
Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by Musa al-Garbi. They discuss the Jason Arday scandal, academic freedom, DEI, affirmative action, merit, standardized testing, grade inflation and the growing crisis of trust in elite institutions.
Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. His work has appeared in The Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic and The Nation among other publications. He is author of the book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/jason-arday-and-me
https://musaalgharbi.com
/https://x.com/Musa_alGharbi
Chapters:
02:11 Musa Al-Garbi’s experience with cancellation
12:16 The Jason Arday scandal
16:19 Identity, victimhood and the incentives inside elite professions
23:40 Does DEI actually work?
28:04 Race, education and standardized testing
38:29 Grade inflation and the collapse of academic standards
42:35 The bigger problem at Cambridge
45:11 Nathan Cofnas and the free-speech battle
57:06 Why academic freedom exists
1:04:31 The decline of serious political debate
Aug 28
1 hr 7 min

An anonymous interview with a diaspora Palestinian - an ex-Muslim who made millions on Polymarket and writes the Substack Moderate Palestinianism.
He supports two states on the '67 borders with no right of return, opposes Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, and appears anonymously because these views are dangerous in his own community. On the heckler's veto that kills every peace deal, whether Palestinians can change, what Israelis get wrong about Al-Aqsa and the right of return, why he calls Ben-Gvir "great propaganda for my side," and why Israeli hasbara fails.
His Substack: https://moderatepalestinianism.substack.com/
0:00 — Intro
1:49 — The heckler's veto: why no deal ever sticks
4:57 — "I'm all for the occupation": civil war, withdrawal, humiliation
13:08 — What Israel should do anyway: settler terrorism and a $50,000 bet
20:05 — How October 7th changed him — and can Palestinians change
30:27 — Why make peace with the Jews? The UAE, Al-Aqsa, the right of return
40:44 — Beinart's one-state "nonsense," Ben-Gvir, and would Bibi take the two-state solution
50:04 'How bad is hasbara'
Aug 22
53 min

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by Evan Barker, writer and author of the book, Nothing Left.
Previously, she worked in Democratic politics, primarily as a fundraiser for progressive politicians and organizations.
They discuss she left progressive politics, why she voted for Trump in 2024, and what she believes Democrats have misunderstood about the working class.
www.evanbarker.net
X: @Evanwch
CHAPTERS
00:00 — Evan Barker joins Live From The Table
04:00 — Why Trump connected with working-class voters
07:30 — “They have contempt for the working class”
10:30 — The Left, race and identity
15:00 — Religion, the Ten Commandments and the culture war
19:00 — Why the Left pushed voters toward Trump
21:00 — Why Democrats are losing trust
24:00 — Israel, antisemitism and the progressive left
27:00 — Mamdani, Jews and the politics of representation
31:00 — Feeling politically homeless after 2024
34:00 — What should—and shouldn't—be taught to children
49:00 — Antisemitism and the argument over Israel
52:00 — Plagiarism, journalism and double standards
Aug 20
1 hr 4 min

Lucas Gage (www.Lucasgage.com X.com/lucasgagex) spent 14 years as one of the loudest antisemites on the internet - a Marine who came home from Iraq, read Mein Kampf, and became a true believer. Then he walked away.What did he believed, and why? What snapped him out of it? And what does it tell us about Tucker, Candace, Fuentes and the rest? Are they believers, grifters, or a bit of both?
0:00 The rise and fall of a viral antisemite
7:18 What radicalized him: Iraq, Mein Kampf, and the ADL
16:35 Tucker, Candace, Fuentes: dog whistles or grifters?
23:15 "Afraid to give my name" - and why Jews succeed anyway
36:54 9/11, October 7, and Charlie Kirk: the conspiracy machine
48:07 Patriotism and the "dual loyalty" smear
57:40 Should America stay majority white? The final debate
SS
Aug 14
1 hr 21 min

Noam Dworman and Periel Aschenbrand sit down expecting to interview Evan Barker—but when she doesn't arrive, they discuss Tucker Carlson, Daryl Cooper, antisemitism, Germany, immigration, media and why Evan Barker never made it.
Chapters
00:00 Waiting for Evan Barker
02:15 Tucker Carlson, Daryl Cooper & extremism
08:35 Germany, antisemitism & lessons from Europe
19:30 Noam on ideology, immigration & prejudice
32:20 Listener emails & why the podcast matters
44:40 Evan Barker finally checks in
49:00 All is forgiven & rescheduling the interview
Aug 13
52 min

0:00 "You picked the wrong guy" – the audiobook story
3:12 "You own [Comedy Cellar], one of New York's treasures"
7:28 The customer who will never tip again
15:41 Motivating a team after you've won: finite vs. infinite games
23:23 Noam doesn't like fine dining
39:55 Handling Google reviews & hunting down critics
Noam sits down with Will Guidara — author of the New York Times bestseller Unreasonable Hospitality, former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park (named the best restaurant in the world under his leadership), and co-producer of The Bear — for a conversation between two obsessives who refuse to run their businesses as businesses. They compare notes on why the money has to be a byproduct, how to answer a customer who swears he'll never tip again, keeping a team motivated after you've won, why fine dining lost its way, tracking down anonymous Google reviewers, and why Will walked away from the top restaurant on earth to be a better dad.
Jul 25
1 hr 3 min

