The Admirably Irresponsible Journalist w/ John R. MacArthur (Members Only #337)

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Admirably Irresponsible Journalist w/ John R. MacArthur"

Podcast: The Fifth Column (Members Only #337)
Hosts: Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, Matt Welch
Guest: John R. "Rick" MacArthur (President & Publisher, Harper's Magazine)
Date: July 31, 2026

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Overview

This episode of The Fifth Column features a lively and insightful conversation with John R. “Rick” MacArthur, the long-serving president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine. The discussion begins with playful banter about physical media and subway readers, then moves into reflections on the transformative years after the Cold War, before digging deep into the state of journalism, the cultural impact of the "Harper's Letter," debates over free speech and cancel culture, the legacy of NAFTA, the rise of Trump, and the intersection of economic insecurity with populist politics.

The hosts and MacArthur openly interrogate the costs and responsibilities of dissent in media, the challenges of defending liberal values in a censorious era, and the socioeconomic shifts shaping the political landscape.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Endurance and Value of Print and Physical Media

• Physical media nostalgia: The episode opens with anecdotes about the decline and rare sight of physical readers on the subway, and MacArthur’s amusement at catching these moments on camera (00:02–00:23).
• Harper’s legacy: MacArthur’s pride in running the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in America, highlighting the publication’s role as an independent print bastion (04:19–04:51).

“What you don’t see anymore is people reading newspapers or magazines. Except me, you know, I’ve got them in my briefcase.”
— Rick MacArthur (00:13)

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Personal Histories in Prague & Journalism's Transformations

• 1980s-90s Prague: Matt shares his experiences living and working in Prague post-Cold War, how it was pivotal to his career, recalling the city’s transformation and the vibrant journalistic environment of the time (00:40–02:34).
• Contrast with earlier era: MacArthur reflects on traveling to Prague at the height of the Cold War in 1983, evoking the atmosphere of scarcity and ideological rigidity (01:19–02:14).

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The "Harper's Letter" and the Free Speech Reckoning (The “Cancel Culture” Debate)

• Context for the letter: MacArthur contextualizes the 2020 Harper’s Letter against rising cultural intolerance for dissenting views (06:04–08:15).
• Quote from the Letter: Matt reads the core passage, expressing concern over narrowing speech boundaries and “risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists” (07:02–08:10).

“The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. Censoriousness is spreading more widely in our culture… the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without threat of reprisal.”
— Matt (reading the Harper’s Letter, 07:02)

• Significance and Impact: MacArthur highlights how publication of the letter shocked the establishment and brought Harper’s into the center of a global debate, restoring its mainstream presence (08:15–10:24).

“It says six paragraphs and $5 million worth of free publicity for Harper’s magazine. But it was a shocker.”
— Rick MacArthur (09:09)

• Pushback and Benefits: Despite backlash, MacArthur notes the letter was a business boon, making the magazine suddenly relevant nationwide again (10:24–11:06).

• Quiet support: The hosts remember contemporaneous private support from prominent colleagues who wouldn’t speak publicly for fear of reprisals, reflecting ongoing self-censorship (11:39–12:00).

“We were getting it in our inboxes from people who we knew who would not say anything publicly for fear that there would be some sort of reprisals. And that went on for years.”
— Podcast Host (11:40)

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Criticisms of the Harper’s Letter & The Nature of Cultural Threats

• Criticism from the left: The hosts relay critiques that the letter was too focused on left-wing censure while Trump posed a bigger threat to liberty, and ask MacArthur’s perspective (12:26–13:07).
• MacArthur’s response: He pushes back, focusing on class and economic drivers of Trump’s support—especially NAFTA as the root—not “woke” politics (13:07–15:35).

“I did not meet a working class voter … who said to me, It’s that WOKE stuff that I can’t stand anymore. That’s why I voted for Trump. They voted for Trump because of NAFTA. The Clinton administration sent millions of jobs to Mexico.”
— Rick MacArthur (14:06)

• Econometric evidence: MacArthur cites a National Bureau of Economic Research paper showing a direct correlation between factory closures post-NAFTA and districts switching to Trump, arguing for policy—not cultural—driven shifts (15:53–16:43).

• Balancing illiberalism: The hosts emphasize that both economic anxiety and left illiberalism played a role in 2016, but that blaming those who called out censorship for “helping Trump” is misplaced (16:43–17:31).

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Due Process, Class, and the Ongoing Culture Wars

• Due process and hypocrisy: MacArthur asserts that “educated woke people” claim to support due process, but often endorse summary punishment—pointing to Democratic hypocrisy and class issues in immigration as wage policy (18:54–19:46).

