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- [00:00]
Coleman Hughes
Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman, now produced by the Free Press. If you're a longtime listener and don't know much about the Free Press, this episode will give you great context because.
- [00:12]
Bari Weiss
I'm interviewing its founder Bari Weiss. Most of the conversation is about her.
- [00:17]
Coleman Hughes
Vision for the FP as an institution where she thinks it fits in the modern media landscape, how her vision has changed over time, and how she plans to execute that vision.
- [00:28]
Bari Weiss
We also talk about her position on.
- [00:30]
Coleman Hughes
The Trump administration and her ongoing concerns about anti Semitism. So without further ado, Bari Weiss, AI.
- [00:46]
Bari Weiss
Already has a large hand in dictating the headlines you see and the voices you hear to keep that power on the side of free inquiry. The the Cosmos Institute and fire, the foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, have put up $1 million in grant funding for open source projects that make AI a better partner for Truth, not a hidden sensor. They're looking for builders who can service dissenting views, expose blind spots, and keep the marketplace of ideas open, no matter who's in charge of the algorithm. To learn more, visit cosmos grants.org truth again, that's cosmos grants.org truth why are podcasts like this one at all popular? We can't compete with the resources of a place like cnn. I can't give you the sheer volume of analysis that the New York Times can, but there's one thing I have that those organizations trust. I think my audience listens to me because they found my judgment to be trustworthy in the past, but have found mainstream media organizations to be the exact opposite. That's why I love Ground News. They're an app and website designed to help you escape ideological echo chambers by pulling in the world's perspective on today's most emotionally and politically charged issues. Ground News breaks down the political bent, reliability, ownership, and location of each reporting source so you understand that news isn't simply reported. Often narratives are crafted. For example, consider a recent story about the Department of Education informing my alma mater, Columbia University, that they broke federal anti discrimination laws and fail to comply with accreditation requirements. There are many different ways to frame this story instead of your typical newsfeed that uses algorithms to push or suppress certain angles. If you go to Ground News Coleman, you can zoom out and understand the full scope of the story. For instance, you can see that the Bloomberg headline frames it as Trump targeting Colombia over pro Palestine protests, which is a framing more sympathetic to the protesters, whereas Arut Sheva frames it as Trump moving to strip Colombia of its accreditation over anti Semitism concerns, which is a framing more sympathetic to Trump as well as to Jewish students. Even the difference between the phrasing matters here. Is Trump targeting or is he moving to strip? The same action is being described, but the first one sounds far more negative than the second. These are the kinds of observations you begin to notice when you start using Ground News. That's why I got you 40% off the same Vantage plan that I use. Just go to groundnews.com Coleman and expand your worldview with unlimited access to all the features I mentioned, plus their browser extension and exclusive newsletters. Get a well rounded view of the world, think critically about what you read, and find common ground between perspectives. That's groundnews.com Coleman for 40% off their vantage plan, available for a limited time only.
- [03:50]
Coleman Hughes
Barry Weiss thanks so much for coming.
- [03:51]
Bari Weiss
On my show, Coleman Hughes. I'm so excited to be here.
- [03:54]
Coleman Hughes
All right, so you probably don't need an introduction or a backstory on this particular podcast for many reasons, but let's just start with the origins of the Free Press, where my podcast is now produced. Do you remember, was there a specific moment when you had the idea for the Free Press? And what was the idea initially? How, if at all, has it changed in its actual unfolding?
- [04:22]
Bari Weiss
First of all, I'm so excited to be sitting across from you and in the Free Press newsroom. It's extremely exciting for me. Just a huge admirer of yours and very, very excited to have you in the mix. Um, when I left the New York Times, I had absolutely no plan at all. All I knew was that the thing I had seen was intolerable to me and that I didn't want to be a fig leaf for something that I felt had become sort of corrupt. And most fundamentally, that, like, the whole reason I became a journalist was to pursue my curiosity. And if I wasn't gonna be able to do that, what was the point? In retrospect, when I wrote that viral resignation letter, I should have had a little widget. It was like, give me your email and follow along to see what I'll do next. The business would have been much further along by this point had I done that. Instead, what I did was commenced a strong diet of day drinking and telling Nelly that anything short of becoming building a world changing empire was sort of going to be too small. I felt like I had seen this. I had seen such an enormous problem, and the solution had to feel equally enormous. And so for a while, that paralyzed me, to be honest. And any suggestion that anyone had, like, oh, I should pitch a show Here, or try this there. And it was like, it's too small, it's too small. And then finally Nellie convinced me to do the smallest thing of all, which is start a blog, a substack. She created the, like, landing page or whatever. I would never have known how to do that because I'm a Luddite. And I wrote the first post for what was then called Common Sense, which was a personal blog, on a flight to Miami. She was still at the New York Times, and she was doing a piece about how Miami and Covid was becoming like the new Silicon Valley that never really happened. And I wrote the post on the plane. And then what shocked me is that within maybe a few weeks, I. I was making more than I was at the New York Times. I think my salary when I left was like $115,000, which felt like a lot at the time. And what astonished me even more was that pieces pretty quickly were getting more traffic than they were at the New York Times. And startup founders talk about this thing called product market fit. I had no idea what that was. I just knew that the more I was doing of the thing, the bigger the audience got. When I look back, I wrote like a memo at the time to some people that I trusted sort of talking about what I ultimately wanted to do. And I had occasion recently to revisit it. And I'm down the path of doing some of those things. I think we do have a thriving newsroom and an incredible subscription business, but the Free Press is at the very beginning of solving the problem that I felt like I peered into at the New York Times. And so ultimately, you know, if you told me that 10 years from 5 years from now, a few years from now, that we would be in book publishing, in producing and making our own documentaries and maybe movies and television shows, that we had not just incredible debates that we do a few times a year, but an ongoing thriving events business that we maybe even had a physical space where like minded, curious, intellectually open people would go to. You could find all of that in a memo I wrote in like the summer of 2020 after I left the New York Times. That's a long way of saying the ambition that I have for it is as big, if not bigger, than in the days when I was sort of like drinking Negronis and paralyzed. It's just, I kind of figured out that you don't like, you don't create an empire overnight. You have to take small territory and do. There's a phrase that my friend Jessica Lesson, who runs the Information taught me, which is like earning your right to fight the next round. And that was just extraordinarily good advice. So it's like, okay, master this one thing. Make sure that you've killed it and maintained your standard of excellence and integrity, and then go on to capture the next hill. And so, yeah, that's where you find me right now.
- [08:29]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah. So if you think about who the prototypical Free Press subscriber is, how would you describe that person? And do you think that audience profile is the same in 2025 as it. As it was a few years ago, or is it changing at all?
