Conversations with Coleman

My guest today is Josh Mitchell. Josh is a Wall Street Journal reporter who covers debt and finance. His book is called "The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe" and it was named one of the best books of 2021 by both NPR and The New York Post.  In this episode, Josh and I talk about the history of government involvement in student loans. We discuss the reasons why college tu...

My guest today is Samaneri Jayasāra. Samaneri is a Buddhist nun and spiritual teacher. Her YouTube channel where she shares her lectures has over 80,000 subscribers.  In this episode, Samaneri and I discuss the purpose of meditation, the true nature of emotions, the core teachings of Buddhism, the illusion of boredom, the difference between Buddhism and the Abrahamic religions, the possibility of...

My guest today is Ted Gioia. Ted is a musician and an author. He's written 11 books including his latest, which is called "Music: A Subversive History". He's been on the faculty at Stanford, and he's been published in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other newspapers.  In this episode, Ted and I talk about why human beings enjoy music from an evolutionary perspec...

My guest today is Maryam Namazie. Maryam is an Iranian-born writer and activist living in the UK. She's the spokesperson of "One Law for All" and "The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain". She has co-authored many books, including "Sharia Law in Britain: A Threat to One Law for All and Equal Rights", "Enemies Not Allies: The Far-Right"  and "Political and Legal Status of Apostates in Islam". This epi...

My guest today is Richard Reeves. Richard Reeves is a Senior Fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institute, where His research focuses on social mobility, inequality, and the middle class. Richard's new book is called "Of boys and men" and it's all about the specific problems facing men in American society.  In this episode, Richard and I talk about whether there's any need to address male...

My guest today is Freddie DeBoer. Freddie is an independent writer on substack and has been published in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and many other places. His book "The Cult of Smart" was named one of the 10 best books of 2020 by New York Magazine. In this episode, Freddie and I begin by discussing Karl Marx, the legacy of Marxism, and the so-called "labor theory of val...

My guest today is Will MacAskill. Will is an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford University. He is the co-founder and president of the Centre for Effective Altruism. Will is also the director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research. In this episode, we discuss his new book "What We Owe the Future". We talk about whether we have a moral obligation to the billions of hum...

My guest today is Claire Lehmann. Claire is an Australian journalist and the founder of Quillette, which is the online magazine that I use to write for. In this episode, Claire and I talk about why she founded Quillette, and how she maintains its original purpose as a magazine. We discuss the so-called "IDW" (the intellectual dark web) and the perception that it fractured into two camps on COVID i...

My guest today is Rafael Mangual. Rafael is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and Head of Research at their policing and public safety initiative. His new book is called "Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most". In this episode, we discuss the nationwide push for defunding and de-policing starting in the summer of 2020. We talk about...

My guest today is Ian Rowe. Ian is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the founder of Vertex Partnership Academies. He's also an educator who ran a charter school called Public Prep in the South Bronx for many years.  In this episode, we discuss his new book "Agency". We talk about the obstacles facing low-income Black and Hispanic kids at the schools Ian teaches in. We discus...

My guest today is David Bernstein. David is a professor at George Mason University Law School and the executive director of their liberty and Law Centre. His new book is called "Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America". Topics covered in this episode include the definition of race and the historical origins of America's Big Five racial and ethnic categories, which are Asia...

Today I'm going to try something new. Instead of publishing an interview that I did myself, or a Q&A where I answer your questions, I'm going to use my platform to publish an interview conducted by somebody else. Now, this requires a bit of an explanation. My friend Desh Amila, who's a filmmaker and producer, organized an event with Julian Assange in 2017. He filmed the event at the time and then...

Today's episode is a Q&A where I answer questions sent to me by supporters of the podcast. Usually, I only release these episodes to members only, but I'm releasing this one to the public because I felt the questions were particularly good. If you have any burning questions you'd like to ask me, and if you'd like to be a part of the next Members Exclusive Q&A, you can join the Coleman Unfiltered C...

