The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

Shawn is a first-generation college grad working at the New York Times and just penned a popular op-ed on his own experience growing up in a culture of opioids in suburban Philly. A more detailed version of his story was published last summer in Liberties. It’s a moving account of a Millennial tragedy.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. For two clips of my conversation with Shawn — on how teen parties became a boring den of zombies; and on how the good intentions of Big Pharma took a reckless deadly turn — head over to our YouTube page.Meanwhile, many readers are responding to last week’s trans/detrans episode with Buck Angel and Helena Kerschner:I thought it was terrific! Buck is a character and Helena is warm and precocious. I had not heard of either of them beforehand, so I nearly skipped the episode. But after I began listening, I quickly appreciated their personalities; they are both open, non-dogmatic, friendly and cheerful. By the end of your discussion, I found myself really rooting for Helena and Buck. It is wonderful that they appear to be thriving despite the difficulties they’ve faced.Another reader was drawn to Buck in particular:Thanks for a particularly good Dishcast! I’m pretty damn close to a Kinsey six or whatever; I may admire women as beautiful and impressive humans, but they do NOTHING for me sexually. I like GUYS: the hairiness, the attitude, the pheromones, the works. Someone like Buck Angel DOES just resonate as a “guy” — the secondary characteristics and attitude matter a lot more than external genitalia. So I guess that’s where I differ from you: the dick, per se, does not make the man — attitude and presentation are far more important.  The problem I’ve run into has been that some super-cute trans otter-or-bear men who appeal immensely on visual/“GUY” terms, will then, almost immediately, if not preemptively, throw up a VERY hostile separatist-lesbian wall of critical theory about “I’m not interested if you’re just objectifying me/I’m not your experiment.” If objectification is oppression, then gay men are all dirty pigs! As a 34-years-out gay man, if someone is purporting to BE a gay man, well, isn’t objectification the whole bloody point?! All my 40-50-60ish cis-male gay pals are ALL about the friendly/brotherly gropey-fun objectification. It makes us all feel seen and appreciated in a low key kind of way.Needless to say, I’ve had little luck with the FTM community, at least the young ‘uns. But it’s the antithesis of truth to say that’s because I’m Transphobic.On the other hand, I do get it: That kind of gropey-fun attitude for either straight/cis women or, apparently, for anyone whose youngest formative years were as equipped with female organs and hormones, is problematic, to say the least. And I’m glad you kinda pointed that out: There is a BIG biological divergence here.All of this just makes me REALLY appreciate a guy like Buck, who’s clearly a guy we would all just like to hang out with, and fool around with, as one of the guys. He did it utterly by himself so long ago, not in any Boomer-parent-coddled cocoon or with any internet echo chambers of satirically Orwellian social theory. He’s just … a GUY.Next up, a cis woman brings to bear her experience with hormone therapy:I had stage III ovarian cancer at age 33 and now don’t have ovaries and have been on hormone replacement for the past seven years. If a trans person told me they had gotten surgery or taken hormones, I would support them because I don’t think it’s my place to tell another adult what to do. However, if they asked my opinion on whether to get surgery or take hormones, my answer would be absolutely not.I know that some people might benefit from hormone treatment, as I do. But I know better than anyone the complexity of dealing with hormone changes. And when it comes to elective surgery, that’s just about the dumbest thing a person could ever do. Celebrating the fact that children are doing this is insanity.Over the years, I’ve found myself  wandering into conversations where people get very angry at me for sharing my opinions. For example, my brother flipped out on me for saying that I think many of these young people would benefit from not having medical interventions and working toward accepting themselves as they are, however they happen to be, even if this isn’t their preferred gender. Yes, they might feel they “are” another gender, but isn’t it an even higher plane of being to just accept whatever you are and try to be healthy? I still feel like a woman even though my female organs have been removed and I have no natural estrogen/progesterone and went into menopause as a young adult, then back out of menopause on hormone treatment. Losing those hormones didn’t change who I am. It did, however, make me appreciate being healthy and being sane. A hormone upheaval makes you feel neither of these things. I take hormone treatment now (as small of doses as possible) to try to reduce the physical symptoms of menopause. I look at parents championing their children’s needless surgeries and experimental hormone treatments in disbelief.Another incident that gave me pause: A colleague had her husband suddenly tell her he was trans and that he was leaving her. Everyone in the community, including at their children’s school, was applauding him for his choice. I would see her at work walking around sadly, like a ghost, no one caring about her. I remarked to someone, “Why is he cheered for leaving his family, but a straight man would be criticized for this? Why is being trans in this special category where you can’t criticize any action a trans person takes?” At the time, I had been married for six months. I said, “Would you applaud my husband if he’d announced today that actually he is trans and he’s leaving me?” They looked momentarily conflicted and then remembered to double-down on their stupid ideology and told me yes, and got still more agitated. Then I got the lecture on how he would be getting to be his “real self”, so I should be happy for him.I fully support anyone doing what is best for them, but does being one gender or another need to define your very existence? Does it belong above every other priority and every other consideration? As someone who has faced cancer and infertility as a young woman, I would say not. I have always wanted to have children. Therefore, I guess you could say that the “real me” is someone who is fertile. But I’m not. The funny thing is, accepting things as they are is a wonderful thing and can be very freeing. After my cancer, I found my husband and this year we had a son. Yes, my baby wasn’t created the natural way, but I wouldn’t change anything now and I accept the way my life has gone. My body is scarred; I have permanent nerve damage; I have no lymph nodes in my torso; my hormone treatments carry unknown risks; and I think I might be getting osteoporosis — and I’m just 41 years old. The “real me” that I feel I am inside wouldn’t have any of these problems. I believe I can say I know what it’s like to feel your body should be different. But yet, cancer has taken that away and I am still completely me, if I’m willing to accept myself.Thank you so much for the Dish. I recently discovered it and am so grateful to you for your work. As my husband says, “We expected the dogma to come from the right, but now it’s coming from the left.” It sometimes feels like everyone has gone crazy, and you have made me feel so much less alone!Here’s a dissent from a “long-time reader since your blog was purple”:I’m a middle-aged bisexual male married to a middle-aged trans woman. We’ve been together for 19 years and I was her boyfriend even before she transitioned (being bisexual comes in handy that way).First I’d like to say that if you’re going to have these big league discussions about trans people, you really should be better informed about all trans adjacent topics. You owe it to your audience to read all the major trans studies and know them by name, talk with endocrinologists, talk to SRS surgeons, understand all about intersex conditions, the SRY gene, the sex organ homologies, the stages of body and mind sex differentiation, and know trans pharmacology and youth impact inside and out. You should know more about these things than a nerdy 17-year-old trans girl with a dozen browser tabs open every night, but the reality is that you don’t. You’re going to tell me you’re trying, but you’re not trying hard enough. (I almost unsubbed forever after the American College of Pediatricians / American Academy of Pediatricians screwup.) Maybe your audience can’t tell that you’re phoning it in, but I can — which pains me to say about someone who’s often moved me to tears about the nuances of the gay experience. You also dug into ALL the messy specific details around abortion, as well as the Arab Spring, on your blog. Do it again for trans people if you’re going to keep doing this.I won’t b******t you: youth trans healthcare is a zero-sum harm reduction/application game. Either you cause some harm to the gay-but-confused-not-trans kid by mistakenly delaying their puberty until 16 and then HRT, or you cause harm to the actually-trans-girl by forcing her to endure permanent masculinizing features (hands, feet, height, frame, hips...) that may cause her to be permanently clocked (and often discriminated against) as a trans woman for the rest of her life. This zero sum is undeniable. The healthcare industry and the WPATH SOC 7 generally has a high bar for determining fitness but obviously lax (and often low-income) clinics with good intentions can pave the road to hell. You go to war against the healthcare system you have, as Rumsfeld never said. The vectors of harm are not the same for MTF vs FTM kids (and those clinically mistaken for them). It may even be the case that the solutions and risks and age determinations for MTF vs FTM should be different. Only the data and the analysis can tell you that. I’ll bring up one point you haven’t touched on, that you should: You can’t keep young trans people from hormones. You act as if many corners of the internet like this one don’t exist: https://www.reddit.com/r/TransDIY. You don’t even need pre-paid debit cards anymore, since many sites that deliver meds will take crypto as payment.The worst case: ubiquitous birth control pills. One trip to Planned Parenthood with a cis girl friend and you have them. This is the standard way that trans women with no resources in poorer parts of the world feminize themselves, in Thailand (katoey), India (hijra/kinnar), Indonesia (waria), Mexico (muxe), etc.Does birth control (ethinylestradiol) have major blood clot health risks if you’re not suppressing T? Yes. Will the desperate-to-transition people give a f**k? Not really. Does it work? So/So, but when you’re a trans girl who hates that you look like a “brick”, it works wonders for taking the edge of dysphoria. Risks be damned. My wife took birth control pills during puberty, because she was trans, poor and desperate, and it was a different time. She’s glad she did. I wish she didn’t have to.As always, I’m grateful for my reader’s insights. I have to say, though, that his conditions for even entering a public debate on a tricky subject — you need to have read everything in the literature cold before you even dare to write a word — is unrealistic in a democracy. We all get to have a say. We can’t all be masters of every subject. And in my defense, I think we’ve covered a huge range of issues connected to the trans debate, both on Substack and the old Dish, before the topic was trendy — and I’m committed to doing more. And I’m always open to readers’ sharing their knowledge and opinions.And one of the first things that reader suggests I do, “talk with endocrinologists”, is happening soon: Carole Hooven, who teaches behavioral endocrinology at Harvard, has agreed to join the Dishcast. And regarding “all about intersex conditions”, we have Alice Dreger on our short list. Julie Bindel is recording next week. Thanks for all the guest recommendations so far — including Natalie Wynn and Justin Vivian Bond — and please keep them coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.Lastly, a reader makes a semantic point:When it comes to your “Trans Proposal In The Trans Wars,” I respectfully suggest you use “reasonable accommodation” rather than “compromise”? It sounds better.When I referred to “the trans question” on Twitter, many people claimed I was comparing it to “the Jewish question” and thus the Final Solution. Oy. For the record, I constantly referred to “the gay question” in all the years I pushed for and debated marriage equality. 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

