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.
247episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
The Real Reason Americans Are So Sick, with Jillian Michaels
4d ago01:16:07Summary readyJillian Michaels is a fitness expert who has spent three decades helping people get healthy in a system that is actively working against them. She joins Coleman to make the case that America’s obesity crisis is not a failure of willpower but the predictable result of a food industry designed to addict and a pharmaceutical industry designed to profit. They get into Ozempic and why taking it for vanity reasons is a catastrophically bad idea, what MAHA has actually accomplished and where it has fallen short, the vaccine debate, and why the healthy-at-any-size movement is one of the more dangerous lies in recent memory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
SummaryThe Charlie Kirk Killing and America’s Forgotten History of Left-Wing Terror
2w ago01:02:21Summary readyNoah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review and author of the new book Blood & Progress, which makes the case that left-wing political violence has a long and largely forgotten history in America. He joins Coleman Hughes to argue that the commonly held belief that political violence is largely a right-wing phenomenon is not just inaccurate but actively dangerous. He believes America has forgotten a century’s worth of anarchist bombings, Marxist guerrilla movements, and ideologically motivated assassinations. And with the trials of Luigi Mangione and the alleged Charlie Kirk killer now underway, the pattern is repeating in real time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
SummaryIn Defense of Elites, with Richard Hanania
3w ago01:19:57Summary readyRichard Hanania is a political scientist, writer, and author of the new book Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster, which makes the sometimes uncomfortable case that antiestablishment politics, for all their appeal, tend to make countries worse. He joins Coleman to talk about who elites actually are and why they’re usually right, even when they’re sometimes spectacularly wrong. They also get into what explains the rise of antiestablishment politics across the West, and why communications technology may be more to blame than any actual failure of institutions. Hanania’s own journey from the alt-right informs all of it, and he closes with some unusually honest advice for young men who find themselves going down that road. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
SummaryDr. Cornel West: Is America Living Up to Its Promise?
4w 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
Jun 2501:03:15Summary 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
Jun 2201:04:08Summary 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?
Jun 1501:44:56Summary 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
Summary