Honestly with Bari Weiss

Everyone wants the war in Gaza to end. The reason the war is not over is because about 50 people are still being held hostage by Hamas. Twenty of them are alive, but on the brink of death. About 30 of them have already been killed, and their bodies remain in Hamas captivity. There are differing opinions on the best way to bring them home: continue the ground war in Gaza, or take the partial deal p...

Ever travel to Europe in the summer and suddenly feel very “ra ra ra” about America? It’s not because of American culture, or food, or architecture. The thing people miss first and foremost is AC. Yes, air-conditioning. It’s an American treasure and of course, fodder for many dad jokes. But beyond the jokes, this invention has been politically and culturally transformational. AC allowed factories...

You might have heard of the new term: “woke right.” It’s the idea that the illiberalism that has swallowed the progressive left—what we often refer to as “wokeness”—has come for the right. Here’s how we think about the dynamic: Over the past two decades the woke left said: “Everything is taboo”—our Founding Fathers, the idea that men and women are different, the idea that wearing hoop earrings is...

On November 1, 2007, a man named Rudy Guede broke into a random home in Perugia, Italy, then raped and killed Meredith Kercher—a 21-year-old exchange student from the University of Leeds. You might not even remember the names Rudy Guede and Meredith Kercher. But one name you will remember is Meredith’s roommate, Amanda Knox, a 20-year-old exchange student from Seattle. In the weeks and years after...

The question of who represents the working class is probably the hottest debate in American politics. Is it Republicans? Democrats? Or socialists like Zohran Mamdani? Pundits can debate that question all they want, but the undeniable test is: Who do the unions believe stands for working people? For a century, unions were undeniably Democratic. And in 2021, Joe Biden tried to carry on that traditio...

Here’s one fun question to ask at a dinner party: What is your favorite conspiracy theory? There’s the idea that the CIA killed John F. Kennedy. The moon landing was fake, and 9/11 was an inside job. Covid was designed by the Gates Foundation to control the world—and the Covid vaccine had a microchip. There’s the deep state. Chemtrails. QAnon. The Illuminati. Reptilian overlords. Pizzagate—which s...

Rahm Emanuel is giving every indication that he’s running for president in 2028—including by coming on Honestly yesterday. Emanuel, now 65 years old, has spent decades making a name for himself as one of the Democratic Party’s fiercest and most effective partisans—a true knife fighter, and you’ll see that spiciness in this interview. But can the dealmaker, the guy so adept at pulling the levers of...

Depending on who you ask, some would call the ultrarich “shameless”; others might say “aspirational.” For example: Mukesh Ambani, the Indian centibillionaire, has a room of snow in the Indian tropics—to say nothing of his skyscraper home, 168-car garage, and 600-person-staff. And celebrations for his kids’ weddings featured Rihanna and Beyoncé. This is nothing new. Aristotle Onassis had whales’ te...

Just two weeks ago, New Yorkers voted en masse for a self-proclaimed socialist—someone who once called for “seizing the means of production.” This is, of course, Zohran Mamdani, who dominated in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor with a definitive victory over Andrew Cuomo. He has called for rent freezes, free buses, and even government-run grocery stores. He won 56 percent of the vote...

Love him or hate him, many consider Elon Musk to be a modern-day genius. He co-founded PayPal, which transformed how people purchase things. He became the CEO of Tesla, which revolutionized electric vehicles—and made it cool to drive them. He founded SpaceX, accomplishing what only superpower nation-states have previously. And he is working to make our species interplanetary—maybe in a few years,...

America is turning 250. And we’re throwing a yearlong celebration of the greatest country on Earth. The greatest? Yes. The greatest. We realize that’s not a popular thing to say these days. Americans have a way of taking this country for granted: a Gallup poll released earlier this week shows that American pride has reached a new low. And the world at large, which is wealthier and freer than it ha...

When we last recorded Saturday night, the U.S. had just announced its strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The U.S. had entered the war. The restrainers had seemingly lost. In the following hours, President Donald Trump said the mission was a “spectacular military success.” And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the program “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites.  But there’s much more to that story...

