My guest today is entrepreneur and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. He’s now facing something most tech business people never imagine: being personally targeted by a sitting president’s Department of Justice. Reid and I talk through the rise of politically motivated prosecutions, the erosion of trust in institutions, and how social media and AI have accelerated our collective slide into suspicion. We get into deepfakes, vaccine skepticism, the inequality debate, and whether billionaires should ...
Dec 08, 2025•1 hr 10 min
In today’s episode, I sit down with former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy, now a columnist at the National Review . He is someone whose legal commentary I’ve followed closely for years. Andy has consistently offered analysis of the major legal battles shaping American politics. In our conversation, we cover everything from the rise of modern lawfare to the prosecutions of both Donald Trump and his political opponents. It couldn’t feel more timely; last week, a federal judge dismissed the crimi...
Dec 01, 2025•1 hr 9 min
Today I’m joined by Warren Smith, a teacher and filmmaker. He created a viral video challenging a student to explain why they believed J.K. Rowling was a bigot. It sparked a national conversation and ultimately cost Smith his job. We talk about that fallout, compare our experiences on college campuses during the height of wokeness, dig into Trump’s attempts to reshape elite universities, and explore what might actually fix higher education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/ad...
Nov 24, 2025•1 hr 15 min
Today I sit down with journalist Astead Herndon, whose award-winning political reporting has appeared in The New York Times , on CNN, and now in Vox , where he serves as editorial director. Astead and I explore how President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory reshaped our own views of American politics. We disagree—cordially—about how much of Trump’s rise was driven by racism, and what that moment revealed about the country. From there, we discuss why more black voters have been moving to the right, an...
Nov 17, 2025•1 hr 4 min
My guest today is Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist, military historian, and senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Victor is one of the most articulate defenders of Donald Trump, and one of the few people willing to explain why millions of Americans still see him as a necessary corrective rather than a danger. We talk about how his years farming in California shaped his politics, how “lawfare” now cuts both ways, and why so many conservatives feel the system has turned against them. We...
Nov 10, 2025•1 hr 14 min
Today, I’m bringing you a special bonus episode with professor Shilo Brooks. Shilo is the host of a new Free Press books podcast called, 'Old School'. For our conversation, I picked Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions. Although our conversation happened months before Mamdani's victory yesterday, I think Sowell’s theory of the two “visions” that shape modern politics is helpful to understanding this election cycle--and why some people buy into utopian projects of remaking society, while others ...
Nov 05, 2025•36 min
My guest today is evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven. If you’ve followed her story, you know she was effectively pushed out of Harvard for articulating a basic biological fact—and doing it politely. We talk through her research on hormones, rough-and-tumble play, aggression, and libido; what puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones actually do; why sports can’t be reorganized around “hormone levels”; and how elite institutions reacted to her saying things they all once taught. This is a convers...
Nov 03, 2025•1 hr 37 min
My guest today is Gelet Martínez Fragela, a Cuban journalist and political refugee whose outlet is banned on the island. We trace Cuba’s path from independence to dictatorship, and separate myth from reality on the embargo, healthcare, and poverty. Gelet describes ration cards, compulsory “labor camps,” and why Cuba’s incarceration rate is among the world’s highest. We also dig into the regime’s information warfare, from cozy ties with the PFLP to state media claiming Israel “nuked” Syria, and h...
Oct 27, 2025•59 min
On October 21, 2023, beloved Detroit community leader Samantha Woll was found brutally stabbed to death outside her home—two weeks to the day after the October 7 attacks on Israel. It looks like an open-and-shut case—a hate crime. But swiftly the police rule that out. Instead they eventually find themselves with two unrelated suspects. When they charge one with murder, the case takes a turn that raises questions about antisemitism, race, and justice in America. Hosted by The Free Press ’s Franni...
Oct 21, 2025•1 min
Dr. Gad Saad is a visiting scholar at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom in Mississippi and an evolutionary psychologist. We discuss his forthcoming book, Suicidal Empathy , in which he argues that the political left has taken empathy to a dangerous extreme. We also talk about his childhood as a Jew in Lebanon and his family’s experience during the Lebanese Civil War. Has empathy gone too far? And is it really a phenomenon unique to the political left? Learn...
