The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com

Michael is the best nonfiction writer in America — and another friend from the early TNR days. He’s the author of so many bestsellers, including Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, and Flash Boys. He was on the Dishcast four years ago to discuss The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, and last year to discuss a collection of essays called Who Is Government?

This week we’re covering his new book, Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State, which profiles some unknown heroes in the bureaucracy who defended the rule of law against Trump in his second term — and faced the consequences. Think of it as the flip-side of Jake Weisberg’s treatment of the powerful cowards who caved.

The episode was recorded on September 29, 2026, and aired on October 9. Timestamps for the main sections:

* 03:36: How Michael decided to frame and shape the book

* 11:32: DOGE as the tip of the spear for Trump 2.0

* 27:36: The physical takeover of buildings by DOGE

* 42:45: The amazing story of Alex Marangides inventing a new fire science

* 101:20: Covid policy and the turmoil at the National Institutes of Health

* 119:32: Michael’s moving tribute to his daughter Dixie

For three audio clips — why DOGE was never really about downsizing, the only member of DOGE who was fired, and Michael writing a play for his deceased daughter — head to our YouTube page.

More topics covered: how Trump 2.0 is different than 1.0; firing his transition team in 2016; the purging of enemies after 2024; Musk wanting to take control of NASA; reversing woke terminology; bypassing Congress; weaponizing private data; Musk promising pardons to DOGE; dismantling USAID; Vought and knee-capping the NIH; Michael’s scoop that Francis Collins was actually fired; debating the culpability of Bhattacharya; the Clinton-Gore downsizing; fixing the ozone layer; Trump’s sycophants; the horrifying Howard Lutnick; and inspiring stories of civil servants standing up for their role and the rule of law.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com

Emily is a senior editor at the New York Times Book Review. She’s also worked as a senior editor at The New Yorker, an ideas reporter for the NYT, a fashion features writer at Vogue, and a deputy editor of Lingua Franca magazine. Her new book is The Frenchmen: Or, My Life in Theory.

A polished transcript is here, including money quotes. Below are timestamps for the main sections of the pod:

* 03:56: Emily’s upbringing in a Francophile family

* 14:27: The postmodern idea that language is everything

* 31:05: The postmodern New Right

* 41:14: The dark dysfunctional lives of many of the French thinkers

* 103:27: The fatalism in pomo discourse

* 117:14: How Emily became skeptical of postmodernism

For two clips of the episode — on the word games of postmodernists, and the screwed-up lives of Foucault and others — head to our YouTube page.

More topics: Emily growing up in Indiana with regular trips to France; the country’s post-war boom but drop in world status; colonial revolt in Algeria; Heidegger and Nazism; Barthes and Maoism; Derrida and language; Levi-Strauss and structuralism; Camus and existentialism; nihilism; bourgeois as an epithet; Lacan and the unconscious; Althusser strangling his wife to death; the Straussian cult; Allan Bloom; the Sokal hoax; Stanley Fish and deconstruction; John Boswell and homosexuality; Foucault deconstructing gayness; the AIDS crisis; the prison system; Orwell and Oakeshott; Sarah Bakewell on Montaigne; HR and pronouns; the fatalism of Coates; and Trump’s exec orders on language in government.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Michael Lewis on the bureaucrats who fought back against Trump, Evan Barker on how the Democratic Party got hijacked by elite activists, Sean Illing on the relevance of Camus and Nietzsche, Catherine Conybeare on Augustine, and Cyrus Habib on leaving politics to become a Jesuit priest. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to [email protected].

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com

Jake is a journalist and a dear old friend, starting in our early days as interns together at TNR. He’s the former longtime editor of Slate and the co-founder of the podcast company Pushkin Industries. He’s also the chairman of The Committee to Protect Journalists and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. His new book is called Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era.

A polished transcript is here, including money quotes. Below are timestamps for the main sections of the pod:

* 04:09: Jake’s background that made him especially attuned to corruption and totalitarianism

* 18:45: Contrasting the craven Lindsey Graham with the principled Liz Cheney

* 25:45: How Megyn Kelly — and others demonized by the left — came to support Trump

* 35:15: Liberal lawyers like Brad Karp who needlessly bent the knee

* 45:52: Debating the culpability of colleges targeted by Trump

* 53:36: Jeff Bezos’ 180 and his lifelong obsession with space travel

* 58:43: The abomination of January 6th and McConnell caving over the impeachment

* 102:28: Debating the culpability of John Roberts for Trump’s success

* 117:26: Reminiscing on our early days at TNR and the genius of Mike Kinsley

For two clips of the episode — on why McConnell balked at banning Trump, and how Megyn Kelly became a bully — head to our YouTube page.

