Uncertain Things

The indispensable Eli Lake — contributing editor at Commentary Magazine and staff writer and podcaster at The Free Press — returns to the pod to mark the destruction of mass murderer and DSA heartthrob Hasan Nasrallah along with the top brass of his terror gang in Beirut this weekend. This leads to a discussion about the nature of warfare and the importance of escalation, the inanity of American m...

Caitlin Flanagan returns ! The unapologetic author of On Thinking for Yourself (a selection of her excellent essays for The Atlantic ) comes to talk to us about the fall of Western civilization, what happens when you let church-going go, what happened to universities, and why (though a Catholic herself) Caitlin has started wearing a Star of David. Check out (the juicier) part two of this conversat...

Nick Gillespie — editor at large at the libertarian institution that is Reason Magazine ( and host of The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie ) — comes on the pod for an IRL conversation about 'The Agony of Abundance,' the paradoxical state in which we’re more prosperous, yet more dissatisfied, than ever. We discuss the negative narratives peddled by the media — a misdirection that’s untethering...

PLEASE NOTE: We are releasing this episode in the immediate aftermath of the alleged assassination attempt on President Trump. Details and facts presented in this conversation are still being corroborated and are subject to be updated/corrected. Recurrent guest Misha Thomas (“ The Liberal Who Voted for Trump ” / “ Blackness and the Other Side of Trauma ”) was visiting family in Pittsburgh yesterda...

Nellie Bowles is back! The journalist, writer of the TGIF newsletter , and co-founder of The Free Press ( along with her wife Bari Weiss) returns to discuss her new book, Morning After the Revolution . In it, she chronicles the unfortunate series of events that led her to leave The New York Times in 2021. We get into that in this conversation, too (diving into the backlash she received for coverin...

William Deresiewicz — author of (the newly updated) Excellent Sheep , The Death of the Artist, and The End of Solitude — returns to the pod! This time we dive into one of the institutions we love to hate: elite universities. We dwell on and debate the protests at Columbia (et al.), the reasons why it’s all gone so wrong, and whether or not the solution is just to raze them to the ground. Check out...

Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, author, and former Columbia Journalism School dean (to us!), Steve Coll, takes us deep into the conspiracy-plagued mind of Saddam Hussein, the subject of his latest book The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq . We go deep into the wonky journalism weeds — including what it took for Coll to get his hands on the...

With Vanessa off for the weekend to explore the world of psychedelics, the podcast has been hijacked by a cabal of furious, loud, and lubricated Jews. Adaam, 3 martinis and a Laphroaig in, is joined by Newsweek opinion editor and author of Second Class Batya Ungar-Sargon, and Free Press reporter and host of The Re-Education podcast Eli Lake. The three have gathered to refute Jonathan Glazer’s Jewi...

Authors and co-hosts of the Cut the Bull podcast, Charles Love ( Race Crazy ) and Wilfred Reilly ( Taboo , Hate Crime Hoax ) join us for a lively conversation/debate about race, history, and K-12 education — and Vanessa gets put in the hot seat. Questions covered include: Should Black history be separate from American history? Are we over-indexing on sex and gender in the classroom? Is social medi...

Dr. Einat Wilf is an Israeli writer, speaker, former (and future?) politician, podcaster ( We Should All be Zionisists ), and co-author of The War of Return . In this episode, we dive into some historical context for the Israel-Palestine conflict, with Vanessa asking all the ignorant questions you were too afraid to ask: What/who was there in Israel before 1948? Was displacement a part of the Zion...

Iranian historian and writer Arash Azizi comes on the pod to share his perspective on the Israel-Hamas conflict today — and why he believes ceasefire is the only viable path forward for Israel’s war with Hamas. Along the way, Azizi gives us on an overview of Iran’s politics since the Revolution of 1979 (i.e. how Soleimani became The Shadow Commander ) and explains the country’s current stance towa...

John Aziz is a British Palestinian musician who has come into the public spotlight since October 7th for tweeting out for peace and against Hamas. In this conversation, we unpack why it’s so controversial for a Palestinian like John to be pro-peace, the trauma both sides aren’t acknowledging or addressing, and the overly-simplified, ironic, Star Wars narratives of the Western Left. Follow him on X...