My guest today is Katie Herzog. Katie is the host of the very funny "Blocked and Reported" Podcast along with Jesse Single. She is a great visual artist and was also a staff writer at "The Stranger" for many years.  In this episode, we talk about Katie's upbringing as a lesbian in a less than accepting environment. We also discuss the rapid rise in the salience of trans issues in the past couple o...

My guest today is Zac Kriegman. Zach was a director of data science at Thomson Reuters before he got fired for posting a fact-based criticism of Black Lives Matter in an internal memo. This is one of the worst examples of Cancel Culture and enforced orthodoxy around the issue of race that I've seen in a while. Zach was fired for pointing to research by Roland Fryer who I just had on the podcast, a...

My guest today is Jonathan Haidt. I just had Jonathan on the show a few weeks ago with Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott, but I wanted to get him back for a one-on-one. I'm glad I did because this turned out to be a really great conversation. It actually felt more like a private phone call than an interview, which I thought was really cool. I also thought it was really cool that John brought up the...

My guest today is Winston Marshall. Winston is a founding member of the Grammy Award-winning band "Mumford and Sons", in which he played lead guitar and banjo for 14 years. He left the band after writing a tweet that praised a book by Andy Ngo. As many of you may remember, Andy Ngo is a journalist that got beaten to a pulp by Antifa extremists. Winston wrote a pretty mild tweet approving of Andy N...

My guest today is Sam Koppelman. Sam is a best-selling author and top speechwriter for many prominent politicians. Sam just co-wrote a book with former Attorney General Eric Holder called "Our Unfinished March: The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote-A History, a Crisis, a Plan" In this episode, we talked about voter fraud, voter ID laws, voter suppression, and gerrymandering. We discuss...

My guest today is Roland Fryer. Roland is an economics professor at Harvard University. He is a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant and the Bates medal. Roland is probably among the top five most frequent guest requests that I get. So it was really exciting to finally have him on the show. In this episode, we discuss Roland's childhood and the many obstacles he had to overcome in order to beco...

This episode is a recording of a live event that I did with Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff, and Rikki Schlott. Jonathan Haidt is a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business. He is also the co-founder of Heterodox Academy, which I once wrote a blog post for back when I was probably 21 years old. Jonathan is the author of many books including "The Happiness Hypothesis", "The Righteous Mind", and...

My guest today is Yascha Mounk. Yascha is a political scientist and associate professor at Johns Hopkins University. He's also the founder of "Persuasion", which is a great online magazine I really recommend you all read. He is also the host of "The Good Fight" podcast. Yascha has a new book out called "The Great Experiment", which is what we'll be discussing in today's episode. We talk about grou...

This podcast is actually a recording of a live event I did at TED in Vancouver with Tim Urban. Tim Urban is the author of the blog "Wait But Why?" and also of the upcoming book "The Story of Us". My thanks to the TED team for inviting me to have this conversation. ​​​​​​​Tim and I talked about procrastination, the shortness of life, artificial intelligence, political polarisation, and much more. U...

My guest today is Frances Haugen. Frances is a data engineer, scientist, product manager, and whistleblower.  ​​​​​​​In this episode, we discuss the psychological effects of Instagram on teenagers, the subculture of Tumblr, the cross-check system at Facebook, Facebook's policy toward misinformation, and much more. I really enjoyed this episode and I hope you do too. Learn more about your ad choice...

My guest today is Richard Dawkins. I assume most of you know who he is, but in case you've been living under a rock; Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and emeritus fellow at Oxford University. If I listed all the awards he's received in his lifetime, this description will not end. His books include The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype, The Blind Watchmaker, The God Delusion, Unweavi...

My guest today is Andrew Yang. Andrew Yang is a businessman, attorney and author. He is known for his presidential bid in 2020 and his bid for New York City mayor in 2021. This podcast was recorded at Andrew's studio and jointly released on his podcast which is called "Forward". In this episode, we discuss my upbringing and background in music, how philosophy is taught, why race shouldn't matter,...