Category: Open Thread

Going to interview Tim Mackintosh-Smith today for the Brown Pundits podcast. He’s the excellent author of Arabs: A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes, and Empires. I’ve posted a podcast with Karol Karpinski for patrons. Karol was stationed in Dhaka with the World Bank, and we talk about his experiences (which includes unfortunate proximity to the…

I’m on the road now, so this is prescheduled. Hope Americans had a good Thanksgiving. For those who are asking, I’m keeping the Patreon because I allocate it to Brown Pundits related costs (hosting podcasts, recording software, etc.). I wi…

New Virgina Postrel book, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World. I did an AMA and set a record for responses on the subreddit for AMAs. probably won’t […]

So I did an AMA on IndiaSpeaks. Someone is now trying to set me up with one on the “India” subreddit. My substack is up. My kids learned about Diwali this week and did some chalk-art from motifs they found. Kind of funny since I didn’t know what “Diwali” was until I was in my…

Tomorrow Rhythm of War is out. This is the fourth of Brandon Sanderson’s ten-book Stormlight Archive. I began reading this series ten years ago, when my life was different. I […]

I don’t know anything about Diwali, but Happy Holdidays! (I found out that it was Diwali this weekend from Twitter and the comments here). A new podcast on the election results with Josiah Neeley and Richard Hanania. We get kind of spicey by the end, as I make fun of Richard making fun of Peter…

I’ve been busy with a lot of things this week. I plan on putting up a post on the “book club” early this week. Lots of stuff happening in the […]

Remember the subreddit. Been a busy week for me…we spent election week somewhere very warm and dry! The blog was down for 6 hours the other day due to a problem with our host’s database. Fixed.

my final map so i can say “i told u so” if i turn out to be right. i put 5 seconds of thought into this…figure i’d make it a little different than the polls so i wouldn’t be crowded out by others. pic.twitter.com/ExC6gKNPMb — Razib 😈 Khan (@razibkhan) October 23, 2020 Please don’t clutter…

I’m going to post about the book club late this week. Very busy and behind. Just a heads up, I haven’t forgotten. Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting […]

So I started a Subreddit. You can start your own threads there. Eventually, that might make the “open threads” redundant (they are not scaling well with ~400 comments per week). I’ve posted a few podcasts on the Patreon. One is a new podcast from Richard Hanania, where he takes a skeptical stance toward France in…

So I started a Subreddit. You can start your own threads there. Eventually, that might make the “open threads” redundant (they are not scaling well with ~400 comments per week). I’ve posted a few podcasts on the Patreon. One is a new podcast from Richard Hanania, where he takes a skeptical stance toward France in…

I’ll be a little late on the book club post this week. Busy with other stuff. Fee free to post on whatever below…

Going to post some notes on the latest podcast here. I talked to Fred Martin, who is of Haitian origin, but pretty stridently French, and a liberal. We discussed the killing of Samuel Paty, and Islam and Islamism in France. We also mooted the differences in relation to race between the USA and France, and…

Taking a break from the book club, I’m finishing up books that I never finished though started. So, The Turks in World History. Recommended. Not so deep as to confuse, […]

The thread is open. Three new podcasts this week in case you aren’t subscribed. Sometimes I get overwhelmed with things and I just can’t be bothere with detailed show notes. As I mentioned before I’m recording interviews for a new podcast I’m starting up separate from the others I run. I’m just throwing them on…

I notice that Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, from 1453 to the Present is on sale. Am I a sucker for cheap Kindle books with high page counts? Yes. But […]

Some cool podcasts will be posted soon. Already posted two on the Patron page, including a very cool one where Mukunda and Jahanarra talk to Michael Fortner. A professor at CUNY, Fortner is the author of Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment. I’ve also posted a podcast with Devang…

When I get busy and don’t post open threads you guys start leaving comments elsewhere (which is fine, since the articles/papers are usually pretty good). I’ll be better about posting, […]

What’s going on in India with COVID-19? Both deaths and cases are now plateauing. Since India is really many nations, this might just be major population centers recovering, even if there are lots of local outbreaks?