Mana Afsari

1 month ago | wisdomofcrowds.live | Mana Afsari |Damon Linker |Santiago Ramos |Shadi Hamid

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -55:02Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. is a writer and sometime contributor to Wisdom of Crowds, whose career has taken her from the RAND Corporation, to a job as an assistant to a a great American poet, to the position of Research Associate at the Aspen Institute’s Philosophy and Society Initiative.

1 month ago | danieloppenheimer.substack.com | Meghan Daum |Mark Oppenheimer |Mana Afsari |William Deresiewicz

My guest on this episode of the podcast is William Deresiewicz, author of a number of books, most notably Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, and the Substack newsletter Derisivist. Bill and I end up spending a fair amount of time discussing an as-yet-untitled essay of his that’s forthcoming in Salmagundi, and at what I'd say are the two poles of it.

2 months ago | wisdomofcrowds.live | Shadi Hamid |Sean Monahan |Christine Emba |Mana Afsari

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -45:28Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. “Something is happening here and you don’t know what it is,” goes the Bob Dylan track from 1965. That song was directed at the squares who weren’t yet hip to the Sixties. It sounded foreboding then, and it sounds foreboding now, because something is happening, again — something perhaps as great and consequential as the cultural changes of Dylan’s time.

2 months ago | myemail.constantcontact.com | Mana Afsari |Christopher Mims |Deepa Seetharaman |Ashley Thomas

​Quotes of the Day:"Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good."– Harriet Beecher Stowe"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."– Martin Luther King, Jr."The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up."– Henry Louis Gates1. How MAGA Won the ‘Sensitive Young Man’2. The Manhattan Project Was Secret.

Nov 4, 2024 | wisdomofcrowds.live | Shadi Hamid |Damir Marusic |Haroon Moghul |Mana Afsari

Welcome to CrowdSource, your weekly guided tour of the latest intellectual disputes, ideological disagreements, and national debates that piqued our interest (or inflamed our passions). This week: an extra-long election special!Join us! CrowdSource features the best comments from The Crowd — our cherished readers and subscribers who, with their comments and emails, help make Wisdom of Crowds what it is.