The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

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Carole is back to discuss her travails at Harvard, teaching in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. She originally appeared two years ago to discuss her superb book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us. She’s now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and an associate in Harvard’s Department of Psychology, in the lab of Steven Pinker. She’s also an active member of the newly established Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. We talk here about her own experience in the last few years, targeted by the woke left on Harvard’s campus, and about Harvard itself, and whether the Ivy League can be reformed.

For two clips of our convo — on loving your intellectual enemies, and how you “can’t win a fight for rights by lying about facts” — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Carole’s popularity with students before her cancellation; her many teaching awards; her Fox News appearance; the grad student who targeted her on Twitter and terrified the senior faculty; the friends who turned on Carole; the TAs who shunned and refused to teach for her en masse; the administration that abandoned her; the sprawling DEI infrastructure at Harvard; the monoculture there; its growing disdain for the working class; how Veritas was sacrificed for standpoint epistemology; feelings over rational debate; runaway grade inflation; “decolonizing” syllabi; Katie Herzog’s report on medical schools abandoning “male and female”; how you can acknowledge nature while still respecting identities and pronouns; CRT as the enemy of liberal democracy; Gay’s testimony before Congress; the quality of her academic papers even before the plagiarism emerged; Harvard threatening the NY Post with defamation; Gay’s resignation and NYT op-ed; the NYT scapegoating James Bennet in 2020; Chait’s cowardice when I was fired at New York Mag; the Trevor Project’s redefinition of homosexuality; the pro-Hamas protesters on campus; the belated alarm by big donors; how “white supremacy” became “Jewish supremacy”; how the SAT finds disadvantaged students — but the woke want to abolish it; my debate with Harvey Mansfield over homosexuality; Harvey mentoring students from minority groups; Carole and I debating whether the the federal government should withhold funds from DEI colleges; and, as always, how Trump makes everything worse.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Alexandra Hudson on civility and Jennifer Burns on her new biography of Milton Friedman. Please send any guest recs, dissent and other comments to [email protected].

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

Joe is a journalist, author, old-school blogger, and an old friend. He’s written seven books, most famously Primary Colors, and he was a longtime columnist for Time magazine. This year he launched a must-read substack called “Sanity Clause,” and he just started a podcast with the great John Ellis called “Wise Owls.”

You can listen to it right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on Trump getting more political savvy, and the NYT’s propaganda on domestic issues — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: growing up in Queens; a grandfather who kept the books for Tammany Hall; how reporting on the busing crisis in Boston made Joe an independent; embedding with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; James Bennet’s exposé of the NYT; a new study on how charter schools help black students; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and single-parent families; Trump’s “dictator on Day One” comment; how Never Trumpers never understand his success; the Trump trials; Biden’s age; his persistently dismal polling; Nikki Haley’s potential; Trump turning the GOP against neoconservatism; how eastern Ukraine is turning into WWI; how Putin’s devastated military is no threat to Europe; The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan; Russiagate; how Larry Summers was right on inflation; Biden’s soft landing; Clinton balancing the budget; Boris and the Tories; tales from Joe’s 30 years of reporting on Israel and Palestine; his optimism on a two-state solution; how AIPAC has been “disastrous” for Israel; Daniel Finkelstein’s Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad; the Ivy League congressional hearings; DEI; why coddling Jewish students now is the wrong approach; Mao’s Cultural Revolution; the dregs of social media; the importance of civility and traditions; the Electoral College; the TV show The Crown; the Latin Mass; Pope Francis and the blessing of gay couples; the AIDS crisis; the PTSD of returning vets; and Joe’s bipartisan PAC for veterans called “With Honor.”

Browse the Dishcast archive for another convo you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Carole Hooven returns to talk about her tribulations at Harvard, Alexandra Hudson on civility, and Jennifer Burns on her new biography of Milton Friedman. Please send any guest recs, dissent and other comments to [email protected].

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

David is a journalist and columnist. He writes the NYT’s flagship daily newsletter, “The Morning,” contributes to the paper’s Sunday Review section, and co-hosts “The Argument,” a weekly opinion podcast with Ross Douthat and Michelle Goldberg. In 2011 he won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary on economic questions. His new book is Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.

The episode was taped on November 8th. For two clips of our convo — on African-American lefties against mass immigration, and black voters moving to the GOP over crime — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: David’s upbringing in NYC and Boston; “creating dorky fake newspapers in elementary school”; his mom was a copyeditor and his dad a high-school teacher; the debt that print journalists owed to the sports page; America’s economic golden age of the mid-20th century; how we used to have trust in institutions with more social cohesion; communism “just doesn’t work”; how the union movement was strong; how Eisenhower’s R&D was unprecedented but also had balanced budgets; how JFK was a “massively overrated president”; RFK’s conservatism and his deep popularity with black Americans; LBJ’s view that crime was just poverty; the immigration restrictions until the 1965 act; low crime before the 1960s; the much higher marriage rate before the 1960s, especially among blacks; the stagflation of the 1970s; OPEC after the Yom Kippur War; Milton Friedman; how the government created the computer industry; how the female workforce has been kicking ass; the anti-patriotism of the left; Obama’s love for America; how today’s government doesn’t invest as much in the future; IRA and CHIPS; the newfound bipartisan interest in unions; Covid relief; crime and disorder after the summer of 2020; effective altruism; the low price of clothing today; how our lower life expectancy is a sign of plenty; and how Millennials are not as far behind their parents as much as we’re told.

Browse the Dishcast archive for another convo you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Carole Hooven returns to talk about her tribulations at Harvard, McKay Coppins discusses Romney and the GOP, my old friend Joe Klein and I do a 2023 review, Jennifer Burns on her new biography of Milton Friedman, and Alexandra Hudson on civility. Please send any guest recs, dissent and other comments to [email protected].

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

Cat is a researcher who focuses on the evolution of narrative and cognition. Her essays and poems have appeared in Scientific American, Mind, Science Magazine, and other publications. Her fascinating new book is Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, and I highly recommend it.

For two clips of our convo — on the combat that occurs within a pregnant woman between mother and child, and the magic of nipples while breastfeeding — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Cat growing up near the “Confederate Mount Rushmore”; her mom the pianist and her dad the research psychologist; Cat helping him in the laboratory he ran; why medical research has ignored female subjects; plastination and Body Worlds; studying the first lactating mammal, Morganucodon; the origins of sex bifurcation; how “binary” is now controversial; how your gut contains countless organisms; how the placenta protects a fetus from being attacked by the mom; the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth; preeclampsia; how human reproduction is much longer than other mammals’; postpartum depression; why the left breast is favored in breastfeeding; the maternal voice; Pinker’s The Language Instinct; humans as hyper-social animals; how women hunted and obtained just as much protein as men — in different ways; our omnivore flexibility; sexed voices; how even livers have a sex; the only reliable way to determine the sex of brains; how male cells can end up in a female brain; why women are more likely to wake during surgery; sexual pleasure; bird copulation; duck vaginas; the chimp’s “polka dot” penis; why the slower sex of humans was key to our evolution; my challenging of Cat’s claim that 20 percent of people are homosexual; and foreskin and boobs and clits, oh my.

On that “20 percent of humans are homosexual” question, which I challenged directly on the podcast, it turns out Bohannon made a mistake which she says she will correct in future editions. As often happens, she conflated the “LGBTQ+” category with homosexuality, and relied on a quirky outlier study rather than the more reliable and standard measurements from places like the Williams Institute or Gallup. Williams says 1.7 percent of Americans are homosexual, i.e. gay or lesbian. Gallup says it’s 2.4 percent. The trouble, of course, with the LGBTQIA+ category is that almost 60 percent are bisexual, and the “Queer” category can include heterosexuals as well. As a way of polling actual, same-sex attracted gays and lesbians, it’s useless. And designed to be useless.

