalism, Marx’s notion of human capacities, the appeal of the tech right’s futurism, as well as religion, autonomy, and whether the loss of a pre-modern sense of cosmic order is recoverable. The episode ends without a tidy resolution, but with a shared sense that any politically viable vision of human flourishing must grapple seriously with what a good life actually looks like — not just what a just distribution of resources resembles. Required Reading: * “Beyond Equality,” by Jonny Thakkar (The Point). * “Last Boys at the Beginning of History,” by Mana Afsari (The Point). * Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (Amazon). * Ross Douthat’s interview with Sen. Chris Murphy (NYT). * The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, by Bernard Suits (Amazon). * Laura Field interviewed by Sam and Christine (WoC). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wisdomofcrowds.live/subscribe

    1 h 15 min
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Agreement is nice. Disagreement is better. wisdomofcrowds.live

Información

  • Creador
    Shadi Hamid & Damir Marusic
  • Años de actividad
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodios
    261
  • Clasificación
    Explícito
  • Copyright
    © Wisdom of Crowds
  • Mostrar sitio web
    Wisdom of Crowds

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