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PODCAST

Conversations with Coleman

Conversations with Colemanis where deep thinkers and curious minds meet for sharp, surprising, and unfiltered chats. Hosted by Coleman Hughes, writer, thinker, and guy who asks the questions other people dodge - this podcast isn’t aboutdebating. It’s about discovery. Politics, philosophy, race, culture, science: it’s all fair game. If you"re done with hot takes and hungry for real-talk, come join the conversation.

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

103:41

Inside Israel’s War Room: What Really Happened After...

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/10/05

Elliot Kaufman’s new book, In the War Room, is an inside account of how Israel actually fought the war that followed October 7, 2023. A Wall Street Journal editorial writer, Kaufman spent the last two years reporting on the conflict and drew on documents recovered from Hamas, along with behind-the-scenes access to Israel’s top political, military, and intelligence leaders, to reconstruct decisions most of the public never saw. Kaufman explains why Hamas sincerely believed it could destroy Israel,

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62:03

The Real Reason the Black Family Fell Apart

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/09/28

Delano Squires spent 15 years working in D.C. government, including a stint in the city’s office of gun violence prevention, where he noticed the same story on repeat: Young black men were both victims and perpetrators of some of the worst crimes in the city. In his new book, The Vanishing Black Family, he argues that family structure, not policing, incarceration, or education policy, is the most consequential and least discussed driver of racial inequality in America today. Squires makes the case

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57:08

Roland Fryer on the Cost of Telling the Truth

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/09/21

Roland Fryer is a professor of economics at Harvard University, the youngest black academic ever to receive tenure there, and a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal for his research on racial inequality, education, and policing. His findings have often put him at odds with progressive orthodoxy, and he’s paid a real price for it over the years, including death threats and a shot-out window over a program that simply paid kids to do well in school.Fryer returns to the show to talk with Coleman

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60:32

The Lie at the Center of Antisemitism, with Dara Horn

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/09/17

Dara Horn is a novelist and essayist whose book People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present examined how contemporary culture sentimentalizes Jewish suffering while ignoring the fullness of Jewish life. Her new book, provocatively titled The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living, goes further, arguing that antisemitism isn’t an ordinary bigotry at all. It’s a lie, always the same lie in different disguises, that Jews are destroying whatever a given society

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84:45

How Do You Talk a Klansman out of the Klan? Ask Daryl...

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/09/14

Daryl Davis is a blues musician who has spent over 40 years doing something few people would attempt: sitting down with members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, one on one, to ask them why they hate him. He’s been threatened, physically attacked, and called a race traitor by people on both sides. He’s also convinced over 200 Klansmen to leave their hate groups entirely—not by arguing them out of their beliefs, but by befriending them long enough for their own convictions to

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45:57

He Couldn’t Save His Brother on 9/11. He Spent the...

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/09/11

Frank Siller’s youngest brother, Stephen, was orphaned at 10, grew up to become a New York City firefighter, and was driving home from a night shift on the morning of September 11, 2001, when he heard the World Trade Center had been hit. He turned his truck around, grabbed his gear, and ran through the closed Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and up the stairs of the South Tower. He never came out.Two weeks later, Siller and his siblings started a charity in Stephen’s name. Twenty-five years on, that

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84:33

The Secret Recordings That Reveal How Presidents...

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/09/03

Tim Naftali is a presidential historian who spent four years running the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. He’s listened to thousands of hours of secret Oval Office recordings from Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson, and John F. Kennedy. Naftali joins Coleman to break down which president was actually the sharpest, walking through the different kinds of intelligence—tactical, strategic, emotional—that separated men like LBJ and Nixon from each other. They get into why presidents started taping

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69:22

This Is How AI Starts a Nuclear War

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/08/24

Robert Wright has spent decades writing about human nature, evolution, and the forces that shape history. In his latest book, The God Test, he argues AI is forcing a test humanity can’t afford to fail: whether we can finally get past the tribalism that’s defined most of our history. He joins Coleman Hughes to walk through a real scenario where competition between the U.S. and China over AI dominance escalates into an arms race, one that could end in nuclear war if either side believes falling behind

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82:03

Democrats Need to Ditch ‘Loser Politics,’ with...

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/08/03

Is there a meaningful difference between a commonsense Democrat and a center-right Republican? Matthew Yglesias thinks so. But he also thinks the Democrats have spent the last decade making it harder and harder to tell. He cofounded Vox and writes the essential Slow Boring Substack. He has been one of the most consistent voices calling for a Democratic politics that is practical and winnable. He joins Coleman Hughes to make that case.They start with the big picture: why people have started asking

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62:21

The Charlie Kirk Killing and America’s Forgotten...

