The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

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 Russia’s reassertion after the Cold War, the rise of China as a superpower, and the impact of Brexit. You always learn something from Luttwak, and from this conversation, I learned a lot about Xi Jinping, a dictator unlike anyone in China since Mao, and internationally far stronger. Did you know Xi is obsessed with Goethe?You can listen to the whole episode in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app,” which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. Ed and I recorded the convo a few weeks ago, so the situation in Ukraine has changed dramatically since then, and he thought Putin was bluffing about invading Ukraine. The reason he gave is simply Putin’s lack of sufficient manpower to hold down a country as vast as Ukraine. We’ll see if that is borne out in due course.The next Russia expert we have scheduled for the Dishcast is Fiona Hill, a former official at the National Security Council, so stay tuned. We’re doing our best to give you the broadest variety of perspectives to understand where we are. My job, as I see it, is not to win an argument, as if I were a fellow guest, but to push and goad and coax my guests to make the best case they can. On that note, many listeners have responded to last week’s episode with Anne Applebaum — which included spirited exchanges like this one:A listener writes:Thanks for this edition of the Dishcast. I know that Applebaum is truly an expert in Russian and Eastern European history, so I was excited to listen to her develop her arguments in long-form. I expected you to “push back,” and it’s important that you do — but only after listening to your guests develop their position, rather than pick at something in every sentence they utter. I understand your passion — it’s what makes your podcast compelling — but a bit more discipline, please.All I can say is that, from my perspective, Anne dominated the conversation, which was fine. But it’s all highly subjective! Another listener was also a bit critical of the back-and-forth:Holy camoly, that conversation with Anne Applebaum was rough! It became so contentious that eventually I lost track of the broader points you two were disagreeing about. I’ve coined the phrase “micro-corrections” to describe what Anne was doing. It is hard to have a productive conversation with someone who’s that fussy and pedantic. It seems like you two are old friends, however, so that’s good.See what I mean? This next listener praises Anne and chides me:Anne Applebaum, David Frum, and Timothy Snyder are some of the only voices I listen to these days for a good dose of intelligence, experience, and sanity — and in Anne and Tim’s case, firsthand knowledge of eastern European and Russian history and politics. It was fairly maddening that you didn’t seem to really grasp what Anne was trying to say about Putin’s motives. You couldn’t seem to separate national pride/patriotism — i.e., the story a country tells about itself — from the paranoid self-interest of a tyrannical leader, who on some level knows what would happen to him if the Russian people really did revolt and usher in a form of democracy. This seems as plain as the nose on your face and mine, but you kept referring to the Kremlin’s propaganda about NATO and indulging in some really counterproductive whataboutism that seems beneath you. It’s clear that you need to spend more time grappling with Anne’s knowledge and perspective, since the romance of realpolitik that John Mearsheimer offers, and which you seem to admire, doesn’t take into account the practical motives of dictators today and how they are enabled and financed by each other (something Anne briefly touched on and wrote extensively about in her “Autocracy, Inc.” article). Nevertheless, I appreciate that you had her on the podcast, so at least you’re trying. And speaking of Timothy Snyder, here’s one of his latest newsletters about thinking through the “simple solution” of giving Putin what he wants and why it’s not actually that simple. I found it immensely helpful.One of the things I’ve learned over three decades of getting things right and wrong on foreign policy is that the neconservative/liberal internationalist rubric of autocracy vs democracy can profoundly blind you to reality in the minds and souls of the people you are dealing with. The writers you follow seem to me to remain, at heart, unreconstructed neocons and liberal internationalists. I’m in recovery from those delusions. That doesn’t mean the

(Apologies if you receive this email twice — last night we accidentally published this pod page for paid subscribers only.)We’ve released this page early this week … because we don’t know what’s going to happen next and don’t want to be caught short by events. And who better to comment on the Ukraine standoff as the days unfold than Anne Applebaum? She’s a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of many formidable books, including Red Famine, Gulag: A History (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism.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 Dishcast feed. For two clips of my conversation with Anne — on whether the West provoked Russia into its possible invasion of Ukraine, and on what the US should do now — head over to our YouTube page.Also up-coming on Ukraine: I’ve recorded a great and ranging conversation with Edward Luttwak — the legendary grand strategist — about the broader tensions with Russia, China, and Brexit, and we’ll be airing that episode soon. But first, below is an assortment of reader dissents and assents over our recent episode with foreign-policy realist John Mearsheimer, whose position on this question is not Anne’s. Here’s a quick reminder of John’s approach to Ukraine:Our first reader writes:I often listen to lectures while exercising. Today was John Mearsheimer on the roots of liberal hegemony — a subject that interests (and troubles) me greatly. When I took a break to read email, I was amazed to see him on the newest Dishcast. He reminds me a great deal of an amazing international relations teacher from community college — and I can’t imagine a more sane commentator for the currently troubled international scene. So thanks for hosting.Another also enjoyed it: “One of my favorite episodes so far — extraordinarily clarifying and stimulating!” But this reader is less of a fan:Let’s get one thing out of the way: Mearsheimer is a renowned scholar and I am not. I’m just a regular listener who is passionate about history and happens to have some direct knowledge of Ukraine, its history, and its people. I very much respect Professor Mearsheimer.However, I think he conveniently omitted some crucial elements. For example, I think it would have been worth pointing out that it was the former Warsaw Pact countries and the Baltics who asked for EU and NATO integration. They did so because they were concerned by an increasingly authoritarian and aggressive Russia, and it took a lot of work and effort on their side to convince NATO and especially the EU to even have that conversation. I also think it was slightly unfair to recall that in 2008 at the Bucharest Summit, NATO did indeed reiterate openness to Ukraine and Georgia’s membership (which is NATO’s standard open-door policy) without mentioning that the statement was made after both countries had just been denied a NATO action plan. And finally, I think Mearsheimer is being naive if he really believes that Putin would be content with a neutral Ukraine.These are all points I am sure you are familiar with. My real issue with the Dishcast conversation in itself was that, once again, the people with the most skin in the game — the Ukrainians — were almost erased from the picture. Too often we keep framing this as an imperialist US/Russia power game in which the people of central and eastern Europe are denied any agenda or agency, and to some extent even their own national identity. The very few words Mearsheimer actually spent on Ukraine and Ukrainians suggested a lack of knowledge of the country's history. In the same way you felt it was appropriate to invite Yossi Klein Halevi to discuss Zionism, it would be very interesting to hear your conversation with someone who knows and understands Ukraine and has produced some really influential work on the subject — such as Serhii Plokhy, Timothy Snyder, and Anne Applebaum. I think it could be very interesting for the audience to hear that side of the story as well. You ask, we deliver. Another reader asks a simple question:My main concern is, why do we still have NATO? After the Soviet Union fell, didn’t that end the need for NATO? If the Europeans want to still band together, wouldn’t a European Treaty Organization — one set up to make sure European nations don’t start fighting each other — have been the correct course? I can’t believe I agree with anything that Putin says, but looking at it from the Russian viewpoint, NATO is an enemy, lined up against Russia. I can see their point.Any conflict in Ukraine will not end well for the world. The Ukrainians will suffer greatly and Russia, which always seems to be teetering, will suffer even more as body bags of soldiers start arriving and piling up in Moscow. I have a hard time believing that the everyday Russian citizen really believes there is a threat (but I don’t know any

Kathleen was a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex for nearly 20 years. Last fall, she resigned under duress following a vicious campaign to have her fired for questioning the policy goals of radical trans activists. Her latest book is Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism. We bonded, to be honest, I think because we’ve both experienced the sting of harassment and caustic criticism from our peers among gays, lesbians and trans people, in different ways and for different reasons. And we’re both from England.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above. For two clips of my conversation with Kathleen — on whether being transgender is “natural” and if that matters, and on the homophobia baked into radical trans ideology — head over to our YouTube page.A reader comments on last week’s episode:Thanks so much for your conversation with Johann Hari. It was refreshing and challenging — refreshing to hear about a topic we all need to be thinking about, regardless of our politics, and challenging as I think we all struggle in the area of attention discipline and focus.Here’s a clip from that convo:Another reader “thoroughly enjoyed your podcast with Johann”: I was already planning on reading his book, but your conversation prompted me to order it today. He is funny — particularly at the beginning, while talking about the Dalai Lama, and his crazy family. I’m not sure if this is an observation worth sharing (and I can’t make it without seeming cranky), but our decreasing ability to focus is alarmingly apparent in young people. I’m a professor of recent American history, age 51, so I’ve been teaching long enough to observe this.It is nearly impossible, nowadays, to get the average college student to read a book (particularly a long one). They won’t read an entertaining novel (such as Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities), or a masterpiece of literary nonfiction (Anthony Lukas’s Common Ground), a hilariously funny political book (Thomas Frank’s What's the Matter With Kansas?), or one of the 20th century’s most impactful memoirs (The Autobiography of Malcolm X). I mention these titles because they are books that I greatly enjoyed and learned from when I was younger, which is partly why I’ve assigned them in my courses. But they all flopped. They flopped despite addressing topics students profess to be interested in! (They will, however, watch loads of television. Tony Kushner’s six-hour miniseries Angels in America was a big hit last semester.)Sometimes I wonder if the streaming miniseries model is our new novel. Meanwhile, many readers are continuing the debate over Whoopi Goldberg’s comments last week. This first reader runs through many good points:The mistake that Whoopi made is that she was trying to express something we can all agree with (Nazis are bad), but she didn’t have a very good understanding of where Jews fit into the picture. I recommend you read Yair Rosenberg’s reaction to her, as it explains that Jews are, all at the same time: a race (the Nazis certainly thought so), a religion, an ethnicity, a culture, a nation, and therefore perhaps the best way to view Jews is as a very diverse family. Whoopi was viewing the Holocaust from a very narrow, US construct where the term “racism” refers to views between whites and blacks. I think that’s what she meant to say, and that’s fine. As a Jew, I’m not offended by that. I’d take it as an invitation to explain the nuances of anti-semitism and Jews — how the Nazis were all about race (you know, Aryans), and viewed Jews as an inferior race. There are white Jews, but also black Jews (for example, Ethiopian Jews). Jews can lead entirely secular lives and still view themselves (and be viewed by others) as very Jewish. All these things. I don’t think that Whoopi meant to offend or insult, and I don’t for a minute think she’s anti-semitic. I just think she was out of her depth.And you did touch on this a little: many American progressives try to impose their racial constructs on Jews, and then on Israel. For example, they view Israeli Jews as “white European colonial oppressors” and Palestinians as the “black oppressed.” They ignore that there are Ethiopian Israeli Jews, who are black, and Yemenite Israeli Jews, who are very dark-skinned, if not black. And more than half of Israel’s Jewish population has its origins in North Africa and the Middle East. These are the mizrahim — Jews from places like Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Iran — who were expelled en masse following the establishment of Israel.US progressives would have a hard time distinguishing an Israeli Jew from a Palestinian based on skin color alone. But this complexity and nuance doesn’t fit their preconceptions that Israel must be European, white, and colonial, and that you can just graft the US black-white experience on a different population thousands of miles away.A reader highlights a classic scene:Your column on whiteness and Jew

Johann is a close friend, so let’s get that out of the way. His latest subject is the modern curse of screen-driven distraction, and how to combat it: “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention — And How To Think Deeply Again.” I even appear in the background in his account of how he tried to escape Internet addiction one summer in Provincetown. So excuse some of the informality and jokiness at the beginning of this chin-wag.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 Dishcast feed. For two clips of our conversation — on whether it’s a good idea to ban the Twitter business model, and on the value of reading fiction — head over to our YouTube page.My chat with Johann touched on many of the themes in my 2016 essay on web addiction, “I Used To Be Human.” Here’s a bit:As I had discovered in my blogging years, the family that is eating together while simultaneously on their phones is not actually together. They are, in Turkle’s formulation, “alone together.” You are where your attention is. If you’re watching a football game with your son while also texting a friend, you’re not fully with your child — and he knows it. Truly being with another person means being experientially with them, picking up countless tiny signals from the eyes and voice and body language and context, and reacting, often unconsciously, to every nuance. These are our deepest social skills, which have been honed through the aeons. They are what make us distinctively human.A reader illustrates how social media not only destroys attention, but also friendships:I want to begin by saying I’m so thankful for having access to your thoughts on a weekly basis. I feel a great deal of comfort and catharsis while listening to the Dishcast, and always admire your compassionate tenor. Your background as a Catholic has challenged some of my narrower preconceptions and helped invigorate a spiritual flame within me that needed nurturing. I was especially intrigued and moved by your conversation with Michael Brendan Dougherty, which I’ve since re-listened to twice.That being said, what has prompted me to write you is, unfortunately, more in the spirit of a lamentation. I usually avoid posting political commentary on social media because the harsh reactions always outweigh whatever good I hope might come of sharing my thoughts. But I nevertheless posted on Instagram a short quote from your latest newsletter, where you plainly (and relatable) describe the escalating cycle of both political fringes pushing us further apart and into illiberalism.As a result, a close friend of mine went off the rails, essentially denouncing any form of compromise and accusing me of being a “centrist.” By some kind of hyper-aggrieved, radical-activist logic, he suggested that I am unwittingly harming gay, trans and other marginalized communities and thereby not a true ally. This was somehow his attempt at giving me a chance to defend myself before being blocked, and we’ve never even spoken about this topic before.I’ve been genuinely depressed since I got his message. Despite being so hurt and sad, I responded as kindly and honestly as I could. I told him I missed seeing him and his wife (my childhood friend). I informed him that, in fact, the writer of the excerpt I posted is himself gay. I said I felt like attacking my character over a benign, non-partisan observation felt unfair and undeserved. I’ve gotten no reply, and when I tried calling a day later, I was sent to voicemail. I can’t help but feel like I’ve been shadow-banned from their lives, which is crushing. This is someone I have only tried to be a good friend to, and who I assumed would defend my character if challenged by a third party. This isn’t even the first friend who has distanced themselves from me as a result of their own submission to the radical left. Yet, these very people never see the irony in claiming that the far-right is the threat we need to fight first and foremost.I suppose all this to say: feeling stuck in the middle is a f*****g miserable place to be.It can be. My hope is that the current polarization will unwind at some point so that friendship — defined as the radical acceptance of the other, flaws and virtues — can recover. I wrote a long essay on friendship, the modern decay of an essential human virtue, and how the loss of one of my dearest contemporaries from AIDS deepened my understanding of it. It’s the piece of writing I’m proudest of in my career: the last third of “Love Undetectable.”Another reader feels he doesn’t have a choice but to surrender to the algorithms when it comes to dating:In one of your recent columns, this caught my eye: “say no to Tinder and Grindr.” I’m a 35-year-old straight male who has been avoiding dating apps for a while because I didn’t want to believe that we’ve reached a point where the most basic of human interactions needs technological mediat

The question of how to deal with a resurgent Russia and a new super-power in China is now an urgent one to think through. At the Dishcast, we’re going to air various views over the coming months. But I couldn’t think of a better person to kick off this debate than John Mearsheimer, a titan in the field of international relations, and the most eloquent defender of realism in foreign policy I know. We talked yesterday about Putin, Xi, the errors of the post-Cold War triumphalists, and what the hell we should do now. I was riveted. John is never boring, and always clear.For those new to him: Prof. Mearsheimer has taught political science at the University of Chicago since 1982, and before that he served five years in the Air Force as a West Point grad. His latest book is The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities.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 full transcript here. For two clips of our conversation — on what the US should do about Putin’s pressure in Ukraine, and how the US accidentally created its greatest rival, China — head over to our YouTube page. That page contains clips from every episode of the Dishcast, including last week’s with Roosevelt Montás:A reader loved the episode:Thank you for the wonderful conversation with Professor Montás. It reawakened the same spirit I had 28 years ago when I walked on the campus of Columbia University as a freshman. I remember being bored by the Iliad, stymied by The Republic, infuriated by Hobbes, and feeling overmatched by Nietzsche and Freud. I often hated the workload and the two-year campaign that asked me to read, think, engage, and discuss with my professors and classmates. But I could never deny that it asked me to do something important and novel: wrestle with the ideas of others. I was not permitted to dismiss them out of hand or avoid the hard work by pointing to false controversy. I had to grapple with difficult ideas and develop the analytical skill and tools of language to explain why an idea did or did not make sense. And the value of that struggle has never left me. Since then, during the two tech-focused decades we have experienced, it’s been easy to forget about ancient wisdom. I have fallen victim to the ever-growing pressure to look to circuits and microchips for new solutions to the problems of life. That effort is futile. In my calmer moments, when I sit in a quiet room, I remember what I learned with those great books, and how to find peace in the effort of seeking truth with the words of those who fought the same battle many centuries and even millennia ago.The episode made me feel like a 19-year-old student again, and that was glorious. In fact, I stopped at a bookstore to buy Augustine’s Confessions before the episode was even over.Excellent. Another reader gently prods me:I so enjoy the Dishcast, largely because of your openness and honesty to share your ideas and opinions that have been informed by rather rough-hewn life experiences and a robust library of worldly books. You are indeed a good friend to humanity. Would it be possible to give a wider breadth to your guests to finish their thoughts, uninterrupted? We get to know you well over the weeks and months of listening to the podcast but we only hear your guests once, usually. I know. I definitely try to keep out the way — but I also think of these podcasts as conversations rather than interviews, which, sadly, might mean more of me than you want at times. When you’re not in the same room, and there’s a slight gap between your words and your interlocutor’s, it can also be hard to judge when a person has said all they want to. And I also need to keep the chat moving. Another reader looks to our recent episode with Chris Rufo:I’m just now listening to your conversation, but I think there is an unarticulated and very important point yet to be made. Rufo doesn’t seem to realize the extent to which he is himself a poster child for precisely the kind of education that embraces conflicting perspectives. The whole reason why he is so well spoken on issues of CRT is because of the intellectual diversity of his past and the fact he dug so deeply into CRT and modern-day versions of it in K-12 curricula. How could he possibly have become this successful if he hadn’t become a de facto expert on current curriculum trends (with which he disagreed)? Rufo asked in the episode, “What’s wrong with California teaching one thing and Texas teaching another?” The America he imagines is one where half of the country learns one thing, the other half of the country learns another — with little common understanding. Far from leading to productive pluralism, this will instead lead to ideological segregation and a total inability to articulate (and thus engage with) contrary or conflicting positions. This is already happening. For the United States to function well, people need to l

Montás, who led the humanities-rich Core Curriculum at Columbia for a decade and still teaches there, has a new book out, Rescuing Socrates. We talk of Augustine and Socrates and Freud and Gandhi and the timelessness of the great texts. His book is a kind of response to the notion that these ideas and texts are somehow blighted by “whiteness” — a topic the Dish tackled last year. I loved this conversation — and the relief it gave from contemporary political and cultural obsessions.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 full transcript here. For two clips my conversation with Roosevelt — on why the humanities are in crisis, and on whether the bodily desires of humans make them less free — head over to our YouTube page. Meanwhile, a flood of emails came in over last week’s episode with Chris Rufo, and many of them are below. But first, here’s a suggestion on the difficult question of trans women in sports:Thanks for saying what needs to be said on the trans movement. Yes to critical and compassionate review without demonization!Regarding trans athletes, has anyone suggested setting up a kind weight-class system based on testosterone exposure, a kind of T-Weight? It would use a scientific score of sorts based on a formula developed by a consensus of medical professionals, factoring both current testosterone levels as well as lifetime exposure (or whatever factors are deemed most relevant to athletic performance).Then sports organizations could create T-Weight classes and allow participation universally regardless of gender. Maybe only three classes would really be needed: Heavy, Middle and Light, where Heavy would be dominated by lifetime biological males, light by lifetime females, and medium by a mix. And athletes in lighter classes would also be free to compete in heavier classes.The beauty of this approach is how it’s potentially both inclusive and fair. In fact, one can imagine all kinds of competitions that have been traditionally sorted by gender now including a cavalcade of new participants from across the gender spectrum, opening the door to achievement (and the accompanying rewards) to individuals who would have otherwise not had good opportunities to test and showcase their abilities.Here’s Mara Keisling debating the question with me on the Dishcast last year:This next reader believes we should “consider transgender competition categories”:One of my three daughters transitioned three years ago as a young adult. To this day, her path remains only for the strong of heart and strong of will. That said, she is comfortable that her personhood is now in the proper alignment. I have read with interest your columns on transgender issues and I offer the following observations:1) I am glad our daughter did not begin a discussion of transition until she was in her early 20s. She was fortunate to be in a community where medical, psychological, and social support were available. While my wife and I participated in her decision process, the ultimate decisions were hers and funded by her. Our transition from son to daughter was not easy, but I shudder to consider how much more difficult it would have been if we were shepherding the decision of a teen or pre-teen. These intense dramas should be supported, not inspected. They are not political, they are personal.2) It is time society accepted transgender for itself. Numerous cultures have recognized a third gender or third sex. It has been with us since the dawn of time, just like homosexuality, and it is time we accommodate the genders. Recognizing the transitioning of female to male seems a more recent phenomenon, surely we can accommodate both. If sport is such an issue, consider transgender competition categories … and perhaps it is time we begin thinking about competitions that can be pan-gender.3) You have no idea how incredibly difficult the transition journey is — even for those supported, and many are not. Getting to the other side is only the beginning. Learning to live is a daily challenge. Cis culture seeks to hive you off. Gay culture questions your inclusion. Your own culture is fraught with conflicting definitions.Rather than creating another category of “others,” we need to blend this bright thread into the weave that is us.This next reader, though, argues that exclusion is simply the nature of competitive sports:On the playing field, there are only X number of spots. Someone is always going to be excluded. That might be for a traditional reason (such as not being good enough to be on that particular team) or a novel reason (such as not enjoying an unfair biological advantage). So yes, the “fairness side” is not inclusive in this respect, but for nearly all of us, that’s merely a consequence of applying common sense to the context of sports rather than a projection of bias.Another parent writes, “To the people who think your criticism of wokene

