The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comMark is a journalist, political scientist, historian of ideas, and a longtime friend since my twenties, when we studied political thought together. He has taught at NYU and the University of Chicago, and he’s currently a professor of humanities at Columbia. His many fine books include The Once and Future Liberal, The Reckless Mind, and The Shipwrecked Mind, and his forthcoming book is Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know. In this episode we focus on his essay, “On Indifference,” and the introduction he wrote for Thomas Mann’s Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man. It was a fantastic conversation. For two clips of our convo — on whether political indifference is unjust, and the political consequences of the decline of novel reading — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Mark’s working-class upbringing in Detroit; “falling in with Jesus freaks” as a teenager; making it to Harvard; absorbing Thomas Mann and The Magic Mountain; Isaiah Berlin; the rivalry between Sartre and Aron; Orwell’s willingness to break ranks; The Lord Chandos Letter and walking away from writing; the moral hysteria after Trump’s election; Mark signing the Harper’s letter; the lack of perspective among young people who feel oppressed; how the most “privileged” are often the most depressed; rising levels of loneliness among teens; the dwindling of connections with extended family; the impact of the Internet and Covid on interacting with bodies; the importance of facial expressions; the need for silence and meditation; the problem of tourists using phones and drones; Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus; slowing the pace of capital for the sake of community; Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option; the cultural impact of Vatican II; the reaction to wokeness in France and Italy; and my 2016 essay, “My Distraction Sickness and Yours.”Browse the Dishcast archive for another discussion you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Nigel Biggar on his qualified defense of colonialism, Tabia Lee on her firing as a DEI director, Chris Stirewalt on Fox News, Ben Smith on going viral, John Oberg on veganism, and Patrick Deneen on a post-liberal future. Send your guest recs and pod comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comSusan is a philosopher and writer focusing on the Enlightenment, moral philosophy, metaphysics and politics. She was professor of philosophy at Yale and Tel Aviv University, and in 2000 assumed her current position as director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam. She’s the author of nine books, including Evil in Modern Thought, Moral Clarity and Learning from the Germans. Her new book is Left Is Not Woke. We hit it off from the get-go.For two clips of our convo — on why being an “ally” is misguided, and the Nazi philosopher who influenced woke thought — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: the tension between universalism and tribalism in her Jewish upbringing in Atlanta; her mom’s work desegregating schools amid night calls from the Klan; Susan joining a commie commune; making it to Harvard as a high-school dropout; the legacy of Kant; Montaigne on how the West could learn from other cultures; the views of Voltaire, Rousseau, Wittgenstein and Rawls; the dialogue between Socrates and Thrasymachus on justice and power; the cynical faux-sophistication of postmodernists; the impact of Foucault and Carl Schmitt on wokeness; truth and reason as mere instruments of power; the woke impulse to deny progress; evolutionary psychology; Jesus rejecting tribalism; the Enlightenment rebuking clerical authority but respecting religion; Anthony Appiah and universalism within African and Indian cultures; anti-colonialism; the Iraq War and the hypocrisy of a liberal democracy using torture; the transition from Obama to Trump; and the Afropessimism of Ta-Nehisi Coates and others.Browse the Dishcast archive for another discussion you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety). Upcoming guests include Mark Lilla on liberalism, Nigel Biggar defending colonialism, Tabia Lee on her firing as a DEI director, Chris Stirewalt on Fox News, Ben Smith on going viral, and John Oberg on veganism.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comBob is a foreign affairs and travel journalist, and a scholar of the classics. For three decades he reported for The Atlantic and wrote for many other places, including the editorial pages of the NYT and WaPo — and TNR back in my day. He holds the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and is a senior adviser at Eurasia Group. He’s the author of 21 books, including The Coming Anarchy, Balkan Ghosts and Asia’s Cauldron. His new book is The Tragic Mind.For two clips of our convo — why anarchy is worse than tyranny, specifically in Iraq, and the question of whether Taiwan is worth going to war over — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Bob’s working-class upbringing; his global travel as a young reporter; his complex views of humanity after visiting Soviet Europe and the Balkans; Reagan’s talent and good fortune; H.W.’s record of averting disaster; the optimism and hubris of the US after the Cold War; the series of US victories in the ‘90s — ending in Iraq and Afghanistan; the evil of Saddam; Obama’s love of Niebuhr and his overcompensation on Russia and China; Biden’s deft balancing act in Ukraine; how the Afghan exit actually benefitted the US against Russia; Greek tragedy vs. Shakespearean tragedy; Sophocles and Oedipus; the Christian understanding of tragedy; Hobbes and his Leviathan; Zionism as the lesser of two evils; Spengler’s Decline of the West; American decadence and the poison of social media; and Bob’s clinical depression after the Iraq invasion.Browse the Dishcast archive for another discussion you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety). Upcoming guests include Mark Lilla on liberalism, Susan Neiman on how “left is not woke,” Tabia Lee on her firing as a DEI director, Chris Stirewalt on Fox News, Nigel Biggar on colonialism, and John Oberg on veganism (recorded already but I’m sampling a variety of plant-based meats to comment on when the episode is released). As always, please send your guest recs and listener feedback to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comMichael, an old friend and acquaintance, is a writer and academic. He’s taught at Harvard, Johns Hopkins and UT-Austin. He’s been an editor or staff writer for The New Yorker, Harper’s and The New Republic, where I published him often, and he now writes frequently for the NYT and Financial Times. Michael also co-founded the think tank New America. The author of many books, his most recent is The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite, and his forthcoming book is Hell to Pay: How the Suppression of Wages is Destroying America.For two clips of our convo — on how big donors have stymied populists, and how Biden is better at Trumpism than Trump — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Michael’s upbringing in Texas; his ancestors who were indentured servants; the ways white Southerners dealt with desegregation better than the North; how white immigrants learned to be American from black Southerners; why Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror was the most important book Michael ever read; the evils of Soviet and Chinese communism; Krauthammer’s “The Unipolar Moment”; neoliberals getting the WTO and NAFTA; the collapse of unions; the rise of woke capitalism; Michael’s longstanding worries over free trade and mass immigration; the 2008 financial crisis; the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan; the dangers of elite consensus; Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot as forerunners to Trump; the populist success of Santorum and Huckabee; the corrupt mayors James Curley and Marion Berry; the Cathedral culture of the MSM; the potential of DeSantis to dethrone Trump; and Biden’s prospects in 2024.Heads up that we just published a new transcript of our discussion with John Gray on the dusk of Western liberalism. It was a classic episode. Browse the Dishcast archive for another you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety).

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comJon is the chief national correspondent for Yahoo News and the host of “The Long Game” podcast. His first book was Camelot’s End: Kennedy v Carter and the Fight that Broke the Democratic Party, and his new book is Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Failed a Generation. You can also follow Jon’s writing on his substack, Border-Stalkers, and on his website, jonwardwrites.org.For two clips of our convo — on the joys of being evangelical Christian, and the sexual struggles of male evangelicals — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Jon growing up in the Jesus Movement in the '70s and '80s; speaking in tongues; the insecurity of evangelicals toward mainstream culture; Catholic hymns vs the music of evangelicals; Catholicism as anti-subjective and anti-emotional compared to evangelicalism; when the Southern Baptist Convention tolerated abortion; the evangelical and Catholic alliance after Roe v. Wade; Paul Weyrich; Reinhold Niebuhr; Frederick Buechner; structural sin; Calvinism and predestination; Saint Francis; the indifference of Jesus toward gender roles; same-sex marriage and the Mormon settlement over it; Garry Wills; James Carroll’s Constantine’s Sword; Kevin Hasson’s The Right to Be Wrong; how Christians should embrace political loss; Christianism and Trump; and the crosses wheeled out on January 6.Heads up that the Dish is taking Holy Week off as our spring break. See you back on the pod the Friday after the Good one. Happy Easter and Passover!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comHannah is an award-winning journalist with 15 years at the BBC. She is currently the Investigations Producer at Newsnight — the BBC’s flagship program for news and current affairs — and before that she was in BBC Radio, producing and reporting documentaries. She just published her first book, Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children. Twenty-two publishers turned down the book in the UK, it has no US publisher, yet it’s already a Sunday Times (of London) bestseller.For two clips of our convo — on the unfounded activist claims of trans-kid suicide, and the dramatic shift toward girls getting hormones with little oversight — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Hannah first encountering the trans issue as a new mother; the Dutch story of the very first patient to receive puberty blockers and hormones; Jesse Singal’s pioneering journalism; the destruction of Ken Zucker’s career and clinic by activists; the old standard of “watchful waiting” swept aside; the whittling away of the Dutch protocol; Tavistock keeping very little data on patients; the vast majority of medicalized kids being gay or lesbian or bi; the hushed dissent at Tavistock over gay kids being misdiagnosed as trans; the bullying and self-hatred of gay kids; the troubled homes of patients; conflating gender dysphoria with other mental-health problems; and a few specific stories of trans and detrans kids. She is fair and measured throughout. If you have bought the line that concerns about child transitions are entirely from the bigoted right, Hannah Barnes is an antidote.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comJames is a Roman Catholic priest, theologian and writer. His life’s work has been the application of the thought of René Girard — the French theoretician of desire and violence — to the understanding of basic Christianity. He has also stood up for truthfulness about gays and lesbians in the life of the Church; and has been a good friend for many years. Among his many books are The Joy of Being Wrong, Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay, and Jesus the Forgiving Victim — an introduction to the Christian faith. One of my current projects is a book on Christianity and its future; and James has been a big influence on my thinking. We range a lot here. For two clips of our convo — on an exasperated but loving God, and the evolutionary role of homosexuality — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: the deep Etonian background of James and his family; his Tory MP father; his evangelical mother who believed in conspiracy theories; young James realizing he was gay and believing God rejected him for it; Lord Montagu and the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1967; Kameny’s role in the US; how childhood alienation can be a creative spark; James at age 12 falling in love with a Catholic boy; his conversion to Catholicism without becoming a reactionary; Original Sin; the depressing parts of the Old Testament; the passages of love in the New Testament; Augustinian teleology debunked by Darwin; the views of Socrates, Buddhism, Aquinas and Luther; collective guilt over slavery; Catholic vs. Protestant colonialism; James adopting a Brazilian child; the AIDS crisis; and political topics like Brexit, Trump and the coup in Peru. Browse the Dishcast archives for a discussion you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety).

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comCathy is a libertarian journalist and author. She’s currently a staff writer at The Bulwark, a columnist for Newsday, and a frequent contributor to Reason magazine. She has written two books: Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, and Growing Up In Moscow: Memories of a Soviet Girlhood. We talk about how her life under totalitarianism informed her views on the war in Ukraine, and the authoritarian illiberalism in the US. She cheered me up a bit.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 — though Spotify sadly doesn’t accept the paid feed). For two clips of our convo — whether Russians actually support the war in Ukraine, and the gaslighting from liberals over woke extremism — pop over to our YouTube page.Other topics: how Soviet indoctrination of Cathy started in elementary school; the closet dissidents in her family; the members who were sent to the Gulag; Cathy reading banned books and hearing jokes against the Soviet leader; dissidents like Solzhenitsyn who became strong nationalists and imperialists; today’s horrors of the Wagner group and trench warfare; possible end-games over Ukraine; the US partisan flip over Russia; CRT in Florida schools and elsewhere; DeSantis and illiberal government overreach; the pushback from FIRE; Chris Rufo; the wokeism in red states; mandatory DEI statements; and Cathy’s optimism toward the woke threat based on her living through the fall of Soviet totalitarianism. Next week is the vegan activist John Oberg who will try to convince me to give up meat. Browse the Dishcast archives for a discussion you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety). As always, send your feedback and guest recommendations to dish@andrewsullivan.com.Here’s a listener on last week’s convo with philosopher John Gray on the threats to Western liberalism:Really enjoyed your conversation — or should I say, your conversational tango — with John Gray. The urge to explain, teach and to understand propelled both of you forward. How interesting to listen as you figured out when to break into the other’s conversational riffs (waiting for the occasional breath). There was not a hint of competition — “hey, it’s now my turn!” — the sort of thing you hear in quasi-debates with ideological foes (necessary though they may be). There is much pleasure, downright fun, in exercising good, free, spirited talk.I have been reading John Gray for years, and you can even call me a fan. I love to read him even if he writes the same book or essay, thematically speaking, year after year, updated to suit the events of the day. He insists on telling us in acres of print that we shouldn’t be fooled by the illusion of progress. Things haven’t gotten much better, morally speaking. We humans concoct one belief after another to make us feel better, or superior. Be it worshipping sky gods or Karl Marx (or Ayn Rand), we fragile creatures are always trying to imagine what we’re most definitely not. Gray does a good job of stripping us of our sense of agency. Reading him over the years I often want to fling his books out the window and take to bed.So I’ve wondered over the years why I still keep reading him and subjecting myself to his scolding critiques of our collective nonsense. Is it masochism? There’s plenty of that going around. You both end up by invoking, inadvertently, the Nike swish slogan, “Just do it!” Forget optimism or pessimism. They don’t do any good. Just get on with it, Gray tells us. Be buoyed by the spirit of conversation.Another listener touches on Trump:Great conversation as always. I even begrudgingly appreciate the scrambling that I must do to look up people, words, ideas, and events to fully engage in your valuable work.On your point that Trump “was a weapon used to bludgeon the people that were not listening to them” (around the 48 minute mark): after nearly four decades of the working-class’s frustrations for being ignored on a bipartisan basis, Fox News, conservative talk radio, and associated media must be mentioned. They collectively acted as both an accelerant and misdirector of the long simmering and justifiable anger. Only then could President Trump become the chosen weapon. Senator Sanders could also have been the weapon — an absolutely more appropriate but likely less effective weapon.Another suggests a future guest:I was struck by what you wrote here: “We’ll air a whole host of dissents to my Ukraine column next week, when I’ll also be discussing the topic with dedicated war-supporter, Cathy Young, on the Dishcast.” Young doesn’t need me to speak on her behalf, but I suspect what she really supports is victory for Ukraine and a just peace, not the kind of occupation that Ukrainians (like Estonians and so many others) remember too well. Supporting people who are fighting for their freedom, their culture, and their lives, is not the same as being a war-supporter.I enjoyed your verbal jousting with Anne Applebaum, so I’m really looking forward to your conversation with Cathy Young. Have you given thought to including a Ukrainian voice, maybe someone like Olesya Khromeychuk? A Ukrainian voice from the in-tray is posted toward the bottom of this post, along with more dissents over my writing on the war. Another plug for the pod:George Packer recently wrote a piece entitled “The Moral Case Against Equity Language,” which was just brilliant. I would love to hear a conversation between you and Packer.Good idea. More recommendations from this listener:Please read the interview with Vincent Lloyd by Conor Friedersdorf and the Compact essay that sparked it. It’s very considered and still sensitive to the goals of the social justice movement. I’d be extremely excited to hear Lloyd on the Dishcast. He changed my thinking and I think he would bust you out of your rut of talking about social justice to people who you largely agree with.In a similar vein, Lulu Garcia-Navarro recently had an interview with Maurice Mitchell — the head of the Working Families Party — on how the left is cannibalizing its own power. Again, a very considered approach from the social justice perspective that I found very instructive. Here’s what Michelle Goldberg recently wrote about him:Mitchell, who has roots in the Black Lives Matter movement, has a great deal of credibility; he can’t be dismissed as a dinosaur threatened