Podcast
Conversations with Coleman
Hosted by The Free Press · EN
Conversations with Coleman is where deep thinkers and curious minds meet for sharp, surprising, and unfiltered chats. Hosted by Coleman Hughes, writer, thinker, and guy who asks the questions other people dodge - this podcast isn’t about debating. It’s about discovery. Politics, philosophy, race, culture, science: it’s all fair game. If you're done with hot takes and hungry for real-talk, come join the conversation.
244episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Dr. Cornel West: Is America Living Up to Its Promise?
4d ago01:11:53Summary readyDr. Cornel West is one of the most distinct voices in American public life. He’s a philosopher, theologian, and moral critic who has spent decades asking the toughest questions about America—what this country is and what it ought to be. He joins Coleman on the 250th anniversary of the founding to get into the state of America in 2026. They get into the founding contradictions, the ethics of manifest destiny, what American capitalism gets right and what it leaves out, the decline of religion and what has replaced it, and what he learned running for president. It ends, as all great philosophical conversations should, with his view of the Drake-versus-Kendrick beef. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
SummaryDouglas Murray: The Iranian Regime Means What It Says
2w ago01:03:15Summary readyDouglas Murray is back as a columnist at The Free Press, and Coleman wastes no time putting him to work. They get into the Iran deal and why Murray thinks it won’t hold. They also dig into the nature of a regime that has been openly stating its intentions for decades, and a West that keeps refusing to believe them. And they cover what the resignation of British prime minister Keir Starmer reveals about a country that voted for change and got very little of it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
SummaryCaitlin Flanagan: Why I Finally Left Los Angeles
3w ago01:04:08Summary readyCaitlin Flanagan joins the show today, now an official columnist at The Free Press. Flanagan, one of the sharpest essayists working today, spent 35 years in Los Angeles before deciding she’d had enough, and tells Coleman why. The answer says a lot about what progressive governance has done to one of America’s great cities. From there they get into territory Flanagan knows well: the state of marriage, the dating crisis, and the case for having children in a culture that has talked itself out of wanting them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
SummaryColeman Hughes vs. Peter Beinart Debate: Should Israel Be a Jewish State?
4w ago01:44:56Summary readyPeter Beinart is a writer and author who has contributed to The New Republic, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. He grew up a committed Zionist and has spent the last decade publicly refuting that position, arriving at the view that Israel cannot be reconciled with the principle of equality under the law. His most recent book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, caused shock waves in the Jewish world. In this conversation, Coleman and Peter debate the Palestinian right of return and whether it’s comparable to Israel’s Law of Return for diaspora Jews. They argue over whether a one-state solution would produce equality or civil war, and whether the idea of comparing Israel to South Africa holds up under scrutiny. They get into the role of jihadist ideology in the conflict, whether Iran constitutes an existential threat to Israel, and what it would actually mean for Israel to be a democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
SummaryIs America’s Racial Reckoning Over? With John McWhorter
Jun 801:08:00Summary readyJohn McWhorter is back. This time, Coleman and John analyze where America stands on race in 2026, whether the woke moment is genuinely behind us, and what may have replaced it. They also get into why black men are increasingly voting Republican, how mass immigration has subtly shifted the conversation on race, and what the Supreme Court's recent Voting Rights Act decision actually means. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
SummaryWhy You Shouldn’t Be Scared of AI
Jun 100:57:33Summary readyAman Verjee has had one of the more unusual careers in finance. He started on Wall Street at Lehman Brothers, joined PayPal in its earliest days and worked alongside Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, and eventually became a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. Along the way he developed an obsession with the history of finance, which led to his upcoming book, A Brief History of Financial Bubbles. He joined Coleman to talk about what the biggest bubbles of the last 500 years have in common, what they reveal about the societies that produced them, and what actually caused the 2008 crisis. Then they look at the questions that everyone is asking: Is AI a bubble, and how will it end? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
SummaryWhat People Who Choose Assisted Death Actually Say
May 2601:02:14Summary readyIn 2016, Canada legalized assisted dying for the terminally ill. Since then, the law—medical assistance in dying, or MAID—has expanded dramatically—to people with chronic but non-terminal conditions, with disabilities, and potentially those with mental illness as the sole underlying condition. Rupa Subramanya, The Free Press’s Canada correspondent, has spent years reporting on this slippery slope, interviewing patients, doctors, and families along the way. She discusses with Coleman where the line should be, what some of the strangest assisted dying cases reveal about the system, and what Canada’s experience should tell the rest of the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
SummaryMichael Shellenberger on the Psychology of Left-Wing Violence
May 1801:01:58Summary readyMichael Shellenberger is the author of San Fransickco and Apocalypse Never. He’s a former progressive activist, and one of the most prominent advocates for nuclear energy in the country. In this episode, he and Coleman dig into the Epstein story and why the evidence falls far short of the conspiracy theory most people believe; the savior complex he sees underlying progressive politics and its connection to recent left- wing violence; and what California and other blue states are finally starting to get right about homelessness after years of getting it catastrophically wrong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
SummaryThe War Before the War: What Everyone Gets Wrong About Israel-Palestine
May 1101:09:20Summary readyOren Kessler explains the origins of Palestinian nationalism, the myth that Jews started the conflict in Israel, and why peace in the region has been elusive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
SummaryWalter Russell Mead on Christian Zionism, the ‘Israel Lobby’ Myth, and the Psychology of Antisemitism
May 401:02:29Summary readyWhy do Americans support Israel? The standard answers—D.C. lobbying, shared democratic values, strategic benefits—all miss something. Walter Russell Mead, one of America's foremost foreign policy scholars, traces the real answer back to 17th-century Calvinist theology, and argues that Christian Zionists were advocating for a Jewish homeland long before most Jews were. Mead joins the show to make the case that the famous Israel Lobby thesis is actually historically incoherent. To explain where antisemitism comes from and why it keeps coming back, he offers a nuanced defense of American global engagement against the America First movement’s more isolationist impulses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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