Note too Gallup’s percentage of “LGBTQIA+” people who define themselves as “queer”. It’s 1.8 percent of us. And yet that word, which is offensive and triggering to many, and adopted by the tiniest fraction of actual homosexuals, is now regarded by the mainstream media as the right way to describe all of us. In the podcast, you can see that Cat simply assumes that “queer” is now used universally — because the activists and academics who form her environment have co-opted it. She readily sees how that could be the case, when we discussed it. I wish the MSM would do the same: stop defining all gays the way only 1.8 percent of the “LGBTQ+” “community” do. Of course they won’t. They’re far more interested in being woke than telling the truth.

Browse the Dishcast archive for another convo you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: McKay Coppins on Romney and the GOP, Jennifer Burns on her new biography of Milton Friedman, Joe Klein with a year-end review, and Alexandra Hudson on civility. Please send any guest recs, dissent and other comments to [email protected].

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

(The main Dish and VFYW contest are taking a break for the holiday; we’ll be back with full coverage on December 1st. Happy Thanksgiving!)

Matthew is a writer and philosopher. He’s currently a senior fellow at UVA’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and a contributing editor at The New Atlantis. His most famous book is Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work. He also has an excellent substack, Archedelia.

This episode was recorded on October 17. You can listen to it right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — the antihumanism of Silicon Valley, and the obsession with kid safetyism — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: Matthew’s birthplace in Berkeley; his dad the physics professor and jazz player; his mom the New Age “seeker type”; Matthew taken out of school at age 10 for five years to live in an strict ashram and travel to India; he left to join “the great bacchanal” of high school where he “didn’t learn much”; did unlicensed electrical work and studied physics in college; he believes bureaucracy “compromises the vitality of life”; Hannah Arendt; Tocqueville; Christopher Lasch and the close supervision of kids’ lives; Johan Huizinga and the spirit of play; Oakeshott’s metaphor of a tennis match; Enoch Powell; behavioral economics; William James; Nudge and choice architecture; Kant; TS Eliot; Nietzsche; gambling addiction and casino manipulation; Twitter and “disinformation”; self-driving cars; plastic surgery; kids and trans activism; the Nordic gender paradox; nationalism; why the love of one’s own is suspect on the political left; how “diversity is our strength” decreases diversity; Hillary’s “deplorables”; Matthew’s book The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction; brainy people not understanding practical ones; knowledge workers threatened by AI; the intelligence needed in manual work; why Americans are having fewer children; liquid modernity; the feminization of society; Bronze Age Pervert; Ratzinger; Matthew’s recent conversion to Christianity; and gratitude being the key to living well.

Browse the Dishcast archive for another convo you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Cat Bohannon on Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, Jennifer Burns on her new biography of Milton Friedman, McKay Coppins on Romney and the GOP, and Alexandra Hudson on civility. Please send any guest recs, dissent and other comments to [email protected].

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

John Judis is an editor-at-large at Talking Points Memo, a former senior editor at The New Republic, and an old friend. Ruy Teixeira is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a contributing columnist at the WaPo, and politics editor of the fantastic substack The Liberal Patriot. In 2002 they wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority, and their new book is Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes.

You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on the ways the Democrats are losing on immigration, and discussing the core failings of Obama — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: John’s wealthy upbringing in Chicago until parents fell on hard times and faced anti-Semitism; Ruy raised by a single mom in DC and whose dad worked at the Portuguese embassy; John and Ruy becoming friends in the early ‘70s as socialist radicals; John writing a biography of Bill Buckley in the ‘80s that garnered him respect among conservatives; Ruy working in progressive think tanks before ending up at the center-right AEI; the Reagan Era shifting to the New Democrats and a triangulating Clinton; John and Ruy writing the famous Emerging Democratic Majority that did not, in fact, write off the white working class; Brownstein’s “coalition of the ascendent” seeming to gel with Obama’s election; how Obamacare didn’t help the working class enough; the 2008 crash and recession; how Obama was “the last New Democrat” and failed to strengthen labor laws; how he enforced the border; how Hillary deployed identity politics to her peril in 2016; Trump capitalizing on trade and immigration; how even John endorsed the feeling behind “Make America Great Again”; the rise of BLM; Wendy Davis’ campaign as a harbinger for Latino support on border enforcement; Trump’s growing support among non-white voters; how the GOP became the party of the working class; how Biden hasn’t changed Dems into the normie party; his industrial policy, IRA and CHIPS; being mum on boosting energy production; his main weaknesses of age and inflation; the dearth of patriotism on the left; how blacks are a moderating force within the Dems; Asians drifting toward the GOP on education and crime; the war in Israel and Gaza; how Ukraine could be a big issue next election; the GOP weakness on abortion; Trump’s “vermin” and enemies list; and who could replace Biden among the Dems or independents like RFK Jr.