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 22-year-old 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.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). Read the full transcript here. To hear four excerpts from my conversation with Buck and Helena — 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 — head over to our YouTube page.This episode is part of an ongoing Dishcast 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 two happily transitioned and brilliant women, Dana Beyer and Mara Keisling, both of whom pushed back against my views, with followup debate led by readers here and here. More to come. I have tried to get today’s more typical trans activists on the show, but they won’t respond to my emails. If you know a trans person both committed to the full-on trans position and willing to enter dialogue with a critic, please get in touch: dish@andrewsullivan.com.Here are some pieces we mentioned in this week’s conversation:* Helena’s tweeted photos showing her social worker assessment. “This took less than 30 min and cleared me to take testosterone w/ no blood work or further assessment,” she writes. She also points to “Tweets with my medical records showing that I was prescribed testosterone (at an unusually high dose) with no blood work on the first visit.”* “Gender identity is hard but jumping to medical solutions is worse,” an Economic piece written by Carey Callahan, a detrans woman, about her experience working at a clinic in California (not Chicago, as Helena put it)* A 9-year-old trans kid asking Elizabeth Warren a question at a televised town hall (not a 6 year old, as I mistakenly said)* “When Sons Become Daughters, Part III: Parents of Transitioning Boys Speak Out on Their Own Suffering,” the latest in an ongoing series by Quillette.* “The He Hormone”, my 2000 NYT Magazine piece on testosteroneMentioned in the main Dish today, here’s the full story from the reader who “recently lost my 21-year-old mentally ill, heroin-addicted, trans nephew whom I raised during his teen years”: As a young girl, my niece literally had no friends and couldn’t find her way in the world. Incredibly smart, beautiful, and funny, she was a lost soul and couldn’t make sense of her life. There was so much mental illness in her family, including her parents. In high school, she founded the Equality Alliance Club and became fascinated by the trans kids. Pretty soon, I found boy’s underwear in her laundry. We had a talk and I got her in therapy. From there, things moved way too fast and before I knew it, her mom okayed testosterone treatment — like six months into the process. It just didn’t fit the kid I knew. And he never found happiness and ended up addicted and homeless.I appreciate your thoughtful analysis of this important issue. Anything under the age of 18 needs to be dealt with slowly and carefully and definitely with second opinions.From another parental figure:Thank you so much for “A Truce Proposal in the Trans War.” As the parent of a 20 year old who identifies as trans male, I can say that so much of your piece perfectly resonates with my observations — I may just reference it directly when asked, “What do you think?”  For me, the trans identity, or any feelings of non-alignment with externally defined gender designations, has never been an issue. My wife and I adore our son, as he is, and support him any way we can, no strings attached. We are fully supportive of him constructing his own life, defined as he wishes. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean we are required to agree with every one of his decisions. Because of the ideological forces you describe in your article, our thoughts on gender issues are not requested or welcomed. We are always under threat of being lumped in with people who are cruel or indifferent in the type of catch-all thinking you describe — either believe it all or be ostracized to the sideline. Our son is brilliant (quite literally) and has always been extremely independent. However, no amount of raw intelligence or independence can substitute for the wisdom of age and, importantly, the final maturation of the brain. This latter idea — brain maturation — is where I have a minor dissent from your piece.You laudably attempt to distinguish between the experiments we perform on children and those that adults choose to perform on themselves. You follow the societally determined age of adulthood as being the critical line. However, you are also attempting to ground your thinking in real science, and I suspect you have only acquiesced to 18 for convenience. The age of 18 is far from being a useful determinant of adulthood or final maturation. In fact, current research suggests that the human brain finishes maturing somewhere around 25 years old. (Here’s just one popular article.)What’s still happening between the ages of 18 and 25? Critically, it’s the development of the prefrontal cortex which regulates behaviors related to risk and long-term planning, to name two key areas. Those seem sort of important here.So I am primarily concerned with medical interventions, such as hormone therapy and permanent alterations (e.g., breast removal), made prior to final maturation of the brain — and 18 has no actual basis in science. Cultures vary in where they draw these lines, while the biology couldn’t care less.I do not have the expertise to define the “right” age, nor do I even feel like there is a perfect age for all individuals. If we admit that there are both genuine trans and trans curious individuals (even that objectively true statement is begging for a fight), and we acknowledge our extreme ignorance about the long-term impacts of some procedures, isn’t genuine caution warranted here? Don’t we have an adult responsibility to retain some stake in the conversation after our child suddenly and instantly becomes an adult on their 18th birthday?As it stands, my wife and I chose not to fight or attempt to interfere in our “adult” (now 20) child’s health decisions. We were essentially hostages in this non-negotiation, with only two choices: maintain a relationship or not. So instead of being partners in our kid’s heath-care choices, we are sideline observers who can’t help think that one day a host of negative health repercussions will emerge and our son will rightfully ask, “Where the f**k were you?” Good question.Yet another parent is very relunctant to allow their child to seek hormone therapy or more:I am a mid-40s, straight, white, Christian, conservative male with a wife and two children. However, I like to think of myself as fairly open minded and the rest of my extended family would tell you that I’m over-the-edge liberal.My oldest child, a 15 year old who was born female, recently told us that they were self-harming and needed help. We immediately sought crisis intervention, therapy, and psychiatry.  During therapy they let us know that they were trans. They also let us know that their boyfriend was cis female and in the process of transitioning.My wife and I have known our child their entire life and we know them well enough to know they can’t decide whether or not they like hot dogs (true story, it switches every couple months). We know that there is a strong possibility that this is due to influence from a group of friends who all identify as trans but have accepted our child into their circle. We don’t know if our child is truly trans or not, but we do know they are not in a good place to make life-altering decisions. Of course, the counterargument is that if we allow hormone therapy, the depression may go away. It could — or it could get worse. I often wonder if I am being overly Christian conservative with all this, even though we have allowed the name change, clothing style change, hair change, etc.  In years to come, we will know whether or not we have made the correct decision. It may be that our child is truly trans and we have delayed their happiness a few years and will be hated because of it or it may go the other way. Either way we will always love our child and are doing our very best to parent from a position of live and to teach them that no matter what, love others and everything else will work out.Another reader suggests that waiting until early adulthood to transition better enables certain trans people to still have children:I am a post-op transwoman in a second marriage to a woman, and also a parent and grandparent. (I also have a partially completed Master of Research with a focus of transgender health care.) So the question of fertility for trans people has a personal resonance for me because I cannot imagine myself not being a parent. I cannot imagine needing to make a choice between transition and having children, when in my mid twenties and even later. But then I am an older transitioner and an early Boomer, so there was nothing available in the airwaves or in popular print media in the ‘60s about gender identity or transitioning.This next reader also touches on the topic of fertility and makes several other interesting points:Many people ignore a huge elephant in the room as to why some trans people are unable to pass. It isn’t simply because they aren’t allowed to transition early enough; it’s that gender dysphoria, especially for many trans women, doesn’t appear until sometime around puberty when changes are already happening. This is in the DSM — the distinction is drawn between early onset and late onset gender dysphoria, since different people experience dysphoria for different reasons. Trans activists hate this theory, because apparently the characteristics of early onset dysphoria in children assigned male at birth correlates strongly with other kids who are not trans and grow up to be cis gay males, whereas the characteristics of late onset dysphoria in teens assigned male at birth correlates strongly with heterosexual cis men who have an erotic or romantic cross-dressing fantasy. The explosive nature of that “two types” model, and especially the second type, is what led to the harassment of scientists by trans activists that was documented in Alice Dreger’s book, Galileo’s Middle Finger.Accordingly, there isn’t actually any solution where if we “catch” gender dysphoria early enough, everyone is going to be able to transition before puberty and pass. In fact, many people don’t get dysphoria until puberty and it doesn't reach the point when they want to transition until far later in life, when the dysphoria becomes so intense that they decide they need to become the woman that they love so much and fantasize about. In addition to the DSM, you can find the data backing up these claims in the scholarship of Ray Blanchard, Michael Bailey, Debra Soh, and others.The folks who are driving this activist train are mostly late onset gender dysphoria trans women. They are people who (1) identify as women and (2) are themselves unable to bear children. The fact that these people have a very different life story than the teens they are advocating for is a real problem. They are speaking for teenage trans boys who have the capability to bear or breastfeed children and who might very much regret such a sacrifice later in life. If you take reproductive ability away from someone who later wants to bear a child, that has to be traumatic. You think Keira Bell isn’t suffering trauma?When I got a vasectomy, at age 25, I was required to fill out all sorts of forms by the HMO and assure several doctors that I was making an intelligent decision and understood I was giving up my ability to have children. And that’s despite the fact that vasectomies are often reversible!None of that is an argument against medical transition for people who really need it. But it underscores how folks are demanding that teenagers be able to rush into medical transitions that have serious long-term consequences of the sort that doctors traditionally felt required a great deal of guidance even when the patients were adults.Also, I am so sick of the talking point that we don’t debate or compromise people’s human rights. The Civil Rights statutes of the 1960s were filled with compromises — they didn’t apply to the smallest businesses, for instance. Thurgood Marshall NEVER said “I don’t have to debate my human rights.” He did it, all the time, for decades.This isn’t because we’re all a bunch of racists and transphobes. It’s because (1) you have to convince people who don’t agree with you or have doubts; and (2) there are some competing interests involved. There were even competing interests involved in race discrimination — we ultimately, as a society, decided that the freedom to refuse to associate with Blacks had to yield. But the argument was made, and it was defeated on its merits. Sex discrimination laws had to make accommodations for single-sex schools. Masterpiece Cakeshop doesn’t have to bake wedding cakes for gay couples because of the owner’s religious beliefs. We balance these interests.This position of “I don’t have to debate or negotiate” is just a convenient excuse to never have to deal with dissent. And I would argue that it, rather than scientists who study ROGD or pundits like you who try to seek compromises, is a much bigger threat to trans rights. Because if trans activists never debate or negotiate, you get more transphobic legislation like the bathroom bills and sports bills we’ve been seeing. There’s no way any movement can get everything it wants without hearing contrary views and persuading people and, yes, sometimes compromising. The alternative isn’t a clean victory — it’s defeat.Our in-tray is always open for more debate and dialogue and personal stories: dish@andrewsullivan.com. 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

