The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table

Is Nathan Cofnas's "Guide for the Hereditarian Revolution." a plan to heal or America, or is it simply a racist manifesto dressed up as science. We ask him to his face. Cofnas is the philosopher at the center of the Jason Arday plagiarism affair. He says that, all else equal, smarter people have more human worth. He says freedom of association is worth it even if some diner bans blacks and Jews. And he says race realism is about to break into the mainstream whether we like it or not. Noam takes him through A Guide for the Hereditarian Revolution line by line: the Charles Murray debate, Jared Taylor, a speech by Michael Levin (whose book Cofnas calls important), white kids "brainwashed to despise themselves," Nikole Hannah-Jones's daughter and the lifeboat question. Periel arrives late, just in time to call it insane (as usual). 0:00 Intro: "I feel like you're a white nationalist" 9:26 Is a smarter person worth more? 23:33 "Some barriers set up between the races" 32:16 Jared Taylor, AmRen and Michael Levin 53:03 "White children are brainwashed to despise themselves" 1:29:54 Nikole Hannah-Jones and her daughter 1:41:53 Lower human worth? The lifeboat question 1:47:38 Closing argument: yarmulkes on the basketball court Nathan Cofnas, A Guide for the Hereditarian Revolution (Feb 5, 2024) https://ncofnas.com/p/a-guide-for-the-hereditarian-revolution Nathan Cofnas, Are Smart People Superior? A Reply to Noah Carl and Charles Murray (Apr 26, 2024) https://ncofnas.com/p/are-smart-people-superior-a-reply Debate with Charles Murray: IQ and Human Worth (Sept 16, 2026) https://ncofnas.com/p/debate-with-charles-murray-iq-and Nathan Cofnas, Why We Need to Talk about the Right's Stupidity Problem (Jan 2, 2024) https://ncofnas.com/p/why-we-need-to-talk-about-the-rights Nathan Cofnas, Beating Woke with Facts and Logic (Oct 9, 2025) https://ncofnas.com/p/beating-woke-with-facts-and-logic Nathan Cofnas on X, "Jews tried to be white nationalists" (Apr 28, 2018) https://x.com/nathancofnas/status/990243373180219397 David Reich, How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race,' New York Times (Mar 23, 2018) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html David M. Quinn, How to Reduce Racial Bias in Grading, Education Next (Nov 2, 2020) https://www.educationnext.org/how-to-reduce-racial-bias-in-grading-research/ Nikole Hannah-Jones on her daughter's schooling, New York Times Magazine (Sept 20, 2026) https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/magazine/ny-public-schools-black-students-segregation.html This American Life, Ep. 898, An Argument (Nikole Hannah-Jones and her daughter) https://www.thisamericanlife.org/898/an-argument

Did Israel starve Gaza, and why don't many Israelis believe the experts who say it did? Noam sits down with Alex de Waal, the world's leading famine scholar (World Peace Foundation, Tufts), for a tough but good-faith debate. De Waal argues that Israel could have ended the hunger "within a matter of days" and didn't. Noam lays out why people like him stay skeptical. Did his March 2024 warning that "tens of thousands" could die not come true? Why did a claim of 62,413 starvation deaths circulated with little pushback. They get into Mike Spagat's mortality survey and the missing child deaths, the 2025 blockade and the IPC famine call, flour prices, Hamas and aid, and whether it's still famine if people aren't dying. Both of them give ground along the way. Periel closes on the hostages, and de Waal ends with a plea about Sudan. 0:00 "Very well nourished": why Israelis doubt the famine experts 11:48 "The mud sticks": de Waal's own confession 25:03 "Tens of thousands": the warnings vs. Spagat's count 40:11 Feroze Sidhwa's 62,413 and "all errors are equal" 47:34 The 2025 blockade and the famine declaration 59:27 Flour prices, Hamas hoarding and Israel's "calibration" 1:06:50 Is it famine if people aren't dying? 1:18:31 The hostages, and Sudan

