If you watched the Super Bowl this year, it was hard not to notice that cryptocurrency had fully arrived. Even Larry David was hawking crypto. But over the past several weeks, the crypto markets, like other markets, have been melting down. Some coins have completely imploded. Some crypto banks have shut their digital doors, refusing to give customers access to their money. And companies like Coinbase are laying off workers. Crypto winter has arrived. Today: a debate. Is crypto really the future ...
Jun 21, 2022•1 hr 14 min
If you read Common Sense, you know that the best day of the week is Friday, when Nellie Bowles delivers us all the news from the week that was. This Friday, we bring you an Honestly special: TGIF! This time built just for your ears and brought to you by America’s favorite lesbians: Nellie and dear friend of the pod, Katie Herzog.Featuring: drag queens, inflation, prosecutors who just won't prosecute. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 17, 2022•39 min
We live in a culture that is driven by nay-saying. In one corner, people insist that the individual stands no chance against structural and systemic maladies. From the other, people say that we are in inexorable decline as a civilization and that decadence is everywhere we turn. Both wind up arguing against risk-taking, against the possibility of creating new things and new worlds. How can we recover the adventurous, optimistic, forward-thinking, risk-taking attitude that has made America the mo...
Jun 15, 2022•16 min
Tulsa. Buffalo. Uvalde. Philadelphia. Chicago. And that’s just the past few weeks. If you’re like me, you’ve had too many despairing conversations about the epidemic of gun violence in this country to count. This isn’t that. This is a conversation about what can actually, practically be done. David French is a senior editor of The Dispatch and the author of “Divided We Fall,” among other books. David is a veteran. He is also, as you’ll hear, a gun owner. Rajiv Sethi is a professor of economics a...
Jun 09, 2022•1 hr 38 min
When Marianne Williamson stood on the presidential debate stage in 2020 and spoke about the “dark psychic force” unleashed in America, she became an instant meme. But these days—with our epidemic of loneliness and addiction, rising crime and violence like the kind we just witnessed in Uvalde, Texas—can anyone deny the existence of this darkness? Long before others were willing to name the anti-human, anti-social sickness in our culture, Williamson was warning of it. She is one of the most belove...
May 31, 2022•59 min
We are living through a seismic political realignment. The parties and the political movements that fuel them are being dramatically redefined—and are up for grabs in ways that would have been unthinkable even two decades ago. Today, we are focusing on “the right” side of that divide: what the right has meant historically; what it means today; and what it might look like a decade or a century from now. My guest is Matthew Continetti, author of the new book: “The Right: The Hundred-year War for A...
May 25, 2022•1 hr 28 min
There is no subject—not Trump, not abortion, not immigration, not taxes-–that is more contentious than the one we tackle today: parenting. This subject has particular urgency because my wife is pregnant! As are two of my producers. But you don’t need to be pregnant to be curious about the following: What is the right way to raise kids who become good, responsible, kind adults? Can we blame our problems as adults on our parents? What about Or do parenting styles not really matter? Is it nature th...
May 18, 2022•1 hr 20 min
Akhil Reed Amar is the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale university, where he’s been teaching constitutional law since the ripe old age of 26. He is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several award-winning books. Amar’s work has been cited in more than 40 supreme court cases—more than anyone else in his generation—including in the shocking draft opinion by Justice Alito that was leaked to the press last week. What may be confusing about that is that A...
May 11, 2022•1 hr 15 min
If you read Common Sense, you know that the best day of the week is Friday, when Nellie Bowles delivers us all the news from the week that was. Today, we bring you: Everything you need to know about this week's Supreme Court Leak, the new singing-and-dancing truth czar, revelations about youth gender transition and signs of change in the Republican party. Plus some attempts at tasteful humor. TGIF! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
May 06, 2022•30 min
In 1989, Andrew Sullivan wrote “Here Comes The Groom,” an essay making the conservative case for gay marriage. Less than four decades later, the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. How did that happen in such an amazingly short time? Why were gay rights won so quickly? Was there something about the nature of that movement that made it so successful? Today, a provocative conversation with Andrew Sullivan about what we can learn from the history of gay rights, how gay bec...
