Honestly with Bari Weiss

If you read Common Sense, you know that the best day of the week is Friday, when Nellie Bowles delivers us all the news from the week that was. 

This Friday, we bring you an Honestly special: TGIF! This time built just for your ears and brought to you by America’s favorite lesbians: Nellie and dear friend of the pod, Katie Herzog.

Featuring: Elon Musk v. Twitter, BLM corruption, inflation, “don’t say gay,” plus special guest Jeff Ross, America’s Roastmaster General, on jokes about alopecia. Including his own.

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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 new book Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai. 

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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 Max Levchin. He’s also been an early investor in some companies you may have heard of: Airbnb, Facebook, Slack, SpaceX, Twitter, Uber. 

At the same time, he is something of a whistleblower from inside the world of tech. He believes that Big Tech has far too much power. He argues that the fact that a handful of billionaires get to decide what we are (and aren’t) allowed to say in the new, digital public square is something that the Framers would have been repelled by—and that all Americans should oppose.

Today I spoke to David, now a general partner at Craft Ventures, about the rise of America’s social credit system and how we can defend our civil liberties in the age of the Internet.

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Today we are republishing Bari’s appearance on Hoover Institute’s Uncommon Knowledge Podcast, hosted by Peter Robinson. 

Peter Robinson is probably best known as a speech-writer for President Ronald Regan. He was the guy who wrote the famous line, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Bari and Peter talk about the social movements shaping our culture, how the personal has become political, anti-semitism and the future of the news media.

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It’s been a month since Russia invaded Ukraine. About a fourth of Ukraine’s population has been displaced. Thousands, if not more, have died. And still, ordinary Ukrainians – professors, engineers, ballerinas – are taking up arms to defend their homes and their land. Why do they stay? And do they think the fight can be won?

Today, I talk to three people who have become inadvertent war correspondents in what they call “the fight against evil.” Katerina Sergatskova reported from Kiev and Lviv. Vladislav Davidzon has reported from many of the border crossings as well as from Odessa and Lviv. And Maria Avdeeva remains in Kharkiv. I talk to them about what they’ve seen and what the war has revealed to them about themselves and about their country.

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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 elections—weren’t a series of separate catastrophes but symptoms of one underlying condition?

That’s the argument of my guest today, Yuval Levin. 

Yuval is a journalist and academic. He has served as a congressional staffer and as a domestic policy staff member under President George W Bush, he’s the author of several books including The Fractured Republic and “A Time to Build.” 

I think of him as one of America’s most insightful political philosophers. I learned so much from this conversation and I hope you do, too.

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For the past three weeks, we have watched the people of Ukraine and their president breathe life into virtues that many of us thought were dead or on life support: duty, sacrifice, responsibility, leadership…and courage. Unbelievable courage. 

The Ukrainian people know what they’re fighting for. Do we?

Today, no interview. Instead Bari speaks about what we can learn from watching President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people. To read the full text, please go to: bariweiss.substack.com

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Russia’s war against Ukraine has been raging on for almost two weeks now and Ukraine is in crisis. President Zelensky has been begging the United States, together with their allies, to enforce a “no fly zone,” to save innocent lives and help Ukraine win a war they seem likely to lose otherwise. The U.S. has refused. So has NATO. Why? 

On today’s episode, Eli Lake and Damir Marusic explain the benefits and risks of imposing a no fly zone over Ukraine, and what’s at stake—for Ukraine, for the U.S., and for the world.

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Lia Thomas is a transgender woman who has, in one year, become the star athlete of the women’s swim team at The University of Pennsylvania. When she competed on the men’s team, she was seeded no. 462 in the NCAA. Now, she’s seeded No. 1 and expected to beat Olympic gold medalist Katy Ledecky, widely considered one of the greatest female swimmers of all time, later this month at the NCAA championship.

Thomas won’t stop there. She recently told Sports Illustrated that she has her sights set on the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

What does the rise of Lia Thomas mean for the future of women’s sports? Suzy Weiss reports from the Harvard pool, where Lia Thomas recently smashed Ivy League records.

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Air raid sirens have been ringing out over the capital of Ukraine for the past week. Russian troops have laid siege to Kharkiv, the second biggest city in the country, and the city of Kherson in the south has already fallen. More than a half of a million Ukranians have fled their homes, with little more than a suitcase or two. Hundreds have been confirmed dead, and surely that number is just the beginning. 

Why did Putin invade Ukraine at this moment? What is his endgame—and what is the West’s? Does this war augur the beginning of a new era? Perhaps even a new Cold War?

Today, Niall Ferguson, Walter Russell Mead and Francis Fukuyama discuss whether or not America is up to the task of truly, as Biden said at the State of the Union address, defending freedom from tyranny.

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