Nick is the supremely talented reporter at the Washington Post covering immigration and DHS, and before that he was a foreign correspondent based in Mexico City and Havana. We tried to break down what is actually happening on the Southern border, and how likely it is to get exponentially worse.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. To hear three excerpts from my conversation with Nick — on how the U.S. got to “kids in cages” under Trump; on the cruelty of letting in migrants without any support; and how basically no one who enters the U.S. illegally gets deported — head over to our YouTube page. Here is the full long dissent from our main post today:I think you’re becoming a curmudgeon. In your episode with Emily Yoffe and your post on “queer”, you negate any possibility of conceiving of a group of people who are either L, or G, or B, or T, or any of the other sometimes-associated letters. The notion that this group is nonexistent is silly. Here are the characteristics common to the people you want to say have nothing in common:* We don’t conform to the expectations today’s culture has for persons of our gender, whatever that may be. Men aren’t supposed to be attracted to men. Women aren’t supposed to be attracted to women. No one is supposed to be attracted to more than one gender. Everyone is supposed to feel like the gender of their biological sex. I first heard this described as “gender-nonconformity” by — guess who? — a gay man. * Because of the above, or for other reasons, we experience mental and emotional issues at higher rates than the general population. Maybe we’ve experienced homophobia by others. Worse, most of us have experienced homophobia or transphobia from ourselves. * Our childhoods were generally marked by stresses due to our nonconformity that other children didn’t experience. * Many of us have to make a life’s work of reaffirming our own worth in spite of the fact that we’re different from most of the culture. * We can each potentially find support from other non-conforming individuals, even if they are different from the general culture in different ways than we are. I could think of others, but that’s enough for now. If a group can be said to be a collection of individuals that share common characteristics, of course there’s a group here. So there must be a word of some kind for it. Sure, raise the alarm against CRT if you want. Fine. Personally, I think this also speaks to your own experience more than logic. You (understandably) like the idea of the community that gay men represent to you, so don’t muddy the waters by broadening the group. It’s meant something to you to have that community. But this is both/and. It’s true that the community of gay men, or even the individual experience of gay men, is not the same as other communities. I know that as a bisexual man. Polls indicate that the numbers of bisexuals is higher than the numbers of either lesbians or gay men. And we commonly report that we feel both that we are like and unlike lesbians and gay men. That’s been my experience—gay/not-gay, but most certainly not straight.I do agree with you that straight people should not identify with groups they don’t belong in. It’s trendy to be “queer,” but it’s insincere signaling. But what I’d like to know, Andrew, is what word you’d allow me to use to describe broadly the group I belong in, beyond just bisexual (a word that carries an awful lot of stigma)? I used to say “LGBT” or “LGBTQ,” but now I’m to understand that those aren’t available for use. And God forbid I call myself “queer.” Learning from other “rainbow people” has helped me learn about myself. Being supported by them, and supporting them, has helped me heal. So I do identify as [Andrew-approved word]. Can you please help me out here? This is a great question. I’ll think some more on it, but here’s my instant thought. Many kids feel isolated from their peers because they don’t quite fit in with crude gender stereotypes — and that includes many more straight than gay kids. Feelings of lack of self-worth are universal. Non-conformity is so vast a grouping you could fit countless non-gay and non-trans people in it. And feeling you are the opposite sex is completely different than being comfortable with your sex and gender and seeking similar. When persecution was intense, there was a reason to group similarly challenged groups. I’m not so sure that endures. The vast differences between gay and lesbian culture — vive la difference — are greater than those between men and gay men or between women and lesbians. Why do we need a collective noun at all? After listening to our episode with Emily Yoffe, a reader makes a provocative argument:The Title IX guidelines for sexual harassment use the phrase “unwelcome conduct”. What to make of this? Each victim may have her own idea of what is “unwelcome”, but on the whole it distinguishes the right sort of people from the wrong sort, creating yet another way to punish members of the unfavored group. This is not just the well-known historically persecuted groups — how many black men were lynched for showing “unwanted advances”? — but men who are undesirable in other ways as well: too short, too fat, too ugly, socially inept.The world is already tilted against you if you’re unattractive. You’re less likely to get economic opportunities and more likely to be blamed or accused of wrongdoing. Now with “unwelcome conduct”, the discrimination is written explicitly into the rules. After all, who is unwelcome? If popular handsome guy says “Wow, you look great in that sweater”, that’s a compliment, but if ugly autistic guy says the same thing, he’s a creep. Which one is guilty of sexual harassment?This is what college women want: They want icky guys to not talk to them. This tool is helping them achieve that, so in that sense the system is working. We’ve codified “she’s out of your league”.Another reader conveys the transcendence he has felt as an atheist:The podcast has been a welcome addition to an already crowded slate of content providers. E.g., from where else in the US could I have gotten that perspective on Boris Johnson? Or a difficult but seemingly honest take on campus due process? Kudos.Your latest column on religion, though, provoked more than just the usual mix of agreements and dissents. Simply put, I think atheism can offer people much of what you find in religion — and I say this as a former Catholic.When I was about 6, I would scrawl out homilies and deliver them from the hearth in my parents’ living room, my junior-sized bathrobe belt draped around my neck as a priestly stole … the epic stories of the Bible, the grandeur of the shared ritual, the togetherness of the enterprise. I’m not sure what drew me to the church so strongly, but I was quite enamored with it. And despite the presence of an eventually outed pedophile in my parish, I never saw even a moment of ugliness in my family’s first church.A half-dozen years later, as my Confirmation neared, my perspective differed: I couldn’t shake the nagging worry that for all my sense of wonderment, I was being required to give away something precious. In eighth grade, I was only beginning to realize the power of reading, inquiry, and criticism; and the prescribed nature of Catholicism suddenly felt stifling.When my mom asked who I might want as a Confirmation sponsor, I realized I couldn’t co-opt other people into what had become a charade. The Bible’s interwoven mix of genuine lessons and absurd fairy tales became quaint and laughable. True revelation came from history books, science labs, and even arguing with friends around the lunch table. Atheism brought me a freedom and encouragement to explore. Not only was there no longer a specified viewpoint or answer, it seemed clear there are usually multiple viewpoints and possibly no answers. Any examined life — one that is not necessarily or merely atheistic but intellectually vibrant — is content with a lack of clarity. Much as your Christian faith seems to provide a respite from exigence of daily struggles, so too does the obviousness that many answers won’t come in my lifetime — but that they are nonetheless there, eventually revealed by a mix of inquiry and some good luck.Surely you know that for every Andrew Sullivan who, after reciting the Lord’s Prayer, extols the virtues of the Enlightenment, there are plenty of Christians staring through the altar with dead eyes, executing a series of programmatic religious commands. And for every curious, well-travelled, unorthodox Christopher Hitchens, whom you evoked, there are legions of atheists whose dogma is mined from reflexive cynicism and bad sociology books cycling through the Times best-seller list.You live an examined life, as did Hitchens. Ostensibly, then, you two had far more in common with one another than either of you might have with a Catholic or atheist plucked from a random street corner. Indeed, what percentage of remaining American Christians share your willingness to separate your intellectual life from your spiritual life rather than make the former subservient to the latter?When you say, “I couldn’t say exactly how this counter-rational aspect of my life affects the rest of me, but it definitely stabilizes things,” I deeply hope all people find that same balance. Several friends from my Catholic days continue to find it in their faiths, and I’m glad it’s available to them to pray together when a congregant is ill or to bring a general sense of order to this year’s chaos.Organized religions, however, are difficult to make compatible with pluralism and inquiry, and those are also values we desperately need. Indeed, I think the stabilizing benefits religion brings you personally only extend to society if its members are also willing to live life by the liberal values you also espouse: engagement with differing views, respectful disagreement, open inquiry, respect for empiricism, admitting when one is demonstrably wrong, understanding one’s own ignorance, et cetera. Or put another way, to show wisdom.Speaking on the coalescing of people into political cults, you write, “[These pseudo-religions] lack the one thing that endures in religious practice: something transcendent that makes the failure in our lives redemptive, and sees politics merely as the necessary art of attending to the imperfect.” I know you were not putting atheism and religion in direct contrast, but to my mind, an atheist living an examined life needs a respect for a scientific approach, a step on an imperfect quest toward enlightenment that will stretch far beyond our lifetimes. That sounds quite a bit like what you see in religious practice. One can find transcendence and mystery to remind us of the cosmic insignificance of an average day all around us: In the pages of the Bible, sure, but also in the pages of A Brief History of Time.Perhaps you’re right that we’ll miss religion. But I’m hopeful that many of your non-religious virtues (and Hitchens’) can bring us the same humility and wisdom you see in religion.I’m deeply grateful for this perspective, and respect it intensely. Since Hitch has joined the great Flying Spaghetti Monster in the sky, a reader suggests another atheist for the Dishcast: I’m not sure if this is realistic, but given the relationship over the years between you and Bill Maher, I think there are a series of topics where the two of you are likely to push at each other in a lively manner that would challenge both of you — and be quite enlightening for listeners. As someone who listens to both of you, trusts your independent thought, and appreciates that I will often disagree with you quite strongly, I think exploring the areas where you disagree in a format that is longer than the snippets that his show permits would be interesting. I empathize with both of your views on religion — with him, in the sense of the purposeful suspension of rational thought being at the root of much human harm; with you, in the sense that the lack of direction from a moral compass for people has devolved at times into political fervor that is just as bad as the worst of religion, except without the moral component. There’s probably more agreement than disagreement, but I think you could challenge each other.But regardless, I think that insofar as you’ve gotten some feedback to interrupt less or talk a little bit less, one alternative way of addressing that is to invite someone like Bill on who may push back at you pretty hard on some things. It may not be his cup of tea, but it’s something that I know many mutual fans would cherish and want to hear more than just once.Another good guest — but I’m less sure of your connection here — would be Michael Lewis, who I similarly find to be a thoughtful but independent thinker.Michael is an old friend and that’s a fantastic suggestion. Bill? I imagine he’s pretty busy, but I take your point. I guess it can’t hurt to ask. 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

Emily has been the most fearless reporter on the fraught subject of sexual assault and due process on college campuses, first for Slate and then The Atlantic. She also wrote a hilarious book about a beagle, What the Dog Did.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or just below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. To listen to three excerpts from my conversation with Emily — on the Democrats’ selective defense of due process; on a culture of fear on the left; and on the need for journalists to be misfits and malcontents — head over to our YouTube page.A reader looks back to last week’s Dishcast:Loved the episode with Tim Shipman — not least because of the effortless switching of your attentions back and forth across the Pond. But only an hour?? I could have listened all afternoon ... Same for this reader:As someone whose grandparents emigrated to the US from Ireland, and one who has no interest in Brexit or Boris Johnson, I was surprised how much I enjoyed your podcast with Tim Shipman and in fact was disappointed it was shorter than your other podcasts. I would have liked to hear more from him, particularly his thoughts on Trump, wokeness, and the future of the US media.What was most refreshing was to hear a man whose success and competency as a newsman is based on his knowledge and experience rather than his intersectionality and his related “story”. I can’t imagine anyone having a political discussion like you two had with Maggie Haberman or Jim Acosta — or anyone in the US White House press corp. And Shipman’s gravitas and dignity stand in stark contrast to our young woke writers. Comparing Shipman’s thoughtfulness to Olivia Nuzzi’s profane snarky tone makes clear how young people in the media today — brought up on Twitter — have a long way to go to develop the type of world-view that will allow them to do the type of quality reporting Shipman does. The most important thing I got out of your discussion was how different Trump and Johnson are. Whatever else Johnson may be, he is obviously a bright, well-educated man — something you cannot say about Trump. You can see how Johnson survives to fight another day and Trump is banished to Mar-a-Lago. It also makes clear that if Trump was just a little smarter and less thin-skinned, we would be in his second term right now.A reader in Ireland found the episode wanting:Great piece with Tim, but I’m really surprised neither of you talked about the Irish Border. This became the thorniest issue in Brexit (because of the hard Brexiteers) and exposed Johnson not just as a liar (ask the DUP — no border in the Irish sea), but also as reckless when dealing with the Good Friday Agreement, the most successful piece of conflict resolution arguably anywhere in many years. I live one mile from the Border with Northern Ireland, so the issue was very real for me and many others on this island. Johnson is devoid of real principle, although he has buckets of charm, which makes him wholly untrustworthy and also, ironically, a real danger to the UK union, having left the European one. Anyway, very few British people “get” Ireland (North or South). But aren’t you, Andrew, Irish?Sorry for that omission. Yes, Boris lied. It’s what he does. And I don’t think he ever really thought through the Irish dimension of Brexit. Another reader remarks, “I really loved this episode, and I hope we get to learn more about non-American politics and personalities.” Always open to suggestions: dish@andrewsullivan.com. Many readers have been recommending Bryan Caplan:After reading your latest column on immigration (which was excellent as usual), I’m wondering if you’ve had a chance to read Caplan’s book Open Borders. It’s a fun and easy read, so I would recommend doing so if you haven’t. I think he makes a strong case for open borders and while I would not go as far as to endorse the position, he definitely nudged me in his direction.This reader recognizes Mickey’s total aversion to b******t:I was gratified to see Mickey Kaus on the podcast. You two were the first bloggers I followed way back when. Oddly, I was about to send a recommendation that you invite him when he magically appeared. Substack has fulfilled my subliminal wish. MK is one of the clearest social welfare policy thinkers around and is incapable of political posturing.I agree. And hilarious. Another reader digs deep into the issues he and I explored:I enjoyed listening to the podcast with Mickey Kaus. You were both so rational and fair that you didn’t piss me off as much as thought you might because I have strong feelings about “welfare”. For the past 25 years, I have worked as a mental health counselor for a community agency in the Cleveland area. All of my clients, most of them women (white, black, and Latino) are low income (or to use Mickey’s term, “on the dole”). I don’t know how many hundreds of people I have worked with over the years, but I have never met a Welfare Queen. Nobody “on the dole” lives comfortably, unless they are lucky enough to have extended family to add to their support, or are also involved in some illegal activity — but that’s not comfortable. If they don’t work, it is not because the government is giving them so much money that they don’t have to.Poverty is a trap that is very difficult, nearly impossible, to escape these days. Only “the fittest survive” and somehow work their way up to a living wage. Mickey and others say that statistics prove that Clinton’s Welfare Reform was a success, but I guess I just saw the people who didn’t succeed. I wonder how many former welfare recipients under Clinton earned a LIVING WAGE.From my perspective on the ground, the “doles” available to those who qualify are: food stamps, Ohio Medicaid (pays my salary!), Section 8 or public housing, reduced rates for utilities, and day care subsidies. You have to work. You can get an earned income tax credit once a year. Your income must be very low to qualify for any of these “benefits”, and it’s as time consuming and stressful as working a full-time job to maneuver the bureaucratic nightmare to quality. In the Cleveland area, the waiting lists to get housing assistance is about five years, and then you have to win in the housing lottery. The average low-rent apartment is $700 to $900 a month, which is very difficult to manage if you have a minimum wage job and are only earning about $1000 a month. If you get behind in rent, you get evicted, and this makes it so much harder to get another apartment unless you can find an unscrupulous landlord who will forgo the credit check, but will never make repairs.Food stamps are rarely enough, so you supplement at food banks. It takes months to get a day care voucher and you have to have a job before you can get one, so you better have child care while you are waiting for the voucher so you can keep the job that you need to get the voucher. Then there’s the problem of getting to work if you have a job. Public transportation in the greater Cleveland area is anything but convenient. I have clients who take several buses and over an hour to get to my office, even if they live only a few miles away. Most try to get cheap cars (usually with their tax refund), but they always have to pay many times what the car is worth because their credit is poor. When the cars die, which they inevitably do, they have to miss work and are likely to lose their job. Often, the car is repossessed before it dies because they can’t afford the ridiculous payments. If you lose your job, you have to start all over again. But your work record looks bad because you can’t keep a job very long. So it is harder to find a job. If you are a single mom with a couple of kids (and it is a rare single mom who has more than two kids, unlike the stereotype that they are having lots of kids so they can get more money “on the dole”), it is very unlikely you are getting any child support because the fathers aren’t faring any better. The men often have children with different mothers and there is no incentive for them to work because their income goes to these women “who are screwing them over.”      So the men work under the table if they can. Many of them have criminal records for minor crimes (drug offenses), which also makes getting employment more difficult. The good factory jobs with union wages for unskilled middle-class men that were plentiful during the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s began to go away in the ‘80s, and Cleveland became part of the Rust Belt. Now, as the Trump base knows well, “all the jobs went to China.”So now Biden’s Recovery Act is going to give families $350 or $250 a month per child with no strings attached. (For a year, anyway.) You may think that these people don’t deserve the help and we can’t afford it (unlike the “job creators” who “needed” tax cuts that were supposed to provide my clients with such great jobs that THEY wouldn’t need government assistance). Or you may think that the money will discourage them from working.  But I see it differently. With that money, maybe they CAN work and be more productive. Maybe they can use it to pay their rent so they don’t end up with their kids in a homeless shelter if they don’t have a supportive family. Maybe they will use it to make payments on a GOOD car that won’t die a month after they buy it. Maybe they will be able to keep a job if they have reliable transportation. Maybe they will use it for child care, or if they are lucky enough to live with a partner who has a “working class” (low paying usually) job, they won’t have to go to work, also, and can care for their young children themselves and give them a good start in life. Yes, some of my clients will blow the money on some immediate gratification luxury. But if you can meet your basic needs month after month, because you can add this child subsidy money to the inadequate amount that you have been able to earn through working your low-paying job, you can begin to understand how to use money more carefully. If you never have enough money and you are always robbing Peter to pay Paul, you can’t learn to spend it wisely.My impressions are “anecdotal,” a compilation of the same stories that I have heard over and over again for 25 years. Poverty keeps my clients and their children depressed, anxious, traumatized, more susceptible to substance abuse, violence, etc. Money would be far more useful than therapy in most cases. It’s about time we started valuing children more than corporations and the wealthy. I’m for any plan that will raise families out of poverty. We need to reform welfare reform. My work has taught me that nothing is black and white, people are extremely complicated. I am not a left-wing socialist, or a bleeding heart “privileged elite” white person trying to assuage my guilt. I have to be a realist. And I applaud Biden’s agenda that is helping the poor and middle class and I think they are doing it the right way.  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

Tim is simply the best political reporter in Britain. He’s their Bob Woodward, but he can also actually write. His two books, Fall Out, and All Out War, are indispensable to understanding the politics of Brexit. He knows the Westminster political class as well as anyone. In this episode, we talk about Boris Johnson’s astonishing luck and charm, as well as the Labour Party’s floundering. For three clips of our conversation — on the Tory leader’s knack for winning over the working class; on his and Brexit’s vindication over the vaccine; and on whether the monarchy might not survive the death of Her Majesty — pop over to our YouTube page. You can listen to the whole episode in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. If you want to understand how the politics of the UK helps us understand the politics of the US right now, have a listen. We had a blast.Looking back to last week’s episode on welfare and immigration in the US, a reader writes:I enjoyed your conversation with Mickey Kaus immensely. I realized I’ve never understood these generational shifts and counter-shifts in government policy emphasis, and that if that’s the case, the vast majority of voters don’t, either. I take issue with one comment, though. Biden has, in fact, harped so incessantly on the “dignity of work” that it invited blowback during his campaign. Do not confuse the activist position with Biden’s. He is the President, and I do not see his acceding to any assistance policy that doesn’t support work. My understanding of even the the child credits argument is that it supports day care, so the parent(s) can work!A sharper dissent comes from this reader:Can you just stop it with the “The Media is monolithically behind Biden” — it’s so lazy and obviously false. Is Fox News behind Biden? NY Post? Washington Examiner? National Review? Townhall.com? Sinclair? Washington Times? Wall Street Journal? Ann Coulter / Hannity in their talk shows? Or are they not part of the media?I get that you had a bad experience with NY Mag and you don’t like Charles Blow, but time to move on and look the world as it is — not some caricature.Over to immigration, another dissent:It’s such a fear-mongering narrative to spin immigration as a conspiracy by shadowy forces on the left to flood the country with non-white racial groups so as to destabilize the structures of white supremacy … you’re sounding like conspiracy theorist! What kind of American politician would invest so much in a strategy that won’t see a pay-off for 20+ years? The waiting list for green cards is backlogged decades, and that’s not even counting the waiting period for becoming a citizen after that. And you even admit that plenty of immigrants don’t automatically vote