The Wright Show

Andrew's new book, The Age of Illusions ... Andrew's ideological lodestars: Catholic conservatism, Reinhold Niebuhr, and FDR ... Defining foreign policy "realism" ... How Clinton, GWB, and Obama were captured by the post–Cold War consensus ... Will international law ever command wide respect? ... 1992 as a harbinger of 2016 ... The political logic behind America’s endless drone war ... Why Trump keeps failing to end the wars he wants to end ... How Andrew's service in Vietnam shaped his worldview ...

In a new TEDx talk, Alex calls for a science of UFOs ... Why Bob finds two naval sightings credible ... Alex: "There's some decent chance that these things are alien" ... Alex's proposal for a UFO monitoring system ... Might it be suicidal to let ETs know that we know about them? ... Alex: Maybe the aliens are waiting for us to figure it out ... What explains the taboo against academic study of UFOs? ... Alex's willingness to be misperceived as a crank ...

Skye and Massimo's new co-edited book, with Daniel Kaufman, How to Live a Good Life ... Existentialism's intersections with Stoicism ... How Skye encountered Existentialism while in business school ... Sartre and de Beauvoir's famous attempt to live a life of freedom ... Are philosophers a bunch of hypocrites? ... Personal authenticity vs. social convention ... Why Stoicism doesn’t mean passive acceptance ... Skye and Massimo on the philosophies they found most interesting ... How Wittgenstein would view this book ...

David says a “narrative of brokenness” distorts news and politics ... Bob laments the demise of the ideal of journalistic objectivity ... David explains "solutions journalism" ... Making stories about solutions sexy ... Does the Solutions Journalism Network have an ideological bias? ... Insights from red states ... Defying the market forces that work against solutions journalism ...

Steve's critique of NPR's Scott Simon ... Bob's larger grievance against NPR ... The media’s implicit bias in favor of military intervention ... Dual theories about the NYT’s weird dual endorsement ... How Steve's paper, the Chicago Tribune, has shrunk ... Is Bernie well positioned to run against Trump? ... The Houston Astros and the whistleblower who exposed their cheating ...

Daniel, a Trump supporter, says the politics of impeachment favor the GOP ... Debating Trump's alleged Ukraine transgressions ... What liberals don't get about the nature of Trump's support ... Pat Buchanan and the politics of cultural difference ... The case against "good government" ... Daniel touts Trump's "personalized" foreign policy ... What Daniel doesn't like about Trump ...

Eli: Trump wants "regime disruption" in Iran ... Assessing Iranians’ reactions to Suleimani’s death ... Is Iran playing offense or defense in the Middle East? ... What do "death to America" and "death to Israel" really mean? ... Weighing whether Iraq will actually expel US forces ... Optimistic and pessimistic regime change scenarios ... How likely is war with Iran and what would it look like? ...

Zachary’s new group of (mainly) optimistic thinkers, the Progress Network ... What many missed about the effects of globalization ... What good comes from highlighting the good stuff? ... A case study in the dangers of alarmism: Trump and the Resistance ... Bob on the perils of not nurturing global governance ... Lessons from past periods of rapid change in infotech ... Bob on the Quincy Institute, a new non-Blob foreign policy think tank ... Are there too many doomsayers? ...

Defining "moral realism" ... Cognitivists vs. noncognitivists ... Are moral beliefs just expressions of human desires? ... Human happiness is better than human suffering...right? ... Considering whether you can be both a Darwinian and a moral realist ... Moral progress, teleology, and mysticism ... Why you "have to take something for granted" in any philosophical system ... The bedrock sources of meaning in life ... If life has meaning, does moral realism logically follow? ...

If Trump wins re-election, will Democrats "go berserk," as Mickey says? ... The top 1% vs. the next 29% ... What are Bernie's chances? ... Bob: Negative partisanship is the decade's most alarming psycho-political trend ... Mickey floats some UFO theories ... An under-the-radar scandal at the world’s chemical weapons watchdog agency ... Bob and Mickey mystified by influence of Twitter elites on presidential campaign ... Silicon Valley: What’s not to hate? ... The past decade’s glimmer of hope: growing awareness of cognitive biases ... Who's crazier, Bob or Mickey? ...

Rhonda's path to meditation and Buddhism ... Rhonda's new book, The Inner Work of Racial Justice ... Is equanimity the enemy of activism? ... Using mindfulness to overcome biases and stereotypes ... How Rhonda deploys contemplative practices in her law school classroom ... Can one feel compassion for a cop who shot an unarmed black man? ...

Dominic’s paper, “Bad World: The Negativity Bias in International Politics” ... Why politicians overestimate threats to national security ... The cognitive bias of “loss avoidance” as fuel for war ... Do international actors give too much weight to past failures? ... World War I as a case study in negativity bias ... Arguments against Dominic’s argument ... Can we use our growing knowledge of cognitive biases to avoid unwise conflicts? ...

Bob reminisces about the origins of Bloggingheads.tv ... Where The Glenn Show fits into the BhTV ecosystem ... Speech policing, the "n-word," and the uses of ridicule ... What's Trump's executive order on anti-Semitism really about? ... Does the IDW care about protecting speech critical of Israel? ... Bob critiques The Trayvon Hoax ... Bob: Be wary of throwing around the word "hoax" ... Quillette accuses Bob of palling around with tyranny apologists ...

Alan's new book, Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now ... Alan on taking over the Guardian in 1995, at the dawn of the web ... Was giving news away for free the "original sin" of online journalism? ... Pros and cons of different media funding models ... The downsides of having lots of subscribers and traffic ... Alan: The British press has failed on Brexit ... A few kinds words about social media ... How the Guardian uses "open journalism" ... Will we soon enter a post-newspaper future? ...

Catherine's new book, How to Be an Epicurean ... How Epicureanism is like and unlike utilitarianism ... How the ancient Epicureans viewed nature and reality ... Comparing Epicureanism with its big rival, Stoicism ... On suffering and death ... Epicurean influence on post-Enlightenment science and philosophy ...