The American dream is the most important of our national myths. It’s the idea that, with hard work and determination, anyone in this country can achieve middle-class security, own a home, start a family, and provide the children they raise with a better life than they had. Is that still true? On the one hand, our economy is the envy of the world. We are the richest country, leading the pack when it comes to innovation. And more people choose to move here for economic opportunity than to any othe...
Sep 17, 2024•1 hr 10 min
Last night was the much-anticipated presidential debate between incumbent vice president Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump. There was no live audience, but the bashing and accusations, one against the other, were all the same. Trump called Kamala a Marxist. Kamala called Trump a liar. Kamala said Trump is for America’s wealthiest. Trump said Kamala is for killing babies at term. Trump said Kamala “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison.” And Kamala said Trum...
Sep 11, 2024•45 min
Tucker Carlson is perhaps the country’s most influential conservative commentator; his eponymous podcast is routinely among the most downloaded shows on the internet. Despite his endless fulminations against the mainstream media, Carlson has an impeccable mainstream media pedigree. He’s hit for the cycle on cable news, having hosted shows on Fox, MSNBC, and CNN. After he was fired from Fox News in 2023, under circumstances that are still hotly disputed, Carlson quickly reconstituted his career o...
Sep 10, 2024•1 hr 13 min
Last year, at colleges across America, students etched themselves into history, or infamy, with the most dramatic campus protests in a generation. In preparation for the fall semester, some major universities—from NYU to UCLA—have implemented new rules and decided to enforce old ones to protect Jewish students from activists who had declared sections of campus no-go zones for Zionists. Universities that turn a blind eye to the Tentifada phenomenon now risk violating federal statute. Nonetheless,...
Sep 07, 2024•44 min
A few weeks ago, at the much-anticipated Democratic National Convention, we witnessed the coronation of Kamala Harris. It was a star-studded event. We got the Obamas, the Clintons, Mindy Kaling, Kerry Washington, Kenan Thompson—and Oprah! Basically every Democratic A-lister you could think of came out in high fashion. (Kamala came out in a Chloé pantsuit.) And then there were the Republicans: Mesa, Arizona mayor John Giles, former Trump White House staffer Olivia Troye, former Trump White House ...
Sep 05, 2024•1 hr 31 min
In the past few weeks, there’s been an increasing number of threats to freedom of speech around the world. In France, authorities arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov for failing to adequately moderate content and prevent criminal activity on his platform. In the UK, since the outbreak of anti-immigration riots, police have arrested individuals merely for posting comments online. The Labour-led government has suggested expanding measures to remove “legal but harmful” content. In Brazil, President L...
Sep 03, 2024•46 min
John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market, is one of the most consequential American entrepreneurs of our time. Whole Foods began in 1980 as a small hippie health food store in Austin, Texas. Under Mackey’s leadership, it grew into the largest organic foods supermarket chain in the United States, selling to Amazon in 2017 for nearly $14 billion. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the company revolutionized the food industry, mainstreaming health-consciousness for a mass market. Despite the...
Aug 29, 2024•42 min
It’s that time of year again–reliably bumming out students and parents alike… it ’s back to school! But back to school is also a time to reflect on the state of education in this country… and it’s not all that great. America is one of the richest countries in the world. But you wouldn’t know it if you looked at our education statistics. We’re 16th in science globally. In Math, we scored below the average and well below the scores of the top five countries, all of which were in Asia. And in 2018,...
Aug 27, 2024•1 hr 12 min
In the 1972 presidential election, Democratic candidate George McGovern was soundly defeated by Richard Nixon. It was a bloodbath. He lost 49 states, a result widely attributed to his positions being “too liberal” for the American mainstream. Four decades later, in a more liberal America, McGovern released a book called What It Means to Be a Democrat, outlining core values that define the Democratic Party. Because, he argued, in his day, during the “1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago...
Aug 23, 2024•47 min
Most humans are cautious by nature. We naturally like to do what’s comfortable and safe. But comfortable and safe don’t usually lead to. . . well, success. In fact, the most successful people in the world share something in common: They love risk. That’s true of the best poker players, hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, and crypto traders. All of these people consider statistics; they embrace uncertainty; and they make bold predictions that ultimately pay off for themselves—and sometimes ...