Other topics: growing up in Chicago with public servants for parents; his dad taking on the Daley machine; Jake’s talent for takedowns back at TNR; South Park mocking Trump; Stop the Steal and Jan 6; Biden’s clusterfuck campaign; the Cheneys backing Harris; Trump’s retribution; the weakness of Schumer; McCain’s nonconformity; Massie’s cojones; the university deals with Trump; his talent as a bully; higher ed’s dearth of viewpoint diversity; anti-semitism in the Ivy League; Musk and the big subsidies for SpaceX; decimating USAID and PEPFAR; Bezos funding the Melania doc; SCOTUS checking tariffs; the presidential immunity ruling; the post-presidencies of Bush and Obama; and the one magazine piece I would never write.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Emily Eakin on the French postmodernists, Sean Illing on the relevance of Camus and Nietzsche, Michael Lewis on the bureaucrats who fought back against Trump, and Evan Barker on how the Democratic Party got hijacked by elite activists. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to [email protected].

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com

Arianna is a writer and businesswoman. She co-founded The Huffington Post in 2005, and after it was acquired by AOL, she became the president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group. She’s currently the CEO of Thrive Global and the author of 15 books, including Thrive and The Sleep Revolution.

A polished transcript is here, including money quotes. Below are timestamps for the main sections of the pod:

5:05: Arianna’s meteoric rise at a young age and challenging left-feminism

28:05: IQ, meritocracy, and what sets humans apart from AI

50:10: A crisis of meaning and the “false god of productivity”

114:07: The importance of sleep and how to improve it

For two clips of the episode — on the desperate need for grace in our discourse, and how to sleep better — head to our YouTube page.

More topics: Arianna’s upbringing in Greece; her dad’s anti-Nazi magazine in WWII; the power of maternal love; her time at the Cambridge Union as its first foreign prez; her first book The Female Woman; her love affair with Bernard Levin; the feminism of the Gospels; meritocracy; AI surpassing us in intelligence; our culture’s distrust of nature; Arianna’s burnout in 2007 and my own in 2015; silent meditation retreats; Matthew Crawford and craftsmanship; Loren Eiseley the anthropologist; mental illness; psychedelics; God as love; Maslow’s pyramid; and Arianna giving me tips for my insomnia.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Emily Eakin on the French postmodernists, Sean Illing on the relevance of Camus and Nietzsche, Jake Weisberg on the cowards who caved to Trump, and Michael Lewis on the bureaucrats who fought back. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to [email protected].

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com

Azam is an international investigative reporter for the New York Times. He used to be the Times bureau chief in Afghanistan, as well as Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. He won a Pulitzer last year for his work on the US intervention in Afghanistan, among other awards. He’s also the author of Fear Is Just A Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother’s Quest for Vengeance.

I discovered him simply by reading the paper and noticing an extraordinary ability to ferret out the truth. In conversation, Azam did not disappoint.

A polished transcript is here, including money quotes from the chat. Below are timestamps for the main sections of the pod:

05:23: Growing up in a Pakistani family in a small-town Virginia

10:36: The value of fiction over nonfiction

22:26: Azam’s time reporting on Wall Street, and then the horrors in Afghanistan

46:24: A deep dive into a terrifying new wave of synthetic drugs

1:03:56: The violent settlers in the West Bank and the Israeli officials speaking out

For two clips of the episode — on the new wave of dangerous drugs, and the Israeli government arming the West Bank settlers — head to our YouTube page.

Other topics: the lack of bigotry in Azam’s upbringing in the South; how UVA was more tribal than his high school; the war on terror; nation-building; how little the US understood Afghanistan; funding warlords against the Taliban; not talking to Taliban officials; US propaganda and lies; a story of suicide; Estonia beating fentanyl; the mega-potency of new drugs like nitazenes; drug-soaked paper causing overdoses in US prisons; why targeting suppliers doesn’t work anymore; harm reduction and Narcan; methadone; decriminalization in Portugal; the popularity of weed; the cynicism and evil of Hamas; dead kids in Gaza and US bombs; the depravity of Ben-Gvir; high-ranking Israelis against the settlements; and Bibi’s polling for the coming election.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Emily Eakin on postmodernism, Jake Weisberg on the cowards who caved to Trump, Michael Lewis on the federal workers who fought back, and Arianna Huffington on living well. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to [email protected].

In our last summer-break podcast two-fer, we’re re-running two very different conversations on sex and race, with two very different characters: Louise Perry and Glenn Loury. Next Friday we’ll be back with fresh Dish as the new season of Dishness kicks off after Labor Day with some great guests lined up for the fall.

We’ll also be introducing Weekly Dish 3.0! Stay tuned.

Louise is a writer and campaigner against sexual violence. She co-founded a non-partisan, feminist think tank called The Other Half, and she’s currently a WSJ columnist and the host of the Maiden Mother Matriarch podcast. In this 2022 episode, we discussed her book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century.

A polished transcript is here. You can find two clips on YouTube: on whether Louise finds it suitable to watch porn while married, and if gay promiscuity is more harmful than straight promiscuity.

See you next Friday.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

In our last summer-break podcast two-fer, we’re re-running two very different conversations on sex and race, with two very different characters: Glenn Loury and Louise Perry. Next Friday we’ll be back with fresh Dish as the new season of Dishness kicks off after Labor Day with some great guests lined up for the fall.