for one party over the other! This would be the most convoluted conspiracy ever. There are far more effective ways to grow the party than to be pro-immigration.It’s not a conspiracy. It’s out in the open. Almost every argument against mass immigration is instantly stigmatized as racist or “white supremacist.” White liberals have increasingly come to see non-white skin as a sign of moral worth, and opposition to mass or illegal immigration as de facto proof of racism. Another reader on immigration addresses an angle that could divide the left:To your point about there being two primary concerns with mass immigration (the traditional labor concerns Mickey spoke to, and the concerns about social cohesion that you and David Frum share), I would add a third (related) concern: environmental sustainability and quality of life.For the past 50 years, immigration policy has driven the majority of U.S. population growth. Without reductions, the Census Bureau projects the U.S. population to surpass 400 million by 2060. In other words, if current trends (2020 notwithstanding) continue, we will grow by roughly the entire population of France in just a few decades. Biden’s immigration proposal would more than double annual immigration. Some might say that’s a good thing, and others will say it is a bad thing, but either way, immigration-driven population growth will have a profound impact on American life. We are making decisions today for future generations. Not only should we be allowed to talk about it, but we should be encouraged to talk about it.For instance, I don’t know if your environmental concerns extend to biodiversity, natural habitats, or access to open space (I know you are very worried about climate change), but each of these become more difficult to guarantee with Congress mandating population growth through immigration. A quarter century ago, President Clinton’s Task Force on Population and Consumption wrote, “We believe that reducing current immigration levels is a necessary part of working toward sustainability in the United States.”I agree. I have no problem with a stable or declining population. For the planet, it’s a good thing. I think of Japan, and see a country that would rather shrink and remain itself than grow and become unrecognizable. The passion for mass immigration and “diversity” is a very Western one. Circling back to the welfare debate, this next reader digs into the many nuances of the child tax credits under the American Rescue Plan:I had to turn off the episode in the midst of the discussion of the “Biden Dole."  Mr. Kaus’s attitude toward this idea was straight outta 1985. Parents should get the money but “only if they work.” So by that logic, if a couple opts for one parent to stay home and raise the kids, their bonus should be cut in half. What really grinds my gears is Mr. Kaus’s obliviousness to the value added to the economy by the unpaid work that occurs in every household. Domestic work — parenting, cooking, cleaning, taking Granny to her appointments — is the grease that allows the machinery of society to operate efficiently. One of the reasons our society feels like it is disintegrating is that too many people are working too damn much.Do you ever think about why memberships in social and fraternal organizations have been declining for decades? Or that church attendance has collapsed? These declines map pretty closely to the increases in labor force participation by women. Do you know how long the waiting lists are for infant daycare? Do you know how people who work 50 or so hours a week plus commute time manage to get the grocery shopping and laundry done? That is what young families are doing on Sunday mornings, and so things like church get crowded out of the weekly schedule.These government payments are a godsend and a first step toward rebuilding the kind of communities that many of us were lucky to grow up in. Families could get by, if modestly, on one income, leaving one parent free to raise the kids and keep the house going, as well as participate in the community. The old system wasn’t great, in that women were always the ones assigned this role and so many women who wanted to do things differently felt trapped. But that is no longer the default; now each couple can decide how it wants to operate. Both parents can keep working full time and use the extra money to buy services to support their choices — maybe a nanny vs. a daycare center, or a cleaning service, or a caregiver for an aging parent. Or one parent can stay home with the kids and the extra money replaces their contribution to household income minus what would have been paid in extra taxes and in daycare costs. Or maybe the extra income allows them to pay off student loans faster and make a down payment on a house. As to Mr. Kaus’s statement that this will provide incentives for poor people to avoid work: possibly. We don’t know that. It may allow low-wage workers like Dollar Store and Walmart clerks to organize and even strike for predictable schedules and decent benefits because they have a cushion to fall back on. But yes, in every society there are layabouts who milk the system. We have them today and they are milking the disability system. The advantage of a program like child allowances is that since every family benefits, there is less resentment seeing your undeserving neighbor or brother-in-law scamming disability payments while you virtuously work and get nothing. One of the reasons the old welfare system was so toxic was that working-class people who were having trouble making ends meet lived cheek by jowl with those who got welfare payments. The workers at the bottom were hardly better off financially than the non-working welfare recipients. It was also a binary system: If you got a job, no matter how low paying, you got kicked off welfare, so many women were not willing risk an uncertain income (a job they could be fired or laid off from) vs. a certain income.I really hope you will rethink this topic and invite a different guest with a different perspective to talk to you about what it is like in 2020 to be a young family trying to juggle jobs, kids and aging parents, and how this universal child allowance will strengthen families and communities. Senator Mitt Romney comes to mind. I believe it is his experience in the LDS church and his large family that gives him a much better understanding of the conditions on the ground in 2020 for raising families. Or how about Liz Bruenig? She just wrote a great piece in the NYT on this very topic, and could educate you and your audience about what it’s like to have young children today.I’ve asked Bruenig, actually. She didn’t reply to my email. 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

Mickey is an old friend and colleague from way back. His 1992 book, The End of Equality, was hugely influential for welfare reform in the Clinton years. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. To hear three excerpts from my conversation with Mickey — on the history of how neoliberalism gutted the middle class; on whether Joe Biden’s amnesty policy amounts to “open borders”; and our questioning of what Biden actually believes, if anything — head over to our YouTube page.Mickey in the first ten minutes of the episode touches on a much-forgotten history noted by this reader:You wrote in your column last week that Johnson was a radically progressive president. Actually, I think that Nixon was more radically progressive. He might have been the most left-wing president of my lifetime since 1953. Nixon created the EPA and supported environmental legislation. He tried wage and price controls to combat inflation. Nixon’s 1969 Family Assistance Program included a guaranteed income (what we increasingly call UBI), and it passed the House but not the Senate. Nixon and Senator Ted Kennedy were also in negotiations for a federal universal health coverage plan. These negotiations didn’t get too far because of Watergate distractions and other priorities.Peter Beinart sizes up the LBJ-Biden analogy when it comes to foreign policy.Looking back to last week’s episode with addiction expert Sally Satel, a reader writes:Thank you for your incredibly fair treatment of AA, and 12-step programs generally. I’m 21 months sober and active in AA, and honestly my main issue has always been depression (which I largely see as my feelings of hopelessness and meaninglessness in this life). I believe the two are intimately connected for me. And I hear how people speak of the program in popular culture and even people who are in addiction services and they don’t seem to understand it, and I think it serves to actively dissuade people from going, which is a huge disservice to lots of people. I think you really understand it (have you spent some time in 12-step recovery?), and I just want to say thanks for doing it justice, in my mind. I also really appreciated this conversation with Sally generally, and the nuanced treatment of depression and addiction and how they are really social disorders, with biological and psychological and other bases.Never done 12-step myself. But I’ve seen its power in others. Another reader dissents a little:Sally Satel is so close! It’s true that addiction isn’t a disease, it’s a symptom — a symptom of a larger psychological problem, usually trauma of some kind. Something that requires escaping. Dr. Gabor Maté found from working with addicts that every single one of them had some kind of traumatic experience that they seek to escape through chemical means. Check him out:This next reader recommends Gabor Maté for the Dishcast and offers some excellent observations about the opioid crisis — both from a professional perspective and a personal one:Fantastic podcast this week with Sally Satel on a topic that interests me greatly (I edited a book about the opioid crisis). You asked some probing questions that the recovery community hasn’t been able to collectively answer: To what degree should we think of addiction as a brain disease, versus something that a person can control? And where should we assign responsibility for the scourge of addiction that is sweeping our country? Surely, the pharmaceutical companies behave villainously. And as you suggest, there are obvious reasons why addiction epidemics strike hardest where people were already suffering.But there is another issue that your podcast failed to take up, and I fear it is likewise lost in the broader conversation, at least among certain educated, liberal circles. I cannot believe that what I’m about to say should strike anyone as remotely controversial, but people often don’t like hearing it: People should not f**k around with certain dangerous drugs, such as crack, meth, or heroin. Not ever, and even a little bit, not even if they are “responsible grown-ups.” So, I regard Carl Hart, whom Sally mentioned on your show, as a terribly misguided menace.(P.S. I feel differently about MDMA and psilocybin, though that muddles my message.)Studies show that the overwhelming majority of opioid addicts did not, initially, receive narcotics from a careless doctor. They started using opioids recreationally. Furthermore, about 70 percent of opioid addicts started fooling around with other drugs before they got hooked on OxyContin or heroin. When overdose deaths occur, they typically involve combinations of drugs, such as when heroin is laced with fentanyl, or when people mix opioids, cocaine, benzos and booze. That happened about 80,000 times last year. Obviously, this is not an invitation to shame, marginalize, or humiliate drug abusers. No decent person would do these things. But we should have a greater capacity — a better language — for compassionately encouraging addicts to take more responsibility for their lives. Whenever we say people are “slaves” to their addictions (or compare opioid users to “zombies”), we are using metaphors. Even when a person’s compulsion to use a drug seems irresistible, their free will is never entirely extinguished. Everyone who ingests an addictive recreational drug is making a choice (and usually it’s a bad one). Toward the end of your podcast, you spoke wonderfully about the virtues and benefits of AA. That organization has yet another salutary quality that I want to mention: It brings people together from all walks of life, working to solve a common problem. We are so unbelievably fractured these days — by race, region, education, class, sexual and gender orientations and (of course) our degraded political situation. But none of those things matter whatsoever in AA. (I mean, I guess they can come up, if a meeting goes off the rails, but they are not ever supposed to.)I’m certain that some of my old-AA cohorts were rabid, FOX-viewing Trump supporters. But I bet if I asked them for help, in an AA context, they would be there for me, just as I would for them. I cannot think of another institution in American life that fosters these kinds of benevolent interactions with people from opposite ends of the political spectrum.Shifting gears to mental illness, a reader relays some interesting and tragic history:Cost was the main reason that the large mental hospitals (“asylums”) were closed in my state. The hospitals overwhelmed state budgets (see Ten Drugs: How Plants, Powders