Rufo is a key architect of the anti-CRT legislation being passed in state legislatures around the country. He is also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and his Twitter account is tirelessly flagging examples of CRT in the public school system, corporate America, and elsewhere. I’ve no doubt that some of this convo is going to stir up a fuss — but the truth is I’ve become more conflicted about this legislation as time has gone by. I once thought it was a terrible idea. I’m now not so sure, given the scale of the attempt to indoctrinate children in neo-Marxist understandings of race throughout public education.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 full transcript here. For two clips my conversation with Rufo — on whether anti-CRT state laws go too far, and on whether anti-CRT critics like us are overhyping the threat — head over to our YouTube page.The Federalist’s Nathanael Blake, responding to my column on “Ever-Radicalizing Republicans,” echoes a core point made by Rufo but applies it to the more narrow focus of sexually-charged books in school libraries:[T]here is an incoherence to liberalism’s semi-official relativism, for it relies on smuggling some moral views back into political life as supposedly neutral liberal norms. This is manifest in the tendency to try to forestall democratic debate and decisions by insisting that what the people want is illiberal. When Andrew Sullivan bemoans the “illiberalism” of removing sexually explicit materials from school libraries, he is not actually supporting liberal neutrality, but instead advocating for the inclusion of such material in government schools, even if parents in particular and the community in general object. Declaring that parental and democratic involvement in schools, from curricula to libraries, is illegitimate doesn’t mean that decisions will be neutral, just that they will be made according to the biases of teachers, administrators, librarians and suchlike. And this pattern is repeated on issue after issue, with “conservative” liberals insisting that left-liberals must be allowed to win in the name of “liberal norms.”I don’t believe parental involvement in schools is illegitimate. Au contraire. I think curriculum transparency is vital; and that indoctrination into the core concepts of CRT is not something that should be allowed in a public high school. But books available in a school library? That students would have to seek out? I don’t have an issue. Sure, one of the books I’ve seen has an illustration of a blow-job. Not exactly Mapplethorpe. Below, the great liberal debate over CRT continues among Dish readers. First, a heads up that “Glenn Loury and John McWhorter favorably discussed a recent piece you wrote concerning the classification of people by race using colors, starting at the 43:40 mark”:Another reader points to one of countless examples of the phenomenon that Glenn and John discuss:Should you care to witness an uninhibited orgy of Blackandbrowning, see this job announcement from Pierce Community College — a public institution — in WA state. They are advertising for a new math professor. Besides the initial paragraphs, be sure to read the list of “Responsibilities of the successful candidate” and even the application process itself. The first two “Responsibilities,” for example, include the phrases “Creating race-conscious course assessments” and “in a manner that promotes Black and Brown excellence.”The phrase “Black and Brown,” in fact, occurs nine times in this ad. “Equity” appears five times. “Antiracism” (or “antiracist”) appears three times. Words that never appear in this ad for a community college math professor: “algebra,” “calculus,” “statistics,” “trigonometry,” “geometry” ...Amazing but unsurprising. A missive from the medical world:You keep publishing dissents like this one:My God, Andrew, will you give the “woke” thing a rest?! I’ve always read you because of the variety of issues you covered. Now it’s become a chore to constantly see my inbox full of “woke this and woke that.” You’ve simply lost all sense of proportion.No, your sense of proportion is exactly right. I wish I could somehow give these dissenters a window into what it is like to work in biomedical science right now. Whether it’s internal memos calling for “decolonising” the molecular biology curriculum or journal editorials declaring “whiteness” to be the great evil permeating all medical science, it’s become a chore to constantly see my inbox full of official wokeness. Maybe I should start keeping a running list, for the sake of all these dissenters who don’t believe in the reality of a woke takeover of elite institutions? Please do. And send us the results. It would make a good column. And wokeness in medicine is especially consequential when it comes to Covid right now. For example: “In Utah, ‘Latinx ethnicity’ counts for more points th

Hey, why not start the new year with solving the Israel-Palestinian problem? Yossi is an American-born Israeli journalist and his latest book is Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. Following our episode with Peter Beinart last summer, many readers recommended Yossi as a guest to balance out the discussion on Israel. I’m grateful for the suggestion and truly enjoyed our conversation — alternately honest and difficult. How can one admire Israel while also being candid about its flaws? How deeply utopian was Zionism in the first place? 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 full transcript here. For two clips of my conversation with Yossi — on the “bizarre, tragic” history of Zionism, and on the intractable nature of the Israeli settlements — head to our YouTube page. For a refresher on our episode with Peter that spurred Yossi’s appearance, here’s a chunk of that conversation on the state of Zionism:Below are many unaired emails from readers responding to our Beinart episode. This first reader feels that I’m “deeply wrong about Israel/Zionism”:I think most Westerners have a delusional view: that a two-state solution was ever acceptable to enough Arabs/Palestinians to have been possible. Many Westerners also have the equally delusional view that a binational state is viable (a view you don’t share, I was glad to hear). Unfortunately, for most Arabs/Palestinians, the dream isn’t about getting East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and a bit more, while leaving the rest to the Jews. They want Tel Aviv, Haifa and everything else, with no Jews.Every war over Israel has been fought by the Arabs in service of a one-state Judenrein solution, beginning in 1948, when they were offered and rejected a contiguous state in nearly half of Mandatory Palestine, from Sinai to Jordan to Lebanon — the river to the sea. The option for a two-state solution was on the table for more than half a century afterward, if the Palestinians had been willing to take it. Half-hearted participation by the Palestinian Authority in peace talks (which they were dragged to), with Hamas and Hezbollah jeering from the sidelines, isn’t remotely good enough.Whether or not you think the state of Israel should ever have been created (that discussion was the most disappointing part of your episode with Beinart), there are now nearly seven million Jews in their historic homeland (of thousands of years), out of a little over nine million inhabitants. Some three-quarters of those Jews were born there. Just under half of the Jews in Israel are Mizrahi/Sephardi, whose family members were largely expelled from Arab countries. They know exactly how the Arabs feel about the Jews, so they aren’t signing up for a binational state, now or ever.Moreover, the Arabs (the notion of a distinct Palestinian identity wasn’t a significant part of mainstream discourse until the 1960s and ‘70s) don’t actually want a single binational state. Agreeing to a peace on the basis of two states would get their leaders assassinated, because Palestinians continue to hope, against all evidence, that one day they’ll get all of it.Arabs living in Israel proper have far better lives and prospects than their brethren in neighboring states: they can vote, an Arab party is in the government, and Israel is the best place in the Middle East to be gay, among other things. Polls show that a majority of Israeli Arabs would prefer living in Israel to a Palestinian state. It would be ideal if the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza gave up their unrealistic expectation of driving the Jews into the sea and stopped promoting terrorism. Then, security restrictions could be relaxed and their lives could improve a lot. But I fear things are too far gone. The Second Intifada, and then Hamas’ unwavering commitment to ending the state of Israel, don’t inspire confidence.The best solution, to be honest, would be for Jordan — more than 20% of whose residents are Palestinians — to take over the Arab areas of the West Bank, and for Egypt to absorb the pestilential flyspeck half the size of Singapore that is Gaza. But Jordan and Egypt wouldn’t touch those areas with a ten-foot pole because they’re ruled by warlords, gangsters and criminals. They’re Northern Ireland during the height of the Troubles, but a thousand times worse.I do agree with you and Beinart that the status quo could persist for a long time. I think if the PA collapses, as Beinart suggests, it’s not going to turn the West Bank into Gaza, because there’s too much economic interdependence between the West Bank and Israel. If it did, though, all that would happen is that Israel would annex the areas with significant Jewish settlements, cut the Jews in the outposts loose and create a hard border, leaving the West Bank population to figure things out for themselves and get bombed if they fire rockets.I get it that Bibi’s an a*****e and he behaved unac

I belatedly came to Shellenberger in my research on nuclear power’s potential to help cut carbon emissions. But his new book — on the terrible progressive governance in many American cities in recent years — is what gave me the idea to interview him. On homelessness, crime, addiction, and the fast-deterioration of our public spaces, San Fran-sicko, despite its trolly title, is empirical, tough-minded and, in my view, humane. But make up your own mind, in what was one of the more timely conversations I’ve had this year.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 full transcript here. For two clips of our conversation — on the reasons why San Francisco progressives won’t build safe homeless shelters, and on the growing backlash against Democrats on crime and urban disorder — head over to our YouTube page. (And be sure to check out Shellenberger’s substack — he’s on a major roll this week.)A reader writes:I just listened to the Dishcast with Sam Quinones and am so grateful you are covering addiction and homelessness. I especially appreciated the perspective that homeless addicts — who I am afraid of and repelled by — are suffering the most, and in genuine need of help. It’s easy to forget when I’m frustrated and everyone seems to be diagnosing the real problem as my own bigotry! (A personal anecdote: my brother’s truck was recently stolen and destroyed by addicts in Bakersfield, where he works as a firefighter and puts out fires every day that are set by the homeless. This is a problem!)The diversity of guests on the Dishcast has been mind-expanding. In this episode I was reminded of John McWhorter’s claims about woke as the new religion. It seems as though homeless men, especially if they are racial minorities, have become sacred cows for progressives.I think there are some more achievable policy solutions than strengthening communities and social relationships, however. This article from the California Globe highlights some concrete things that could be done by redirecting the massive resources already going to homelessness. Here’s a clip of my conversation with Sam about the meth crisis:Another reader remarks:I loved your interview with Quinones. For one thing, I love his speaking style — many false starts and revisions, as he looks at the subject from many perspectives, going several directions before going ahead. (It’s my style as well.) I think it’s characteristic of many thoughtful people, but they don’t always get a chance to speak. The episode makes me want to read his book.Another reader:Thank you for introducing Sam Quinones to those of us who haven’t read his books. You and he shed so much light on the relationship between the large and ever-expanding encampments and meth and fentanyl use. He was able to explain the rapid expansion, which had been the most mysterious aspect of the issue for me. We have always had homelessness, but not like what we see today. It’s a different thing altogether. I used to think that taking the profit motive out of drugs and decriminalizing them would reduce the problem, but I think I heard the opposite from Quinones. I also was unaware of the meth issue among gay men. The gay men I socialize with don’t talk about it, but maybe they are not having the problem (we are boomers).Here’s a snippet of the convo on gays and meth:A recommendation from a reader:For those who are interested, there is a documentary on gay men and meth on Amazon Prime that is quite devastating to watch. (I’m not affiliated with Amazon, just passing along some info.)Yes — but it’s from 2014! We could use an updated one. From a reader with first-hand experience with the meth crisis:Overall, your perspective on crystal meth addiction in the gay male community is spot on. I was able to hide it for years, until one day I was unable to do so, and it caught up with me. Exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, I found myself unable to stop, as meth allowed me to cope with the isolation and other traumas. What I don’t think was discussed by you or Sam in his book are some positive steps towards recovery that many have found. First, the community of Crystal Meth Anonymous (CMA) moved itself online at the start of the pandemic and now continues to offer hundreds of meetings each week, in addition to in-person meetings across the world. I regularly find addicts are unaware of CMA and have trouble relating to those they find in AA or Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Second, some of us have found support against meth cravings through the use of the anti-depressant mirtazapine. There has been a small clinical trial. While not a panacea for meth addiction, I have met others who have found recovery through its use, along with a combination of regular attendance of recovery meetings.A reader who practices medicine in California touches on some themes that Shellenberger and I discussed:I wonder if you’re aware of the pressu

The Covid news keeps coming, and I wanted to understand it better, especially as Omicron makes its way across the Atlantic, and as vaccine effectiveness declines. Who better to talk to than David Wallace-Wells, New York Magazine’s Covid specialist and environmental correspondent? He was on the Dishcast early this year, before the vaccines arrived, and he’s about as honest a broker on the pandemic as anyone. I also asked him to debrief Dishheads on the upshot of COP26, the recent Climate Change conference in Glasgow. I learned a lot — about the waste of solar panels and the potential of nuclear power to help us get past carbon more quickly.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 Dishcast feed. For two clips my conversation with David — on his sobering assessment of the vaccines against Delta, and on Biden’s bumbling on Covid pills and testing — head over to our YouTube page. A reader looks back to last week’s episode:I just listened to your podcast with Christina Sommers and Danielle Crittenden, and was pretty struck by your conversation with David Frum regarding President Biden. I’m a strong Biden supporter and am quite sanguine on his chances in 2024 (yes, I believe he will run if his health permits), so you can imagine I was more partial to Frum’s argument. But I’m wondering about your diagnosis of the prospects of his presidency. Do you think his situation is irreversible?You can point to any number of two-term presidents in recent memory and find a moment in time where, if the election were held on a given day, the president would badly lose re-election. I wasn’t around for Reagan’s presidency, but didn’t things look pretty terrible for him in early 1983? A Harris poll taken in early January of ‘83 had Mondale trouncing Reagan. FiveThirtyEight has Reagan hitting the mid-30s around that time, quite a bit lower than where Biden is now. Before that, by mid-1982, he was where Biden is now, polling-wise.You could say the same of Bill Clinton’s first two years. It strikes me that few mention his inglorious dip into the mid-30s only a few months into his term, again per 538. Then there were Clinton’s low-40s averages heading into the 1994 elections, the collapse of one of his signature legislative pushes, and his infamous drubbing at the hands of Newt Gingrich. Was it considered likely at the time that he would skate to re-election just two years later?I feel like citing H.W. Bush’s soaring public approvals in his first three years and his incredible collapse in 1992 is a cliché at this point. And of course Obama had his highs and lows, and spent much of 2011 treading water roughly where Biden is now in terms of his poll numbers — to say nothing of his total collapse after his first debate with Romney and rapid climb back to the lead just in time to clinch re-election (yes, I was around for your reaction to that!).I guess my question is, knowing that ultimately successful presidents can recover from political lows and have, why do I get the sense that you think Biden’s condition is terminal?Because of his age and declining abilities. This is no reflection on him: he’s pretty remarkable for a 79 year old. But his speeches lack fire and focus; he’s background noise in our politics; he keeps making gaffes, including a rather dangerous one on declaring support for Ukraine; he has allowed himself to be defined, fairly or not, by the far left. Cognitive ability declines sharply around 60. In 2028, which would be Biden’s final year in office if re-elected, he’d be 86, my mother’s age. Yes, Trump would be 82. But Trump has the energy and passion of the mentally ill — and I just can’t see Biden matching that even now, let alone in nearly a decade’s time.Another reader sounds the alarm for Biden and his party when it comes to America’s schools:The NYT posted this today (“Schools Are Closing Classrooms on Fridays. Parents Are Furious.), and I suspect it’s going to be the main theme in the midterm elections: parents and schools. We saw this play out in Virginia and NJ last month and it seems to be intensifying.Here in Portland, there is a serious battle going on with the Teachers Association and the school district. The teachers have proposed making Fridays a self-learning day for the remainder of the year. The school district is pushing back, particularly based on parent backlash. And the Oregonian newspaper has come out against the proposal as well.I think everyone sympathizes that teachers are undergoing an extremely difficult time, particularly with all the behavioral issues kids are having. But I can tell you that every parent I know is gobsmacked at the thought of returning back to online learning. There have to be other solutions. We can’t go back to having kids at home. I don’t think this has fully resonated with Democratic politicians, even after the backlash last month. While there’s been a

I’ve been meaning to invite Christina Sommers and Danielle Crittenden on the pod since they first had me on theirs, Femsplainers, a few years ago. This week we talked about men and women, trans and cis, gay and straight, and they drank rosé and I smoked half a joint, as we did on their pod. For two clips of our conversation — on whether more women staying home during Covid was a good thing, and on how gender nonconformity is often a source of strength — head over to our YouTube page. 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 Dishcast feed.At the last minute, we re-invited to the pod Danielle’s husband, David Frum, because we both wanted to hash out our differences over the Trump-Russia media coverage. (We first debated the issue ten months ago, and my column last week was in response to his latest in the Atlantic.) I think we may have made some progress in finessing where we differ, and why. But you be the judge. Things got a bit heated here:Meanwhile, readers continue to hash out the intricacies of Russiagate in a series of dissents that continue from our main page. First up:David Frum has a really good summary of the evidentiary record, excluding the Steele Dossier, showing that cooperation with Russia did occur. In your response, you basically agree that he’s right about everything and just try to define the media narrative as something greater than that and say it hasn’t been proven. It would take another thousand words to explain all the ways in which this doesn’t work. (It can’t be collusion because he already liked Russia?? Really?!! Sanctions imposed under duress and then deliberately undermined prove he’s not guilty? Huh?!!) From my point of view, you’re engaged in a hair-splitting exercise in denial. I guarantee that Rachel Maddow and others in the liberal media are not backing down from the idea that Trump and Russia may have colluded, cooperated, or coordinated (all three are bad), because they continue to see evidence that it’s true, regardless of the dossier — which has really been more of a distraction.Another reader begins by quoting me:“But this was not what the MSM tried to sell us from the get-go. What they and the Democrats argued — with endless, breathless, high-drama reporting — was that there was some kind of plot between Trump and Russia to rig the election and it had succeeded. Investigating this was hugely important because it could expose near-treason and instantly remove Trump from power via impeachment. This was the dream to cope with the nightmare.”Andrew, read this NYT article: it seems that Don Jr. actually *did* meet with a Russian attorney, who promised documents that would embarrass Clinton, and the Russian government *did* hack into the Clinton campaign’s emails and did release those emails, and Trump himself asked the Russians (on national TV) to release more emails. And of course, Trump actually won the election, and the Russian intelligence service’s email dump may well have pushed Trump over the finish line, so it’s hard to argue that the Russian campaign wasn’t a success. So I’m trying to figure out exactly what the MSM got wrong here.The only thing I can think of is that you think that the MSM actually accused the Trump campaign of initiating the hack of the Clinton campaign emails. But I can’t find any evidence that they did say that. In the article above, for example, the Times specifically says: “The precise nature of the promised damaging information about Mrs. Clinton is unclear, and there is no evidence to suggest that it was related to Russian-government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails.”In reality, of course, the Trump campaign contributed nothing to the Russian hacking beyond making it clear that should Trump win the election, there would be no retribution for influencing our election — which could be the campaign’s biggest contribution to the Russian hacking.So, if you’re going to accuse the MSM of actually going further, please define what further actually means, and then, please, come up with a link to at least *one* article from CNN, NYT or the Washington Post to such an article. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable ask.Another reader raises more question:David Frum’s piece begins by setting a low bar, by his own admission, listing only those matters acknowledged by everyone. It leaves out other matters that are equally interesting, and it makes it fair to turn your question back around to you. If Trump really wasn’t guilty of outright treason or near-treason in his dealings with Russia, then:* Why was he desperate to fire Mueller?* Why did he meet privately with Putin on one occasion, barring his own translator, and on another, entertain the Russian ambassador and foreign minister in the Oval Office, with few or no witnesses?* Why did he make a craven public spectacle of h

Many of you will recall the horrendous way in which the Catholic Church hierarchy responded to the AIDS crisis. Many blamed homosexual sex and refused to endorse condoms for heterosexuals. It was extremely hard for me to hang in there in this period, and I had to take months away from Mass after various appalling statements. It was a time when I first experienced the love of God and the intimacy of Jesus in contrast to the church that claimed to represent Him on earth. But it was not the only story. On the ground, many lay Catholics, priests and nuns defied the hierarchy and came to the aid of the young and sick and dying. Michael O’Loughlin, another gay Catholic, has written a history book, “Hidden Mercy,” about this other story. We talked faith, sex, disease, and redemption. 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 Dishcast feed. For two clips of our conversation — on the nuns and priests who fought AIDS in spite of the Catholic leadership, and on how gay Catholics have wrestled with their faith — head over to our YouTube page. Pope Francis recently replied to a letter from O’Loughlin, posted in a NYT op-ed, that “Gives Me Hope as a Gay Catholic.”A reader looks back to last week’s episode with Dominic Cummings:I listened to Cummings despite having little interest in Boris, Brexit, or the UK. Although I heard little I agreed with, I found it interesting how much more thoughtful and intelligent the overeducated elite from Oxford are compared to Ivy Leaguers such as Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Elise Stefanik, or Tom Cotton. It is hard to find intelligent commentary coming from US conservatives today, guaranteeing that they will once again fail to capitalize on the disarray of the Democratic Party. Republicans seem intent on meeting Democratic incompetence with outright insanity. Meanwhile, as Cummings pointed out, many people want and would respond positively to cogent policy from either party.Another fan of the episode: Kudos to you for getting an interview with Dominic Cummings, who is in my opinion the most interesting man in UK politics today, indeed perhaps anywhere. He’s a very refreshing transformational thinker. It’s a shame that Boris Johnson decided not to keep him on, although I think the latter’s temperamental weaknesses (especially his incessant need to be loved) made that all but inevitable. Thatcher, by contrast, really didn’t care what the media or Whitehall thought, and she ultimately ended up being far more consequential than Johnson is likely to be, even though, as Cummings observed, Covid gave him an enormous opportunity to be similarly transformational.Many (especially those who don’t really follow the UK closely) liken Cummings to Steve Bannon, which is an exceptionally lazy narrative. Cummings doesn’t have an ounce of racism in him or demagoguery, but is interested in policy and really doesn’t care what people think (which is extremely courageous). His diagnosis of American politics is spot on as well. I occasionally wonder whether the rhythms of politics, the need for the occasional cajoling, especially the retail aspects, make him unsuited to being a long-term player in the political process. I also kept pondering during the interview whether there was an American equivalent to Dominic Cummings out there right now? If so, who is it? It was a great discussion and I’m glad you gave him a wide berth in expressing his views. He’s a fascinating thinker.This next reader wasn’t impressed:The Cummings interview was a collection of softball pitches allowing him to say whatever he wanted to say with no challenges at all. You gave him a platform to preen for an hour and some. You said at the end that you are a huge fan. That much was obvious all along. If I wanted to pay to hear a fawning groupie gush I would have got everything I wanted.He is a smart man, yes, but that’s not the only requirement for good politics. There were reasonable questions to be asked, like whatever happened to the “£350 million per week to the NHS”? That was a cruel joke coming just before COVID hit. And if he is so concerned about average British people, why did he think himself above the law when it came to the lockdown? What about the no-bid COVID contracts to buddies who had no idea how to do what they contracted for? The amount of money wasted was incredible. I could go on, but it’s not worth my time. It was a terrible interview. You have serious blinders on and you need to think more about that. Maybe I went too easy on him. But many of the issues that Brits have with him — his complicated flouting of Covid rules, for example, or the pledge that Brexit would help fund the NHS — might have been too opaque and insidery to a largely American audience. So I didn’t do the equivalent of a BBC interview. An old college friend in England was also pissed off:As a great admirer of what you have been doing at

How to introduce Dominic Cummings? I’d say he has a decent claim to be one of the most influential figures in modern European history, whatever you think of him. He innovated Brexit, led the Leave campaign, then guided Boris Johnson into a stinking election victory in 2019. The two allies then fell out, Cummings quit — and he is now “having a think.” He almost never gives interviews — let alone chat for an hour and a half. So this is a bit of a Dish coup. 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 full transcript here. For two clips of my conversation with Dominic — on the reasons he resigned as top aide at Number 10, and on what US politicians can learn from Brexit on immigration — head over to our YouTube page.And be sure to sign up for the Dominic Cummings Substack.Halfway down this page are five reader dissents over my criticism of the MSM, continued from our main page, but first, some reader commentary on British politics. Here’s a disgruntled Dish subscriber responding to my passing reference to how I “like” Boris Johnson to some degree:I find I’m more and more uncomfortable, as a paying subscriber, to underwrite, even in the smallest way, your acceptance of Mr. Johnson’s con of us, the British people. Granted, he’s not a grifter in the same league as Mr. Trump, but nevertheless the thought of supporting him in any way — albeit indirectly through your journalism — has become something I can no longer tolerate. Perhaps you weren’t around in the days when the BBC (unwittingly I think) gave him for all those years a platform on “Have I Got News for You,” when naive middle-of-the-roaders like myself were mildly charmed by this apparently harmless but funny, over entitled Tory buffoon. Little did we realise he was lining himself up to kill off our warm and productive relationship with Europe and all its benefits for ordinary citizens. He did it partly by getting us to know him as “Boris” — like he’s our friend, which he isn’t. It’s a mechanism that draws in people who are even more naive, and it means he gets forgiven for his absolute incompetence. He isn’t fit to be prime minister, and there is so much evidence out there that confirms it that I can’t really understand how you buy it. Ok, so you “like” him, whatever that means. Another dissent comes from a UK reader over my recent column, “The Boldness of Biden and Boris”:It seems I only ever email to complain about your coverage of Boris Johnson. You write that it’s “the image that mattered” in Boris’s dealings with the French over nuclear subs and on the vaccine. The problem with much of what Boris is doing is that it’s all image. EU countries have overtaken the UK in vaccination rates and we have soaring infection rates compared to our neighbours. Boris’s latest “Global Britain” is announcing bringing back pounds and ounces. Imperial measurements are only used by two countries (the US and Myanmar), and anyone under 50 was taught metric at school. Armando Iannucci wouldn’t write this stuff; it would look too bonkers. This steady stream of jingoistic nonsense is just the usual background noise under Prime Minister Johnson — but it’s not the main reason I’m writing. The rise in National Insurance isn’t the bold “Red Tory” move you hail it as. It isn’t an injection of desperately needed new money into social care. For readers outside the UK, I’ll explain. At the moment, if someone goes into long-term care because they are unable to look after themselves, the cost of that is recouped from their assets (over a certain threshold) when they die. This often means selling their home. (We had to do that when my Nan died in 2010.) What Johnson is doing is capping that limit (which wouldn’t have mattered in my case) and trying to recoup it with a raise in National Insurance — a tax that almost all workers pay. This means that care staff, who earn minimum wage or thereabouts, will be losing money to pay for the care of the people they’re looking after. If Johnson really had “the balls” you give him props for, he would have introduced a tax on assets. Others have been quick to point out that those paying rent are losing money while their landlords have avoided any new tax. Anyone over retirement age is also exempt from National Insurance. I consider myself a centrist, I don’t belong to a political party, as I prefer to advocate ideas from the political left or right if they have merit. We have the worst of all worlds in Johnson — someone willing to raise taxes from those who can least afford it to fritter away on meaningless gestures and dodgy contracts to his friends. If that’s Red Toryism, you can keep it.Another reader who doesn’t like Boris:I’ve been a Dish supporter for many years and have loved the recent content and podcasts. I’m generally pretty aligned with your views, but there is one area where we diverge sharply: Boris Johnson. Everyone knows he’s a liar