“Ask any educated woke person, first question is, Do you believe in due process of law? Well, of course I do. But then, of course, the qualifications begin.”
— Rick MacArthur (18:54)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You ask any educated woke person, first question is, do you believe in due process of law? Well, of course I do. But then, of course, the qualifications. The qualifications begin.”
  — Rick MacArthur (18:54)

• “We uphold the values of robust and even caustic counterspeech… but it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.”
  — Matt, reading from the Harper’s Letter (07:02–08:12)

• “I just don’t want to get away from the class issue because immigration, again, there again, immigration, should be viewed illegal. Immigration should be viewed as a wage issue.”
  — Rick MacArthur (19:46)

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Timestamps for Important Topics

• 00:02–00:23: Physical media nostalgia and decline
• 00:40–02:34: Prague stories and reflections on post-Communist transitions
• 04:19–04:51: Overview of Harper’s Magazine and its historical legacy
• 06:29–10:24: Origins and impact of the Harper’s Letter
• 11:39–12:00: Hidden, private support in the cancel culture era
• 13:07–15:35: Class, NAFTA, and the roots of Trump’s electoral success
• 15:53–16:43: Economic research on factory closures and voting shifts
• 18:54–19:46: Debates on due process, summary punishment, and class issues

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Tone, Flow, and Style

The episode blends good-natured teasing with weighty analysis. The hosts’ freewheeling style gives way to earnest reflection as they probe MacArthur’s experiences and views. MacArthur’s responses are frank, occasionally combative, and rooted in left-wing economic analysis, emphasizing policy over culture war as the true engine of national division.

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Summary

If you missed this episode, you’d know that:

• MacArthur remains a principled skeptic of the internet and defender of print culture.
• The 2020 “Harper’s Letter” was both a rebuke to rising intolerance and a flashpoint in debates over free speech.
• MacArthur and the hosts challenge the idea that “wokeness” swung the 2016 election, arguing for economic policy as the key driver.
• The threat to due process and open debate isn’t simply partisan—it’s institutional, cultural, and ongoing.
• This conversation highlights the moment’s confusions and stakes for journalists committed to independent skepticism—admirably irresponsible, perhaps, but vital all the same.

Transcript

[Matt]

How many people did you see reading anything on.

[Rick MacArthur]

In physical media making a tiny comeback? I take pictures of them. I do. I've got a bunch of them on my camera, if you. On my phone, if you want me

[Matt]

to show you creeps talking physical readers.

[Rick MacArthur]

So if you get three people in a row reading a book, what you don't see anymore is people reading newspapers or magazines. Except me, you know, I've got them in my briefcase there.

[Podcast Host]

Well, on the subway.

[Rick MacArthur]

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

[Matt]

we know of new methods of attack.

[Rick MacArthur]

What happened to the prognosis?

[Matt]

Oh, thank God.

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

He went bankrupt.

[Rick MacArthur]

But how long after you found it? Four years.

[Matt]

March 90 to March. No, March 91 to March 95. No, it was great and like, it cut a pretty wide swath because there was a lot of people doing their Young Americans in Prague stories. We were always the center of that. And then just a lot of people went out there, you know, who were at loose ends my age, and the Cold War had just ended, so it was like, hey, let's go and see some crazy new stuff. So there's a lot of really great energy associated with it. And it was very much crystallized in our paper rather than the paper started by our former business staff that outlasted us like by 20 years. And we hate them and we don't talk about them.

[Rick MacArthur]

I went to Prague in 1983 with my future wife, and it was a true Cold War experience. It's very exciting.

[Matt]

I just read that this morning. Very interesting. I know Ludwig Vasilyk.

[Rick MacArthur]

You did?

[Matt]

I knew Ivan Klima. Yeah. He was the. Did he write under the Skies Clay E Bottom as was horribly misguided play Ebotomus? Alex Zucker's a dear friend who translated. He worked for our newspaper and that's where we met. So, yeah, all those characters are people I knew. I lived in the Prague Castle for about four months and lost the keys to it. That's a story for another day.

[Rick MacArthur]

I love Prague. It's just. I could see, you know, it needed work. You're really eating the Communist, you know, you don't know what you're eating. It's like, is it meat? Is it synthetic? It's all organic. We don't know what it is, but we're eating was still like that.

[Matt]

I got there in August of 1990. So it was nine months later, but still every store was called Store and, you know, and there was nothing in it and everything was gray. And like, the only vegetables were onions and potato. And it took a couple of years for that to start to kind of like go away now. It's like a fancy place.

[Podcast Host]

It is no criticism for me to say that with you, Matt, most roads lead back to Prague, which I actually think is both endearing and just helpful orientation to the person you are.

