The Wright Show

David: American conservatism is basically white cultural resentment ... Is the left as tribal as the right? ... The "war on Christmas" as a case study ... Is pluralistic democracy contrary to human nature? ... Maybe nothing can unify Americans as a nation any more ... So whom should the NYT op-ed page hire? ... The one thing Trump could do to alienate his base ...

Was the Buddha a Buddhist? ... What the Buddha meant by “suffering” ... Mindfulness as awareness ... "Secular" mindfulness as sacred ... The trap of goal-oriented meditation ... The heart of the Buddha’s message ... When Jon discovered his purpose ... Mindfulness training in schools ...

Ryan's new book on the destruction of Gawker, Conspiracy ... What the Stoics thought about revenge ... Why Hulk Hogan slept with Bubba the Love Sponge’s wife ... Why Gawker lost and Peter Thiel won ... Nick Denton's turn to Stoicism in the wake of catastrophe ... Apportioning sympathy and blame ...

How Michael landed at National Review ... Are there any upsides to Trump? ... Michael: The "decline of the liberal world order" narrative is BS ... What surprised Bob about Trump ... Might we some day look back on the culture war with nostalgia? ... Michael throws cold water on the Cambridge Analytica uproar ... The era of disbelief and universal grievance ...

The historical backdrop of last week's protest in Gaza ... Yousef: Israel had no justification for the use of lethal force ... What were the Israelis thinking? ... How Israel undermines non-violent Palestinian resistance ... Next steps for the protest movement ... If it is too late for two states, what's next? ...

Recounting Bret's tumultuous exit from Evergreen State ... Bret: Intersectionality is an "invitation to bad actors" ... Is racism in the genes? ... When tribalism encounters Enlightenment values ... Bret: Intolerance of divergent views goes beyond just a few college campuses ... Bret: "Most scientists are not scientific" ... Bob offers a word in defense of social justice warriors ...

The Real News, a viewer-supported site ... Why Aaron, like some others on the left, is a Russiagate skeptic ... What we talk about when we talk about the "Deep State" ... Aaron throws cold water on the idea that Mueller is gonna get Trump ... Are liberals obsessed with Russia to their own detriment? ... The perils of rejecting the conventional wisdom ... What the Buddha would say about hating Trump ...

Massimo’s new edited volume, Science Unlimited?: The Challenges of Scientism ... What is scientism? ... Science and the challenge of studying subjective experience ... And about those pesky fundamental questions of existence… ... How philosophical thought underpins all research methodology ... Massimo: Core concepts across science have competing interpretations ... The importance of distinguishing “is" from "ought ... What neuroscience can never explain about human consciousness ...

Elizabeth’s time working for Jared Kushner as editor of the New York Observer ... Is there more to Kushner than family loyalty? ... The Kushner family’s looming financing deadline for 666 Fifth Avenue ... Why Elizabeth resigned as editor of the Observer ... Elizabeth, founding editor of Gawker, talks about Peter Thiel’s destruction of it ... What Gawker got about politics and the lowbrow ...

Molly’s research on social media and moral outrage ... The personal benefits of sanctimony ... Why do certain posts go viral? ... Even without complex algorithms, social media discourages mindful reflection ... Online outrage and the signal-to-noise problem ...

Katherine: Libertarianism has often been ahead of the curve ... Liberal smugness vs. conservative trolling ... The different values left and right bring to politics ... What conservatives learned from Jon Stewart ... Katherine on the 2016 election: “President Smug gave way to President Troll” ... Ending on a note of pessimism ...

Bob and Josh recount their first meeting after a silent meditation retreat ... Does yoga always have a spiritual component? ... How Josh’s yoga practice prepares the body for meditation ... How yoga’s focus on breath can lead to the body ... Solutions to modern distraction ... Bob: Mindfulness practice can erode essentialist thinking ... What’s the point of Bob’s Mindful Resistance Project? ... The present and future of the Mindful Resistance Newsletter ...

Darwin’s approach to explaining the peacock’s cumbersome plumage ... Could beauty have evolved, in part, for beauty’s sake? ... The sense in which traits favored via mate selection may not be ‘adaptive’ ... Mate preference and aesthetics ... What can we learn from ducks’ miserable sex lives? ... How paternal investment in offspring became part of human life ... When sex isn’t for reproduction ... Richard’s misgivings about evolutionary psychology ...

Is the NYT Op-Ed page serving the public discourse? ... Andrew: Quality of argument matters more than the identity of the speaker ... How Trump and identity politics reinforce each other ... Andrew is irritated by the idea of an "LBGTQ community" ... Bob: Evolutionary psychology isn't right-wing ... The opioid epidemic and America's hidden pain ... Floating the idea of "meta-conservatism" ...

Why scientific materialism is harder to define than you think ... Galen explains panpsychism ... What does “mind is all there is to reality” mean? ... Is human consciousness epiphenomenal? ... Do physical laws come from somewhere? ... Is it like something to be a rock? (And is Galen saying it is?) ... Galen: Discussion of the mind-body problem was better 100 years ago ...