Kemi Badenoch just became the first black woman to lead the UK’s Conservative Party, the oldest in British politics, colloquially known as “the Tories.” She’s also 44, has three children, grew up in Nigeria, actually worked at McDonald’s (unlike some American politicians who have claimed to), didn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge, and has a master’s degree in computer engineering. Not exactly your typical Tory party leader profile. But it’s Kemi Badenoch who has just inherited a Conservative Party th...
Dec 12, 2024•1 hr 25 min
Democrats once seemed to have a monopoly on Silicon Valley. Perhaps you remember when Elon Musk bought Twitter and posted pictures of cabinets at the old office filled with “#StayWoke” T-shirts. But just as the country is realigning itself along new ideological and political lines, so is the tech capital of the world. In 2024, many of the Valley’s biggest tech titans came out with their unabashed support for Donald Trump. There was, of course, Elon Musk. . . but also WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum...
Dec 10, 2024•1 hr 46 min
In the 2010s, Ryan Holiday was the head of marketing for the controversial clothing brand American Apparel, and the sought-after media strategist for people like the womanizing blogger Tucker Max. Then he wrote an exposé called Trust Me, I’m Lying, which lifted the veil on his world of media manipulation. Now, he is an advocate of the ancient philosophy of stoicism, which he roughly defines as the idea that we do not control what happens but we do control how we respond, and that it’s best to re...
Dec 05, 2024•57 min
This week marked a dramatic escalation in Syria’s 13-year civil war. Rebel factions launched their most audacious offensive in years, capturing Aleppo, the focal point of the war for over a decade. This marked the most serious challenge to President Bashar al-Assad’s government and its Russian- and Iranian-backed allies in nearly a decade. Syrian and Russian forces are currently unleashing joint air strikes in a desperate attempt to reclaim the city. Iran has thrown its weight behind al-Assad, p...
Dec 03, 2024•1 hr 15 min
As you’re recovering from indulging in stuffing and pecan pie, we wanted to bring you a special bonus episode we put together in collaboration with our friends at StoryCorps. If you haven’t heard of StoryCorps, it’s an organization that has been gathering individual stories from across the country for over 20 years and collects them in the U.S. Library of Congress. StoryCorps’s online archive now has the largest single collection of human voices ever gathered. Today, we wanted to play seven stor...
Nov 30, 2024•34 min
Happy Thanksgiving, Honestly listeners! If you’re anything like the rest of America, you’ll be spending the day with family, cooking turkey, eating sweet potatoes, and. . . watching football. Whether or not you’re from Texas, the game on most American TVs on Thanksgiving Day will be the Dallas Cowboys. But just behind the players are the real stars of the show: blue and white pom-poms accenting sparkly white cowboy boots dancing to the sound of “Thunderstruck” for 41.8 million viewers at home. W...
Nov 28, 2024•56 min
Peggy Noonan does what we try to do every day at The Free Press: tell the truth, make sense of things plainly and without pretension, frame the news in a way that helps the reader make sense of things, and put things in a historical context that gives the day-to-day depth and meaning. The very annoying thing about Peggy Noonan is that she makes the thing that we know is so very hard look so very easy. And she does it week after week after week in The Wall Street Journal—which adds up to more tha...
Nov 26, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Throughout the election, we heard one warning, repeated ad infinitum: A Donald Trump victory would precipitate a fascist dictatorship, and the United States would soon resemble Nazi Germany. But Democrats didn’t take up arms to defend the ramparts of democracy. They didn’t repel Trump’s storm troopers who descended on Washington. Instead, something more. . . traditional happened. President Joe Biden welcomed Donald Trump to the White House, congratulated him, and promised a “smooth transition.” ...
Nov 21, 2024•1 hr
Trump’s gains among working-class voters of all races—according to exit polls, he won the majority of Latino men at 55 percent—represent the ongoing realignment of the Republican Party. What was once Reagan’s party of free trade, low taxes, and limited government seems to be shifting toward a multiracial working-class party that celebrates economic protectionism and credibly courts unions. But what will this shift mean for the future of the party. . . and American politics? Trump’s cabinet appoi...
Nov 19, 2024•1 hr 13 min
On Tuesday night, president-elect Donald Trump announced that the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, along with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy will head a new initiative in the Trump administration: the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE.” Aside from the very strange fact that internet meme culture has now landed in the White House—Dogecoin is a memecoin—more importantly, what the announcement solidifies is the triumph of the counter-elite. A bunch of oddball outsiders ran against an ...
