Help me to populate Fantasy Intellectual Teams

Open leagues, a league of media pundits, and a league of think tank scholars

I am putting together the May leagues for what I call Fantasy Intellectual Teams. The “players” are intellectuals and pundits who comment on current events, and the scoring statistics were described in Who is in my tribe? Make sure you have read that essay and understand the scoring metrics before you proceed further.

Some of the leagues will be open leagues, in which teams will be chosen entirely by individual “owners” in a competitive draft, just like fantasy baseball or fantasy football. I am thinking in terms of one league where each owner gets to pick 7 intellectuals, if there are enough owners who want to follow a team that big. Also, two more leagues in which each owner gets to pick 5 intellectuals.

I am still looking for a few more owners. Let me know if you are interested in competing as an owner. I will warn you that it takes some work. Think twice before volunteering to won in a 7-player league.

I also want to set up two closed leagues where I have final say about who is on a team. For these, you are welcome to provide input in the comment section.

I am not—I repeat not—looking for players you like because of the positions that they take. I am looking for players who will score points for their team. Players score by arguing in a way that respects opposing viewpoints. Players who use what Julia Galef calls The Scout Mindset. Recall what I said at the beginning about reading and understanding the scoring metrics

One league is for what I call media intellectuals. Their teams are based on their primary affiliations, such as newspaper columnist or podcaster. But scoring will be based on all of the player’s output, including podcasting, blogging, and essays. But Twitter is not conducive to the sort of constructive debates that score points, so don’t think in terms of drafting players for their tweets.

I have in mind five teams. I hope you find the team names amusing:

• Dead Trees Walking. These are newspaper columnists. Megan McArdle, Ezra Klein, plus who else? Ross Douthat? Michelle Goldberg? Jason Riley?

• Increase Playback Speed. These are podcasters. Russ Roberts, Coleman Hughes, Heather Heying-Bret Weinstein, and Tyler Cowen (he is a man of many talents, but Conversations with Tyler is one of them). I know you like lots of other podcasters, but I’m pretty set on these as likely high scorers.

• So-called Rationalists. Scott Alexander, Julia Galef, Zvi Mowshowitz, Robin Hanson. But should Robin be benched this month while he is writing about what he calls “grabby aliens” and replaced by someone more down to earth? Tanner Greer?

• The $Sub$stack$. Forced to flee their corporate homes, they cried all the way to the bank. Andrew Sullivan, Bari Weiss, Matts Yglesias and Taibbi.

• Tenured Dilettantes. Professors with a big Internet presence. John McWhorter, Yascha Mounk, Emily Oster, Bryan Caplan.

The final league is for think tanks. I am going to start it small, because I am not sure how well it will go. I am thinking of starting with just three teams.

• American Enterprise Institute. James Pethokoukis, Greg Weiner, Thomas Chatterton Williams, plus Yuval Levin? Michael Strain? Jonah Goldberg?

• Brookings Institution. Richard Reeves, Louise Sheiner, David Wessel, and Marcus Casey seem to be the most active on the Brookings current-events blog. Should I pick them? Or how about Jon Rauch? Bill Galston? Shadi Hamid? Justin Wolfers? Mark Muro?

• Reason. Nick Gillespie, Robby Soave plus Jacob Sullum? Ron Bailey? Katherine Mangu-Ward?

If you think that you could pick much better teams, then remember you have the option of competing as an owner in one of the open leagues.