We’ll also be introducing Weekly Dish 3.0! Stay tuned.

Glenn is an academic, writer, and podcaster. At the age of 33, he became the first African-American professor of economics at Harvard to get tenure. He’s currently the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of Economics at Brown University, a columnist for UnHerd, and co-host of The Glenn Show, alongside John McWhorter. In this early 2023 episode, we talked about Glenn’s incredibly colorful life, and he subsequently published his memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative. So in this conversation we got a preview of the book: the product of a remarkable American life.

Read a polished transcript here. You can hear two clips on YouTube — how the insistence on the permanence of “white supremacy” hurts African-Americans, and how we are all “hypocrites” to some extent. Other topics covered: Glenn’s parents dealing with him as a prodigy; dropping out of college with a newborn; rebounding to MIT and Harvard; being ostracized by the black cognoscenti; his drug addiction; his conversion to Christianity; his loss of faith; falling out with the neocon right; the racial wealth gap; and affirmative action.

See you next Friday.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

(The full Dish returns on September 4. In the meantime, we are re-airing a handful of the most downloaded episodes from the early years of the Dishcast.)

Charles is a writer, social scientist, and longtime friend. He currently holds the F.A. Hayek Chair Emeritus in Cultural Studies at AIE, and his many books include Losing Ground, The Bell Curve (co-authored with Richard Herrnstein), Coming Apart, Facing Reality, and Taking Religion Seriously (which we covered last year). In this May 2021 pod, he and I discussed Human Diversity — a book that received little attention compared to the others. If you think you know who Charles is from the way the MSM has portrayed him for years, this conversation may surprise you.

Like Cornel West, Charles is a one-off: absurdly brave (or dumb) in wading into truly touchy subjects, and always with reason. In many ways, I think if we’d been able to have a serious debate about The Bell Curve all those years ago — and I tried to encourage one — we might have avoided some awful subsequent mistakes. But we resorted to abuse and hysteria and went on to enact Woke 1.0 and, now, Woke 2.0.

Go here for a polished transcript of Charles. We also have three clips on YouTube: on the different career choices of high IQ women; the “unearned gift” of a high IQ; and IQ’s irrelevance to the human worth, dignity, and essential equality of all people.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

(The full Dish returns on September 4. In the meantime, we are re-airing a handful of the most downloaded episodes from the early years of the Dishcast.)

The academic career of Cornel West is long and storied. He has taught religion, philosophy, and African-American studies at Yale, Princeton, Harvard, and Union Theological Seminary. He has written or contributed to more than 20 books, including Race Matters and Democracy Matters — but he recommends you start with Chekhov.

I met Cornel decades ago, when I interviewed him at Union Theological Seminary for a TNR piece I was writing on divinity schools. He has long fascinated me, and Race Matters had a real impact on me decades ago. Erudite, passionate, and deeply humane, he is an unapologetically leftist Christian who is also a champion of free speech, civility, and the classics. In other words: a rare and beautiful man.

A key theme of the Dishcast is a willingness to talk to anyone across the political and ideological spectrum. We thought it would be cool if we re-aired this episode alongside that with Charles Murray, a philosophical opposite, but also a deeply decent man.

Go here for a polished transcript of Cornel. We also have two clips on YouTube: on how he finds common ground with bigots and racists, and his take on CRT and the 1619 Project.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

(The full Dish returns on September 4. In the meantime, we are re-airing a handful of the most downloaded episodes from the early years of the Dishcast.)

In addition to the Middle East, another topic that has generated a lot of heat on the Dish since 2020 is the issue of the gender revolution and the TQ+ movement. So here are two perspectives from an early pod — that shows again how we at the Dish have genuinely sought the truth in this area, have listened to all sides, and aired all the arguments. Almost no other place does this anymore. Which is why we’re so grateful for your support and subscriptions.

Buck Angel was a pioneering porn star — the only trans man to ever win Transsexual Performer of the Year at the AVN Awards — and today he’s a sex educator, motivational speaker, and entrepreneur. Helena Kerschner is a young woman who lived as a man on hormone therapy for several years before detransitioning. Buck’s transition saved his life, while Helena’s transition was a bit of a calamity, but they share a resistance to the dogma of the trans activist community and speak forcefully and elegantly against it.

Go here for a polished transcript. Four clips on YouTube are also available: on the cult-like behavior of many trans activists; on the risks of puberty blockers; on the profound effects of testosterone; on how the hormone caused Buck, a former lesbian, to become attracted to men for the first time.

This episode is part of an ongoing series on the lives of transgender people and the debates surrounding one of the most polarizing subjects of today, especially when it comes to kids transitioning. Our previous episodes welcomed three happily transitioned and brilliant women — Dana Beyer, Mara Keisling, Brianna Wu — along with a remarkable trans man, Shannon Minter. All of them pushed back against my views, and we agreed on a lot as well.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe