The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comBen is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Semafor, a global news company. He was an old-school blogger at Politico and others, the first editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, and the media columnist for the NYT. His new book is Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral. I wrote what he called a “savage and delightful” review of his book, but we remain friends and went at it cordially.For two clips of our convo — on the addictive power of blogging, and Ben’s tough call over publishing the Steele dossier — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: his early career on the cop beat and in Eastern Europe; getting hooked on blogs after 9/11; his kid throwing his Blackberry in the toilet; the launch of the Daily Dish and its “mass intimacy”; the MSM (and me) “massively screwing up” the Iraq invasion; Ben covering marriage equality due to the Dish; the blog functioning as “Twitter before Twitter”; the Green Revolution in Iran; the Palin debacle and Trig; the torture program; why the Dish left the Daily Beast; the emotional turmoil of ending the blog; the “under-news” of Gawker; its indifference to to gay men’s privacy; the role of Jezebel; the redemption of Nick Denton and “20 percent nicer”; Gawker killed by Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel; Buzzfeed and sponsored content; the Shitty Media Men list; Americans’ contempt for the MSM; Steve Bannon; how social media is perfect for right-wing populists and woke mobs; Substack reviving the spirit of blogging; the fall of Buzzfeed News and Vice; Semafor’s embrace of dissent; and Ben’s thoughts on my “savage and delightful review” of his book.Browse the Dishcast archive for another conversation you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Tabia Lee on her firing as a DEI director, Patrick Deneen on a post-liberal future, and David Grann on an 18th-century mutiny that’s a “parable for our own turbulent time.” Please send your guest recs and pod dissent to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comWhere are we in the war between the West and Russia in Ukraine? We asked Sam back to help us figure it out. He’s a tutor in the Department of Political Science at Oxford and a member of the Royal United Services Institute in London. He’s an expert on Russia’s wars in Chechnya and Syria, and he’s been to Russia and Ukraine many times in the course of getting his International Relations DPhil. His forthcoming book is Putin’s War on Ukraine: Russia’s Campaign for Global Counter-Revolution. I learned a lot in this conversation and so will you.For two clips of our convo — on whether Russia or Ukraine is winning, and the EU’s surprising response to the war — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Putin’s Pyrrhic victory in Bahkmut; the unexpected support for Ukraine from Meloni; the bromance between Boris and Zelensky and now Rishi; the odd airing of dissent within Russia; how Putin is spinning his failures; Lavrov’s propaganda that Hitler was partly Jewish; how Ukraine is now a proxy war for the West; Russia’s self-fulfilling prophecy of Ukraine joining NATO; Prigozhin bad-mouthing the Kremlin; the possibility of his Wagner Group going rogue; the Russian far right and Dugin; the prospects of a Ukrainian offensive; the chance Zelensky could take back Crimea; the dangers of the war spilling into Russia; the increased risk of nukes as the war grinds on; how Putin could save face in a ceasefire; the stretched limits of US support for Ukraine; how electing DeSantis or Trump could affect that support; Putin exploiting the culture wars; the wild card of war breaking out in Taiwan; and the election next year in Russia.Browse the Dishcast archive for another conversation you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Ben Smith on going viral, Tabia Lee on her firing as a DEI director, Patrick Deneen on a post-liberal future, and David Grann on an 18th-century mutiny that’s a “parable for our own turbulent time.” Please send your guest recommendations and pod dissent to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comJohn is an animal advocate and social media professional (@JohnOberg). He has served as the director of new media for The Humane League and the director of communications for Vegan Outreach, but now he’s an independent advocate funded by individual donations. He’s also a powerlifter — not something you usually associate with vegans. In this episode he tries to convince me to give up meat.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 — on whether humans are evolving into vegans, and dispelling the notion that all vegans are scrawny — pop over to our YouTube page.Other topics: the profound influence that John’s mother had on his advocacy from a very young age; their lonely protest against deer culling; vegan stereotypes and gay stereotypes; the cruelty of animals to other animals in nature; the greater sentience of some creatures over others; the horrific conditions of factory farming; Ag-Gag laws; how to provide protein to people without killing animals; “the protein myth”; the Impossible Burger and other food recs from John; the proliferating types of non-dairy milk; incentivizing corporations to make vegan options; and meeting people halfway with veganism rather than demonizing them. 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: Sam Ramani on Ukraine, Ben Smith on going viral, Tabia Lee on her firing as a DEI director, and Patrick Deneen on a post-liberal future. Send your guest recs and pod dissent to dish@andrewsullivan.com.A quick bit of fan mail for Chris Stirewalt:Just wanted to say your conversation with Stirewalt was f****n’ great!  