Author: The Free Press

Peter Boghossian is the first one to tell you: he's no victim of cancel culture. The philosophy professor has long had a taste for stoking debate, questioning orthodoxies, and exposing the brokenness of an academic system that values identity-based grievances over scholarship. He did that, in part, by writing phony papers like "The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct" and getting them published by respected, peer-reviewed journals. 

That project and others painted a target on Peter’s back on Portland State's campus, where he was subjected to endless investigations and harassment. 

This week, Peter resigned in a letter writing to the school's provost: “The university transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a social justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender and victimhood and whose only output was grievance and division.”

In this episode, a frank conversation about the culture of higher education, and how to fight back against radicalism without becoming radicalized yourself.

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Abigail Shrier is a lawyer, a reporter and author of Irreversible Damage. One way to describe her book would be: controversial. She has been accused of spreading misinformation by GLAAD. A prominent ACLU lawyer called for her book to be banned. A favorable review of the book in Science-Based Medicine ignited an online mob, which led to the journal disappearing that first review and replacing it with a negative one. Amazon and Target have also been pressured to stop carrying Shrier's book.

But it hasn’t worked. Despite being ignored by outlets like the New York Times Book Review, Irreversible Damage is an enormous bestseller. Some readers felt so passionately about this book that they took out billboards advertising it on their own dime.

Both the subject that Abigail writes about and the treatment of her book deserve your attention.

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Between the catastrophic American withdrawal from Afghanistan, an endless pandemic, a broken education system, and competent leaders nowhere in sight, it can feel like America is in a constant state of meltdown.

On today's episode, renowned historian Niall Ferguson answers the big questions: how did we get here? Is American decline inevitable? And if not, what can be done to renew the culture and the country?

Niall is the author of nearly 20 books. His latest is: "Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe."

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In Part II, a diagnosis of the global ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party with Josh Rogin. Josh explains how U.S policy mistakes in the 20th century handed more power to China in the 21st, how the Chinese government wields power over Big Tech, Hollywood, and higher education on U.S. soil, and whether we’re headed for another Cold War.  

“The global scale of the China challenge is not just about China’s rise, it’s not just about the genocide,” says Josh, “It’s about what kind of world we want to live in.”

Plus, a call with Josh to discuss the American withdrawal of Afghanistan, and how the execution of that withdrawal creates a power vacuum for China to fill.

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When the pandemic began eighteen months ago, anyone who dared suggest that the virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China, was dismissed as a crank, or otherwise accused of racism, xenophobia, and refusing to “believe science.” Why was this highly plausible theory unsayable?

On today’s podcast, Josh Rogin, a foreign policy columnist for the Washington Post and author of “Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century” answers that question. He makes the powerful case that it all comes back to the power of the Chinese Communist Party, which he likens to the Gambino crime family. If the Gambinos, that is, were running one of the richest countries in the world.

Josh is a phenomenal guest and we couldn’t contain our conversation to just one episode. So today, in Part One, a look into what went down in Wuhan and Washington during the fateful month of January 2020. We show how the “Lab Leak Theory,” due in big part to Josh’s reporting, went from a fringe conspiracy theory to a credible explanation for the virus that continues to ravage the planet. Also discussed: Anthony Fauci, Donald Trump, Rand Paul, Peter Daszak, Xi Jinping, Elaine Chao, Henry Kissinger.

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How did this happen? How did we spend 20 years, over 2 trillion dollars and over 2,000 American lives to wind up losing Afghanistan to the Taliban in under two weeks? Was the mission doomed from the start? Was it political incompetence? Or was it the fault of the military brass who refused to be honest about what it would take to win?

Today, a frank and wide-ranging conversation with H.R. McMaster, former National Security Advisor and three-star general. We talk about Obama, Trump, Biden; the corruption and incompetence of our elites; rising isolationism; and why he’s still bullish about America.

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For several months, the journalist Katie Herzog has been talking to some of the country's top doctors and professors—not about COVID, or vaccines—but about a new, creeping orthodoxy that’s taken over the hospitals and medical schools where they work. Those doctors say that whole areas of research are off-limits. They say that top physicians are treating patients based on their race. That professors are apologizing for saying ‘male’ and ‘female’ and that students are policing teachers. And in more than a few alarming instances, politics has come before patients. As one doctor put it: “Wokeness feels like an existential threat."Today, Katie joins us to discuss the ideological purge happening within American medicine, where the stakes could not be higher. 

If you haven't read her newsmaking stories, published in our newsletter, we highly recommend checking them out

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Amy Cooper was not the internet’s first “Karen” — the pejorative used for a demanding, entitled white woman. But as the Central Park dog walker who went viral for calling the police on a black birdwatcher last year, she quickly became the paragon of the archetype.

Within 24 hours, Amy Cooper had been doxxed, fired from her job, and surrendered her dog. She wound up fleeing the country. She hasn’t spoken publicly since last summer. Until now. 

In a wide-ranging interview with Kmele Foster, friend of Honestly and co-host of The Fifth Column, we revisit the story of what happened in the park that day. We show what the media intentionally left out of the story. And we examine the cost of mob justice.

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Why are men the way they are? Are they naturally more aggressive? And is it fair for transwomen to compete in sports separated by sex? Is it possible to overcome our animal instincts?

And why has it gotten so hard to ask these questions out loud? To admit that there are any differences between men and women?

On today’s episode, a deep dive into these subjects and more with Carole Hooven, the author of “‘T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us." The book was named one of the WSJ’s ten best.

Carole is an evolutionary biologist and lecturer at Harvard, where she focuses on behavioral endocrinology and sex differences. Here, she explains the science of T, the misinformation about sex, and the importance of telling the truth, even if it makes you unpopular.

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Maud Maron is the picture of a passionate progressive. She was a Planned Parenthood escort; a research assistant for a Black Panther leader; a Bernie voter; a public school parent; and, most significantly, a public defender who worked for many years at Legal Aid.

But fellow progressives, including her colleagues at Legal Aid, now insist that Maud is racist, that she supports segregation, that she is, despite all appearances to the contrary, a modern version of Bull Connor.

How did this happen? Why is Maron being lied about so flagrantly? And why did she recently decide to sue Legal Aid, the institution to which she dedicated her career?

You've probably never heard of Maud Maron. But I think you will be shocked by her story -- and inspired by her decision to stand up to a tsunami of lies. 

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