The Hanania Show

There are few (if any!) people alive whose work I think more highly of than Steven Pinker, or whose books have done more to shape my worldview. As he was in Los Angeles as part of his latest book tour, I took the opportunity to invite him on the show for an in-person interview. I did a podcast with him on Rationality, his last book, and wrote the following at the time: “One of the best parts of becoming (sort of) famous in the last year has been getting to meet and form relationships with some of my intellectual heroes. Seeing those I’ve looked up to for years not only become friends but in many cases return the admiration has been extremely rewarding.”That remains true, and although we’ve corresponded over the years, this discussion was the first time we met in person. The topic was his new book When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.We begin by discussing the Aumann Agreement Theorem, which I thought sounded trite from the book but came around to believing was endlessly fascinating after hearing Steve explain it. We spend a bit of time on humor, which is such an important part of social relations but rarely given the scholarly attention it deserves, or else we might say the theories that do exist are usually unsatisfying. I liked our discussion of how presidents and leaders engage in self-deprecating humor, and different public figures that either poke fun at themselves or the other side. I feel like the topic of politics and humor could make a fascinating PhD dissertation. If I had time, I would listen to podcasts and classify when people laughed and according to what criteria, and try to theorize about differences between groups like conservatives and liberals, or centrists and extremists. I think AI could probably help with that at this point. As I told Steve, perhaps we should all decide to support political movements that engage in more self-deprecating humor on the grounds that they are less likely to violate the rights of others! If you’re a graduate student or professor who is interested in doing such work, please reach out, as I would like to help find ways to make it happen. Moving on from the new book, I got to ask Steve something I’ve been wondering about for a few years, which is whether recent events, particularly the war in Ukraine, have shifted his views on what maintains peace in the international system. As it turns out, we were both surprised that under contemporary conditions you could see two European countries kill each other in such large numbers. Maybe the great run of peace we’ve had since 1945 isn’t a result of, as John Mueller has argued, people realizing that war is stupid, but rather has depended on Western military, economic, and diplomatic power. Were the dreaded neocons perhaps correct? As international norms look a lot more fragile than they did fifteen years ago, this is a question we probably should be asking.We close with some discussion about the Trump administration’s war on the universities, particularly Harvard. I loved the essay Pinker published in the NYT on “Harvard Derangement Syndrome.” The key passage is here. Why does this matter? For all its foibles, Harvard (together with other universities) has made the world a better place, significantly so. Fifty-two faculty members have won Nobel Prizes, and more than 5,800 patents are held by Harvard. Its researchers invented baking powder, the first organ transplant, the programmable computer, the defibrillator, the syphilis test and oral rehydration therapy (a cheap treatment that has saved tens of millions of lives). They developed the theory of nuclear stability that has saved the world from Armageddon (Arguable! – RH). They invented the golf tee and the catcher’s mask. Harvard spawned “Sesame Street,” The National Lampoon, “The Simpsons,” Microsoft and Facebook.Ongoing research at Harvard includes methane-tracking satellites, robotic catheters, next-generation batteries and wearable robotics for stroke victims. Federal grants are supporting research on metastasis, tumor suppression, radiation and chemotherapy in children, multidrug-resistant infections, pandemic prevention, dementia, anesthesia, toxin reduction in firefighting and the military, the physiological effects of spaceflight and battlefield wound care. Harvard’s technologists are pushing innovations in quantum computing, A.I., nanomaterials, biomechanics, foldable bridges for the military, hack-resistant computer networks and smart living environments for the elderly. One lab has developed what may be a cure for Type 1 diabetes.This was published only ten days after my own piece in The Economist touching on many of the same themes. Given the range and depth of the conversation, I walked away from it wondering how I would summarize Pinker’s career, or how to make sense of my intuition that there’s a line that extends through his books on psychology, linguistics, interpersonal communication, the history of violence, behavioral genetics, and political philosophy. If there is a unifying theme to his career, it’s a belief in reason to illuminate the most important human phenomena, from seemingly trivial – but actually quite deep! – questions like what makes us laugh or blush, to topics as weighty as, at an individual level, what determines the content of our personalities, and, from a more macro perspective, the causes of genocide and how we should arrange our political life. There’s been a progression from embodying enlightenment values in addressing important scientific questions regarding human nature, to explicitly advocating for those same principles in some of his more recent books, most clearly in Enlightenment Now. His two-front war against both wokeness in universities and the creeping authoritarianism of the Trump era is part and parcel of the same story. As liberalism seems to be on the decline, at least in the short run, there’s never been a better time to delve into Pinker’s articles and books if you haven’t already. Not only for the overt defenses of what Western Civilization has built, but also for his non-political books that show us how the acquisition of knowledge can itself be joyful and life affirming. You will breeze through a joke from Curb Your Enthusiasm or a Woody Allen film (yes, the books are very Jewish), and before you know it you will have grasped a deep insight into the human condition – in a way that is understandable and relatable, but never dumbed down. I hope that this conversation encourages listeners who are not familiar with Pinker’s body of work to decide that it is worth exploring. Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

