Honestly with Bari Weiss

Just when we think we have Kim Kardashian pinned she adds another hyphen. She’s a reality star, until she owns Instagram. She’s an influencer, until she becomes a business mogul. She’s the sexual icon of a generation, but also a mother of four. And now, this week, she’s one step closer to being a lawyer.  Somewhere between 2007, when “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” first premiered and now, she m...

In 2019, Jussie Smollett’s hate crime allegations captured the nation. The actor and singer claimed that two men beat him, poured bleach over his head, and tied a noose around his neck—all while shouting homophobic and racial slurs. Many pointed to his story as proof that our country, even in liberal cities like Chicago, is still plagued by the most evil forms of racism. But a few weeks later, we...

Eccentric economist and brilliant thinker Tyler Cowen answers our questions about the confusing state of the economy. We talk about: inflation, the stock market, “The Great Resignation”, billionaires, income inequality, crypto, Texas vs San Francisco, the metaverse, good food, working remotely, what states like Virginia swinging back toward the right might mean for national politics and more. Lear...

Desmond Shum knows well the cost of doing business in China. Born to a humble family that was marginalized during the Cultural Revolution, he became a wildly successful entrepreneur, along with his ex-wife Whitney, to the tune of billions of dollars. But just as quickly as the Chinese Communist Party elite helped enrich the couple, it tore them down. In 2017, Whitney disappeared, not to be seen or...

If your family is anything like mine, Thanksgiving is an opportunity to take a break from work, to bask in one others’ presence, and to fight savagely over the hottest political issues of the day. And nothing is more contentious than Covid: mask policies; vaccine mandates; whether kids should be confined to the backyard; and, most urgently, whether we can safely--and finally--call time on the pand...

Here is what I thought was true about Kyle Rittenhouse in the last days of August 2020: The 17-year-old was a racist vigilante. I thought he drove across state lines, to Kenosha, Wisc., with an illegally acquired semi-automatic rifle to a town to which he had no connection. I thought he went there because he knew there were Black Lives Matter protests and he wanted to start a fight. And I thought...

First, Andrew Yang ran for President, and he could barely get mainstream media’s attention. Then, he ran for Mayor of New York City, and suddenly, his every move was being scrutinized.  Following those two failed campaigns Andrew announced that he was leaving the Democratic Party altogether and announced the formation of a new third party, Forward, this past October. Today, a conversation on how,...

It’s been three years since the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, the most lethal attack on Jews on U.S. soil. That day was, for me, as it was for so many others, a watershed event. The country I knew was changing. While anti-semitic incidents in America had been climbing for a few years, this was different. Jews were afraid, and no longer felt safe. After Pittsburgh, there were countless other dis...

"Defund the police" or "healthy at every size" or "marriage is just an oppressive institution of the patriarchy" - these are just a few of the ideas that are becoming common doctrine among American elites. And Rob Henderson has described these new orthodoxies as “Luxury Beliefs.”  He says, much like second homes on the beach or Bentleys, luxury beliefs are thoughts that can only be afforded by peo...

If you’ve just heard of the word “TERF” (it stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) it was probably because of Dave Chapelle’s new Netflix special, “The Closer.” The comedian declared himself “Team TERF.” But what does that really mean?  Julie Bindel would know. She has been physically attacked; her work has been banned; and she’s been disinvited from lectures all because of the accusation...

Ross Douthat is a New York Times columnist, a father of four, an author . . . and also someone who lives with a tremendous amount of pain. Ross has been battling chronic Lyme disease since 2015. It's a disease that doesn’t officially exist, but it managed to bring this otherwise healthy man to his knees. This is a conversation about something we all have or will experience: pain. How pain can dist...

Last week, Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, confirmed what we already felt; that big tech platform’s algorithms are manipulating our sense of reality, and ourselves, and in doing so enriching themselves.  Jaron Lanier, the technologist, philosopher, and virtual reality pioneer has been warning us about the dangers of the internet for years. Today, a conversation with Jaron, from his hom...