Oct 20, 2025•1 hr 3 min
Nicholas Wade is a former science writer for The New York Times and author of several books on human evolution, including A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History and his new book, The Origin of Politics: How Evolution and Ideology Shape the Fate of Nations . Today, I invite Wade on to discuss some of the toughest topics in modern science: the controversial territory of race and genetics, and whether there are fundamental genetic differences between right-wingers and left-winger...
Oct 13, 2025•1 hr
Note that this conversation took place before Hamas addressed some conditions of President Donald Trump’s proposed peace plan and said it agreed to release all remaining hostages. This was the most requested conversation I've ever had, and one of the longest and most challenging. Dave Smith—comedian, podcaster, and libertarian foreign policy critic—joined me for three and a half hours to debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American foreign policy more broadly. We disagree on a lot. Smith...
Oct 04, 2025•3 hr 32 min
Recorded live at the Comedy Cellar in New York City: I sat down with Steven Pinker, Harvard psychologist, best-selling author, and world-class debunker of doom, to talk about his new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…:Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. We got into this idea of “common knowledge”: what we all know and know that everyone else knows. It may sound abstract, but really it underlies everything. It is our shared awareness that lets us coo...
Sep 29, 2025•57 min
In this episode, I’m joined by Jane Coaston, a journalist and former host of The Argument podcast at The New York Times who is now a host at Crooked Media. We talk about how she became a libertarian, the spread of far-right conspiracies, why black support for conservatives is growing, and what the mainstream media continues to miss. A special thanks to our sponsors: New episodes of The Isabel Brown Show can be viewed on DailyWire+ here: www.dailywire.com/show/the-isabel-brown-show Follow I...
Sep 22, 2025•1 hr 22 min
In this mini episode, I’m joined by Janiyah Thomas, the Black Media Director for Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign. We talk about Charlie Kirk's assasination, Jimmy Kimmel being pulled off the air, Trump’s National Guard deployment in D.C., and how Janiyah helped Trump win over black voters. If you enjoy these shorter episodes, let me know and maybe we’ll do more. Don’t forget, a full-length episode will be back on Monday! A special thanks to our sponsors: New episodes of The Isabel Brown Show can be...
Sep 20, 2025•33 min
My guest today is Bhaskar Sunkara. He’s the founding editor of Jacobin magazine and currently serves as president at The Nation . Bhaskar is a proud democratic socialist; he was even vice-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, and he’s the author of a book titled The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality . In this conversation, we dive into the practicality of democratic socialism. We talk about rent controls, the affordability crisis in Ameri...
Sep 15, 2025•1 hr 24 min
I’m joined by Ben Shapiro, a controversial figure who for many needs no introduction. Ben is a political commentator, author, and co-founder of The Daily Wire . He joins me to discuss his new book, Scavengers and Lions . We explore the central metaphor of the book and what it says about the moral choices facing our culture today. Ben lays out his argument about the rise of intellectual scavengers who feed on grievance and resentment, and contrasts them with the “lions,” those who embrace respons...
Sep 08, 2025•1 hr 8 min
It’s been nearly two years since October 7, when Hamas took over 250 people hostage. Since then, families of the captives have led a relentless campaign to bring them home, but they haven’t always agreed on how to get there. As a new ceasefire deal is on the table, I speak with three voices from that struggle. One is Dalia Cusnir-Horn, who has one brother-in-law, Iair Horn, who was captured and then freed and another, Eitan Horn, who is still held in Gaza. Dalia has become a leading advocate for...
Sep 01, 2025•1 hr 4 min
Greg Lukianoff is an attorney, author, and president of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. You may know him from his previous books, The Coddling of the American Mind and The Canceling of the American Mind . His latest book, which was published earlier this summer, is The War on Words, Ten Arguments Against Free Speech—and Why They Fail . In this episode, we get into why Lukianoff is not a free speech absolutist, how October 7 shifted the campus speech debate, and where p...
Aug 25, 2025•1 hr 5 min
This week on Conversations with Coleman , I’m joined by writer and cultural critic Adam Szetela, author of That Book Is Dangerous! , a trenchant look at how moral panic, social media, and identity-driven outrage are reshaping the publishing industry. We discuss the rise of so-called sensitivity readers who vet books to ensure they are as inoffensive as possible, and how an obsession with controlling representation of minorities is narrowing creative freedom and silencing risk-taking voices. Adam...
