Canada legalized assisted dying in 2016, with a promise that it would be “narrow, cautious,” and reserved for those within months of death. It hasn’t stayed that way. The law has since expanded to cover people with chronic but nonterminal conditions, people with disabilities, and people whose suffering is entirely psychological. Now a parliamentary comm…

Michael Shellenberger is the kind of person with the intellectual honesty to change his mind. He’s a former progressive activist who changed his tune publicly on nuclear energy, homelessness, and a bunch of other issues where the left-wing consensus turned out to be wrong. He’s also the author of Apocalypse Never and San Fransicko, and runs Public, one …

Most people with strong opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have never heard of the Arab Revolt of 1936–1939. That’s a problem, because it’s arguably the moment when the modern conflict took shape.

Historian and political analyst Oren Kessler spent five years researching this period, resulting in his book Palestine 1936, one of the only compr…

On one of the most polarizing questions in American foreign policy—U.S. support for Israel— historian and geopolitical expert Walter Russell Mead argues that nearly everyone has the story wrong.

The standard explanations focus on lobbying power, campaign donations, and media influence. But, as Mead explains, this ignores the fact that American interest i…

I have noticed firsthand the way that Wikipedia—the internet’s encyclopedia, widely treated as an objective reference—can become, in small but persistent ways, an ideological battleground. After I testified to Congress against reparations for slavery, my own Wikipedia page became a site of competing edits. At one point, an editor removed the fact—well-d…

Shadi Hamid came of age in an environment where America was often seen as a font of destruction, the root cause of the world’s problems rather than their solution. He marched against the Iraq War. He read Noam Chomsky. Like many on the left, he saw the United States primarily as a source of global harm. But over time, he came to see American power as a …

Linda Chavez once held the highest-ranking position of any woman in Ronald Reagan’s White House, serving as director of the Office of Public Liaison. But when she was nominated to be secretary of labor under George W. Bush, her candidacy unraveled when it emerged that she had been sheltering an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala in her home. She hadn…

Earlier this year, I was set to debate the influence of the Israel lobby on the U.S. at a live event in New York. That event was canceled. So instead, I invited my would-be opponent, journalist Glenn Greenwald, onto the podcast to have the conversation anyway.

Glenn and I disagree on a lot, including how much influence Israel has over American foreign po…

During the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 and the wave of campus protests since, I have been struck by how far modern activism seems to have drifted from the strategies and philosophies of the civil rights era—which, in my opinion, should have remained the model. In the 1950s and ’60s, political change was pursued with discipline, pre…

Sam Harris is one of the great thinkers of our time. The philosopher, neuroscientist, and host of the Making Sense podcast joined me to discuss some of the defining issues of the moment. We began with the ongoing war in Iran. While Harris is in favor of regime change given the Islamic regime’s hostility to its own people as well as the United States, he…

Justin Marozzi is a historian and travel writer whose work has long explored the history of the Islamic world. In his new book, Captives and Companions, he turns to a subject that remains surprisingly under-examined: the history of slavery across Islamic societies. Stretching from the time of the prophet Muhammad to the modern era, the system he describ…

Is war with Iran necessary, or a catastrophic choice? Two of the West’s most prominent foreign-policy thinkers clash over this defining geopolitical question. Historian Niall Ferguson argues that the greater danger would be to allow Tehran to obtain nuclear weapons. Former diplomat Richard Haass warns that preventive war risks unleashing a conflict far worse than the threat it seeks to eliminate.

A Renaissance historian, James Hankins left his longtime post at Harvard University in December to join the little-known Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. As he wrote in an essay that sent shock waves through higher education, he says he did so because the Hamilton School is committed to teaching the history…

As coordinated American and Israeli strikes on Iran continue, I wanted to sit down with Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a leading expert on Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. sanctions policy.

I asked Mark the most pressing questions to emerge since the major conflict began over the weekend: How does this serve Americ…

What does conservatism mean in an age of populism, executive power, and institutional distrust? Yuval Levin is a political theorist, the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again. Today he argues that the deepest divide in American politics is no longer left versus right, but populism versus institutions. Levin traces the shift within the conservative movement from an emphasis on morality and constitutional limits to a more confrontational style of politics, and he explains why durable reform requires coalition building, legislation, and respect for procedure. He reflects on his time in the Bush administration, the limits of presidential governance, the fight over universities, the coming politics of AI, and why the Constitution was designed to hold a divided nation together.