[Matt]

I was 22.

[Rick MacArthur]

This formula looks fantastic.

[Matt]

Kind of created a career.

[Podcast Host]

I want to begin briefly. Well, two things. Should we be drinking? We don't always do it drinking early. People don't know what time we're recording this. We could really do whatever we want to.

[Matt]

Sounds like you're thirsty.

[Podcast Host]

First of all, I'm just asking. I'm just putting it out there if

[Matt]

our guest is thirsty.

[Rick MacArthur]

No, no, no, no. It's okay. I have a whole afternoon ahead of me.

[Matt]

Okay.

[Rick MacArthur]

So we'll set.

[Podcast Host]

Degeneracy of chores.

[Rick MacArthur]

Chores. So I better not.

[Podcast Host]

Okay. And the second thing is.

[Rick MacArthur]

Another time, another time.

[Podcast Host]

I just want to apologize because I feel a little unsettled today. I'm having two problems. One, I am not used to these glasses. I don't understand how you people. We are supposed to do this. They're constantly fogging up and I have fingerprints all over them and I'm trying to get there. I also am wearing shorts today.

[Matt]

Yeah, that's the real apologies.

[Podcast Host]

It feels weird to be doing it on camera. I've been assured that it's fine, but we'll probably.

[Rick MacArthur]

You're wearing an Argentine jersey.

[Matt]

Am I?

[Podcast Host]

Just kidding.

[Rick MacArthur]

Doesn't it remind you of the Argentine football jersey?

[Matt]

My support, like yours. My allegiance is with France. Me too. So that's what he's gonna be doing

[Podcast Host]

at 4 o', clock, I can tell you. And his shirts are obtained at Goodwill. So he didn't do that on purpose. That's true, yeah. Or their gifts. But we have an extraordinary guest today, Rick MacArthur, who I've been very excited to talk to this week. There are plenty of things that we could talk about. We usually improvise a lot of the show, but I actually wrote a bit of a bio out because you have had this decorated career and I wanna be sure to hit the main points and we'll talk about plenty of stuff, but. President and publisher of Harper's Magazine.

[Matt]

That's this print thing here, look. Print, yes.

[Podcast Host]

Which he has run since 1983, which is the oldest continuously published monthly in America. Is that correct?

[Rick MacArthur]

That's correct.

[Podcast Host]

Okay.

[Matt]

That feels like that continuous. Like. Is there a discontinuous one that started a little bit before and you kind of.

[Rick MacArthur]

Yeah, it's complicated. Yeah. The Scientific American started out its Existence as a weekly and then went monthly after we were founded.

[Matt]

Got it.

[Podcast Host]

And is no longer scientific, actually.

[Rick MacArthur]

So that's why we say continuously publish monthly.

[Matt]

Yeah. Which I think is 175 years.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. Usually the qualification is some kind of cop out, but here it is a distinguishing characteristic that is actually attesting to the exemplary quality of the publication.

[Rick MacArthur]

Just at our 175th anniversary, we just celebrated.

[Podcast Host]

Incredible. Yeah. So in addition to just being there that long when you took over, I guess you kind of helped rescue this publication, keep it alive for a while. You are a famous skeptic of the Internet as opposed to just Internet skeptic. And that has been an important dimension of Harper's evolution. I think in a lot of ways you were kind of accurately predicted the way that the Internet would help royal culture and disrupt our shared sensibility about the world. And I want to talk about some of that and maybe your predictions with respect to AI, which I'm not sure if you've weighed in on a whole bunch, but we should talk about that. And something of a paywall absolutist, which we should talk about as well. But in addition to all of that and being this important figure in journalism, you're also someone who's been a real defender of individual liberty and liberalism writ large. You helped defend Salman Rushdie and more recently, Harper's was the place where the Harper's letter appeared back in 2020, I believe it was. And I am a signatory to that letter along with a bunch of other people. But not me. I want to get to that. I want to talk about all the things. But again, I just want to welcome you and thank you for stopping by to chat with us for a bit.

[Rick MacArthur]

I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

[Matt]

I want to force. Since you guys both have your names on this damn thing, I want to read a little selection from it. It's June, I think. June 2020. So the culture was breaking in June 2020.

[Podcast Host]

Felt that way.

[Matt]

Or maybe July 2020. Sorry. But whatever. That summer was a bad summer. So this is from the Reckoning.

[Podcast Host]

How could it be bad?

[Matt]

This is the selection here. The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. Censoriousness is spreading more widely in our culture. An intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the values of robust and even caustic counterspeech. From all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to persuasion, perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces, books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity, journalists are barred from writing on certain topics, professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class, a researcher is fired for circulating a peer reviewed academic study and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the argument around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement. And I hope I mispronounce zell or zeal. How does that sound to both of you? But you first.