Sam, the author of Dreamland, is out with another book about the explosion of hard and dangerous drugs, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth. His reporting was an indispensable part of my big magazine piece on the opioid crisis, and we go into great detail on the pod. 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 Dishcast feed. For two clips of my conversation with Sam — on the rise of a new sinister meth, and on the media silence over gays and meth — head over to our YouTube page.Meanwhile, many readers keep the debate going on critical race theory in the wake of the Virginia elections. The first:I agree with you on a lot on CRT, and I agree that the Arlington County materials one of your readers linked to is deeply problematic. We’ve got a little blond 12-year-old girl in school right now who was recently singled out by a really terrible teacher who basically demonized her as representative of the wrongs perpetrated by white people throughout history. We’re planning to talk to the teacher and maybe the school and will be having some out-of-school discussions with our kids.So suffice it to say on this issue, I’m with Youngkin. However, I was surprised to see you say you’d vote for him if you were in Virginia. Do you consider yourself a one-issue voter? Youngkin certainly talked a more moderate talk, which I’d love to see become fashionable in the GOP, and I’d say he has the better of the education argument. But then there’s his waffling on Jan 6 and voter integrity — and commitment to a democratic society is pretty foundational. There’s Covid — I don’t want to get rid of mask mandates in schools. Do I even need to say this: Covid is NOT a fringe issue. Then there’s climate change, which is kind of a big deal too. Youngkin isn’t sure if humans play any role in global warming, and he warned that a transition to renewables will result in “blackouts and brownouts and an unreliable grid.” As for local issues, historically it’s been really hard to get Republican candidates to support desperately needed money for roads in northern Virginia.The response to each of those can’t be “but CRT!” I don’t see how you weigh all that and come out for Youngkin.Sometimes, you vote as a protest to make sure your voice is heard on a particular topic. I do see CRT as a foundational issue for a liberal democracy — and in a governor’s race, it would be my core issue. CRT’s premises and arguments are so designed to dismantle our entire constitution and way of life, it becomes a litmus test in my mind. Another reader prods me further:Unexplored in your column “The Woke Meet Their Match: Parents” is what role parents should actually play in public school education. Let’s look at it this way: public schools are going to continue to assign reading that troubles one constituency or another. Hardcore CRT is going to tick off many parents, and sexually explicit content (like in “Beloved”) will cause at least some parents to shield their children. On the other end of the spectrum, some parents believe history textbooks whitewash the most painful parts of our history.My point is a mundane one: you can’t please everyone. What, then, is the solution? Should parents be able to opt a 12th grader out of certain books? Should school boards simply water down curriculum so that no student reads any material that challenges their sensibilities? Should schools send parents mailers warning them of troubling content? Who decides what content is troubling?In short: you implied that you think parents should have some sort of involvement. But what does that mean?I think parents should be able to express their concerns, and teachers should reasonably accommodate them in egregious cases. If they don’t, parents need to elect better school boards, or recall members, as is happening in San Francisco of all places. But no, I don’t want to give parents a veto over anything their kid studies. A sharp dissent from a public school administrator in NYC:I agree with you about the far left’s overreach on matters of race, and that it dashed the Dems’ chance at winning the gubernatorial race, but, when it comes to what’s being taught in schools, with respect, you don’t know what you’re talking about (and even sound — dear Lord forgive me — a little like Tucker Carlson). You wrote that students are “being taught in a school system now thoroughly committed to the ideology and worldview of CRT, by teachers who have been marinated in it, and whose unions have championed it” — and then cherry pick examples to support these overgeneralized claims. First, unions have no say in what gets taught in schools. None. Whom they invite to their conferences (that no one goes to or cares about) has zero bearing on what students learn in their 2nd period Geometry class. Randi Weingarten and the AFT could invite Lucifer himself t

She’s the author of 13 NYT bestselling books, including Adios, America. I know, I know. A lot of you are going to get mad at me for this one. If you’re a longtime Dishhead, you may even remember that we once had a Malkin Award every year, and this is how we described it:The Malkin Award, named after blogger Michelle Malkin, is for shrill, hyperbolic, divisive and intemperate right-wing rhetoric. Ann Coulter is ineligible — to give others a chance.I once described Coulter as a “drag queen posing as a fascist.” But, I’ll be honest, I’ve come to admire her the last couple of years for taking on Trump — for breaking his promises on immigration. Agree or disagree, that took a certain amount of courage, given her audience. I also met her, and found her much more intriguing than you’d expect from the public image. I’m not sure I grilled her hard enough in this podcast, but I did try to flush out some inconsistencies. 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 Dishcast feed. For two clips of my conversation with Ann — on our differing views on diversity, and how she underestimated Trump’s intelligence — head over to our YouTube page.A reader writes:I just finished your episode with Briahna Joy Gray on race and class in America, and I wanted to take a moment to thank you for bringing on guests you don't necessarily agree with. Too many podcasters use the platform to simply promote their ideas and bring on guests who don’t challenge them. Even though I could sense frustration and struggle on your side from time to time, I enjoyed the dialogue.The dialogue continues this week on Briahna’s pod — teaser below. God I look tired.Meanwhile, many readers continue to respond to our episode with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. One writes, “Intended or not, you and the Bobs managed to scare the living s**t out of me just in time for Halloween”:As a perennial supporter of outsiders — Howard Dean, local libertarians, Tulsi Gabbard, et al — I was embarrassed to vote for Joe Biden in 2020. And on January 6, I merely rolled my eyes at the wannabe cast of Idiocracy that stormed the Capitol, thinking I was witnessing a ridiculous but somewhat understandable temper tantrum within a heated historical moment. But thanks to the book Peril, I realize I was gravely in error. We were instead, on January 6, watching people cheer on an aspiring demagogue who was planning a case through the rule of law that we could and should overturn a free and fair election — and we are about to watch him do it again. There is absolutely nothing more plausibly dangerous to our country in our near future.During your closing minutes with the Bobs, you more or less label Trump as the one exceptional danger that ought to command our attention more than Wokeism. I agree — and surely far more dangerous than Biden. Even if we were to grant that the riots and crime sprees that took place alongside BLM protests were more dangerous than a mob attempting to capture or kill a vice president and/or members of our legislature, there’s little evidence Biden would further such riots beyond, perhaps, a misguided speech on race. Whereas we now know that President Trump would have done anything he could, including tactics bearing the weight of law, to further enable January 6.We have to ask what likely coming transgressions to laws and norms are most likely to damage us irreparably: Biden and the Wokesters castigating us on Twitter for watching Dave Chappelle, or Trump’s lawyers aiming to discard popular votes? Indeed, the Woke may want to shame us, coerce us, and tell us what to think, but should what the Bobs report come to pass, the Right will have functionally stripped the right to vote. To me, that sounds as though the American experiment will have ended.Another reader “watched this clip of your interview with the Bobs”:I wondered why you changed from saying at the beginning that Trump was crazy but rational to saying he was crazy and irrational at the end. Could you parse this please?I tried to explain above: you can be out of your mind, yet brutally rational in assessing your own narcissistic interests. From a reader in Portland, Oregon:I’m a long-time reader — all the way back to your days at TNR. Judging from your newsletters at the current Dish, however, I just can’t follow. While on the one hand I don’t want to unsubscribe from your freebie version, I often find it hard to read. Not because I agree or disagree with your take on current issues — that’s mixed, as one would expect in a sane world — but more about your apparent understanding, or lack thereof, about the hierarchy of cultural threats surrounding us, and where the dangers in these threats really lie.If you haven’t read this story from the WaPo about a Texas principal suspended for supposedly embracing CRT, I suggest you do. Cancel culture has been a feature of conservative America from t

Pinker’s new book is Rationality. It’s like taking a Harvard course on the tricks our minds play on us. We had a blast — and I pressed him on several points.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 Dishcast feed. For two clips of my conversation with Pinker — on what he believes is the biggest delusion in society today, and what we should do about truths that hurt people — head over to our YouTube page. If you’d rather watch the whole episode in living color — and see the most famous hair in academia — we videotaped the remote convo in the Dishcast studio. It even has the view from Pinker’s window in the background:Responding to my latest column on “our gay inheritance,” a reader actually hits on some themes discussed by Pinker and me:I find your argument regarding the new censoriousness of the LGBTQ community to miss some important context. Namely, the Puritans were once the rebels and the outcasts. I understand that from your perspective, as a gay man, the defining Puritan ethos is one of vicious repression, but I think there are larger truths we can learn once we understand the genesis of the Puritans as a “marginalized community.” How many powerful groups got their “start” in marginalization? The Catholic Church and Christians in general? Other groups that are so powerful that one might be called a bigot just for stating that they are powerful?A story of persecution is useful for attracting empathy and support, even after a group has recovered from its marginalization. At that point, is there ever any incentive to abandon the story? No, because as a group rises in status, there is power to be had in advocacy for the group. And the higher the status of the group, the more power can be gained by the advocates. And at some point, the preservation and gain of power becomes the point, and so every marginalized group has a tendency to become “The Puritans” over time.At this point in history, the larger danger, I believe, is that marginalized groups are being used to advance an agenda — the agenda of low-trust authoritarians. “Believe women” undercuts the presumption of innocence that we used to hold as a sacred belief. “Intent doesn’t matter” goes further along the path, essentially implying that everyone and anyone is guilty, and can be shamed at the pleasure of the attack dogs. “Follow the science” implies that there is only one true correct explanation, as determined by experts deemed in good grace by the media and government. Anyone who disagrees is distributing “misinformation.”Brilliantly put. This next reader, using the tool of rationality but also empathy, continues a discussion thread from the summer driven by an anti-vax reader:Immediately before reading the dissents over your “Let It Rip” piece, I read with disgust a wildly judgmental essay that a friend of a friend posted on Facebook. While I agreed with the spirit of frustration with the unvaccinated, the bitterness and judgment of the essay were breathtaking. These essays followed Sam Harris’ mea culpa regarding taking a preachy tone on the topic of vaccination. A pretty easy pattern emerged.It’s not hard to see that many of us are communicating in tone and tenor that is completely devoid of any understanding for people who are simply afraid of the shots and any potential side effects. And whether these unvaccinated folks are behaving in a way we find rational isn’t really the point, is it? We all know what fear feels like, and no one arrives at a place of fear through a rational exercise — so how can we then judge fearful actions only by the standards of rationality? Yet that seems to be what much of the vaccinated population (of which I am one) wants to do.Your impassioned final dissenter implied as much, and I sympathize: “What are we up against in the future? No one can say with concrete evidence. You might argue, that’s because there is nothing to worry about. Well, I don’t buy that. I know people in my own circle who have experienced heart issues, long-term fevers, menstrual changes and frequent illness since being vaccinated. That’s within months, imagine years.”I also know women who suffered strange menstrual changes and people with days of heart palpitations. Those folks’ symptoms did subside, and they know that their cases are rare and that most others’ with the same problems will experience similar relief because they’ve read the opinions of people like Your Local Epidemiologist or watched Scott Gottlieb or plenty of others on the Sunday shows. But many others won’t have found their way to that type of information for whatever reason.Assuming these experts are correct, should people like the dissenter seek out these data and figure all this out for themselves? Perhaps. But this is a confused media landscape we live in, and as The Dish has well documented, traditional outlets like the New York Times have been caugh

For anyone who follows online debates over race in America, John needs little introduction. The Columbia linguist just wrote a bracing tract, Woke Racism, against the new elite religion. He, like me, despises the racism inherent in critical race theory and its various off-shoots, and let’s just say we talked very freely about many of the dynamics of our time.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 full transcript here. For two clips of my conversation with John — on the banality of wokeness, and how the woke religion hurts African-American kids — head over to our YouTube page.Speaking of John, a reader mentions him in the context of this dissent:Love your podcast, but your complaints about the NYT are becoming tiresome and seem to reflect a lack of recent reading. With Bret Stephens, Ross Douthat, and now John McWhorter writing consistently reasonable columns that are not knee-jerk liberal, your tirades against the Times sound more like sour grapes every week. (No rational person supports Trump, so those voices aren’t going to be heard there except in the occasional guest column.)Sometimes you paint with such broad strokes that you fall prey to the same distorted view of the opposition — lumping them all together with the most extreme elements of the woke left and exclaiming, “Can you believe what they’re saying?!” Stop with the straw men!Sour grapes? The NYT has published many of my essays and reviews, and gave my new book a rave. But if my reader thinks that non-left views have more than token appearances in that paper, then I don’t know what to say. Conservative writers need not support Trump, but might be able to defend the non-interventionist, neo-protectionist agenda that also seeks to limit immigration. Another reader is curious to find good alternatives:As a lifelong Democrat (I was elected to county office on the McGovern ticket) and subscriber to liberal mainstream media, I was interested in your antipathy to those sources. What I need is balance. What sources and commentators do you trust for their objectivity?The Wall Street Journal is often a very neutral read in its news pages. Various Substacks help balance out the left-framing of everything. The Economist is much more based than the biased CNN or MSNBC.Looking back to our episode with Cornel West, the following clip, where he offers his take on critical race theory and the 1619 Project, was really popular among readers:One reader remarks how “Cornel West just exudes a cerebral, erudite common (universalist) warmth and decency. Is this why he’s seemingly so out of fashion on the left?” Another reader:“We’ve got to fight the notion that whiteness is reducible to white supremacy.” Yes — thank you, Dr. West. This is my issue with how CRT is being disseminated. I don’t have any problems with teaching history, however reprehensible some of our predecessors behaved, but don’t teach children that they have some sort of original sin based on their skin color.Condoleezza Rice said the same this week:Another reader on Cornel’s deep love for the humanities:I found very interesting Dr. West’s response to your question of who people should read more of. His response was Chekhov. Now, critical race theory would tell you that Dr. West, a black man, shouldn’t find too much in common with Chekhov, a dead white man. But in fact the opposite is true. Moreover, Dr. West’s analysis of Chekhov’s work wasn’t a critical theory analysis of cis, white, patriarchal, capitalist, etc, etc. Rather it was a fundamental engagement with. the. text. — can you hear the annoying clapping? — and what that text says about the HUMAN condition. I think there is something deep to this, especially in our current cultural moment. That a black American professor in 2021 finds such deep communion with a Russian white playwright from (roughly) 150 years ago … worlds apart, and yet deeply connected.And this is the real beauty of a liberal education — you can commune with anyone outside your own “lived experience” and learn from them. Their identity matters far less than their ideas — and the more cultural and historical boundaries we cross the more we stand to learn. Many more readers keep the conversation going over the episode with Briahna Joy Gray:This was a really good talk. While it can be fun to hear you, Andrew, chat with your old buddies, this is the kind of talk I’m here for. Briahna is obviously incredibly sharp. In my experience, articulate thinkers like her are rare out on her wing. She really is the kind of progressive intellectual we need to put forward the best version of the worst ideas from the left. I’m so tired of only finding rational sense-makers clustered around the center of everything. I enjoy getting my opinions challenged, but it doesn’t work if those doing the challenging seem delusional.And so, it was a bit frustrating to hear Briahna make so much sense, a

In the year or so that I’ve been podcasting, this may be the most significant conversation I’ve recorded. It’s a civil, careful examination of the core political question we face today: how can we save liberal democracy from becoming tyranny? The skill with which Bob Woodward and now Robert Costa have put together a chronology of the Trump administration should remind us of how truly grave the threat was — and is. No hyperbole here; just brutal realism and a refusal to deny what is staring us in the face. Something new for the Dishcast this week: video. If you’re a paid subscriber and want to watch as well as listen to my discussion with Bob and Robert in our DC studio, go here. Or check out this short clip of the 1.5 hour episode: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 full transcript here. For two audio clips — on the various signs of Trump’s insanity, and on how the non-interventionist president still got us on the brink of war — head over to our YouTube page.Staying on the topic of Trump, several readers reflect on the episode we did last month with Michael Wolff. The first writes:I really appreciate your measured but firm concern about Trump, and I thoroughly enjoyed your conversation with Wolff, whose overall take on Trump — not a mastermind but a moronic, egomaniacal, accidentally genius, dangerous rabble-rouser — has always seemed the most accurate one. But what I’d add to your essay on “Deepening Menace of Trump” is that, if he’s re-elected (and I agree with you that it’s VERY possible), the GOP and the various amoral grifters attached to Trump will have had four years to give far more purpose to strip-mining democracy. Whereas the first time around, Trump was an unguided missile, someone who no one was sure could be manipulated, it’s now clear he can be maneuvered to do all sorts of catastrophic harm by people skilled at flattering his demented ego and exploiting his proud ignorance of history and how government works. Take the first Trump presidency and add to it the steely discipline of GOP cynicism and the ever-increasing, violent insanity of his cult followers, and your “deepening menace” becomes lethally nihilistic on many levels. This next reader, on the other hand, gives Trump much more credit:Michael Wolff has such a narrow, one-dimensional view of Trump that it’s hard to swallow completely. I voted for Trump because he lacked the smooth rehearsed qualities of professional politicians. I hoped a businessman would provide refreshing leadership. (After all, Reagan the Actor turned out to be quite wonderful in most respects.) I have lived to regret my vote for Trump, because his hideous personality has completely overshadowed his accomplishments. If he had stayed out of view and simply put forward his agenda, I believe he would have been re-elected. His response to Covid was far better than Biden’s, something the mainstream press has given Trump little credit for. The great masking debate notwithstanding, it truly was Operation Warp Speed. And while many, including myself, are impatient with anti-vaxxers, you should pull out the clips of Kamala Harris casting doubt on a “Trump vaccine.” If Trump had been re-elected, would the Left be the main vaccine holdouts? Maybe so.Other Trump accomplishments include:* Slowing illegal immigration and his success in requiring asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico. * He was derided for trying to work with Kim Jong-Un, an impossible task, but Trump managed to put a pause on North Korean nuclear reactor development. Under Biden, the reactor has again been fired up. No other president did anything meaningful on this front.* Largely ignored was Trump’s successful efforts to broker some degree of cooperation between Israel and Arab countries.* A less tangible benefit of a Trump presidency was a restored national pride and confidence. Obama seemed ashamed or disdainful of our country. America is truly a place where opportunity is endless and anyone can make good, and he didn’t seem to appreciate that.In my opinion, the Trump accomplishments prove that he was more than just a crazy guy who couldn’t pay attention.Speaking of policies under a GOP administration, a reader has a suggestion:I completely agree with your 2019 argument for nuclear power as a means of combating climate change. My recent brainstorm on the issue: on a political level, GOP primary candidates who are pro-nuclear seem much more likely to succeed than Dem primary candidates who are pro-nuclear. Is it time to reach out, or prod, the Republican Party to make it happen? Steal the entire issue of the environment while putting millions to work building power plants? Launch perhaps 10 years of sustained old-school infrastructure stimulus? Own the libs by making them live through an American nuclear Renaissance?This could win a lot of elections. But probably only on the GOP side, God help us.Yes! But

Cornel West’s academic career is long and storied, having taught religion, philosophy, and African-American studies at Yale, Princeton, Harvard, and Union Theological Seminary, where he recently returned. He has written or contributed to more than 20 books, including Race Matters and Democracy Matters — but he recommends you start with Chekhov.I met Cornel decades ago, when I interviewed him at Union Theological Seminary for a TNR piece I was writing on divinity schools. He has long fascinated me, and Race Matters had a real impact on me decades ago. Erudite, passionate, and deeply humane, he is an unapologetically leftist Christian, who is also a champion of free speech, civility and the classics. In other words: a rare and beautiful man.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 full transcript here. For two clips of my conversation with Cornel — on how he finds common ground with bigots and racists, and his take on CRT and the 1619 Project — pop over to our YouTube page.Last week’s episode with Briahna Joy Gray elicited one of the biggest waves of email yet. Here’s the first of many readers to sound off:This was, hands down, your best conversation on the Dishcast. Ms. Gray is brilliant, and you were, as always, a worthy interlocutor. It was refreshing to have two smart people with very different points of view converse about complicated issues rather than endure yet another diatribe against wokeness. That script has become predictable and boring, and none of us who admire your intellect (even as we often disagree with your views) want you to become boring. There are many thoughtful voices on the left — some of whom regard wokeness as a distraction, which it is, so bring more of them on to your show.You can always drop us more guest recommendations at [email protected]. This next reader also enjoyed the “fascinating” debate with Briahna and throws a barbed dissent my way:I admire your resolution to have on guests who clearly do not agree with you, and such guests are so much more interesting to hear than a sympathetic guest and you mutually endorsing each other’s dislike of Wokery, or congratulating each other on being Catholics. I must say I thought Gray had the edge on you in your arguments, and I found myself at times wanting to scream at your stubborn refusal to see her argument at its strongest. You are right in acknowledging the importance of two-parent households in raising healthy and well-adjusted young people, but you seem blind to the political and economic factors that have made that such a difficulty in the African-American community in the past 30 to 40 years. To hear you lament the lack of father figures in the ghetto as if this was due to the unique moral failings of Black men reminded me of the way that the British used to talk about the Irish during the Famine and afterwards. Dark references to fecundity, waywardness, intemperance and passivity were all leveled at the Irish then, as they are to African-Americans today. Lo and behold, when the criminal British Imperial policy in Ireland changed, the economy began to develop and the Irish showed those tropes to be exactly what they were: prejudicial nonsense. Until we stop the War on Drugs, reinvest in inner cities, begin to bring back industries and meaningful work opportunities, and reorient the police away from soldiering and into community care and treatment, these problems will persist, and people like you and others on the right will continue to blame the victims rather than face up to the logical consequences of the economic policies pursued by successive governments since the 1980s. Poverty is not a moral failing; it is an economic consequence of the system we have allowed to develop and until this is grasped, people like you are seeing the world with one eye closed.Why, then, one wonders was the black family far, far stronger a century ago, when oppression was much greater and the welfare state so much more meager? Another reader is more critical of Briahna:She set up a false dichotomy: “There are two options: Either you believe that Black men don’t care about their children, have some kind of fundamentally intrinsic cultural lack of interest in their offspring, or you think that there are structural factors that are making it more difficult for Black fathers to be in the home or for them to stay in relationships with the mothers of their children.”No. Both factors can, and likely are, at play. The real question is the relative way of the two factors.But Briahna simply refused to acknowledge ANY negative cultural effects. For her, it’s ALL systemic. And, as you pointed out, if it is all systemic, then that world has no individual agency — people are just helplessly subject to the whims of political and economic structures. If those structures were in fact the cause of all life-outcome disparities (an Ibram X Kendi notion),