Bryan Caplan joined me on the livestream today to discuss my recent article, “Economists Should Do More to Fight Misinformation.” We begin by splitting some hairs about whether the misinformation label misleads us about the ultimate origins of false beliefs, and also the difference between something being emotionally unappealing and intuitively incorrect. He ends up agreeing with me though on the major points of the article. We both encourage economists out there to take more pride in their work as intellectuals and fight false beliefs regardless of where on the ideological spectrum they come from. We then go into his experiences traveling to the Gulf Arab states and Japan. Bryan’s article on the UAE as utopia has stuck with me since I read it almost a year ago as demonstrating how well humans could be living if we simply were able to move beyond commonly held beliefs about markets and nationhood. Arabs built something this amazing! All it took was them believing in freedom. Or maybe just being rational. Bryan mentions to me that when you talk to their government ministers off the record, they believe the story that they’re exploiting the workers, which I found very amusing. There can sometimes be an incredible divergence between intentions and consequences that most people find difficult to fathom. I also bring up Laurenz Guenther’s recent article on immigration explaining the rise of populism and ask Bryan how he would address its findings in the context of his commitment to open borders. I bring up global demographic trends and ask if they frighten him, which leads to a discussion of South Africa. Somewhere in there we talk about the theories of Daron Acemoglu on why nations become rich or poor. Finally, the conversation closes with me asking Bryan for an update on what’s going on at GMU and his lonely struggle against attempts to make it woke.Overall, a very stimulating conversation, as always with Bryan. I encourage everyone to follow him on X and subscribe to his Substack. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comMichael Tracey joins me to talk about the Charlie Kirk memorial service. The conversation somehow devolves into us disagreeing strongly on which parts of the Christian Nationalist spectacle on display were strangest. Michael’s inner new atheist comes out, as we play clips from Erika Kirk, RFK, Pete Hegseth, and others. He notes how out of place this kind of overt sectarianism would have been in any previous administration. I argue that this is one of the signifiers of the right leaning into identitarianism, of which strict restrictionism and all the talk we’re getting about “Heritage Americans” are a part. One doesn’t have to be a Christian or even believe in God to be a member of the movement in good standing; it’s just about fighting the left. But fighting them on what? Consider how the second Trump administration has completely lost interest in abortion, which has traditionally been the main issue for the Christian Right. Is trans in women’s sports worth all this apocalyptic rhetoric? The dangers of crime in inner cities most Republicans don’t live anywhere near? The conversation also touches on the future of the conservative movement, and whether conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk’s death are going to be a fixture on the right going forward.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comI just did a livestream on the latest in the Charlie Kirk investigation, my article yesterday on the killing, and my piece on anti-Indian hate. As soon as I got off, I saw that a Congressman had just tweeted that he will try to permanently ban from social media anyone who “belittles” the Charlie Kirk assassination. He also says such people should not have business or driver’s licenses or be allowed to attend schools. This is by far the most authoritarian thing I can ever remember hearing an elected official say. People who complained that I shouldn’t have had a take so soon after the assassination should look at the kinds of rhetoric that Republican officials and conservative influencers are engaging in. One cannot cede the floor to these people. It would be different if there were a broad norm to not express political opinions on the news of the day in times like this. But that’s not where we are. I discuss the two-step conservatives engage in, where they:* Point to crazy things said by online leftists on Bluesky and TikTok who have no positions of power or influence* Use that as an excuse to call for repression of mainstream Democrats, even though literally 0% of them talk or act like the leftists the right complains aboutThis is completely dishonest, and facilitates hysteria by telling conservatives that deranged leftists are half the country rather than a small and isolated minority. You can’t make some mentally ill communist the avatar for an entire side of the political spectrum. The trick is to start by calling something bad “the Left”, and then declaring half the country responsible for anything they say or do. From the perspective of judging the Democratic Party and mainstream liberals it’s actually impressive that a movement can, among influential figures, be 100% in lockstep in terms of not celebrating the death of a political opponent. Again, that is much more than can be said for conservatives when they face similar circumstances. This is the human capital difference, which applies not just to intelligence, but also ethical norms.