Extremely Offline

We’re living through an era of enormous transition, most significantly from a world governed by free market fundamentalism to something new — something we can’t yet quite discern and which could take radically different forms depending on the political decisions we make as a society. Two of the founding scholars of sociology, Karl Marx and Max Weber, tackled broad questions and themes about how economic and political history unfolds, which are helpful to interpreting events today.Marx and Weber came from very different places in their thinking — politically, philosophically, and methodologically. In this episode of XO, we explore both the insights and the limitations of these two foundational thinkers in making sense of today’s rapidly unraveling global political order.Professor Dylan Riley is a political sociologist who uses the comparative-historical method to study socialism, capitalism, fascism and democracy. Professor Neil Fligstein is an economic and political sociologist who focuses on how organization

Health care in America remains one of the most important issues for partisans on every side, as costs continue to rise with no end in sight.Adam Gaffney, President of Physicians for a National Health Program, believes that the best way to tackle this problem is through a single-payer health care system, in which everybody receives health insurance from the U.S. federal government, free at the point of service. Chris Pope, who researches health care at the Manhattan Institute, disagrees. He prefers a more market-based approach and argues that government intervention generally makes prices worse.As a reminder, this podcast is a labor of love, but it does cost time and money to produce it. If you'd like to support us, please go to patreon.com/extremelyoffline.

July's Democratic primary debates were an opportunity for the progressive and more establishment factions of the party to hash out their differences and present voters with different visions going into the 2020 presidential elections.Bill Scher is a veteran of liberal politics who has been involved in left-of-center organizing since the early 2000s. Today, he's a regular columnist at Politico Magazine, where he often writes in defense of the Democratic Party establishment's approach to achieving legislation.Richard Eskow was a staffer on the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016, and hosts a radio show where he discusses a number of issues including retirement security and his belief that the Democratic establishment is seriously out of touch.On this episode, they'll offer their reactions to the debate and their views on where the Democrats should go in 2020.Due to technical difficulties and limited time on the part of our guests, this episode will be short and sweet, but we hope you enjoy yours

There's no one who knows the mood of voters who attend presidential campaign events more than the political reporters who are on the trail. While pundits in DC and New York opine on what voters are supposed to care about, these reporters are actually on the ground taking the temperature of the electorate in realtime.Daniel Marans, a reporter at the left-of-center Huffington Post, has attended events with nearly all of the Democratic presidential candidates, and his reporting offers unique perspectives about what voters actually care about versus what we're told they care about on cable news shows. Joe Simonson, of the right-of-center Washington Examiner, is doing the same thing, flying around the country following candidates around and talking to the voters who will decide the Democratic nominee. These reporters disagree on plenty of things politically, but they share a desire to report out the ground truth of the 2020 presidential election. On this episode, they offer their insight as to what the m

One of the most influential novelists in the United States is the late Ayn Rand. The Russian-born author's works inspired generations of right-leaning intellectuals, from former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan to former Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.Rand's popularity stems from her simple creed that selfishness is a virtue. In her philosophy, called Objectivism, the highest moral calling is to pursue your rational self-interest. This puts Objectivism in a unique corner, as most of the world's schools of moral philosophy and religion preach that selflessness and self-sacrifice are the most noble qualities. But Rands philosophy has sustained its following long after her death in 1982. In 2009, in the aftermath of a financial crisis many blamed on the selfishness of Wall Street, her novel Atlas Shrugged, which preaches the virtues of the self interested titans of industry, surged to a bestseller position on Amazon.com.What makes Rand so popular? And is there any merit to her pr

With more and more Americans going to college every year, there are increasing demands that the federal government step in and make higher education more affordable and tackle burgeoning student debt.But some on the conservative side argue that increasing federal aid will only make the problem worse by contributing to runaway inflation of tuition and other costs related to going to college. Daniel Friedman, a novelist based in New York City, takes that point of view. He has argued in his Quillette columns that making college free would risk subsidizing a system that is already failing many of its students.That's something Charlie Eaton, a higher education researcher at the University of California-Merced, is very familiar with. His work focuses on the financialization of higher education, and he agrees that there is a systemic cost problem that goes far beyond the amount of aid the government offers to students. But he believes that some sort of free college plan is wise.On this episode we'll talk a

