The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

In the year or so that I’ve been podcasting, this may be the most significant conversation I’ve recorded. It’s a civil, careful examination of the core political question we face today: how can we save liberal democracy from becoming tyranny? The skill with which Bob Woodward and now Robert Costa have put together a chronology of the Trump administration should remind us of how truly grave the thr...

Cornel West’s academic career is long and storied, having taught religion, philosophy, and African-American studies at Yale, Princeton, Harvard, and Union Theological Seminary, where he recently returned. He has written or contributed to more than 20 books, including Race Matters and Democracy Matters — but he recommends you start with Chekhov. I met Cornel decades ago, when I interviewed him at U...

Briahna, a lawyer and political consultant who served as press secretary for Bernie Sanders, co-hosts the superb podcast Bad Faith . I start our enjoyable convo with a simple question: how can we best facilitate the flourishing of black America? I’m trying to reach out and engage more people I have disagreements with, to see where we might have common ground. I’m immensely grateful to Briahna for...

Antonio is quite the Renaissance man: child of Cuban exiles, journalist, PhD student in physics, Wall Street ace, entrepreneur, Facebook ad pioneer, and Silicon Valley apostate. His NYT bestselling memoir Chaos Monkeys got rave reviews until five years later it got him fired from Apple a few weeks into his job because of a woke revolt. Now he has a brilliant substack . In this episode we dive deep...

Ross is a dear old colleague whose newest book, The Deep Places , is a memoir about his long fight against Lyme disease. In this episode we talk about the world of sickness, which we both know something about, and we debate our differing views of Pope Francis and our different levels of panic over Trump and CRT. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right...

Michael Wolff, a longtime media critic, and now the author of three Trump tell-alls, talks with me about the 45th president. How politically dangerous is he still? How delusional and mentally unbalanced? Will he run again? We get into it. You can listen to our conversation right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect yo...

While Andrew and I wrap up our two-week summer vacation (back on September 10), here is the second half of the very personal interview he did with journalist and friend Johann Hari  (who wrote the bestselling books  Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs  and  Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope ). To recap, the idea to re-air the 2012 conversation...

This fortnight, while Andrew and I are on our annual Dishcation in August, we are airing a two-part interview of Andrew from 2012, conducted by the journalist Johann Hari (author of the bestselling books Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs and Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope ). The idea to re-air the interview all started with this reader: I...

Moynihan is one-third of the The Fifth Column — the sharp, hilarious podcast he does with Kmele Foster and Matt Welch — and he’s a long-time correspondent for Vice. In this episode we mostly cover the cascading news out of Afghanistan, but also bounce around to topics like old media, woke media, neocons and Israel, Big Tech, and third rails. We also reminisce a little about our mutual friend, the...

Michael, currently in Hong Kong, is a veteran journalist on East Asian affairs and a regular contributor to The Atlantic and Bloomberg. He’s written a book on Confucius , and his most recent one, Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World , explores the driving force behind the current Xi regime. After our episode with Peter Beinart that touched on China, and after the reader dissent...

Michael’s latest book, The Premonition , spotlights a band of dissenting doctors that battled the inept government response to Covid-19. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. For three clips of my conversation with Michael — on how we should approach Covid r...

Wesley is a columnist for Tablet magazine, the author of The Souls of Yellow Folk , and a newly minted substacker . I’ve long admired him both for his essays and for his dry-as-toast Twitter feed . In this episode, we discuss the Great Awokening and critical race theory in great detail. You’ve be warned. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu...

Peter is a long-time friend and fellow former editor of The New Republic. His latest book is The Crisis of Zionism , and he’s the editor-at-large for Jewish Currents and the creator of his own substack, The Beinart Notebook . In this episode we focus on foreign affairs — China, Israel, and South Africa — as well as our shared apostasy when it comes to Iraq and neoconservatism. In the last half-hou...

One of the writers I most revere in journalism, Michael has a style that is as lucid as his research is exhaustive. His new book, This Is Your Mind on Plants — specifically coffee, poppies, and the San Pedro cactus — is a continuation of his magisterial How to Change Your Mind , a deep dive into psychedelics that made the subject more respectable than it’s ever been. (My 2018 review of that book,...

Amy, who you probably know as the Tiger Mom, is a law professor at Yale and the author of several books, including The Triple Package and Political Tribes . In this episode we discuss the experience of being an immigrant, of being a minority within a minority, and the importance of, in Amy’s words, “turning being an outsider into a source of strength,” not victimhood. You can listen to the episode...

Katie Herzog, one of the last remaining lesbians in America, is the co-host of Blocked and Reported alongside her battered pod-wife, Jesse Singal. Gay neocon Jamie Kirchick is a Brookings fellow and the author of the forthcoming book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington . If you’d like to hear a politically incorrect gay and lesbian conversation that would never be aired in the MSM, c...

Michael is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a prolific writer, primarily for National Review. His first book is My Father Left Me Ireland: An American Son’s Search for Home , a beautiful memoir I reviewed here . You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishca...

Prof. Hooven is an evolutionary biologist and the author of the awesome new book, T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us . She’s a teaching star at Harvard and it’s easy to see why. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. For t...

Bryan, who teaches economics at George Mason University, is the author of the graphic nonfiction NYT bestseller Open Borders . His views on immigration, nation-states, and democracy are extremely different from my own, so we debate all throughout the episode. Bryan has been the most recommended guest by our readers, who clearly want to see some fireworks on this issue. I had a lot of fun. You can...

Jon and I go way back to the early days of the marriage movement. In this episode we discuss his important new book, The Constitution of Knowledge , and get into some heated exchanges over Trump, the MSM, and Russiagate — Jon as the optimistic liberal and me as the pessimistic conservative. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Di...

Charles has a new — and probably explosive — book coming out soon, Facing Reality . This conversation is not about that. Instead, I wanted to discuss his last book which received almost no attention, Human Diversity . You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed).  Read the full transcript here .   For three...

Niall is one of my oldest and dearest friends, stretching back to our time at Magdalen College. The prolific historian is out with a new book, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe . One of the hardest convos I’ve yet had. Simply because Niall and I go back so far together, and our friendship is deep, it’s tough to interview him without abandoning objectivity — but I hope I did ok. You can listen to t...

A co-founder of Justice for Women, Julie has a long career campaigning against male violence. She’s the author of many books , and you can pre-order her latest, Feminism for Women, here . I disagree with her on many subjects but found strange agreement on others. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — w...

Eric is a professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, and he most recently wrote the book Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities , which I reviewed here . Be sure to check out his recent report on the social construction of racism in the United States. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it...

Shawn is a first-generation college grad working at the New York Times and just penned a popular op-ed on his own experience growing up in a culture of opioids in suburban Philly. A more detailed version of his story was published last summer in Liberties. It’s a moving account of a Millennial tragedy. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it y...