It’s been nearly two years since October 7, when Hamas took over 250 people hostage. Since then, families of the captives have led a relentless campaign to bring them home, but they haven’t always agreed on how to get there.

As a new ceasefire deal is on the table, I speak with three voices from that struggle. One is Dalia Cusnir-Horn, who has one brother-in-law, Iair Horn, who was captured and then freed and another, Eitan Horn, who is still held in Gaza. Dalia has become a leading advocate for a negotiated release.

I also speak with Tzvika Mor and Talik Gvili, parents with a very different view. Tzvika speaks to me from a protest calling for “total victory.” Both argue that only military pressure will bring real resolution, and to negotiate with Hamas is not an option.

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Greg Lukianoff is an attorney, author, and president of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. You may know him from his previous books, The Coddling of the American Mind and The Canceling of the American Mind. His latest book, which was published earlier this summer, is The War on Words, Ten Arguments Against Free Speech—and Why They Fail. 

In this episode, we get into why Lukianoff is nota free speech absolutist, how October 7 shifted the campus speech debate, and where protest crosses the line into illegality. We also touch on the rights of visa and green card holders, President Donald Trump’s intimidation tactics, and the troubling free speech climate in the UK.

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This week on Conversations with Coleman, I’m joined by writer and cultural critic Adam Szetela, author of That Book Is Dangerous!, a trenchant look at how moral panic, social media, and identity-driven outrage are reshaping the publishing industry. We discuss the rise of so-called sensitivity readers who vet books to ensure they are as inoffensive as possible, and how an obsession with controlling representation of minorities is narrowing creative freedom and silencing risk-taking voices. Adam argues that in trying to avoid stereotypes, the industry may be reinforcing a subtle form of racism, one that flattens characters into symbols instead of portraying them as fully human.

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I watched the eight-hour series on the French First Lady by podcaster Candace Owens, so you don't have to. It’s a fascinating window into a mind gripped by extreme apophenia: the tendency to see patterns where none exist.

So just how and why did Candace Owens spread this lie?

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You might think you know what a Washington Post columnist sounds like, but Megan McArdle is not your typical liberal media voice. She’s spent years inside the most established outlets in journalism: The Atlantic, Bloomberg, The Economist and yet she’s managed to surprise and infuriate readers on the left with sharp critiques that don’t always toe the party line.

Today on Conversations we talk about why progressives often get economic policy wrong and the real mess behind America’s broken healthcare system. Megan makes a solid pitch for why Americans should continue to have a private system. Megan and I get into it about insurance companies, pharmaceutical giants, and where the incentives in healthcare are completely backwards . . . and, believe it or not, where they actually work.

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In this special episode, I take on probably the most controversial and emotionally fraught topic of the moment: the Israel-Hamas conflict. 

I think war crimes have been committed on both sides. But that doesn’t mean I think the two sides are morally equivalent. Today, I argue that there’s a fundamental asymmetry between Israel and Hamas, one that’s too often blurred or ignored by the mainstream media. Israel’s actions, while sometimes flawed or tragic in consequence, are ultimately rooted in a defensive logic.

Hamas, on the other hand, has explicitly genocidal goals. But where does that leave us when we see images of children starving and hear reports that Israel is responsible?

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Filmmaker and digital rights activist Justine Bateman joins me for a conversation on how AI is warping Hollywood and why the content we consume feels increasingly hollow. We dive into the decline of originality, the studios' addiction to algorithms, and how the “double-screen” era (watching while scrolling) has rewired audience expectations, pushing creators toward louder, faster, and shallower stories. Can art survive the attention economy?

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This week I sat down with political analyst Galen Druke to talk about what actually moves public opinion and shifts voter behavior. We got into why some people viewed Donald Trump as the more moderate choice in 2016, what that says about how voters think, and how Democrats might get back into the national conversation in a real way. We also talked about how polls work, when they matter, and what they often miss about what voters actually care about.

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Josh Hammer is the author of Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West. He joins me to explore the big stuff: God, geopolitics, Zionism, the future of the U.S. We also get into the complexities of interfaith marriage and the role of religion in modern culture. The conversation delves into the challenges and nuances of maintaining religious and ethnic continuity in a modern, pluralistic society.

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New York City’s mayor on Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo; socialism and corruption; policing and power; rats and redemption.

New York City mayor Eric Adams has had a controversial time in office. So why should New Yorkers trust him for another four years?

In this episode, we talk about Adams’ criticisms of Zohran Mamdani, his call to Andrew Cuomo to step aside, and yes: rats, e-bikes, and trash.

Adams also opens up about the police beating him as a teen, and how that moment shaped his life in law enforcement and politics.

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Go to groundnews.com/Coleman to get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and unlock world-wide perspectives on today’s biggest news stories.

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