The December edition of the ICBW podcast is now available for download or streaming.  It was recorded prior to the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, so instead it covers Joe Biden's pardon of his son Hunter (in part 1), Democratic party post-mortems of the 2024 election (in part 2), and the state of modern art in the wake of the sale of "comedian" for over $6 million (in part 3).  As always, listeners are invited to participate in the conversation by commenting on this post.

 The election edition of the ICBW podcast is now available for download or streaming.  In part 1 and part 2, we discuss the recent US presidential election, with a brief digression into the topic of academic freedom (a perennial favorite of the podcast).  In part 3 we discuss, among other things, political intrigue in Israel, Islam in Europe, and Iranians in the Biden administration.  As always, listeners are invited to participate in the discussion via comments on this post.

 The October edition of the ICBW podcast is now available for download or streaming.  In part 1, we discuss the Israeli operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon; in part 2, the topic is the US election--particularly the assassination attempts on Trump and the political implications of the immigration issue; and in part 3, we consider the possibility that the overall competence of government is in decline, in the context of the Hurricane rescue and recovery efforts going on in the Southeastern US.  As always, listeners are invited to participate in the conversation themselves via comments on this blog post.

 The September edition of the ICBW podcast is now available for download or streaming.  In part 1 we discuss RFK Jr.'s exit from the US presidential race and the ceasefire negotiations between Israel in Hamas--a conversation that evolves into part 2's general discussion of how political coalitions work in practice in democracies.  In part 3 we return to the US presidential race--focusing on policy this time--and in part 4 we touch on recent attacks on free speech in the US and Great Britain.  As always, listeners are invited to participate in the discussion via comments on this blog post.

 The August edition of the ICBW podcast is now available for download or streaming.  In part 1, we discuss the assassination attempt against Trump, and what it tells us about quality control in critical security agencies; in part 2, we finish that discussion before tackling Joe Biden's withdrawal from the presidential race; and in part 3, we cover the assassination of Ismael Haniyeh and the recent anti-immigration riots in Britain.  As always, listeners are invited to participate in the discussion by leaving comments on this post.

 The July edition of the ICBW podcast is now available for download or streaming.  It's POTUS/SCOTUS month--in part 1, we discuss the president's mental and political condition, and in part 2 we review some of the big rulings from the end of the Supreme Court's term.  As always, listeners are welcome to join the conversation via comments on this post...

 The June edition of the ICBW podcast is now available for download or streaming.  In part 1 we discuss the ceasefire negotiations over Gaza (we recorded pre-rescue).  Part 2 covers European attitudes towards immigration, and part 3 dissects the Trump trial and conviction.  As always, listeners are invited to participate in the discussion via comments on this post.

 The May edition of the ICBW blog podcast is now available for download or streaming.  Appropriately for the time of year, we focus on universities:  in part 1, we discuss the rash of pro-Hamas protests plaguing numerous campuses, as well as MIT's decision to abandon mandatory faculty DEI statements; in part 2, we discuss the problem of imposing governance and accountability on weakly governed institutions such as universities, with a digression into college athletics; and in part 3, we discuss anti-discrimination law, particularly (though not exclusively) as it applies to academia.  As always, listeners are invited to participate in the discussion via comments on this post.

 The April edition of the ICBW podcast is now available for download or streaming.  In part 1, we discuss the latest developments in the Middle East and reactions to them in North America, while in part 2, we consider a recent experiment in climate engineering and its implications, with some digressions into transportation policy.  As always, listeners are invited to join the debate via comments on this blog post.

 The March edition of the ICBW podcast is now available for download or streaming.  In part 1, we hold a discussion of the current state of the conflict in Gaza, broadening it in part 2 to cover Hamas' Western supporters and the possible future of the territory.  In part 3, we touch on recent problems with Google's Gemini AI tool, and as well as recent remarks by the makers of the film, "The Zone of Interest".  As always, listeners are encouraged to participate in the discussion via comments on this post.

