Podcast
Wisdom of Crowds
Hosted by Shadi Hamid & Damir Marusic · EN
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Episodes
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What If We Fired All the Politicians?
4w ago01:02:54Tap to summarizeIn 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
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Church and Empire
May 101:11:08Tap to summarizeThe 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
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Did We Get Hungary Wrong?
Apr 1901:06:57Tap to summarizeThis 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
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Anti-Politics and the Counter-Revolution
Apr 1400:59:03Tap to summarizeSamuel 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
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Peter Beinart on Why the "Right to Exist" is the Wrong Question
Apr 100:33:30Tap to summarizeThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.liveLast 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…
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What Ails the Left?
Mar 1701:14:49Tap to summarizeThis 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
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Cameron Kasky on How Israel Lost America
Mar 701:03:58Tap to summarizeThis week, Shadi and Damir hosted Cameron Kasky — a rising young activist in the Democratic Party and former congressional candidate for New York’s 12th District — who gave us a glimpse into where American politics might be headed. Cameron started his career as a gun control advocate after surviving the Parkland shooting. For his efforts, he was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in 2018. He has since become a passionate advocate for the Palestinian cause, especially so after Gaza. We recorded this episode a day after Marco Rubio caused a furor by suggesting America’s decision to attack Iran was shaped by the fact that Israel might do it without us anyway, leaving our assets in the region dangerously exposed. With increasingly hostile young MAGA voices convinced that Israel holds undue sway over American foreign policy, we discussed how Democrats see a path forward.The conversation got heated at times — Damir goes incandescent over Epstein, Shadi frets about entrenched Democratic leaders not reflecting voters’ preferences — but it’s an important episode very much worth your time. American politics is changing before our eyes, and anyone thinking we’re going back to the way things were after Trump has another thing coming. 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
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Are We All Clavicular Now?
Feb 2301:08:04Tap to summarizeDamir, Shadi and Christine discuss the latest wave of worrying data about young adults’ retreat from dating, sex, marriage and parenthood. Shadi lays out the big numbers — projections that a large minority of young Americans may never marry and a substantial share may never have children — and ties them to two worries: widespread loneliness (especially among young men) and long-run national capacity in an era of low fertility and reduced immigration. Christine agrees on the economic and political downstream effects but keeps returning to more normative questions: is a prosperous but degraded society worth saving? The conversation swerves (as it tends to) into the subcultures forming in the vacuum: the looksmaxxing/manosphere influencer “Clavicular,” who embodies male energy redirected inward — away from courtship and community and toward obsessive self-modification and performative detachment from women. Damir pushes an uncomfortable adaptation thesis: maybe this is simply what “winning” does to advanced societies, whether we like the aesthetics of it or not.Required Reading:* “The truth about population decline,” by Martin Wolf (Financial Times).* “Get Married Young,” by Brad Wilcox (Compact).* “1-in-3: A Record Share of Young Adults Will Never Marry,” by Lyman Stone (Institute for Family Studies).* The Human Flourishing Program’s “Flourish” measure (Harvard IQSS). 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
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Just How Worried Should We Be About AI?
Feb 1501:11:09Tap to summarizeDamir and Sam are joined by Cambridge philosopher Henry Shevlin of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence for a raucous and rambling conversation about the state of artificial intelligence. Is it about to get conscious, take all of our jobs, and destroy the world? Or is all this industry hype?Henry starts off the conversation asserting that AI already has a kind of “agency,” even if it’s not yet the full kind that some skeptics are looking for. Damir and Sam push back on AI’s reliability and proclivity to hallucinations, and wonder whether AI can create anything genuinely novel or creative.The conversation turns to autonomy and risk. Can “artificial superintelligence” ever be reached, asks Sam? Henry points to AI coding agents already improving themselves. Damir objects to anthropomorphizing AI and prefers treating these systems as powerful tools capable runaway failures — but nothing more. Henry disagrees, ending the conversation with a plea for AIs getting consideration as moral entities at some point.Required Reading:* “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies,” by Nick Bostrom (Amazon).* The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms, by Margaret Boden (Amazon).* “Disambiguating Anthropomorphism and Anthropomimesis in Human-Robot Interaction,” by Minja Axelsson and Henry Shevlin (arxiv.org).* “Real Patterns,” by Daniel C. Dennett (Rutgers).* A relevant tweet by Séb Krier (X).* AlphaGo Move 37 analysis (DeepMind).* Conway’s Game of Life (Wikipedia). 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
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American Exceptionalism on Trial
Feb 300:56:54Tap to summarizeThis episode features a full-length debate between Shadi Hamid and Trita Parsi —two thinkers who fundamentally disagree about the role of American power in the world. Released jointly with The Disagreement podcast and hosted by Alex Grodd, the conversation reflects a shared Wisdom of Crowds ethos — one that treats disagreement not as a failure of understanding, but as a tool for thinking more clearly about first principles. Rather than trading talking points, Hamid and Parsi engage each other’s strongest arguments in a sustained, good-faith exchange.Shadi draws on themes from The Case for American Power to defend a position that has fallen out of favor across much of the political spectrum: that American power, when used with moral purpose, can still play a necessary role in reducing global suffering. His argument is aimed in part at a disillusioned left that has come to see U.S. power primarily as a source of harm rather than a potential instrument of humanitarian good. Against this, Trita — one of the most incisive critics of American interventionism — offers a sustained challenge, grounded in historical failures, unintended consequences, and the limits of even well-intentioned power.Does the world need the United States to act, and if so, when — and at what cost? How should past disasters constrain present ambitions? And if American power is curtailed, what realistic alternatives exist, and who bears responsibility when things go wrong? This debate doesn’t resolve those questions — but it models what it looks like to take them seriously, in conversation with someone who sees the world very differently.Required Reading/ Listening: * The Disagreement podcast. * Shadi Hamid, The Case for American Power. (Amazon) * Shadi’s 2024 debate with Daniel Bessner hosted by The Disagreement. 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
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