Author: The Free Press

The Exodus—the story of the Israelites’ freedom from Egyptian slavery 3,000 years ago—is the ultimate story of freedom. And not just for Jews. But for people seeking liberation from subjugation in so many other times and places. Including here in America. 

From the founding fathers, to abolitionists like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas, to presidents like Lincoln and leaders like Martin Luther King Jr, the themes and symbols and moral truths of the Exodus story have been at the core of how Americans seeking freedom from tyranny have seen themselves. One could argue that without the Exodus there might be no America.

To make that case on the eve of Passover—and to take us on a tour of the way the Exodus has been used throughout American history—Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, who teaches at Yeshiva University and helms the oldest synagogue in the United States. 

You don’t need to be a believer to love this episode. You just need to be concerned with how divided we have become, how we have lost a shared sense of reality, a shared sense of ethics, and shared stories from which we can draw universal meaning and inspiration.

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Perhaps you’ve noticed that the thing we call “social media'' is deeply antisocial—the thing that promised to unite us has done precisely the opposite. 

A lot of people have tried to explain why. They blame Mark Zuckerberg. Or Jack Dorsey. Or the attention-stealing algorithms of TikTok. Or capitalism. Or human nature.

But the best explanation I have read to date was just published in the Atlantic by my guest today Jonathan Haidt. It is a must-read essay, as are Jonathan’s books, “The Righteous Mind” and “The Coddling of the American Mind.” 

Our conversation today, fitting the importance of this subject, is long and deep. It spans the advent of the like button–and how that transformed the way we use the internet–to Jon’s argument that social media is making us unfit for democracy. And that unless we change course we stand to lose everything.

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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: Elon Musk v. Twitter, BLM corruption, inflation, “don’t say gay,” plus special guest Jeff Ross, America’s Roastmaster General, on jokes about alopecia. Including his own.

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In 1973, Leonard Cohen announced he was done with music for good. The same year, in October, war broke out in Israel.

The Yom Kippur War would become the bloodiest in Israel’s young history—and Cohen was there to witness it. As the war broke out, he left his home on the Greek island of Hydra to fly into the warzone.

Leonard Cohen never said much about why he went to the front. What we know is that in the months that followed, he would write “Who By Fire.” Five decades later, on Spotify and in synagogue, you can still hear the echoes of this trip.

So what was it that happened in the desert in October of 1973 between this depressed musician and these too young soldiers going off to battle? How did it remake Leonard Cohen? How did it transform those who heard him play? And how did the war transform Israel itself?

Those are just some of the questions Matti Friedman explains in his beautiful new book Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai. 

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David Sacks is a paradox. The entrepreneur and venture capitalist helped lay the foundations of the digital world we now live in: He was one of the members of what's known as the PayPal Mafia, alongside people like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Max Levchin. He’s also been an early investor in some companies you may have heard of: Airbnb, Facebook, Slack, SpaceX, Twitter, Uber. 

At the same time, he is something of a whistleblower from inside the world of tech. He believes that Big Tech has far too much power. He argues that the fact that a handful of billionaires get to decide what we are (and aren’t) allowed to say in the new, digital public square is something that the Framers would have been repelled by—and that all Americans should oppose.

Today I spoke to David, now a general partner at Craft Ventures, about the rise of America’s social credit system and how we can defend our civil liberties in the age of the Internet.

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Today we are republishing Bari’s appearance on Hoover Institute’s Uncommon Knowledge Podcast, hosted by Peter Robinson. 

Peter Robinson is probably best known as a speech-writer for President Ronald Regan. He was the guy who wrote the famous line, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Bari and Peter talk about the social movements shaping our culture, how the personal has become political, anti-semitism and the future of the news media.

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It’s been a month since Russia invaded Ukraine. About a fourth of Ukraine’s population has been displaced. Thousands, if not more, have died. And still, ordinary Ukrainians – professors, engineers, ballerinas – are taking up arms to defend their homes and their land. Why do they stay? And do they think the fight can be won?

Today, I talk to three people who have become inadvertent war correspondents in what they call “the fight against evil.” Katerina Sergatskova reported from Kiev and Lviv. Vladislav Davidzon has reported from many of the border crossings as well as from Odessa and Lviv. And Maria Avdeeva remains in Kharkiv. I talk to them about what they’ve seen and what the war has revealed to them about themselves and about their country.

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What if I told you that all the brokenness in our society—from the increased rates in suicide and addiction to the decreased rates in marriage and sex to the crisis of faith in everything from the CDC to political leaders to our democratic elections—weren’t a series of separate catastrophes but symptoms of one underlying condition?

That’s the argument of my guest today, Yuval Levin. 

Yuval is a journalist and academic. He has served as a congressional staffer and as a domestic policy staff member under President George W Bush, he’s the author of several books including The Fractured Republic and “A Time to Build.” 

I think of him as one of America’s most insightful political philosophers. I learned so much from this conversation and I hope you do, too.

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For the past three weeks, we have watched the people of Ukraine and their president breathe life into virtues that many of us thought were dead or on life support: duty, sacrifice, responsibility, leadership…and courage. Unbelievable courage. 

The Ukrainian people know what they’re fighting for. Do we?

Today, no interview. Instead Bari speaks about what we can learn from watching President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people. To read the full text, please go to: bariweiss.substack.com

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Russia’s war against Ukraine has been raging on for almost two weeks now and Ukraine is in crisis. President Zelensky has been begging the United States, together with their allies, to enforce a “no fly zone,” to save innocent lives and help Ukraine win a war they seem likely to lose otherwise. The U.S. has refused. So has NATO. Why? 

On today’s episode, Eli Lake and Damir Marusic explain the benefits and risks of imposing a no fly zone over Ukraine, and what’s at stake—for Ukraine, for the U.S., and for the world.

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