[Rick MacArthur]

Six years later I'm only half joking when I say it could have been tougher, in fact. But remember, this was committee written and it's hard to get six, five, six people together on language they all agree on. But Thomas Chatterton Williams was probably the principal author of it, but he wrote it with five other people. And what's interesting about it is that Harper's was the obvious place for them to come. That's where I come in to get it published. And when I saw it, I said, well, given the, the. I'm not going to mess with the language. I'm not going to try to make it tougher or meaner or more sarcastic because I knew at that point the intolerance afoot of woke. I hate to have to have to use that expression anymore. But the intolerance in the air was so overwhelming that this would shock people. And it would shock people because of the number of people who signed it or the kind of people who signed it. So we said, of course we'll do it. Of course it went all over the world. It says six paragraphs and $5 million worth of free publicity for Harper's magazine. But it was a shocker. And all these people who wouldn't put our writers wouldn't put me on the air anymore because I'd already blotted my copy book with Katie Roifi's piece. I don't remember.

[Matt]

It's 2018 early.

[Rick MacArthur]

Me too.

[Podcast Host]

Skeptic.

[Rick MacArthur]

John Hockenberry's piece enraged the woke crowd. And remember, I'm a left winger. I'm a card carrying left winger. And they were so enraged that they wouldn't put me on the air anymore. They wouldn't let me answer on behalf of our writers. Really. I wasn't canceled. I'm hard to cancel, but I will say but this put us right back in the mainstream, this letter. So I'm very proud of it.

[Matt]

That's interesting. So like this was unlike the national reviews against Trump issue in 2016. This was good for your business.

[Rick MacArthur]

It was good for our business. And it put. We're back on the PBS NewsHour, NPR, Everywhere, New York front page of the New York Times. Everyone who was you've gone too far defending. I defended people I didn't even like very much. People who got railroaded at the New York Times, got thrown out on the street for nothing. Donald McNeil Particularly, I didn't know. Suddenly we're front and center in the national debate, which was a great thing.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. I'm reminded of the fact, and I don't think we talked about it on the podcast or in general actually, that Ezra Klein recently did that interview with Chris Ruffo and it's gotten a lot of attention. But the moment that really stood out to me was when Ezra acknowledged that the culture became far too censorious during that period and said explicitly should have said more. And I've heard that sort of acknowledgement five, six years on from a number of people and I'm happy to hear it. I wish I'd heard more of it at the time. Actually, I did hear more of it at the time. Plenty of us did.

[Rick MacArthur]

Quietly.

[Podcast Host]

We were getting it in our inboxes from people who we knew who would not say anything publicly for fear that they there would be some sort of reprisals. And that went on for years. In fact, in some respects still goes on today. There are plenty of people who I'll meet who will quietly acknowledge what was happening during that period. But the other thing that still goes on is Harper's letter is invoked as an invective, like Thomas is a friend of the podcast, is a dear friend of mine personally, and it is routine for him, I know. And for me even to get this thing where it's like, oh, it's Harper's letter, Harper's letter. As though that should be like a badge of shame of some sort. And I think the specific reason why people are critical of it and I actually am very curious how you might have strengthened it cuz I had some concern myself. But the specific criticism is that, look, now Donald Trump is back in office and he is worse than ever before and he is leading this unbelievable assault on civil liberties, on the institutions, broadly speaking of government, of the academy. And you were worried about left wing censorious and awfulness. Isn't this so much worse? Look what you did. You helped to empower him and give him cover by going after the left. I'm deeply skeptical of that critique, but I am curious about your response to it and if you have kind of a similar sort of perspective on this current state of things.

[Rick MacArthur]

Well, as a left winger and as a journalist, because I've written a lot about this. I wrote a book about NAFTA, came out in 2000, which I wish I could say I predicted Trump, but I certainly described the circumstances that made it possible for Trump to come to power. Don't forget that Obama started out campaigning against NAFTA in the Ohio primary against Hillary Clinton. He's the first one who thought of it, although he was completely complicit in the passage of NAFTA in the sense that he wasn't an elected official in the early 90s, but he was part of the very much a part of the Democratic machine in Chicago that was integral to getting NAFTA passed. NAFTA clearly got Trump elected. So to say that WOKE got Trump elected is unfair. I mean, it's misleading. I don't think it helped anybody on the Democratic side. But I did not meet a working class voter and I know a lot of them. I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people who said to me, it's that WOKE stuff that I can't stand anymore. That's why I voted for Trump. They voted for Trump because of nafta. The Clinton administration sent millions of jobs to Mexico. Remember, it's an investment agreement. It's not a free trade agreement. But they created conditions, a contract where the Mexican government would not expropriate or would not interfere with the operation of factories on the Mexican side of the border and sort of locked it in with insurance in the NAFTA agreement. That is 80,000 votes won it for Trump in 2016, spread across Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. I know half those people. They all are either unemployed ex factory workers or they're related to somebody, or they ran the local grocery store in the town where the factory closed and that went out of business. Those people are still mad. I still meet him and a lot of them are UAW members who will never vote Democratic again.