Browse the Dishcast archive for another convo you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Matthew Crawford on anti-humanism and social control, David Leonhardt on his new book about the American Dream, Cat Bohannon on Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, Jennifer Burns on her new biography of Milton Friedman, McKay Coppins on Romney and the GOP, and Alexandra Hudson on civility. Please send any guest recs, dissent and other comments to [email protected].

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

Graeme is a foreign correspondent, and one of the most brilliant men I’ve ever met. He’s been a staff writer at The Atlantic since 2006 and a lecturer in political science at Yale since 2014. He’s also been a contributing editor to The New Republic and books editor of Pacific Standard, and he’s the author of The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State. Graeme was in Israel when we spoke earlier this week. It’s — shall we say — a lively conversation, covering every taboo in the Israel/Palestine question.

You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on the ways Hamas is more evil than even ISIS, and on the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: growing up in an upper-middle-class home in Dallas; how his parents gave him the travel bug, which he took to the extreme; why the challenges of travel are often the best parts; how time slows down abroad; Paul Theroux and Emerson on travel; going to Afghanistan in 2001 at age 21; why ISIS hated the Taliban and considered them non-Muslims; the caliphate; the easy divisibility of Islamists because of doctrinal differences; Israelis leaving Gaza in 2005; a Nakba in the West Bank; Bibi opposing a two-state solution; the savagery and evil glee of 10/7; the rank corruption and greed of the Hamas government; the dismal economy of Gaza; the terrible conundrum of killing Hamas among human shields; Fallujah vs. Gaza; the fanatical settlers; how the Orthodox right doesn’t start tech companies or join the military; Kushner funding the settlements; Trump and the Abraham Accords; Graeme disagreeing with me over the Accords; the protests over judicial reform; the Israelis who oppose settlements; AIPAC and the dearth of US pushback on Israel; the Dem rift over the Gaza war; far-left denialism over 10/7; destroying the posters of hostages; and the upcoming mass protest in London on 11/11.

Browse the Dishcast archive for another convo you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: David Leonhardt on his new book about the American Dream, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira on Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, Cat Bohannon on Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, Matthew Crawford, and Jennifer Burns. Please send any guest recs, dissent and other comments to [email protected].

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

Pamela is a journalist. For nine years she was the editor of The New York Times Book Review, where she also hosted a weekly podcast, and she’s now a columnist for the Opinion section of the Times where she writes about culture, ideas, society, language and politics. She’s the author of eight books, most recently 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet. We had a fun chat about a whole host of topics.

You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on how computers are killing off deep reading, and the growing rate of anorexia among girls — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: growing up in NYC and Long Island with divorced parents; her mom wrote ad copy and her dad was a contractor; Pamela was the only girl among seven brothers; she always wanted to be a writer; studied history at Brown; considered a PhD but didn’t want to focus on an “ism”; spent a year alone in northern Thailand with little tech — “probably best decision of my life”; how a career is not a linear path, especially in your 20s; the benefits of very little Internet; how media today is homogenized across the Western world; the publishing industry; Jon Stewart ambushing me on his show; how non-natives often see a country better than its natives; Tocqueville; how professors have stopped assigning full books; the assault on the humanities; Reed College and Hum 110; the war in Israel and Gaza; the ignorance and hateful ideology against Israel; Jewish liberals waking up to wokeness; how Israeli officials are botching their PR; “the death of Israeli competence”; gender and trans ideology; how gays and trans people are far more persecuted outside the West; Iran’s program of sex changes; what priests and trans activists have in common; Thatcher a much better feminist than Clinton; the decline of magazines and the blogosphere; The Weekly Dish; and Pamela defending the NYT against my barbs.