Entertaining, funny, and really educational. Loved it.Another fan focuses on this segment:Listening to Chris talk about goat porn and golden showers on Ted Cruz almost made me pee my pants! Absolutely hilarious.A listener dissents:I had to stop listening once it became clear that you and Chris seem to be of the opinion that the legacy media share equally with the 30-year-old disinformation industry in cleaving the American voters into hateful camps. While you did recognize that Rush was a pioneer in taking advantage of the abrogation of the Fairness Doctrine to voice his BS, you also blithely acknowledged that he was “talented entertainer.” Let’s face facts: Adolph was full of hateful bile that led to the eventual destruction of Germany along with millions of innocents but the guy was really entertaining. The legacy media, for all of its faults and biases, is not equivalent to the collective disinformation industry. Wokeness does not equal lies, character assassination, conspiracy mongering, calls for the overthrow of the “deep state,” civil war, summary execution of suspected drug dealers, ad nauseam. Criticize the legacy media all you want, but don’t equate them with Fox and its many copycats as part of the critique. Whataboutism is tiresome and lazy.If you want my view of the different kinds of media bias at play — and why the right is worse — this piece is a good overview. I make many distinctions. From a baseball fan:Are my ears playing tricks on me or did I just hear Chris Stirewalt attribute “Hit ‘em where they ain’t” to Pee Wee Reese? If I did hear this, it’s the worst piece of fake news this 72-year-old guy has heard on the Dishcast. Apparently that quote by Willie Keeler is commonly misattributed to Reese. Here’s one more clip from the Stirewalt pod — on why the cult of Trump is so strong:Staying on the topic of Trump, a reader dissents:I was not planning to send you a second scathing email in two weeks, but here we are. Your latest column on Trump was surreal. “Guys, a wildfire is about to burn down all these houses. This is bad! But you must admit, the fire is beautiful! Look at the gracefully leaping orange-golden flames. Such flair and energy! It speaks to something deep inside me, I remember sitting by a campfire as a kid …“But yes, the fire is bad, so we must fight it using this beat-up old fire truck. God, I hate the truck! It’s ugly and rusty, the paint is peeling, the engine makes a weird grinding noise, there’s a coffee stain on the driver’s seat. The truck is boring, just sitting there like a lump. No entertainment value at all! In a direct contrast between the fire and the truck, there will surely be some people who simply favor the shiny and pretty over the dull and old!“Anyway, uh, we ought to stop the fire before it burns down all these houses, so let’s get inside this crappy truck, which I hate, and go fight the fire… even though the fire is lovely and exciting and fun to look at…” (you gaze into the flames, their reflection dancing in your eyes)I wan to insert that gif of Cher slapping Nick Cage’s face in Moonstruck and yelling, “Snap out of it!” Yes, the fire truck certainly is beat-up and rusty, and I too wish for a newer and better model. But if you value the houses, and you recognize that they will burn unless enough people act, the right thing to say is, “Guys, let’s get in the truck and go put out the f**king fire!”My core political objective right now is avoiding a second Trump term. How much clearer can I get? My concern with the loony left is both substantive on the issues, but also rooted in my view that they are empowering Trump, not weakening him. Another reader quotes me:“Trump is more likely than not returning to the White House as of now.” No offense, but have you not been paying attention for the last two years?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comChris is a political analyst and author. He worked at Fox News for more than a decade until they fired him in the wake of the 2020 election, when he was part of the election team that accurately called Arizona for Biden. He’s now the politics editor for NewsNation and a contributing editor for The Dispatch. His new book is Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back. He’s also a blast.For two clips of our convo — on how the unbundling the news corrupted it, and why Trump voters can’t quit him — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Chris’ upbringing in West Virginia; working as a sports writer alongside “crabby profane smokers”; transitioning to local TV; my young days on Fleet Street; loud newsrooms and gossip at the pub; the benefits of news being bundled and magazines stapled; the unbundling force of the Internet; how blogs challenged and checked legacy journalists; covering the Iraq War; the demonization of the Clintons; some history of The Daily Dish (e.g. Palin); the perverse incentives of seeing stats on posts; how hatred drives the most traffic; losing readers to keep principles; the shift to social media; the loss of any gatekeeping; the roots of online tribalism; why Canadians and African-Americans are often the best comedians; Steve Kornacki’s The Red and the Blue; Russiagate; Trump’s rape case; Alvin Bragg’s blunder; Murdoch and Ailes; Shep Smith’s integrity; the social costs of political dissent; how cable news is designed for personality cults; Carlson and his firing by Fox News; Peretti and Denton; Ben Smith’s new book; and the 2024 election.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: Ben Smith on going viral, Tabia Lee on her firing as a DEI director, John Oberg on veganism, and Patrick Deneen on a post-liberal future. Send your guest recs and pod dissent to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comNigel Biggar is an Anglican priest, academic and writer. Formerly the Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford, he now directs the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics & Public Life and chairs the board of the UK’s Free Speech Union. The author of many books on ethics, his controversial new one is Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning.For two clips of our convo — debating what makes an empire worse than others, and whether the British started or just exploited the wars in their colonies — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: writing his book as a response to revisionism; the 1619 Project; the difficulty he had getting it published; the various motives of British colonialism and its slow development; how anti-slavery stemmed from the Enlightenment and Christianity; the colonists who fled poverty and religious persecution; the Irish Famine; the contempt and fear and racism toward native peoples; the natives who welcomed trade and protection; whether plagues were intentional or unavoidable; non-European empires and human sacrifice; the ubiquity of slavery throughout history; the unique evil of the transatlantic trade; maroons who kept slaves of their own; Zionism; the colonists who prized foreign cultures; the hypocrisy of British subjects in America exploiting natives; the Indian MP in the 1890s; Indians fighting alongside the British in WWII; the decolonized who embraced the liberal institutions of the Brits; the Chinese who fled communism for the colony of Hong Kong; the diversity of Boris’ cabinet; and the historic triumph of Rishi Sunak. 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: Tabia Lee on her firing as a DEI director, Chris Stirewalt on Fox and the MSM, 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.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!