Debates over crime policy are often driven by emotion. People argue based on their feelings about police presence on their streets, or narratives about the social conditions they believe produce criminals. But Jennifer Doleac, an economist who focuses on criminal justice, contends that emotion shouldn’t be the basis of this conversation. Like sound econ…

Michael Shermer is a science writer, founder of Skeptic magazine, and author of the new book Truth. First known as part of the New Atheist movement, Shermer has long defended evidence-based thinking in debates about religion and the paranormal, but in this live conversation at the Comedy Cellar, he steps back to ask a deeper question: What does it really mean to call something true? Shermer speaks to his conversion to Christianity and eventual loss of faith, the tension between personal experience and public evidence, and whether religion’s measurable benefits make belief rational. We also examine conspiracy theories, UFO sightings, and the psychology of distrust, before turning to the replication crisis, scientific fraud, and the blow to institutional credibility during Covid.

Rutger Bregman is a Dutch historian and best-selling author of Utopia for Realists and Humankind: A Hopeful History. In 2019, he went viral for his takedown of billionaires at the World Economic Forum and for a heated exchange with Tucker Carlson. Today, he joins the show to discuss his latest book, Moral Ambition, which he defines as the desire to use your available talents and resources to make the world a better place rather than focus solely on individual wealth. He argues the real question is whether the work you’ve chosen is ambitious enough in moral terms—whether your day-to-day life tackles the big problems facing humankind. He explains why “follow your passion” is often bad advice; why moral breakthroughs tend to come from small, disciplined groups rather than mass appeal; and why moral progress is neither automatic nor inevitable.

What did Jeffrey Epstein actually get convicted of? Why has no “client list” ever been produced? And why is Epstein’s death still so hard for people to accept as a suicide? Michael Tracey joins Coleman Hughes to discuss the Epstein case—what we know, what’s been distorted, and why the story still fuels public distrust in powerful institutions. Michael digs into the media coverage, the legal realities, and the lingering questions that continue to shape how people understand one of the most disturbing scandals of the modern era.

Acclaimed novelist and cultural critic Lionel Shriver joins me today to discuss her provocative new book A Better Life. We talk about why immigration has become one of the most morally charged topics in public life; how good intentions collide with human nature; and why cultural change is treated as a legitimate concern for some groups but as taboo for others. We also explore the differing immigration challenges between America and Europe, the hypocrisy of open-border politics, and why fiction may be better suited than policy debates to expose the hard truths about border enforcement, assimilation, and today’s political orthodoxy.

My guest today is Jamie Metzl—a former national security official, biotech futurist, and one of the earliest public voices to argue that Covid likely came from a lab accident. We talk about why that possibility became taboo; what gain-of-function research gets wrong; and how fear and politics distort scientific judgment. From there, we move into the future of gene editing, embryo selection, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and artificial intelligence (AI)—what’s actually coming, what people misunderstand, and why the hardest questions ahead of us aren’t likely technical, but moral.

My guest today is Rabbi David Wolpe. He’s spent decades debating atheists, leading one of the country’s largest synagogues, and thinking seriously about what holds a moral society together once traditional faith loosens its grip. Wolpe and I talk about belief after the New Atheists, why reason alone keeps overreaching, and how secular movements quietly take on the structure—and zeal—of religion. We get into Judaism as a form of peoplehood, the strange moral logic of modern campus activism, antisemitism as a conspiracy engine, and why slogans and ideology can harden into dogma. Wolpe also reflects on his time teaching at Harvard, the limits of academic tolerance, and what he learned about institutions under pressure. 

This week I’m joined by Arctic geopolitics expert Heather A. Conley to talk about a place most of us barely think about—until it becomes the center of a global power struggle. Greenland has gone from frozen afterthought to geopolitical prize, and its story reveals a lot about American expansionism, NATO politics, and the race now unfolding in the Arctic. We trace Greenland’s strange political history with Denmark and the U.S., unpack why its location has always mattered militarily, and explore what happens as China and Russia push north. We also confront the uncomfortable truth behind Trump’s “buy Greenland” moment—and why the people who actually live there want neither Denmark nor America to own them. 

