You probably know Jonathan Haidt as the guy trying to save your kids from smartphones and social media apps. Likely you’ve read The Anxious Generation, which has been translated into 44 languages and sold nearly 2 million copies. One might say that Jon is Elvis for 21st century moms who don't understand Discord. 

But when Haidt gets written about decades from now, it will be for much more than this book and the powerful movement that came out of it. He will be regarded as one of the most important writers of this epoch. 

Because he has this remarkable ability to understand—and explain—our social condition. He holds up a mirror to us.

He did it with his book The Righteous Mind, which explained why people are so passionately divided over politics and religion. He did it again with The Coddling of the American Mind, cowritten with Greg Lukianoff, which explored why young people—especially on college campuses—can become totally intolerant of opposing views. And in his latest book, The Anxious Generation, he asked the obvious question: Why are teens suddenly so unhappy? Why are they losing attention, self-confidence, and the ability to socialize? Perhaps it has something to do with the mesmerizing device in their hands.

In a world gone mad, Haidt has turned common sense into a radical mission. Bari sat down with him in front of a live audience in New York City to talk about how we got here—and where we go from here.

Learn more about Anthropic’s AI assistant Claude at: Claude.ai/honestly

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Who owns the future of the Democratic Party?

That’s the question on everyone’s mind since last Tuesday night—when the richest city in America elected 34-year-old democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as its mayor.

You can see Mamdani’s win as a one-off—a charismatic contender facing a rival mired in controversy. But the other way to see it is as emblematic of something larger: a sign about the state—and future—of the left. 

Here was a candidate promising to solve the affordability crisis with free childcare, free buses, rent freezes, and even government-run grocery stores. And despite the socialist bent, most establishment Democrats fell in line to support him—from Kathy Hochul and Hakeem Jeffries to Barack Obama, who reportedly called Mamdani to offer himself as a sounding board.

If that’s true—if Mamdani is the new standard-bearer for Democrats in the way Obama once was—then where does that leave someone like Senator John Fetterman?

The Pennsylvania senator didn’t just withhold his endorsement—he went so far as to say that socialism is not the future of the Democratic Party.

It’s an interesting stance, given that just a few years ago, Fetterman ran a progressive Senate campaign focused on reforming criminal justice,  legalizing marijuana, and raising the minimum wage. He was backed by AOC and Bernie Sanders. The right even called him a “silver-spoon socialist.”

Then came his near-fatal stroke on the day of his Democratic primary—followed by calls from both sides to drop out. Instead, he stayed in the race and won, flipping a GOP Senate seat.

Since coming to Congress, Fetterman has stood out—and not just because he’s six-foot-eight. He’s shown strong support for Israel, a departure from many in his party. He’s said Democrats mishandled border security under Biden. He praised the president for his peace deal in Gaza—and even met with him in Mar-a-Lago.

He’s also publicly blamed Democrats for the government shutdown, saying: “I follow country, then party.” He refused to “play chicken with the food security of 42 million Americans,” and voted 15 times with Republicans to reopen Washington.

On Sunday night, the Senate finally voted to reopen the governement—but only after 40 days of missed paychecks, travel chaos, and millions at risk of losing SNAP benefits.

It was just the latest litmus test for Democrats, highlighting the divide between the centrists and the progressives—between, for lack of better words, the Fetterman wing and the Mamdani wing. And now, Democrats may have to decide which impulse to run on—in 2026, and in 2028.
Today, Bari asks John Fetterman about his decision to speak out against his own party; his recent dinner with Donald Trump—and the backlash that followed; the shutdown and whether he believes the Democratic Party is heading in the right direction; and finally, his new book Unfettered, which chronicles his journey to the Senate, his stroke, his battle with depression, and his time in office.

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Do you feel uneasy? Do you feel a level of ambient anxiety? Do you feel despair, despite the fact that we live in the most luxurious time and place in human history? 

The point is, you are not crazy. If you feel these things, you are simply attuned to reality—and it’s not a problem that’s solvable with less screen time or with meditation, red light, or sea moss.

My brilliant guest, Paul Kingsnorth, argues that the reason you feel this way is not this or that social media app or algorithm or culture war issue. That these are all superficial expressions of a thousand-year battle with what he calls “the Machine.” What exactly that means, he’ll explain tonight.

To personally fight the Machine, Paul has moved his family out of urban England to live off the land in rural Ireland, where his family grows their own food, draws water from a well, and homeschools their children. To learn more about his life, you’ll have to go back and listen to the Honestly episode we did with him in 2024.

In his new book, Against the Machine, Paul makes the argument that what this moment requires is something of a rebellion. He says the West is not dying, but already dead. And this book is an attempt to understand how we got to this profound feeling of disquiet—and how we might return to true peace. It’s being billed as a “spiritual manual for dissidents in the technological age.”

Click below to listen to our conversation, or scroll down for our favorite moments.

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It’s no secret that young men are sort of unwell.

They are four times more likely to kill themselves, three times more likely to struggle with addiction, and 12 times more likely to be incarcerated than women. If that weren’t enough, record numbers of men are not getting married, not dating, not enrolling in school or working, and struggling with serious mental health issues.

In response, a cottage industry has emerged—full of influencers and paid courses claiming to teach young men how to become “high value.”

But there seems to be a deeper intractable challenge: Young people lack meaning. Fifty-eight percent of young adults say they’ve experienced little or no sense of purpose in their lives over the past month.

Shilo Brooks has a simple idea for all of it. He’s telling young men—and really, all young people—to read. Yes, read. The idea is simple: Reading great books can make stronger and better men.

He knows he’s facing an uphill battle: Reading for pleasure among American adults has dropped 40 percent in the past 20 years. In 2022, only 28 percent of men read a fiction book, compared to 47 percent of women—a 19-point gap. 

Shilo doesn’t have the stereotypical profile for a “lit boy,” as Gen Z might describe him. He’s from a small town in Texas and has a thick Southern drawl. When he was a baby, his stepfather stole his mother’s savings, leaving them with nothing. And he almost didn’t go to college because he couldn’t afford it. 

But today, Shilo is president and CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and Professor of Practice in the Department of Political Science at Southern Methodist University. He has also taught at Princeton, the University of Virginia, the University of Colorado, and Bowdoin College. 

His prescription is simple. Shilo says: “Great works of literature are entertaining, but they are not mere entertainment. A great book induces self-examination and spiritual expansion. When a man is starved for love, work, purpose, money, or vitality, a novel wrestling with these themes can be metabolized as energy for the heart. When a man suffers from addiction, divorce, self-loathing, or vanity, his local bookstore can become his pharmacy.”

This is the driving vision of the new podcast he just launched with The Free Press, called Old School, where he talks to guests about the books that shaped their lives: Fareed Zakaria on The Great Gatsby, Nick Cave on The Adventures of Pinocchio, Richard Dawkins on P.G. Wodehouse novels. Then there’s Coleman Hughes, Ryan Holiday, Rob Henderson, and so much more. Think of it like a boy’s book club that anyone can enjoy.

So, here’s what you’ll hear today: a conversation between Bari and Shilo about this project, and how it fulfills the desperate needs of a lost generation.

Subscribe to Old School with Shilo Brooks.

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A former Senate staffer recently told our friend, reporter Dexter Filkins: “The last socialist systems in the world are in Cuba and the Pentagon.” My guest tonight is trying to do something about that. And good luck to anyone trying to get in his way.

When people think of defense tech titans, they might not think of my guest tonight, Palmer Luckey. He looks more like Jimmy Buffett than George S. Patton. But don’t let his looks deceive you.

At the age of 19, Palmer founded the VR company Oculus. Two years later, it was acquired by Facebook for more than two billion dollars. Then, when he was 24—while his peers were making dating apps and platforms to share thirst traps—he founded Anduril Industries, having had no experience whatsoever in the world of defense.

Now it’s a $30.5 billion company that develops drones, autonomous vehicles, subs, rockets, and software for military use.

At just 33, Palmer spends his days building the most technologically advanced software and war-fighting devices in the world. His goal is straightforward: “Move fast, build what works, and get it into the hands of people who need it.”

And the moment could not be more critical. Iran is trying to destabilize the Middle East. Russia is willing to lose countless soldiers to gain slivers of territory in Ukraine. China is gaming how to invade Taiwan—to say nothing of our intensifying cold war and AI arms race. And the West’s enemies are undermining us from without and within.