Aug 18, 2025•1 hr 5 min
I watched the eight-hour series on the French First Lady by podcaster Candace Owens, so you don't have to. It’s a fascinating window into a mind gripped by extreme apophenia: the tendency to see patterns where none exist. So just how and why did Candace Owens spread this lie? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aug 13, 2025•9 min
You might think you know what a Washington Post columnist sounds like, but Megan McArdle is not your typical liberal media voice. She’s spent years inside the most established outlets in journalism: The Atlantic, Bloomberg, The Economist and yet she’s managed to surprise and infuriate readers on the left with sharp critiques that don’t always toe the party line. Today on Conversations we talk about why progressives often get economic policy wrong and the real mess behind America’s broken healthc...
Aug 11, 2025•1 hr 21 min
In this special episode, I take on probably the most controversial and emotionally fraught topic of the moment: the Israel-Hamas conflict. I think war crimes have been committed on both sides. But that doesn’t mean I think the two sides are morally equivalent. Today, I argue that there’s a fundamental asymmetry between Israel and Hamas, one that’s too often blurred or ignored by the mainstream media. Israel’s actions, while sometimes flawed or tragic in consequence, are ultimately rooted in a de...
Aug 04, 2025•18 min
Filmmaker and digital rights activist Justine Bateman joins me for a conversation on how AI is warping Hollywood and why the content we consume feels increasingly hollow. We dive into the decline of originality, the studios' addiction to algorithms, and how the “double-screen” era (watching while scrolling) has rewired audience expectations, pushing creators toward louder, faster, and shallower stories. Can art survive the attention economy? A special thanks to our sponsors: Go to groundnews.com...
Jul 28, 2025•1 hr 4 min
This week I sat down with political analyst Galen Druke to talk about what actually moves public opinion and shifts voter behavior. We got into why some people viewed Donald Trump as the more moderate choice in 2016, what that says about how voters think, and how Democrats might get back into the national conversation in a real way. We also talked about how polls work, when they matter, and what they often miss about what voters actually care about. A special thanks to our sponsors: Go to ground...
Jul 21, 2025•1 hr 3 min
Josh Hammer is the author of Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West . He joins me to explore the big stuff: God, geopolitics, Zionism, the future of the U.S. We also get into the complexities of interfaith marriage and the role of religion in modern culture. The conversation delves into the challenges and nuances of maintaining religious and ethnic continuity in a modern, pluralistic society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoic...
Jul 14, 2025•1 hr 22 min
New York City’s mayor on Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo; socialism and corruption; policing and power; rats and redemption. New York City mayor Eric Adams has had a controversial time in office. So why should New Yorkers trust him for another four years? In this episode, we talk about Adams’ criticisms of Zohran Mamdani, his call to Andrew Cuomo to step aside, and yes: rats, e-bikes, and trash. Adams also opens up about the police beating him as a teen, and how that moment shaped his life in la...
Jul 08, 2025•51 min
I’m joined this week by someone who asks questions maybe all of us don’t ask enough: How do we become happier? And how do we date people we disagree with? And maybe most importantly: W hy do people feel they are living lives without meaning? And how do we solve this? My guest is Arthur C. Brooks, a Harvard professor, a best-selling author, a social scientist, and a co-author (with Oprah, no less) of Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier . Arthur has spent decades studyi...
Jun 30, 2025•1 hr 13 min
This week I sit down with writer and thinker Tim Urban, creator of the blog Wait But Why to talk: political polarization, AI, university campuses and even dating. Tim brings his trademark clarity and curiosity to a conversation that covers the rise of tribal thinking, the challenge of nuance in a viral world, and how humanity can navigate the information overload of the digital age. www.moinkbox.com/coleman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Jun 23, 2025•1 hr 9 min
Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has long focused on Iran’s nuclear ambitions and advised multiple U.S. administrations on policy toward Iran. I invited him on Conversations with Coleman to explain the Iran nuclear issue at a deep level. We discussed the science of uranium enrichment, the differing Obama, Trump, and Biden policies on containment, and the history of Iran’s nuclear ambitions from the 1979 Revolution to today. Mark laid out the stakes of preventing a...
Jun 16, 2025•1 hr 17 min
