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Give Them An Argument is a YouTube show and podcast dedicated to building a smarter, funnier and more strategic Left. New episodes are live on YouTube on Monday nights with an exclusive postgame for GTAA patrons after the main show. (To become a patron, go to patreon.com/benburgis and sign up for the monthly cost of a milkshake at a 50s nostalgia diner in 1994.) Past guests have included Slavoj Žižek, Richard Wolff, David Pizarro, Gregory Sadler, Glenn Greenwald, Krystal Ball, Bhaskar Sunkara, Sam Seder, Ana Kasparian, Emma Vigeland, Matt Christman, and Amber Frost. The show has also featured debates between host Ben Burgis and opponents ranging from Walter Block to Charlie Kirk.Ben is a philosophy professor, Jacobin columnist, and frequent debater. He did a regular "Debunk" segment on the Michael Brooks Show until 2020. He's appeared on the Debate Night with Charlie Kirk, System Update with Glenn Greenwald, Rising, Krystal, Kyle & Friends, the Majority Report w/Sam Seder & the Joe Rogan Experience.benburgis.compatreon.com/benburgis
278 Episodes
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It's Friday! Let's end the week with something fun and watch Zohran sparring with the ladies on The View about Palestine, electability, and more. Follow Ben on Twitter: @BenBurgis Follow GTAA on Twitter: @Gtaa_Show Become a GTAA Patron and receive numerous benefits ranging from patron-exclusive postgames every Monday night to our undying love and gratitude for helping us keep this thing going: patreon.com/benburgis Read the weekly philosophy Substack: benburgis.substack.com Visit benbu...
That's the claim made by Neil Vallelly in a shockingly poorly-informed article for Jacobin (reviewing Christopher Schuringa's book "A Social History of Analytical Philosophy"). Jacobin editor Nick French defended analytic philosophy in a counterpoint review of the same book ("Is Analytic Philosophy a Class Ideology?") published the same day. In this episode, Ben Burgis argues in this episode that French is correct but that the whole exchange suffers from ignoring the overlap between analytic ...
Trump's new national security directive classifies all of the following as indicators of incipient political violence that need to be investigated and disrupted before they come to fruition: • anti-Americanism, • anti-capitalism, • anti-Christianity, • support for the overthrow of the United States Government, • extremism on migration, • extremism on race, • extremism on gender • hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, • hostility towards those who hold traditi...
Ben Burgis addresses the controversy about the article he and Meagan Day wrote about political violence and free speech after the Charlie Kirk assassination, all of the ways the most tedious and unhelpful people on the Left found to miss the point, and the broader perils of this moment. Read the original article: https://jacobin.com/2025/09/charlie-kirk-murder-political-violence Follow Meagan on Twitter: @meagankday Follow Ben on Twitter: @BenBurgis Follow GTAA on Twitter: @Gtaa_Show Be...
We're back! This last weekend, Ben Burgis was at an international conference of socialist, communist, and labor parties in Mexico City hosted by the Partido del Trabajo (the smallest but furthest left of the three parties in Claudia Sheinbaum's coalition). He introduced Richard Wolff to the assembled delegates, and Wolff have a barn burner of a talk outlining just what's happened to American society in the last few decades. We share the video + Ben gives some background on the conference and ...
After a four-year run on the show, Producer Jake is saying goodbye. (Although presumably he'll be saying "hello" again on some future episodes as a guest.) One of his predecessors, Producer Cale, joins us to see the lad off. Jay Zeroni, who's never been a GTAA producer but is still a good guy, joins us in the postgame for patrons. We're having some fun with our Season 7 finale before we take a break (at least from full episodes) for a couple weeks, and then we'll be back with some big format ...
Jacobin writer and editor Meagan Day joins us to talk about what reactionary "tradwife" influencers are latching onto, and how social democracy can actually help families in a way that ugly anti-feminist culture war can't. Before that, Ben does an Opening Argument on what the Epstein scandal says about our late capitalist hellscape. (No postgame tonight, sorry!) Read Ben's Epstein Files article: https://jacobin.com/2025/08/epstein-scandal-trump-clinton-bipartisanship Read Meagan's article ...