Briahna, a lawyer and political consultant who served as press secretary for Bernie Sanders, co-hosts the superb podcast Bad Faith. I start our enjoyable convo with a simple question: how can we best facilitate the flourishing of black America? I’m trying to reach out and engage more people I have disagreements with, to see where we might have common ground. I’m immensely grateful to Briahna for coming on.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 Dishcast feed. For two excerpts of my conversation with Briahna — on the extent to which culture plays a role in poverty, and on the causes behind the sky-high murder rates of young African-American men — head over to our YouTube page.After listening to last week’s episode with Antonio García Martínez, a reader writes:While I agree with you on most topics, I have never been able to grasp the logic of your position on immigration. In your conversation with Martínez, you explained that the core reason you support more limited immigration is for the purpose of maintaining the cultural status quo. For you, it doesn’t seem to ultimately be about economics or logistics or crime, just aesthetics. My question is, why do you think that as an individual person you have any right to decide “what London culturally feels like,” or something similar? Why should your aesthetic preferences about cities have meaningful implications for public policy? And furthermore, what about those of us who enjoy having a few really culturally diverse cities in the world like London and New York? Do we get any say about it?First off, it’s not aesthetics. I’m not even sure what you mean by that. It’s simply about not creating such massive and sudden demographic change that it threatens the cohesion and common identity of a nation-state. It’s about slowing migration, to encourage social stability and some measure of cultural continuity, not stopping it altogether. And of course I don’t decide. Voters do. And in such a situation, big multicultural cities are not threatened at all. Next up, a perennial dissent:I am sure you have heard this before, but I think that the experiences of African Americans cannot be compared to other immigrants. I believe you give short shrift to the ongoing experience and sensibilities of black people in the US. While it is true, as you pointed out in your conversation with Mr. Martínez, that slavery and discrimination were not created in the US, it held a special place, which I believe you minimize.In my lifetime I have seen the tail end of Jim Crow, the redlining, the mistreatment of Black students in schools, the unwillingness of academic departments to come to grips with the longstanding double standards towards Black applicants and faculty. I was alive, although somewhat young, when Brown v. Board of Education was decided, and during the backlash, the creation of “private” white schools. The Civil Rights Movement occurred when I was an adult. Anti-miscegenation laws were ended when I was an adult as well. I was alive when the Voting Rights Act was passed, and when it was gutted recently because Chief Justice Roberts thinks that discrimination in access to voting no longer exists.I could go on, but I think you get the point. We need to consider the experiences of Black people who have this as part of their memories, and of their parents’ and grandparents’ memories. The effect of the experiences of Jews in Nazi Germany on their children and grandchildren are taken seriously, more seriously than the effect of slavery and the brutal experiences that lasted well into the present on the minds and sensibilities of Blacks. Discrimination is not over. There is ample empirical evidence that Blacks are still not treated equally, even though less unequally than in the past. But it seems like there is a real desire for them to forget their parents’ and grandparents’ experiences and even their own, and act as if they do not matter.I know you know all this, and I know you take it seriously, but I do think that the way you have discussed this history, and the ongoing effects of this history, has been dismissive. I do hope that you find merit in my argument and will examine how you have presented this in your past discussions.I do see a great deal of merit in what you are saying. The African-American experience in this country is indeed unique in its historic enmeshment with evil. The question is how we respond to that inheritance. And I think the woke left’s insistence that history can never be overcome, that the US needs to be dismantled for liberation to arrive, and that African Americans are uniquely incapable of agency because of “white supremacy,” to be unhelpful, if not downright counter-productive. You can acknowledge deeply the victimhood, without being defined by it. This is not a new tension: it has engaged black America for centuries. I think the cur

Antonio is quite the Renaissance man: child of Cuban exiles, journalist, PhD student in physics, Wall Street ace, entrepreneur, Facebook ad pioneer, and Silicon Valley apostate. His NYT bestselling memoir Chaos Monkeys got rave reviews until five years later it got him fired from Apple a few weeks into his job because of a woke revolt. Now he has a brilliant substack. In this episode we dive deep into our Catholic backgrounds, Antonio’s break toward Judaism, and the new Woke religion.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 Dishcast feed. To listen to two excerpts from my conversation with Antonio — on how he thinks Christianity is flawed compared to his chosen religion of Judaism, and on how the Great Awokening is very Puritan in nature — head over to our YouTube page.A reader reflects on last week’s episode with Ross Douthat:You and Douthat are my two favorite contemporary thinkers, so listening to both of you discuss such a wide range of topics absolutely delighted me. While you two have some commonalities in your respective backgrounds that are obvious — Catholic conservatives educated at Harvard and working in journalism — the fact that you have both endured chronic illnesses never occurred to me. Listening to you discuss the struggle and the pain, and the way that suffering has shaped your respective relationships with God, was very moving. I was surprised by how little of Douthat’s personal spirituality I knew about, despite having read him for over a decade and obviously being very familiar with his overall interest in religion. But you have a wonderful way of getting your interviewees to open up and of empathizing with them, and this interview was no exception.One amusing part of the interview, which underscores the complexity of both thinkers, was your discussion of the political landscape toward the end. I typically consider you to be to Douthat’s left, and in most cases that is true. But it was enjoyable to hear you outflank him to the right on the question of wokeism. Obviously you have different audiences, objectives, and temperaments that shape your writing.I also want to briefly note that I greatly enjoyed the old interview that Johann Hari did of you. Aside from how moving it was to hear you discuss your personal faith journey, it was incredibly engaging to hear you and Hari get into the weeds of political philosophy. Also, amusingly, I immediately picked up on your thicker English accent, which you eventually acknowledged as probable subconscious code-switching.I was in England at the time and the accent creeps back in. A question from a reader:I have a background in Philosophy of Religion, with some familiarity with political philosophy. However, Oakeshott is someone who has only come on to my radar since following you in the last year or two. Could you make a recommendation for where to begin reading him? I realize he apparently evolved in his thinking, but just curious of a good place to start.Read his introduction to Hobbes’ Leviathan. Then the assorted essays in “Rationalism in Politics.” Then try the final third of “On Human Conduct.” For a superb account of Oakeshott on religion (the ultimate focus of my own book on him), try Elizabeth Corey’s study. Another reader points to a sermon in the midst of the Jewish holidays:I love your writing and your defense of liberalism. Along those lines, I thought you might appreciate this impassioned, yet measured, advocacy of liberalism from a religious perspective. It’s the Kol Nidre (night of Yom Kippur — holiest time of the Jewish Year) sermon from the chief rabbi at Central Synagogue in NYC, Angela Warnick Buchdal, who is herself a trailblazer in being an Asian, female rabbi. (As a Catholic, I hope you don’t mind the comparison at the beginning of Judaism to the Nicene Creed; not sure how valid that is). Her measured yet clear repudiation of identity politics at 14:34 is particularly good:Central Syngagogue is a Reform synagogue that is probably overwhelmingly liberal in its membership and “social justice” orientation, so I took this sermon, at the most important service of the year, amplified by the Internet and Jewish Broadcasting Service, as a good sign that more are waking up to the threats from the illiberal left.Another reader turns to the ongoing debate over Covid:Last week you wrote, “I am befuddled and maddened by the resistance of so many to such obvious common sense.” I find your position regarding COVID “anti-vaxxers” to be uncharacteristically devoid of nuance, especially in light of your recent interview with Michael Lewis. I think I can help explain the skepticism of at least some of the anti-vaxx crowd.There are many good reasons to be nervous about getting the COVID vaccines. The fundamental problem is that for those who are 12 and older, we have a one-size-fits-all vaccine policy. This despite many well

Ross is a dear old colleague whose newest book, The Deep Places, is a memoir about his long fight against Lyme disease. In this episode we talk about the world of sickness, which we both know something about, and we debate our differing views of Pope Francis and our different levels of panic over Trump and CRT.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 Dishcast feed. To listen to two excerpts from my conversation with Ross — on how chronic pain affects one’s religious faith, and on whether the Vatican should deny Communion to certain groups, such as the rich or the remarried — head over to our YouTube page.A religious reader writes:I listened to the first part of your interview with Johann Hari (whose book Lost Connections is in my library), and I have a small dissent. You said something (at 1:11:00) that I interpreted as a belief that Jesus was not literally resurrected, on the grounds that the resurrection is an accretion: “the Gospels themselves are oral histories written one hundred years later.” This sounds an awful lot like form criticism and is wrong. The Gospel of Mark was written 30-40 years after the crucifixion and the Gospel of John was written about AD 90. I recommend a book called Jesus and The Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham, who explains why this is probably so. It isn’t apologetics; it’s a serious academic study. However, what is even more important is that we know that one of the earliest pieces of oral history, written within months of the resurrection (I can’t explain how the experts know this, but apparently even Bart Ehrman agrees), appears in Corinthians 15:13, “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance [a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture” … which apparently scholars date to within a few months of the resurrection. A more detailed explanation is here: The Gospels may be full of accretions, but the resurrection isn’t one of them. It is one of the first things. I think you misinterpreted me. It’s quite clear that the resurrection was believed by the earliest sources. My point is that what the resurrection actually has multiple versions in the New Testament, and what it means specifically — did he retain his body? could he walk through walls? could he disguise himself as someone else? —remains a little obscure. Another reader zooms out:After falling behind on your podcasts, I was able to catch up. While my comments are not timely, I feel the need to share them.Michael Wolff: He had a better understanding of Trump than anyone at the NYT, WaPo, etc. He really exposed the weakness of the coverage of Trump by mainstream media.Michael Moynihan: Very sharp and interesting. Gives you hope that there are sane journalists out there not afraid to expose the deficiencies of the CRT/Woke ideology. It made me wonder if young “woke” poorly paid journalists understand that they will soon be replaced by younger poorly paid journalists — who will criticize them.Michael Schuman: Pivoting to China (away from CRT) shows the breadth of the Dish. China is obviously a present and future problem for our country, and a problem that people (and politicians) know little about. Schuman’s suggestion that we expand our trade partners beyond China (TPP comes to mind) would be a wise course of action. We will never compete with China with American workers.Michael Lewis: As interesting as his books. Listening to him discuss the death of his daughter; and thinking about the difficult situation he faces grieving for her and supporting his family who is also grieving, I thought of those who speak of white privilege and how they should look at Michael’s tragic story as an example of how the world can, at times, cause everyone pain, no matter how white or wealthy.Wesley Yang: No one can say Andrew Sullivan talks over his guest anymore.Peter Beinart: I’m stunned at Beinart’s support for the direction of the media today and enjoyed hearing him challenged on the basis for that support. Did he really say there are examples of great writing from Nikole Hannah Jones? Where? Here’s a followup to the Schuman pod from another reader:I grew up with a foot in each world with a mixed background: father’s side is Irish/Polish from Boston, mother’s side is ethnically Chinese and has been educated in the US since the late 19th century but has called Hong Kong home since the 1970s. All four past generations have essentially split my life between the East and the West.Here is my dissent to the interview: When I hear Westerners talk about East Asia, there is a false parallel that most fail to understand. One must beware of the temptation to equate Christianity’s influence in the West to Confucianism in the East. In the West, we tend to define much of our history in terms of tension based on religion (think: Rome pagan vs. Christian, Crusades, Reformation, persecution of the Je

Michael Wolff, a longtime media critic, and now the author of three Trump tell-alls, talks with me about the 45th president. How politically dangerous is he still? How delusional and mentally unbalanced? Will he run again? We get into it. You can listen to our conversation 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 Dishcast feed. For two clips of the episode — on the questions of whether the media confronted Trump appropriately and whether the madman will return to electoral politics — head over to our YouTube page.A reader writes:Your two-week vacation gave me time to listen to the Michael Lewis episode. Since Donald Trump is supposedly responsible for all of the country’s ills, here’s a counterfactual: If he had taken the California approach to controlling Covid, would he have been branded an authoritarian dictator who was denying Americans their basic freedoms? Had he taken that approach, along with Operation Warp Speed, I doubt he would have been hailed as someone who was doing his best to protect the public’s health. He knew how the media would portray an attempted federal shutdown of the country and his only response was to err on the side of less restrictions. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.I don’t disagree. That’s what a tribalized country does: one tribe cannot ever give a president of the other tribe the benefit of the doubt, even in a public health emergency. That applies to Biden now as well, of course. Another reader swung his support to Trump out of a reaction to the media:I come from a Muslim country and I’m a naturalized American. I was a registered Democrat for 10 years. I always voted for the Democrats. But in 2020, I voted for Trump, due to the lies of the leftist MSM after watching all WH press conferences in full. I saw the edited/manipulated sound-bite videos and I couldn’t believe the lies and the distortion. All those “mostly peaceful” protests ... simply disappointing.The left doesn't represent me anymore. I don’t like watching Bill Maher, Steven Colbert, John Oliver, or Trevor Noah anymore. I don’t share the same values with them anymore. I’m a **civil libertarian** before anything else. I'm tired of you guys’ constant Trump Derangement Syndrome cramps day and night. Switching to Afghanistan, a reader sends a view from his wartime:From the reader:The 2014 window view from Afghanistan that you posted prompts me to share this photo, taken through the window of a truck in Khost, Afghanistan in 2004. I was a hardcore neocon when I enlisted after 9/11, and of course I’m much chastened from those days. I enjoyed your writing all along the sad journey. My mom would send several days’ worth of the Dish in letter-format when I was in basic training — when reading anything but letters and religious texts were forbidden — and I continued reading you while in Afghanistan, when I could get to the Internet.Next is a dissent from an “ex British Army soldier who completed two tours of Helmand province and then worked for several more years as a civilian in Afghanistan.” It’s a powerful testimony, and the impact of the chaotic withdrawal on our alliances is something I haven’t fully accounted for:What you have wrong here is that whether to withdraw or not is barely half the question. It is possible to withdraw in a manner that isn’t reckless, petulant, tin-eared, chaotic and certain to inflict pandemonium on your partner nations. It is possible to let your allies and your own military actually plan for the tasks that withdrawal necessitates, whereas here it seems plain that the operation to extract people has not even had time to plan movements from the city to the airport (this in a city whose airport, as most people don’t know, is practically in the city centre). Biden, in short, has absolutely fucked not only Kabulis, but all of the US partner countries in Afghanistan, all of whom are absolutely swamped beneath this task. This is Biden pulling the pin without caring a s**t for America’s allies. Good grief, Andrew, this is very far from “grown-up.” You seem to imply that the only people complaining about the exit’s manner are those who are opposed to it — I think you have that quite, quite wrong. There is no incoherence in the notion that withdrawal is necessary but the manner of it is an embarrassing and shameful episode which will damage enduring partnerships. That damage is worst with the British, who expended more blood and treasure than any other NATO country. What many British officials have internalised over the years is that the special relationship is largely meaningless as far as the Americans are concerned. But for the first time we have incontrovertible proof that first, the US doesn’t care about us, and second, the US is unreliable anyway. This may prompt a wholesale rethinking of British foreign policy. I really don’t think even Trump — even Trump! — could have done anything so spectac

While Andrew and I wrap up our two-week summer vacation (back on September 10), here is the second half of the very personal interview he did with journalist and friend Johann Hari (who wrote the bestselling books Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs and Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope). To recap, the idea to re-air the 2012 conversation all started with this reader: I began reading Andrew in the early 2000s, and even though I’m a huge fan, I’ve never heard him systematically discuss his intellectual origins and development. […] I bet your listeners might enjoy hearing Andrew being interviewed thoroughly and in-depth about how he sees the trajectory of his intellectual life. (I know I would.)That posted email prompted another reader to write in:[Andrew] did an extensive two-parter with Johann Hari a decade ago, which covers most of the areas that your reader mentions. Johann put this out as his own podcast, which is no longer available online, but I have mp3 copies that I’m happy to share.A big thanks to our reader for saving the audio files from oblivion! I vividly remember listening to that interview, almost a decade ago, because it was one of the most riveting and revealing conversations I’ve ever heard from Andrew, publicly or privately. Johann has that effect.You can listen to the second half of the conversation 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 Dishcast feed. (The first half was posted here.) The second half includes an emotional recounting of Andrew’s best friend Patrick, who perished from AIDS in the middle of the book tour for Virtually Normal, a book he helped edit:Another part of the conversation tackles the nature of religious fundamentalism and natural law, especially when it comes to sexuality:For three more clips of Andrew’s conversation with Johann — about two of the earliest influences that made Andrew a conservative; on the genius of his dissertation subject, Michael Oakeshott; and on why true conservatives should want to save the planet from climate change — head to our YouTube page.In lieu of reader commentary this week, we are trying something different: a transcript of a podcast episode, specifically a July interview that Andrew did on Debra Soh’s podcast, focused on the AIDS crisis and the marriage movement. (We are thinking of making transcripts available for our most popular Dishcast episodes. Unfortunately we we don’t have the staff bandwidth to do every episode, since transcripts are a ton of work, even with auto-transcription tools.) Below is the second half of Andrew’s conversation with Debra, author of The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity in Our Society (the first half is here):Andrew: I could take you to a few leather bars, where it’s probably the last place now in America where raw masculinity can be simply celebrated, where it isn’t complicated. I mean, it’s in the presentation more than in the actual reality, but nonetheless it’s like, “Yay! Men like sex, we’re men, sniff my armpit, look at my back hair, and let’s go for it. And in a couple of weeks in Provincetown, where I am, we’re going to have Bear Week, which was the moment when a whole bunch of middle-aged overweight, hairy-back dudes who were able to actually be welcomed as integral to gay culture and gay society — which took a while too — instead of all these perfect little muscle bunnies that show up for circuit party.Debra: When I go to gay bars, it doesn’t matter where I am in the world. Sometimes I’ll go by myself even, just because I’m curious to hang out there — and everyone is always so nice. They’re a little bit concerned. They look at me and think, like, “Why is she here?” But they never ask me, “What are you doing here?” And they never told me to leave. And that’s one thing I love about it.Andrew: The thing that we are getting a little upset is, um, vast numbers of straight women coming in — especially this bachelorette party thing, where gay male spaces are just overwhelmed by women.Debra: Yeah that’s a problem. Because they’re disrespectful too. They get really drunk and they’re all over people — don’t do that. Be respectful.Andrew: We’re like zoo animals to them. And they want their Instagram photos in the cool leather bar. And we’re just like, you’re killing the mood. Like, you know, we don’t want to be mean and tell you to leave, but can’t you see that this is actually a place you might want to respect a little bit? I mean, they had a bachelorette party coming in, they’re playing bareback sex on the screens up there, and they will still sit there with their gin and tonic.Debra: It’s weird. I feel it’s changed, because when I used to go, I’d be the only straight person there. Now when I go out, it’s weird to see — you see a younger generation of straight kids there, and I’m like, this is crazy.Andrew: Well you take the word

This fortnight, while Andrew and I are on our annual Dishcation in August, we are airing a two-part interview of Andrew from 2012, conducted by the journalist Johann Hari (author of the bestselling books Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs and Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope). The idea to re-air the interview all started with this reader:I began reading Andrew in the early 2000s, and even though I’m a huge fan, I’ve never heard him systematically discuss his intellectual origins and development. I know bits and pieces of the story — a provincial kid, debated at Oxford, proud Tory and Reagan supporter, came to the States, courted controversy at The New Republic, was a pioneering supporter of gay marriage, supported the Iraq War and lived to regret it, and so on. But I bet your listeners might enjoy hearing Andrew being interviewed thoroughly and in-depth about how he sees the trajectory of his intellectual life. (I know I would.) Another impetus for this suggestion is that I recently enjoyed listening to Glenn Loury do something like this on his own podcast. I loved it and learned a lot.That posted email prompted another reader to write in:One of your readers suggested that Andrew do an in-depth interview about his early life, his intellectual influences, etc. I listened to his interview with Giles Fraser, which was interesting, but he also did a more extensive two-parter with Johann Hari a decade ago, which covers most of the areas that your reader mentions. Johann put this out as his own podcast, which is no longer available online, but I have mp3 copies that I’m happy to share.Even Johann doesn’t have the audio files anymore, so a big thanks to our reader for saving them from oblivion! I vividly remember listening to that interview, almost a decade ago, because it was one of the most revealing conversations I’ve ever heard of Andrew (and I’ve known him a long time). Johann has a real knack for allowing people to reveal themselves.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 Dishcast feed. (The second half of the interview will air next Friday. Update: here.) For three clips of Andrew’s conversation with Johann — on two of the earliest influences that made Andrew a conservative; on the genius of his dissertation subject, Michael Oakeshott; and on why true conservatives should want to save the planet from climate change — head over to our YouTube page.In lieu of reader commentary this week, we are trying something different: a transcript of a podcast episode, specifically an interview that Andrew did last month on Debra Soh’s podcast, focused on the AIDS crisis and the marriage movement. We may start making transcripts available for our most popular Dishcast episodes, rather than all of the episodes, because we don’t have the staff bandwidth right now, and transcripts are a lot of work. Let us know if you think they would be particularly useful, or if you have any ideas in general about the Dishcast: [email protected]. For now, we hope you get some value from the transcript below, which gets very personal about Andrew and his friends who suffered during the AIDS crisis.Debra: I want to start by saying thank you so much for agreeing to do this. It’s really an honor for me to get to talk with you, especially about this subject. I guess I’ll explain to listeners what got me interested in wanting to do this episode. So my audience knows I’m straight, but I grew up in the gay community. When I was younger all my friends were gay men, and I really do credit them for helping me become the woman I am. I’m very proud of that. I love them so much, and I don’t feel there’s enough of a discussion about the AIDS crisis and what happened in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I feel like there needs to be more education about it, and I admire how open you’ve been about what you’ve been through. And I get so many questions from my audience, because I have a lot of young gay men in my audience, and they ask me about dating and sex, just like everyone does, but specifically in the context of this history and how to go about safer sex practices. So that’s what brought me to you.Andrew: I’m delighted to answer any questions or engage in various reminiscences, as you please.Debra: I want to start with a bit of a broader question in terms of coming out, because some of my audience, they live in parts of the world where it’s not acceptable to be gay, unfortunately, or they come from families where their families don’t accept them. What was it like for you when you were coming out? And also, what advice would you have for them?Andrew: Well, I came out in the ‘80s, and I was a gay boy entirely surrounded by straight people — the complete inverse of you. And I love them all. I never heard the word “homosexual” ever. I never heard any discussion of it. I never heard anyt