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comGhislaine speaks! And as it turns out, there is still nothing to the Epstein conspiracies. Michael Tracey has a nice breakdown of how it went, pointing out that there is no indication she is lying, even when you might expect to see signs of her doing so. He joins me to discuss. I went into this conversation thinking I had learned almost everything important about the Epstein saga. I was wrong. There are so many threads to pull here. But they’re not the ones people expect. The whole case against Ghislaine appears to have been drummed up by trial lawyers who recruited the “victims,” conducted the PR campaign, got journalists on board, and, according to Ghislaine and evidence presented by Alan Dershowitz, were engaging in a blackmail ring that involved threatening to drag more people into the story.It’s all rotten from top to bottom. It’s always easy to see a moral panic in retrospect. A hallmark of moral panics is that groups normally at odds unite to condemn a target. As Michael alludes to, podcast bros, CNN, and Fox are all on the same side here, making him a rare beacon of truth. They’re still wrong. We also talk about the role that taking high doses of testosterone might have played in Epstein’s behavior, something that came out during the Ghislaine interviews. He was clearly acting recklessly, which led to his downfall, and we now finally have an explanation of why.There are some video and audio problems near the middle of the conversation, and Michael disconnects at one point, but he comes back on and we finish the discussion.Note: I’ve heard from some of you who are paid subscribers that you don’t know how to get the full episodes via your podcast apps. It’s very simple. Just go to the episode page on the newsletter website on your phone or desktop. Don’t do it through the Substack app; it must be a browser. At the top, there will be a tab that says “Listen via…” Choose that, and then pick from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc. It should then allow you to add the show to your feeds, where you’ll automatically get the full versions of all episodes when they come out. Note that you need to do it separately for both shows associated with this newsletter: The Hanania Show and The H&H Podcast.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comMichael Tracey joins me to talk about the latest saga in the moral panic over pedophilia and its intersection with antisemitic conspiracy theories. The most interesting part of the conversation is when we discuss how the concept of “prostitution” has disappeared from the culture. Everything is “trafficking” or must involve minors. I note that, with the collapse of social conservatism, we no longer have any basis not to allow legalized prostitution. To justify the current state of the law, then, in addition to the grant money involved, we need a new angle, which exaggerates or invents the coercive aspects of most sex work. Michael brings up the point that if Elliot Spitzer were arrested today, the women involved would unquestionably be treated as helpless victims.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comLast month, Tulsi Gabbard in her capacity as the head of DNI released a number of documents pertaining to Russiagate. On the right, an entire mythology has grown around the idea that the Obama administration, Hillary, and Deep State actors fabricated the idea that Russia helped get Trump elected, along with the narrative surrounding ties between his campaign and the Putin regime. Even as someone who hasn’t followed all the twists and turns of this saga, I knew enough to understand that some of Gabbard’s most sensationalist claims were laughable. With great fanfare, she informed the world that the Obama administration knew that Russia had never hacked the voting machines to deliver a Trump victory. Under the headline “New Evidence of Obama Administration Conspiracy to Subvert President Trump’s 2016 Victory and Presidency,” the DNI press release lists the following bullet points* In the months leading up to the November 2016 election, the Intelligence Community (IC) consistently assessed that Russia is “probably not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means.”* On December 7, 2016, after the election, talking points were prepared for DNI James Clapper stating, “Foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome.”* On December 9, 2016, President Obama’s White House gathered top National Security Council Principals for a meeting that included James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe and others, to discuss Russia.* After the meeting, DNI Clapper’s Executive Assistant sent an email to IC leaders tasking them with creating a new IC assessment “per the President’s request” that details the “tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election.” It went on to say, “ODNI will lead this effort with participation from CIA, FBI, NSA, and DHS.”* Obama officials leaked false statements to media outlets, including The Washington Post, claiming, “Russia has attempted through cyber means to interfere in, if not actively influence, the outcome of an election.”* On January 6, 2017, a new Intelligence Community Assessment was released that directly contradicted the IC assessments that were made throughout the previous six months.The problem of course is that the administration never claimed that Russia manipulated the vote tally! Everyone who is familiar with the most basic facts surrounding Russiagate knew this already. Go back to the first bullet point, with the quote that Russia was “probably not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means.” Now look at the complete passage here, on page 2, taken first from the email of an unnamed Obama administration official:Russia probably is not trying to going to be able to? (sic) influence the election by using cyber means to manipulate computer-enabled election infrastructure. Russia probably is using cyber means primarily to influence the election by stealing campaign party data and leaking select items, and it is also using public propaganda. [emphasis added]Another email in response concurs with this judgment and repeats the phrase. The dishonesty is staggering. Put aside all other claims that Gabbard makes, this is so blatantly in bad faith that it’s immediately discrediting, and should make you skeptical of everything else these people say. Especially when this lie is combined with calls for Obama to be prosecuted. The Trump administration is speaking to an audience that it knows is misinformed, or unable to understand the distinction between “Russia tried to influence the election” and “Russia tried to change the election outcome by manipulating voting machines.”This recent news renewed my interest in the Russiagate story, so I invited