The crossover event the world has eagerly awaited is here (OK, well, some of us are excited)--Matt McManus and Stormin' Norman Finkelstein on the same podcast episode. As it turns out, they share an interest in John Stuart Mill, so we thought it might be interesting to explore that. Before that, Ben does an Opening Argument on Bret Stephens's absurd genocide denialism. Watch Norm deliver a lecture on Mill to the Communist Party of Great Britain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt3WmzLM5G0 ...
Nicholas Vrousalis, author of "Exploitation as Domination: What Makes Capitalism Unjust" joins Ben Burgis to talk about his book, how to rigorously think about capitalist exploitation, what it was like to work with G.A. Cohen in grad school, and more. Before that, Ben does an Opening Argument about the bizarro arguments of pro-Trump libertarians. In the postgame for patrons, Ryan Zickgraf joins us for a dramatic reading of Sophie Lewis's thoughts about the sex with octopuses. Order Nicholas'...
1Steve Paxton studied with the great Marxist philosopher G.A. Cohen as a graduate student at Oxford. Since then, he's had blue-collar jobs, white collar jobs, and been unemployed, but he's never stopped writing and thinking about socialism and Marxism. For this special Bastille Day episode, Ben Burgis talks with Steve about his book "How Capitalism Ends." Oh, and it's graphic designer Andy's birthday, so we'll raise a toast to our Bastille Day Boy. In the postgame for patrons, believe it or no...
Labor scholar Shaun Richman joins us to talk to Ben Burgis about his book "We Always Had a Union: The New York Hotel Workers’ Union, 1912-1953." Before that, Ben does an Opening Argument on the absurd attacks on Zohran that have been made everywhere from National Review to Reason to...Matt Taibbi's Substack. (Goddamnit, Matt.) In the postgame for patrons, Ben and the crew get heart-breakingly close to finally being done with "Jordan Peterson vs. 20 Atheists." Read Ben's MSNBC article on the ...
Two authors from the new anthology "Flowers for Marx" (returning guests Matt McManus & Conrad Hamilton) join Ben Burgis to chat about the book. Before that, Ben and the crew debunk more smears of Zohran. In the postgame for patrons, Matt puts in a shift joining us on our long march through Jordan Peterson vs. 20 atheists. Order Flowers for Marx: https://www.revolpress.com/flowers Follow Matt on Twitter: @MattPolProf Follow Conrad on Twitter: @BongardConrad Follow Ben on Twitter: @Ben...
Philosophical and comedic YouTube person Michael O'Neill Burns comes on GTAA for the first time and political science professor Matt McManus comes on for the billionth time (rough approximation) so they can discuss Marx and ideology. Before that, Ben and the crew break down some of the worst pro-war talking points wrt Iran. In the postgame, we continue our long march through Jordan Peterson vs. 20 Atheists. Watch Michael's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MichaelOBurns Follow him on Twitt...
Natasha Hakimi Zapata joins us to chat w/Ben about her important new book "Another World is Possible: Lessons for America from Around the Globe." From Britain's NHS to Singapore's publicly-leased housing system to New Zealand's egalitarian pensions to Norway's family policies, her book documents the way that countries around the world have proven that social problems that seem intractable in America are in fact perfectly fucking tractable given the political will. Before that, Ben does an Ope...
Bruno Leipold joins Ben Burgis to talk about his excellent book "Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought." Before that, Ben does an Opening Argument responding to Jodi Dean on "neofeudalism." In the postgame for patrons, RM Brown joins Ben and the crew to break down some more of Jordan Peterson's bizarro debate with 20 atheists. And, oh yeah, scattered around all this there's some discussion of the spiraling insanity and authoritarianism going...
Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson joins Ben Burgis to talk about his and Noam Chomsky's new book "The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World." In the postgame for patrons, Ben and the cre watch some of Jordan Peterson's Jubilee debate, in which Peterson realizes he can brilliantly defend his position by the 5D chess strategy of angrily taking exception to every background assumption and every turn of phrase and never actually committing himself to anyth...