Moynihan is one-third of the The Fifth Column — the sharp, hilarious podcast he does with Kmele Foster and Matt Welch — and he’s a long-time correspondent for Vice. In this episode we mostly cover the cascading news out of Afghanistan, but also bounce around to topics like old media, woke media, neocons and Israel, Big Tech, and third rails. We also reminisce a little about our mutual friend, the late Christopher Hitchens — like that one time Hitch called me a lesbian on air. 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 full transcript here. For three clips of my conversation with Moynihan — on our shared bewilderment over anti-vaxxers, on the need for intellectual humility and occasionally eating crow, and on gay men having a very different culture of consent and flirting — head over to our YouTube page.Two of the subjects that Moynihan and I covered in the episode — wokeness and anti-vaxxers — are discussed by readers below, spurred by previous pods with Wesley Yang and Michael Lewis. This first reader “really enjoyed your conversation with Wesley and his idea of the ‘successor ideology’”:I appreciated your and Wesley’s suggestion that a kind of racial anxiety feeds into both “woke” and Trumpist takes on culture, specifically the woke anxiety that America will soon (if not already) no longer be primarily black and white, and so they will be less justified in framing their projects in his mode. Yes, I agree! I am a mother of two young children. My family mostly hails from the British Isles (though it was a long time ago!) and my husband was born in Iran. Thus our children are, in the current understanding, “biracial” — or if you prefer, “brown” — or “white”? depending on the season? And yet, what an empty, grasping way to look at them! I shudder to think of the day my children will be informed by someone that they are growing up not with vegetarian, Catholic, urban, Persian, Muslim, musical, and Midwestern values and influences, but with “whiteness” or “brownness” to which they must confess some kind of allegiance. The absurdity of this idea should be obvious. Not just the absurdity, but the toxic crudeness of it all. Another multi-racial perspective from a reader:A recent piece at The Atlantic, “The Surprising Innovations of Pandemic-Era Sex,” reads like a parody of 1990s POMO-speak: “Many queer people are reimagining their own boundaries and thinking of this reentry period as a time for sexual self-discovery.” When you boil it down to ordinary English, the piece argues that any person should be free to have sex with whomever they wish and however they like.Well sure. Almost all readers of The Atlantic would agree. Those who don’t will not be persuaded by sentences like, “This drive stems from the fact that many queer and trans people — especially those of color — live under a kind of sociocultural duress in which our livelihoods and human rights are constantly subject to negotiation and popular debate, to say nothing of our physical safety.”It’s not surprising that the author, Madison Moore, is “an assistant professor of queer studies” at Virginia Commonwealth University. “Their” personal web page is here. I’m not sure how to name this kind of young gay thinker with whom I agree at root, but whose mode of presentation is … risible. They “discourse” only with each other and their university’s uneasy tenure committee.I myself am a white male gay boomer who bought a home in Central Harlem and lives there happily with my Black boyfriend. I studied for the Ph.D. in English at UCLA, progressing to all but dissertation. If even someone like me finds this kind of writing to be counter-productive for the cause, I’m not sure who else is left to applaud it.P.S. The conversation with Yang was tremendously fine. The crucial part came when you debated whether the successor ideology was merely a fad, or the ineluctable doom of liberalism, or something in between. Listening, I felt some hope.I too wince at some of the brain-dead grievance porn that now passes for “queer” discourse. But it’s particularly painful to read it in the pages of the Atlantic. A dissent from a reader:I tend to concur with your dislike of the “woke” ideas that have increasingly percolated in the media in recent years. However, I think your emphasis is misplaced. In my view, the essential problem with this ideology is its phoniness; the people pushing this rhetoric are from the professional bourgeois class, and many of them aren’t actually concerned about lower strata of society on their own terms — they’re definitely not concerned with the values of the working class and the indigent.If you accept this premise, then the ideology isn’t quite the threat to the liberal order that is your refrain. And the most effective response is not to continually sound the alarm about the danger of these people, but, rather, to mock them dismissively and then mov

Michael, currently in Hong Kong, is a veteran journalist on East Asian affairs and a regular contributor to The Atlantic and Bloomberg. He’s written a book on Confucius, and his most recent one, Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World, explores the driving force behind the current Xi regime. After our episode with Peter Beinart that touched on China, and after the reader dissents that made me rethink, we wanted to bring on a Sinophile to help us sort through the most important foreign policy issue of the next decade.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 Dishcast feed. For three clips of my conversation with Michael — on whether China is really that culturally alien to the West and its economic system, on the overt structural racism and sexism in China, and on the current relevance of Confucius in foreign affairs — head over to our YouTube page.Keeping the debate going, a Canadian reader who recently moved back from China responds to my initial column on the darkness visible there:I wanted to say thank you for finally talking about international politics again, even if it is just to reach another disappointingly isolationist/non-interventionist conclusion. It’s so sad that there aren’t any bold freedom hawks in the West any more, whether conservative or liberal. I thought freedom mattered, you know? Spreading democracy, trying to make the world a better and fairer place.I don’t know what the solution on China is, but I wish we got to hear more varied opinions than “work side-by-side with a genocidal government because climate change is worse than authoritarianism,” or “ignore the foreign fascists trying to shape media narratives internationally because U.S. journalists writing about systemic racism is a bigger threat to the liberal order.” It’s depressing that there isn’t a unified voice of resistance. That means the authoritarians already won, since they seem to have already defeated the spirits of most Western elites.In that spirit, here’s a tangible tactic from a reader that doesn’t involve the military:Your column on China was the most clear-headed piece I’ve read on the subject and I appreciate the practicality of it. But you missed something major: We can accept refugees. One of the greatest moral errors of the 20th century was the failure to accept Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler. One of our greatest moral triumphs against Communism was the open arms with which we embraced refugees from every place the Soviets and their allies controlled. This is the right course of action on principle alone, but in an ongoing struggle for global hearts and minds, it’s practical as well. No one flees a utopia, especially not en masse, and especially not toward a country that’s a nightmare. The sight of refugees arriving on the shores of America, telling their stories, using newfound freedom to organize in a way that's impossible in the land they fled from is devastating to China on a global scale. Think Avital Sharansky campaigning across the world to free her husband but boosted by TikTok. (The irony of a Chinese platform serving endless anti-China content would be delicious.)I know the escape would be difficult, but as the Talmud says, he who saves a single life, it as if he has saved the entire world. And perhaps we’d be lucky enough that Xi would pull a Castro and allow people to flee. If we coordinate well, we can probably also prevent the sort of backlash that came from the Syrian refugee crisis. Regardless, it’s the right thing to do.Offering Hong Kong citizens asylum seems a no-brainer to me. To his credit, Boris Johnson has offered a path to UK citizenship to anyone fleeing the former British colony. Maybe the US could do the same for Taiwan. What other forms of soft power can we deploy? Vaccine aid, says this reader:I’m curious about your take on Pfizer and Moderna raising prices on their Covid vaccines and not sharing manufacturing capabilities with the rest of the world. This behavior and its lack of coverage seems both tragic, hypocritical, and an inevitable blow to America abroad.For the past year and a half, we’ve made tremendous sacrifices to confront this pandemic and forced many of those sacrifices upon small businesses in the name of public health. Why won’t we force similar sacrifices upon the large vaccine manufacturers? How can people decry the possibility of mutations developing among the unvaccinated in the US without screaming about our corporations refusal to do all that they can to end the pandemic abroad? And how can we claim a moral standing in the world when even the tyranny of China can take this right-minded step?I wish I could trust our companies and their corporate leadership to make these decisions. But the vaccine manufacturers stand to benefit far too much financially from a never-ending pandemic with ongoing cycles of mutations and booster

Michael’s latest book, The Premonition, spotlights a band of dissenting doctors that battled the inept government response to Covid-19.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 Dishcast feed. For three clips of my conversation with Michael — on how we should approach Covid right now, on why Americans in particular are so vulnerable to viruses, and on the profound grief of losing a child — head over to our YouTube page.The Covid-related conversation from our main page continues below. This first reader sums up many of the dissents from parents:I enjoyed your perspective last week on the virus, masking, and lockdowns, but you made a major mistake: Children who can’t get vaccinated and the societal costs of long COVID behoove those of us who are vaccinated to work together to protect others. There is also the evolutionary biology, which you do touch on, but more infections mean more mutations and a more complex vaccination strategy going forward. So I think indoor masking for now in areas above public-health threshold levels of infections are important. Yes, the recalcitrant and stupid should get vaccinated. But a really important demographic (children) can’t yet, so it’s not fair to pursue policies that we know will unfairly penalize them. I am not a parent, but when I talk with those who are, they are terrified.“Terrified” is not a reasonable response to the reality, even though, of course, it’s understandable. And if taking these measures, we keep slowing down the trajectory of the pandemic, we also extend the time for the virus to mutate and evolve again. There isn’t a perfect solution. But I don’t think my trade-off is reckless. From a parent:I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of the path forward on the COVID front — i.e., not delaying any longer the point at which this virus is no longer novel to significant elements of humanity. But there’s one important caveat: kids. I know that children generally don’t face the same level of risk as do adults (this guest essay on Zeynep’s stack explains why), and I’m biased by being the father of two young girls, but I think it’s reasonable to think about bringing back some NPIs [non-pharmaceutical interventions] over the next bunch of months until we have vaccines approved for children.Notice I am *not* saying the same thing about the severely immunocompromised, for whom the vaccines may be truly ineffective. Unfortunately, it seems to me that that population may have to continue to avoid high-risk settings and/or wear high-filtration masks until the pandemic has truly subsided and case rates have come way down — and we’ll be there sooner if we “let it rip,” as you say.Let’s hear from a reader who is immunocompromised:I must say that I am quite taken aback by your prescription, Andrew. You see, I’m a responsible person who eagerly got doubly vaccinated as soon as I could. Like all my friends, family, and colleagues, I was excited and relieved to be protected against an insidious virus.However, unlike my friends, family, and colleagues, I am immune-compromised with a very rare disease that, without medication, would leave me blind and paralyzed. That medication, I have come to find out, leaves me unprotected against Covid-19. So, unlike you and your friends in Ptown, if I get infected, there’s a relatively good chance I will have more than a brief period of the sniffles, feeling sick and missing the chance of having a great night out. In fact, you and I live with this virus in a crucially different way: there’s a good chance that I would require hospitalization, suffer serious consequences, and die if I were exposed to it. But that is what you gladly foresee and accept by allowing natural forces to take over, right? I cannot put myself in your shoes of living with HIV, so I don’t know what you’ve gone through over the years. But please put yourself in mine. Vaccinated people can be effective passive carriers of the highly-contagious delta variant. That being the case, I still need to sequester myself in my apartment, with very limited person-to-person contact for about a year and a half. Would that I could go to a bar or any indoor place. I wasn’t able to be with my elderly mother in her final days to comfort her, nor was I able to attend her funeral or burial services. What do we do in the meantime while the vaccine-deniers reach their moment of awareness? I’m sorry that you feel that taking sensible institutional measures to protect the continued vulnerable is unfair and constraining. But it is the last line of a defense that, I hope, others can provide me. After all, aren’t we all in this together? Or are the immune-compromised expendable? You wrote, “And this seems to me to be the key question here: do we really want to get back to living? I do.” Yeah, so do I.But again, slowing the pandemic down won’t help you. It will actually exten

Wesley is a columnist for Tablet magazine, the author of The Souls of Yellow Folk, and a newly minted substacker. I’ve long admired him both for his essays and for his dry-as-toast Twitter feed. In this episode, we discuss the Great Awokening and critical race theory in great detail. You’ve be warned.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 full transcript here. For three clips of our conversation — on Wes describing the core concepts of the successor ideology, on some ways BLM has arrested a multi-racial liberalism, and on how wokeness has captured corporate America, including top magazines — head over to our YouTube page.Understandably, given the polarizing topic of Israel and Palestine, many readers are upset over last week’s episode with Peter Beinart, who has become highly controversial in Jewish circles. This first dissenter accuses me of having a lens similar to the successor ideology when it comes to Israel:I could begin this email denouncing you for letting Beinart lead us into the factual swamp of Israel/Palestine. I’m sure some will. But surely over the years you have read all the bulletins and bullet points — about how many times the Palestinians and their leadership has been offered generous, or at least negotiable, promising terms for a peace settlement. These are proposals that would have given Palestinians so much more than they might get today — land swaps, half a capital city of Jerusalem, etc. I would even spare you the history of the 48 War of Independence (who invaded whom etc.); the attempts to negotiate after various conflicts; the failure of Oslo; the terror; the genocidal Hamas charter; the refusal to give up the right of return; the fact that Israeli Arabs CAN vote in Israeli elections; the miserable conditions of Palestinians in neighbouring countries which so many anti-Zionists couldn’t give a damn about. Etc. Etc.No doubt you know all of that — and how the center and left in Israel have been hollowed out by the failure of all of this, and the poisonous lack of trust on both sides. But what really amazed me about your episode was how you seemed to discard all that. It’s a great example of how a “successor ideology or narrative” can drain the complexity and nuance from the situation — even from from you, a complicated conservative who argues for nuance and complexity every week. It’s a victory for what might be called “ideological capture.” I expected more from you. (Your friend Beinart, well, I expect little from him but utopian fantasy.)I do indeed know all of that, and sympathize with much of my reader’s points. I also know that the settlement policy is now and always has been the core obstacle to any deal and that Israel has doubled down on that repeatedly, enabled by Washington in successive administrations. Another reader, “genuinely saddened by your episode with Beinart,” gets into more specifics:I’m an Israeli, and like you, I’m originally from the UK. I’ve come to regard your podcast as essential, and up to this episode, you had not discussed Israel, and I had no idea of your views on my country. I listen and read enough from people, from all sides, discussing my all-too-obsessed-about little state. And it turns out that you share Peter Beinart’s far-left, anti-Zionist, historically selective views. You say that liberal Zionists are lying when they claim to want two states. I know that’s not the case. I’m a liberal Zionist, I want two states. I’m desperate for an end to the conflict, if for no other reason than I’d like my young children to not have to serve in the army. I also know Palestinians, who I would love to see free from occupation. But it’s not that simple. (This blog piece I wrote in the wake of Trump’s “Deal of the Century” non-peace plan is a decent summary of where I stand.) You, who are so consistently excellent at understanding the nuances and complexities of American society, and capable of seeing the threat to liberal democracy from both sides of the political map, must surely appreciate that you are not getting the full picture from your vantage point in the U.S. I’m sorry, but it is not the case that no Israeli government was serious about two states. We can agree that the Netanyahu government was not, but even that government, under pressure from the Obama administration, took steps towards negotiations that the Palestinian leadership rejected. There was a long piece by, I think, Jeffrey Goldberg telling the story of Obama/Kerry’s failed push for Israeli-Palestinian peace. In addition to much criticism of Netanyahu (all of which I agree with), there was also the retelling of a scene where Obama administration officials are raging in disbelief at Mahmoud Abbas’s seeming unwillingness to, at the very least, call Netanyahu’s bluff and sit down at the negotiating table that Kerry’s efforts had brought to his door.Peter Beinart knows all of this, and h

Peter is a long-time friend and fellow former editor of The New Republic. His latest book is The Crisis of Zionism, and he’s the editor-at-large for Jewish Currents and the creator of his own substack, The Beinart Notebook. In this episode we focus on foreign affairs — China, Israel, and South Africa — as well as our shared apostasy when it comes to Iraq and neoconservatism. In the last half-hour of the pod, we get into a heated debate over the merits of racial diversity and viewpoint diversity in magazines and op-ed pages.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 Dishcast feed. For three clips of my conversation with Peter — on how the U.S. should deal with China; on whether Zionism has failed; and how Peter has dealt with the Jewish-American tribalism — head over to our YouTube page.Related to our latest episode with Michael Pollan, here’s a reader response to my October 23 column, “The Psychedelic Election”:I can’t say thank you enough for your piece. As you probably know, nature-based psychedelics were decriminalized in Ann Arbor, where I live. And it’s personal for me. I spent the better part of a decade slowly circling the drain because of alcohol addiction, unexamined effects of child abuse on my personality, and career frustrations trying to become a successful orchestra conductor. I sought out the “best” addiction treatment, went to rehab, dragged myself to AA and frequent individual and group therapy sessions for years. It kind of all sucked. Intuitively, I just knew it wasn’t working for me on a deep level, and it took a long time for me to recognize it and get over the guilt of just feeling like a I was a broken, bad person. I suspect I am not alone. One of the unfortunate cultural outcomes of AA is that people just assume that’s where you get better. That is the case for some. But if a thinking person truly digs deep into the data, the success of AA and rehab, etc. is abysmal. Finland has a drinking cessation treatment (pioneered in the USA) called the Sinclair Method, which utilizes the drug naltrexone in the service of “behavior extinction” issuing a remedy of drinking while taking naltrexone, decoupling the reward of the high, and hence ending reliance on ethanol. I tried this too, after having had to do a lot of research, and I found only one in four doctors in the state of Michigan who utilize this method (and even then, my MD was an AA fundamentalist who only begrudgingly endorsed the Sinclair method). But naltrexone caused me terrible anxiety and the inability to feel pleasure, or “anhedonia,” as is the warning of possible side-effect issued with naltrexone. Finally, in part due to Michael Pollan’s book, but also my hair stylist, Sam Harris’s podcast, and various YouTube videos, I decided to seek out a trained trip sitter and have a spiritual experience on psilocybin mushrooms. I’ve done this four times now in three years, and I can tell you: it is an anti-addictive experience. It’s way too intense to want to repeat with any regularity. But it was the only thing that truly, interrupted my drinking and depression by permanently altering my worldview just as you described, with respect to the view of death, and several incredibly powerful experiences of what felt like a Divine Feminine, bathing me in pure light, love, beauty, and acceptance. It’s not an exaggeration to say that these trips saved my life and my sanity, and gave me unexpected insights about my life, relationships, work, and the beauty of the world. And yes, I used to be an evangelical Christian, and am now an agnostic/atheist (thank you Hitch, Sam), but in a softer way, where I now have a deep sense of the inner spiritual capacity that is even more stupefying to me as a natural occurrence of molecules and processes inside my body, and the potential that lay deep within each of us. Talk about the ultimate rejection of woke/identity politics, as an experience like this explodes these crushingly small-minded categories of difference. Speaking of wokeness, the persistent debate over CRT continues with this reader:I found your reader’s dissent recognizing the tendency of cultural values to swing like a pendulum, and suggesting that the pendulum be encouraged to swing to pro-black racism, an example of limited insight. Yes, cultural opinions nearly always swing from one extreme to another, but I am not convinced that this is an insurmountable law of nature. Swinging the pendulum to a new kind of racism guarantees the future ascendance of the Proud Boys ideology, as they will be joined by previously reasonable people angry at being displaced through the hypocrisy of racism.Keep in mind that in a nominally democratic society, the pendulum will tend to swing harder in favor of the majority. So aiming for a neutral centrist approach to “race” seems like a far better long-term strategy for poor minorities, not just

One of the writers I most revere in journalism, Michael has a style that is as lucid as his research is exhaustive. His new book, This Is Your Mind on Plants — specifically coffee, poppies, and the San Pedro cactus — is a continuation of his magisterial How to Change Your Mind, a deep dive into psychedelics that made the subject more respectable than it’s ever been. (My 2018 review of that book, “Just Say Yes to Drugs,” is included in my new essay collection.) 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 Dishcast feed. For three clips of my conversation with Michael — on our shared love of gardening and why it’s so zen; on whether psychoactive drugs may have sparked the rise of religion; and how the first coffee houses were a kind of proto-internet — head over to our YouTube page.A reader has a related email on the subject of this week’s episode:I just wanted to say thank you for “Reasons To Be Cheerful” (I know I’m a week late on it). I’m particularly thrilled that you mentioned the stuff about various psychedelics and their potential to help those suffering from mental health issues, especially veterans. As a retired Navy SEAL with a 100% anxiety disability, I can tell you that I believe those medicines offer tons of promise. They should be taken seriously, but we need to pursue their use in a clinical setting. Given the fact that just as many Americans kill themselves every year as die from breast cancer and opioid overdoses (both of which receive lots of media coverage), we need to start paying better attention to mental health and how to actually help those who are suffering, instead of continuing to push drugs manufactured by pharmaceutical companies that do a lot for their profits, but very little for the afflicted.That reader’s message is especially needed this week, as news broke that a record 93,000 Americans died last year from a drug overdose, up 29 percent from the previous year. It’s a staggering loss on top of the pandemic, and one I’m not happy to say I predicted.Another reader looks back to last week’s episode:I loved your conversation with Amy Chua. It gave me lots of pep in my step. As an Iranian immigrant, I am extremely grateful to America.Another reader dissents — toward me:I’m a long-time reader since 2008 and have been a subscriber to all iterations of the Dish. With that said, Andrew, STOP TALKING OVER YOUR GUESTS SO GODDANG MUCH. I can’t count how many times you cut off Amy to do a little disquisition about your own frustrations with the woke left. When I wanna know your opinions on the topic, I read your columns, but in the podcast, I wanna hear what your guest has to say!Point taken. I was feisty last week and may have gotten over-excited. But I don’t see the podcasts so much as interviews as conversations. This reader liked my rants:I think your podcast with Amy Chua helped you to clarify your concern for CRT and its effects on our democracy. It is easy to dismiss CRT as irrelevant since, like most people, I know of no black person who believes in CRT or the 1619 Project; no Hispanic who uses Latinx; no one who wants to defund the police; no white person who is a White Supremacist, and no one at all who thinks that someone with a penis should be allowed in a spa with naked women.What I thought most important was your discussion about minorities thriving in the face of oppression. Chua pointed out how there are cross-cultural traits that lead to success. This is true on my block. I live in an integrated but predominantly white neighborhood. The black families who live on my block have been successful and have accumulated impressive wealth. They have in common the things you discussed: stable, two-parent homes; both parents employed; college graduates. I would be foolish to say that I have not benefited from being a member of the cis-heteronormative white patriarchy, but these advantages have not prevented others from achieving success.The promise of liberal democracy is that it’s not zero-sum. Another reader:Your liberal friends have changed — dramatically — and are telling you that you are the ones that have changed. There is a word for that, and it is one that they should understand well: GASLIGHTING. I’ve had many conversations just like the ones you reference, and ever since I started using that word, I have been winning those arguments. It’s especially effective if you use combine it with a haughty victim-valorizing tone: “I’m not going to let you gaslight me!” Woke jiu jitsu.Another week, another dissent over CRT:I’m still working on why I’m so annoyed with your take on Critical Race Theory. Two things: 1. Your tone of outrage is so close to that of right-wing nuts that it offends me, and gives more power to them; and 2. I think you are looking at it wrong. I don’t think anyone who is thoughtful about and supportive of CRT meant to erase the Enlightenment