We live in an increasingly diverse country, and history shows that diversity often introduces challenges that are difficult to overcome, ranging from increased social tensions all the way up to violence. But it has long been argued that diversity is our strength and that with meaningful contact between heterogeneous groups we can break down barriers and learn from each other. One of the responses to increased racial and cultural diversification is to embrace multiculturalism, where we can both acknowledge and respect differences that are inevitable in a complex society. Jesse Singal, a journalist with New York Magazine, takes that point of view. Others have argued that we need to emphasize assimilation, and perhaps even be more selective in the way we do immigration in order to ensure social comity and cohesion. Andy Ngo, a journalist and editor at Quillette, takes that point of view.On this episode, we'll discuss how we should address issues like increased cultural diversification in America and greater

During the 2016 Democratic primaries, political strategist Peter Daou was one of Hillary Clinton’s most vocal and prominent boosters, especially on social media. In addition to his relentless advocacy on Twitter, Peter was the co-founder of “Hillary Men,” a website that purported to serve as a “safe space” for male feminists who supported Hillary Clinton — and, by implication, to fend off her sexist rivals in the Bernie camp. To Clinton supporters, Daou was a diehard on the front lines of the digital battlefield of the 2016 race. To Sanders supporters, he was a walking caricature of the movement behind Hillary: zealous, earnest to a fault, and bent on weaponizing identity to attack Clinton’s political opponents.Nomiki Konst was on the opposite side of that battle. Nomi was, and is, a fierce Bernie Sanders supporter, regularly appearing on cable news shows to make the case for his “political revolution.” Since then, she has worked for The Young Turks and was a candidate for the office of New York City Public A

Contrary to popular belief, Islam has been present in the United States since its founding days. Thomas Jefferson even owned a copy of the Quran, Islam's holy text, which Congressman Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, used during his swearing-in ceremony.The reality is, we live on an increasingly Muslim planet, as the pace of the growth of the religion means that it may very well be the most common religion on Earth by the end of the century. To many Muslims, this growth in the religion is a source of pride and joy. But like any other religion, the way it is practiced is what matters. There is fierce debate among Muslims, and those who choose to leave the faith, about the sort of religion it should be, and how it should relate to law, politics, and wider society. Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution argues that we should come to terms with Islam's growing role in the world and in politics. He believes that Islam is exceptionally resistant to secularization.Sarah Haider, the dir

This episode began with a spat on Twitter. Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and co-founder of The Intercept, is famous for his deep, long-standing skepticism of Russiagate. After Attorney General Barr’s summary of the Mueller Report came out, announcing to the world that the special prosecutor had found no basis for bringing charges against the President for collusion in Russia’s 2016 election interference, Glenn was not shy in pointing out that for two years, the media had hyped what amounted to, in his words, a “conspiracy theory,” while maligning its skeptics, including himself.David Klion, a freelance journalist, took issue with Glenn’s pronouncements. In Mother Jones, he admonished what he referred to as “a clutch of noisy Russiagate skeptics in the media,” focusing on Greenwald and Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi in particular. Glenn and David mixed it up a little bit on Twitter, before Glenn invited David to discuss it in a more productive venue — our podcast. David graciously accepte

Mike Cernovich is notorious on the left because of his past behavior as a social media troll, beginning with Gamergate, and continuing on through Pizzagate and countless other Twitter flare-ups. He's often lumped in with the alt-right, even though his actual politics are a mixed bag of economic populism, anti-interventionism, border restrictionism, animal welfarism, and mild support for Trump, putting him somewhere slightly to the left of David Frum. In the era of Trump, however, it's not your policy preferences that define your politics, it's your positioning within the Culture Wars.Katie Herzog knows this well. Katie, who writes for The Stranger, is gay and an out-and-out leftist. Yet if you ask certain of her detractors on Twitter, they might tell you she's a fascist homophobe. Why? Because she frequently criticizes certain quarters of the left, particularly when it comes to identity-based issues such as de-platforming and cultural appropriation.Mike and Katie have almost nothing in com

With the Mueller Report completed, many are still left wondering what exactly occurred in the 2016 election. Did the Russian government work with the Trump campaign to hack Clinton campaign emails? Did the Trump administration engage in collusion with the Russian government to impact the election? While we don't have the full text of the report, the answer appears to be no.But many political watchers are still skeptical. Cenk Uygur, the co-founder of The Young Turks, is one of those skeptics. He thinks that the report far from exonerates President Trump and that some form of illicit collaboration between the Russian government and Trump is likely.Freelance journalist Michael Tracey, on the other hand, thinks that the entire saga has been dramatically exaggerated by a combination of Democratic Party officials looking for a scapegoat for their 2016 election loss and a liberal media susceptible to Russiophobia.Welcome to the Russiagate episode of Extremely Offline.