 The February ICBW podcast is now available for download or streaming.  Part 1 covers the border, so to speak, delving into the US "border crisis", with digressions into the properties of various democratic systems as well as Israeli politics.  Part 2 explores DEI, merit and employment policy--with additional discussion of presidential administration staffing--and in part 3 we consider the question of politically motivated disparities in the application of justice, in historical context.  As always, listeners are invited to participate in the discussion via comments on this post.

 The first ICBW podcast of 2024 is now available for download or streaming.  In part 1, we discuss GOP candidate Nikki Haley's recent gaffe regarding the causes of the Civil War; in part 2, we review the annual ICBW predictions, 2024 edition; and in part 3, we discuss the ouster of Harvard's president amid her controversial Congressional testimony and allegations of plagiarism (with a digression on our part into the distinction between "ethics" and "morality").  As always, listeners are invited to participate in the conversation via the comments section for this post.

(An additional note:  if you've had trouble with the links for this podcast recently, we believe we've fixed the problem now.  If you're still experiencing difficulties, please let us know...)

As perennial as unrest in the Middle East and political rancor at home, the ICBW annual predictions post is back again--starting, of course, with our review of last year's not-so-on-target predictions:

• The US economy will dip into recession--a full-fledged one, this time--in 2023, and all major asset markets will again be down sharply by the end of the year (apart from bonds, which will benefit from a recession-related decline in inflation).  If a recovery begins at all before 2024, it will be anemic.  The collapse of cryptocurrencies will continue.

Wrong on just about every count.  Stocks are up, bonds are flat, real estate is up slightly, and even Bitcoin is up.  I blame the Fed for not attacking inflation sufficiently vigorously (it's still above 3%, higher than the Fed's traditional 2% target).

• The war in Ukraine will take one of two paths:  if Putin survives the year, then the war will drag on, World War I-style, at increasing cost to both sides, with Ukraine making incremental gains but both sides hampered from major offensive actions by lack of equipment and ammunition.  On the other hand, if Putin dies this year, then the new leader, seeking a domestic PR victory, will begin negotiations for ending the war.

This one may have been my best of the year--fairly accurate for the Putin-survives case.

• The unrest in China will dissipate, but a spooked government, distracted by COVID and a 1990s-Japan-style economic implosion, will hold off on major internal crackdowns--let alone an invasion of Taiwan.  The unrest in Iran, on the other hand, will continue and even grow, with the opposition coalescing around some consensus leader--possibly the heir to the last Shah.  If Khamenei survives through 2023, then so will his regime, but it will end the year looking increasingly shaky.  If, on the other hand, Khamenei dies, then so will the regime--even if a candidate manages to seize the role of successor immediately, without a protracted struggle, he will nevertheless be too weak to be able to rally the regime to fully suppress the uprising.

I was pretty accurate about China, although Xi does appear to have been busy purging top-level officials this year (by "crackdowns", I was referring to large-scale actions against portions of the public, such as its Hong Kong, Uighur and COVID lockdown campaigns).  I knew my Iranian prediction was risky--the mullahs' regime has been pretty resilient over 40 years--but I certainly didn't expect the level of fawning appeasement granted by the Biden administration this year, and that may have been what gave Iran's rulers the confidence to continue to crack down hard on internal dissent--not to mention greenlighting Hamas' attack on Israel...

• Joe Biden's domestic approval rating will hover around 40% for much of the year, weighed down by the poor economy and general discontent with the results of Democratic policies on energy (high fossil fuel prices), crime (skyrocketing due to lack of law enforcement) and immigration (an unabated massive wave of illegals).  As a result, at least one Democratic primary challenger will emerge before the end of the year.  Meanwhile, on the GOP side, Trump's dominance of the candidate field will continue to slide, and by the end of the year there will be several announced primary candidates, with one of the alternatives to Trump--possibly, though not certainly, DeSantis--leading in the polls.  The GOP-led House, in addition to blocking all but the most bipartisan legislative initiatives, will launch numerous investigations into Biden administration malfeasance, which will generate plenty of breathless headlines in pro-GOP partisan media but be largely ignored or ridiculed by the pro-Democrat mainstream outlets.

