Dirty Moderate with Adam Epstein

Shabbos Kestenbaum is a graduate student at Harvard University, researching the intersections between between public policy and contemporary Jewish life in the United States. Shabbos is the lead plaintiff against Harvard University alleging pervasive and systemic antisemitism. Shabbos has appeared on CNN, Fox News, and in The New York Times, and has testified in front of the United States Congress...

When he was elected Lt. Governor of Maryland in 2003, Michael Steele made history as the first African American elected to statewide office; and again with his subsequent chairmanship of the Republican National Committee in 2009. A longtime political analyst and contributor  to MSNBC, Michael is currently the co-host of MSNBC’s “The Weekend,” which airs Saturdays and Sundays at 8AM EST. Having rec...

Ron Reagan, the son of former President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan, grew up in Los Angeles and Sacramento while his father served as Governor of California from 1967-1975.   After a brief career as a classical ballet dancer, Ron Reagan has spent the past 40 years as a correspondent, host and political commentator in television and radio, chiefly for MSNBC and Air America. He has written for ma...

John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina.  John was one of our very first guests on Dirty Moderate over 2 years ago, and we were thrilled to spend time with this deep thinking, generous, loving, and spirited human again.  A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside...

Stella is an Irish psychotherapist who had her own intense experience with gender as a child, and the resolution of her gender distress has made her curious about the wisdom of early intervention. As a result, in addition to facilitating a parent coaching site that provides practical help to parents who are navigating their child’s gender-related distress, and acting as the presenter for the docum...

Reed Galen is a co-founder of The Lincoln Project, host of the Lincoln Project podcast and author of The HomeFront Substack , and a self-proclaimed Cassandra. Reed is an independent political strategist who has spent years advising Fortune 500 companies, and has also worked on several prominent republican campaigns. He joins Adam to assess the Never Trump movement( of which they are both part) fro...

William Inboden is Professor and Director of the Alexander Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, and Peterson Senior Fellow with the Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.  He joins Adam in a discussion centering around his latest book “ The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan in the White House and the World. ”...

Alana Newhouse   is an American writer and editor. She is the founder of Tablet magazine, a dynamic hub of Jewish life, which features news, essays, podcasts and opinion pieces. In November 2022, Alana wrote an essay for Tablet called “Brokenism.” The essay remains deeply compelling because, as Alana argues, that “the real debate today isn’t between the left and the right . It’s between those inve...

Mona Charen is a conservative American journalist, columnist, commentator and best selling author. She is the Policy Editor of The Bulwark , and host of the Beg to Differ podcast, which you need to subscribe to immediately.   Mona fell hard for William F. Buckley as a teenager, and her first job was as editorial assistant at his National Review. She went on to write speeches for first lady Nancy R...

As the host of the podcast History of the Land of Israel , and his own YouTube show, Israel Explained, Shaiel Ben-Ephraim spends his time thinking about Israel and assessing Israel’s long term goals. Given Iran’s attack on Israel, we invited Shaiel back to Dirty Moderate so he and Adam could discuss the implications of Iran launching drones and missiles, including ballistic ones, directly at Israe...

Mike Gonzalez is the Angeles T Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He is a longtime journalist who currently writes for The Washington Examiner. Prior to that, he wrote for the Wall Street Journal, where he was based in Hong Kong.  Mike is an ardent conservative and he sees the re-election of Trump as the only stopgap against the progressive onslaught of the left. H...

George Washington claimed that anyone who attempted to provide an accurate account of the war for independence would be accused of writing fiction.   At the time, no one called it the “American Revolution”: former colonists still regarded themselves as Virginians or Pennsylvanians, not Americans, while John Adams insisted that the British were the real revolutionaries, for attempting to impose rad...

As a young girl born in Canada, Yasmine Mohammed was born into a strict Islamic household. If she missed a word of her Koran readings, she was beat until her feet were bloody and raw. And the Canadian government said there was nothing they could do to help her. “This is your culture,” they smugly told her.  But Yasmine escaped the horrors of her childhood and the strictures of her faith to emerge...