Aug 20, 2024•1 hr 1 min
A few months ago, we learned about a young man whose name we’re withholding, which is something we very rarely do, because he insists it’s for his safety. This young Palestinian man is from a small village in the West Bank, and he grew up there with limited access to water and without a regular supply of electricity. Most of the kids he grew up with dropped out of school and went into manual labor. But this young man chose a different path. He won a scholarship to study abroad for college. He ea...
Aug 15, 2024•1 hr 25 min
Never before have people felt more comfortable weighing in on other people’s lives. What diet to do, what to wear, how to make yourself attractive to the opposite sex, whether or not you should put money into that new crypto coin, if you should let your kids self-soothe, and on and on—but most of it, this endless supply of advice, is actually pretty bad. Weekly popular advice columns, like Dear Abby and Ask E. Jean, have vanished. And in their place is finger-wagging, political posturing, and st...
Aug 13, 2024•1 hr 1 min
A few weeks ago, very few people outside of the Beltway and niche media circles had ever heard the name Tim Walz. Almost overnight, the relatively obscure governor from Minnesota started to gain traction thanks to a viral clip where he called J.D. Vance “weird.” It resonated with a lot of people. He came across as direct, plainspoken, and affable. And on Tuesday, August 6, Vice President Kamala Harris officially announced him as her running mate. The conventional wisdom was that Harris would pic...
Aug 08, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Last month, we ran an episode here by one of our amazing reporters, Eli Lake, that took us back to the tumultuous year of 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson dropped out of his own reelection race, and the resulting turmoil at the Democratic convention that followed that summer in Chicago. At the time of that episode, of course, Biden was still in the race, and Eli was guiding us through that history lesson in order to help us make sense of the present moment, and to indicate what might happen ne...
Aug 06, 2024•44 min
On Monday, the markets had one of its worst trading days since the 2008 financial crisis. Stocks tumbled around the world, with a global sell-off, amid fears of a recession. The VIX (an index often called “Wall Street’s Fear Gauge”) was at times today as high as we saw it when the economy was shutting down for Covid. This comes on the tail of a pretty insane news cycle: a presidential assassination attempt, Joe Biden dropping out of the race, the coronation of a new Democratic nominee, a stolen ...
Aug 06, 2024•38 min
Today, we have a special story from two friends and former Free Pressers, Andy Mills and Matt Boll. They have a new podcast, Reflector, that I think you’re going to love, and we’re sharing an episode where they look at some of the hidden truths and misconceptions about alcoholism and how to treat it. Alcohol consumption increased more during the Covid years than it had at any time in the past 50 years. In fact, Americans were drinking so much that from 2020 through 2021, there were approximately...
Aug 01, 2024•59 min
On Saturday afternoon, a Hezbollah rocket fired from southern Lebanon struck a soccer field in the village of Majdal Shams in Israel’s north, slaughtering 12 children. For the last 10 months, many have warned that Israel is on the brink of a major war with Hezbollah. But the truth is that Hezbollah has been fighting—and winning—in Israel’s north since October 8. For the past 10 months, Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy terror group that controls southern Lebanon, has essentially redrawn the northern ...
Jul 30, 2024•1 hr 17 min
Most of the media-verse right now is focused on a handful of serious and important questions: Kamala’s VP pick, if Democrats have been anti-Democratic, if Kamala can receive Biden’s campaign money without a legal battle. And whether or not China will see the opportunity of our lame-duck president to make moves against Taiwan. But today we aren’t here to talk about any of that. Today we’re here to talk about memes and whether or not Kamala Harris is “brat.” On Sunday, July 21, we found out that P...
Jul 25, 2024•1 hr 1 min
The United States locks up nearly two million people, the highest number of prisoners for any country in the world. That represents about 20 percent of the world’s prison population, even though the U.S. makes up only around 5 percent of the global population. It's not surprising that over the past two decades, more and more people have embraced the idea of criminal justice reform. In 2020, there were calls around the country to defund the police and divert money to programs meant to address the...
Jul 23, 2024•1 hr 32 min
Tonight, President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and endorsed Kamala Harris to be the Democratic nominee. After weeks of speculation, criticism of his candidacy, concern about his health, and withdrawal of donors, President Biden finally said: “It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling m...
