Honestly with Bari Weiss

In 1973, Leonard Cohen announced he was done with music for good. The same year, in October, war broke out in Israel. The Yom Kippur War would become the bloodiest in Israel’s young history—and Cohen was there to witness it. As the war broke out, he left his home on the Greek island of Hydra to fly into the warzone. Leonard Cohen never said much about why he went to the front. What we know is that in the months that followed, he would write “Who By Fire.” Five decades later, on Spotify and in synagogue, you can still hear the echoes of this trip. So what was it that happened in the desert in October of 1973 between this depressed musician and these too young soldiers going off to battle? How did it remake Leonard Cohen? How did it transform those who heard him play? And how did the war transform Israel itself? Those are just some of the questions Matti Friedman explains in his beautiful book Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai. This episode aired last year on Honestly, and we’re thrilled to reshare it with you today, as we approach the 50 year anniversary of the war that remade a country—and one searching folk star.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

17 Sep 20231h 22min

This week, while our audio team is on summer break, we’re featuring an episode from one of our favorite podcasts: Conversations with Tyler, hosted by the wonderful Tyler Cowen. It’s a conversation with philosopher Amia Srinivasan about her book, The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century. They debate questions such as: do we have a “right” to be desired? How are our sexual desires shaped by the society around us? Is consent sufficient for a sexual relationship? How should we address falling fertility rates? What did women learn about egalitarianism during the pandemic? Why, according to her, progress requires regress. And much, much more. . .  The episode received a lot of attention and reactions, for reasons you’ll understand when you listen to it. Most importantly, it’s contentious yet respectful in a way that I think is increasingly rare in public life. As Tyler wrote at the time, on his blog Marginal Revolution, about the conversation: “You have to learn to learn from people who bother, annoy, or frustrate you. If you do, they will not in fact bother, annoy, or frustrate you.” I couldn’t agree more. In fact, this conversation between Tyler and Amia was a big inspiration for our first-ever Free Press live debate, which is happening next week in L.A. The proposition: has the sexual revolution failed? If this conversation inspires you too, please consider buying a ticket to the event: Wednesday, September 13, at the Ace Theatre in downtown L.A. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7 Sep 20231h 11min

The team’s on vacation, so for this week’s Honestly, we’re sharing a favorite episode from a favorite podcast, one you may not have heard of: UnHerd with Freddie Sayers. UnHerd’s mission is similar to ours: to push back against the herd mentality, and to provide a platform for otherwise unheard ideas, people, and places. On this episode, host Freddie Sayers talks to evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins about God, people’s distrust in science and vaccines, cancel culture, aliens, romantic poetry and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

31 Aug 202358min

On Wednesday night, Fox News and the streaming platform Rumble hosted the first Republican presidential debate with the eight GOP hopefuls who made the cut: North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, former governor of Arkansas Asa Hutchinson, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, former governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, former vice president Mike Pence, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.  Missing from the stage was Donald Trump, who refused to attend the debate. Instead, he sat down Tucker Carlson—a move that allowed him to flip the bird to the RNC and allowed Tucker to do the same to Fox, who fired him a few months ago. Trump’s interview with Tucker aired exclusively on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and more than 74 million people tuned in. Here at The Free Press, we love a good debate night, and we were up until the wee hours discussing it all. So today on Honestly, TFP reporter Olivia Reingold, TFP senior editor Peter Savodnik, and Newsweek’s opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon are here to discuss who emerged on top? Who fell by the wayside? And did the elephant not in the room still somehow manage to dominate? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

