If you read Common Sense, you know that the best day of the week is Friday, when Nellie Bowles delivers us all the news from the week that was.This Friday, we bring you an Honestly special: TGIF! This time built just for your ears and brought to you by America’s favorite lesbians: Nellie and dear friend of the pod, Katie Herzog.Featuring: drag queens, inflation, prosecutors who just won't prosecute. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We live in a culture that is driven by nay-saying. In one corner, people insist that the individual stands no chance against structural and systemic maladies. From the other, people say that we are in inexorable decline as a civilization and that decadence is everywhere we turn. Both wind up arguing against risk-taking, against the possibility of creating new things and new worlds.How can we recover the adventurous, optimistic, forward-thinking, risk-taking attitude that has made America the most innovative country in the history of the world?Today, the venture capitalist (and former journalist) Katherine Boyle explains how. She makes the powerful case that that spirit of building is very much alive in America—just not in the places that we once assumed we’d find it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tulsa. Buffalo. Uvalde. Philadelphia. Chicago. And that’s just the past few weeks.If you’re like me, you’ve had too many despairing conversations about the epidemic of gun violence in this country to count. This isn’t that. This is a conversation about what can actually, practically be done. David French is a senior editor of The Dispatch and the author of “Divided We Fall,” among other books. David is a veteran. He is also, as you’ll hear, a gun owner. Rajiv Sethi is a professor of economics at Barnard College at Columbia University who has been researching gun violence and writing about innovative solutions to the problem—even in a country with a robust Second Amendment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Marianne Williamson stood on the presidential debate stage in 2020 and spoke about the “dark psychic force” unleashed in America, she became an instant meme. But these days—with our epidemic of loneliness and addiction, rising crime and violence like the kind we just witnessed in Uvalde, Texas—can anyone deny the existence of this darkness?Long before others were willing to name the anti-human, anti-social sickness in our culture, Williamson was warning of it. She is one of the most beloved self-help authors in the world, having sold more than three million copies of her more than a dozen books.If you are heartsick about the state of the country and find yourself asking how it can be made right, this episode is for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are living through a seismic political realignment. The parties and the political movements that fuel them are being dramatically redefined—and are up for grabs in ways that would have been unthinkable even two decades ago.Today, we are focusing on “the right” side of that divide: what the right has meant historically; what it means today; and what it might look like a decade or a century from now.My guest is Matthew Continetti, author of the new book: “The Right: The Hundred-year War for American Conservatism.” We talk about Donald Trump, of course. But more so we talk about whether or not he was a departure from conservatism or a return to something deeper in American history that the movement’s elites had long kept at the periphery. We talk about the gap between those elites and the base. And we talk about the emerging group known as the “New Right” and whether or not they represent the future of American politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is no subject—not Trump, not abortion, not immigration, not taxes-–that is more contentious than the one we tackle today: parenting. This subject has particular urgency because my wife is pregnant! As are two of my producers. But you don’t need to be pregnant to be curious about the following: What is the right way to raise kids who become good, responsible, kind adults? Can we blame our problems as adults on our parents? What about Or do parenting styles not really matter? Is it nature that determines just about everything? That–and a thousand more questions–are what we discuss on today’s show.So today: a debate with three parenting experts who have radically different ideas about raising kids. Bryan Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason, is the author of “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids.” Michaelleen Doucleff is a NPR global health correspondent and the author of “Hunt, Gather, Parent.” And Carla Naumburg is a clinical social worker and the author of “How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t With Your Kids.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Akhil Reed Amar is the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale university, where he’s been teaching constitutional law since the ripe old age of 26. He is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several award-winning books. Amar’s work has been cited in more than 40 supreme court cases—more than anyone else in his generation—including in the shocking draft opinion by Justice Alito that was leaked to the press last week.What may be confusing about that is that Amar is a self-described liberal, pro-choice Democrat. So why is Alito citing his work in an opinion to overturn Roe? Today, Amar explains why he, in fact, agrees with Alito, what overturning Roe might mean for the country, what the leak says about the culture of American law, and what supporters of legal abortion, like himself, should do now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you read Common Sense, you know that the best day of the week is Friday, when Nellie Bowles delivers us all the news from the week that was. Today, we bring you: Everything you need to know about this week's Supreme Court Leak, the new singing-and-dancing truth czar, revelations about youth gender transition and signs of change in the Republican party. Plus some attempts at tasteful humor. TGIF! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1989, Andrew Sullivan wrote “Here Comes The Groom,” an essay making the conservative case for gay marriage. Less than four decades later, the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges.How did that happen in such an amazingly short time? Why were gay rights won so quickly? Was there something about the nature of that movement that made it so successful? Today, a provocative conversation with Andrew Sullivan about what we can learn from the history of gay rights, how gay became LGBTQIA+ . . . and why he doesn’t support gender ideology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The average American adult spends over three hours a day staring into their phone. If you’re a teenager it’s even worse – seven hours. What’s really troubling is that in study after study, people say that they want to be looking at their screens less. They just don’t know how. They’ve lost control. Johann Hari interviewed over 200 of the world’s leading experts on focus and attention for his new book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again. What he found was that your attention didn’t collapse. It’s been stolen from you. So on today’s episode, while everyone is busy debating what Elon Musk is doing to Twitter, Johann explains what Twitter is doing to all of us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices