Conversations with Coleman

Note that this conversation took place before Hamas addressed some conditions of President Donald Trump’s proposed peace plan and said it agreed to release all remaining hostages.

This was the most requested conversation I've ever had, and one of the longest and most challenging. Dave Smith—comedian, podcaster, and libertarian foreign policy critic—joined me for three and a half hours to debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American foreign policy more broadly.

We disagree on a lot. Smith recently published a video responding to my analysis of the conflict, and this conversation gave us the chance to unpack those disagreements directly—without dodging the hard questions or talking past each other. We covered Ron Paul's influence on Smith's worldview, whether 9/11 was driven by foreign policy grievances or jihadist ideology, the Iraq War, whether Israel wants peace, what Palestinians actually want, and what American foreign policy in Iran should be.

This is what substantive disagreement looks like: long, difficult, and hopefully enlightening.

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Recorded live at the Comedy Cellar in New York City: I sat down with Steven Pinker, Harvard psychologist, best-selling author, and world-class debunker of doom, to talk about his new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…:Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. 

We got into this idea of “common knowledge”: what we all know and know that everyone else knows. It may sound abstract, but really it underlies everything. It is our shared awareness that lets us coordinate, bluff, protest, and panic together. We also talk about assassinated Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, the changing style of comedy and its audience, and more.

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In this episode, I’m joined by Jane Coaston, a journalist and former host of The Argument podcast at The New York Times who is now a host at Crooked Media. We talk about how she became a libertarian, the spread of far-right conspiracies, why black support for conservatives is growing, and what the mainstream media continues to miss.

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In this mini episode, I’m joined by Janiyah Thomas, the Black Media Director for Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign. We talk about Charlie Kirk's assasination, Jimmy Kimmel being pulled off the air, Trump’s National Guard deployment in D.C., and how Janiyah helped Trump win over black voters. If you enjoy these shorter episodes, let me know and maybe we’ll do more. Don’t forget, a full-length episode will be back on Monday!

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My guest today is Bhaskar Sunkara. He’s the founding editor of Jacobin magazine and currently serves as president at The Nation. Bhaskar is a proud democratic socialist; he was even vice-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, and he’s the author of a book titled The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality.

In this conversation, we dive into the practicality of democratic socialism. We talk about rent controls, the affordability crisis in American cities, and the real-world limits of the populist left. We also touch on identity, class politics, and the influence of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. What do we all get wrong about his pitch to New Yorkers?

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New episodes of The Isabel Brown Show can be viewed on DailyWire+ here: ⁠⁠www.dailywire.com/show/the-isabel-brown-show⁠⁠Follow Isabel on X: ⁠⁠www.x.com/theisabelb⁠⁠Follow Isabel on Instagram: ⁠⁠www.instagram.com/theisabelbrown

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I’m joined by Ben Shapiro, a controversial figure who for many needs no introduction. Ben is a political commentator, author, and co-founder of The Daily Wire. He joins me to discuss his new book, Scavengers and Lions. We explore the central metaphor of the book and what it says about the moral choices facing our culture today. Ben lays out his argument about the rise of intellectual scavengers who feed on grievance and resentment, and contrasts them with the “lions,” those who embrace responsibility, reason, and moral clarity. We also talk about Donald Trump, wokeness, gun control, and birth rates.

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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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Buy tickets for The Free Press Pittsburgh Debate on September 10th here:
https://www.trustarts.org/production/103133

Buy tickets for The Free Press Live at The Comedy Cellar on September 14th here.

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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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