Heather e…

This week I’m joined by historian Niall Ferguson to help me make sense of Iran’s unprecedented wave of protests. We talk about why this moment feels different to previous uprisings, the regime’s growing crisis of legitimacy, the limits of sanctions, and how the long shadow of 1953 still shapes everything in Iran. We also look at what Trump’s “maximum pressure” could mean, and the risks posed by any form of U.S. intervention. 

Thor Halvorssen is a Venezuelan-born human rights campaigner and the founder of the Human Rights Foundation. His life as an activist began after his mother was shot and wounded by pro-regime forces for trying to expose election fraud under Hugo Chávez, an event that turned his work from theory into something painfully concrete.

In this episode we talk about how Venezuela’s dictatorship operated more like a cartel than a state, why the regime survived despite losing elections, and how oil, narcotics, and foreign alliances sustained one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the hemisphere. We also discuss why Venezuela is not another Iraq, how major Western media outlets repeatedly misread the regime, and what a realistic political transition might look like. 

I’m joined by Gelet Martínez Fragela, a Cuban activist and journalist and a close watcher of Venezuela who’s tracked how authoritarianism hollowed out a once prosperous country.

We talk about the warning signs, the lies that sustained the regime, and why President Maduro’s trial in the United States matters far beyond Venezuelan borders. Gelet also answers the question: Why were Cubans responsible for guarding President Maduro? And how will the country function in the wake of the U.S.’s shock intervention?

For Gelet’s personal story, listen to our episode from October: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-cubas-police-state-from-ration-cards-to-black/id1716338488?i=1000733663296 

Dr. Anna Machin is a British evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Oxford who studies the neuroscience and psychology of love. Anna and I talk through what science actually says about attraction, attachment, and long-term relationships, and why so much modern dating advice gets human nature wrong. We get into dating apps and how they shape behavior, whether love at first sight is real, what attachment styles do and don’t explain, and what science says about polyamory. We also discuss common myths about pheromones, love languages, and whether having kids really makes people happier.

My producer Poppy Damon and I are back for another Ask Me Anything. In this bonus episode, I answer your questions on President Donald Trump and the attention economy, declining birth rates, psychedelics and mental health, AI and the future of work, social media and kids, religion, meritocracy, and more.

As 2025 wraps up, it felt like a good moment to st…

For years, I’ve turned to lawyer and National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy for honest analysis of America’s legal and political battles. Long before the rest of the country was trying to make sense of indictments, immunity rulings, and the growing politicization of the Justice Department, Andy was already doing the work, calling balls and strikes in…

Astead Herndon is frustrated by polling. After a career spent speaking directly with voters around the country about their priorities, he has found that the flat numbers of surveys rarely capture the complex realities of Americans. I sat down with Herndon, recently named editorial director of Vox after covering elections for The New York Times since 201…

Something strange is happening on the American right. In just a few years, a movement that once claimed to champion Western civilization began to entertain arguments that Winston Churchill was the real villain of World War II, that Adolf Hitler didn’t intend the Holocaust, and that Joseph Stalin wasn’t so bad after all.

In elite circles, it has become strangely difficult to say out loud what every biology department taught as recently as 10 years ago: that sex is binary, that testosterone matters, and that average differences do not mean categorical rules. That’s why I wanted to sit down with Carole Hooven, an evolutionary biologist who spent 20 years at Harvard teachi…

It’s difficult for Americans to see clearly what’s happening inside Cuba, both because of the communist regime’s powerful propaganda apparatus and because of the American left’s lingering romanticism about the revolution’s supposed ideals.

That’s why I wanted to sit down with Gelet Martínez Fragela, the founder of ADN Cuba, an independent outlet reportin…

In his latest book, Summer of Our Discontent, social commentator Thomas Chatterton Williams examines the complexities and contradictions of the so-called “Great Awokening,” beginning in the 2010s and peaking in the explosive summer of 2020.

