John McWhorter and I are joined this week by the actor, singer, and writer Clifton Duncan, who’s deep in the process of writing a one-man show about Thomas Sowell. This is the final conversation in the informal TGS mini-series on Sowell, and I think Clifton is the perfect guest to end on. The conference on Sowell’s life and work that I’m organizing is coming up in a matter of weeks. That means I have to finish my contribution, a keynote address. I’ll be honest, I’m feeling the pressure. How does one sum up the man’s contributions to economics and political economy: the mountain of books, the erudition, the sheer intensity of his thought and personality? If anyone knows what I’m feeling, it’s Clifton, who’s tasked himself not only with understanding the work but embodying Sowell himself on the stage.
But before we get into Clifton’s work-in-progress, we talk about the tense political atmosphere that’s taken hold over the last couple weeks. Clifton gives voice to the high stakes of speaking one’s mind, especially when what you’re saying doesn’t necessarily fit into a neat ideological paradigm. We’re sometimes fond of saying “wokeness is dead,” but Clifton and John point out that it’s alive and well—it’s simply assumed a different form. And yet, the very fact that Thomas Sowell is more popular today than ever should give us reason for optimism. Clifton discusses the difficulty of dramatizing Sowell’s life in a way that will move audiences without reducing or oversimplifying the man. He gives us an inside look at the intricate process of shaping a long, complex life into a compelling work of art. The road from the one to the other is long, but I’ll be first in line for tickets when Clifton reaches the end of it.
You can keep tabs on Clifton’s progress and support his work at his Substack, Becoming Thomas Sowell.
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0:00 A Hard Day’s McWhorter
3:51 Jimmy Kimmel and the collapse of the“bluegeois” paradigm
9:47 Ground News ad
11:30 Ideological gatekeeping in the arts
17:02 The Gamergate-ification of everything
25:50 John: Wokeness isn’t dead, it’s changed shape
33:11 Clifton’s one-man show in-progress, Becoming Thomas Sowell
35:21 Sowell at Cornell
40:10 The challenge to Sowell’s conception of “the civil rights vision”
43:36 The pressures of bringing Sowell to the stage
45:58 Clifton: I think of Sowell as “the people’s intellectual”
Recorded September 20, 2025
Links and Readings
John and Clifton’s previous conversation on The Glenn Show
Clifton’s Substack, Becoming Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell’s book, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles
Sowell’s book, Knowledge and Decisions
Sowell’s book, Black Education: Myths and Tragedies
Donald Downs’s book, Cornell ‘69: Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University
Sowell’s book, On Classical Economics
Mark Whitaker’s book, Saying It Loud: 1966—the Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement
Sowell’s book, Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?
Jason Riley’s latest appearance on TGS
Jason’s book, Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell
Sowell’s memoir, A Personal Odyssey
