Coming up on this episode of the roundtable.

Religion can be seen in a couple different ways.

I think one of them is that of the true believer who says,

you know, well, the problem with meritocracy is,

we all deserve nothing or worse and that's why you

throw yourself at the feet of God and beg for healing or mercy what have you.

The other view is well religion is good because it's it kind of gives everyone something to do and its structure and prevents people from getting confused or lost and you know who really cares whether it's true or not who really cares what's going on inside people's

consciousness. What really matters is just kind of getting everyone to adopt the

same rituals so that we have the sense of togetherness and we stay busy, which is kind of the pattern of thinking

that the internet itself imposes on us, I think. Everything on the internet tends to drift or converge on filler, just sort of content that is just chummed out there every day for people to consume and whatever it is that is your head in the

head in the internet has a channel for that has a 24-7 feed and you can just you know dip your head

in the stream of whatever it is that you care about most and just participate in the ritual of consuming that feed. The Hello and welcome once again to the roundtable your weekly publishers and editors podcast here at

The American Mind. I'm your host Spencer Clavin features editor of the American Mind and

associate editor of the Claremont Review of Books.

And it's happened. We made it just under the gun January 24.

So shortly before the end of the month, we've all managed to get on a podcast

together before the first month of the year is up. I am joined by the whole gang

editor James Poulas, managing editor Seth Barron and publisher and president Ryan Williams

great to see and or hear from you guys and I it's always a little weird to say I'm

excited about our topics on any given week because it's not like the news is so sunny and thrilling all the time but I am kind of excited to discuss I think we've got some juicy topics here today and I'm interested to know what you guys think of them but we wanted to actually kick things off with a little victory lap. I think it's fair to take one after this New York Times piece that came out about us.

First of all, it seems that we live rent-free in the heads of the New York Times editorial staff. This in itself

delights me. But our most recent, you might say hit piece, you might say advertisement in the Times has been particularly delicious to watch

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