Andrew Hartman joins Ben Burgis to talk about his fascinating book "Karl Marx in America," where he traces interest in Marx's ideas by American commentators from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression to the Vietnam-era New Left to the present. Before that, Ben does an Opening Argument responding to Ro Khanna on socialism. In the postgame for patrons, Ben and the crew watch a slightly less serious discussion about Marx by Tim Pool and Sargon of Akkad and some other person who's name none of u...
Eric Blanc joins Ben Burgis to talk about his new book "How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big." Then in the postgame for patrons, Ben and the crew will watch a bit of Ethan Klein vs. Hassan Piker for some reason. Buy Eric's book: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/we-are-the-union/paper Read Eric's Substack: https://www.laborpolitics.com/ Follow Eric on Twitter: @_ericblanc Follow Ben on Twitter: @BenBurgis Follow GTAA on Twitter: @Gtaa_Show Become a GTAA Pa...
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) comes on to talk about the swirling chaos of Trump 2.0 and where Dems are falling short in response. Before that, Ben does an Opening Argument about why the Left should trumpet the fact that social democratic policies are objectively pro-natalist. Pressuring people to have kids is obviously illiberal and bad, but we should take the W on the fact that the economic policies we want would make things a lot easier for people who want to make that choice (and the fact that th...
First-time GTAA guest Borna Radnik and frequent GTAA guest Matt McManus join Ben Burgis to chat about Borna's book "Freedom, in Context:Time, History, and Necessity in Hegel." Before that, in lieu of an Opening Argument and for the first time on YouTube, we'll play a talk Ben gave a while back called "Karl Marx Deserves Better Critics." ...and, last but not least, Jason Myles hangs out in the postgame for patrons! Check out Borna's book: https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Context-History-Neces...
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Props to Ben for keeping his cool and staying professional. This was one of the most anger inducing, disgusting debates I've heard in a long time. From the opening, Walter starts with the long debunked human shield argument, and then basically goes on to claim the genocide is justified because Palestinians are "criminals." SMFH
The Swedish ambassador was Raoul Wallenberger.
Matt McManus is a truly irritating, unfunny little elf.
I'm starting to think Kuba might *actually* be some sort of low-effort psyop and a liberal Polish chauvinist to boot.
It's really no better than upper middle class Cuban reactionaries acting like their lived experience is both universal and authoritative.
lol @ Kuba whining about being Polish. Hope they're enjoying their free market.
I first became aware of Matt Walsh around 2014 when I was partnering with a very right wing church in the Nashville area that turned into an official propaganda wing of the IDF and he was a huge hit there. I suspect he's genuinely an evangelical's evangelical, it isn't a gimmick with him.
Rod is such a demented closet case 😆
How ironic, Germany, a country that's been essentially center-left for decades, let in asylum seekers. This fast talking guy is a hoot!
The guy who talks really fast is almost as annoying as Rod Dreher and that's a very sobering thought.
Ana loves tooting her own horn, it's one of her favorite hobbies.
I'm trying to imagine someone who's been raped or had a family member murdered being told by some nebbish that their framing is problematic, actually.
That apology is the scariest thing ive ever heard!!
I wonder how much O'Keefe paid Tool to deep throat him that hard???
Not only has the Kitty thing been debunked, it was racist, anti-city propaganda deployed in service of austerity.
Question: can a human even survive with only one lung? This seems like nonsense while the violinist thing seems like bratty libertarianism. A lot of these types seem remarkably anti-solidaristic.
Quavering libfems probably aren't the best candidates to tackle this sort of thing from anything approaching objectivity.
Pretty sure I read the rejoinder/second essay and was struck then as I am now by how comprehensively stupid the attachment-to-the-violinist argument was. Of course it's immoral not to save someone's life because it inconveniences you. It seems to me that if personhood could be convincingly demonstrated (it can't be), abortion *would* be unambiguously immoral.
"authoritarian" is a meaningless category and this woke Ben Shapiro guy should know better.
The idea of God as unmoved mover is an Aristotilian (sp?) modification to both Judaism and Christianity. If you actually look at the text, humans are constantly "moving" God to the point of torturing God to death. Whitehead and friends are very useful in that regard.