Chris — an old friend and, in my view, one of the sharpest right-of-center writers in journalism — returns to the Dishcast. A senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and contributing editor to the Claremont Review of Books, his latest book, The Age of Entitlement, is a constitutional narrative of the last half-century that is indispensable — especially for liberals — in understanding the roots of our polarization. We discussed the book last year . This time on the pod, Chris has just returned f...
Oct 21, 2022•1 hr 19 min
Yoram Hazony is a philosopher, Bible scholar, and political theorist. He founded the Shalem Center, a research institute in Israel, and he’s currently president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and serves as chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation in DC. The author of many books, including The Virtue of Nationalism , his most recent is Conservatism: A Rediscovery . He is one of the most compelling writers in the “post-liberalism” camp on the right. I think you’ll find I challenged him on ever...
Oct 14, 2022•1 hr 34 min
Frank is a longtime writer at the NYT — ranging from White House correspondent to chief restaurant critic to op-ed columnist, and now also a journalism professor at Duke. In his early days at the Detroit Free Press, he was a war correspondent, chief movie critic, and religion writer. We’ve known each other for many years, gay writers of the same generation. His latest book is the bestselling memoir The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found , about aging and optimism after Frank began to go bl...
Oct 07, 2022•1 hr 19 min
Richard Reeves is a senior fellow at Brookings, where he directs the Boys and Men Project. He’s also been the director of Demos — the London-based political think-tank — an adviser to Nick Clegg in David Cameron’s coalition government, and a Guardian journalist. His latest book is Of Boys and Men : Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It . (For more, follow his new substack .) I’m fascinated by the challenges of modernity for the weaker sex (men), and Richard h...
Sep 30, 2022•1 hr 33 min
As you’ll tell from my brief new intro to this 2006 conversation, my voice right now is so eviscerated I can’t speak at all. Silenced at last! So here is a very early experiment I did with kinda-podcasting, when I took a microphone to Hitch’s place and let the tape roll. A blast from the grave in some ways. We mainly debated the nature of religion and the global war on terrorism. For two clips — on the divinity of Jesus, and whether the Golden Rule is actually “cruel and stupid,” as Hitch put it...
Sep 23, 2022•2 hr 7 min
Louise Perry is a writer and campaigner against sexual violence. This year she co-founded a non-partisan feminist think tank called The Other Half, where she serves as Research Director. Her debut book is The Case Against the Sexual Revolution : A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century , where she takes on casual sex, porn, BDSM, dating apps and prostitution, all from a post-liberal perspective. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus e...
Sep 16, 2022•1 hr 25 min
Matthew Rose is a scholar of religion. He’s currently Senior Fellow and Director of the Barry Center on the University and Intellectual Life — a project of the Morningside Institute — and he previously taught at Villanova. He’s written for magazines such as First Things and The Weekly Standard, and his newest book is A World After Liberalism . It’s an examination of five far-right thinkers, from Julius Evola to Sam Francis, who are proving increasingly influential in post-liberal conservatism in...
Sep 09, 2022•1 hr 22 min
How to think about DeSantis? We decided to ask Dexter Filkins, who recently wrote this super-smart profile of the man for The New Yorker, which the Dish discussed here . Dexter is an award-winning journalist best known for covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the New York Times. His book, The Forever War , won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award. He’s the best in the business, a native of Florida, and a longtime friend of the Dish. This is a public episode. If you'd like to disc...
Aug 12, 2022•1 hr 17 min
Sohrab is a founder and editor of Compact: A Radical American Journal , and he’s a contributing editor at The American Conservative. He spent nearly a decade at News Corp. — as the op-ed editor of the New York Post and as a columnist and editor with the WSJ opinion pages in New York and London. His books include From Fire, by Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith and The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos . A new voice for a new conservatism, I tried to tal...