Friend of the pod Batya Ungar-Sargon , deputy opinion editor for Newsweek and author of Bad News , returns for a deep, contentious conversation about the responsibility of journalists covering the Israel-Hamas war, the people worth expending energy on (versus relegating as enemies), and the uncomfortable embrace of moral certainty.  While much vitriol is expended on the “journalists” bringing sham...

Note: This episode is far more explicit — and way more rage-ful — than your average. As you have likely read by now in the news, last Saturday, a group of Hamas combatants infiltrated Israel and massacred about 1300 people, mostly civilians. Usually, Uncertain Things is all about embracing epistemological uncertainty. This conversation is not about that. To help Adaam process his rage and achieve...

Yascha Mounk returns for round two! If you missed part one of our conversation with the political theorist, writer, and podcaster about his latest book, The Identity Trap , stop now and listen to that episode first.  We pick up where we left off last time and get deep into debate about strategic essentialism, the privileging of marginalized voices, and the incoherencies of standpoint theory . We a...

Political theorist, writer, and podcaster Yascha Mounk returns! Last time , we spoke about Yascha’s last book: The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure . This time, Adaam got to air his personal grievances as we dove into the thorny topic of his latest book: The Identity Trap .  Yascha covers a ton: he traces the intellectual history of the postmodern ideas...

We bring in the fall with a big conversation about big tech, with the authors of System Error: Stanford professors Rob Reich (expertise in: political science, philosophy, ethics, democracy, digital technology), Mehran Sahami (software engineering, in particular machine learning and AI, and VC funding), and Jeremy Weinstein (political science, government, social impact). We cover the systemic drive...

James (Jamie) Kirchick is an author, columnist for Tablet magazine, historian, podcaster, and staunch believer in/defender of liberal values — and he’ll speak up against any party/group currently trampling on them. He began his journalism career writing about domestic and foreign politics; his first book, The End of Europe focused on the rise of populism in the continent (paid subscribers — stay t...

Scientist-turned-historian Peter Turchin returns! Peter first came on the pod a few months ago to discuss the famous prediction he made in 2010 that we were headed for crisis, circa 2020. Last time, we covered the controversy he’s stirred up within the historical discipline, the methodologies behind cliodynamics/his data-based predictions, and the drivers of social unrest (in particular, elite ove...

David Krakauer is the President of the Santa Fe Institute — an academic institution that conscientiously bucks the overly-siloed and ideological bents of most universities these days. Krakauer is an evolutionary biologist who studies “​​the evolution of intelligence and stupidity on Earth.” He joined us on the pod for a wide-ranging conversation covering the history of complexity science, the inad...

William Deresiewicz — author of Excellent Sheep, The Death of the Artist, and The End of Solitude — has lived many lives. He’s been an orthodox Jewish boy who lost his faith; a journalism school student unimpressed by the pretensions of the profession; a literature professor who (blasphemously) loved books and teaching. Today, he’s an author, essayist, and nostalgic ex-New Yorker. No matter where...

Nellie Bowles is one of the few journalists who lives and writes in the Venn diagram of both Adaam and Vanessa’s interests. For years she was the tech reporter for The New York Times and her epic 2022 piece on San Francisco’s decline for The Atlantic deservedly kicked up a lot of attention, including from your podcast hosts  — for different reasons, of course. In 2021, she left “mainstream” media...

Behold! The recording of our first ever live event! We were graced by the thoughts, arguments, and non-English accents of Niall Ferguson — economic historian, fellow at Stanford, and author of many books, including Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe — and Martin Gurri — a former media analyst for the CIA and author of The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium (a.k.a...

Journalist Helen Lewis spent much of last year knee-deep in gurus — the Steve Jobs, Russell Brands, and Jordan Petersons who captivate (and capture) audiences with their spiritual aura and (increasingly) podcasts  — while reporting The New Gurus . She postulates that they derive their popularity, in part, to the decline of religion in our societies, a topic she explored in her reporting for The Ch...

Vanessa has admired the New York Times ’ architecture critic Michael Kimmelman ever since she was a starry-eyed youngster starting her urban journalism career. Now that his latest book The Intimate City is out, it was the perfect excuse to have him on the show. She and Adaam ask Michael what it was like at the Times in the late ‘80s when he started out, continue the conversation they started with...