The Wright Show

Why did George Floyd’s death spark such a massive uprising? ... Mickey senses a whiff of the sixties ... The debacle of clearing Lafayette Park ... Bob vs. Mickey on whether it’s time to worry about Trump’s authoritarianism ... Are progressives inviting a Trumpian catastrophe? ... Will the protesters vindicate the anti-lockdowners? ... Mickey's fears for a second Trump term: Jared unleashed ... In defense of the NYT running Tom Cotton's infamous op-ed ... Local news ...

Paul describes the view from Toronto ... Zero- and non-zero-sum aspects of the pandemic ... Paul: Canada's multiparty system helps defuse polarization ... A disaster without solidarity ... How our emotions caused us to underreact to the pandemic ... Masks and mobs ... Trump's fragile feelings ... Why has the external threat of the disease not united humanity? ... A deep dive into the meaning of statistical significance ...

A return to "root causes" for racial unrest? ... Bob: The worst thing anyone in America does every day can go viral ... Mickey wonders whether the pandemic is burning out on its own ... 100K deaths but anti-lockdown forces are on the march ... Is a cold war with China now inevitable? ... Bob's advice for Biden: Don't be feisty ... Jeff Sessions tests whether GOP voters will believe anything Trump says ... Is Trump's threat to hobble social media companies just a bluff? ... Viewer feedback and a potential theme song ...

Remembering Andrew’s recently deceased dog Eddy ... Can we explain the bond between dogs and people? ... The many disgusting things that dogs love ... Andrew angers the cat lovers in the audience ... Are there actually "cat people" and "dog people"? ... Dogs' use of affection as a tool ... What can we learn from dogs about how to be present? ... Andrew: "I do think that after death I will be with my dogs" ... Andrew wants the economy to open up—a little ...

Jacqueline's new book, Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World ... Female saints as childhood role models ... How Jacqueline helped start Rwanda's first microfinance bank ... Jacqueline's "patient capital" investment nonprofit, Acumen ... The four steps toward building moral imagination ... Toilet entrepreneurship in Nairobi ... Changing the market for coffee and chocolate farmers ... Can identity connect as well as it divides? ... Jacqueline: A moral revolution must come from inside us ...

Mickey betrays Bob on Twitter ... With some states reopening, what have we learned? ... Debating "decoupling" from China ... Trump fires IGs; Bob frets, Mickey is blasé ... Tara Reade’s credibility takes a hit ... Were the layoffs at The Atlantic less than meets the eye? ... Bob's media criticism, pro- and anti-Trump editions ... Mickey rebuts Adam Serwer on Trump, race, and the virus ... Why are there no anti-immigration liberals? ... Why Bob doesn't want Klob to have the VP job ... Mickey's Devs mea culpa ... Viewer mail ... Grading Ben Smith’s NYT takedown of Ronan Farrow ...

Ezra's new book, Why We're Polarized ... How ideology became identity ... Could Trump have realigned American politics? ... Ezra: All politics is identity politics ... Why “this person is not like us” is a way to go viral ... Why the two political parties stopped cooperating ... Ezra wants to see more small-d democratization in America ... When winning is losing ... Trump's one weird trick for hacking the media ...

Will the pandemic inspire terrorists to engineer biological weapons? ... The answer to last week’s riddle revealed ... Debating Biden’s chances of remaining in the race ... Mickey’s theory of the Michael Flynn affair ... The tribal dynamics of the pandemic ... Whither Mickey’s hopes for social equality amidst the pandemic? ... Mickey and Bob argue about the TV show Devs ...

John fails the coronavirus antibody test; Bob consoles him ... Science fiction, free will, and robot sex ... The Devs interpretation of quantum mechanics ... The Wright-Horgan interpretation of Devs, part 1 (spoilers) ... The Wright-Horgan interpretation of Devs, part 2 (lots of spoilers) ... John: we need the concept of free will more than we need God ... Is the many worlds interpretation consoling or terrifying? ...

Mickey’s face, Bob’s face, and other pandemic-related things ... Will Tara Reade derail the Biden nomination? ... The human cost of herd immunity ... Stoking and quelling antagonism toward China ... The “slow, creeping degradation” of governance under Trump ... Will Trump pay the ultimate political price for mishandling the Covid crisis? ... Bob versus the statisticians (and some good news about remdesivir) ... How will we think back on the pandemic in 30 years? ...

Michael's new book, Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right ... The hidden factor in the story of Bret Weinstein and Evergreen College ... Why exactly is Ben Shapiro part of the Intellectual Dark Web? ... What Jordan Peterson gets right ... Michael's proposed political answer: "socialist cosmopolitanism" ... Michael: "Electorally, it's an extremely bleak time" ... Condemning Biden's anti-China rhetoric ... How should the American left view China? ...

Texas and other states begin reopening ... Bob's state park confession ... A sermon on statistical significance ... There’s a much faster, if controversial, way to test vaccines. Bob says do it. ... Will the pandemic make online censorship as American as apple pie? ... Mickey: There's a non-trivial chance Biden gets replaced ... Bob attacks the GOP's attacks on China ... Do the origins of the virus really matter? ... Harvard comes clean about its ties to Jeffrey Epstein ...

Evan's new book, Why I Am Not a Buddhist ... Evan's critique of "Buddhist modernism" and "Buddhist exceptionalism" ... Which of Buddhism’s major claims are naturalistic? ... Is Buddhism fundamentally different than other religions? ... Bob defends Buddhist insights into human psychology ... Evan's case against "neural Buddhism" ... Does a clearer view of reality make you more equanimous? ... All about nirvana ... Debating evolutionary psychology ... Evan: This book is friendly criticism ...

Disinfectants, ultraviolet light, and Trump's brain ... What was America's crucial corona mistake? ... Are we headed for phased-in herd immunity? ... Skepticism about contact tracing ... Does climate make some regions Covid-resistant? ... Mickey: Trump's immigration order "in a tiny way achieved the ancient dream" ... Has Biden's (alleged) cognitive decline plateaued? ... Bob defends economic engagement with China ... Migrants, pandemics, and racism ...

What most worries Richard about the economy ... Assessing the Fed's and Congress's economic interventions ... Why China is doing relatively well economically ... Richard: Conventional wisdom on debt and interest rates is wrong ... How much government spending is too much? ... Is a private debt crisis looming? ... Can the government create money without creating debt? ... Richard: Deflation is now a much bigger concern than inflation ...