- [08:51]
Bari Weiss
Well, it's changed a lot because, to be blunt, the Free Press began as a reactionary product. Like, I saw the excesses of the liberal left, and it pissed me off because it was making my own life harder, and I felt like was swallowing so many things that I loved and cared about. And so the stories that I ran at in the beginning were stories that spoke directly to that. And so, you know, in the beginning, it was tons of stories about what came to be called institutional capture, whether that was in schools or in newspapers or in media. Four years later, I think it's been four years, I've lost track of time. The Free Press, the burdens and the obligations of it are extremely different. If you are a sideshow to someone, like, not a sideshow in a negative way, but if you're like the spice on the side of someone's diet, but they're getting their main meal at the Washington Post or the New York Times, that's one thing. What's changed is that the audience has said to us, no, no, you guys are like, my main thing. Like, I'm coming to you at 6am to read the front page, and I want to get a holistic sense of what's going on in the world. Well, we weren't built for that in the beginning, and it takes a while to build up to that. And so that's one thing that has changed. I think we've gone from being a reactionary product that did six or seven topics really well to understanding that what the audience is asking from us is so much more than that. And so over the coming months, what does Free press, health and science look like? What does free press, technology and business coverage look like? What does free press economic coverage look like? We're still going to do the kinds of themes and stories that we began with because they're still urgent and important, but we've had to just really build out the breadth of what we Cover. As for who the audience is, I would say, and I think this is still true, I would say like the beating heart of our audience are people that think of themselves as liberals, classical liberals, centrists, center left, even center right libertarians who feel disaffected and cast out or alienated by, let's just call it wokeness that came to capture like things that they regarded as sacred and important, whether they're institutions or culture. So that I feel is still very much like the absolute. If you asked me what is the core Free Press Persona, I would say it's a disaffected liberal in a hyper woke environment. But it's also a lot of other people. And this is both the bluntly the huge opportunity and challenge. I could tell you, you know, there's a lot of never Trump publications out there that are thriving and successful and I'm a reader of many of them. They have a very, very particular niche audience. Ours is much wider than that. So it's like we're both read by people in the Trump administration and we're read by people that were pilloried or cast out or despised the Trump administration. We are read by people in Manhattan and Los Angeles. We are also read by farmers in Iowa and homeschooling moms in Texas. Like it's a very much like here comes everybod. Like, so I imagine, like it's not a niche audience. And so that, that's both an incredible opportunity, but it's also a challenge for us.
- [12:04]
Coleman Hughes
I think it's, it seems to me it's also a challenge because the coalition is unique. It's not if you try to name another publication with the Free Press Coalition, I'm not sure you, you come up with any.
- [12:17]
Bari Weiss
No.
- [12:18]
Coleman Hughes
And, and so I think, you know, when you look at the way other people view the Free Press that are in other publications, whether it's never Trump publications or left leaning publications, I think they have, if they're going to have an opinion on the Free Press, it's not the same as a stock opinion they have of a lot of other places. It's unique to the Free Press. But it's also this thing of.
- [12:48]
Bari Weiss
I.
- [12:49]
Coleman Hughes
Sort of don't know what to make of it because it's an, it's a new kind of thing.
- [12:53]
Bari Weiss
Yeah. And it really, really frustrates a lot of people.
- [12:57]
Coleman Hughes
That's exactly what I'm getting at. I think the result of that is very few other publications are going to have just a, like a stamp of approval on the Free Press because There's nothing else. There's not many other things like it. Right? There's no one in your camp in some way, no other major publications in your camp?
- [13:18]
Bari Weiss
I mean, I think what makes the Free Press unique is very much typified by the kinds of people that choose to work here. And we took a straw poll. I wrote a little bit about this two weeks before the election. We were on a staff retreat. We were literally stuck on a boat. We were going around the Statue of Liberty, which is incredibly fun. And an enterprising podcast producer was like, I'm gonna take a vote because we're two weeks ahead of the presidential election. And I honestly did not. I did not know what the outcome of that vote would be. And I was sort of, like, quite nervous because I was like, is everyone here gonna be like an RFK write in secretly? And I didn't know it. And it was a third for Trump, a third for Kamala, and a third were either writing in or not voting. There's no other newsroom like that in the country that I'm 100% sure of. And in that, I think we're very much a reflection of the country and also of our readership. I'm extraordinarily proud of that, because I've been in many monocultures in my life, having worked in American newsrooms, and you kind of lose your edge when you're working alongside people that all think the same way. And so, A, I think it keeps all of us on our toes in the most positive way. B, I think it models the bigger set of values that we're trying to stand for in the world. So, like, what does that mean? I think the average free Presser, and they come up to me and say this, and it's kind of. It's very gratifying because they're reflecting to me a implicit value, which is they say, you know, hey, I'm xyz. I lean this way politically. I don't always. They always say this. I don't agree with everything that you guys run, but I know that's the point. And I come away smarter from having read the kinds of pieces that you run. I'm just very proud of that. And I think at our worst, and there's many criticisms of us, we have blind spots. We're also a nascent newsroom, so there's just whole areas of the world that we're not covering yet. But at our worst, we have blind spots. At our worst, we become parodic and can repeat the kind of same themes. At our worst, we're contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. I know all the criticisms. At our best, I think what we do is give people the strongest argument on both or multiple sides of an issue. And in a country where it feels like a thousand years ago, the idea of RBG and Scalia going to the opera together, being best friends, that is a vestige of an America that feels to many people out of reach. We're trying to revive that and actually reflect that in the way that we, in the way that we conduct ourselves in the world and in the kinds of pieces that we run. You know, the audience ultimately will judge whether or not we've fulfilled that mission, whether we've lived up to those values.
- [16:10]
Coleman Hughes
So the idea of having a newsroom that's one third for Trump, 1/3 for Kamala, 1 third other, I should say.
- [16:18]
Bari Weiss
Like, I didn't give anyone a litmus test when they joined. It's just, that's how it shook out.
- [16:21]
Coleman Hughes
That's how it shook out. That's fanta. I think that's fantastic. That's why I feel my values are aligned with the Free Press. I think if you spoke to a lot of people at other newsrooms, many of them would say, I'd love for my newsroom to be like that. Actually, many of them would, at minimum pay lip service to that. But then the next question would be, how do you, how does that survive? Practically? Because once you, once you have people that feel strongly on different sides of an issue in an office, I mean, we've seen this meltdown after meltdown after meltdown at different institutions, there's a certain gravity where it has to go one way or the other because people can't tolerate each other. That's a fundamental problem. So how do you, as the head of the ship, avoid a mutiny in one direction or the other? How do you keep people getting along? Is it a matter of who you hire?
- [17:16]
Bari Weiss
I mean, part of it is.
- [17:21]
Coleman Hughes
It'S.
- [17:21]
Bari Weiss
A very self selecting group that comes to work at the Free Press in the same way that I think our audience is self selecting. In other words, there are many places, and by the way, I'm a reader of many of them, where when I want to just like get the rage at Trump going, like, I know where to go for that. You know, if I want to get the rage at Hamas going, I know where to go for like, meaning there's virtue in that kind of predictability and virtue in the thing that I think a lot of people are craving in this Moment, which is the, the warmth of being in an, in a, in a space where you know that your priors are going to get affirmed to you. What we're trying to do here is, you know, is something very different. And it's, it's quite challenging. It's challenging for the reader and it's challenging to work in an environment, I think for some people like that. So, you know, people ask like, how do I. How have I hired for the Free Press? They've hired themselves in the sense that I would say most of the people that work here wrote me a cold email or reached out to us in some way and kind of self identified as a Free presser in all of the complications of what that is. Now, obviously, the thing I wake up thinking of, not the first thing I wake up thinking about, but every day I'm thinking about this question. My nightmare is to either replicate or fall victim to the exact type of thing that I experienced at the New York Times. So part of the way that we do that is be extremely explicit about our values. Part of the way we do that is it's like working. It's almost like a muscle being in conversation with people that you disagree with, but then having a beer with them at the end of the day, like, that's a, that's not a natural. I don't know if that's a natural thing to human. Like, the natural thing as humans is just like, go get with your little tribe and get with the people that agree with you and like, beat your chest and feel good. So the thing we're trying to do is very hard. And you know, again, to me it's all in the practice. It's not like I had a litmus test to hire people. I don't know if three years from now it'll be exactly the same breakdown. I don't know where the country will be in a few years from now. What I can tell you is that it's really, really working right now. And part of it, I think is if you ask people, I don't know, I could talk about that. I think about it a lot. I would say one thing that I did not expect, but that a lot of Free Press people, readers and staffers have in common is. I don't want to say that they're all religious, but I would say that there is a deep sense of values that people here actively talk about often and often that is a religious person. Like, there's a lot of conversation. I don't want to say necessarily about God, but Sometimes about God, certainly about the idea that the world is disordered, the culture feels unraveling, and what's the kind of wisdom and connective tissue that, like, is bigger than the politics of the day, is bigger than a lot of the things that feel like they're tearing us apart. And I would say that that is like an active conversation here in a way that I've never experienced in any place I've ever worked, that I find is, like, very, very generative and really healthy.
- [20:57]
Coleman Hughes
Okay, I'm going to read some of the. I'm going to read some of the criticism that the Free Press has gotten recently from no less than Andrew Sullivan, who I admire for a long time and I think is brilliant. But here's what he says about the Free Press. Goes, quote, I just made the mistake of looking at the publication that, with increasing levels of nerve, calls itself the Free Press.
- [21:21]
Bari Weiss
The almost total avoidance of coverage of.
- [21:24]
Coleman Hughes
The current government threats to freedom, as basic as habeas corpus, due process, and free speech on campus, is quite something. And when there is coverage, it's nitpicking. In order to defend Trump, did they mean none of it? As in, did they mean none of it in their commitment to free speech and so forth?
- [21:42]
Bari Weiss
I agree with you that Andrew's brilliant. And so I don't want to say that I dismiss his criticism. I take it seriously. You know, he's a person that Nellie and I have spent a lot of time with. And I wish he had called me and talked to me about that before he posted it, but I did see it on the Internet as well. Look, Andrew is someone who, like, when he gets an idea in his mind, he really sticks to it. I feel a little bit like the Free Press is like the Trigg Palin of the moment for him. I don't know if you remember his obsession. He got obsessed with the idea that Sarah Palin was not actually the mother of trick.
- [22:18]
Coleman Hughes
Yes.
- [22:20]
Bari Weiss
What I'll say is I genuinely don't think he's reading what we're putting out there. It may be true that if you look, do we have an anti Trump piece that is sufficiently rageful or sufficiently passionate to Andrew's satisfaction every single day? No, but if you look at the kinds of pieces that we've done, I mean, who can look at the piece that we ran recently about Qatar and Qatar's influence over the Trump administration and more broadly over America, and what's more serious and more lasting? That or an 800 word op ed saying Donald Trump is a threat to democracy who could look at the. We ran a symposium recently on whether or not we were in a kind of constitutional crisis moment from some of the most like, pedigreed and celebrated originalist judges and scholars in the country. Again, what's more effective? That or an op ed by, I don't know, Jen Rubin? We ran an essay, a really important essay recently by Rod Dreher, who's extremely close to J.D. vance, about his concerns about this administration. I just could go on like that with, like, lists of dozens and dozens and dozens of stories that we've published since Trump took office. I just think that for people maybe, that are encountering, like, a headline on Twitter or a piece, like, we're just publishing so many pieces a day, perhaps they're not reading us carefully enough.
- [23:55]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah, I agree with that. I also think it's really shitty when a friend doesn't contact you first.
- [24:03]
Bari Weiss
Yeah.
- [24:04]
Coleman Hughes
Because I think, yeah, you know, just like, call me up and yell at me and we'll talk about it. And if I tell you to fuck off, okay, well, then. Then go to Twitter. But that's a personal code of mine.
- [24:15]
Bari Weiss
One thing that I do really pride us on, you know, we don't always do this, but doing it our best, is when people come to us with criticism, it's not even that we take it seriously. Often it turns into a piece itself, and sometimes that's a letter to the editor. But you would be shocked by the number of pieces that we've run that have begun with an angry text or voice memo or email to me. And, you know, again, like. And I think that it. I think that it catches people off guard because they're so used to, like, just, like, screaming into the void. And it's like, no, no. If you have great criticism and you have productive criticism that you feel that we feel would make us better and our understanding of the world better, we take it very, very seriously. I think one of the things that's hard and that I'm really trying to practice is, and I'm sure you understand this, Coleman, is when you've been online for a really long time and you get a lot of really irrational hate coming at you, it is very tempting to just plug the holes in your ears and cover your eyes and wish away all criticism as strawman hateful, tuning it all out. It's a very hard thing to tune out the irrational, deranged hatred, but also make sure that you are getting useful, constructive feedback and criticism. And that's something that I am struggling with a lot. And that's one of the reasons why I find it so important to be working with people that see the world differently than I do. Because I know that when Joe Nacera comes to me with criticism, I know he's giving it to me or giving it to the publication with the best of possible faith. He works here. He wants it to be great. And I think that's one of the things that I think keeps me honest. But I would say for anyone that's been online and has been like getting punched in the face for many, many years in a row, it's a muscle that, like, it's a practice that you need to maintain.