On Saturday night at 7:50 pm ET, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. had entered the war against Iran when he posted: “We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home...

It’s the fourth day in the war between Iran and Israel. Many questions hang in the air. Chief among them: Will Israel be able to fulfill its main goal in the war—to end Iran’s nuclear program? Will it put troops on the ground to do so, specifically to blow up Iran’s most important nuclear site? Or will the U.S. get involved? Will Trump provide the bunker-busting bombs necessary to destroy the faci...

As we taped this episode of Honestly, it was 3 a.m. in Israel. Sirens wailed across the country as Iranian missiles rained down on Israeli towns. At the same time, Israel was striking military and nuclear sites inside Iran, and oil fields were aflame. Meanwhile in Washington, reports were emerging of a heated debate inside the White House over whether the U.S. should get involved in the war. It’s...

In the early hours of Friday morning, Israel pulled off a historic strike on Iran. As I record these lines, Iran is reporting a “massive explosion” in Isfahan, in a province that is home to several nuclear facilities. In Israel, where Shabbat has begun, the government has ordered all synagogues to shut down—and for citizens to remain close to bomb shelters as they brace for a retaliatory strike. I...

There are people who have résumés we might call “diverse” or “wide-ranging.” And then there are people like Mike Huckabee who, at age 69, has seemingly crammed several lifetimes’ worth of careers into one. He was a televangelist. He was governor of Arkansas for over a decade. He ran for president and won the Iowa caucuses. He hosted his own show on Fox News for seven years. He’s written books on e...

In the past few weeks, Qatar has been all over the news with flashy headlines of a $400 million luxury jet that the country gifted to President Donald Trump. It symbolized their opulence and eagerness to please the U.S. But 40 years ago, Qatar was a country with a gross domestic product (GDP) of a few billion dollars. Since the 19th century, it has been run by the Al Thani family, which can trace...

In 2023 and 2024, there were many things that were unsayable. Perhaps the most unsayable—at least in legacy media circles—was that the President of the United States was not capable of being president, because he was no longer mentally fit. Those people who did break the taboo—who dared to notice Biden’s countless gaffes, his stiff gait, those who recognized the reality of old age, including Speci...

A lot of people fall in love outside of their marriages. Some have affairs. Some leave their wives or husbands. But not a lot of people are Agnes Callard. Agnes did something really unique. She fell in love while she was (seemingly happily) married with two children. She told her husband. They got divorced—sharing a single lawyer—and it took under three weeks to split. And then? Then they all move...

Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, were staffers at the Israeli Embassy. They had just planned a trip for Sarah to meet Yaron’s parents. He had recently bought an engagement ring. Then on Wednesday night, they were murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. The suspect, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez, told police: “I did it for Palestine. I did it for Gaza.” Since its fo...

The late biologist E.O. Wilson said that “the real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous.” Wilson said that back in 2011, long before any of us were talking about large language models or GPTs. A little more than a decade later, artificial intelligence is already completely transforming o...

When you think about great political comebacks, maybe you think of Donald Trump, or Richard Nixon, or “comeback kid” Bill Clinton. You might soon add Andrew Cuomo to that list. In 2020, Cuomo was at the top of the world. He had been governor of New York for a decade. He had an illustrious career in New York politics—which is sort of the Cuomo family business. He learned how the state worked from h...

The majority of people listening to this episode are hearing it on an iPhone. As most of us can attest, the iPhone is so central to our lives that if we lose it, we feel totally unmoored from our ability to function in the world. It’s hard to explain how ubiquitous the iPhone is—and how much of a behemoth Apple is. Apple sells over 60 million iPhones in the U.S. a year, and one plant can make as m...

There’s an endearing saying that the U.S. surgeon general’s primary role is to be the nation’s family doctor. They represent America’s medical community, educate the public on current health risks, and wield tremendous influence over medical and scientific information. On Thursday, President Trump nominated Dr. Casey Means to take on this important role. Casey’s background is unique. After attendi...