Nov 14, 2024•1 hr 56 min
Even your most optimistic Mar-a-Lago member didn’t see Donald Trump winning the popular vote and taking all seven swing states. He even came within five points of taking the Democratic stronghold of New Jersey! So, what on earth does the Democratic Party do next? They can stay the course and resist. It’s what they did the last time Trump won. In the aftermath of Trump’s 2016 victory, America was stunned. Every time he opened his mouth, Trump exploded political norms, and the Democratic Party res...
Nov 12, 2024•43 min
Donald Trump has been elected president of the United States. . . again. It was a historic political comeback for a candidate rejected by the people just four years ago. But this time, Trump took almost every coveted state: Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. And he leads in Nevada and Arizona. The entire blue wall. . . turned red. And unlike 2016, this was not just an Electoral College victory. Surprising pollsters and betting markets alike, Trump also won the popular vo...
Nov 07, 2024•1 hr 19 min
Our newsroom reflects our readers: We aren’t voting in unison. Today, Bari Weiss explains how The Free Press is handling Election Day inside the office. Read Bari’s full essay. If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today. Go to groundnews.com/Honestly to get 50% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and unlock world-wide perspectives on today’s biggest news stories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit me...
Nov 05, 2024•12 min
Bullshit is an American tradition. Think the theatrics of P.T. Barnum, miracle products sold ad nauseam on television in the 1980s and, of course, politicians. Who can forget President Bill Clinton saying “It depends upon what the meaning of the word is is” during his grand jury testimony in the Monica Lewinsky scandal? And then there’s Donald Trump. He presents as a man with no fact-checking filter, someone happily buying his own convenient bullshit. That’s not quite the same thing as lying. Th...
Nov 02, 2024•42 min
Need a break from political programming? Well, today we have a special treat: It’s The Free Press’s scary movie Halloween special! It’s that time of year: changing leaves, pumpkin spice lattes, animal costumes with sex appeal and, of course, gory, bloody, nightmare-inducing horror movies. We all remember the first horror movie that we were allowed to watch—or maybe that we weren’t allowed to watch, but saw anyway: Silence of the Lambs, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, The Blair Witch Project, Jaws...
Oct 31, 2024•1 hr 12 min
There are no perfect candidates. But what do you do when both candidates are not just imperfect but deeply flawed, and seen by many as unqualified for the job? We are just one week away from a presidential election that will decide if the next four years are helmed by Vice President Kamala Harris or former president Donald Trump. I know many people who are still undecided. Some of them work at The Free Press. These undecided voters have just one presidential debate to reference, and as my friend...
Oct 29, 2024•2 hr 18 min
We don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that we’re standing at the precipice of what could be a third world war. At the very least, the thing that we refer to as the “Free World” is burning at its outer edges. Just a few weeks ago, Iran launched its largest-ever ballistic missile attack against Israel, while its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, continue to wage war against Israel, making use of the steady flow of weaponry and funding from Iran—which is ever closer to having nuclear weapons. The ...
Oct 27, 2024•1 hr 11 min
Gad Saad was born in Beirut in 1964 into one of the last Jewish families to remain in Lebanon. But the country that was once called “the Paris of the Middle East” began to turn. Saad remembers one day at school when a fellow student told his class that he wanted to be a “Jew-killer” when he grew up. The rest of the kids laughed. By 1975, Lebanon descended into a brutal civil war and Saad said death awaited him at every millisecond of the day. Even through the danger and turmoil, his family thoug...
Oct 24, 2024•1 hr 38 min
In the last year, we’ve witnessed a disturbing trend among some on the fringe left, who cheer those they think are resisting Western imperialism. Even when those anti-imperialists are. . . designated terrorist groups. This misguided support was on full display on the anniversary of October 7, when protesters marched through London chanting, “I love Hezbollah”, and in New York, where they flew flags for the Iran-backed militia group flags and carried “New York for Hezbollah” signs. It was a remar...
Oct 22, 2024•57 min
It would have been unthinkable for Brianna Wu to have appeared on Honestly a decade ago (if the show had existed back then). But Brianna isn’t most people. I actually can’t think of anyone else quite like her. She’s a trans woman who advocates passionately for trans healthcare, but thinks many trans activists have alienated women and feminists. She’s a progressive who once called Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “one of the best politicians in America,” but is today a staunch supporter of Israel. She wa...