- [26:22]
Coleman Hughes
Definitely.
- [26:24]
Bari Weiss
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- [27:47]
I do, but. But like I have such an. If you ask me the second follow up question which is like, what do I mean by that? Like, I don't feel like I have a sophisticated answer.
- [27:58]
Coleman Hughes
So then what does it mean to you to say yes? Why is it important to you to say yes as opposed to no or I don't know.
- [28:06]
Bari Weiss
Maybe. It's definitely not a no. But it's more than an I don't. It's more than a I hope or I don't know. I think part of it is just a visceral feeling that I Have and I feel like has deepened as I've gotten older. I think part of it is just maybe a yearning for God that is not proof or disproof, but that's the reason that I just say yes. Part of it is very much a view that without God, I'm not sure. In the end, we just did a really great debate on this and I felt Ross Douthat was very convincing. I don't know how we get to all kinds of other things that I believe in, like the idea that we're all created equal because we're all created in God's image. How do we get there without God? So you could say that my answer for Godness or belief in Godness is kind of thin or utilitarian. I don't know. I feel like it's an emergent thing for me. Yeah, what about. I'm just curious. Yes. Is it a yes or a no or a maybe?
- [29:20]
Coleman Hughes
It's probably not. Probably not. But, like, I think I would count as an atheist for sure. But I don't at all discount the idea that religion can be good not just for individuals, which is obvious if you've ever met someone, you know, millions of people across the world that were alcoholics, drug addicts, you name it, until they found God, and now they're just sweet, lovely people. So to go up to such a person and say, did you know God probably doesn't exist? And I just read Richard Dawkins. Yeah, you can be right. But I don't see how that's helpful or to me, if faith works for you, then you should do faith because you've only got one life. And as long as it's not harming anyone else, I don't see how it's harming me. So I actually recommend that people do faith and religion if it works for them and doesn't harm other people. I don't think you should be an atheist just because that's probably the most intellectually sound, intellectually defensible position. Nor do I think a community that's super functional because it's centered around a benign faith should let go of that faith if it's working for the community. So I think the only critique I have of the famous atheists, that I agree with them down the line on almost everything, except for that I take very seriously the research, which is not ambiguous at this point, that religious people are happier, conservatives are happier than liberals, which could be a side effect of religion. I don't think we know why, but there's no rule that says, you know, having the truest, most scientifically defensible beliefs is equal to living the happiest life possible, or living life, or living the good life. Yeah, there's no rule. I don't think there's any reason that that has to be true. And so if I get evidence that maybe it's not true, you gotta take that on board. To me, as an atheist, you have to seriously grapple with that question.
- [31:33]
Bari Weiss
I think also part of the reason that this question is particular when you ask a Jew this question is because so much of Judaism is about acting as if, like, I try and live my life as if God exists. There's this idea, you know, there's this sort of famous line from the Bible of, you know, it's NA7. Like, we will do and then we will understand. And the idea behind that is, like, you do all these things, or as my dad likes to say, it's like a good program. Like, it's a good program for a meaningful life, a meaningful family life, a way of marking time, a obligation to do right and pursue justice in the world. And so for me, I think it's part of the reason I say yes is because I want it to be a yes. Because I try at my best to live my life as if there is a God. But I don't know. It's probably something I should talk to a rabbi more deeply about.
- [32:34]
Coleman Hughes
I think that's what RFK Jr said about getting off of heroin. I don't know if you ever saw that interview he did. Yeah, it's actually one of the few really personal interviews he's done about his whole past. And all his craziness is that the advice that brought him to religion was to first do the stuff and then see how you feel and how you believe after a few years of doing it. Which is counterintuitive, but. But it actually makes sense because this actually goes back to what I said a second ago. If you start doing faith and it works for you, you just notice you're waking up happier every day. Who at that point would then question whether. Whether the faith is working for you? Right. It's similar to you mentioned Ross Douthit. So Ross struggled. He wrote about this in his book. Struggled with Lyme disease and chronic pain and just awful, awful ailments. And he tried everything, tried Western medicine, everything doctors gave him. And then he started doing these crazy quack stuff, sound therapy and blah, blah, blah.
- [33:41]
Bari Weiss
But I read the book.
- [33:42]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah, it worked. His pain was gone. So my view is that every Single one of us, if we're in, whether it's physical pain or emotional pain, and you start doing something that is not hurting anyone, that you're just immediately happier and your pain goes away. No one at the. At that point is going to question.
- [34:02]
Bari Weiss
Whether the thing is legit.
- [34:03]
Coleman Hughes
And if you think you are, it's because you haven't been in that scenario.
- [34:06]
Bari Weiss
Yeah.
- [34:07]
Coleman Hughes
Right. And. And so that's how I feel about faith and quack cures, though I don't personally engage any of the above.
- [34:16]
Bari Weiss
I've never tried a quack cure for anything.
- [34:19]
Coleman Hughes
Well, don't try it unless you absolutely have to. It should be a last resort.
- [34:23]
Bari Weiss
Yeah, yeah. You know, do you regard, like, acupuncture as a quack thing or legit enough?
- [34:27]
Coleman Hughes
People have told me it's legit.
- [34:28]
Bari Weiss
Yeah.
- [34:30]
Coleman Hughes
The thing with that is. Remember when the New York Times ran that piece years ago called the Placebo Effect is Real?
- [34:38]
Bari Weiss
No, I don't.
- [34:39]
Coleman Hughes
Is. I had heard other people make.
- [34:42]
Bari Weiss
I know this is real because I once got prescribed Xanax and I never actually filled the prescription. I just looked at the prescription and knew that it could be there if I needed it. And that was enough to not panic.
- [34:54]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah, but the point of that title is a double meaning because obviously the placebo effect is real, but it's also. The placebo effect is real. In other words, if you're looking for a way to lessen your pain and the doctor gives you sugar pills and your pain is lessened.
- [35:09]
Bari Weiss
It doesn't.
- [35:10]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah, it's real. Because in the end, the point of the medicine was to lessen the pain. If you can do that by exploiting this weird thing in human psychology, then so much the better. Right?
- [35:20]
Bari Weiss
Yeah.
- [35:21]
Coleman Hughes
So that's how I feel about all that. So one more question about.
- [35:27]
Bari Weiss
But I will say being a parent and beginning to raise children that are aware and constantly asking why, you do sort of face a question, like, earlier on than you think of, like, where does God fit into the explanation of things? Or how does this come up?