Aug 05, 2022•1 hr 48 min
He’s in the news again this week — after persuading Joe Manchin that the climate and healthcare bill he’s pushing isn’t inflationary. Larry Summers has had a storied career, as the chief economist of the World Bank, the treasury secretary under Clinton, and the director of the National Economic Council under Obama. He also was the president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006 and remains there as the Charles W. Eliot University Professor. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio...
Jul 29, 2022•1 hr 25 min
Fraser is a Scottish Catholic highlander who now edits (brilliantly) the Spectator in London. Deeply versed in Tory politics, and sympathetic to Boris, he seemed the ideal person to ask to explain what’s been going on in Westminster, what went so wrong under PM Johnson, and who is likely to replace him. It’s a one-stop guide to contemporary British politics in a mild Scottish accent. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Li...
Jul 22, 2022•1 hr 26 min
Peter is a political activist, most famously as a pioneering member of ACT UP — the grassroots AIDS group that challenged and changed the federal government. He founded both the Treatment Action Group (TAG) and the educational website AIDSmeds.com. An old friend and sparring partner, he also stars in the Oscar-nominated documentary “ How to Survive a Plague .” Check out his memoir, Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism . You can listen to the episode — which gets fiery at times — in the a...
Jul 15, 2022•1 hr 43 min
Matthew is a journalist who worked at The Weekly Standard and co-founded The Washington Free Beacon, where he served as editor-in-chief. Currently he’s a contributing editor at National Review, a columnist at Commentary, and a senior fellow and the Patrick and Charlene Neal Chair in American Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute. We discuss his wonderful book, The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism . You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above ...
Jul 08, 2022•1 hr 26 min
Jennifer Senior was a long-time staff writer at New York magazine and a daily book critic for the NYT. Her own book is the bestseller, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood . She’s now a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she won a 2022 Pulitzer for “ What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind, ” a story about 9/11. But in this episode we primarily focus on her essay, “ It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart .” You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click th...
Jul 01, 2022•1 hr 25 min
Jill is a journalist, academic, and the author of five books. She’s best known as the first woman to become executive editor at the New York Times, from 2011 to 2014. She’s currently a professor in the English department at Harvard. We’ve been friends forever. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). For two clips of our convo — on whether women are better observational reporters, and looking back at...
Jun 24, 2022•1 hr 36 min
David Goodhart is a British journalist. In 1995 he founded Prospect, the center-left political magazine, where he served as editor for 15 years, and then became the director of Demos, the cross-party think tank. His book The Road to Somewhere coined the terms “Anywheres” and “Somewheres” to help us understand populism in the contemporary West. We also discuss his latest book, Head Hand Heart: The Struggle for Dignity and Status in the 21st Century . You can listen to the episode right away in th...
Jun 17, 2022•1 hr 28 min
We took the podcast on the road this week — to Provincetown for a live chat with Jamie Kirchick, whose new book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington , I reviewed last week . We were able to discuss much more than could be covered in pixels — with questions from the audience as well. Many thanks to Twenty Summers for hosting the event. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). Read the fu...
Jun 10, 2022
Bob is a journalist, public intellectual, and the author of many books, including The Moral Animal , Nonzero , The Evolution of God , and Why Buddhism Is True. He’s written for countless magazines, including The New Republic, where he co-wrote the TRB column with Mickey Kaus. He and Mickey also co-founded Bloggingheads TV, and the two regularly converse on The Wright Show and The Parrot Room. He also has his own Substack, the Nonzero Newsletter. Bob is quite simply brilliant, and his books have ...
Jun 03, 2022
Fukuyama is simply the most sophisticated and nuanced political scientist in the field today. He’s currently at Stanford, but he’s also taught at Johns Hopkins and George Mason. The author of almost a dozen books, his most famous is The End of History and the Last Man , published shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His new book is Liberalism and Its Discontents . You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above, or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your...
