Beyond Red and Blue

 It’s been a corrosive few weeks for national unity.  There was the F.B.I. raid on Mar-a-Lago in which agents even went through the belongings of Melania and Barron.   Then there was the rancor between Texas and Chicago, New York and D.C. as Texas governor Abbott began to ship illegals to these putative sanctuary cities.  Finally, there was the dark and menacing speech of Joe Biden, given in front of the dark blood red background, using marines as props, telling us that MAGA Republicans represent a threat to democracy, and then threatening his own citizens with F-15’s.  And if that wasn’t enough, there were the images of armed Antifa in the background of a drag queen show for children in Texas.

Everywhere you look, it appears that reasoned argument and engagement have evaporated, and have been replaced by division, anger, bitterness and hatred.  After Biden labeled Trump voters “semi-fascist,” it took all of my self-control not to send the clip to friends of mine that voted for Biden because of Trump’s “divisiveness.”   Cable news is divided into two camps—MSNBC and Fox, basically where the narratives run in parallel universes. 

It's hard to find any platform or any person that can make fact based policy arguments or make fair evaluations, particularly of Donald Trump.  I had great hopes for Bill Barr, and I thought his memoir, One Damn Thing After Another was generally about as fair as you get, but his recent statements on the raid of Mar-a-Lago betrayed his anti-Trump bias by making inaccurate statements (storing classified materials at a country club-not true) and making several assumptions about the unprecedented raid.

Nonetheless, I have identified a number of podcasts that I believe are eminently fair.   Despite the well-deserved criticism, the technology industry has provided at least one development that is worthwhile—the podcast.  Podcasts have picked up the slack that legacy media has left and have given voice to several people that legacy media has thrown overboard.  Liberated from time constraints, podcast discussions are often more nuanced and in depth.

Quillette
Quillette was the first podcast I listened to regularly.  With the slogan “Free Thought Lives” and its dedication to heterodoxy, Quillette has mostly been a great podcast to hear free thinkers that are willing to push back on Wokeness.  Still, I lost respect for its founder Claire Lehmann when she launched a series of personal and vituperative attacks on Bret Weinstein for his skepticism over COVID restrictions and vaccines.  She also has a tendency to post somewhat revealing photos of herself to show off her fit and attractive figure on social media, which, I think actually detracts from her images as a serious intellectual.  Still, Quillette remains a good podcast if you wish to swim against the tide.

DarkHorse
DarkHorse is one of my absolute favorites.  Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, evolutionary biologists that were driven from the faculty of Evergreen State by the Woke mob, and deplatformed by YouTube, this nominally progressive couple bring reason and the scientific method to the fight.   They almost always have something interesting to say, and Weinstein was one of the first to suggest that COVID may have originated in the Wuhan Lab, and warned of the ineffectiveness and safety issues of the mRNA vaccines.  Both have been highly vocal about the corruption of science in universities.  I particularly enjoy Heather’s rants and Bret’s nerdy humor.  Both are willing to engage and have lively discussions with people with a more conservative tilt that they have, which makes this podcast most thought provoking.

Honestly with Bari Weiss
Like Weinstein and Heying, Bari Weiss is a refugee from a legacy institution—the New York Times, and she has had to find an alternative way of making a living.  She is very smart, high energy and open minded.   Hers is the absolute best podcast if you want to hear frank discussions of both sides of an issue.  Her more recent podcasts included discussions of the Oberlin College case, Election Denial, and Feminism and Sexuality.  Her interviews have ranged from Mike Pompeo to Marianne Williamson.  She is a fierce defender of the principles of free speech and is on the advisory board of both the new University of Austin and the Foundation Against Intolerance of Racism.   Who knew that I would consider a liberal liberal Jewish lesbian from the New York Times to be one of young intellectuals for whom I have the utmost respect---but so much for labels.

The Glenn Show
The odd benefit of Woke is that I was introduced to the thinking and ideas of Glenn Loury and John McWhorter—“The Black Guys.”   Loury is an economist from Brown and McWhorter, a linguist, hails from Columbia.   I rarely miss their bi-weekly discussions.  Loury is more conservative of the two but McWhorter almost always gets me thinking in a different direction.   I have a special affinity for Loury since he is originally from Chicago’s South Side and his life has had its own travails, which lends authenticity to his views.  He is certainly not a lifelong ivory tower guy.  Loury and McWhorter often have disagreements and their friendship and civility toward one another is a model for all of us.

In addition to these, I also like New Discourses by James Lindsay, which is sometimes long and detailed but provides a comprehensive analysis of Woke ideology and Marxism.   Victor Davis Hanson’s weekly podcasts are a regular for me as well as Hanson provides a historical perspective on things.  Megyn Kelly’s podcast is also quite good.  Although she tilts rights, she is open minded, is an excellent interviewer, and is open minded.   Her delightful personality comes out more in her podcast than it did on legacy media.

The four podcasts that I highlighted provide a nice balance.   In this hyperpartisan and rancorous atmosphere, it is easy to get siloed and walled off from other perspectives.  Social media and its algorithms are designed to magnify these differences and harden us into tribal camps.  The trouble with Wokeness is that it doesn’t admit or acknowledge legitimate differences of opinion and neither will it acknowledge contrary evidence—it argues with the four D’s—deny, dismiss, disparage and double down.  These podcasts allow for legitimate discourse.