I apparently overestimated both parties' willingness to challenge their own weak, unpopular leaders, who look set to cruise to nomination despite their manifest electoral weaknesses.

• The Supreme Court's rulings on the anti-Asian discrimination cases will rule 6-3 that the two universities' practices are indeed illegally discriminatory, with the three Democratic-appointed justices dissenting but Roberts this time aligning fully with the GOP-appointed majority.

An easy one, but spot-on.  (Well, sort of--Kagan recused herself, so it was actually 6-2.)

• Elon Musk will appoint a new CEO for Twitter, who will (per his instructions) focus on improving the user experience and increasing profitability, rather than policing user-generated content.  As a result, Twitter's user base and net income will increase substantially, and the company will end the year financially much healthier that it appeared to be at the beginning--much to the chagrin of censorship supporters.

This is an interesting one--we don't actually know how accurate this prediction is, since Twitter/X is a private company now.  (I suppose that's an argument for it having been a pointless prediction to make in the first place...)  There's certainly lots of speculation that its business is weakening due to political hostility to Elon Musk, and the user population appears to be down slightly--as for all social media.  But we don't actually know how the company is doing financially.  In any event, as with most of my "cultural" predictions, this one is implicitly intended to pan out over the long term, even if not necessarily in the year it was made.

And now for this year's predictions:

• Juiced by the Fed's already-tipped plans to further ease its monetary policy, the economy and asset markets will continue to rise overall in 2024, with the caveat that inflation will also tick upward from its current 3% level, pulling bonds down slightly.  Even cryptocurrencies will participate in the Fed-induced market frothiness.
• Donald Trump will defeat Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election, after the Supreme Court blocks states from removing him from the ballot on 14th-Amendment grounds, and his lawyers succeed in getting his criminal trials postponed until after the election.  Republicans will also take control of the Senate and expand their lead in the House, but by very little in both cases.  The election will be accompanied by considerable unrest, but it will consist mostly of marches, sit-ins and the like, with relatively little 2020-style rioting.  In fact, the press and other institutions will be remarkably resigned to the result, having recognized in advance this time that such an outcome was a real possibility.  There will be the usual predictions of doom and threats to move to Canada, but nothing like the hysteria of 2016.
• The war in Ukraine will continue to grind on at a low level, with both sides too resource- and manpower-constrained, and too uncertain about the outcome of the US presidential election--with its enormous potential effects on the conflict--to make any bold moves.  
• Israel will continue to grind down Hamas in Gaza for a few more months, as Western pro-Hamas protests gradually peter out. Eventually,  political authority in Gaza will be transferred to some new entity--possibly Gulf-sponsored.  Israel will also make some sort of deal with Hezbollah that involves a buffer zone on the Lebanese side of the border--as mandated by UN resolution 1701--thus averting a full-scale war between the two sides.  Regardless, PM Netanyahu will not last the year as prime minister--his government, stained by the October 7th debacle, will fall, and a center-left coalition, probably led by Benny Gantz, will win the subsequent election.
• Elsewhere, the Iranian regime will continue to harass US troops via its proxies, and the US will continue to do only the barest minimum necessary not to appear to be abjectly capitulating to Iranian pressure.  The alliance among China, Russia and Iran will further deepen, but China will continue its cautious, incremental power projection strategy--as its economic implosion continues--rather than launch any major attacks or invasions (e.g., of Taiwan).  
• Claudine Gay will eventually resign the presidency of Harvard, but otherwise the Ivy League, and the rest of elite academia, will make only token gestures towards addressing their collective reputational collapse.  Instead, they will focus on their rapidly mounting financial problems, as both donors and students flee in droves, the former in response to the institutions' declining prestige and the latter driven by newfound cost-consciousness.
• The proliferation of AI tools for common personal and workplace tasks, such as document composition and summarization, will make AI more familiar to its users and hence somewhat counteract the hysterical fears being spread by some AI "experts" about a supposed imminent AI-triggered apocalypse.

As always, readers are encouraged to respond to these predictions, and add their own, via the comments section.