Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily Podcast.

Today is Friday, June 19, 2020. I am John Pluthorz, the editor of Commentary

Magazine. Christine Rosen is off today with me as always, senior editor, a

Greenwald Hyabe. Hi John. Associate editor Noah Rothman, Hynella. Hi John.

And joining us today, the author of the Commentary July August cover story,

America Run Riot. Wilford Riley, Associate Professor of Political Science at

Kentucky State University. Hey, well, how are you? Pretty good. Kind of tired,

glad to be here. Great. Well, so your cover story is as has become your want as a

as a player and intellectual describing American politics in American

society. You are a myth buster. You are a hoax revealer. First piece that you wrote for

commentary was an adaptation of your book hate crime hoaxes and why they happen.

And now you've written America Run Riot, which is an effort to sort of correct the record

about police violence and the aftermath of the George Floyd killing. So the piece is just out

on commentarymagazine.com. I urge everybody within earshot to read it. So let me just ask

a question. It's a very complicated piece. So there's no you know, there's no log line,

there's no you know, sound bite to really describe it. But you are trying to say let us just take

a look at the evidence in front of our faces and not be distracted by the passions of the moment

if we can do so, right? Yeah, one of the focuses of my writing is taking kind of that quantitative

background from my PhD process and trying to take a look at some of the things people talk about

in society. White privilege was an example in one of my books and see whether they actually

make sense, whether they're empirically real. So the Floyd piece which I enjoyed writing for

you guys. I mean that touches on a lot of things like the impact of rioting on small,

...