• Helen Pluckrose, “How French ‘Intellectuals’ Ruined the West: Postmodernism and Its Impact, Explained“
• Christina Hoff Sommers interviewing Roger Scruton. Scruton is one of my favorite people to think with. Some of his work can be philosophically dense, but I find it’s always worth putting in the time and effort to understand it. This, though, is just an example of how interesting it would be to have an informal conversation with him.
• Carlos Lozada, “The Last Thing On ‘Privilege’ You’ll Ever Need to Read“
• Walter Scheidel, “The Only Thing, Historically, That’s Curbed Inequality: Catastrophe.” In recent years, progressives have soft-pedaled their redistributionist instincts into moaning about income inequality as the apparent root of all evil. It’s so nice to finally see a lonely rebuttal, and in the Atlantic, of all places. His book on the topic looks very interesting. Sigh. Like I need another book to read.
• Lionel Shriver, “We Need to Talk About Sense and Sensitivity“
• Bo & Ben Winegard, “A Tale of Two Bell Curves“
• Lecture by Wilfred McClay: “The Illusion of Mastery” (parts 2-5; part 1 is only introductory remarks). “No aspiration of modernity has been more fundamental and more persistent than its desire to achieve mastery over the terms of human existence. Yet the record of the last century or more suggests that mastery is an ambivalent goal, one that does not always deliver on its promises, and does not necessarily conduce to greater human happiness. Wilfred McClay explores the paradoxical character of our drive toward mastery, and how we should balance that impulse against other fundamental human goods.” I love this kind of philosophizing about the history of ideas.