Episodes

  • Caitlin Flanagan: Why I Finally Left Los Angeles

    Caitlin Flanagan: Why I Finally Left Los Angeles
    Jun 22 2026
    Caitlin Flanagan joins the show today, now an official columnist at The Free Press. Flanagan, one of the sharpest essayists working today, spent 35 years in Los Angeles before deciding she’d had enough, and tells Coleman why. The answer says a lot about what progressive governance has done to one of America’s great cities. From there they get into territory Flanagan knows well: the state of marriage, the dating crisis, and the case for having children in a culture that has talked itself out of wanting them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • Coleman Hughes vs. Peter Beinart Debate: Should Israel Be a Jewish State?

    Coleman Hughes vs. Peter Beinart Debate: Should Israel Be a Jewish State?
    Jun 15 2026
    Peter Beinart is a writer and author who has contributed to The New Republic, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. He grew up a committed Zionist and has spent the last decade publicly refuting that position, arriving at the view that Israel cannot be reconciled with the principle of equality under the law. His most recent book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, caused shock waves in the Jewish world. In this conversation, Coleman and Peter debate the Palestinian right of return and whether it’s comparable to Israel’s Law of Return for diaspora Jews. They argue over whether a one-state solution would produce equality or civil war, and whether the idea of comparing Israel to South Africa holds up under scrutiny. They get into the role of jihadist ideology in the conflict, whether Iran constitutes an existential threat to Israel, and what it would actually mean for Israel to be a democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 45 mins
  • Is America’s Racial Reckoning Over? With John McWhorter

    Is America’s Racial Reckoning Over? With John McWhorter
    Jun 8 2026
    John McWhorter is back. This time, Coleman and John analyze where America stands on race in 2026, whether the woke moment is genuinely behind us, and what may have replaced it. They also get into why black men are increasingly voting Republican, how mass immigration has subtly shifted the conversation on race, and what the Supreme Court's recent Voting Rights Act decision actually means. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 8 mins
  • Why You Shouldn’t Be Scared of AI

    Why You Shouldn’t Be Scared of AI
    Jun 1 2026
    Aman Verjee has had one of the more unusual careers in finance. He started on Wall Street at Lehman Brothers, joined PayPal in its earliest days and worked alongside Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, and eventually became a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. Along the way he developed an obsession with the history of finance, which led to his upcoming book, A Brief History of Financial Bubbles. He joined Coleman to talk about what the biggest bubbles of the last 500 years have in common, what they reveal about the societies that produced them, and what actually caused the 2008 crisis. Then they look at the questions that everyone is asking: Is AI a bubble, and how will it end? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    58 mins
  • What People Who Choose Assisted Death Actually Say

    What People Who Choose Assisted Death Actually Say
    May 26 2026
    In 2016, Canada legalized assisted dying for the terminally ill. Since then, the law—medical assistance in dying, or MAID—has expanded dramatically—to people with chronic but non-terminal conditions, with disabilities, and potentially those with mental illness as the sole underlying condition. Rupa Subramanya, The Free Press’s Canada correspondent, has spent years reporting on this slippery slope, interviewing patients, doctors, and families along the way. She discusses with Coleman where the line should be, what some of the strangest assisted dying cases reveal about the system, and what Canada’s experience should tell the rest of the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Michael Shellenberger on the Psychology of Left-Wing Violence

    Michael Shellenberger on the Psychology of Left-Wing Violence
    May 18 2026
    Michael Shellenberger is the author of San Fransickco and Apocalypse Never. He’s a former progressive activist, and one of the most prominent advocates for nuclear energy in the country. In this episode, he and Coleman dig into the Epstein story and why the evidence falls far short of the conspiracy theory most people believe; the savior complex he sees underlying progressive politics and its connection to recent left- wing violence; and what California and other blue states are finally starting to get right about homelessness after years of getting it catastrophically wrong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • The War Before the War: What Everyone Gets Wrong About Israel-Palestine

    The War Before the War: What Everyone Gets Wrong About Israel-Palestine
    May 11 2026
    Oren Kessler explains the origins of Palestinian nationalism, the myth that Jews started the conflict in Israel, and why peace in the region has been elusive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Walter Russell Mead on Christian Zionism, the ‘Israel Lobby’ Myth, and the Psychology of Antisemitism

    Walter Russell Mead on Christian Zionism, the ‘Israel Lobby’ Myth, and the Psychology of Antisemitism
    May 4 2026
    Why do Americans support Israel? The standard answers—D.C. lobbying, shared democratic values, strategic benefits—all miss something. Walter Russell Mead, one of America's foremost foreign policy scholars, traces the real answer back to 17th-century Calvinist theology, and argues that Christian Zionists were advocating for a Jewish homeland long before most Jews were. Mead joins the show to make the case that the famous Israel Lobby thesis is actually historically incoherent. To explain where antisemitism comes from and why it keeps coming back, he offers a nuanced defense of American global engagement against the America First movement’s more isolationist impulses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 2 mins