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The Glenn Show

TGS Live: Can We Survive the Wisdom of the Market?

The Glenn Show

Glenn Loury

Politics, Society & Culture, News

4.82.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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In this conversation, my editor Mark Sussman and I discuss Kamala Harris’s forthcoming book, 107 Days, and the dire state of publishing. I’ve been reading a lot of Thomas Sowell in preparation for a major address I have to deliver about his work in the Fall, and I suggest that Sowell might say that the declining profitability of writing and publishing might well be a good thing, insofar as it signals the market’s responsiveness to consumer demand and desire. This leads to a debate about the distinction (and perhaps the conflict) between aesthetic and economic value. Then it’s on to a broader discussion of Sowell. Next we move onto the story of a group of people establishing a Christian, LGBTQ-free, whites-only community in Arkansas. We close out with viewer questions about Brown University’s deal with the Trump administration, which somehow leads to a debate about climate science and the epistemological limitations of modernity. And finally, an evergreen topic: black patriotism.

In the course of this conversation, Mark and I reference Michel Houellebecq’s 2015 novel, Submission. That’s because we plan to discuss the book on our next livestream, which we’ll announce in the coming days. So if you want to participate in the discussion or simply follow along, read the book. We’ll be taking calls, and I’m very curious what you all have to think of this brilliant, provocative, and (be warned) sexually explicit book.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

another question on Brown.

0:04.1

This person, whoever it is, says,

0:05.9

okay, I get Glenn's academic outrage,

0:08.4

but I know he can expand on why the taxpayers question,

0:11.9

sorry, on the taxpayers question,

0:14.6

what they're paying for,

0:16.8

considering the political leanings of academia.

0:20.6

So I guess he's asking why should taxpayers foot the bill for the, you know,

0:29.1

and subsidize the political orientation of these academics?

0:35.6

Well, I don't think that most of the money that was flowing to these colleges is getting

0:39.7

into the political science or the sociology department.

0:43.6

I think it's mostly going to the engineering school, the medical school, and chemistry

0:49.8

laboratories and things like that.

0:53.4

So I think there's a mismatch there.

0:57.1

But I mean, I guess if you pull the lens back and you ask about the finances of higher

1:00.9

education, you know, there's a point that indirect subsidies and whatnot.

1:10.4

I think prudent management of the universities would not allow too great a gap to develop between the sensibility of their philosophical ideological coloration and that are the populace are just on prudential grounds.

1:33.1

I think deference to expertise and virtuosity of craft and, you know, kind of genius,

1:45.0

I mean, forgive me for using these kind of words, but I think that's what we're talking about.

1:50.6

I think there's a certain amount of deference that's due, but I, you know, I'm reading up on

1:58.4

Thomas Sol and he's very much anti-deference to expertise

2:02.5

in his sensibility. He thinks to common sense and the wisdom of the ages that's embedded

...

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