May 03, 2022•1 hr 49 min
The average American adult spends over three hours a day staring into their phone. If you’re a teenager it’s even worse – seven hours. What’s really troubling is that in study after study, people say that they want to be looking at their screens less. They just don’t know how. They’ve lost control. Johann Hari interviewed over 200 of the world’s leading experts on focus and attention for his new book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again. What he found was that...
Apr 27, 2022•1 hr
If you read Common Sense, you know that the best day of the week is Friday, when Nellie Bowles delivers us all the news from the week that was. This Friday, we bring you an Honestly special: TGIF! This time built just for your ears and brought to you by America’s favorite lesbians: Nellie and dear friend of the pod, Katie Herzog. Featuring: The end of the mask mandates, Biden and fellow aging American leaders, the end of CNN+, Libs of Tiktok, and finding some hope in unity around... balls. It's ...
Apr 22, 2022•44 min
If you’re confused about what is happening with the economy right now, so are we. Why is inflation up 8.5%? Who’s to blame? Is it the Democrats? Or everyone that’s been pushing easy money? What should we do in the long term? The short term? Should we be renting? Buying? Good time to get into the market? Or should we be putting a couple thousand away under the mattress? Or into crypto? Today, Tyler Cowen is here to answer all of your burning questions about the economy. Cowen is a professor at Ge...
Apr 19, 2022•1 hr 6 min
The Exodus—the story of the Israelites’ freedom from Egyptian slavery 3,000 years ago—is the ultimate story of freedom. And not just for Jews. But for people seeking liberation from subjugation in so many other times and places. Including here in America. From the founding fathers, to abolitionists like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas, to presidents like Lincoln and leaders like Martin Luther King Jr, the themes and symbols and moral truths of the Exodus story have been at the core of how A...
Apr 14, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Perhaps you’ve noticed that the thing we call “social media'' is deeply antisocial—the thing that promised to unite us has done precisely the opposite. A lot of people have tried to explain why. They blame Mark Zuckerberg. Or Jack Dorsey. Or the attention-stealing algorithms of TikTok. Or capitalism. Or human nature. But the best explanation I have read to date was just published in the Atlantic by my guest today Jonathan Haidt. It is a must-read essay, as are Jonathan’s books, “The Righteous Mi...
Apr 12, 2022•1 hr 41 min
If you read Common Sense, you know that the best day of the week is Friday, when Nellie Bowles delivers us all the news from the week that was. This Friday, we bring you an Honestly special: TGIF! This time built just for your ears and brought to you by America’s favorite lesbians: Nellie and dear friend of the pod, Katie Herzog. Featuring: Elon Musk v. Twitter, BLM corruption, inflation, “don’t say gay,” plus special guest Jeff Ross, America’s Roastmaster General, on jokes about alopecia. Inclu...
Apr 08, 2022•46 min
In 1973, Leonard Cohen announced he was done with music for good. The same year, in October, war broke out in Israel. The Yom Kippur War would become the bloodiest in Israel’s young history—and Cohen was there to witness it. As the war broke out, he left his home on the Greek island of Hydra to fly into the warzone. Leonard Cohen never said much about why he went to the front. What we know is that in the months that followed, he would write “Who By Fire.” Five decades later, on Spotify and in sy...
Apr 06, 2022•1 hr 24 min
David Sacks is a paradox. The entrepreneur and venture capitalist helped lay the foundations of the digital world we now live in: He was one of the members of what's known as the PayPal Mafia, alongside people like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Max Levchin. He’s also been an early investor in some companies you may have heard of: Airbnb, Facebook, Slack, SpaceX, Twitter, Uber. At the same time, he is something of a whistleblower from inside the world of tech. He believes that Big Tech has far too m...
Mar 29, 2022•1 hr 14 min
Today we are republishing Bari’s appearance on Hoover Institute’s Uncommon Knowledge Podcast, hosted by Peter Robinson. Peter Robinson is probably best known as a speech-writer for President Ronald Regan. He was the guy who wrote the famous line, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Bari and Peter talk about the social movements shaping our culture, how the personal has become political, anti-semitism and the future of the news media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoic...
Mar 25, 2022•1 hr 3 min
It’s been a month since Russia invaded Ukraine. About a fourth of Ukraine’s population has been displaced. Thousands, if not more, have died. And still, ordinary Ukrainians – professors, engineers, ballerinas – are taking up arms to defend their homes and their land. Why do they stay? And do they think the fight can be won? Today, I talk to three people who have become inadvertent war correspondents in what they call “the fight against evil.” Katerina Sergatskova reported from Kiev and Lviv. Vla...
