My guest today is Shadi Hamid. Shadi is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He was named one of the world's top 50 thinkers in 2019 by Prospect Magazine. Shadi is also the author of three books, Temptations of Power , Islamic Exceptionalism , and The Problem of Democracy , which will be the primary subject of this conversation. Shadi and I talk about the difference between liberal democracy and democracy, full stop. We discuss Shadi's concept o...
Dec 17, 2022•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 41
My guest today is David Sacks. David is an entrepreneur, tech investor, film producer, and the co-host of the All-In podcast , which I highly recommend. He's General Partner at Craft Ventures, a venture capital firm he co-founded. David was the founding CEO of PayPal, which makes him a part of the so-called PayPal Mafia, which includes folks like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. He was an angel investor in Facebook, Uber, SpaceX, Airbnb, and many other successful companies. He also produced the film "...
Dec 10, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 40
My guest today is Rama Chellappa. Rama Chellappa is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. He's a chief scientist at the Johns Hopkins Institute for assured autonomy. Before that, Rama was an assistant Associate Professor and later became the director of the University of Southern California Signal and Image Processing Institute. Rama is also the author of the book "Can We Trust AI?" This episode is all about artificial intelligence. Several recent stories about AI have shocked and worried me....
Dec 03, 2022•54 min•Ep. 39
My guest today is Professor Alexandra Natapoff. Alexandra is a law professor at Harvard University. She writes about criminal courts, public defense, plea bargaining, wrongful convictions, and race and inequality in the criminal justice system. Her new book, which is an expanded edition of her older book is called "Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice" In this episode, Alexandra and I discuss a phenomenon that's rarely encountered outside of shows like The Sopranos ...
Nov 20, 2022•46 min•Ep. 38
My guest today is Timothy Shenk. Tim is a historian at George Washington University and a co-editor at Dissent magazine. He has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, London Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, and Jacobin, among other publications. Tim is also the author of the book "Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy" . In this episode, Tim and I discuss the book that President Obama wrote in the 90s, but never...
Nov 11, 2022•54 min•Ep. 37
Today I have a different kind of guest than I usually do. He's a fantasy and sci-fi author by the name of Christopher Paolini. You may be aware of his best-selling young adult fantasy book Eragon , which he wrote at the age of 15 and was also made into a major-budget film. The rest of the books in that series are Eldest , Brisingr , and Inheritance . You may also be aware of his more recent sci-fi novel called "To Sleep in a Sea of Stars" . I've been a huge fan of Christopher for a very long tim...
Oct 28, 2022•53 min•Ep. 36
My guest today is Josh Mitchell. Josh is a Wall Street Journal reporter who covers debt and finance. His book is called "The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe" and it was named one of the best books of 2021 by both NPR and The New York Post. In this episode, Josh and I talk about the history of government involvement in student loans. We discuss the reasons why college tuition has been soaring since the 1980s. We talk about the value of a four-year college degree. We tal...
Oct 21, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 35
My guest today is Samaneri Jayasāra. Samaneri is a Buddhist nun and spiritual teacher. Her YouTube channe l where she shares her lectures has over 80,000 subscribers. In this episode, Samaneri and I discuss the purpose of meditation, the true nature of emotions, the core teachings of Buddhism, the illusion of boredom, the difference between Buddhism and the Abrahamic religions, the possibility of enlightenment, the cycle of pleasure and pain, and much more. SPONSORS BUTCHERBOX: Sign up today at ...
Oct 14, 2022•52 min•Ep. 34
My guest today is Ted Gioia. Ted is a musician and an author. He's written 11 books including his latest, which is called "Music: A Subversive History" . He's been on the faculty at Stanford, and he's been published in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other newspapers. In this episode, Ted and I talk about why human beings enjoy music from an evolutionary perspective. We discuss the evolution of recorded music from the analog age to the present. We talk about T...
Oct 07, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 33
My guest today is Maryam Namazie. Maryam is an Iranian-born writer and activist living in the UK. She's the spokesperson of "One Law for All" and "The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain". She has co-authored many books, including "Sharia Law in Britain: A Threat to One Law for All and Equal Rights" , "Enemies Not Allies: The Far-Right" and "Political and Legal Status of Apostates in Islam" . This episode is all about the current uprising in Iran. Miriam and I talk about the death of Masa Amini in ...
