Perhaps you’ve noticed that the thing we call “social media'' is deeply antisocial—the thing that promised to unite us has done precisely the opposite. A lot of people have tried to explain why. They blame Mark Zuckerberg. Or Jack Dorsey. Or

How Big Tech Is Strangling Your Freedom

Mar 29th, 2022 1h 14m

David Sacks is a paradox. The entrepreneur and venture capitalist helped lay the foundations of the digital world we now live in: He was one of the members of what's known as the PayPal Mafia, alongside people like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Ma

Abigail Shrier: On Freedom in an Age of Fear

Dec 21st, 2021 26m 37s

Abigail Shrier, the author of the bestselling book “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” was recently invited to speak at Princeton. But this being a college campus in 2021, you can imagine what happened next. The

Pain, Wisdom and Mercy

1 Oct 19th, 2021 1h 31m

Ross Douthat is a New York Times columnist, a father of four, an author . . . and also someone who lives with a tremendous amount of pain. Ross has been battling chronic Lyme disease since 2015. It's a disease that doesn’t officially exist, but

Was the Internet a Horrible Mistake?

1 Oct 13th, 2021 1h 21m

Last week, Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, confirmed what we already felt; that big tech platform’s algorithms are manipulating our sense of reality, and ourselves, and in doing so enriching themselves. Jaron Lanier, the technolog

The Story of One Teenager's Escape From Afghanistan

Sep 17th, 2021 52m 35s

It’s been a month since the fall of Afghanistan. And Black Hawk helicopters and Humvees aren’t the only things we left behind. Trapped in a country now controlled by the Taliban are hundreds of thousands of America’s Afghan allies. These are th

When Ideology Corrupts Medicine—and How One Reporter Exposed It

Jul 12th, 2023 1h 12m

Last month, Britain’s National Health Service made major news when they announced that they were banning the use of puberty blockers for children, except for those enrolled in a tightly regulated clinical trial. The decision was made after an i

The Eternally Radical Idea

Jul 27th, 2022 1h 12m

There is no organization that’s done more to fight for freedom of speech on American campuses over the past 20 years than FIRE, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. If you care deeply about the First Amendment and a robust culture

Women Like Hunting Witches, Too

Oct 28th, 2021 1h 30m

If you’ve just heard of the word “TERF” (it stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) it was probably because of Dave Chapelle’s new Netflix special, “The Closer.” The comedian declared himself “Team TERF.” But what does that really mean?

When American Doctors Are Scared to Tell the Truth

Aug 11th, 2021 1h 10m

For several months, the journalist Katie Herzog has been talking to some of the country's top doctors and professors—not about COVID, or vaccines—but about a new, creeping orthodoxy that’s taken over the hospitals and medical schools where they

The Real Story of “The Central Park Karen”

Aug 3rd, 2021 1h 23m

Amy Cooper was not the internet’s first “Karen” — the pejorative used for a demanding, entitled white woman. But as the Central Park dog walker who went viral for calling the police on a black birdwatcher last year, she quickly became the parag

When a Free Society Becomes a Police State

Jun 27th, 2021 34m 16s

For 26 years, the swash-buckling, pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily was a thorn in the side of the Chinese Communist Party. This week, after its offices were ransacked, its founder was jailed ,and five of its executives were arrested, it printe

America's Cultural Revolution

1 Jun 9th, 2021 35m 42s

What the public shaming of Palestinian immigrant Majdi Wadi — and the boycott of his Minneapolis business — says about who we are becoming.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Right Way to Fight Illiberalism: Christopher Rufo and Yascha Mounk Debate

Jan 26th, 2024 1h 56m

Today, Yascha Mounk and Christopher Rufo debate the origins of DEI and the right way to fight the illiberal orthodoxy that has consumed our schools and institutions.Christopher is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a board member at N

A Golden Age of Gurus

Jan 31st, 2023 1h 18m

Over the last decade, the internet has devolved into a playground for influencers who sell and show off anything and everything you could ever imagine. But my guest today, Helen Lewis, says it isn’t all just superficial TikTok stars telling you

The Iranian Regime's Most Wanted Woman

Oct 7th, 2022 1h 1m

Last month, a 22 year old Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, was arrested in Tehran by the Islamic Republic's so-called morality police for not wearing her hijab correctly. Three days later, on September 16th, she died in their custody. Her de

We Ignored Salman Rushdie’s Warning

Aug 16th, 2022 18m 38s

We live in a culture in which many people believe that words are violence. In this, they have much in common with Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who issued the first fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989, and with Hadi Matar, the 24-year-o

The Yale Law Professor Who Is Anti-Roe, But Pro-Choice

May 11th, 2022 1h 14m

Akhil Reed Amar is the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale university, where he’s been teaching constitutional law since the ripe old age of 26. He is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several award-w

Why No One Trusts Anything

Mar 18th, 2022 1h 29m

What if I told you that all the brokenness in our society—from the increased rates in suicide and addiction to the decreased rates in marriage and sex to the crisis of faith in everything from the CDC to political leaders to our democratic elec

The Aftermath Part 2: The Haves and The Have Nots

Jan 21st, 2022 35m 6s

At this point in the pandemic, one group of Americans generally gets to show their faces. The other still does not. One group orders groceries from Amazon, while the other packages it. One group enjoys take-out. And the other delivers it in the

The Aftermath Part 1: Kids, Schools, and the Crime Surge

Jan 19th, 2022 1h

As we approach the third year of this pandemic, it’s become painfully clear that the stringent measures we took to mitigate against the virus had all kinds of unintended consequences. For mental health. For the economy. For our cities. And, esp

Humans Are More Resilient Than You Think

Jan 12th, 2022 1h 3m

We are living in an era in which Americans–especially younger ones–say they are increasingly traumatized. In one recent study, 82% of Gen Z respondents said they regularly felt so sad that nothing could cheer them up. And that was before the pa

Investigating January 6th: The Price Liz Cheney Paid

Jan 6th, 2022 1h 13m

A year ago today, something big happened in Washington. Was it a coup? Was it an insurrection? Was it “the worst attack on our democracy since the civil war,” as Joe Biden said? Who is responsible? Should the former president of the United Stat

Jussie Smollett and Hate Crime Hoaxes

Dec 10th, 2021 1h 14m

In 2019, Jussie Smollett’s hate crime allegations captured the nation. The actor and singer claimed that two men beat him, poured bleach over his head, and tied a noose around his neck—all while shouting homophobic and racial slurs.Many point

The Media’s Verdict on Kyle Rittenhouse

Nov 17th, 2021 1h

Here is what I thought was true about Kyle Rittenhouse in the last days of August 2020: The 17-year-old was a racist vigilante. I thought he drove across state lines, to Kenosha, Wisc., with an illegally acquired semi-automatic rifle to a town