Mar 23, 2022•1 hr 10 min
What if I told you that all the brokenness in our society—from the increased rates in suicide and addiction to the decreased rates in marriage and sex to the crisis of faith in everything from the CDC to political leaders to our democratic elections—weren’t a series of separate catastrophes but symptoms of one underlying condition? That’s the argument of my guest today, Yuval Levin. Yuval is a journalist and academic. He has served as a congressional staffer and as a domestic policy staff member...
Mar 18, 2022•1 hr 30 min
For the past three weeks, we have watched the people of Ukraine and their president breathe life into virtues that many of us thought were dead or on life support: duty, sacrifice, responsibility, leadership…and courage. Unbelievable courage. The Ukrainian people know what they’re fighting for. Do we? Today, no interview. Instead Bari speaks about what we can learn from watching President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people. To read the full text, please go to: bariweiss.substack.com Learn more ab...
Mar 16, 2022•38 min
Russia’s war against Ukraine has been raging on for almost two weeks now and Ukraine is in crisis. President Zelensky has been begging the United States, together with their allies, to enforce a “no fly zone,” to save innocent lives and help Ukraine win a war they seem likely to lose otherwise. The U.S. has refused. So has NATO. Why? On today’s episode, Eli Lake and Damir Marusic explain the benefits and risks of imposing a no fly zone over Ukraine, and what’s at stake—for Ukraine, for the U.S.,...
Mar 10, 2022•48 min
Lia Thomas is a transgender woman who has, in one year, become the star athlete of the women’s swim team at The University of Pennsylvania. When she competed on the men’s team, she was seeded no. 462 in the NCAA. Now, she’s seeded No. 1 and expected to beat Olympic gold medalist Katy Ledecky, widely considered one of the greatest female swimmers of all time, later this month at the NCAA championship. Thomas won’t stop there. She recently told Sports Illustrated that she has her sights set on the...
Mar 06, 2022•27 min
Air raid sirens have been ringing out over the capital of Ukraine for the past week. Russian troops have laid siege to Kharkiv, the second biggest city in the country, and the city of Kherson in the south has already fallen. More than a half of a million Ukranians have fled their homes, with little more than a suitcase or two. Hundreds have been confirmed dead, and surely that number is just the beginning. Why did Putin invade Ukraine at this moment? What is his endgame—and what is the West’s? D...
Mar 03, 2022•1 hr 6 min
Zoe Strimpel on the collapse of Western authority, self and geopolitical understanding— and the predictably catastrophic results of our politics of retrenchment, appeasement and pacifism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 25, 2022•24 min
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is one of those pioneering American leaders whose story is for the history books. Born in the segregated south in the 1950s, Rice couldn’t step foot in certain movie theaters and restaurants when she was a little girl. By the time she stepped foot in the White House as a National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State, she was one of the most powerful people in the world—and the highest ranking black woman in the history of the United States. On t...
Feb 22, 2022•59 min
Right now, the Winter Olympics are underway in Beijing. But for the Chinese Communist Party, the 2022 Games are an opportunity not simply for athleticism, but for authoritarianism. Athletes at the Games are subject not just to official Olympics rules, but also the heavy hand of the CCP. They are being spied on—and they have been warned, including by Nancy Pelosi, not to criticize the injustices China is committing in plain sight. Why is America participating in an Olympics in a country committin...
Feb 16, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Eric Scmidt has been a pioneer at every chapter of the tech revolution… from the very beginnings of the internet to helming Google for more than a decade. Now, he’s focused on the next iteration of our digital world: artificial intelligence. His most recent book, written with Henry Kissinger and Daniel Huttenlocker, is called “The Age of AI: And our Human Future.” It investigates how AI is transforming the very foundations of what it means to be human. Today, our quick question to Google’s forme...
Feb 11, 2022•59 min
Ever since the end of World War II, America has been the dominant world superpower. We have been ready to use that power to defend our national interest. Or to defend a certain set of values. Or both. But there has always been a tension in this country between isolationism and interventionism. Between those among us who think we should maintain an active role in world affairs—and those who want to pull back and focus on our myriad problems here at home. That long standing debate is being reignit...
Feb 09, 2022•1 hr 29 min