May 28, 2022
David is a political writer and former attorney who took on high-profile cases for religious liberty. He was also a major in the Army Reserve who served in Iraq, and before that he served as president of FIRE, the campus free-speech group. David now writes for The Dispatch and The Atlantic, and his latest book is Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation . Last summer he wrote this wonderful review of my essay collection, Out On A Limb , but this is the first time...
May 20, 2022•1 hr 29 min
She needs no introduction — but in magazine history, Tina Brown is rightly deemed a legend, reviving Tatler , Vanity Fair and The New Yorker , before turning to the web and The Daily Beast (where I worked for her). Her new book is The Palace Papers . We talked journalism, life and royals. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above, or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app. For two clips of my convo with Ti...
May 13, 2022•1 hr 9 min
Douglas Murray is a British writer and commentator, primarily for The Spectator, and his latest book is The War on the West . It’s a powerful narrative of the past couple of decades, in which a small minority waged ideological war on the underpinnings of Western civilization: reason, toleration, free speech, color-blind racial politics. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app,” which will connect you to t...
May 06, 2022•1 hr 50 min
Bari was an opinion editor at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times before leaving to create her own op-ed page on Substack, “ Common Sense .” She’s also the author of How to Fight Anti-Semitism , and for some reason one of the most reviled figures on Left Twitter, despite being one of the most gifted editors of her generation. We talk groomers and culture war desperation and the amnesia of recent triumphs. This was a joint podcast, and you’ll be able to hear a somewhat longer version o...
Apr 29, 2022
Haidt is a social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at the NYU Stern School of Business, and he co-founded Heterodox Academy . His latest book is The Coddling of the American Mind , but our discussion centered on his new piece for The Atlantic, “ Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid ,” a history of social media. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). Read ...
Apr 15, 2022•1 hr 27 min
Nicholas is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale, where he directs the Human Nature Lab and co-directs the Yale Institute for Network Science. His latest book is Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live , and also check out Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society . We talk Covid, plagues, and friendship as a virtue. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can...
Apr 08, 2022•1 hr 30 min
Fiona Hill was an intel analyst under Bush and Obama and then served under Trump as senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council. Currently a senior fellow at Brookings, her new book is There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century . She also co-authored a book called Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin . It was a really pleasant chat — especially talking about our parallel paths from Britain to America. You can listen to the episode ...
Apr 01, 2022
Ramani is a tutor in the Department of Political Science at Oxford and a member of the Royal United Services Institute in London. He’s been to Russia and Ukraine many times in the course of getting his DPhil — the Oxford equivalent of a PhD — in International Relations. He has studied Russia’s wars in Chechnya and Syria, and has two books in the works — one on Russia in Africa and another on the current war in Ukraine. At just 28, Ramani is a bit of a phenom. I wanted a deep dive on the subject ...
Mar 25, 2022
Maia is the author of Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction , and her latest book, Undoing Drugs , which we cover in this episode. Much of her reporting and research on harm reduction is informed by her own history of drug addiction, including heroin, which we discuss in detail. She makes a strong case. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app,” which will connect you to the Di...
Mar 11, 2022•1 hr 9 min
Jim is the author of Why Does the World Exist? , Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes , and his latest, When Einstein Walked with Gödel . Andrew tees up the episode: I’ve known Jim forever, and he’s rather hard to introduce, but he’s one of the liveliest and rudest conversationalists I’ve ever known, so I thought he’d be a great podcast guest. It’s a bit of a break from the deadly seriousness of the past few weeks. Jim goes at me over “The Bell Curve,” performs a rant ...
Mar 04, 2022•1 hr 27 min
I first came across Ed Luttwak when I edited him at The New Republic in its glory days. He is a military strategist, historian, and consultant in the “grand strategy” school of geopolitics who has advised many world leaders — and is basically sui generis . He’s the author of almost two dozen books, including Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook and, most recently, The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy . He’s a trip — and his personality and brilliance come through in this chat. We discussed R...
Feb 25, 2022•1 hr 20 min