It's unusual for a freshman member of Congress to draw as much attention as Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar. In just a few short months in Congress, she has been the center of numerous media firestorms after making repeatedly making remarks her supporters believe are exposing the influence of a powerful lobbying group and what her detractors would say is anti-Semitic.On Capitol Hill, her own party's leadership has condemned her remarks on the influence of the pro-Israel lobby.Omar Baddar, deputy director of the Arab American Institute disagrees with Schumer. He thinks the Congresswoman is being targeted by a powerful political machine that is distorting her message in order to defend a  status quo that is supportive of the Israeli government.Batya Ungar-Sargon, the opinion editor at the Jewish Daily Forward, agrees with Omar that the occupation of the Palestinians must end and that we need to change U.S. policy towards Israel. But she believes the Congresswoman's rhetoric has been needlessly pola

When President Trump signed into law the First STEP Act, a wide-ranging federal prison reform bill passed this past December, he marveled at the wide bipartisan vote that got it across the finish line. Indeed, everybody from the Koch Brothers to former Obama adviser Van Jones helped build the wide bipartisan coalition that passed the legislation.But while most of America now agrees on some form of criminal justice reform, there are still major divisions. On issues like how we tackle violent crime to if and how we should end the drug war, local and federal politicians continue to sharply disagree.Joining us for this episode are two guests, both of whom are the sons of police officers. But that's where their similarities end. Jonathan Blanks of the Cato institute is an ardent critic of policing and the prison system as it is constituted today, arguing that American society often turns to incarceration and punishment as a substitute for more comprehensive solutions that tackle the root causes of crime.Rafae

With Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both offering their own form of challenge to the Democratic establishment, which candidate would have a better shot at succeeding? Which candidate would ultimately make a better president? To answer that question, on this episode we'll ask two of their strongest supporters.Adam Green is the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, an organization that helped elect Warren to the Senate in 2012 and that quickly endorsed her presidential bid shortly after her announcement. He argues that she brings policy expertise and a winning message that is unmatched by other candidates.Bhaskar Sunkara is the founder of Jacobin Magazine, America's leading socialist publication. He argues that what America truly needs is an outsider who preaches democratic socialism in order to remake our economic and political systems.

This week, we have two guests on opposite sides of our debates about what should be done with the economy. Lee Fang is a reporter for The Intercept and a long-time journalist who has been critical of the structure and function of American capitalism. He looks around the world and sees democratic socialist policies as those which best promote human prosperity and freedom. With rising health care costs and student debt, many Americans are coming around to his point of view.Kmele Foster, on the other hand, is the libertarian anarcho-capitalist co-host of the breakout podcast The Fifth Column, and he thinks that the free market has proven that it can lift literally hundreds of millions of people out of poverty within the last few decades. He would argue that socialism sounds good on paper, but simply doesn't deliver on its promises.

This episode features two guests from opposite sides of the debate over the state of the Democratic Party and the left. First, we have Jonathan Chait, a long time left-of-center writer who argues that the Obama years were a stunning success and form the trajectory the party should pursue in the future. Opposite Chait we have the Washington Post’s Elizabeth Bruenig, who argues that the Obama presidency’s shortcomings are part of why democratic socialism is the path forward. On Twitter and Facebook, these two camps, which overlap with the 2016 Hillary vs. Bernie divide, snipe at each other endlessly, engaged in a forever war for control of social media narratives. In this episode, Bruenig and Chait leave those Twitter tribes behind for a respectful, substantive discussion about Twitter, abortion, Obama, healthcare reform, liberal democracy, and the culture of left-wing campus activism.Co-produced by Leighton Woodhouse and Zaid JilaniModerated by Zaid JilaniMusic by Breakmaster Cylinder

It's time to admit it: when we argue online, we’re not actually trying to persuade anyone. We’re not even trying to ‘win’ a debate. We’re trying to “dunk” on our rivals, “own” our political enemies. We’re just performing for our followers, who are usually people who share our politics, our attitudes, and our biases.That kind of discourse might be entertaining, but it doesn’t get us anywhere. We don’t learn from each other or about each other. We don’t sharpen the arguments we make for our favored policies. All we do is widen the divisions of our politics. We harden our alliances with people like ourselves, while increasing our contempt for people who think differently. We feel even more certain of our own opinions, while becoming even blinder to their shortcomings. It’s an unhealthy, dysfunctional way to approach our disagreements with others. It’s profoundly harmful to our democracy.On this podcast, we aspire to be the opposite of “extremely online.” What does that mean? It means we want to bring people