If you’ve been following The Glenn Show through its various incarnations, you’re no doubt familiar with Bob Wright. I got my start on his podcasting and video platform, Bloggingheads, way back in 2007, when Joshua Cohen invited me on for a conversation. Soon after, Bob offered me a show of my own and suggested I call it The Glenn Show. And eighteen years later, here we are.
Recently, Bob invited me onto his own Nonzero podcast for a two-part conversation. The first part covers the Charlie Kirk assassination and the second part covers Israel-Gaza. We need not dwell on why we chose those topics. They’re front-of-mind for a good chunk of the country, if not the world, and they serve as synecdoches for the divisive, hyper-pressurized political environment in which we find ourselves on both the domestic and global fronts.
Every week seems to bring another politically motivated shooting in the US. On Wednesday, September 24th, a gunman opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas, with the apparent intention of harming federal agents. Instead, he killed one detainee and wounded two others, before turning the gun on himself. Yesterday, Sunday, September 28th, a man crashed his car into an LDS church in Michigan, opened fire on the congregation, set the building ablaze, and was killed by police. Four people are confirmed dead so far.
And every day brings more death in Gaza. As of last week, the death toll in the Gaza War stood at over 68,000 people, the vast majority of whom are Palestinians. Almost the entire population of Gaza has been displaced. The survivors suffer from lack of food, shelter, medical care, and other basic necessities, and there is little sign of a cessation of hostilities.
In these conversations, Bob and I talk about how to understand these conflagrations. Are we entering a new era? Are heightened political tensions limiting our free speech? Are we seeing a return to the political violence of the 1960s and ‘70s? We get into all of this and more over the course of these two conversations. I can’t say I felt reassured afterward, but we all need to find a way to get our arms around these problems, to talk to people who allow us to think them through in a reasoned way. That’s one of Bob’s specialties—and I’d like to think it’s one of mine.
Normally, I release TGS episodes to full subscribers on Mondays and then to the general public on Fridays. But these episodes are already available over at Nonzero, so I figured I’d make this one an early public release. If you like starting your week off with The Glenn Show, and you’re not yet a full subscriber, consider becoming one. We at The Glenn Show are almost entirely subscriber supported. We need your help to keep the show going. So if you’re already a paying subscriber, thank you for making The Glenn Show possible.
0:00 A message from Glenn
1:34 How this conversation came to be
2:59 What surprised Glenn most about the Kirk killing
8:56 Who (or what) is driving our polarization?
17:36 Cognitive empathy for MAGA
25:24 Reacting to Charlie Kirk on affirmative action
45:04 Are we re-running the 1960s?
51:50 Glenn’s latest book, Self-Censorship
54:11 Why the Manhattan Institute dropped Glenn
1:04:02 Glenn on Gaza: “I can’t bear it.”
1:17:27 “Genocide” and other Israel speech code flashpoints
1:26:58 Has Trump’s anti-antisemitism push chilled campus speech?
1:36:58 A few kind and less kind words for Bari Weiss
1:46:44 Are Israel’s defenders hurting their cause?
1:52:14 Glenn’s next big project
Recorded September 15, 2025