Bari sat down with Palmer Luckey live in D.C. to ask: What can we do about all of it? Does America still have the technological prowess—and, more importantly, the will—to win?

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On October 21, 2023, beloved Detroit community leader Samantha Woll was found brutally stabbed to death outside her home—two weeks to the day after the October 7 attacks on Israel. It looked like an open-and-shut case—a hate crime. But swiftly the police ruled that out. Instead they eventually found themselves with two unrelated suspects. When they charged one with murder, the case took a turn that raised questions about antisemitism, race, and justice in America.

Hosted by The Free Press’s Frannie Block, this podcast features exclusive interviews and explores the remarkable, too-short life of Woll and the impact she had. And ⁠Spiral⁠ tells the bizarre twists and turns of one of Detroit’s most haunting recent crimes.

Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press to binge the full series today, and with reduced ads. Click ⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ to subscribe.

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If you’re listening to this, you probably know someone who has struggled with alcohol addiction, or maybe you’re an alcoholic yourself. It’s one of the most universal human experiences. In 2023, 10 percent of the U.S. population met the criteria for alcoholism. That’s 30 million people.

And throughout the past hundred or so years, there’s basically been one solution: total sobriety, talk therapy, and Alcoholics Anonymous. And yes, there are countless people ready and eager to say, “AA saved my life.” We know and love many of those people.

But as Katie Herzog writes: “The dominance of AA obscures the fact that other options exist too.” Okay, so what are these other options? One of them is a drug called naltrexone that can let alcoholics keep drinking—yes, you heard me right. Katie describes it as a chemical safety net that makes you want to drink less.

And in order for the drug to work, you actually have to drink—at least at the beginning. The goal with this method is not necessarily abstinence. It’s reformed, moderate, responsible drinking.

Is this all starting to sound like snake oil—or worse, even dangerous? We understand. Over 175,000 Americans die each year from excessive drinking. It causes heart disease, cancer, domestic violence, and suicide. It costs the U.S. economy nearly $250 billion in healthcare expenses. There’s loss of productivity, criminal justice fees, vehicle wrecks—I could go on. And living with alcoholism, or being close to someone who struggles with addiction, can be devastating.

So when someone comes along and says, “Your alcoholic loved one can actually drink with naltrexone,” the knee-jerk reaction is to say: “Hell no.”

But Katie Herzog, in her new book Drink Your Way Sober, argues that AA—and our traditional thinking—has not worked, and will not work, for everyone. And she makes the case that we should be more open to alternative forms of treatment like naltrexone.

You’ll know Katie from her hit podcast Blocked and Reported, which she co-hosts with Free Press contributor Jesse Singal—though she likes to say she is “the only host of the only podcast.”

And today, Bari asks her how she got sober using naltrexone—and a program called the Sinclair Method—how the drug actually works, why it’s been shunned by the medical community, and whether she thinks society will buy into it.

This episode of Honestly is presented by Wonderful Pistachios.

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At 3:22 a.m. ET on October 7, 2023, Bari texted her producer: “Candace, there’s war in Israel.” At that moment, Hamas men still roamed southern Israel, and the details were far from clear. What we knew was that Israel had been attacked and that videos were beginning to make their way from Telegram to X: scenes of dozens of Palestinian terrorists breaking through the security fence and rushing into Israeli territory; clips of Hamas militants, with AK-47s slung over their chests, driving white pickup trucks through the streets of southern Israel; blurry videos of Israelis running for their lives in roundabouts and fields.

We had no idea what was about to unfold. We did not know yet that 251 Israelis would be kidnapped that day, including more than 30 children. We did not know yet that what was unfolding was the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust—only this time streaming live on social media.

We immediately started bringing you firsthand accounts here on Honestly. You might remember a pregnant woman named Shaked told us about 11 family members who were taken hostage, including her niece, 3, and nephew, 8. Or how two survivors of the Nova Music Festival, Amit and Chen, watched the murder of their friends. We talked to a mother whose daughter was killed at the music festival. And a grandmother who hid in her safe room for hours with her 10-day-old grandson as terrorists shot at the door.