Browse the Dishcast archive for another convo you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: David Leonhardt on his new book about the American Dream, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira on Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, Cat Bohannon on Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, Matthew Crawford, and McKay Coppins. Please send any guest recs, dissent and other comments to [email protected].

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

David is a long-time columnist for the New York Times. He’s also a commentator on “PBS NewsHour,” NPR’s “All Things Considered” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Plus he teaches at Yale. His new book is How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.

You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on how to be a better friend to suffering loved ones, and how loneliness leads to authoritarianism — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: his upbringing in Greenwich Village among intellectuals and gays; his beatnik Jewish parents; his father the NYU professor and his mother with a PhD from Columbia; “not the most emotionally intimate” family; how people shouldn’t separate thinking from emotions; the French Enlightenment; Jungian/Burkean conservatism; Hume; nationalism and King Charles III; Orwell’s “The Lion and the Unicorn”; Disraeli; conservatism and the current GOP as a nihilist cult; Isaiah Berlin; how you’re an “illuminator” or “diminisher” when meeting new people; how most don’t ask questions and instead broadcast themselves; Trump; how Trump supporters are “hard to hate up close”; Hamas and Israel; Hannah Arendt; how to encounter a super woke person; arguments as a form of respect; suppressing your ego for better conversations; Taylor Swift on narcissism; suicidal friends; the distortion of reality when depressed; the AIDS crisis and losing friends; marriage equality; one changing in midlife; Oakeshott; overprotective parents; the value of play; Gen Z’s low social trust; boys growing up with poor flirting skills; casual dating and ghosting; the historical amnesia and unhappiness of young gays; the tension between individualism and belonging; extroverts vs. introverts; how Jesus disarmed people; and the loving kindness of Buddhism.

Browse the Dishcast archive for another convo you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: David Leonhardt on his new book about the American Dream, NYT columnist Pamela Paul, and the authors of Where Have All the Democrats Gone? — John Judis and Ruy Teixeira. Later on: Cat Bohannon and McKay Coppins. Please send any guest recs, pod dissent and other comments to [email protected].

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

Spencer is a writer and podcaster. He’s currently an associate editor at the Claremont Review of Books and the host of the “Young Heretics” podcast. He’s also the author of How to Save the West: Ancient Wisdom for 5 Modern Crises and the editor of Gateway to the Stoics. You can follow his latest writing on Substack.

For two clips of our convo — on finding God in the humanities, and why so many gays throughout history have been drawn to the Church — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Spencer’s upbringing in NYC and London and elsewhere; his rigorous schooling in Britain; his dad the prominent novelist; his lapsed Catholic mom and lapsed Jewish dad; Spencer as a teen converting to Christianity — “conversational, not doctrinal”; coming to terms with his homosexuality; Yale for undergrad and Oxford for a PhD in the Classics; his initial calling as an actor; learning Latin and ancient Greek; how the Greeks had two words for forgiveness; the Gospels; Aquinas; the Scientific Revolution; how evolution is compatible with Christianity; James Madison; Tocqueville; the suffering that brings one closer to God; the waning of both the humanities and religion in American life; climate doomerism; postmodernism; Judith Butler; the transing of gender-dysphoric kids; Alasdair MacIntyre; and how genetics is “necessary but not sufficient” for seeking truth.

Browse the Dishcast archive for another convo you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: David Brooks on his new book How to Know a Person,” his fellow NYT columnist Pamela Paul, and the authors of Where Have All the Democrats Gone? — John Judis and Ruy Teixeira. Also: David Leonhardt, Cat Bohannon, and McKay Coppins.

Have a question you want me to ask one of those future guests? Email [email protected], and please put the question in the subject line. Send any guest recs, pod dissent and other comments to [email protected].