Damon Linker, is a writer for the Atlantic and is a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Pennsylvania. He also writes the Substack newsletter “ Notes from the Middleground ” and is an Open Society Project senior fellow at the Niskanen Center. Damon joins Adam to discuss his latest article for the Atlantic, "The Dead-Enders of the Reagan-Era GOP"  in which Damon argue...

New York Times columnist David French joins Adam to discuss the role of religion in public life, and he offers up a unique portal into the pro-life movement, and its perils in the aftermath of Roe. David discusses the important role of the courts, and especially the critical role of the Supreme Court, in securing( or not securing) the guardrails against a Trump/MAGA led assault on our institutions...

As arguably the pre-eminent voice warning about the dangers of Donald Trump, longtime political operative Steve Schmidt needs no introduction. But in case you have been abducted by aliens, Steve is the founder, author and host of The Warning, a digital media company comprised of a daily newsletter, podcast and video analysis on his YouTube channel .   Through The Warning, Schmidt discusses the eve...

It’s not playtime in America. It’s high time in America that we all stand up for democracy. It’s gonna take all of us, especially independents like myself who will back Biden in November because that’s putting America first.  It’s America or Trump; you can’t have both.…  Thanks for helping us save democracy one episode at a time! Join the Dirty Moderate Nation on Substack !  Tell us what you think...

Noah Rothman is an author and conservative thinker who is a Senior Writer for National Review, and whose recent bestseller, “The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives’ War on Fun,” is the chief subject of the second episode of our new series Dirty Moderate After Dark . Adam and Noah do a deep dive into the origins of Puritan thought, and they detail the odd, and very uniquel...

Tina Nguyen is a national correspondent for Puck covering the world of Donald Trump and the American right for their The Best & The Brightest newsletter. Previously, Nguyen was a White House reporter for Politico, a staff reporter for Vanity Fair Hive , and an editor at Mediaite. Her new book, The MAGA Diaries: My Surreal Adventures Inside the Right-Wing (And How I Got Out) is a dazzling memoi...

Philip K. Howard is a lawyer, author and chair of Common Good ( www.commongood.org ), a nonpartisan organization aimed at replacing red tape with human responsibility and agency.  In his discussion with Adam, Philip discusses his latest book “ Everyday Freedom: Designing the Framework for a Flourishing Society, ” which argues that the post 1960’s legal framework which has guided government policy...

James Kirchick is a columnist for Tablet magazine , a writer at large for Air Mail , and author of the instant New York Times bestseller, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington .  Jamie( as he is known,) sits down with Adam and details why he wrote “Secret City,” discusses his longtime interest in Cold War history and assesses the intersection of anti-Communist and anti-gay hysteria and...

As the host of the podcast History of the Land of Israel , and his own YouTube show, Israel Explained , Shaiel Ben-Ephraim spends his time thinking about Israel, assessing Israel’s long term goals and strategies and nuancing a discussion about Israel and the Palestinians which blessedly sheds more light than heat. A self described “Liberal Zionist,” Shaiel sits down with Adam to discuss his time a...

 At once passionate and eloquent, Kaivan Shroff may just be the Democratic Party’s most effective communicator. A onetime digital strategist for Hillary Clinton, Kaivan is now the Press Secretary for Dream for America, a Gen-Z movement for freedom, democracy, & progressive government.  As a regular pundit and commentator, Kaivan regularly and forcefully makes the case for Biden’s re-election....

Before we all settle in to watch Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl, check out Adam’s recent discussion about immigration with the second best blonde of the day, his Executive Producer, Dawn Sorokin in this special edition of Stay Dirty, Stay Moderate     Leadership Lessons From The Great Books Understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand (yet)... Listen on: Apple Podcas...

With the 2024 election less than a year away, Kyle Kondick, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball , the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ nonpartisan election forecasting newsletter joins the podcast to look at our electoral landscape—both presidential and congressional—from 30,000 feet. Have a listen as Kyle and Adam discuss Biden’s vulnerabilities as an incumbent, the precarious sen...