The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table

"They hated each other." That's Elliot Kaufman describing Israel's war cabinet, not its enemies. Kaufman joins Noam Dworman on the rivalries, leaks and gambles behind Israel's war since October 7. Why did Netanyahu wait 20 days to invade Gaza? When was Biden saving Israel from itself, and when was he holding it back? And why did killing Nasrallah trigger a furious phone call from Washington? They...

Hen Mazzig, co-founder of the Tel Aviv Institute and author of The Wrong Kind of Jew, says Israel won on the battlefield and lost the world, and that explaining Israel "is not a replacement for policy." He spent five years in COGAT, the IDF unit that issues Palestinian permits and prison visits, and was attacked by settlers while in uniform. We play his Piers Morgan fight with Norman Finkelstein (...

Three years after October 7: What's Next for Israel and the Jewish People. Noam sits down with Coleman Hughes, Eli Lake and Salo Aizenberg to ask whether the war was worth it. Coleman says Israel traded prestige for power and Hamas did the opposite. Salo brings the Gaza Health Ministry's own 2025 report: 50,000 births, 25,000 deaths, and 108 hospital workers who appear in Hamas's own martyr notice...

Is Nathan Cofnas's "Guide for the Hereditarian Revolution." a plan to heal or America, or is it simply a racist manifesto dressed up as science. We ask him to his face. Cofnas is the philosopher at the center of the Jason Arday plagiarism affair. He says that, all else equal, smarter people have more human worth. He says freedom of association is worth it even if some diner bans blacks and Jews. A...

Did Israel starve Gaza, and why don't many Israelis believe the experts who say it did? Noam sits down with Alex de Waal, the world's leading famine scholar (World Peace Foundation, Tufts), for a tough but good-faith debate. De Waal argues that Israel could have ended the hunger "within a matter of days" and didn't. Noam lays out why people like him stay skeptical. Did his March 2024 warning that...

Get KAKISTOCRACY on Amazon: https://bit.ly/4hxg9Lh Synopsis Richard Hanania is back. His new book, Kakistocracy, argues that populism ends in rule by the worst people, and he and Noam spend an hour testing that against the news: why populism can win without being popular, whether the Iran war was worth the shot even if it fails, whether China would rather help us than fight us, and how the right b...

Ross Barkan got fired for it. Jason Arday resigned over it. Claudine Gay lost Harvard because of it. Brian Frye, a Tulane law professor and the legal academy's one and only defender of plagiarism, says nobody can explain why it's wrong in the first place. He joins Noam, Dan, and Periel to make the case: why the Gay affair was "a joke," why Arday's real problem was never plagiarism, why Barkan's re...

00:00 Meet Cameron Berg - and the number: 25-30% odds AI is conscious 03:16 Is training an AI punishment? 13:18 Is turning it off murder: the anesthesia problem 19:00 The immune system challenge 39:08 Bliss attractors, panic, and guilt inside the model 52:46 The abortion parallel 56:23 Noam interrogates Grok in the Tesla Could the AI you use every day be conscious - and suffering? Researcher Camer...

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by Musa al-Garbi. They discuss the Jason Arday scandal, academic freedom, DEI, affirmative action, merit, standardized testing, grade inflation and the growing crisis of trust in elite institutions. Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. His work has appeared in The Guardi...

An anonymous interview with a diaspora Palestinian - an ex-Muslim who made millions on Polymarket and writes the Substack Moderate Palestinianism. He supports two states on the '67 borders with no right of return, opposes Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, and appears anonymously because these views are dangerous in his own community. On the heckler's veto that kills every peace deal, whether...

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by  Evan Barker, writer and author of the book, Nothing Left. Previously, she worked in Democratic politics, primarily as a fundraiser for progressive politicians and organizations. They discuss she left progressive politics, why she voted for Trump in 2024, and what she believes Democrats have misunderstood about the working class....

Lucas Gage (www. Lucasgage.com X.com/lucasgagex) spent 14 years as one of the loudest antisemites on the internet - a Marine who came home from Iraq, read Mein Kampf, and became a true believer. Then he walked away. What did he believed, and why? What snapped him out of it? And what does it tell us about Tucker, Candace, Fuentes and the rest? Are they believers, grifters, or a bit of both? 0:00 Th...