Oct 17, 2024•1 hr 22 min
A few weeks ago, we had Sarah Longwell and David French, two prominent conservatives, on Honestly to explain why they’re supporting Vice President Kamala Harris this presidential election. There are a lot of people like them—conservatives who are so staunchly never Trump that they are supporting the Democratic candidate. What’s less common—or, at least, less talked about—are the Democrats who are voting for Donald Trump. Maybe there are fewer Democrats crossing the aisle to vote for Trump in 202...
Oct 15, 2024•1 hr 31 min
We all know the horrid tale of what happened in Israel on October 7, 2023. Waves of gunmen attacked families in their homes and young people attending a music festival. The marauders filmed their murders on GoPro cameras. They burned families alive in their safe rooms; raped, and mutilated their victims; and took hostages back to Gaza on golf carts. Why did they do it? For many critics of Israel, the horrific violence of October 7 was the predictable response to the “occupation”—never mind that ...
Oct 12, 2024•46 min
We’ve released a few episodes on Honestly for the anniversary of October 7. Today, we’re bringing you one more conversation with someone who has been breaking news on the ground every single day of this war: journalist Trey Yingst. On the morning of October 7, Trey was in Israel’s south, reporting on the massacre as it unfolded. He saw bodies dragged into vehicles, mothers trying to save their children, and the bloodshed—unlike anything he had ever seen—in the communities and kibbutzim. He repor...
Oct 10, 2024•1 hr 36 min
We expected Hamas to kill Jews. We didn’t expect Americans to celebrate it. Today on Honestly, Bari Weiss’s reflections on the anniversary of October 7. Plus, one of our most memorable episodes of the last year. A quick note: Since the earliest hours of October 7, 2023, we have published more than 150 reports, features, essays, podcasts, and videos, many from on the ground in Israel, the Palestinian territories, and more recently, Lebanon and Syria. In The Free Press, you’ll find all of those pr...
Oct 07, 2024•1 hr 4 min
When Emily Oster was a kid in the 1980s in New Haven, Connecticut, she grew up on a block with a lot of other children. Every day after dinner, around 6:30, everyone emptied out of their houses and went down to the church parking lot where they engaged in all kinds of unsupervised activities—throwing balls at each other in front of the church wall, climbing up trees and sometimes falling out of them, riding Hot Wheels until people skinned their knees. There was street hockey and there were scrap...
Oct 05, 2024•1 hr 14 min
When we planned the conversation you’re going to hear today—a live conversation with Douglas Murray—we thought it would be a searching conversation that we’d release on the anniversary of October 7th, looking back at a year of war from a slightly quieter moment. You’ll hear some of that today. But the moment is anything but quiet. As we prepared yesterday afternoon for this conversation, the war that Iran has outsourced to its proxies for the last year finally became a war being waged by Iran it...
Oct 02, 2024•1 hr 12 min
Megyn Kelly cut her teeth in the mainstream media and became one of the most influential voices in the political debate. From her meteoric rise at Fox News to her stint at NBC, Megyn Kelly has been a central figure in American journalism for over a decade. You might recall her contentious exchange with then-candidate Donald Trump during a Republican presidential debate in 2015. Kelly asked him about the names he’d called women—such as “fat pigs” and “dogs.” Trump’s response, in part: “I’ve been ...
Oct 01, 2024•56 min
Last week, a man armed with an assault rifle was apprehended on a southern Florida golf course. He was planning to murder Donald Trump on the links. It was the second near miss in two months. It seems likely that the shooter, Ryan Routh, was acting alone. But he is not alone in the hatred he has for Trump. He shares that with millions of Americans. In many people’s eyes, the 45th president of the United States is an existential threat to our republic. And ever since Trump won the Republican nomi...
Sep 26, 2024•42 min
If you’re a listener of this show, then you’ve probably heard of the horseshoe theory. It’s basically this idea that when you go far enough to the left and far enough to the right, the voices start to sound pretty similar. This is certainly the case when you listen to sound bites of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump talk about trade and tariffs. But during this time—what my colleague Peter Savodnik has called our great political scramble—some voices don’t seem to fit in anywhere, voices like ...
Sep 24, 2024•45 min
On Tuesday, hundreds of encrypted pagers in Lebanon and Syria began exploding at the same time. Lebanon’s health minister said Tuesday that at least nine people were killed and 2,800 were injured. The tiny country’s hospitals were overwhelmed with patients suffering from burn wounds, blown-up hands, and groin injuries. The pagers belonged to members of the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah. Then, just 24 hours later, a second wave of thousands more explosions again went off simultaneously in...
Sep 19, 2024•59 min