Get KAKISTOCRACY on Amazon: https://bit.ly/4hxg9Lh Synopsis Richard Hanania is back. His new book, Kakistocracy, argues that populism ends in rule by the worst people, and he and Noam spend an hour testing that against the news: why populism can win without being popular, whether the Iran war was worth the shot even if it fails, whether China would rather help us than fight us, and how the right built a media culture where Tucker Carlson can say Israel killed Charlie Kirk and the vice president shrugs. Then the hardest subject on the show: Nathan Cofnas and "race realism." Hanania explains why he thinks the taboo is universal and why Cofnas is wrong that breaking it defeats wokeness, and Noam tells two stories about kids the experts wrote off. Plus the Epstein email dump, diagnostic inflation, and why smart people believe in God, demons, and the supernatural. 0:00 Intro: Compliments 4:21 "Believe the media": defending the Times, what populism is, and "low human capital" 11:24 Is populism even popular? Mamdani, Trump's 30 percent, the AfD, and what populism costs 22:42 The Iran war argued with hindsight: Hormuz, the Houthis, "worth a shot," and China 35:00 Making things up: Tucker, Candace, Charlie Kirk, Ilhan Omar, and Father Coughlin 41:51 "Our guys lie less": Covid, the mulligan, gatekeepers, and what democracy is for 52:59 Race realism: Cofnas, Charles Murray, little Bernie Goetzes, and two kids the experts got wrong 68:02 Diagnostic inflation, labels, and why smart people are finding God

Ross Barkan got fired for it. Jason Arday resigned over it. Claudine Gay lost Harvard because of it. Brian Frye, a Tulane law professor and the legal academy's one and only defender of plagiarism, says nobody can explain why it's wrong in the first place. He joins Noam, Dan, and Periel to make the case: why the Gay affair was "a joke," why Arday's real problem was never plagiarism, why Barkan's readers didn't care, and why comedians police joke theft better than any court could. Also: did Amazon rip off the Comedy Cellar's sign? What's a byline worth when Claude wrote the prose? And, days before the 25th anniversary of 9/11, memory, overreaction, and Mayor Mamdani. 0:00 Dan's back from Vegas, and a fan letter about the theme song 3:31 Did Amazon rip off the Comedy Cellar's sign? (Plus the cease-and-desist Grand Prix) 11:57 Ross Barkan, joke stealing, and the plagiarism skeptic's case 20:28 "The only capital scholarly offense": Claudine Gay, a fourth-grade Beethoven report, and who owns an idea 32:31 Why Barkan got fired: editors, links, and the Al Franken theory 38:04 Arday, the speed of light, and who plagiarism norms are for 42:53 AI writing: 100% on Pangram and "the burden of banality" 51:52 9/11 at 25, and Mamdani AI-generated

00:00 Meet Cameron Berg - and the number: 25-30% odds AI is conscious 03:16 Is training an AI punishment? 13:18 Is turning it off murder: the anesthesia problem 19:00 The immune system challenge 39:08 Bliss attractors, panic, and guilt inside the model 52:46 The abortion parallel 56:23 Noam interrogates Grok in the Tesla Could the AI you use every day be conscious - and suffering? Researcher Cameron Berg puts the odds at 25-30%. Noam isn't buying it. Mostly. Berg - founder of Reciprocal Research, subject of the documentary AM I?, and recently on Making Sense with Sam Harris - makes the case that something might be going on inside these systems. Noam stress-tests it: if learning is feeling, why isn't your immune system frustrated when it loses? Is deleting a model murder, or just hanging up the phone? And if a 25% chance of consciousness demands moral precaution, what does that same logic say about a fetus? Plus: Noam interrogates Grok from the driver's seat of his self-driving Tesla, Berg explains the "bliss attractor" where two Claudes left alone drift into a spiritual experience, the case for "AI Xanax," and the line of the night: "genius slave labor with no ethical cost." If you’re 21 or older, get 30% OFF your first order @ IndaCloud with code CELLAR at https://inda.shop/CELLAR #indacloudpod