Uncertain Things

Dan Senor, host of the Call Me Back podcast and co-author of The Genius of Israel, is bullish on Israel. Is there anything that could change his mind? He and Adaam discuss what makes Israeli society strong and what might make it turn against itself. They also can’t resist some media naval gazing and debate whether the fall of sense-making gatekeepers is a boon or a curse.

On the agenda:

-Brave new media

-Could anything make Dan go bea...

Alan Dershowitz is one of the most prolific legal scholars (and civil rights litigators) in this country of ours. In his latest book, The Preventive State, he takes the first step in developing the jurisprudence of what Philip K. Dick called precrime. Dershowitz argues that we need a better — and more transparent — legal system for calculating how many civil liberties we’re willing to sacrifice in order to prevent potential harm. H...

Coleman Hughes, author of The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America and writer for The Free Press, argues that recent progressive theories about antiracism have looped all the way back to racism. He joins Adaam to discuss the power of language to reveal and distort, the moral confusions of revolutionary activism, the aesthetics of social justice, and how this all relates to Israel’s war on Iran.

On the agenda:

-Col...

Is there hope for Palestinians in Gaza after the war? What will happen to Hamas? Does anyone still want a Two State Solution? And will the war with Iran change the game? Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and director of Realign for Palestine, joins Adaam James Levin-Areddy to discuss. Ahmed seeks to refocus the Palestinian mission from armed resistance against Israel to self-governance, independen...

Former ACLU President Nadine Strossen and FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) President Greg Lukianoff join Adaam to discuss their upcoming book War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail. The three dig into what makes liberalism in general and free speech in particular so powerful, so radical, and so rare. Is too much information a danger for free speech? Why are some institutions resilient...

Perspicacious podcaster Mike Pesca, host of The Gist and author of Pesca Profundities, joins Adaam to partake in principled, punny, and peppily pugnacious perorations. On the agenda: the creeping nihilism of American society (and should we be worried about it), the comedy of Signalgate, the state of the media, and the revenge of the cancelled.

On the agenda:

-Podcasting with Pesca [00:00]

-Misinformation and media [10:52]

-Objectivit...

Former Democratic organizer Brianna Wu joins Adaam James Levin-Areddy for a conversation about her journey from leftist activism to clashing with leftists about antisemitism and the recklessness of transgender politics. Wu opens up on the challenges that come with standing up to one’s own tribe, the importance of defending liberal values, and how to think responsibly—and compassionately—about sex and gender.

On the Agenda:—How Gamer...

Religious scholar Tomer Persico, now a Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, returns to help us unpack why liberalism is special — and why it’s now in crisis.

Mentioned in this episode:

-Our first conversation with Tomer, about the implications of seeing ourselves as made in the image of God

-Yascha Mounk, who talked to us about how identity politics is straining liberalism

-Tom Holland, the Liberal who lost his faith

-Sara...

To write The Other Significant Others, journalist Rhaina Cohen interviewed couples around the country who have committed to sharing their lives with each other — just not their beds. These pivotal yet hard-to-define relationships have existed throughout history, but we lack the vocabulary to talk about them (let alone a legal framework to protect them). Adaam and Vanessa — platonic partners themselves — talk to Rhaina about the nom...

Podcaster/journalist Andy Mills shares the unusual trajectory of his life and career: from small town boy; to God-loving member of a close-knit group of friends; to rebellious drop-out of a Christian college; to curious outsider in Southern Sudan; to hard-working, some-time inappropriate young media professional; to a more self-aware, award-winning podcast producer; to New York Times outcast; to independent media professional (with...

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 media, and also what the decline of ...

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 conversation (for paid members only) here.

Find...

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 us from reality — and debate the limi...

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 yesterday when he decided to check out his fir...

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 covering the more violent 2020 protests in Po...

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 our ‘Uncertainty’ newsletter for up...

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 Saddam tapes. And we ask our former...

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 Jewishness being worth hijacking by any...

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 media an “environmental toxin” — or just ano...