I Invited Them. They Denied It. Here’s the List.
Documenting invitations so the pattern of non-response and denial can no longer be ignored.
Munz, the president of the Black Power gang, showing me his tattoos during a conversation. New Zealand
I have a problem.
For years now, I’ve been unable to get people on our show who disagree with me. Not all people, just those committed to identity-first frameworks on the left.
I’m currently in New Zealand. As this is a remarkably chill place, I invited, both by email and on X, a few of New Zealand’s prominent progressives to come on the show.
Crickets.
But getting them to have conversations with me is only half the problem. The more corrosive half is the pattern of denying invitations ever occurred, which undermines any claim to good-faith disagreement. After years of thinking about how to solve these problems, I finally have the best solution I could think of: Make a public registry of who we invited for a conversation, when they were invited, how they were invited, and what their response has been.
You can find our invitation list here:
https://www.nationalprogressalliance.org/who-weve-invited/
We just began this on April 28, and we will be adding to this list accordingly.
To understand why I think this is important, I want to offer a brief background and a few words about the show.
In conversation with Grub, VP of the Black Power gang in New Zealand.
(Conversations will be posted shortly.)
Background
From the right, I’ve had a lot of people on who disagree with me about issues—for example, abortion (I’m pro-choice in the first trimester), the death penalty (I’m against it), religion (both Muslim and Christian apologists have come on the show), immigration (guests have been both pro and con), marijuana legalization (I’m pro legalization), metaphysics, morality more broadly, etc. These conversations have been extremely civil, and they’ve nudged some of my views. I’ve even had non-identitarian leftists on the show, like David Pakman, Destiny (five times), Jonathan Rauch, and others.
But I simply cannot get identitarian leftists to come on the show and speak with me. This is one of the Achilles’ heels of my book that Lindsay and I acknowledge early on: You cannot force a person to have a conversation with you. If they agree to converse, the book is, in my opinion, the ultimate tool. If they do not agree, there is literally nothing you can do. But not having a conversation and (in at least one case) lying about the fact that you were ever invited is different.
I want to be crystal clear: Nobody is under any obligation to speak with me, just as I’m under none to speak with anyone. The invitations to conversation are not about beating anyone down, tricking people, or humiliating them, and I offer ~240 episodes of the show as evidence of this.
Conversations with Peter Boghossian: “No dogma. Just dialogue.”
My 45–90 minutes conversations are long-form, unscripted, and candid.
I explicitly aim to model productive conversation. My goal is to foster candid, intellectually rigorous dialogues grounded in reason, civility, and curiosity. Yes, I want to challenge ideological conformity and reclaim open inquiry amid polarization. And yes, I do test assumptions, push guests for clarity, and Socratically explore ideas while doing my best to minimize my own orthodoxies. And yes, I do have first principles like free expression, civil discourse, and Enlightenment rationalism.
Using Spectrum Street Epistemology to discuss controversial issues with Reid and a someone who walked by. Auckland.
I attempt to demonstrate, in practice, how to have difficult conversations across divides, reduce tribalism, and defend habits of open, evidence-based inquiry that are essential to democracy and human progress. I don’t just talk about the problem of polarization. I try to model a solution.
In short, I’m trying to show that serious conversation about difficult topics is still possible, and doing so is essential for a healthy liberal democracy. My conversations are not about “winning” but about clarifying ideas, exposing weak reasoning, and fostering intellectual courage in the audience.
Finally
It is difficult to discharge this mission when the people who have radical disagreements with most (all?) of my positions refuse to converse. It is more difficult still when they lie about not being invited to converse. Hence, in the spirit of transparency, we are making our outreach list public. If you know anyone who disagrees with any of my views and you think we should invite them, please write their name(s) in the comments below along with their X handles if they have one. Or if you believe someone was improperly listed as non-responsive, please provide counter-evidence.
Thanks, and I’m hoping that making our invitation list public will make it easier to hold both sides accountable whether impossible conversations actually happen.
Your pragmatic, principled, unflinching courage and commitment to free civil discourse is a shining example that is much needed. Please keep it coming.
Keep up the good work Peter. I don’t always agree with you—and I think different POVs are one of the great pleasures and rewards of sentient life—but I applaud your efforts on behalf of civil discourse.