Oct 01, 2022•35 min•Ep. 32
My guest today is Richard Reeves. Richard Reeves is a Senior Fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institute, where His research focuses on social mobility, inequality, and the middle class. Richard's new book is called "Of boys and men" and it's all about the specific problems facing men in American society. In this episode, Richard and I talk about whether there's any need to address male-specific problems in the first place. We discuss whether gender differences come from nature or nurt...
Sep 23, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 31
My guest today is Freddie DeBoer. Freddie is an independent writer on substack and has been published in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and many other places. His book "The Cult of Smart" was named one of the 10 best books of 2020 by New York Magazine. In this episode, Freddie and I begin by discussing Karl Marx, the legacy of Marxism, and the so-called "labor theory of value". Freddie sees much more value in Marxism than I do so we disagree somewhat on that. We move on t...
Sep 09, 2022•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 30
My guest today is Will MacAskill . Will is an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford University. He is the co-founder and president of the Centre for Effective Altruism. Will is also the director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research. In this episode, we discuss his new book "What We Owe the Future" . We talk about whether we have a moral obligation to the billions of humans that will be born in the next several 1000 years, and how to weigh those obligations against t...
Sep 04, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 29
My guest today is Claire Lehmann. Claire is an Australian journalist and the founder of Quillette , which is the online magazine that I use to write for. In this episode, Claire and I talk about why she founded Quillette, and how she maintains its original purpose as a magazine. We discuss the so-called "IDW" (the intellectual dark web) and the perception that it fractured into two camps on COVID issues. We discuss the difference between Australian and American COVID policy. We talk about the ph...
Aug 26, 2022•57 min•Ep. 28
My guest today is Rafael Mangual. Rafael is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and Head of Research at their policing and public safety initiative. His new book is called "Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most". In this episode, we discuss the nationwide push for defunding and de-policing starting in the summer of 2020. We talk about the so-called root causes of crime. We talk about Ava DuVernay's documentary "13th" and Michelle Al...
Aug 22, 2022•2 hr 41 min•Ep. 28
My guest today is Ian Rowe. Ian is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the founder of Vertex Partnership Academies. He's also an educator who ran a charter school called Public Prep in the South Bronx for many years. In this episode, we discuss his new book "Agency" . We talk about the obstacles facing low-income Black and Hispanic kids at the schools Ian teaches in. We discuss the problems with the narratives handed to these kids by both the left and the right which Ian cal...
Aug 12, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 27
My guest today is David Bernstein. David is a professor at George Mason University Law School and the executive director of their liberty and Law Centre. His new book is called "Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America" . Topics covered in this episode include the definition of race and the historical origins of America's Big Five racial and ethnic categories, which are Asian American, Black, Hispanic, American Indian, and White. We discuss the problems with all of these ...
Aug 08, 2022•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 26
Today I'm going to try something new. Instead of publishing an interview that I did myself, or a Q&A where I answer your questions, I'm going to use my platform to publish an interview conducted by somebody else. Now, this requires a bit of an explanation. My friend Desh Amila, who's a filmmaker and producer, organized an event with Julian Assange in 2017. He filmed the event at the time and then forgot all about it until a few days ago when he came across the footage by coincidence. When Desh o...
Jul 31, 2022•2 hr 41 min•Ep. 25
Today's episode is a Q&A where I answer questions sent to me by supporters of the podcast. Usually, I only release these episodes to members only, but I'm releasing this one to the public because I felt the questions were particularly good. If you have any burning questions you'd like to ask me, and if you'd like to be a part of the next Members Exclusive Q&A, you can join the Coleman Unfiltered Community and become a member today via https://colemanhughes.org/unfiltered -Get 20% Off and Free Sh...
Jul 22, 2022•53 min
My guest today is Katie Herzog. Katie is the host of the very funny "Blocked and Reported" Podcast along with Jesse Single. She is a great visual artist and was also a staff writer at "The Stranger" for many years. In this episode, we talk about Katie's upbringing as a lesbian in a less than accepting environment. We also discuss the rapid rise in the salience of trans issues in the past couple of years, the element of social contagion, and the recent rise of Gen Z girls with gender dysphoria. W...