- [35:45]
Coleman Hughes
And how do you answer that question?
- [35:49]
Bari Weiss
I'm very, very into God, like, when talking to my daughter. And so is Natalie. And it's. I mean, not just in, like, the Jewish rituals. Like, we make a big. We have big Shabbat every week. And it's a very special thing. Cause she gets to sleep in our bed with us. And so it's like making that a special thing, but saying the Shema before she goes to sleep. And I don't know, the whole question of as A parent, you sort of, or at least for me, the question about, like, what is my sophisticated understanding of God? I don't know. But I'm like, I do want to transmit all of this to her and I want her to feel like I want to raise her in an environment where like, God is part of the conversation.
- [36:35]
Coleman Hughes
Why?
- [36:40]
Bari Weiss
It feels like a really important. And it feels, I don't know, it's a good value system is like way too thin a way to say it. But for example, like when we're walking around the street and we, we talk about like, you know, you do mitzvahs, like, you do good deeds in the world, like, let's look for mitzvah opportunities all the time. And she'll see garbage. It's like, why do we do mitzvahs? It's like, because we want to help other people. And then your child will ask you, why do we want to help other people? Because it's good to help other people. Well, why, why, why? You will not believe how many why's you will get in the world, which is Chachi beat is actually very helpful for some of these questions. But then in the end it's like, well, why do we need to help people? Because people are. Because we love all people. Why? Well, because we're all created in the image of God. Like you, you do ultimately sort of like go back to that. And it's, it just, it's come. It comes up way more than I would ever expect. And so I'm curious when, I hope, yeah, I'm definitely gonna have, you'll have your own children. Like how you'll, how you'll face that.
- [37:47]
That's a good question.
- [37:48]
Coleman Hughes
Because on the one hand, I don't, I really don't want to lie to my kids and tell them Daddy believes in God, even if mommy believes in God, which is probably going to be true in my particular case. At the same time, if they give me the never ending whys and I'm on three hours of sleep and I'm taking them to whatever practice or whatever, I don't know if I'm going to have the wherewithal to actually try my best to explain why you ought to be good in the world. So I get why it would be useful to have God as a backstop and to say, well, you know, God says that you have to be kind to people and that has to be enough. I don't know what I'm going to say. I'm going to try my best. It's going to Depend on the kid, obviously. But I'm excited for it.
- [38:45]
Bari Weiss
If Nelly were here, she would tell you right now, like, do it soon. Don't wait. Do it soon.
- [38:49]
Coleman Hughes
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we'll see about that. But. So I'm curious. We're talking about kids. Do you feel that having kids has changed you at all? Because I have seen examples where someone has a kid and it just unlocks an aspect of their personality that I didn't even know existed prior to them having kids. So I'm curious. Do you feel. Did you feel. Do you feel different as a mom?
- [39:22]
Bari Weiss
I think it's. I just think having kids changes everything. It's not that my personality changed. I think it just intensifies everything. Like, the highs and the lows, but also, for me, the. I think I already felt a profound sense of urgency to, like, do as much as I can in the world. But now I feel like I have a deadline. Like, I'm like, okay, so, like, our daughter's two and a half. Like, how am I gonna make sure that the University of Austin is, like, a great place to send her in 60? Like, everything is measured in a much more condensed way. Like, when you're young, it's like, oh, I wanna change the world. I wanna do great things. And now I'm like, no, I. I'm on a deadline.
- [40:06]
Coleman Hughes
And your deadline is when they leave the house.
- [40:08]
Bari Weiss
Sure. I mean, not literally, but you have a feeling of like, we're speaking on whatever day this is. And last night, two young people were gunned down outside of the Jewish Museum in D.C. and it used to be that I would read that news and feel angry and sad and everything that I still feel, but now I feel this sense of, like, I cannot allow my children to grow up in a world where that is the case. That's one way that it's manifested for me. I think the other thing is just you're not the center of your world anymore. And I find that to be, like, the most wonderful feeling in the entire world. Maybe for other people, it's not, but recognizing your birthday, it's like, your birthday. Who cares about your birthday? Just all of the sense that you're at the center of the world, it just, like, immediately goes away. And then just every. It's like every cliche is just so unbelievably true. Yeah, I highly recommend it.
- [41:15]
Coleman Hughes
So a few more questions about the Free Press. When the Free Press started, being against wokeness was higher value than it is today in the sense that it's there was more wokeness to oppose. I think at least in the. In the news talking, you know, 2022ish. And it was rarer to. It was harder to be opposed to it from a reputation based standpoint. It was just harder to be the person with your face out there saying, you know, I'm against defund the police or, you know, I'm against children transitioning before a certain age or whatever it is now. That's opened up a little bit. We're in a new era.
- [42:03]
Bari Weiss
It's opened up a lot.
- [42:04]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah. So how do you think the free press as an organization should meet the new era?
- [42:13]
Bari Weiss
By applying the same set of moral and journalistic values that we applied to excesses of the illiberalism of the left now increasingly that are coming from the illiberalism of the right. So I am not of the view, and I think Tyler Cowen disagrees with this. A lot of smart people do. That wokeness has peaked. I don't think that at all. I still think it's an extremely active thing. It's just been sort of. It's won so fully inside certain institutions that it's almost like not a headline anymore because they've just been fully transformed. So I still think that's an important story. But the same set of impulses that led me and a lot of other people that now work here to want to write about the ways that people were being dehumanized or pitted against each other because of a version of identity politics that was small and narrow and pinched. Okay, now we apply that to what's coming out of the right. The same set of values that led people here to want to question, let's just say, the orthodoxy or the consensus around school lockdowns. That was a huge issue when the free press first began. A lot of parents, especially a lot of public school parents, began reading us because of that issue. And they were like, I don't understand. Like, you know, I vaccinated my family. I've done all the right things. But kids can't get Covid. So why have they been home from school for two years? Like, applying that skepticism now to other, you know, what Orwell called smelly little orthodoxies that are coming from different precincts in the culture. Like, the values remain the same. The threats to those values are coming from different places. And we should be judged on whether or not we are able to see them clearly meet the moment and apply the same standards and same rigor that I think we really successfully applied to the stories and the storylines and the themes when we began to a new set of them. Some people have also criticized us because they're like, you missed X and Y and Z. And sometimes they're right. And they, I think, sometimes might ascribe that to us having a blind spot in any number of ways. Often it's just a super practical question, which is like, hey, I didn't have anyone, like, covering the law, you know, like lawfare. And the law has been an enormous issue since Trump became elected. I'm like, not only the editor in chief and the host of a show, I'm like, having to go, I need to recruit those voices.
- [44:58]
Coleman Hughes
Right.