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/07/20

Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review and author of the new book Blood & Progress, which makes the case that left-wing political violence has a long and largely forgotten history in America. He joins Coleman Hughes to argue that the commonly held belief that political violence is largely a right-wing phenomenon is not just inaccurate but actively dangerous. He believes America has forgotten a century’s worth of anarchist bombings, Marxist guerrilla movements, and ideologically motivated

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79:57

In Defense of Elites, with Richard Hanania

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/07/13

Richard Hanania is a political scientist, writer, and author of the new book Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster, which makes the sometimes uncomfortable case that antiestablishment politics, for all their appeal, tend to make countries worse. He joins Coleman to talk about who elites actually are and why they’re usually right, even when they’re sometimes spectacularly wrong.They also get into what explains the rise of antiestablishment politics across the West, and why communications

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71:53

Dr. Cornel West: Is America Living Up to Its Promise?

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/07/06

Dr. Cornel West is one of the most distinct voices in American public life. He’s a philosopher, theologian, and moral critic who has spent decades asking the toughest questions about America—what this country is and what it ought to be. He joins Coleman on the 250th anniversary of the founding to get into the state of America in 2026. They get into the founding contradictions, the ethics of manifest destiny, what American capitalism gets right and what it leaves out, the decline of religion and what

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63:15

Douglas Murray: The Iranian Regime Means What It Says

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/06/25

Douglas Murray is back as a columnist at The Free Press, and Coleman wastes no time putting him to work. They get into the Iran deal and why Murray thinks it won’t hold. They also dig into the nature of a regime that has been openly stating its intentions for decades, and a West that keeps refusing to believe them. And they cover what the resignation of British prime minister Keir Starmer reveals about a country that voted for change and got very little of it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

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64:08

Caitlin Flanagan: Why I Finally Left Los Angeles

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/06/22

Caitlin Flanagan joins the show today, now an official columnist at The Free Press. Flanagan, one of the sharpest essayists working today, spent 35 years in Los Angeles before deciding she’d had enough, and tells Coleman why. The answer says a lot about what progressive governance has done to one of America’s great cities. From there they get into territory Flanagan knows well: the state of marriage, the dating crisis, and the case for having children in a culture that has talked itself out of

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104:56

Coleman Hughes vs. Peter Beinart Debate: Should...

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/06/15

Peter Beinart is a writer and author who has contributed to The New Republic, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. He grew up a committed Zionist and has spent the last decade publicly refuting that position, arriving at the view that Israel cannot be reconciled with the principle of equality under the law. His most recent book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, caused shock waves in the Jewish world. In this conversation, Coleman and Peter debate the Palestinian right of return and

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61:58

Michael Shellenberger on the Psychology of Left-Wing...

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/05/18

Michael Shellenberger is the author of San Fransickco and Apocalypse Never. He’s a former progressive activist, and one of the most prominent advocates for nuclear energy in the country. In this episode, he and Coleman dig into the Epstein story and why the evidence falls far short of the conspiracy theory most people believe; the savior complex he sees underlying progressive politics and its connection to recent left- wing violence; and what California and other blue states are finally starting to

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62:29

Walter Russell Mead on Christian Zionism, the ‘Israel...

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/05/04

Why do Americans support Israel? The standard answers—D.C. lobbying, shared democratic values, strategic benefits—all miss something. Walter Russell Mead, one of America's foremost foreign policy scholars, traces the real answer back to 17th-century Calvinist theology, and argues that Christian Zionists were advocating for a Jewish homeland long before most Jews were. Mead joins the show to make the case that the famous Israel Lobby thesis is actually historically incoherent. To explain where

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72:03

The Case for Drinking Alcohol

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/04/27

Most researchers who study alcohol focus on what it does to your body. Edward Slingerland is more interested in what it does to your friendships. In his book Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization, the University of British Columbia professor argues that alcohol has functioned for thousands of years as humanity's most important social lubricant, and that the modern war on drinking is costing us something we can't easily replace. He and Coleman dig into the anthropological

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62:30

Who Decides What’s True on Wikipedia?

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/04/20

Ashley Rindsberg has spent years investigating how ideological bias corrupts institutions that present themselves as neutral arbiters of truth. His book The Gray Lady Winked exposed how The New York Times got major stories wrong across decades of reporting. Now he turns his attention to Wikipedia, the internet’s default encyclopedia and one of the most influential sources of information in the world. Rindsberg finds that while Wikipedia remains a reliable resource for most topics, its most

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0:25

Help Us Win the Internet’s Highest Honor

Conversations with Coleman ·

2026/04/16

Click this link, make an account, and vote for Conversations with Coleman!⁠https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/individual-episode/interview-or-talk-show⁠ Hi guys, Coleman here, sharing some exciting news: Conversations with Coleman has been nominated for a Webby Award. This is the internet’s highest honor, and we need your help to get over the finish line! I am currently in second place in the “Best Interview or Talk Show” category, and voting ends Thursday, April16, at

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