Jul 17, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 23
My guest today is Zac Kriegman. Zach was a director of data science at Thomson Reuters before he got fired for posting a fact-based criticism of Black Lives Matter in an internal memo. This is one of the worst examples of Cancel Culture and enforced orthodoxy around the issue of race that I've seen in a while. Zach was fired for pointing to research by Roland Fryer who I just had on the podcast, and others, which showed that there was no anti-black bias in police shootings as well as that DOJ in...
Jul 08, 2022•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 22
My guest today is Jonathan Haidt. I just had Jonathan on the show a few weeks ago with Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott, but I wanted to get him back for a one-on-one. I'm glad I did because this turned out to be a really great conversation. It actually felt more like a private phone call than an interview, which I thought was really cool. I also thought it was really cool that John brought up the first email that I ever sent to him back when I was just a random Columbia undergraduate trying to ...
Jun 25, 2022•55 min•Ep. 21
My guest today is Winston Marshall. Winston is a founding member of the Grammy Award-winning band "Mumford and Sons", in which he played lead guitar and banjo for 14 years. He left the band after writing a tweet that praised a book by Andy Ngo. As many of you may remember, Andy Ngo is a journalist that got beaten to a pulp by Antifa extremists. Winston wrote a pretty mild tweet approving of Andy Ngo's book on Antifa and as a result, was pressured to leave Mumford and Sons and he eventually did. ...
Jun 18, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 20
My guest today is Sam Koppelman. Sam is a best-selling author and top speechwriter for many prominent politicians. Sam just co-wrote a book with former Attorney General Eric Holder called "Our Unfinished March: The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote-A History, a Crisis, a Plan" In this episode, we talked about voter fraud, voter ID laws, voter suppression, and gerrymandering. We discuss the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the so-called "gutting of that act" in 2013. We also talk about ...
Jun 10, 2022•53 min•Ep. 19
My guest today is Roland Fryer. Roland is an economics professor at Harvard University . He is a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant and the Bates medal. Roland is probably among the top five most frequent guest requests that I get. So it was really exciting to finally have him on the show. In this episode, we discuss Roland's childhood and the many obstacles he had to overcome in order to become a top-notch economist. We talk about his relationship with his grandmother and his father, our r...
Jun 05, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 18
This episode is a recording of a live event that I did with Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff, and Rikki Schlott. Jonathan Haidt is a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business. He is also the co-founder of Heterodox Academy, which I once wrote a blog post for back when I was probably 21 years old. Jonathan is the author of many books including "The Happiness Hypothesis" , "The Righteous Mind ", and "The Coddling of the American Mind" with his co-author Gregory Lukianoff. Greg Lukianoff is the p...
May 27, 2022•38 min•Ep. 17
My guest today is Yascha Mounk. Yascha is a political scientist and associate professor at Johns Hopkins University. He's also the founder of "Persuasion" , which is a great online magazine I really recommend you all read. He is also the host of "The Good Fight" podcast. Yascha has a new book out called "The Great Experiment" , which is what we'll be discussing in today's episode. We talk about group psychology and tribalism, their origin, and human nature. We discuss the difference between nati...
May 20, 2022•2 hr 31 min•Ep. 16
This podcast is actually a recording of a live event I did at TED in Vancouver with Tim Urban. Tim Urban is the author of the blog "Wait But Why?" and also of the upcoming book "The Story of Us" . My thanks to the TED team for inviting me to have this conversation. Tim and I talked about procrastination, the shortness of life, artificial intelligence, political polarisation, and much more. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to film this event, so this will be an audio-only episode. I hope yo...
May 14, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 15
My guest today is Frances Haugen. Frances is a data engineer, scientist, product manager, and whistleblower. In this episode, we discuss the psychological effects of Instagram on teenagers, the subculture of Tumblr, the cross-check system at Facebook, Facebook's policy toward misinformation, and much more. I really enjoyed this episode and I hope you do too.
May 07, 2022•41 min•Ep. 14
My guest today is Richard Dawkins. I assume most of you know who he is, but in case you've been living under a rock; Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and emeritus fellow at Oxford University. If I listed all the awards he's received in his lifetime, this description will not end. His books include The Selfish Gene , The Extended Phenotype , The Blind Watchmaker , The God Delusion , Unweaving the Rainbow , and many others . His latest book is called "Flights of Fancy: Defying Gravity ...
Apr 30, 2022•48 min•Ep. 13