Amy, who you probably know as the Tiger Mom, is a law professor at Yale and the author of several books, including The Triple Package and Political Tribes. In this episode we discuss the experience of being an immigrant, of being a minority within a minority, and the importance of, in Amy’s words, “turning being an outsider into a source of strength,” not victimhood.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 Dishcast feed. For three clips of my conversation with Amy — on how college kids these days are terrified of debate; on how to be resilient in the face of bigotry; and on the courage of the individual in the face of woke conformity — head over to our YouTube page.Looking back to our Pride pod last week, a reader remarks:What a fun and hilarious episode with Katie and Jamie! It’s also nice to hear you a bit cheerier and self-deprecating, part of what makes absorbing your thinking so much fun. Finally, I’d be concerned if the episode hadn’t included some Sullivanesque “get off my gay-man lawn!” comments ;)Another reader also found the episode “fantastic”:Thank you many times over for reminding us (I came out in 1975) that there are people not in tune with the au courant aspects of the alphabet movement — especially its anti-Semitism and anti-police sentiments. I have friends who are big contributors to the Human Rights Campaign who are clueless, almost recalcitrantly so, about many of the specifics pushed by HRC and the overall movement. And these people are in the Federal Club — or whatever the big donors of HRC are — at the highest levels for over 25 years.By the way, in a Twitter thread I saw that the NYTimes effort to “re-center” Stonewall as black trans-initiated is being called “The 1969 Project”.This next reader sends a moving letter that begins, “Dear Andrew,”I’m a 26-year-old gay man living in San Diego and I’m writing to say Thank You. At the 1:15:00 mark of the podcast, you say “my generation went through an incredible trauma and fought through a ... critical period of civil rights. Two generations below us have no idea we did anything at all except that we’re old transphobes. We did all of it so people could live gay lives which are not political … ”Well today, that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m getting ready to drive up to Portland, Oregon for what I hope will be an exciting summer romance with a wonderful guy. Nothing political about it. No shame about the fact that we’re two men — just my latest adventure. And I can’t imagine having gotten here without your writing.At 15, I realized I was gay. It took a while. No one in my family ever even mentioned “gay”, with the exception of Uncle Mike, a grizzled ex-Marine who read books like Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good Catholics? Then, one day watching beautiful Cameron Monaghan in the Showtime series “Shameless”, it sort of hit me all at once: He’s hot. I’m gay. F**k. It was terrifying. I remember brooding in my room, trying to make sense of it. What does it mean to be gay? Where do I fit? I’m supposed to grow up, get a good job, meet a nice girl, and maybe become a CYO [Catholic Youth Organization] basketball coach. All of that suddenly evaporated, and I felt totally lost.I didn’t start to find myself again until I read “What Is a Homosexual?” in junior year English class. (Not so long ago, kids were reading you — not critical theory — in the Norton Anthology.) And as I read you calmly, honestly describe the feelings of growing up gay, I suddenly began to feel human again. I wasn’t a freak. There were others out there. What followed was a two-year journey of coming out that started with that English teacher, progressed to a few close friends, and gradually encompassed my entire family. Most people didn’t care. Some people loved it. Uncle Mike and his whole family hated it. But I got through it. And I have a beautiful life. Your writing was indispensable at each step of that journey. It helped me understand who I was and what I was going through. It introduced me to the politics of homosexuality and, more generally, to your brand of small-c conservatism. It helped me to grasp the fundamentalist psyche of Uncle Mike, and later to question the gender theory of my college’s LGBTQIA++~$% :) student organization. Beyond me, your voice so convinced our country of the humanity of gay people that by June of 2015 we had marriage equality. And here I am, packing up, getting ready to go see a guy I could maybe someday marry (— not to get ahead of myself!)From reading and listening to you, l know that you’ve been through some of the bitterest suffering imaginable. You watched so many friends you loved die a horrible death, made ever more terrible by the contempt heaped on you by the Uncle Mikes of America. But through it all, you persevered. And you kept telling the truth about who you were — who we are. I can’t find words to express how

Katie Herzog, one of the last remaining lesbians in America, is the co-host of Blocked and Reported alongside her battered pod-wife, Jesse Singal. Gay neocon Jamie Kirchick is a Brookings fellow and the author of the forthcoming book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. If you’d like to hear a politically incorrect gay and lesbian conversation that would never be aired in the MSM, check it out.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 Dishcast feed. For three clips of my conversation with Jamie and Katie — on the deceitful propaganda surrounding the Stonewall narrative; on the problems with the “Q” in LGBTQRSTUV+; and on the concerns that puberty blockers might be blocking the self-actualization of gay kids — head over to our YouTube page.After listening to last week’s episode, a reader writes:What an amazing conversation with Michael Brendan Dougherty — truly epic! Toward the end of that marathon of a chat, you remarked that, interestingly, many in the anti-woke resistance are gay. From my perspective as a gay man, the wokers annoy the hell out of me because I feel they merely consider us part of what I like to call the Left’s “laundry list”: “people of color, Latinx, LGBTQIA+” … blah, blah, blah. Along with membership on the list comes the assumption of our supposed monolithic thought (from the woke and dominant media) solely based on our identity and biological makeup. I find it presumptive, paternalistic, and condescending, not to mention lazy. Your weekly podcast is a salvation to me against such maddening absurdity! I hope you’re enjoying Ptown, and watch out for the Great White I read is lurking off shore …I hope those sharks can finally reckon with their “whiteness”. This next reader also liked the MBD episode, “especially the last 20 minutes!”: I also visited Provincetown, inadvertently during Gay Pride week, with my wife and daughter in 2017. I knew nothing of its reputation, so it was quite the eyeopener. Dina had a similar first impression:Another reader has mixed feelings about the MBD episode:Whether it be a sign of the nuanced discussion or my own intellectual hypocrisies, I found myself simultaneously nodding in agreement and wanting to hurl my earbuds at a wall. During your brief tale about a past editor of The New Yorker attempting to manufacture a story about religion out of thin air, you casually delivered some genuine wisdom: “The whole point is to let go of what’s hot and to see what’s true.” Continuing a theme you discussed with Charles Murray, you lamented people’s inability to “transcend the cult of the current.” Throughout the podcast with Michael, and in the past, you seem to mourn what’s lost as American society grows increasingly secular, implying that wokeism is a stand-in for religion in people’s lives. But I find that you haven’t illustrated a causal chain. Rather, you just see similar patterns of faith and of craving meaning, then more or less assume that wokeism is being plugged in after the loss of religion, rather like interchangeable modules for our brains or souls.Perhaps. But I don’t think you’ve made the case, and it feels like your attention is sometimes so captured by the decline of religion that you spend far less time on other, arguably more contributory factors to this religious-like behavior. You seem to be arguing that the cure to this new religion is an old religion, whereas I might say that the cure for this illiberalism is simply more liberalism. The two can absolutely go hand in hand — but counter to your discussion, they need not. It might not be that we ought to resurrect religion, but that we need less certainty and more humility, less pedantry and more inquiry, regardless of where it wells up within us.Michael referred to fewer kids in catechism, among other statistics about a decline in religion. Ignoring that Christianity has a wildly outsized influence on American politics, I’ll grant his basic point. But it’s of equal note that there are also fewer schools requiring civics, teaching rhetoric, exploring philosophy, encouraging debate, or practicing journalism. Today’s worship of STEM and financial management leaves little time for the disciplines that require humility as students iteratively and methodically work (or even just awkwardly stumble) away from “what’s hot” and toward truth.Beautifully put. My worry is that liberalism itself relies on a Christian understanding of the unique individuality and worth of every individual, while CRT believes, as Robin DiAngelo reminds us in her new book, that “the ideology of individualism is foundational to white supremacy.” To adherents of CRT, liberalism is a manifestation of “white supremacy”. I wish more people could see how deeply corrosive that is to the stability and legitimacy of liberal democracy. Merging some themes of the MBD episode with my column on Biden’s Catho

Michael is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a prolific writer, primarily for National Review. His first book is My Father Left Me Ireland: An American Son’s Search for Home, a beautiful memoir I reviewed here.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 Dishcast feed. For three clips of my conversation with Michael — on the countercultural rebellion of teen churchgoers; on the iconoclasm of the Great Awokening; and on a potential conflict with China strengthening US liberalism — head over to our YouTube page. In the last 25 minutes of the episode we go into overtime mode by riffing on gay culture and Ptown.Our latest episode with evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven was a big hit with listeners. Here’s one:I expected Hooven to be interesting, but I was curious why you called her a teaching “star” at Harvard. After listening to her, I understand why. I taught for 35 years. To be a great teacher you need to be passionate about your subject and care about your students. This certainly describes Prof. Hooven. It was also nice to see someone passionate about a subject and not obsessed with the response she will get on social media. As she said, follow the data.Hopefully you will have her back, since I would like to hear more about how society benefits from people with high testosterone, especially those doing dangerous jobs. I’m also interested in how Hooven believes women would respond if men acted more feminine. Many women complain that their husbands don’t do enough housework and help with the children. But how many would really be sexually attracted to men who perform traditional female roles?Her own story is inspiring. She didn’t focus on her GPA, AP classes and test prep to get into Harvard, but just found something she was passionate about. To Harvard’s credit, they recognized her value.The reader adds, “Hooven was also excellent on Joe Rogan’s show.” She got teary-eyed on both podcasts, and Rogan got emotional back:Another reader who liked Hooven:It was refreshing to hear a conversation with someone who wanted to talk real science and didn’t just cherry-pick scientific research to support some partisan angle. I especially liked that she called out some of the talking points as unproven hypotheses, at best. The political sphere would be so much less toxic if more people engaged in this way.What I found the most surprising was the assertion that it’s “mainstream” or common opinion that men are somehow being marginalized in modern society, which I see as utterly absurd. Perhaps I am completely out of touch, but I really don’t see anyone trying to force men to be ashamed of their masculinity. It seems to me that this is a phantasm that certain insecure men have conjured up for themselves. I don’t think anyone has a problem with men being men, they just have a problem with men abusing women, or men taking advantage of their superior strength and more competitive nature to keep women out of positions for which they are qualified, or men expecting to be owed sexual gratification as a matter of course. Checking these behaviors doesn’t mean depriving men of their masculinity, it just means expecting men to process their masculinity in ways that don’t harm women.I agree. But there is also burgeoning misandry on the CT left, which denies any role for biology in society at all. Another reader’s two cents:I agree that some people are uncomfortable with the fact that all fetuses start out as female and then repurpose tissue to transform to male in the womb. Some men especially take offense to the reality of their early gender fluidity, and that their male bits used to be lady parts. To all those who have trouble accepting it, just ask them: why do men have nipples? It is a vestige of our having started out as female — there is nothing that tissue needed to be repurposed for.Ah, yes, the nipple point. It’s true! Another reader has a dissent for me:I enjoy reading and listening to your work even though I don’t always agree with you. Some disagreements come down to a matter of opinion, but you repeated a factual claim I’ve heard you make many times about men wanting more sex than women — across the board, no caveats. I’m a youngish married straight woman with many youngish and oldish married and long-partnered female friends, and my anecdata begs to differ. The number one complaint I hear from female friends about their long-term partners is that the men are not interested in having sex with their female partners as much as the female partners would like. I’ve heard this enough times that I have come to consider it a cliche, and my friends and I have all frequently wondered why the media depiction is so contrary. I don’t have hard data, but I would suggest that either you put forward some data to back up your frequent claim or stop making it. This question seems much more nuanced to me.

Prof. Hooven is an evolutionary biologist and the author of the awesome new book, T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us. She’s a teaching star at Harvard and it’s easy to see why.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 Dishcast feed. For three clips of my conversation with Carole — on how male horniness is increasingly shamed; on testosterone’s effect on crying; and on the ways in which T needs to be contained and channeled toward noble ends — head over to our YouTube page. We had a ton of reader response to last week’s episode with Bryan Caplan, the cheerleader for open borders. But first, here’s a reader reflection on our episode with feminist Julie Bindel, since it’s so relevant to the new episode with Carole Hooven:This American Life had an episode many years ago called “Testosterone”, partly about the story of a lesbian who once railed against the entire suite of male failings, including the sexualization of the male gaze. Then she transitioned to a man. Awash in testosterone, he recalled an incident walking past a hot woman on the sidewalk. A pitched battle erupted in his head: to look, or not to look. Unable to stop himself, he turned around to check out her cute ass. “I’m a pig, too!”, he wailed to himself.It’s an incredible TAL episode overall, also telling the story of a man who lost the ability to produce T and became deeply spiritual after the loss of all desire. Another reader recently recommended a book by Hooven’s mentor at Harvard:I just read a book by British primatologist Richard Wrangham, titled “The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution.” While the overall message of the book surrounds reductions in violence among humans, Wrangham discusses the roots of this reduction and how it ties to Domestication Syndrome. Part of this “syndrome” has the impact of making men less masculine — and more anatomically similar to females. As soon as I read that, I thought of the Dishcast. I’d love to hear Wrangham and you discuss the science behind this, and how it factors in to the gender identity issues we are grappling with as a society. His protégé, Hooven, unpacks those themes brilliantly in this week’s episode. Shifting over to Caplan, the reader reviews for his episode were the most mixed of any we’ve had yet. One reader appreciated the fiery debate as “a fulfilled promise to engage with radically different viewpoints than your own.” Another reader “enjoyed listening to your viewpoint as well as Bryan’s, and while I can’t say I agree completely with either of you, it was good to hear a civilized debate.” Another:I applaud your interest in engaging people with views the opposite of yours on a given issue, but I was just wholly unimpressed by Bryan Caplan. I am surprised he was so oft-requested by readers, as he just never once came across as a serious thinker on the matter. From start to finish, he just reminded me of that guy in your freshman dorm who’d endlessly (and unprovoked) argue on behalf of communism by regurgitating one-liners he’d committed to memory. On the other hand:I absolutely loved your episode with Bryan Caplan. It’s rare to have someone like him who gives his unvarnished viewed, backed by research, in plainspoken terms, no matter what. Easily my favorite conversation of yours. Thanks!A constructive bit of dissent:Professor Caplan seems to assume that the only people who would try to make use of open borders are those who are desperate to come to the United States and partake in and embrace our way of life. That may be true in a large number of cases, but the good professor, in his desire to provoke, remains oblivious to the idea that some may come in with a view toward doing the country great harm. Does 9/11 not ring a bell for him? To say nothing of the scope for espionage, industrial or otherwise.Another reader reflects a point I made in the pod:I have no idea how anyone can claim they’re concerned about climate change, deforestation, mass extinction, air and water pollution, zoonotic and other diseases — let alone ending factory farms — and favor open borders and admission of essentially any economic migrants who can pay someone, criminal or otherwise, to make their way here. The difference in intensity of resource consumption, required extraction and use, between someone in virtually all places from which migrants would emigrate to the US is mind-boggling. The “almost empty” country would be laid waste (in large part literally) as forests were replaced by more intensive cultivation and grazing; massive slaughterhouses filled with these largely low-wage, low-skill migrants would cover the land. Have any of these open-borders advocates spent real time in portions of North Carolina or Ohio covered with flies, unbreathable air and leaking cesspools?A dissent toward me:I have

Bryan, who teaches economics at George Mason University, is the author of the graphic nonfiction NYT bestseller Open Borders. His views on immigration, nation-states, and democracy are extremely different from my own, so we debate all throughout the episode. Bryan has been the most recommended guest by our readers, who clearly want to see some fireworks on this issue. I had a lot of fun.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 Dishcast feed. To hear three clips of my conversation with Bryan — on whether a country’s citizens should have any say over immigration; on whether adding a billion people to the U.S. is wise or feasible; and on whether voting is irrational “poetry”, as Bryan puts it — head over to our YouTube page.Meanwhile, a wave of reader email came in after our episode with Jonathan Rauch, the most email we have received for any guest. Many of them are below, starting with this reader:This was an excellent podcast. Jonathan Rauch is kind and articulate, a great combination, and your dialogue was a great mixture of respectful conflict between the two of you and time for each of you to make your cases.In light of a new opinion piece in the NYT, “Cancel Culture Works: We Wouldn't Have Marriage Equality Without It,” and throwing in some of Rauch’s ideas, I wonder what you think about this: Democrats and those to the left of center have long been accused of playing too nice. Republicans began by using negative ads — tactics that didn’t begin but coalesced under Trump — and progressed to outright threats and naked power plays used to punish wayward thinkers. Democrats, on the other hand, wouldn’t attack each other and generally held on to the idea of building relationships and playing nice much longer. The problem is the negative ads worked. The threats worked. All of Trump’s disgusting tactics worked. Mind you, I do believe the Republicans may be hurting themselves in the long run, but in the short run, they’ve got loyal politicians, courts and state legislatures packed with like-minded conservatives, voting districts drawn to favor themselves, and an electorate — approximately half the country — that supports them through thick and thin.It seems to me that cancel culture and its wokeists are simply taking on the same cutthroat tactics. They’re tired of losing and being the nice guys. The culture has taught them to be more cynical, that long-term persuasion is too soft, takes too long, is too vulnerable to being undermined in the short term. Case in point is the example of that Times op-ed. I don’t know if the author is right that gay marriage needed to start threatening opponents’ livelihoods and positions in order to win, but it probably didn’t hurt, at least along with the more typical persuasive techniques. If one side continues to use cutthroat, anti-liberal (in the Rauch sense of the word) tactics that tear to shreds the slow, persuasive, long-term techniques of those following a more traditional, liberal model, what are the Democrats then left with?To be quite frank, I think Sasha’s argument was more good op-ed provocation than serious analysis of how marriage equality won. You win by shifting public opinion, which shifts the incentives of politicians. And, more importantly, that makes the advances stick. A reader dissents over my perspective on the pod:First of all, the Jonathan Rauch podcast was excellent. One of the best in a while. But I was gobsmacked that you could not concede that the danger of Donald Trump and the Republican disinformation campaign was a greater threat than what’s going on at the New York Times. You’ve truly lost the forest for the trees and it’s incredible, but sad, to watch. When you started your podcast I couldn’t imagine that I wouldn’t listen to every episode; I’ve been a fan for 20 years. But I don’t because so much of it is just you ranting against CRT and the NYT. I do believe that the Trump insanity and the GOP degeneracy are bigger threats to liberal democracy. But that doesn’t mean I can’t worry about liberal institutions caving to leftism. Another reader turns to Rauch:Dissent incoming!I like Jonathan Rauch and look forward to reading his new book, but he makes two errors in his apology for journalism’s recent missteps. First, mainstream journalism didn’t simply “get it wrong based upon the facts as known at the time.” Journalists called the Wuhan lab theory “debunked” (which it clearly wasn’t) and some characterized it as a racist theory — a NYT Covid reporter even called it racist just two weeks ago. Journalists never “showed their work” in reporting how this theory was “debunked.” Instead, they just cited Fauci and blindly accepted his version because it contradicted Trump.This leads me to my second point: journalists cannot blame Trump for their own mistakes! The NYT, WashPo, Atlantic, and New Yorker are operated by some of the most

Jon and I go way back to the early days of the marriage movement. In this episode we discuss his important new book, The Constitution of Knowledge, and get into some heated exchanges over Trump, the MSM, and Russiagate — Jon as the optimistic liberal and me as the pessimistic conservative. 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 full transcript here. For three clips from my conversation with Jon — on what he calls “the weirdest and craziest social idea ever invented”; on the propaganda of Trump and the NYT; and on the best ways to reform Twitter — head over to our YouTube page.Meanwhile, many readers are responding to my conversation with Charles Murray last week. One quick take:Great to hear Charles Murray! I’m sure Twitter subsequently lost its mind — good. Screw ‘em. Has anyone been more unfairly maligned than this man?Twitter was oddly quiet. Another reader enjoyed the long conversation as well:Oh jeez, Andrew — I can imagine the fun mail you’ll be getting for this one, but it’s the episode I’ve been really looking forward to! I found it both insightful, and emotional. But after one day, what sticks out for me is the section about affirmative action. When Murray says that when he went to Harvard in 1961 there were few Blacks and that you KNEW they absolutely deserved to be there on merit and academic acumen, that rang true. But then … there was no acknowledgement by him or you of the obverse: many of the white kids were there because of legacy or rich parents. I mean, isn’t that how Bush43 ended up at Yale? There MUST be a recognition of that when talking about affirmative action.Absolutely. I don’t want to end affirmative action before ending legacy admissions. They are inextricable acts of unfairness — but the long history of legacy discrimination makes it a higher priority. In the Quotes section of the Dish last week, we cheered the end of legacy preferences in Colorado. A reader dissents over the Murray episode:I find all this talk of race and IQ to be rather insulting to folks I dearly love. I would hope you could find a guest similar to Stephen Jay Gould (who’s dead) to provide a useful counterpoint to Charles Murray. Robert Bieder is still alive — he’s 82 and his book Science Encounters the Indian is a wonderful overview of the racist anthropology of the 19th century. If you’re going to give time to Murray, then you owe it to your readers to give time to the scholars who helped us all understand that intelligence has nothing to do with the melanin content of a person’s skin or how they do on a test.Obviously intelligence has nothing to do with melanin. But it is measurable, and real, and denial of this seems to me to be a denial of science. Another dissent from a reader:First, I’ll lead with my background, which informs my thoughts on this. Brought up by my Ashkenazi Jewish mother with a Yoruba/Nigerian father by blood, though not culturally, I am in an odd space in the race wars. The motivated reasoning on race and intelligence by the white community is something I’ve often observed but rarely have seen commented on. For example, somehow the difference between black and white is portrayed as profound, and yet somehow the difference between the Ashkenazi Jewish and Gentile communities is portrayed as less profound, even though the gaps are similar. It’s about 1 standard deviation between each set of groups. Also, in the case of the Jewish community, which has a lopsided verbal-loaded performance (visuospatial is below average from the Jewish community), if you just look at verbal ability, it’s likely a >1.5 standard deviation difference. Yet somehow the white community is fixated more on the black community, but doesn’t seem to really address the implications relative to the Jewish community.More importantly, the discussion of IQ is too unsophisticated. For example, is it possible that “environmental” factors can cause a >1 standard deviation difference in IQ scores? Actually, the answer is “yes”, even obviously so, but due to reasons of motivated reasoning, this is almost never discussed. I refer to the Flynn Effect, a well-documented phenomenon, where psychologists in the industrialized world have noticed that IQ scores have been creeping upwards, to the extent that every 5-10 years they need to “re-center” their scores to keep the average down at 100. As a result, black Americans in 2020 actually get higher raw IQ scores than white Americans did in 1930. What is the reason that Americans score so much higher today than they did in 1930? Health, education, computers? Who knows, but it is profound enough that if psychologists didn’t recenter scores, today the average IQ score would be something like >120, which is absurd and can’t be right.People like you make life harder for people like me. I am a gifted black American who doesn’t need more bigots wearing the cloak of reasoning from the li

Charles has a new — and probably explosive — book coming out soon, Facing Reality. This conversation is not about that. Instead, I wanted to discuss his last book which received almost no attention, Human Diversity. 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 full transcript here. For three clips of my conversation with Charles — on the different career choices that high-IQ women often make; on the “unearned gift” of those with high IQs; and how IQ is irrelevant to the human worth, dignity, and essential equality of all people — head over to our YouTube page.Meanwhile, a reader looks back to last week’s episode:I have long been an avid follower, and I enjoyed your conversation with Niall Ferguson. I write because Niall made a claim during the conversation that I consider dangerously misleading. Indeed there was a serious flu epidemic in 1957-58, and indeed we produced a vaccine very quickly. However, while it is perhaps arguable that one reason for this apparent “remarkable success” compared to Trump’s “Operation WarpSpeed” was lack of bureaucracy, the main factors were not related to that.First, the 1957 vaccine was produced according to well-known and well-understood principles. Flu is a recurrent disease with quite predictable antigenic shifts; once a technique has been developed (which it had ten years earlier), it’s simply a matter of applying exactly the same approach to the new strain. In contrast, today’s mRNA vaccines were entirely novel, produced against a new virus.Second, the 1957 vaccine was only marginally effective, in contrast to the ~95% efficacy of the current mRNA vaccines.Third, the US epidemic in 1957 ended basically independently of the vaccine.Fourth, while a large number of doses were manufactured in 1957, it was nowhere near sufficient to vaccinate the whole population.I realize that this issue is somewhat away from Ferguson’s main point, but I write because I feel there is a trend, especially from a branch of the US Republican party, to discredit a remarkable scientific achievement, and to attribute such success as there may have been exclusively to industry. While complex and inefficient government administration can be a serious problem, I think that citing that as an important factor in delaying production of the mRNA vaccines is factually questionable.Niall responds:There are no footnotes on podcasts! But here are the relevant pages of my book. You can decide for yourself if I have got it wrong. You can also decide if you find the text “glib.” Finally, as you know, the fundamental mRNA breakthroughs that made possible the Moderna and Biontech vaccines were not made last year. I believe mRNA was discovered in 1961.Another reader adds:You briefly mentioned nuclear annihilation on the podcast. An older topic, but there is a hysterical 60-year-old song about it with lyrics like, “There will be no more misery when the world is our rotisserie...” The song is called “We Will All Go Together When We Go” by Tom Lehrer:Tom Lehrer was a genius. Another reader plugs a brilliant book — and conveys a growing sentiment among Dish dissenters:Your conversation with Niall Ferguson would have been much more substantive and enlightening if you both had read Michael Lewis’s new book on the pandemic, Premonition. It explains a great deal about the reasons for US failures in the crisis, especially at the CDC. A gripping must-read. I couldn’t put it down.The discussion also helped me to understand your instinctive contrarianism. I’ve been an avid Dishhead for about 20 years, and I usually appreciate the insights you gain from your prickly vantage point. However, lately I fear that you have become a one-trick pony regarding “woke authoritarianism” and it’s blinkering you to the many positives of Biden’s administration. As far as I can tell, wokeness is confined to fewer than 10 percent of Americans (mostly university educated whites) and will soon be forced into some synthesis with the views of mainstream society.Wokeness may already be at, or past, its peak. The failure to sell “Latinx” usage is one example, along with the real political cost of “defund the police” and the widespread ridicule of San Francisco’s school renaming. (“They” lost me a long time ago; I simply cannot use a plural pronoun with a singular verb; if necessary, get around it with “the individual” or “the person.”) So, while I agree with you in general, I find your obsessive preoccupation with the topic hyperbolic and tedious. My cousin in Texas, also a long-time Dish fan, recently said the same thing. Anti-woke can be a tiresome as woke.I hear you. I hope my column today helps explain my boring obsession with this. There’s a very important principle involved. Another reader: Your dissenter here might be right that it’s a minority of the left nationwide that means genuine police abolition. But in Seattle, it’s a very large minorit