my friend Renée DiResta (X, Substack, personal website) on a livestream to talk about it. She is a professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, and the former research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. She also did work on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. I used to take a very dim view of the misinformation crowd, and there are many researchers out there who give the field a bad name. I once saw institutions like the Stanford Internet Observatory as being at the center of a vast censorship complex that sought to simply stamp out all dissent from leftist orthodoxy. As someone who was repeatedly suspended under the old Twitter regime, I joined many on the right in seeing these people as a personal threat to my right to speak.If only the world could have stayed so simple! I could be a free speech absolutist, and never take any position that risks giving power to people who might eventually censor me. Yet recent years have shown that we need something like a community of responsible academics, intellectuals, and curators of content watching over the misinformed mobs that have been mobilized in the era of social media. If the flaws of the misinformation studies community made many of us believe in the desirability of an internet without any public or private regulation at all, the Trump movement and Elon’s X have made the best case against that position one can imagine. The flaws of the media and liberal establishment can be dealt with through appeals to morality, compelling counterarguments, and attempts to hold people to their own stated principles. In contrast, there is no way to take a similar approach to MAGA. These people simply lack any interest in building or maintaining truth-seeking institutions, and are appealing to a political base that is so misinformed that it allows them to get away with what more sophisticated observers will recognize as absurd lies. All of this is to say we need people like Renée. She walks me through the latest Russiagate news, and dissects Gabbard’s claims one-by-one. We start with the aforementioned non sequitur about the Obama administration knowing that Russia did not hack voting machines. We then go on to discuss whether Russia preferred Trump in 2016, the Durham annex, and more. One important point that needs to be emphasized is that the Senate Select Committee Report, with Marco Rubio serving as chair, concluded that the Russians tried to help Trump in 2016. This hasn’t been controversial until recently. The two House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence reports quibbled with that conclusion. Note that the HPSCI was chaired by Devin Nunes at the time, whose job is now literally being the head of Truth Social, and working as an aide was Kash Patel, whose job is now literally being the head of the FBI after a time writing children’s books teaching kids to worship Trump, and of course getting consulting fees from Truth Social. Arguments should be judged on their merits, but it tells you something when the mainstream of both parties agree on something, while the only ones who take the opposite position are known grifters and Trump lackeys. And even the HPSCI reports don’t put forward the most radical claims spread by MAGA influencers and Michael Shellenberger types, like the idea that Putin actually preferred Hillary, or that the DNC hack wasn’t carried out by the Russians. We close by discussing why this matters, what is at stake when we continue to debate Russiagate, AI slop, and what can be done to make social media better. Important documentsJanuary 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment2019 Mueller ReportSenate Select Committee on Intelligence Report (August 2020)The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Report (filed September 2020, released July 2025) (not to be confused with the HPSCI report from 2018)The Durham Report and the annex (May 2023)Articles Renée, “Reconning ‘Russiagate’”; her conversation with ShellenbergerNYT 2015 report on Russian internet troll farm

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comMichael Tracey joins me on the stream this afternoon to talk about the latest in the Epstein saga and additional things he has learned about the accusers. It seems like every time Michael looks into one of the accusers or one of the journalists who has taken up the Epstein cause, he uncovers new problems. His last article is on one Nick Bryant, who responded to Michael asking a simple question about his source for a sensationalist claim about human trafficking by calling him a pedophile. We also talk about Ghislaine being moved to a minimum security prison, and whether Trump has a plan regarding what to do with her. It looks like she may have worked out some kind of understanding with the administration, and in the coming weeks and months we’ll be finding out exactly what the terms are. Finally, we close with a few Sydney Sweeney takes, and respond to the revelation that she registered as a Republican a few months after my big article last year. The stream ends with me getting stabbed in the eye by my own eyelash, so become a paid subscriber if you want to see that.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comMichael is back for yet another Epstein podcast. In this one, we spend a lot of time going over Ross Douthat’s recent interview with Julie K. Brown, who has been the most important journalist covering the Epstein story. Michael shows how she glosses over the credibility problems of the alleged victims who were supposedly trafficked to men other than Epstein, even implying that one of them was killed. We talk about Michael’s article on what Bannon is hiding. I encourage him to send it to Democratic members of Congress, and he follows my advice by DMing Ro Khanna as we’re speaking. If Democrats start discussing the need to subpoena Bannon in the coming days and weeks, you’ll know why.We also take some questions from the audience.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comAlright, I really thought we were done, but with the revelation that Trump wrote a love letter to Epstein about their shared secret interest, I guess not. As I tell him, I was in the gym and had to go outside and record in my car. For something this funny, one finds a way to post.