by identity politics. But as the head of an organization with a very practical devotion to building electoral power, he has a sharp critique of the way some on the left deploy identity as a trump card. “Identity and position are misused to create a doom loop that can lead to unnecessary ruptures of our political vehicles and the shuttering of vital movement spaces,” he wrote last month in a 6,000-word examination of the fallacies and rhetorical traps plaguing activist culture.I’ve yet to read Mitchell’s essay, but it’s on my list. Please consider having him as a guest as well. I’ve been a fan and subscriber to the Dishcast for a while, and I’m thinking that the social justice debate you’re having has gotten stale. I think both these guests would spark new thoughts, new directions, and new challenges.Thanks. Another turns to gender issues:I just watched your appearance on Bill Maher’s podcast. I loved it. Your sincerity and sadness about how gayness is getting twisted into some kind of bigotry was very apparent.  There’s one thing I think you should have told Bill. It isn’t just gays who have a “bigoted genital preference.” Straights also have “bigoted genital preference.” If Bill doesn’t want to have sex with a trans woman, he’s a bigot. It’s a mystery to me why ANYONE would want to have a physical relationship with someone who would find that experience repulsive. But of course, as you said, it’s all about control. And shaming — suggesting that there’s something wrong with you for not finding their body type attractive.Another Dishhead writes:I saw your tweet about the drag show for babies and toddlers. I just want to share my own experience with you.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comJohn Gray is a political philosopher. He retired from academia in 2007 as Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, and is now a regular contributor and lead reviewer at the New Statesman. His forthcoming book is The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism. I regard him as one of the great minds of our time, and this is one of my favorite pods ever. For two clips of our convo — how smug liberalism led to Trump and Brexit, and why we shouldn’t treat religion as intellectual error — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: the Judeo-Christian roots of liberalism; why Catholics never supported eugenics; the genius and licentious life of Michael Oakeshott; how Thatcherism and Reaganism turned into “inverted Marxism”; John’s loathing of the “indifference to economic casualties” (e.g. Hillary’s “deplorables”); his opposition to Fukuyama; Blair and the Iraq War; the liberal case for border control; the dangers of producing too many elites; Silicon Valley’s obsession with eternal life; anti-wokeness in France; how Trump predicted Germany’s bind over Russian energy; the disintegrating support for the war in Ukraine; reporting on the Holodomor; Fox News and Dominion; and how the gains of Western civilization could ultimately be saved by non-Westerners.Next week is Cathy Young to discuss Ukraine and what do to about CRT in public schools. Browse the Dishcast archives for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety). If you missed last week’s transcript with Glenn Loury, it’s here for the reading.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comAurelian is a political scientist and professor at Indiana University in Bloomington. His two most recent books are A Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought and Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes. His forthcoming book is Why Not Moderation?: Letters to Young Radicals. If you think you know what moderation is, Aurelian will surprise you. Not mushy; not vague; not the median: it’s a political temperament and philosophy with its own distinctive heritage. We talk of Raymond Aron and George Orwell, Albert Camus and Michael Oakeshott, Isaiah Berlin and Adam Michnik. And why we need these kinds of thinkers today.For two clips of our convo — on whether the right or left is more of a threat to moderates, and why moderates oppose the notion of salvation — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Aurelian growing up in communist Romania near Ukraine; his five key principles of moderation; the French philosopher Raymond Aron and his rivalry with Sartre; Camus and Orwell as men of the left whom leftists hated; Isaiah Berlin and pluralism; Tocqueville, Judith Shklar, and Montaigne; relativism vs. skepticism; Keynes, and how liberty and equality are not incompatible; Machiavelli and the role of luck in politics; Oakeshott, politics as the art of improvisation; Adam Michnik’s courage in dark times; Plato on when moderation is not a good thing; MLK’s critique of moderates, Flight 93 elections, the Benedict Option, the cancel culture of the right, Oscar Wilde and the need for relaxed humor in politics. Yes, it was a lot. But we had a lot of fun as well.