Niall is one of my oldest and dearest friends, stretching back to our time at Magdalen College. The prolific historian is out with a new book, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe. One of the hardest convos I’ve yet had. Simply because Niall and I go back so far together, and our friendship is deep, it’s tough to interview him without abandoning objectivity — but I hope I did ok.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 Dishcast feed. For three clips of my conversation with Niall — debating how likely we are screwed as a species; on how the US response to Covid19 differed from its response to the 1957 flu; and on the religious nature of the Black Lives Matter protests last summer — head over to our YouTube page. Meanwhile, many readers are sounding off on our episode with radfem journalist Julie Bindel. A dissenter of mine:Bindel was so astute about feminism, society and what needs to change. I hope, actually, that you will go back and carefully listen to her and the nuance of what she says. Like her, I’m not denying biological determinism; I am experiencing it everyday going through perimenopause. However, I felt Bindel expressed these realities with so much more subtlety than you seem to be able to, Andrew, with all due respect. In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari points out that what makes humans special is that we tell stories. “Homo Sapiens has been able to revise its behaviour rapidly in accordance with changing needs. This opened a fast lane of cultural evolution, bypassing the traffic jams of genetic evolution.” Or, as the theorist Joan Scott has written, “It is not about whether difference exists, but the meaning we make of that difference.”Humans tell stories, and those stories adapt to our different circumstances more than our evolution determines them. You seem to believe in this biological determinism in which it is ok for women to work in certain professions because it is “natural”. Hogwash. Then gay men would be relegated to being hairdressers and interior designers, and I’m assuming you would like and expect more options for yourself than those? In such a world, the masters of the universe would not be Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos — wimpy men by biological standards — but Hulk Hogan and Steven Seagal. Our circumstances change, our stories change, we adapt. THIS is what makes us human. Difference will always be there, but the meaning we make of it, what it means for people in our society, can and does change.The reader seems to misunderstand where I was coming from when I spoke of the gender-equality paradox of Scandinavian countries. I certainly don’t believe in “biological determinism”, just realism about some deep differences between most men and most women that will never be fully overcome. I strongly support any individual, male and female, who breaks out of those patterns.Another reader found pros and cons with the episode:Once again, I find myself enjoying a podcast with a person — Julie Bindel — whom I had had no interest in. I found myself agreeing with her on some points, but it was clear that she has little understanding of men and testosterone. Testosterone does not make you violent. But most people committing violence have testosterone. Just because a FTM trans person starts to take testosterone does not mean they will turn violent for the same reason the vast majority of men are not violent. I agreed with her on sex work. I also feel it is exploitation. I feel the same about pornography. But I don’t have the right to limit your choices. I did not understand her statement about the prostitute hating her client. Many people, such as lawyers, hate their clients. She should have gone more deeply into how we can offer sex workers economic alternatives.Laura Agustín goes deeper into that last point here, and Julie has a whole book on the subject, The Pimping of Prostitution: Abolishing the Sex Work Myth. Another reader’s two cents:All prostitution is not equal. Pimps, drug addiction, violence and intimidation are all abhorrent, and it is right to condemn them. Anyone who abuses women is immoral and a criminal, and women should be protected from them as much as possible. On the other hand, absent any REAL coercion (money is persuasion, not coercion), any adult should have the option to sell their sexual services if they choose to do so. A person might FEEL like they have no other choice, but that is a sad illusion. We should all do our best to help people in bad situations find better solutions, and to see their own potential.That’s where I’m at as well. On the topic of transgenderism, which Julie and I only briefly touched on, Dr. Dana Beyer, who appeared on the Dishcast last year, writes in:As one of the rational and civil trans women to whom you alluded on this podcast, I’d like to reiterate my previous point that Julie Bindel highlighted: much of the dispute is due to conf

A co-founder of Justice for Women, Julie has a long career campaigning against male violence. She’s the author of many books, and you can pre-order her latest, Feminism for Women, here. I disagree with her on many subjects but found strange agreement on others.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 Dishcast feed. For three clips of our conversation — on how Julie distinguishes her own “liberation feminism” from “equality feminism”; on the crucial need to focus more on global feminism; and why she views prostitution as “paid rape” — head over to our YouTube page.Meanwhile, many readers are offering up commentary on my discussion with Eric Kaufmann on race and shifting demographics. But first a quick correction from a reader, who clears up my conflation of two similar men featured on Bari Weiss’s substack:Contrary to your passing comment, Paul Rossi (the teacher at Grace Church School who got fired) didn’t say that about systemic racism (“We have not had systemic racism against Blacks in this country since the civil rights reforms of the 1960s”). It was Andrew Gutmann — a father of a student at Brearley.Bari spoke to both men over Zoom here. And here she featured six takes — from John McWhorter, Lara Bazelon, Glenn Loury, Kmele Foster, Chloé Valdary and Kenny Xu — on the question of “what is systemic racism?” I’m working on my own attempt to answer that question.Back to the Kaufmann pod, a reader offers firsthand perspective on racism outside the United States:I’m glad you made the point that other countries have worse racial oppression. Whenever a CRT activist says the US is terrible on race, I always wonder, “compared to what?”I lived in Africa for years and study it today, and the racism there is pervasive. Majority-clan Somalis treat the ethnically distinct, minority Somali Bantus (historically slaves in Somalia) horribly, to the point that some scholars believe they have suffered genocide. In Central Africa, pygmy peoples are seen as subhuman and have been nearly wiped out by surrounding people groups. The Khoisan in southern Africa were driven from most of their land by Bantu-speaking groups, and the Portuguese discovered that Khoisan made fabulous counterinsurgent fighters in part because they so hated the Bantu-speaking groups that populated the rebel ranks. In Mauritania, the light-skinned Moors to this day enslave many dark-skinned Africans, as much as 20% of the population. Sec. Blinken recently described what is going on in Ethiopia’s Tigray region as “ethnic cleansing.” And it goes on and on.America is not a racial utopia, but no state ever has been or ever will be. It does, however, treat its minorities much better than does the great majority of countries. That is why it has by far the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, why millions of black Africans line up at US consulates for the remotest chance to get a visa, and why hundreds of thousands of people from Latin America head for the US-Mexican border whenever there is an opportunity to get across. The idea that the U.S. is uniquely evil on racial issues is analytically indefensible, but also dangerous. I see in Africa every single day how destructive group grievances are to efforts to build unity, stability, and prosperity, and that is where the CRT crowd is trying to take us.Amen. It takes unimaginable levels of historical ignorance to describe the modern West as uniquely racist, or as somehow “creating” racism in the modern era. And yet this very ignorance is now being taught to children as a “responsible” curriculum. Another reader makes an analogy:While I am no astrophysicist, it seems to me “systemic racism” plays the same role in the liberal/progressive view of American society as dark matter (and dark energy) play in cosmology. Simply put, without positing the existence of massive amounts of unseen dark matter, our standard cosmological model — incorporating our very best understanding of “the science” — cannot stand. We cannot explain the Universe while maintaining the current cosmological paradigm unless dark matter exists.Another reader pushes against my views on wokeness and immigration:Excellent podcast with Eric Kaufmann. Lots of interesting stuff here, but I feel like there are two separate topics you sometimes confuse in the conversation.The first topic is to what degree certain ethnicities or races or other demographic groups are disadvantaged in American society. I think a lot of what you call “neo-racism” is just a belief that right now the disparities are too big. Why aren’t 51% of congresspeople women? Why aren’t 18% Hispanic? Of course there are historical reasons for these disparities, and in theory they will slowly correct themselves over time, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth proactively trying to help it along. It’s disingenuous to claim that white liberals are looking to entirely

Eric is a professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, and he most recently wrote the book Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities, which I reviewed here. Be sure to check out his recent report on the social construction of racism in the United States.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 Dishcast feed. For three excerpts from my conversation with Eric — on the comparatively little racism of the US compared to other countries; on the anti-immigrant views of new immigrants; and on why Barack Obama would be considered “white supremacist” today — head over to our YouTube page.After listening to last week’s episode with Shawn McCreesh, a reader shares his own family experience with opioids:My mother had terminal cancer when I was in college in the mid 1980s, in a far-ish suburb outside of Boston. After the cancer got to a certain point, and only then, she was prescribed morphine. It is my understanding it was only prescribed in terminal cases. Even after getting a prescription, it wasn’t easy to get. I remember my stepfather had to drive about 30 minutes to the nearest pharmacy that sold it, since it wasn’t available everywhere. He went to a pharmacy close to the hospital and handed over his license, and they logged where every drop went.The question is, how did we go to a strictly controlled substance with very specific indications to a very similar class of drugs that was doled out like candy to high school football players with minor neck injuries? I think the answer is that it was a patented pharma product where the owners could make a lot of money. They spent a lot of money lobbying doctors to write scripts and legislators to make sure the scripts could be written. Everyone made money but the patients. Voila. Here is your crisis. It was entirely manufactured because the healthcare system is not designed to keep the population healthy, but to make money for a certain group of people and companies. Health care, like so many other vital services in America, including higher education and housing, has been fully monetized.As people like Shawn McCreesh continue to survey the carnage, the person at McKinsey who designed Perdue’s sales strategy probably made partner and is now a wealthy, respected, and an upstanding member of his community — and you can bet it isn’t Shawn’s hometown, Hatboro.Another reader’s two cents:I found the interview with Shawn McCreesh very interesting. Once again, a subject that I had no interest in turned out to be fascinating.I have children around that same age who have dabbled in drugs. From my experience, this gets down to bad parenting. Leaving prescription drugs where they can be stolen. Being unaware that your medication is missing. Your children becoming addicts without you knowing. Another reader lends his expertise to clarify a point about drug treatment meds:Great conversation with Shawn McCreesh, thanks for doing it. I’m a psychiatrist with significant experience treating substance abuse (though not that much treating opioid addiction). Shawn mentions that Suboxone may be even worse than other opioids, and describes his friends having a very bad reaction. However, Suboxone (really the buprenorphine ingredient in Suboxone) is a “partial agonist”, meaning it binds to the opioid receptors very tightly, but does not stimulate them very strongly. This leads to a ceiling effect where once all the receptors are bound, more Suboxone doesn’t make one any more high, and it is extremely hard to overdose on Suboxone. Other opioids bind less tightly, but stimulate the receptor more strongly, so the more one has in his system the more intoxicated/overdosed one gets. What this also means is if one already has other opioids in the body, Suboxone will kick them off the opioid receptors and that person will go into rapid opioid withdrawal, which is I think what happened to his friends.People can still abuse and get addicted to Suboxone, and it can be very hard to discontinue as well so it is often used for long-term maintenance. But it is much safer than other opioids, and people can live normal lives for decades taking this once per day in the morning to block other opioid cravings and abuse. Basically all addiction specialists think it should be much more widely available.Switching gears, this next reader offers her expertise on our immigration episode with Nick Miroff:I love your stuff, but I can’t help but notice that your immigration conclusions fail to grapple with a huge empirical piece — which I report on these days from Mexico/Central America: the reality of war-zone-levels of insecurity on the ground here (not everywhere, but in vast swathes of territory). The discussion up north centers largely on the narrative that most asylum-seekers are mainly cheating economic migrants. I listened to your recent podcast a

Shawn is a first-generation college grad working at the New York Times and just penned a popular op-ed on his own experience growing up in a culture of opioids in suburban Philly. A more detailed version of his story was published last summer in Liberties. It’s a moving account of a Millennial tragedy.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 Dishcast feed. For two clips of my conversation with Shawn — on how teen parties became a boring den of zombies; and on how the good intentions of Big Pharma took a reckless deadly turn — head over to our YouTube page.Meanwhile, many readers are responding to last week’s trans/detrans episode with Buck Angel and Helena Kerschner:I thought it was terrific! Buck is a character and Helena is warm and precocious. I had not heard of either of them beforehand, so I nearly skipped the episode. But after I began listening, I quickly appreciated their personalities; they are both open, non-dogmatic, friendly and cheerful. By the end of your discussion, I found myself really rooting for Helena and Buck. It is wonderful that they appear to be thriving despite the difficulties they’ve faced.Another reader was drawn to Buck in particular:Thanks for a particularly good Dishcast! I’m pretty damn close to a Kinsey six or whatever; I may admire women as beautiful and impressive humans, but they do NOTHING for me sexually. I like GUYS: the hairiness, the attitude, the pheromones, the works. Someone like Buck Angel DOES just resonate as a “guy” — the secondary characteristics and attitude matter a lot more than external genitalia. So I guess that’s where I differ from you: the dick, per se, does not make the man — attitude and presentation are far more important. The problem I’ve run into has been that some super-cute trans otter-or-bear men who appeal immensely on visual/“GUY” terms, will then, almost immediately, if not preemptively, throw up a VERY hostile separatist-lesbian wall of critical theory about “I’m not interested if you’re just objectifying me/I’m not your experiment.” If objectification is oppression, then gay men are all dirty pigs! As a 34-years-out gay man, if someone is purporting to BE a gay man, well, isn’t objectification the whole bloody point?! All my 40-50-60ish cis-male gay pals are ALL about the friendly/brotherly gropey-fun objectification. It makes us all feel seen and appreciated in a low key kind of way.Needless to say, I’ve had little luck with the FTM community, at least the young ‘uns. But it’s the antithesis of truth to say that’s because I’m Transphobic.On the other hand, I do get it: That kind of gropey-fun attitude for either straight/cis women or, apparently, for anyone whose youngest formative years were as equipped with female organs and hormones, is problematic, to say the least. And I’m glad you kinda pointed that out: There is a BIG biological divergence here.All of this just makes me REALLY appreciate a guy like Buck, who’s clearly a guy we would all just like to hang out with, and fool around with, as one of the guys. He did it utterly by himself so long ago, not in any Boomer-parent-coddled cocoon or with any internet echo chambers of satirically Orwellian social theory. He’s just … a GUY.Next up, a cis woman brings to bear her experience with hormone therapy:I had stage III ovarian cancer at age 33 and now don’t have ovaries and have been on hormone replacement for the past seven years. If a trans person told me they had gotten surgery or taken hormones, I would support them because I don’t think it’s my place to tell another adult what to do. However, if they asked my opinion on whether to get surgery or take hormones, my answer would be absolutely not.I know that some people might benefit from hormone treatment, as I do. But I know better than anyone the complexity of dealing with hormone changes. And when it comes to elective surgery, that’s just about the dumbest thing a person could ever do. Celebrating the fact that children are doing this is insanity.Over the years, I’ve found myself wandering into conversations where people get very angry at me for sharing my opinions. For example, my brother flipped out on me for saying that I think many of these young people would benefit from not having medical interventions and working toward accepting themselves as they are, however they happen to be, even if this isn’t their preferred gender. Yes, they might feel they “are” another gender, but isn’t it an even higher plane of being to just accept whatever you are and try to be healthy? I still feel like a woman even though my female organs have been removed and I have no natural estrogen/progesterone and went into menopause as a young adult, then back out of menopause on hormone treatment. Losing those hormones didn’t change who I am. It did, however, make me appreciate being healthy and being sane. A hormone upheaval make

Buck Angel was a pioneering porn star — the only trans man to ever win Transsexual Performer of the Year at the AVN Awards — and today he’s a sex educator, motivational speaker, and entrepreneur. Helena Kerschner is a 22-year-old woman who lived as a man on hormone therapy for several years before detransitioning. Buck’s transition saved his life, while Helena’s transition was a bit of a calamity, but they share a resistance to the dogma of the trans activist community and speak forcefully and elegantly against it.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 full transcript here. To hear four excerpts from my conversation with Buck and Helena — on the cult-like behavior of many trans activists; on the risks of puberty blockers; on the profound effects of testosterone; on how the hormone caused Buck, a former lesbian, to become attracted to men for the first time — head over to our YouTube page.This episode is part of an ongoing Dishcast series on the lives of transgender people and the debates surrounding one of the most polarizing subjects of today, especially when it comes to kids transitioning. Our previous episodes welcomed two happily transitioned and brilliant women, Dana Beyer and Mara Keisling, both of whom pushed back against my views, with followup debate led by readers here and here. More to come. I have tried to get today’s more typical trans activists on the show, but they won’t respond to my emails. If you know a trans person both committed to the full-on trans position and willing to enter dialogue with a critic, please get in touch: [email protected] are some pieces we mentioned in this week’s conversation:* Helena’s tweeted photos showing her social worker assessment. “This took less than 30 min and cleared me to take testosterone w/ no blood work or further assessment,” she writes. She also points to “Tweets with my medical records showing that I was prescribed testosterone (at an unusually high dose) with no blood work on the first visit.”* “Gender identity is hard but jumping to medical solutions is worse,” an Economic piece written by Carey Callahan, a detrans woman, about her experience working at a clinic in California (not Chicago, as Helena put it)* A 9-year-old trans kid asking Elizabeth Warren a question at a televised town hall (not a 6 year old, as I mistakenly said)* “When Sons Become Daughters, Part III: Parents of Transitioning Boys Speak Out on Their Own Suffering,” the latest in an ongoing series by Quillette.* “The He Hormone”, my 2000 NYT Magazine piece on testosteroneMentioned in the main Dish today, here’s the full story from the reader who “recently lost my 21-year-old mentally ill, heroin-addicted, trans nephew whom I raised during his teen years”: As a young girl, my niece literally had no friends and couldn’t find her way in the world. Incredibly smart, beautiful, and funny, she was a lost soul and couldn’t make sense of her life. There was so much mental illness in her family, including her parents. In high school, she founded the Equality Alliance Club and became fascinated by the trans kids. Pretty soon, I found boy’s underwear in her laundry. We had a talk and I got her in therapy. From there, things moved way too fast and before I knew it, her mom okayed testosterone treatment — like six months into the process. It just didn’t fit the kid I knew. And he never found happiness and ended up addicted and homeless.I appreciate your thoughtful analysis of this important issue. Anything under the age of 18 needs to be dealt with slowly and carefully and definitely with second opinions.From another parental figure:Thank you so much for “A Truce Proposal in the Trans War.” As the parent of a 20 year old who identifies as trans male, I can say that so much of your piece perfectly resonates with my observations — I may just reference it directly when asked, “What do you think?” For me, the trans identity, or any feelings of non-alignment with externally defined gender designations, has never been an issue. My wife and I adore our son, as he is, and support him any way we can, no strings attached. We are fully supportive of him constructing his own life, defined as he wishes. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean we are required to agree with every one of his decisions. Because of the ideological forces you describe in your article, our thoughts on gender issues are not requested or welcomed. We are always under threat of being lumped in with people who are cruel or indifferent in the type of catch-all thinking you describe — either believe it all or be ostracized to the sideline. Our son is brilliant (quite literally) and has always been extremely independent. However, no amount of raw intelligence or independence can substitute for the wisdom of age and, importantly, the final maturation of the brain. This latter idea — brain maturation — is where I have a minor dis

Nick is the supremely talented reporter at the Washington Post covering immigration and DHS, and before that he was a foreign correspondent based in Mexico City and Havana. We tried to break down what is actually happening on the Southern border, and how likely it is to get exponentially worse.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 Dishcast feed. To hear three excerpts from my conversation with Nick — on how the U.S. got to “kids in cages” under Trump; on the cruelty of letting in migrants without any support; and how basically no one who enters the U.S. illegally gets deported — head over to our YouTube page. Here is the full long dissent from our main post today:I think you’re becoming a curmudgeon. In your episode with Emily Yoffe and your post on “queer”, you negate any possibility of conceiving of a group of people who are either L, or G, or B, or T, or any of the other sometimes-associated letters. The notion that this group is nonexistent is silly. Here are the characteristics common to the people you want to say have nothing in common:* We don’t conform to the expectations today’s culture has for persons of our gender, whatever that may be. Men aren’t supposed to be attracted to men. Women aren’t supposed to be attracted to women. No one is supposed to be attracted to more than one gender. Everyone is supposed to feel like the gender of their biological sex. I first heard this described as “gender-nonconformity” by — guess who? — a gay man. * Because of the above, or for other reasons, we experience mental and emotional issues at higher rates than the general population. Maybe we’ve experienced homophobia by others. Worse, most of us have experienced homophobia or transphobia from ourselves. * Our childhoods were generally marked by stresses due to our nonconformity that other children didn’t experience. * Many of us have to make a life’s work of reaffirming our own worth in spite of the fact that we’re different from most of the culture. * We can each potentially find support from other non-conforming individuals, even if they are different from the general culture in different ways than we are. I could think of others, but that’s enough for now. If a group can be said to be a collection of individuals that share common characteristics, of course there’s a group here. So there must be a word of some kind for it. Sure, raise the alarm against CRT if you want. Fine. Personally, I think this also speaks to your own experience more than logic. You (understandably) like the idea of the community that gay men represent to you, so don’t muddy the waters by broadening the group. It’s meant something to you to have that community. But this is both/and. It’s true that the community of gay men, or even the individual experience of gay men, is not the same as other communities. I know that as a bisexual man. Polls indicate that the numbers of bisexuals is higher than the numbers of either lesbians or gay men. And we commonly report that we feel both that we are like and unlike lesbians and gay men. That’s been my experience—gay/not-gay, but most certainly not straight.I do agree with you that straight people should not identify with groups they don’t belong in. It’s trendy to be “queer,” but it’s insincere signaling. But what I’d like to know, Andrew, is what word you’d allow me to use to describe broadly the group I belong in, beyond just bisexual (a word that carries an awful lot of stigma)? I used to say “LGBT” or “LGBTQ,” but now I’m to understand that those aren’t available for use. And God forbid I call myself “queer.” Learning from other “rainbow people” has helped me learn about myself. Being supported by them, and supporting them, has helped me heal. So I do identify as [Andrew-approved word]. Can you please help me out here? This is a great question. I’ll think some more on it, but here’s my instant thought. Many kids feel isolated from their peers because they don’t quite fit in with crude gender stereotypes — and that includes many more straight than gay kids. Feelings of lack of self-worth are universal. Non-conformity is so vast a grouping you could fit countless non-gay and non-trans people in it. And feeling you are the opposite sex is completely different than being comfortable with your sex and gender and seeking similar. When persecution was intense, there was a reason to group similarly challenged groups. I’m not so sure that endures. The vast differences between gay and lesbian culture — vive la difference — are greater than those between men and gay men or between women and lesbians. Why do we need a collective noun at all? After listening to our episode with Emily Yoffe, a reader makes a provocative argument:The Title IX guidelines for sexual harassment use the phrase “unwelcome conduct”. What to make of this? Each victim may have her own idea of what is “unwelcom