Jul 22, 2024•58 min
For the past few decades, it’s been conventional wisdom in D.C. that “demographics are destiny.” That the increased share of immigrants, young people, and racial minorities across the country would build a bulletproof coalition for the Democratic Party, swelling their ranks and keeping them in power forever. Those who deviated from this expectation could expect to be called sellouts, race traitors, and Uncle Toms. Recall Joe Biden’s infamous interview with radio host Charlamagne tha God, when he...
Jul 18, 2024•42 min
A lot happened in American politics last night: the Biden interview, the Vance unveiling, Trump’s RNC entrance—his first public appearance since Saturday’s shooting. And there, to help you all make sense of it, was The Free Press team in our first-ever live video on X. To be honest, we weren’t sure how it was going to go. We were blown away by the response. There were some 350,000 of you watching this experiment, in which we had the kind of panel we wish were assembled on cable news, or as host ...
Jul 16, 2024•1 hr 27 min
As you now well know, at 6:11 p.m. on Saturday evening, shots rang out at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. One person, a 50-year-old man named Cory Comperatore, was killed. Two others, David Dutch and James Copenhaver, were gravely injured. Trump’s ear was grazed by a bullet. Before the 45th president was whisked away by Secret Service, he emerged defiant with his fist pumping in the air, blood on his ear and face. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” he yelled at the crowd, to which they chanted back: ...
Jul 16, 2024•1 hr 56 min
Yesterday, Donald Trump was shot at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. A few minutes into the rally, a gunman opened fire, and a bullet pierced the former president’s ear. He ducked to the ground, the Secret Service piled on top of him, supporters screamed, and chaos erupted through the crowd. Trump suffered a superficial wound, but one rally attendee was killed and two others were critically injured. Moments after the shooting, images of Trump flooded the internet—fist clenched, blood running dow...
Jul 14, 2024•32 min
A few weeks ago, fresh from being knighted by King Charles, historian Sir Niall Ferguson officially joined The Free Press as a columnist. His first piece was rather provocatively called “We’re All Soviets Now.” He argued why he thinks today’s United States resembles the decaying Soviet Union of the ’70s and ’80s. We’re physically unwell, heavily in debt, run by an out-of-touch gerontocracy, and subjected to a bogus ideology pushed by elites. This was published before the disastrous presidential ...
Jul 11, 2024•1 hr 1 min
As some of you know, Nellie and Bari are having another baby—any moment now—maybe even by the time this podcast is published! Going from one kid to two is no small challenge, so we’re doing something a little different on the podcast today. In an attempt to quell the nerves, we decided to call up some of our favorite parents to give Nellie and Bari advice before they become a family of four. We ask Bethany Mandel about the importance of birth order; Elon Gold about how to protect your marriage a...
Jul 09, 2024•1 hr 11 min
On our nation’s 248th birthday, Joe Biden faces the wrath of a thousand pundits. The whole world watched the elected leader of the world’s oldest republic befogged, slack-jawed, and mentally vacant in a debate he had to win. A recent poll from CBS showed that after Biden’s performance last week, 72 percent of registered voters believed the man lacked the cognitive ability to be president. Even his closest friends and sycophants are pleading for the old man to hang it up. The New York Times edito...
Jul 04, 2024•43 min
The past few days have been perhaps the most dramatic political spectacle since November 8, 2016. Ever since President Biden’s disastrous debate performance last Thursday, there has been a panic around the country. Can he still be on the Democratic ticket in 2024? And who has actually been running the United States for the past four years? Every minute, another shoe drops. Another grim poll, another devastating leak. All of which suggests that Biden has to throw in the towel. But the White House...
Jul 04, 2024•56 min
In January, I was announced as a 2024 TED speaker in Vancouver. Predictably, a small group of very loud people were angry—mostly on Twitter. Then, five TED fellows resigned. They wrote a letter to the head of TED, Chris Anderson, titled: “TED Fellows Refuse to Be Associated with Genocide Apologists.” They pleaded to disinvite me, plus a few others who had been asked to speak, and take us off the program. A strange thing considering that TED is devoted to curiosity, reason, wonder, and the pursui...
Jul 02, 2024•33 min
There was no raucous audience cheering and jeering last night in Atlanta, but the first presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump was a painful affair. Even the most steadfast Biden partisans were devastated, panicked, and dazed, many of them waking up this morning saying the quiet part out loud: we can’t possibly run this candidate in November. Here to break it down this morning are Mary Katharine Ham and Ben Smith. Mary Katharine is a Fox News analyst an...
Jun 28, 2024•37 min