and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine by Thomas Hager), but the conditions of the hospitals were embarrassing when shown (see, the documentary Titicut Follies or Geraldo Rivera’s Willowbrook investigation.) Freeing patients into the community with medications like Thorazine and a promise of support seemed to permit the hospitals to be closed and the patients to enjoy life with fewer restrictions. This was an apparent win-win: state budgets freed from the burden of the mental hospitals and the patients liberated. The first part worked brilliantly; the second part, less so. Not only did promised outpatient services fail to emerge, the patients stopped their meds. And with good reason: Thorazine has permanent and irreversible physical side effects. But there was a second reason that my clients (I was a Legal Aid lawyer in Manhattan) stopped taking their meds: they did not think they needed them. And who could blame them? When properly medicated, they were self-aware and rational. And like you and me, they tended to believe that was who they were and would continue to be. As they experienced it, they had overcome their mental issues and had put them behind them. Just as you were eager to get off steroids for your bronchitis, my clients were eager to get off Thorazine.Insidiously, stopping their meds did not have an immediate effect. This reinforced their belief that they no longer needed them. And when they began to deteriorate, their illness blinded them to it. All of this also applies to the mentally ill homeless today. I have no idea whether jails are cheaper than mental hospitals, but I assume that they must be since there seems to be no political stirring to revive them. And, of course, it seems inhumane to restrain people who, once medicated, seem fine until they are not.Another reader has some gut feelings about the spiritual nature of drug addiction:The most recent podcast episode was great food for thought, as usual. Something was said toward the end about nondenominational churches involved in addiction recovery, and made me think of this:I grew up Pentecostal Protestant, and I’ve had a lot of experience in Pentecostal churches and communities. Pentecostal worship practices, and group behavior in general, is extremely emotionally and viscerally charged to the point that transcendental experiences can be triggered in people open to these experiences. At some point I noticed that a lot of people who have recovered from a substance addiction were drawn to this tradition of Christianity and tended to be most open to intense mystical experiences, and that in certain cases the pattern of addiction carried over into their spiritual practices and beliefs. But I also know people (family members) whose recovery from drug addiction and life stability was directly assisted by charismatic experiences. I mention the fact that these groups were Christian simply for context, because I think that this phenomenon probably also applies to other spiritual traditions where ecstatic experiences are a focus. Lastly, on a very different subject, a reader wants me to go there, again:Thanks so much for the podcast with Michael Anton a few weeks ago. I appreciated that both of you could keep your cool talking about such heated topics, and I thought you both made many good points about issues I am torn on.You should talk to Charles Murray at some point about human biodiversity and the plausibility of genetic bases for disparate outcomes in our society between the sexes or among racial groups. His extensively researched, carefully written book on that subject last year, Human Diversity, was intentionally ignored by most mainstream media outlets and commentators, and he has a timely short follow-up book coming out this summer that will address our current derangement over racial issues.So I think he would be thrilled to talk to you about his recent scholarship. Obviously this subject is incredibly controversial and most people would rather avoid thinking about it entirely, but I think intelligent heterodox adults like your audience should be able to grapple with these issues and their implications for fully understanding the world we live in. I’d understand if you’d rather avoid more notoriety of course. But since you essentially got fired from your last job for refusing to condemn Murray’s work, and you started your own independent outlet to maintain your intellectual freedom, I do think it would be a shame to never touch on those types of taboo ideas in your future work.That’s a good idea. I read Human Diversity carefully, and found it nuanced as well as fascinating. I didn’t review it because, well, the process of getting that through the woke-checkers at New York Magazine would have destroyed what T-cells I have left. But since the elite media won’t touch these subjects, it seems to me that those of us with independent platforms should bear the burden of pursuing the truth, even through the relentless harassment and obloquy. In all honesty, that’s why I’m a writer. I’m interested in the truth about the world. 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

Sally Satel, the author of many books, is a psychiatrist and journalist who just came back after spending a year with opioid addicts in Ironton, Ohio. She writes about that experience, and her views on addiction — that it’s not as simple as a “brain disease” — for the journal, Liberties. We also discuss depression, mental illness, and modernity. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. To hear two excerpts from my conversation with Sally — on the compelling story of how Nixon got Vietnam vets off heroin; and on the tragic impact that meth has had on too many gay men — head over to our YouTube page.Looking back to last week, a reader loved our episode with Glenn Greenwald:Do you have any idea how refreshing that was?! One and a half hours of b******t-free thinking out loud! As much of his stuff I’ve read, I had never heard Greenwald interviewed in depth or even heard his voice.  I was just so impressed with this man’s courage. He exemplifies intellectual honesty and integrity, to the point that he puts his body on the line. The dude has big brass balls and I admire the hell out of him even more having heard you two chat.  Another reader digs up a YouTube recording from 2013:I finished your podcast with Glenn this morning and went to find and watch the marriage debate in Idaho that you mentioned in the episode:I’m just sending this note to let you know how moving you were in the debate. I don’t cry, but I do let my eyes swell, and over the course of those two hours you made so many statements that moved me to the point of my eyes swelling. Really appreciate your work and everything else.Another reader criticizes my work:Greetings from Afghanistan. I’ve read your work on and off since your days at The New Republic. I credit you for changing my mind on gay marriage, so thank you for that alone. Although we have different views — I’m a Never Trumper, somewhere between Kevin Williamson and George Will — I respect your willingness to debate people who hold different views.I must admit, however, that I vociferously disagree with your thoughts on Iraq/Afghanistan/and the wider war on terrorism. I’m currently on my sixth deployment and I’ve spent nearly five years in Iraq and Afghanistan. I will fully admit that I’m probably biased on this subject. I’ve shed a lot of blood here. I’ve lost so many friends — both Afghan/Iraqi and American — so when I hear you and Mr. Greenwald roll your eyes at the thought of staying put in either country, it certainly boils my blood. I’m aware we’ve made egregious errors. I’ve railed against the machine myself, tilting at the proverbial windmills. Nevertheless, I’m quite reluctant to quit (lose) and see hundreds of my Afghan friends get slaughtered, like our South Vietnamese allies did in re-education camps. These wars are just talking points for so many — another cudgel to hit the neo-cons with or put that war-monger W in his place. But for thousands of my brothers and sister-in-arms, it has been our lives’ work. I didn’t intend to be in any respect glib about that. I’m in awe of the way so many service-members have given their lives to this endless war, and it’s impossible to express my respect and admiration for those not in armchairs debating policy. The question is whether to keep this kind of sacrifice going indefinitely, or to end it, however grueling an admission of defeat might be. Another reader sizes up the rapidly shifting mediascape from his vantage point in Boston:Thank you for the wonderful conversation with Glenn Greenwald. I was struck by your mentioning the recent media obsession with violence toward Asian Americans. You are correct — in none of the stories have I seen a word said about the perpetrators. We are supposed to assume that this is collateral damage from Trump’s xenophobic reign, but it appears to me that many of those committing these heinous acts are young black men. For the media to acknowledge that would sort of make the simplistic narrative surrounding BLM that we’ve been spoon fed these past several months a bit more complicated, so therefore we are left with just the storyline that’s there’s been “escalating violence” against Asians.Your attitude towards the New York Times mirrors mine toward the Boston Globe. The Globe was a staple on my morning doorstep throughout my life — I guess I’m a true classic Liberal deep down as well — but I no longer have faith in the paper. Conversely, The Manchester Union Leader has always been my local paper — but growing up gay and reading anti-gay bigotry on its editorial pages throughout my life did little for my self acceptance.A funny thing happened during the Trump era. The Globe ran story after front-page story as part of “the resistance”, and the op-eds all had the same punchline: Trump is evil. (I did not vote for him either time.) The Union Leader did not support Trump; he’s really not a “ conservative, they said, nor a Republican at heart.Long story short, I no longer subscribe to the Globe — way too woke and only dishing out what hyper-elite progressives want to read. I find the once intolerant far-right Union Leader actually publishes more moderate and Liberal op-eds these days than the Globe does with moderates and conservatives. So much for “diversity”.Another reader looks back to our episode with Mara Keisling:I’ve followed your thoughts on the trans debate a great deal, and I very much appreciate your perspective. But it seems to me that your writing, and your episode, miss one particular point a bit (one which I believe J.K. Rowling was making): Allowing people who declare themselves to be trans into women-only spaces merely on the basis of that declaration introduces a risk to women from abusive cis men, not from trans people.An example. In one company I worked for, with around 5K employees, the bathrooms were set to automatically lock overnight. People who worked late could still get into them by using the employee ID cards, which were key-coded to only let you into the bathroom of your gender. This was meant as a safety mechanism for women who worked late in the office to have a place to retreat to if a man started acting in a threatening way and no one else was around.The risk with some of the proposed legal changes, as Rowling seemed to be pushing back on, is that a straight male predator could declare himself a woman legally, mandate the company honor this by changing the coding of his ID card, and use this as a way to attack a woman in exactly the place our society set aside for her to retreat to.The knee-jerk reaction of some people is to say no cis man would do this, but I’d suggest that those people are not considering seriously the lengths to which teenage boys will go for a laugh, and the lengths to which male predators regularly can and do go to against women.There must, of course, be a balancing act in this. There are clearly ways our society should change to be more welcoming and supportive of trans people. But it seems reasonable to ensure that those changes don’t inadvertently dismantle safety mechanisms for women designed to protect them from cis men — or at least have an honest debate about where that balance might be, and how to minimize the cost.Another wrinkle in the trans debate from a reader:In our corner of northwest London, we have a large population of Muslim families who we struggled to engage in girls’ sports. Many of them are already nervous about allowing their girls to participate in mixed classes for swimming and after-school sports. Any whiff of shared changing rooms or physical contact (judo/soccer, etc) with a biological boy and they would be out for sure.  Emails keep coming in over that episode with Mara, which is probably our most popular yet, in terms of downloads. Here’s another:Reading your column celebrating gender non-conformity, and listening to your conversation with Ms. Keisling, it occurred to me that some on the left are simply flatly denying the validity of any kind of statistical analysis.I work as a scientist at a biotech startup, and I’m used to thinking of things in statistical terms. Nature manifests many phenomena, particularly biological phenomena, as probability distributions. This is true of organismal properties like body size, genome content, immunological responses, and more socially relevant phenomena in human beings like expression of sex/gender and ancestry/race. Leftist political thinkers, immersed in postmodernist theory, take these probability distributions and use them to justify statements like “race simply doesn’t exist” or “sex-based binaries are meaningless”, which is, it seems to me, fairly absurd. Statistical analysis is about clusters of data, correlation, grouping things together based on shared characteristics, and these analyses (like the bimodal probability distribution of “male” and “female” characteristics you spoke to Ms. Keisling about) often don’t perfectly fit the entirety of an individual. But they are still often incredibly useful in making predictions about many individuals, and policy making, by nature of its broad strokes approach, must necessarily concern itself with the statistic.To recognize an individual as just that — an individual, with their own private life and idiosyncrasies and beliefs — is appropriate and just and moral and compassionate. In most day-to-day interactions, it’s not necessary to collect data to understand someone; we simply need to have a dialogue with them to come to appreciate their personality and traits. We can observe patterns without being prejudicial. We can be rational and kind at the same time. Indeed, we need to be.But it’s ridiculous to deny that probabilities and correlations aren’t useful in policy analysis. Biological males are more often physically stronger and faster than biological females. The fact that Sara Sigmundsdóttir exists doesn’t negate that. Ms. Keisling seemed to deny, for instance, that one can say on average a trans woman should be presumed to have a biologically based advantage over a cis woman in an athletic competition, despite that fact that one of the primary reasons androgen levels spike in males is to increase muscle and bone mass. To be frank, that was an astonishing rejection of simple reality.The more leftists rely on non sequiturs and sophistry to attempt to secure what they believe is the moral high ground, the more the foaming-at-the-mouth reactionary right will point to these irrationalisms and denounce the entire progressive framework.As an aside, as a lover of Impressionism, I thought your father’s painting was gorgeous, and it’s a shame he couldn’t devote more of his life to what seems to have been a remarkable talent.Lastly, from a reader who just listened to the episode with Michael Anton:Everybody loves a non-falsifiable argument these days. “Given all the irregularities, there could obviously be fraud and you don’t know how much and so why wouldn’t you commit fraud?” Or “if the same situation happened after the 2016 election, Hillary would behaved in much the same way!” Or “if the Capitol riot was actually a BLM protest, the cops would have massacred the protestors and that proves racism exists!” These are all b******t arguments and they are everywhere, and it's distracting and utterly exhausting.I believe that it is quite obvious that the elections were free and fair because I have some basic understanding about how democracy is supposed to function!  But, of course, I can’t directly PROVE that the elections were free and fair, because the systems are manifold and complex.  In the same way I believe peer-reviewed science to produce conclusions that are provably correct, I believe that a functional democracy will produce elections that are provably fair. And when the majority of a political party is insistent on casting doubt on a systemic process that is so utterly fundamental ... we have serious problems!One thing I would love to see produced by news media is a legitimate, detailed case-study / audit of election process. Examine every aspect of election process in various states (not just contested ones, because obviously the focus there is because of the results, not because of the imagined fraud). I want to know every step of how elections work — from registration to the hiring of poll volunteers to the selection of polling sites to the operation of voting machines to the tabulation of ballots.  And then also an honest, categorical interrogation of the fraud allegations. Can “dead people” actually vote? If that's possible, why is it possible, and what is State X doing to ensure it doesn’t happen? If it is happening, what’s the frequency, and what’s the impact? How is identity verified at the polls? How is it verified for mail-in voting? How are votes actually tabulated, and how do we know that they count?  How do we know that the software on voting machines is secure and accurate in its reporting? Can individuals know that their vote was tabulated correctly, and if so, how?Is each flavor of theoretical fraud actually possible? What prevents it? How likely is it that the scale of such fraud could be done in a way that is impactful and undetectable?  For all I know, this has been done by mainstream press. Sounds like something the New York Times would produce. But then you have an entire half of the political spectrum that is prepared to dismiss such reporting out of hand.It’s just f*****g easier to say “The system works and it’s obvious” or “The election was rigged and it’s obvious” than to break anything down and actually examine things and it's so troubling, and this is why I enjoy your podcast, which I found through Sam Harris’s podcast, which I also very much enjoy, even when — or maybe especially when — I disagree with the arguments.Spoken like a true Dish reader. 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 indefatigable Greenwald needs no introduction for Dishheads. He was once a demon for the pro-war right; and now for the woke left. You can pre-order his book on Brazil under Bolsonaro, Securing Democracy, and you can donate to the animal shelter he started.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). Read the full transcript here. To hear three excerpts from my conversation with Glenn — on the dangers of living as a gay public figure in Bolsonaro’s Brazil; on Trump’s success when it came to foreign policy; and on the ways in which elite journalists punch down with wokeness — head over to our YouTube page. Looking back to last week, many readers enjoyed our episode with trans activist Mara Keisling:Thanks for having the conversation with Mara and kudos to her for having a civil conversation with you. While I agreed with much of what you said, I think “trans women are women” is a much more defensible statement than you seem to believe.  You appear to push back against it because you interpret it as a factual statement about how trans women aren’t in any way different from cis women, which would indeed be false. A different way of looking at it: we should define the term “women” to encompass both cis women and trans women. Scott Alexander made this point beautifully in a post on his old blog called “The Categories Were Made For Man, Not Man For The Categories.”As I’ve said repeatedly, I believe that trans women should be treated as women under the law and by decent human beings. But I can’t in good conscience say they are in every way indistinguishable from women, that “biological sex” is a bigoted term, and that where nudity or safety are concerned, we cannot make some small compromises. Another reader:Excellent podcast. I found it telling that Ms. Keisling struggled in three parts of the interview: women’s sports, religious tolerance under the proposed Equality Act, and where do we draw the line with regards to children and transgender therapy/medical procedures. These three topics are where the majority of people supportive of transgender identity often raise legitimate questions of concern, and where they’re often met with the fiercest hostility by activists. Notice how difficult it was to get a straightforward response from Ms. Keisling on these three issues, as if she were walking a tightrope above a sea of egg shells. Could it be that these areas are where much of the current transgender rights argument falls apart? I don’t think it falls apart as a whole. But I do think treating these legitimate, small worries as a form of “hate” is wrong, and counter-productive. In their defense, I don’t think many trans activists have ever engaged these arguments without dismissing them as bigotry, and beneath a response. They mainly chant, deploy maximal emotional blackmail, and intimidate the press, which is already on their side. When you regard debate itself as a form of white supremacy, you tend not to be very good at it.This next reader focuses on the sports issue and illustrates why Dish readers are the absolute best:I have been reading and listening to you since your early New Republic days but have never written to you because I felt I didn’t have enough specific knowledge to jump in. Having listened to your conversation with Mara Keisling, it is odd to me that the topic I do have specific knowledge about is women versus men in billiards, which Mara speculated about.From 2001 to 2005, I was President of the United Poolplayers of America (UPA), the governing body of men’s professional pool in the US. During that time, I promoted the World Summit of Pool that was televised on ESPN from Grand Central Terminal in NYC. In an effort to sell more tickets, I suggested that we let the women compete as well. Well, the guys couldn’t have cared less. It was the women who were adamantly opposed. I had several conversations with Jeanette Lee, aka the Black Widow, the greatest American woman billiards player. She was the one who made the case that the guys have an overwhelming physical advantage. The advantage has nothing to do with the guys being taller, as Mara suggested. (Efren Reyes, the best poolplayer in the world, is 5’7”.) While the women are equal shot-makers and just as cool under pressure, the guys have a big advantage on the break. Because they are stronger and can generate more power, they will pocket a ball on the break more frequently, which allows them to continue shooting. In a “race to eleven”, if a woman fails to pocket a ball just one or two times less than her opponent, then that’s the whole ballgame.Back in 2003, Jeanette actually gave me several academic studies that she had researched. Sorry to say, but Mara is just not correct when she says there aren’t real studies on the topic of the advantages that boys have in sports from an early age. All these years later I have found these articles in my file cabinet:* “Longitudinal Change in Throwing Performance: Gender Differences”* “Development of Gender Differences in Physical Activity”* “Transcending Tradition: Females and Males in Open Competition”One of the studies, however, does make an interesting point on why girls might want to compete with boys (and presumably trans girls.) Girls who compete against boys are forced to up their games and their skills improve much more quickly.During your discussion with Mara, she also said that people thought Martina Navratilova had an advantage because she was a lesbian. Nobody within the world of tennis thought that. They all knew she practiced almost exclusively against guys.  That, and she was the first player to hit the gym and rigorously lift weights. I’ve heard Chris Evert talk about how she was then forced to lift weights in order to keep up and that made her a much better player.If a top women’s billiards player were to adopt Navratilova’s training regimen, no doubt they could rise to the top of the women’s rankings and perhaps give the guys a run for their money.Another reader turns to a different sport:I’m an avid tennis fan. Both Serena and Venus in the prime of their fitness faced an aging male tennis pro ranked 203 in the world in the twilight of his career after he had two beers. It’s a well-documented event from 1998. He absolutely destroyed them both. One female trans tennis player ranking anywhere in the top 500 getting on the women’s tour would absolutely destroy the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association). Every Grand Slam trophy, every Masters 1000 event, every Olympic match. This is proven with objective metrics of the game. Serve speed, groud-stroke speed, reflexes. There’s absolutely no argument here that gender can be mixed in tennis. I don’t know about other sports, but I’m assuming the same principle applies.This soccer headline says it all: “Australian women’s national team lose 7-0 to team of 15-year-old boys.” 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