Emily has been the most fearless reporter on the fraught subject of sexual assault and due process on college campuses, first for Slate and then The Atlantic. She also wrote a hilarious book about a beagle, What the Dog Did.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or just below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. To listen to three excerpts from my conversation with Emily — on the Democrats’ selective defense of due process; on a culture of fear on the left; and on the need for journalists to be misfits and malcontents — head over to our YouTube page.A reader looks back to last week’s Dishcast:Loved the episode with Tim Shipman — not least because of the effortless switching of your attentions back and forth across the Pond. But only an hour?? I could have listened all afternoon ... Same for this reader:As someone whose grandparents emigrated to the US from Ireland, and one who has no interest in Brexit or Boris Johnson, I was surprised how much I enjoyed your podcast with Tim Shipman and in fact was disappointed it was shorter than your other podcasts. I would have liked to hear more from him, particularly his thoughts on Trump, wokeness, and the future of the US media.What was most refreshing was to hear a man whose success and competency as a newsman is based on his knowledge and experience rather than his intersectionality and his related “story”. I can’t imagine anyone having a political discussion like you two had with Maggie Haberman or Jim Acosta — or anyone in the US White House press corp. And Shipman’s gravitas and dignity stand in stark contrast to our young woke writers. Comparing Shipman’s thoughtfulness to Olivia Nuzzi’s profane snarky tone makes clear how young people in the media today — brought up on Twitter — have a long way to go to develop the type of world-view that will allow them to do the type of quality reporting Shipman does. The most important thing I got out of your discussion was how different Trump and Johnson are. Whatever else Johnson may be, he is obviously a bright, well-educated man — something you cannot say about Trump. You can see how Johnson survives to fight another day and Trump is banished to Mar-a-Lago. It also makes clear that if Trump was just a little smarter and less thin-skinned, we would be in his second term right now.A reader in Ireland found the episode wanting:Great piece with Tim, but I’m really surprised neither of you talked about the Irish Border. This became the thorniest issue in Brexit (because of the hard Brexiteers) and exposed Johnson not just as a liar (ask the DUP — no border in the Irish sea), but also as reckless when dealing with the Good Friday Agreement, the most successful piece of conflict resolution arguably anywhere in many years. I live one mile from the Border with Northern Ireland, so the issue was very real for me and many others on this island. Johnson is devoid of real principle, although he has buckets of charm, which makes him wholly untrustworthy and also, ironically, a real danger to the UK union, having left the European one. Anyway, very few British people “get” Ireland (North or South). But aren’t you, Andrew, Irish?Sorry for that omission. Yes, Boris lied. It’s what he does. And I don’t think he ever really thought through the Irish dimension of Brexit. Another reader remarks, “I really loved this episode, and I hope we get to learn more about non-American politics and personalities.” Always open to suggestions: [email protected]. Many readers have been recommending Bryan Caplan:After reading your latest column on immigration (which was excellent as usual), I’m wondering if you’ve had a chance to read Caplan’s book Open Borders. It’s a fun and easy read, so I would recommend doing so if you haven’t. I think he makes a strong case for open borders and while I would not go as far as to endorse the position, he definitely nudged me in his direction.This reader recognizes Mickey’s total aversion to b******t:I was gratified to see Mickey Kaus on the podcast. You two were the first bloggers I followed way back when. Oddly, I was about to send a recommendation that you invite him when he magically appeared. Substack has fulfilled my subliminal wish. MK is one of the clearest social welfare policy thinkers around and is incapable of political posturing.I agree. And hilarious. Another reader digs deep into the issues he and I explored:I enjoyed listening to the podcast with Mickey Kaus. You were both so rational and fair that you didn’t piss me off as much as thought you might because I have strong feelings about “welfare”. For the past 25 years, I have worked as a mental health counselor for a community agency in the Cleveland area. All of my clients, most of them women (white, black, and Latino) are low income (or to use Mickey’s term, “on the dole”). I don’t know how many hundreds of people I have worked with over the years, but I ha

Tim is simply the best political reporter in Britain. He’s their Bob Woodward, but he can also actually write. His two books, Fall Out, and All Out War, are indispensable to understanding the politics of Brexit. He knows the Westminster political class as well as anyone. In this episode, we talk about Boris Johnson’s astonishing luck and charm, as well as the Labour Party’s floundering. For three clips of our conversation — on the Tory leader’s knack for winning over the working class; on his and Brexit’s vindication over the vaccine; and on whether the monarchy might not survive the death of Her Majesty — pop over to our YouTube page. You can listen to the whole episode in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. If you want to understand how the politics of the UK helps us understand the politics of the US right now, have a listen. We had a blast.Looking back to last week’s episode on welfare and immigration in the US, a reader writes:I enjoyed your conversation with Mickey Kaus immensely. I realized I’ve never understood these generational shifts and counter-shifts in government policy emphasis, and that if that’s the case, the vast majority of voters don’t, either. I take issue with one comment, though. Biden has, in fact, harped so incessantly on the “dignity of work” that it invited blowback during his campaign. Do not confuse the activist position with Biden’s. He is the President, and I do not see his acceding to any assistance policy that doesn’t support work. My understanding of even the the child credits argument is that it supports day care, so the parent(s) can work!A sharper dissent comes from this reader:Can you just stop it with the “The Media is monolithically behind Biden” — it’s so lazy and obviously false. Is Fox News behind Biden? NY Post? Washington Examiner? National Review? Townhall.com? Sinclair? Washington Times? Wall Street Journal? Ann Coulter / Hannity in their talk shows? Or are they not part of the media?I get that you had a bad experience with NY Mag and you don’t like Charles Blow, but time to move on and look the world as it is — not some caricature.Over to immigration, another dissent:It’s such a fear-mongering narrative to spin immigration as a conspiracy by shadowy forces on the left to flood the country with non-white racial groups so as to destabilize the structures of white supremacy … you’re sounding like conspiracy theorist! What kind of American politician would invest so much in a strategy that won’t see a pay-off for 20+ years? The waiting list for green cards is backlogged decades, and that’s not even counting the waiting period for becoming a citizen after that. And you even admit that plenty of immigrants don’t automatically vote for one party over the other! This would be the most convoluted conspiracy ever. There are far more effective ways to grow the party than to be pro-immigration.It’s not a conspiracy. It’s out in the open. Almost every argument against mass immigration is instantly stigmatized as racist or “white supremacist.” White liberals have increasingly come to see non-white skin as a sign of moral worth, and opposition to mass or illegal immigration as de facto proof of racism. Another reader on immigration addresses an angle that could divide the left:To your point about there being two primary concerns with mass immigration (the traditional labor concerns Mickey spoke to, and the concerns about social cohesion that you and David Frum share), I would add a third (related) concern: environmental sustainability and quality of life.For the past 50 years, immigration policy has driven the majority of U.S. population growth. Without reductions, the Census Bureau projects the U.S. population to surpass 400 million by 2060. In other words, if current trends (2020 notwithstanding) continue, we will grow by roughly the entire population of France in just a few decades. Biden’s immigration proposal would more than double annual immigration. Some might say that’s a good thing, and others will say it is a bad thing, but either way, immigration-driven population growth will have a profound impact on American life. We are making decisions today for future generations. Not only should we be allowed to talk about it, but we should be encouraged to talk about it.For instance, I don’t know if your environmental concerns extend to biodiversity, natural habitats, or access to open space (I know you are very worried about climate change), but each of these become more difficult to guarantee with Congress mandating population growth through immigration. A quarter century ago, President Clinton’s Task Force on Population and Consumption wrote, “We believe that reducing current immigration levels is a necessary part of working toward sustainability in the United States.”I agree. I have no problem with a stable or declining population. For the planet, it’s a good thing. I thi

Mickey is an old friend and colleague from way back. His 1992 book, The End of Equality, was hugely influential for welfare reform in the Clinton years. 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 Dishcast feed. To hear three excerpts from my conversation with Mickey — on the history of how neoliberalism gutted the middle class; on whether Joe Biden’s amnesty policy amounts to “open borders”; and our questioning of what Biden actually believes, if anything — head over to our YouTube page.Mickey in the first ten minutes of the episode touches on a much-forgotten history noted by this reader:You wrote in your column last week that Johnson was a radically progressive president. Actually, I think that Nixon was more radically progressive. He might have been the most left-wing president of my lifetime since 1953. Nixon created the EPA and supported environmental legislation. He tried wage and price controls to combat inflation. Nixon’s 1969 Family Assistance Program included a guaranteed income (what we increasingly call UBI), and it passed the House but not the Senate. Nixon and Senator Ted Kennedy were also in negotiations for a federal universal health coverage plan. These negotiations didn’t get too far because of Watergate distractions and other priorities.Peter Beinart sizes up the LBJ-Biden analogy when it comes to foreign policy.Looking back to last week’s episode with addiction expert Sally Satel, a reader writes:Thank you for your incredibly fair treatment of AA, and 12-step programs generally. I’m 21 months sober and active in AA, and honestly my main issue has always been depression (which I largely see as my feelings of hopelessness and meaninglessness in this life). I believe the two are intimately connected for me. And I hear how people speak of the program in popular culture and even people who are in addiction services and they don’t seem to understand it, and I think it serves to actively dissuade people from going, which is a huge disservice to lots of people. I think you really understand it (have you spent some time in 12-step recovery?), and I just want to say thanks for doing it justice, in my mind. I also really appreciated this conversation with Sally generally, and the nuanced treatment of depression and addiction and how they are really social disorders, with biological and psychological and other bases.Never done 12-step myself. But I’ve seen its power in others. Another reader dissents a little:Sally Satel is so close! It’s true that addiction isn’t a disease, it’s a symptom — a symptom of a larger psychological problem, usually trauma of some kind. Something that requires escaping. Dr. Gabor Maté found from working with addicts that every single one of them had some kind of traumatic experience that they seek to escape through chemical means. Check him out:This next reader recommends Gabor Maté for the Dishcast and offers some excellent observations about the opioid crisis — both from a professional perspective and a personal one:Fantastic podcast this week with Sally Satel on a topic that interests me greatly (I edited a book about the opioid crisis). You asked some probing questions that the recovery community hasn’t been able to collectively answer: To what degree should we think of addiction as a brain disease, versus something that a person can control? And where should we assign responsibility for the scourge of addiction that is sweeping our country? Surely, the pharmaceutical companies behave villainously. And as you suggest, there are obvious reasons why addiction epidemics strike hardest where people were already suffering.But there is another issue that your podcast failed to take up, and I fear it is likewise lost in the broader conversation, at least among certain educated, liberal circles. I cannot believe that what I’m about to say should strike anyone as remotely controversial, but people often don’t like hearing it: People should not f**k around with certain dangerous drugs, such as crack, meth, or heroin. Not ever, and even a little bit, not even if they are “responsible grown-ups.” So, I regard Carl Hart, whom Sally mentioned on your show, as a terribly misguided menace.(P.S. I feel differently about MDMA and psilocybin, though that muddles my message.)Studies show that the overwhelming majority of opioid addicts did not, initially, receive narcotics from a careless doctor. They started using opioids recreationally. Furthermore, about 70 percent of opioid addicts started fooling around with other drugs before they got hooked on OxyContin or heroin. When overdose deaths occur, they typically involve combinations of drugs, such as when heroin is laced with fentanyl, or when people mix opioids, cocaine, benzos and booze. That happened about 80,000 times last year. Obviously, this is not an invitation to shame, marginalize, or humiliate drug abusers

Sally Satel, the author of many books, is a psychiatrist and journalist who just came back after spending a year with opioid addicts in Ironton, Ohio. She writes about that experience, and her views on addiction — that it’s not as simple as a “brain disease” — for the journal, Liberties. We also discuss depression, mental illness, and modernity. 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 Dishcast feed. To hear two excerpts from my conversation with Sally — on the compelling story of how Nixon got Vietnam vets off heroin; and on the tragic impact that meth has had on too many gay men — head over to our YouTube page.Looking back to last week, a reader loved our episode with Glenn Greenwald:Do you have any idea how refreshing that was?! One and a half hours of b******t-free thinking out loud! As much of his stuff I’ve read, I had never heard Greenwald interviewed in depth or even heard his voice. I was just so impressed with this man’s courage. He exemplifies intellectual honesty and integrity, to the point that he puts his body on the line. The dude has big brass balls and I admire the hell out of him even more having heard you two chat. Another reader digs up a YouTube recording from 2013:I finished your podcast with Glenn this morning and went to find and watch the marriage debate in Idaho that you mentioned in the episode:I’m just sending this note to let you know how moving you were in the debate. I don’t cry, but I do let my eyes swell, and over the course of those two hours you made so many statements that moved me to the point of my eyes swelling. Really appreciate your work and everything else.Another reader criticizes my work:Greetings from Afghanistan. I’ve read your work on and off since your days at The New Republic. I credit you for changing my mind on gay marriage, so thank you for that alone. Although we have different views — I’m a Never Trumper, somewhere between Kevin Williamson and George Will — I respect your willingness to debate people who hold different views.I must admit, however, that I vociferously disagree with your thoughts on Iraq/Afghanistan/and the wider war on terrorism. I’m currently on my sixth deployment and I’ve spent nearly five years in Iraq and Afghanistan. I will fully admit that I’m probably biased on this subject. I’ve shed a lot of blood here. I’ve lost so many friends — both Afghan/Iraqi and American — so when I hear you and Mr. Greenwald roll your eyes at the thought of staying put in either country, it certainly boils my blood. I’m aware we’ve made egregious errors. I’ve railed against the machine myself, tilting at the proverbial windmills. Nevertheless, I’m quite reluctant to quit (lose) and see hundreds of my Afghan friends get slaughtered, like our South Vietnamese allies did in re-education camps. These wars are just talking points for so many — another cudgel to hit the neo-cons with or put that war-monger W in his place. But for thousands of my brothers and sister-in-arms, it has been our lives’ work. I didn’t intend to be in any respect glib about that. I’m in awe of the way so many service-members have given their lives to this endless war, and it’s impossible to express my respect and admiration for those not in armchairs debating policy. The question is whether to keep this kind of sacrifice going indefinitely, or to end it, however grueling an admission of defeat might be. Another reader sizes up the rapidly shifting mediascape from his vantage point in Boston:Thank you for the wonderful conversation with Glenn Greenwald. I was struck by your mentioning the recent media obsession with violence toward Asian Americans. You are correct — in none of the stories have I seen a word said about the perpetrators. We are supposed to assume that this is collateral damage from Trump’s xenophobic reign, but it appears to me that many of those committing these heinous acts are young black men. For the media to acknowledge that would sort of make the simplistic narrative surrounding BLM that we’ve been spoon fed these past several months a bit more complicated, so therefore we are left with just the storyline that’s there’s been “escalating violence” against Asians.Your attitude towards the New York Times mirrors mine toward the Boston Globe. The Globe was a staple on my morning doorstep throughout my life — I guess I’m a true classic Liberal deep down as well — but I no longer have faith in the paper. Conversely, The Manchester Union Leader has always been my local paper — but growing up gay and reading anti-gay bigotry on its editorial pages throughout my life did little for my self acceptance.A funny thing happened during the Trump era. The Globe ran story after front-page story as part of “the resistance”, and the op-eds all had the same punchline: Trump is evil. (I did not vote for him either time.) The Union Leader did not support Trump; he’

The indefatigable Greenwald needs no introduction for Dishheads. He was once a demon for the pro-war right; and now for the woke left. You can pre-order his book on Brazil under Bolsonaro, Securing Democracy, and you can donate to the animal shelter he started.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 full transcript here. To hear three excerpts from my conversation with Glenn — on the dangers of living as a gay public figure in Bolsonaro’s Brazil; on Trump’s success when it came to foreign policy; and on the ways in which elite journalists punch down with wokeness — head over to our YouTube page. Looking back to last week, many readers enjoyed our episode with trans activist Mara Keisling:Thanks for having the conversation with Mara and kudos to her for having a civil conversation with you. While I agreed with much of what you said, I think “trans women are women” is a much more defensible statement than you seem to believe. You appear to push back against it because you interpret it as a factual statement about how trans women aren’t in any way different from cis women, which would indeed be false. A different way of looking at it: we should define the term “women” to encompass both cis women and trans women. Scott Alexander made this point beautifully in a post on his old blog called “The Categories Were Made For Man, Not Man For The Categories.”As I’ve said repeatedly, I believe that trans women should be treated as women under the law and by decent human beings. But I can’t in good conscience say they are in every way indistinguishable from women, that “biological sex” is a bigoted term, and that where nudity or safety are concerned, we cannot make some small compromises. Another reader:Excellent podcast. I found it telling that Ms. Keisling struggled in three parts of the interview: women’s sports, religious tolerance under the proposed Equality Act, and where do we draw the line with regards to children and transgender therapy/medical procedures. These three topics are where the majority of people supportive of transgender identity often raise legitimate questions of concern, and where they’re often met with the fiercest hostility by activists. Notice how difficult it was to get a straightforward response from Ms. Keisling on these three issues, as if she were walking a tightrope above a sea of egg shells. Could it be that these areas are where much of the current transgender rights argument falls apart? I don’t think it falls apart as a whole. But I do think treating these legitimate, small worries as a form of “hate” is wrong, and counter-productive. In their defense, I don’t think many trans activists have ever engaged these arguments without dismissing them as bigotry, and beneath a response. They mainly chant, deploy maximal emotional blackmail, and intimidate the press, which is already on their side. When you regard debate itself as a form of white supremacy, you tend not to be very good at it.This next reader focuses on the sports issue and illustrates why Dish readers are the absolute best:I have been reading and listening to you since your early New Republic days but have never written to you because I felt I didn’t have enough specific knowledge to jump in. Having listened to your conversation with Mara Keisling, it is odd to me that the topic I do have specific knowledge about is women versus men in billiards, which Mara speculated about.From 2001 to 2005, I was President of the United Poolplayers of America (UPA), the governing body of men’s professional pool in the US. During that time, I promoted the World Summit of Pool that was televised on ESPN from Grand Central Terminal in NYC. In an effort to sell more tickets, I suggested that we let the women compete as well. Well, the guys couldn’t have cared less. It was the women who were adamantly opposed. I had several conversations with Jeanette Lee, aka the Black Widow, the greatest American woman billiards player. She was the one who made the case that the guys have an overwhelming physical advantage. The advantage has nothing to do with the guys being taller, as Mara suggested. (Efren Reyes, the best poolplayer in the world, is 5’7”.) While the women are equal shot-makers and just as cool under pressure, the guys have a big advantage on the break. Because they are stronger and can generate more power, they will pocket a ball on the break more frequently, which allows them to continue shooting. In a “race to eleven”, if a woman fails to pocket a ball just one or two times less than her opponent, then that’s the whole ballgame.Back in 2003, Jeanette actually gave me several academic studies that she had researched. Sorry to say, but Mara is just not correct when she says there aren’t real studies on the topic of the advantages that boys have in sports from an early age. All these years later I have found these articles in my file cabi

Mara is a brilliant transgender rights activist and founding executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. I’m so grateful for her willingness to have a robust exchange of views on some issues, along with much agreement as well. Every few weeks, I hope to add another perspective to the debate over trans identity, a subject that has suffered from the mainstream media’s horror of open debate. Dana Beyer kicked the series off. You can listen to the episode with Mara Keisling 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 Dishcast feed. To listen to three excerpts of Mara — on the tensions within the new Equality Act; on the conflation of sex and gender in public policy; and on the fairness of trans athletes competing with cis athletes — head over to our YouTube page.Looking back, here’s a question from a reader prompted by our episode with Kmele Foster:You expressed your frustration with terms like “whiteness” or “white values”, which mean nothing more specific than anything the speaker disapproves of at that moment. Whilst I agree, I’m not sure this is a new phenomenon. When I was at university, people on the left would use the phrase “bourgeois values” in the same way. Whilst the points of reference are rooted in identity politics rather than economics, and the underlying ideology is critical race theory rather than Marxism, is it not the same phenomenon? And, if so, do you believe they are interchangeable or is this generation’s activism significantly different?My concern is associating a whole slew of characteristics to a single “race” and erasing all the variety and diversity within that population is, itself, a form of racism. Values are not black white; they are human, and available to all. Last week’s episode with pro-Trump intellectual Michael Anton elicited the most email of any episode we’ve had so far. A reader writes:I appreciated your discussion with Anton, as it can be useful to hear the best defense of even (and perhaps especially) those things one finds largely indefensible (allowing me to check my Trump Derangement Syndrome levels, and all that). But boy, that sure didn’t move the needle. Anton’s defense of Trump boiled down to a combination of relentless whataboutism and what appeared to be, if we’re being extremely generous, highly selective “epistemological humility,” as he puts it. I came away with the impression that, whatever his rationalizations, what was driving him was largely the same motive driving my Trump-supporting relatives: a desire to own the libs/spite the elites/stick it to the Dems. Why that particular tribal motive is so powerful, and what can be done about it — in conservative and liberal circles alike — seems important to figure out if we’re to keep the republic chugging along.Another reader focuses on our fiery exchange over the 2020 election:Thank you for interviewing Michael Anton. I’d never before listened to a person espouse theories of voter fraud who actually has the mental resources and willingness to debate the topic, so the discussion was very revealing. I do wish that you, or someone, would ask him why he feels that our “loosey goosey” voter registration system (to use his words) is being massively exploited only by Democrats. If the fraud is not baked at the voting machine level (which Anton conceded) and is instead organic, then why does this organic fraud only cut in one direction? Anton casually asserts that half of the electorate (his side) is honest, while the other half is widely corrupt on an individual, person-by-person level: millions of people individually deciding to cheat the system. Anton himself has written a response to his Dish experience. Check it out. Another reader is “disturbed by the ongoing ‘bad election’ narrative”:As someone who has worked elections, may I suggest the doubters please work a poll? My experience is people of all political ideologies work together to make free and fair democracy happen. I am in Georgia. Workers here risked their health to open the polls. Then they spent long hours counting and recounting and recounting. Then they reset the whole thing for a 5 January run off. All this during the holiday season! The Senate double run-off is proof Georgia was free and fair. Georgia — a state run by Republicans — spent $100 million between 2016 and 2020 buying new voter-verified paper and digital voting machines. If Senators Purdue and Loeffler had won reelection, the Democrats would not have challenged the result. They would had gone back to discussing why they get 48-49% but never crack 50%.This next reader looks to other parts of the episode:Two things that really stuck out that I would’ve loved to hear Anton address as he played his whataboutism rhetorical games with you:* During his campaign in 2016, Trump promised to not only get rid of the budget deficit, but to eliminate all US debt within 8 years. This wasn