[Matt]

That's 2016, though. I mean, that's initial thing of Trump

[Rick MacArthur]

2024, but that's what launches him. If he doesn't win in 2016, he's history. He's gone.

[Podcast Host]

I do think there's probably some disagreement about the.

[Rick MacArthur]

Oh, and I have a. That's why I brought this paper is economists would challenge me on this all the time.

[Podcast Host]

I was just getting ready to subtly.

[Rick MacArthur]

And Joe Stieglitz, who I was a friend of mine, he said, oh, your thesis has been proved. The National Bureau of Economic Research did a paper five years ago by four economists where they simply studied the congressional districts that's shifted from Democrat to Republican in 2016 and did an overlay of factory closures. And it's absolutely convincing. They have these equations that are over all of our heads, maybe not over my head, but which really proves in an econometric study that NAFTA won it for certainly in 2016 won it for Trump.

[Podcast Host]

I might have some disagreement. One I want to take a look at the paper. I think it's just the first ten pages, some disagreement about the kind of role of NAFTA specifically. But I think what's definitely true is that sense of economic insecurity and the populist narrative that Donald Trump has pioneered on the right.

[Rick MacArthur]

Yeah.

[Matt]

While Bernie Sanders is doing something similar on the left.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, yeah. I think that absolutely played a role in his election. And that sense of economic insecurity was definitely reinforced by illegal immigration, which generally speaking, Democrats would not even acknowledge was creating some issues and Donald Trump was speaking about in the most dramatic way as possible. But I think those two things helped. But it's also the case that the wokeness or illiberalism on the left, broadly perceived, was a factor.

[Rick MacArthur]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

It's just. It would be strange, it seems to me, to blame the people who were calling that proclivity out for the fact that it contributed to Trump winning the election. So that's always seemed really strange to me. But interestingly, I mentioned that I was a signatory on the letter. One of the things that made me reluctant to sign initially, and I did ultimately do it, was the particularly strenuous way that the letter called out. Donald Trump is like the real threat and the real problem.

[Matt]

You noticed I elided all the Trump throat clearing.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. And I mention it now because I still feel that that was perhaps a bit much at the time, even if now it is very useful to be able to point to that, to say there was always this broad concern about the issue, because from my standpoint, reading the letter, even now it's clear that the concern is universal and that there's a clear understanding that it exists on the left and the right.

[Rick MacArthur]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

But at the time, in 2020, there was something uniquely concerning about the way that liberalism was not just gaining strength on the left, but gaining strength and being operationalized inside of institutions and kind of quieting.

[Matt]

And that panicked.

[Podcast Host]

That being a great word in there.

[Matt]

Panicked institutions, just, like, freaking out. That's what we were seeing at the time.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rick MacArthur]

And I don't want to tout you off this, because I'm also radically anti woke. Radically pro due process of law. I mean, you ask any educated woke person, first question is, do you believe in due process of law? Well, of course I do. But then, of course, the qualifications. The qualifications begin. They're all for summary, or a lot of them are for summary execution. So Al Franken and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And although the Democrats are hypocrites on it because they don't call for summary execution of Trump, I just don't want to get away from the class issue because immigration, again, there again, immigration, should be viewed illegal. Immigration should be viewed as a wage issue. And this was something done.

[Matt]

Do we have enough?

[Podcast Host]

I don't know. I don't know if that's gonna work.

[Rick MacArthur]

I don't care.

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

All right, cheapos. You got as much as we're gonna give you for free. It gets a lot worse from here.

[Matt]

So much worse.

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

There's gonna be so many mispronounced words like architecture, which is a favorite of a friend of ours.

[Podcast Host]

Wait, that's not right.

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

And a lot of fluffing, a lot of kerfluffs. And that will be three, sometimes nine syllables. But you can only find out if you take out that credit card, swipe it a couple times, and subscribe. Why have you not done this already? So many of you send me emails that say, okay, I finally subscribed because Moynihan was pressuring me. The pressure's back, baby. Subscribe. Bye bye.