And we spoke to a father named Jon Polin, whose son, Hersh, was kidnapped. Little did we know that the entire world would soon know his name.

Anyone who bore witness to the evil of that day, and to the horrific tragedy of the war that has followed, prayed that the hostages—the living and the dead—would finally be brought home. For Israelis, that rallying cry—Bring them home—was at the center of their psyche, their longing, their hope for the last two years.

And then yesterday, 738 days later, the remaining 20 living hostages came home as part of President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan.

Yesterday, we spent moments throughout the day glued to our phones, tears streaming down our cheeks, watching the videos of these freed men running into the embrace of their mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers—and in some cases even to their little children—after more than two unimaginable years in Hamas captivity. 

As Matti Friedman wrote in The FP: “An unfamiliar mood spread like a shift in the weather: relief and optimism. . . . The Israelis who rallied over the past two years under the banner ‘Bring Them Home,’ and whose energies kept the hostages and their families in headlines in Israel and abroad through two dark and often hopeless years, allowed themselves to smile and cheer.”

We are under no illusions about what comes next. Yesterday began only phase 1 of Trump’s peace plan (Hamas still holds many of the deceased hostages, which is a breach of the agreement). And serious—perhaps intractable—challenges lay ahead. There are many, many outstanding questions. As Free Press Middle East analyst Haviv Rettig Gur said, “Everything that matters for Gaza’s future is in phase 2 and beyond.”

To try to begin answering many of those questions—and to reflect on this historic moment and what it means for Israel and the world—Free Press producer Rafaela Siewert hosted a livestream yesterday that we want to play here for you today.

She was joined by former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren; The Free Press’s Matti Friedman and Haviv Rettig Gur; and Nimrod Palmach, who ran into battle on October 7, 2023 of his own accord. And Siewert also speaks to Rachel and Jon Goldberg-Polin—the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was kidnapped on October 7 and murdered in Gaza after over 300 days in Hamas captivity. Still, Rachel and Jon woke up every single day for the last two years and fought—in public and around the world—for the return of every last one of the remaining souls to come home.

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Congratulations are not usually in order for someone who has been forced into hiding, someone whose children are scattered across continents for their safety, someone whose supporters are sitting in prison cells for the crime of believing in democracy. 

But our guest today, María Corina Machado, just won the Nobel Peace Prize—joining the ranks of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Dalai Lama, to name a few. 

On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded their 2025 Peace Price to the Venezuelan opposition leader for her tireless work “promoting democratic rights,” describing her as “a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.” She is Venezuela’s first-ever Nobel Peace Prize winner. 

Machado’s story, as Jonathan Jakubowicz wrote in The Free Press, “is a political thriller come to life. A 58-year old industrial engineer and former member of parliament, she spent two decades as the most relentless opponent of Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro.” That thriller came to a head on July 28, 2024, when Edmundo González, Machado’s stand-in candidate, swept Venezuela’s elections with over 90 percent of the vote. But Maduro, Venezuela’s longtime dictator, claimed victory anyway and seized power. Since then, Machado has been living in hiding, her location undisclosed even to most of her allies, as the regime has arrested hundreds of political prisoners and issued a warrant for her arrest. 

Machado has been nicknamed Venezuela’s “Iron Lady,” the same moniker given to Margaret Thatcher, who happens to be her personal hero. She represents what may be the most significant challenge to authoritarian socialism in Latin America, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to have her here today.

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This week commemorates the two year anniversary of October 7, 2023. That morning, Hamas invaded Israel. They slaughtered some 1,200 people and took another 250 hostage. Forty-eight hostages, some alive and some dead, are still being held in Gaza.

In these last two years, the world has changed. In many ways, the past two years have felt like two decades. The world feels like it has tilted on its axis. 

There is nobody better suited to make sense of this moment—the lessons learned, the harsh realities that have been revealed, and America’s changing role in the world—than Niall Ferguson.

Niall is a columnist at The Free Press. He is also senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, the author of 16 books, and one of the most influential historians of our time.

This conversation with Niall was a Free Press livestream. To never miss those conversations, and to be able to join them as they unfold, become a subscriber at thefp.com.

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