- [44:58]
Bari Weiss
You know, or pick your issue. There's just things that we were not equipped to cover because they weren't stories before. And so figuring out the people that share and live out our values and frankly, the independent cast of mind, finding the people that both have the journalistic chops, the writing ability, and the independent cast of mind, it is very, very difficult from just a pure talent perspective to find those people. So I would be lying if I sat here and said, kamala Harris presidency would have been a breeze for us to cover. We're built to cover that kind of thing. A Donald Trump presidency is a huge, huge pivot and shift for us. We know how to cover the woke left. What does it mean to cover a woke right? We know how to cover antisemitism, well, from the left and the right, but especially that was coming out of the institutions of the left. What does it mean to cover it when it's coming from, I mean, literally, neo Nazis on the right. You're catching me in a conversation as I'm navigating us through that shift and finding the right voices and the right talent, many of whom are already here, by the way. They just need to, like. It's like a journalist that was covering the climate change beat is now putting them on crime. It's like you have to build up a new set of sources. You need to learn to master your new domain. And that just takes a while. So I'm pretty proud, actually, of how we've navigated the change, but we have a long ways to go. And again, kind of going back to where the conversation began. We don't exist as a news organization just to, like, criticize the President, Trump or whoever else that will be, I think, because other publications largely do that day in and day out. When people see us not doing that on every single topic every single day, it looks like we're somehow pulling our punches. And my feeling is just like, there's lots of other stories out there in the world. The other part of it is that we're a business that needs that, that differentiates ourselves. So in other words, we're never going to be, at least in the current incarnation of the Free Press. Maybe that will change. You know, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at the New York Times for scoops coming out of Mar A Lago. Like, they're going to get that every time.
- [47:27]
Coleman Hughes
Right.
- [47:27]
Bari Weiss
You know, we're probably never going to beat Patrick McGee on covering, you know, Apple in China. He was just on the show, and he was excellent. So, like, what are. Where are the. Where are the topics? And what's our wedge. What's our, like, way into an issue? We talk about this in every editorial meeting. Like, what makes this a Free Press story? What are the stories? Not just the topics. Right. Trump is a topic. Lawfare is a topic. They're topics for every news publication out there. But what is the unique Free Press way into this story? What's the way that we can uniquely cover it? And there are certain moments where I'm like, that's it. Specifically, I remember in the. When Zelenskyy came to the Oval Office and there was the whole meltdown of the meeting that Monday, we published Eli Lake kind of blasting Trump and J.D. vance on the Saturday. And then by the Monday, we needed to have a piece to satisfy the reader the next day. And then by the Monday, we had commissioned five other pieces from really different angles on that story. And that kind of like kaleidoscopic view. I was like, we can't do that every day. It's very hard. We worked all weekend. But, like, the, the value in that for the reader, I feel, was tremendous. And at our best, that's what we. What we're trying to deliver.
- [48:44]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah. I mean, that's what attracts me as a reader to the Free Press, because that's. I know I'm going to get that perspective on whatever, whatever the news of the day is. So you talked a bit about some of the fever swamps developing on the right, especially in the podcast world. Thinking of Tucker Carlson.
- [49:04]
Bari Weiss
Daryl Davis, martyr.
- [49:05]
Coleman Hughes
Maid, some of the guests Joe Rogan has had. Ian Carroll.
- [49:10]
Bari Weiss
Is it Daryl Davis or Daryl Cooper?
- [49:12]
Coleman Hughes
Daryl Cooper, sorry. Daryl Davis is that really wonderful guy, blues musician that deprogrammed KKK members. He's great. Daryl Cooper is programming people in the opposite direction. You know, we're talking about the mainstreaming of ideas that. That five, six years ago would have been so outlandish. I mean, the idea that Kanye could have a song called Heil Hitler and.
- [49:42]
Bari Weiss
And that very, very prominent people would share it in the name of free speech. As if in the name of free speech, you need to like, flaunt every single taboo. Like, it's.
- [49:53]
Coleman Hughes
To me, the crazy thing is, is not that Kanye did that song. I mean, we've known who he is, I think, and his mental illness and his bigotry for years now. What was crazy to me is that you could get 30 background dancers and the other 50 people you need to make a professional grade music video to participate in a song called Heil Hitler. And I wonder if you flip that situation, right? If you get a Jewish artist, a Jewish rapper, there aren't that many. But if you got a Jewish songwriter or something that wrote a song that was just as racist against black people as Heil Hitler is against Jews, could they even find 30 Jewish background dancers and a couple dozen people of any race to participate in that video? I don't think so. If you did a song celebrating slavery, you literally couldn't find 40 competent people to put the music video out. Right. And so to me, it's not about Kanye. It's about the idea that you could get any number of people to collaborate on such a project. I mean, that seems scary to me, and I think that's. I mean, I haven't seen anyone take that angle on the. That's really what's significant about the music video. Not. Not Kanye.
- [51:15]
Bari Weiss
Well, and not just in the video I just saw a few hours earlier. I've been online a lot today because of the shooting and wanting to see the reaction or the non reaction, as it were, from some people or the shock among others, who I feel have created a permission structure for literal physical violence against Jews and supporters of Israel. But there were like 20 guys. I don't know if there's the same ones from the music video that Kanye had go for whatever reason to P. Diddy's like Hollywood star and sing the song, you know, in broad daylight in Los Angeles today. And yeah, I mean, I. I consider myself someone that is pretty awake to the moment and at my best, maybe able to see a little bit ahead of the curve. But I am shocked at how far and fast this has gone and how normalized it's. How normalized, just like open hatred has become.
- [52:32]
Coleman Hughes
What role do you think Twitter now X has played? Because I've. I've. Many have observed. I've observed that over the past two years under Elon's stewardship, it's Just gone from clearly biased against right wing commentators to clearly promoting and boosting straight up bigotry.
- [52:55]
Bari Weiss
Yeah.
- [52:56]
Coleman Hughes
Not just against Jews.
- [52:58]
Bari Weiss
Yeah. I mean, I don't think there's anyone that's on that platform could deny that that's been the experience it's basically become. I still use it. It's still a really fast way to get in touch with people.
- [53:09]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah, I still use it too, to be clear.
- [53:10]
Bari Weiss
Like, you know, last night I was.
- [53:11]
Coleman Hughes
Looking for people, but I post a lot less.
- [53:14]
Bari Weiss
I post a lot less. And it's very, very hard to find quick news in the way I used to be able to look. I mean, one of the reasons we covered the Twitter file story was because it was an exciting story. But also, if you asked me, then I would have said this is exciting. I love the kinds of things that Elon and this new gang of people say that they want to do with it. I was so sick of all of social media platforms being biased clearly in one direction. Shutting down, totally sensible conversation. But wanting Jay Bhattacharya to be able to talk about the Great Barrington Declaration is not wanting to be served every single Alex Jones insanity. No, really, because there's this. Probably most people listening to this don't spend as much time on this platform as you and I do. If you click on the for you tab, which is like what Twitter is actively promoting, like, it is wild what's going on there. It is some of like the worst, most just blatant bigotry that you can encounter on the Internet and they're serving it to you. And the question is, why are they doing that? Why is that good business?
- [54:30]
Coleman Hughes
I don't know. I mean, I imagine it can't be good business in the very long run because you're appealing to people's basest instincts for short term, I wouldn't even say gratification. It's more of can't look away is really what Twitter is optimizing for. I mean, they say hilariously that they optimize for time well spent, which is like this phrase that social media moguls kind of have been saying for a decade. Because it really is at our best, what all of us want from these platforms is we want to maximize time well spent. I don't want you to show me the thing that I can't look away from because it's so shocking, appalling, or sexual or like, I don't want you to show me that. I want you to show me something that my better self wants to see. Right. I want you to show me the person that I think about intentionally follow because I want to see more of their content. I don't want you to show me the thing that I just can't look away from, but would never consciously follow. Right. But clearly that is what X is doing now and it's good for clicks and eyeballs in the short run. Question is, is that a good long term business strategy or do they just have they just slowly rebranded themselves as that's what we are now?
- [55:44]
Bari Weiss
Yeah, I mean, I will just say as like, probably not as heavy user as Elon, but like a very heavy user of Twitter. And I have found it to be an incredible, at its best, an incredible tool journalistically and allowed me to, you know, connect with smaller, like writers with small platforms all over. Like, it's incredible in that, you know, at its best I just find myself like being not just shocked by what I see there, like actively disgusted and alarmed because it's really hard when you're on there to understand, is this just where culture is now or is this just a narrower and narrower right wing echo chamber? And hoping it's the latter, but not being quite sure. Yeah.
- [56:35]
Coleman Hughes
Do you trust Trump to combat anti Semitism in a way that you think is net beneficial?
- [56:44]
Bari Weiss
It's a great question. I think it's very hard to bet on Trump when it comes to anything because the whole thing about Trump is we have a great piece by Yuval Levin about this. Today is just the whiplash. It's like there's tariffs. There's no tariffs. You're hired, you're fired. Like, I hate Zelensky. No, maybe he's not so bad. I would just never make a bet on Trump in any direction. I think it would be absolutely foolish to do that. On the other hand, when something like last night happens, I feel comforted genuinely to look at the various messages coming out of this administration that are absolutely morally clear and not trying to bring in also Islamophobia to a thing that was clearly targeted at Jews and be extremely forthright in their condemnation of it. And then frankly connecting it to a broader culture where the normalization of hatred of Jews and hatred of supporters of Israel has been like, it's just been completely normalized since October 7th in this country, especially on the left. It doesn't mean that there's not crazy right wing anti Semitism. Like, I'm very, very scared of that too. And that has a huge impact on my actual life. I mean, they both do. So if we have this conversation, however many three and a half years from now, and there's been Abraham Accords with Saudi Arabia and maybe some of the other Gulf states. And the universities have become more serious in, I don't want to say fighting anti Semitism, but just applying the rules that they claim to stand for to Jews as well as other minority groups. Like, you could never. And going back to your Kanye rap analogy, like you could never imagine in a thousand years, a group of any students gathering in the middle of campus screaming the N word or holding up Confederate flags or giving that a pass.
- [59:01]
Coleman Hughes
Holding up signs that said go back to Mexico or something that people were.
- [59:03]
Bari Weiss
Saying that just literally never happened. So, I mean, if we're sitting here three and a half years from now and those things have happened, will I praise Trump for it in the same way that I praise him for the Abraham Accords in the first administration and moving the embassy to Jerusalem? Definitely. I just think you have to be intellectually honest. And I've been very clear in the way I think about Trump. The fact that I truly do believe that character is destiny. It's like an old fashioned idea. I still believe that. But that doesn't mean that he can't do good things. And there were good things that happened in the first Trump administration with regard to Israel and with regard to Jews and anti Semitism. Could that happen again now? Yes. When I see the President accepting a Qatari plane, does that make me extraordinarily concerned? Yes, it does. So I don't have a clean and crisp answer for you, because I think anyone that tries to say that Trump stands by his word and does the first thing he says has not been paying attention to who Donald Trump is.
- [60:11]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah. How do you feel, if at all, you reconcile your proud Jewish identity with your general opposition to identity politics?
- [60:23]
Bari Weiss
I think that there's like a really enormous misunderstanding about what identity politics is, or at least what I mean when I use that phrase. I don't mean that people shouldn't be proud of, like, any part of who they are. I don't think it's strange for someone to be like, I'm proud to be gay. Like, great, good. I'm proud to be Jewish. Great. I'm proud to be black. I'm proud to be born an immigrant. Like, I don't think there's any danger in any of those things where I have an issue. And I think anyone with eyes to see over the past 10 years has been able to see this is, is a version of that that says, I am better than you because of this part of my identity, or I am born in a position of either original. You are born in a position of original sin or original standing because of some part of your identity. Jonathan Haidt has spoken and written much more brilliantly about this, and I'm going to butcher it, but I'm going to try, which is like, there's a capacious version of identity politics that says, come along with me and let me tell you what my experience has been in the world, because I believe that despite the fact that you have more melanin or less melanin than me, or you have a penis and I have a vagina, that doesn't matter, like, come along with me as I tell you about my experience. That's like a positive version of what identity politics can look like. The version of it that we've been living with and I don't see any sign that this is going away is a version that says, you can never understand me, you can never step foot in my shoes. And in fact, we're in some kind of like zero sum game with each other where we're pitted against each other necessarily because of these immutable characteristics or because of the lane of our birth. And in fact, you can never understand me. You're constrained to the lane of your birth forever. That's what I have a problem with. And so for me, being an American, being a Jew, supporting Israel, being gay, I don't see any of that as being in conflict with each other, nor do I see that as precluding my ability to connect with other people. I think if I believed in a vision of that, where I was saying being a Jew makes me a victim and therefore makes you unable to understand me, like, yeah, then you should have an issue with me. Or being a Jew makes me better in some way than any other person. Yeah, then you should have a problem with me.
- [63:02]
Coleman Hughes
Right?
- [63:03]
Bari Weiss
I think that that's like the test. Does someone's identification with a group or with a set of ideas like can that. Can. Can. Can their identity allow a broadening or does it mean a narrowing? And if it means a narrowing and either from a perspective of chauvinism or, you know, victimhood Olympics, that's the thing I think that I've. That's the thing that I do have a problem with. And that I think is like, fundamentally dangerous in a country that, you know, is more than 300 million people from wildly different identity groups that are trying to be one larger identity. But we don't ask, we don't ask people when they become American like, you know, give up your Italian Day parade, give up your Columbus Day parade, give up your Israel Day parade. It's like, that's the unbelievable miracle and beauty of this country is like, we're able to kind of hold both. I think the question that a lot of us are asking ourselves is whether or not that can last.
- [64:03]
Coleman Hughes
Right. One I've gotten online recently is how do I reconcile supporting Israel with being against identity politics? As if supporting a country that was based around protecting a particular group of people is the same as supporting identity politics in general of the kind you just described, which I agree with your distinction. To me, this is ridiculous. As our mutual friend Noam Dorman put it to me recently, when neocons and actually many people around the world were lamenting the plight of the Kurds in Iraq and Syria and kind of wishing that there was a Kurdistan not only to protect them from Iraq, but also from Turkey and so forth, no one in their right mind would say, oh, well, that's. You're playing identity politics. We'll say, well, no, there's a group here that the region has proved they cannot keep this group safe and in fact, are so hostile to the group that it makes perfect sense from the point of view of wanting there to be peace on earth, really, to give this group a state right, to give this group state power. I mean, it just. To me, that's such a nonsensical argument.
- [65:21]
Bari Weiss
I think it's being used just very cynically. Well, yeah, like, no one would say the hypocrisy. You have pride in America, like, you're an American patriot. Identity politics, like, you know, you're an Italian American that cheers for some Italian soccer team. Identity politics. It's like they are misusing, in my view. I think people are kind of cynically misusing that in the same way they are cynically misusing cancel culture, which was always meant to describe a cultural movement that was trying to shut down legitimate debate. Now they're saying, no, no, hold on. Thinking that Kanye's Heil Hitler song is bad or suggesting that sharing it is maybe irresponsible. That's cancel culture. It's like, come on. Yeah, there's a lot of that going on right now.
- [66:10]
Coleman Hughes
How do you think the climate has changed for just an average Jewish person in America post October 7th and the reaction to October 7th.
- [66:24]
Bari Weiss
We could have a whole hour on this. If you are Jewish in America, you are already used to a reality that would be shocking to people that don't know Jews or don't go into Jewish spaces. There's armed guards at all of our schools, at all of our synagogues. There's just a level of hardness and security that I think would be very shocking to most people. And that got even more intense after October 7th and October 8th. And then. And this is the more, like, emotional and existential part of it is, like, I grew up so fully believing that antisemitism was a vestige of other times and places and could never become normalized in America. Like, I just. That was like, an article of faith in the family that I grew up in. And so even though anti Semitic things happened, and most obviously and tragically in the massacre at Tree of Life, when kids said to me, like, pick up pennies, wear your horns. Like, I remember the Catholic school bus would drive by and scream kike and dirty Jew at my sister. Like, the attitude of my parents was not. Was not at all like, we have to protect you from the anti Semitism of the country and the community you're in. It was, how sad for those people that they don't know what country and culture that we're living in. Like, how embarrassing for them. And that just gave me such a supreme level of confidence that we're not like Europe. We're not like other places that my ancestors have fled. And I think one of the most tragic and profound adjustments that me and every other Jew I know is living through right now is questioning whether or not that's still true and whether or not the things that have made America the most exceptional Diaspora experience for Jews will hold for our children. And that is, like, the story for me of this moment. And so much of the work that I'm trying to do with my own writing and then just more generally with the free press, you know, it's not about, like, fighting for Jews to protect Jews. Of course that's true. Like, of course I want my family to be safe. It is a profound. Like, I don't know that much about many things, but I do know that if you study history, societies where this kind of hatred is allowed to become normalized are societies that are dying or dead. And so the stakes of it are not just. It's not just about my safety or the safety of my family or my community. It's about the safety and flourishing of the country itself. And I just. I try and say that in so many different ways. On my most despairing mornings, I'm like, is it, like, will that message ever get through? Like, is it possible to explain to people how an attack on Jews for being Jews at a Museum in Washington, D.C. is actually an attack on everything that this country stands for. You know, at. At my best, like, and my most hopeful, I really believe that most Americans still understand that to be the case. But that's. That's the challenge.
- [69:49]
Coleman Hughes
Okay, we're almost out of time, but.
- [69:51]
Bari Weiss
Quick, quick lightning round.
- [69:52]
Coleman Hughes
Okay, L.A. or New York City.
- [69:54]
Bari Weiss
Oh, New York City.
- [69:56]
Coleman Hughes
Correct.
- [69:58]
Bari Weiss
Dating advice.
- [69:59]
Coleman Hughes
Best piece of dating advice you've ever gotten.
- [70:01]
Bari Weiss
Okay, this is a controversial one, but I believe if it's not fuck yes, it's no. That's. I might just be a fuck yes or no after one date, or maybe not after one date, but, like, I really believe in trusting your gut. And I'm sort of astonished by how many people will pursue a relationship because it's good on paper. It's like you're not dating the paper. Like, right. It's gotta be fuck yes. It's the biggest and most important decision of your life.
- [70:32]
Coleman Hughes
Guilty pleasure.
- [70:33]
Bari Weiss
Oh, my God. Alcohol and.
- [70:38]
Coleman Hughes
Same as mine.
- [70:39]
Bari Weiss
Food, but alcohol for sure.
- [70:42]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah. And finally, one thing you're looking forward to.
- [70:46]
Bari Weiss
Oh, my God. I'm going to Israel this summer with Nelly for the first time. I'm hoping that, like, Houthis will allow that to happen. We haven't taken a vacation pretty much since we started the company, so I'm really excited about that. And I know it's a cheesy answer, but I'm going to do it anyway. Just like, I'm not someone that. I never thought that I was an entrepreneur. I still don't know what, like cacs and cogs and all of these things. Ibida. Like, I don't know what any of that stuff is, but I feel really proud of what the Free Press is. I feel so proud in the kinds of people that want to be a part of what we're doing here. And as exhausted as I am most of the time. And I'm telling you that there's a reason that startups are like the game of 21 year old men and not the purview of middle aged mothers with nine months old at home. But I feel very, very excited about continuing to build this and just inspired and energized and like eager to get up the next day and to get to work.
- [71:49]
Coleman Hughes
All right, Barry Weiss, thanks for coming on my show.
- [71:51]
Bari Weiss
Coleman Hughes. Thank you.