24 Aug 20231h 4min

If you’ve been listening to this show for the past few months, maybe even since the 2022 midterms, you probably think I sound like something of a broken record when it comes to my advice for politicians today. Again and again, I’ve said the following: elections right now are Republicans’ to lose. Biden’s approval numbers are low—41.2 percent-—which is lower than every president at this stage of their term in the last 75 years, other than Jimmy Carter.  It seems to me that all Republicans need to do is stand still and be normal, and they’d win. (Instead, the GOP often seems more focused on Bud Light and books about gay penguins with two moms.) So when former Texas congressman Will Hurd announced he was running for president last month, I thought, at long last, a normal Republican candidate. And not just that—one with an impeccable pedigree and reputation. A Republican who has never bent the knee to Trump. A Republican who is sensible, sober, and highly respected for his bipartisanship. The kind of textbook candidate that will set your heart aflutter if you count yourself among the legions of the sane and moderate. So. . . why is Hurd polling in last place? Has my advice over the last few months been misguided? Is the Republican Party just too far gone, too changed at this point for someone as normal as Will Hurd? On today’s episode, I ask him.  Hurd spent nearly a decade as an undercover operative for the CIA in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, during the height of the war on terror. In 2010, he left the agency to start his political career and in 2014, he was elected to Congress, becoming the only black Republican on the House floor. For three consecutive terms, Hurd represented one of Texas’s most sprawling districts, a district that is two-thirds Latino and covers much of the border with Mexico, from San Antonio to El Paso.  In a profile of Hurd in The Atlantic last year, appropriately titled “Revenge of the Normal Republicans,” the reporter Tim Alberta wrote this: Will Hurd knows that “a leader can’t emerge without a movement, and a movement manifests only with the inspiration of a leader. He also knows that some people view him as uniquely qualified to meet this moment: a young, robust, eloquent man of mixed race and complete devotion to country, someone whose life is a testament to nuance and empathy and reconciliation. What Hurd doesn’t know is whether America is ready to buy what he’s selling.”  So which is it: Are Americans ready to buy what Hurd is selling? Or has that ship simply sailed? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

15 Aug 20231h 18min

Colin Campbell says that the way our society treats grief—and people in grief—is cruel and backward, and it needs a radical reimagining.  He, of all people, would know. Four years ago, Colin, his wife Gail, and their two teenage kids were driving to Joshua Tree, when they were T-boned by a drunk and high driver going 90 miles an hour. Colin and Gail survived. Their two children, Ruby and Hart, did not. How do you live after that nightmare? How do you support a friend, a colleague, a brother or sister, who literally does not know how to go on? Colin’s new book, Finding the Words, attempts to answer those unimaginable questions. It tells the story not only of his own pain in the weeks and months following Ruby and Hart’s death, but also breaks down our society’s misconceptions about grief, which he calls the “grief orthodoxy,” and it provides practical advice for a different kind of approach to grief—one that is more truthful, real, and connected. People say to the grieving “There are no words” because they’re scared to confront the hard conversation. As Colin writes, it “acts as a perfect conversation killer. This empty phrase immediately ends any chance of a dialogue about loss and mourning. It encapsulates all that is wrong with how our society handles grief.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

10 Aug 20231h 27min

Vivek Ramaswamy, at 37 years old, is the first ever millennial Republican presidential candidate. He graduated from Harvard, then Yale Law School, and worked as a partner at a hedge fund before starting a successful biotech company, where he made millions. It’s an impressive background. But he lacks any political experience, so he’s not someone pundits think has a shot in the already crowded GOP primary field. And yet, somehow, his name is in the news almost every single day. His tweets are constantly going viral. And recent polling suggests that he’s hitting a nerve with the American people: it’s only August and Vivek is polling in third place, ahead of established politicians and a former vice president.  On today’s show, Vivek explains he thinks he can win the nomination and the presidency—by beating Trump by going further than Trump, and by being a kind of Trump 2.0. He talks about why he thinks we’ve lost our soul as a nation, and why he thinks we need a “second American revolution.” And—from immigration to foreign policy to dismantling the Department of Education—what a President Ramaswamy, with all of his radical proposals, would do for the country.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1 Aug 20231h 39min

Recently, Walter Russell Mead wrote an outstanding article in Tablet titled “You Are Not Destined to Live in Quiet Times.” It’s about the paradox—and great dangers—of technological progress: “Human ingenuity has made us much safer from natural calamities. We can treat many diseases, predict storms, build dams both to prevent floods and to save water against drought, and many other fine things. Many fewer of us starve than in former times, and billions of us today enjoy better living conditions than our forebears dreamed possible. Yet if we are safer from most natural catastrophes, we are more vulnerable than ever to human-caused ones.”  Today on Honestly, Walter talks about that significant vulnerability, and why human-caused catastrophes are the most serious threat to humanity today. Walter also explains why he believes we have definitively entered a pre-war era, and what he thinks needs to change in order to get us out of it.   Walter Russell Mead is a fellow at Hudson Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College. He’s written numerous books on foreign policy, including last year’s excellent book on Israel titled The Arc of a Covenant, and he is the host of the brand-new podcast What Really Matters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

27 Juli 20231h 33min