I sat down live with Thomas, in partnership with the American Enterprise Institute, to discuss his book and the cul…

For months, my audience has been asking me to have this conversation. Dave Smith—stand-up comedian, host of the Part of the Problem podcast, and one of the most prominent libertarian critics of U.S. foreign policy—recently made a video responding to my analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We disagree about a lot. So we sat down for three and a …

The phrase “common knowledge” is usually used to mean a fact most people are aware of, like that George W. Bush was president in the early 2000s. But as cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker explains in his new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…:Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life, the term has a more precise…

Jane Coaston, host of Crooked Media’s What a Day podcast, is known for sharp political analysis that resists easy, black-and-white partisan divides. After crossing intellectual paths for years, it was a real pleasure to finally sit down for a one-on-one Conversation.

Jane has a fascinating political journey that we delved into. For years, she identified …

Janiyah Thomas has spent her career in conservative politics, from the Republican National Committee to Senator Tim Scott’s presidential campaign, but she thinks that the Republican Party hasn’t always filled its ranks with people who are culturally in tune with African Americans. So when she joined Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign as Black Media Director, …

Bhaskar Sunkara has been a socialist since he was 17 years old and, as he told me in our recent conversation, he thinks he’ll stick with it until he dies. The founding editor of Jacobin, the most important socialist magazine in America, former vice chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, and current president of The Nation, Bhaskar has been a pro…

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro sees the civilizational battle of the modern era as one between the builders and the destroyers—or as he writes it in his new book, between the “lions” and the “scavengers.”

When I sat down with Ben this week, he explained the way he sees this dynamic play out in American society—across both political parties—as “scav…

Greg Lukianoff of FIRE has spent his career protecting free speech. FIRE is known for its work on college campuses, where student expression has faced censorship from the left. Now, FIRE has been fighting threats from the right.

This week on Conversations with Coleman, I’m joined by writer and cultural critic Adam Szetela, author of That Book Is Dangerous! How Moral Panic, Social Media, and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing. Its publisher calls it “an alarming exposé of the new challenges to literary freedom in the age of social media, when anyone with an identity and an…

In a media landscape almost entirely fragmented across partisan lines, I am drawn to a writer not easily categorized. Megan McArdle, columnist at The Washington Post, calls it like she sees it. Her independence has led to a loyal fan base—and a comments section filled with backlash. This week on Conversations, I sat down with Megan to have a conversatio…

Why does so much of what we watch on TV feel flat and predictable? Why do old movies seem so much more clever, and stick with us longer and more deeply? This week, I sat down with someone who's been thinking about this question from the inside of the Hollywood machine: Justine Bateman is a filmmaker, author, and former actress who rose to fame as Mallor…

It hasn’t been a good decade for polling. In 2016, the national polls were humiliated by confident predictions of a Hillary Clinton win. In 2020, polls didn’t foresee how close the swing state margins would be. And in 2024, pollsters still underestimated Donald Trump’s support by nearly three percentage points. But as most media organizations continue t…

Josh Hammer is a political commentator, attorney, and columnist whose recent book, Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West, argues that the flourishing of the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel is essential to the survival of Western civilization.

Josh and I agree on quite a bit when it comes to Israel…

New York City Mayor Eric Adams told me, at Gracie Mansion on Monday, that there is only one thing left for former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to do after losing the Democratic primary for mayor: “Get out of the race.”

“That’s the right thing to do for the city of New York,” Adams said. Adams made it clear that he still sees Cuomo as his chief rival in…

We’re living in an era of hyper-politicization, loneliness, and a growing mental health crisis. So what does it actually mean to build a “good” and “happy” life in the middle of all that?

That’s the question I brought to Arthur Brooks.

If you’re familiar with his work, you know Arthur is the preeminent scholar of human happiness today. He started out, lik…

When I first stumbled across the Wait But Why blog nearly a decade ago, it felt like I’d found a corner of the internet that actually respected my intelligence, and challenged it. Tim Urban writes about human behavior, futurism, and society with depth and clarity—and the help of his signature stick figure illustrations—in a way that makes even the most . . .

The eyes of the world are on Iran and Israel—and on the waves of strikes that began early Friday morning when Israel hit nuclear facilities, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps military bases, missile launchers, and commanders’ residences in Iran. At the heart of the conflict is Iran’s nuclear ambitions. That’s something my guest on Conversations with Col…

We are coming up on the five-year anniversary of Bari Weiss’s resignation from The New York Times. In her now-famous resignation letter, she concluded that intellectual curiosity had become a liability at the paper of record, after she was bullied by colleagues for not following their ideological orthodoxy.

If you’re reading this article, you know what h…