Mara is a brilliant transgender rights activist and founding executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. I’m so grateful for her willingness to have a robust exchange of views on some issues, along with much agreement as well. Every few weeks, I hope to add another perspective to the debate over trans identity, a subject that has suffered from the mainstream media’s horror of open debate. Dana Beyer kicked the series off. You can listen to the episode with Mara Keisling right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. To listen to three excerpts of Mara — on the tensions within the new Equality Act; on the conflation of sex and gender in public policy; and on the fairness of trans athletes competing with cis athletes — head over to our YouTube page.Looking back, here’s a question from a reader prompted by our episode with Kmele Foster:You expressed your frustration with terms like “whiteness” or “white values”, which mean nothing more specific than anything the speaker disapproves of at that moment. Whilst I agree, I’m not sure this is a new phenomenon. When I was at university, people on the left would use the phrase “bourgeois values” in the same way. Whilst the points of reference are rooted in identity politics rather than economics, and the underlying ideology is critical race theory rather than Marxism, is it not the same phenomenon? And, if so, do you believe they are interchangeable or is this generation’s activism significantly different?My concern is associating a whole slew of characteristics to a single “race” and erasing all the variety and diversity within that population is, itself, a form of racism. Values are not black white; they are human, and available to all. Last week’s episode with pro-Trump intellectual Michael Anton elicited the most email of any episode we’ve had so far. A reader writes:I appreciated your discussion with Anton, as it can be useful to hear the best defense of even (and perhaps especially) those things one finds largely indefensible (allowing me to check my Trump Derangement Syndrome levels, and all that). But boy, that sure didn’t move the needle. Anton’s defense of Trump boiled down to a combination of relentless whataboutism and what appeared to be, if we’re being extremely generous, highly selective “epistemological humility,” as he puts it. I came away with the impression that, whatever his rationalizations, what was driving him was largely the same motive driving my Trump-supporting relatives: a desire to own the libs/spite the elites/stick it to the Dems. Why that particular tribal motive is so powerful, and what can be done about it — in conservative and liberal circles alike — seems important to figure out if we’re to keep the republic chugging along.Another reader focuses on our fiery exchange over the 2020 election:Thank you for interviewing Michael Anton. I’d never before listened to a person espouse theories of voter fraud who actually has the mental resources and willingness to debate the topic, so the discussion was very revealing. I do wish that you, or someone, would ask him why he feels that our “loosey goosey” voter registration system (to use his words) is being massively exploited only by Democrats. If the fraud is not baked at the voting machine level (which Anton conceded) and is instead organic, then why does this organic fraud only cut in one direction? Anton casually asserts that half of the electorate (his side) is honest, while the other half is widely corrupt on an individual, person-by-person level: millions of people individually deciding to cheat the system. Anton himself has written a response to his Dish experience. Check it out. Another reader is “disturbed by the ongoing ‘bad election’ narrative”:As someone who has worked elections, may I suggest the doubters please work a poll? My experience is people of all political ideologies work together to make free and fair democracy happen. I am in Georgia. Workers here risked their health to open the polls. Then they spent long hours counting and recounting and recounting. Then they reset the whole thing for a 5 January run off. All this during the holiday season! The Senate double run-off is proof Georgia was free and fair. Georgia — a state run by Republicans — spent $100 million between 2016 and 2020 buying new voter-verified paper and digital voting machines. If Senators Purdue and Loeffler had won reelection, the Democrats would not have challenged the result. They would had gone back to discussing why they get 48-49% but never crack 50%.This next reader looks to other parts of the episode:Two things that really stuck out that I would’ve loved to hear Anton address as he played his whataboutism rhetorical games with you:* During his campaign in 2016, Trump promised to not only get rid of the budget deficit, but to eliminate all US debt within 8 years. This wasn’t a throwaway promise. It was on his website, and I know people who voted for him precisely for this reason.* Anton grotesquely underplayed the entire attack on the Capitol. He did this by focusing solely on the deaths, but there have been hundreds of serious injuries to Capitol and DC police officers caused directly by the insurrectionists, and obviously plenty of videos documenting some of these attacks. I’d love to hear him defend these as well, as if this was some sort of fun lark and people went in because they didn’t know there was a Visitors Center (give me a f*****g break!).Anyway, an enraging but enlightening discussion. Makes me skeptical of any reconciliation any time soon.Lastly, some much deserved praise for Anton:I really enjoyed the episode, and Michael Anton has the kind of perspective I never really hear in my bubble, so I found it fascinating. While I think he was wrong about virtually everything over the first half of the podcast, he did have some insightful criticisms of the left toward the end. Thank you for your effort to provide fans of the Dish with some much needed intellectual diversity. 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

One of the leading intellectuals of Trumpism, Michael was a senior national security official in the Trump administration and is most widely known for writing “The Flight 93 Election”, an essay endorsing Trump in 2016. He’s out with a new essay, “The Continuing Crisis”, and a recent book, “The Stakes”.I think you’ll find our debate, er, lively. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. To listen to two excerpts from my chat with Michael — on what he believes are Trump’s greatest achievements in office; and how he thinks Trump caved to the GOP establishment — head over to our YouTube page.A lovely note from a reader about the Dishcast:My husband and I listen to your podcast separately. We then discuss it on our weekly date night. I learn something new in each episode. We miss you on Real Time. Thanks for brightening our Covid mindsets.Another reader dissents over the still-new format:One tiny piece of feedback: Please, please, please stop interrupting your interviewees/guests. I found myself thinking during the Kmele Foster podcast, “Andrew stop interrupting him and let him finish his response on the question you JUST asked him!” There are so many platforms (like Bill Maher’s) that are meant to be a more strident debate between commentators where it is more of an interruption and zinger battle between them, and that makes sense. But in a 1:1 interview for an hour-long podcast, I expect the pace to be slower and for the two people to not interrupt each other.This is not the first time a reader has told me this. I get absorbed into the conversation too easily and can forget I’m broadcasting. I will try harder. Another reader “very much enjoyed your discussion with Kmele Foster” and dissents over a passing comment of mine:I particularly enjoyed those parts that touched on the power of words and mob rule; the concepts of “use vs mention”, “intent vs impact” and the power the mob has in exercising its almost ritualistic cancelling of a person’s career.It was interesting to me, therefore, that you stated George Floyd was murdered. Interestingly — actually, surprisingly — your statement ignores the very concepts upon which much of your discussion with Mr. Foster was focused: intent and the need to defend against mob rule.Murder is when one person kills another (unlawfully) with the intention to cause either death or serious injury (UK). In the States, I understand it to be the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought — and malice aforethought means the “intention to kill or harm”.  Intent matters, and the case of George Floyd has not yet been adjudicated. Mr. Floyd was killed. From what the general public has seen, his killing was appalling, horrific and heinous, but we do not yet know if he was murdered.Defending the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” is vital. Intent in all its forms should also be defended. Otherwise the mob rules.Point taken. (There’s also the complicating factor of fentanyl in Floyd’s bloodstream at the time of death — which may be irrelevant but will still doubtless come up at the trial.) Another reader continues on the theme of preventing mob rule:I totally second the concerns of Kmele Foster. Before social media, the methods that political victors could use to suppress the other side in the USA was limited mostly to government structures. The separation of powers and the guarantees of individual rights stymie the urge to suppress others through government. When these rights are violated, individuals can seek redress through the legal system. It is not a perfect system, and it often takes longer than it should, but our civilization depends on most citizens believing the system will ultimately work.Social media has dangerously changed that by bypassing government. I fear that cancel culture and the example of groups like Antifa — which can coordinate on social media and behave as they do with few consequences — is shaking the belief in our system of government. There are new methods of suppression, outside of our legal structures. Many feel a vulnerability they did not feel a few years ago.Another reader illustrates the divisiveness of woke initiatives in the workplace, even among friends:I wanted to share a story with you after listening to your conversation with Kmele Foster. I work for a very well-known big tech company in the Bay Area. (I can hardly stand CA, from Texas originally — two different worlds.) A few weeks ago, the company sponsored a week-long summit for women of color. The summit description invited all groups of women or people who identify as women that were: black, latina, asian, native american, muslim, etc. — all listed there except white. So while they didn’t say “anyone who isn’t white”, the message was clear. I am Lebanese (not a muslim) and have never thought of myself as white until the 2020 census included Lebanese ... as white (?).The summit invited anyone outside of these listed groups to join as allies but also made it clear that swag was not available for allies. I didn’t join for numerous reasons.But a colleague who is Mexican-American did, and when next we spoke, I asked her how it went. She was most impressed by the keynote speaker’s explanation of whitewashing. She explained that having to change her look and the way she speaks to fit into corporate America is an example of whitewashing. I noted back that everyone has to change to accommodate office and business formalities, i.e., I have to leave myself at home too. Then I pressed her to say more about whitewashing so I could understand what it is. She told me that as a “white woman,” I couldn’t possibly understand. This is someone with whom I have exchanged stories of our families and childhoods. We’ve laughed more than a few times about how much we actually have in common. I am Lebanese. She is Mexican. We were both raised Catholic by big families and have many siblings. This is also a women who recently sold her house in SF for 3 million. I am still trying to pay off my student loans.In your conversation with Kmele, it was mentioned that calling people out and asking them to explain is a good first step. I try to do that where I can AND find that most folks, when pressed, CAN’T explain. But at work, I can only press so much without putting my livelihood in jeopardy.  There must be ways for people in my circumstance to counter this effectively, without having to put our families at risk. One last reader has a suggestion for an upcoming topic and guest:Just finished listening to the pod with Kmele Foster — another early gem in this project. I’m also in the midst of reading Cynical Theories, and I was struck by how much the conversation with Kmele overlaps with the dangers of applied postmodernism and critical race theory highlighted in the book. The rejection of reason and objectivity in favor of opportunistic groupthink, the emphasis on superficial and contrived identity-based power dynamics over individual experience, the dismissal of intent in favor of (often disingenuous) wailing over subjective impact — all came through in your discussion. If only more of us could approach these issues with the courage and intellectual honesty you and Kmele called for at the close. Along those lines, it would be interesting if you could find a guest to dissect some of the similar overreaches of the me-too movement. I was struck while listening to this pod by how many of the themes you and Kmele criticized with respect to race are also prevalent in some me-too cases, especially those where unprovable subjective responses to awkward situations end up ruining the lives of men and boys who actually have a lot less power than the woke left will admit — all in furtherance of a different kind of identity-based reckoning. Emily Yoffe comes to mind as someone who has shown some guts in countering the prevailing narrative.  Emily is a great idea. Thanks for prodding me. 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