The most honest thing I’ve ever read about abortion is by Caitlin Flanagan. It’s called “The Dishonesty of the Abortion Debate: Why We Need to Face the Best Argument From the Other Side.” You can read it here. On today’s episode, and in light of the new law in Texas, which effectively bans abortion, a conversation with my friend Caitlin. We talk about the best arguments on both sides of this issue...

Four decades ago, Glenn C. Loury became the first tenured black professor of economics in Harvard’s history. Ever since then, he has made waves for his willingness to buck the elite intellectual establishment; for his iconoclastic ideas about race and inequality; and for his incisive cultural criticism.  He is a man of seeming contradictions: he rails against the divisiveness of woke politics from...

So much of the conversation about Covid-19 is angry and full of finger-pointing. Dr. Vinay Prasad has consistently been able to cut through the noise, the confusion, and the endless bickering. He does this by consistently avoiding the blame game and following the data wherever it leads. Dr. Prasad is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Ca...

It’s been a month since the fall of Afghanistan. And Black Hawk helicopters and Humvees aren’t the only things we left behind. Trapped in a country now controlled by the Taliban are hundreds of thousands of America’s Afghan allies. These are the interpreters, advisers and others who worked with the U.S. government and with American organizations--and who we promised we would never abandon. Their c...

Peter Boghossian is the first one to tell you: he's no victim of cancel culture. The philosophy professor has long had a taste for stoking debate, questioning orthodoxies, and exposing the brokenness of an academic system that values identity-based grievances over scholarship. He did that, in part, by writing phony papers like "The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct" and getting them published...

Abigail Shrier is a lawyer, a reporter and author of Irreversible Damage. One way to describe her book would be: controversial. She has been accused of spreading misinformation by GLAAD. A prominent ACLU lawyer called for her book to be banned. A favorable review of the book in Science-Based Medicine ignited an online mob, which led to the journal disappearing that first review and replacing it wi...

Between the catastrophic American withdrawal from Afghanistan, an endless pandemic, a broken education system, and competent leaders nowhere in sight, it can feel like America is in a constant state of meltdown. On today's episode, renowned historian Niall Ferguson answers the big questions: how did we get here? Is American decline inevitable? And if not, what can be done to renew the culture and...

In Part II, a diagnosis of the global ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party with Josh Rogin. Josh explains how U.S policy mistakes in the 20th century handed more power to China in the 21st, how the Chinese government wields power over Big Tech, Hollywood, and higher education on U.S. soil, and whether we’re headed for another Cold War.   “The global scale of the China challenge is not just abo...

When the pandemic began eighteen months ago, anyone who dared suggest that the virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China, was dismissed as a crank, or otherwise accused of racism, xenophobia, and refusing to “believe science.” Why was this highly plausible theory unsayable? On today’s podcast, Josh Rogin, a foreign policy columnist for the Washington Post and author of “Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi a...

How did this happen? How did we spend 20 years, over 2 trillion dollars and over 2,000 American lives to wind up losing Afghanistan to the Taliban in under two weeks? Was the mission doomed from the start? Was it political incompetence? Or was it the fault of the military brass who refused to be honest about what it would take to win? Today, a frank and wide-ranging conversation with H.R. McMaster...

For several months, the journalist Katie Herzog has been talking to some of the country's top doctors and professors—not about COVID, or vaccines—but about a new, creeping orthodoxy that’s taken over the hospitals and medical schools where they work. Those doctors say that whole areas of research are off-limits. They say that top physicians are treating patients based on their race. That professor...

Amy Cooper was not the internet’s first “Karen” — the pejorative used for a demanding, entitled white woman. But as the Central Park dog walker who went viral for calling the police on a black birdwatcher last year, she quickly became the paragon of the archetype. Within 24 hours, Amy Cooper had been doxxed, fired from her job, and surrendered her dog. She wound up fleeing the country. She hasn’t...

Why are men the way they are? Are they naturally more aggressive? And is it fair for transwomen to compete in sports separated by sex? Is it possible to overcome our animal instincts? And why has it gotten so hard to ask these questions out loud? To admit that there are any differences between men and women? On today’s episode, a deep dive into these subjects and more with Carole Hooven, the autho...