Noam Dworman and Periel Aschenbrand sit down expecting to interview Evan Barker—but when she doesn't arrive, they discuss Tucker Carlson, Daryl Cooper, antisemitism, Germany, immigration, media and why Evan Barker never made it. Chapters 00:00 Waiting for Evan Barker 02:15 Tucker Carlson, Daryl Cooper & extremism 08:35 Germany, antisemitism & lessons from Europe 19:30 Noam on ideology, immigration...

0:00 "You picked the wrong guy" – the audiobook story 3:12 "You own [Comedy Cellar], one of New York's treasures" 7:28 The customer who will never tip again 15:41 Motivating a team after you've won: finite vs. infinite games 23:23 Noam doesn't like fine dining 39:55 Handling Google reviews & hunting down critics Noam sits down with Will Guidara — author of the New York Times bestseller Unreasonabl...

0:00 The friend he hasn't seen since sixth grade 5:16 Angelina Jolie, BRCA, and the 20% nobody tells women about 18:23 What a cancer cell actually is - and why tumors evolve 26:31 How cancer actually kills you, and what a seizure is 32:14 The last cigarette: why he can't take the test every week 46:27 The best medicine in the world, and who can't get to it 1:03:23 Telling a family there's nothing...

CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro - four nice things about Peter Beinart 4:50 Will God punish Israel? Jeremiah, tradition, and belief 13:20 The critical-mass hypothetical: a 49% Hasidic America 22:03 Quebec, Czechoslovakia, South Africa - why not divorce? 41:35 The right of return: "You can cherry-pick anything" 54:24 1948: They were closer to the Holocaust than we are to COVID 63:40 Day one of a one-state solu...

Description Written By Fable/Max: Robert Wright interviewed Geoffrey Hinton in 1983 and, by his own account, got the story 180 degrees wrong. Forty years later Hinton is the "Godfather of AI," two of the three godfathers are frightened of their own creation, and Wright has written The God Test to figure out what he missed and what's coming. We talk about how these machines evolved rather than bein...

A conversation about the future of Israel and world Jewry. Can Israel protect itself without becoming a global pariah? Did Hamas gamble that even losing the war could pull Israel into isolation? Noam and Sobelman discuss occupation, unilateral withdrawal, the settler movement, Jewish vulnerability abroad, and the difficult tradeoffs now shaping Israel’s future. 00:00 Intro: Daniel Sobelman returns...

Was the MOU a good idea? Noam says yes, the Professor says no. The Table is joined by Kian Tajbakhsh. They discuss his years as a political prisoner in Iran, the psychology of the Iranian regime, why he believes Iran's leaders genuinely seek Israel's destruction and what the West continues to misunderstand about the Middle East. He also weighs in on Trump, the latest U.S.-Iran developments and the...

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by Ankush Khardori. They discuss the Epstein files, Kathy Ruemmler, civil liberties, public shaming and whether the release of Epstein-related documents has generated more heat than facts. They also discuss cancel culture, online mobs, Anthony Weiner, anti-Semitism, and the broader consequences of judging people through leaked communicat...

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by Ben Kawaller. They discuss his podcast Strange Bedfellows, the evolution of the LGBT movement, gay marriage, Pride culture, trans politics, free speech, Andrew Sullivan and why some gay activists believe the movement has fundamentally changed. Ben Kawaller is the lead reporter on the Reflector podcast’s three-part miniseries, “Strange...

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by Professor Daniel Sobelman. They discuss his research into the strategic origins of October 7, the captured Hamas documents recovered during the war, how Israel's deterrence strategy failed and what the future of warfare means for Israel and the region. Sobelman explains why Hamas believed it could fundamentally alter the balance of po...

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by Daniella Bloom to discuss her journey from Democrat to conservative, the rise of anti-Israel sentiment, Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, free speech, Trump, antisemitism and the future of the conservative movement. Daniella Bloom is a former California Democrat, a psychotherapist, keynote speaker, producer and on-air comme...

Josh Szeps joins us for a wide-ranging conversation about Israel, Gaza, antisemitism, Zionism, Jewish identity and why the debate has become so exhausting and distorted. We talk about whether Jews outside Israel are being forced to answer for the Israeli government, what anti-Zionism really means, the failure of the peace process, Netanyahu, Gaza, drones, Palestinian leadership, the pressure to “c...

Peter Savodnik joins us to talk about Nicholas Kristof’s column alleging abuse of Palestinian prisoners, including the most extreme dog-rape allegation, and how pro-Israel people should respond when the reporting is weak but the underlying issue may still deserve investigation. We talk about the difference between bad journalism and false accusations, the danger of reflexively circling the wagons,...