0:00 The friend he hasn't seen since sixth grade
5:16 Angelina Jolie, BRCA, and the 20% nobody tells women about
18:23 What a cancer cell actually is - and why tumors evolve
26:31 How cancer actually kills you, and what a seizure is
32:14 The last cigarette: why he can't take the test every week
46:27 The best medicine in the world, and who can't get to it
1:03:23 Telling a family there's nothing left
Noam hadn't seen Kenan Onel since high school in Ardsley, where Onel graduated first in the class and Noam, by his own account, drifted somewhere well below. Fifty years later Onel runs genetics and genomics at Roswell Park - the only comprehensive cancer center in all of western New York - and Noam has one thing he wants to ask him about.
He's afraid of cancer. His grandfather died of it. His father died of it. He's taken the Grail blood test, it came back clean, and he wants to know why he can't just take it every week.
What follows is part reunion and part interrogation. Onel explains what a cancer cell actually is, why tumors evolve like finches in the Galapagos, and what is physically happening to someone during a seizure. He explains how cancer kills - the mechanism, organ by organ. And he tells Noam that the test he's counting on just failed its biggest trial in the UK, which sets off the real argument of the hour: whether a guideline written for a population means anything at all to the one person sitting in the chair.
Then, near the end, Noam asks how you tell a family there's nothing left to offer. The answer is the best thing in the episode.
Also: the 20% of women who are high-risk and have never been told, the doctor who warned Noam that Pellegrino was bad for his son's bones, a scan booked by 4pm the next afternoon, and one entire podcast without mentioning Israel.
Dr. Kenan Onel is Chief of the Division of Genetics and Genomics and Director of the Center for Precision Oncology and Cancer Prevention at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Live from the Table is the official podcast of the world-famous Comedy Cellar.
Jul 23
1 hr 12 min

"An Agenda Dressed Up in Violins?" - Debating Peter Beinart on the Right of Return and Other Matters
CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro - four nice things about Peter Beinart
4:50 Will God punish Israel? Jeremiah, tradition, and belief
13:20 The critical-mass hypothetical: a 49% Hasidic America
22:03 Quebec, Czechoslovakia, South Africa - why not divorce?
41:35 The right of return: "You can cherry-pick anything"
54:24 1948: They were closer to the Holocaust than we are to COVID
63:40 Day one of a one-state solution: the list
79:53 "An agenda dressed up in violins"
Claude Says:
Peter Beinart - editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, New York Times opinion writer, and author of "Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza" - joins Noam Dworman and Dan Naturman for an honest, occasionally heated conversation about the questions underneath the Israel-Palestine debate. Does Jewish tradition teach that Israel's survival depends on its ethics - and does Beinart, an observant Jew, mean that literally? Is there such a thing as demographic critical mass? Why is secession the answer everywhere from Quebec to Czechoslovakia, but one shared state the answer here? Is the Palestinian right of return a sacred principle, a practical question, or - as Noam puts it - "an agenda dressed up in violins"? Plus: South Africa and Mandela, Iran, the Olmert-Abbas offers, what Benny Morris actually wrote about 1948, Robert Jackson's "suicide pact," and what day one of a one-state solution would look like for a gay couple in Tel Aviv. Two people who disagree about almost everything - except the settlements - actually talk to each other.
Peter's book: Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza https://bit.ly/4ygbHH8
Peter's Substack: The Beinart Notebook https://peterbeinart.substack.com/
Jul 16
1 hr 25 min

Description Written By Fable/Max: Robert Wright interviewed Geoffrey Hinton in 1983 and, by his own account, got the story 180 degrees wrong. Forty years later Hinton is the "Godfather of AI," two of the three godfathers are frightened of their own creation, and Wright has written The God Test to figure out what he missed and what's coming. We talk about how these machines evolved rather than being programmed - nobody fully understands them, including the people who build them - why "fancy autocomplete" was always wrong, the best case (an AI caught a radiologist's error in his cancer MRI), the worst case (a bioweapon that incubates silently for six weeks), why racing China to superintelligence may cause the war it's meant to prevent, and whether unplugging a machine could ever be murder. Plus an experiment of my own: I put a legal dispute in front of the AI and handed the laptop to the other side.
0:00 Intro - Robert Wright and The God Test
2:13 A 27-ton computer and a buried headline
4:11 Interviewing the Godfather of AI in 1983 - and missing it
10:15 Not programmed - evolved
17:27 The "fancy autocomplete" myth
24:17 Dukakis, Reagan, and how minds file words
35:49 Best case: medicine, education, and an MRI story
42:38 Worst case: bioweapons, jailbreaks, designer babies
48:51 An AI that believes what the Ayatollah believes
50:30 The China race - overdone and dangerous?
57:33 Nazis, the Hamas charter, and bombing over AI
59:46 Authoritarianism through the back door
1:03:35 Sociopaths, the ship of Theseus, and machine morality
1:14:34 Is it sentient? Should you be nice to it?
1:21:54 AI as judge: my legal experiment
1:26:20 The God Test
Jul 10
1 hr 30 min

A conversation about the future of Israel and world Jewry. Can Israel protect itself without becoming a global pariah? Did Hamas gamble that even losing the war could pull Israel into isolation? Noam and Sobelman discuss occupation, unilateral withdrawal, the settler movement, Jewish vulnerability abroad, and the difficult tradeoffs now shaping Israel’s future.
00:00 Intro: Daniel Sobelman returns
03:47 Israel after October 7: a new era for Jews and Israel
08:58 Sobelman: October 7 as a nuclear-level shock
11:48 Why Israel was blamed before it responded
15:50 Hamas’s strategy: provoke a war and isolate Israel
22:35 Occupation, moral corrosion, and the West Bank dilemma
32:23 Could Israeli initiative restore its global standing?
34:03 Settlers, politics, and the failed path of unilateral withdrawal
41:29 Israel as both Jewish safety net and source of Jewish vulnerability
52:02 Resistance vs normalization: the future of the Middle East
Daniel Sobelman is a professor of international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. Read his book, "Axis of Resistance" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9L7QQNN?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback
Jul 3
1 hr 10 min
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