The Free Press: Conversations with Coleman

Who Decides What’s True on Wikipedia?

Coleman Hughes — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:02:01 GMT

I have noticed firsthand the way that Wikipedia—the internet’s encyclopedia, widely treated as an objective reference—can become, in small but persistent ways, an ideological battleground. After I testified to Congress against reparations for slavery, my own Wikipedia page became a site of competing edits. At one point, an editor removed the fact—well-d…

The Liberal Case for American Power

Coleman Hughes — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 09:02:23 GMT

Shadi Hamid came of age in an environment where America was often seen as a font of destruction, the root cause of the world’s problems rather than their solution. He marched against the Iraq War. He read Noam Chomsky. Like many on the left, he saw the United States primarily as a source of global harm. But over time, he came to see American power as a …

What People Get Wrong About Birthright Citizenship

Coleman Hughes — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 09:01:56 GMT

Linda Chavez once held the highest-ranking position of any woman in Ronald Reagan’s White House, serving as director of the Office of Public Liaison. But when she was nominated to be secretary of labor under George W. Bush, her candidacy unraveled when it emerged that she had been sheltering an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala in her home. She hadn…

What Tyler Cowen Thinks About (Almost) Everything

Coleman Hughes — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 09:02:09 GMT

Tyler Cowen is an economist at George Mason University, co-founder of my favorite blog, Marginal Revolution, and a contributor to The Free Press. A true polymath known for his short but extremely substantive answers to questions, Tyler is one of my favorite people with whom to have a long conversation. On the show this week, I got to do the kind of inte…

Coleman Hughes and Glenn Greenwald Debate Israel’s Influence in Washington

Coleman Hughes — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 09:02:37 GMT

Earlier this year, I was set to debate the influence of the Israel lobby on the U.S. at a live event in New York. That event was canceled. So instead, I invited my would-be opponent, journalist Glenn Greenwald, onto the podcast to have the conversation anyway.

Glenn and I disagree on a lot, including how much influence Israel has over American foreign po…

Nonviolence in a Violent Age: Coleman Hughes Live in Atlanta

Coleman Hughes — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 19:54:12 GMT

During the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 and the wave of campus protests since, I have been struck by how far modern activism seems to have drifted from the strategies and philosophies of the civil rights era—which, in my opinion, should have remained the model. In the 1950s and ’60s, political change was pursued with discipline, pre…

What Keeps Sam Harris Up at Night

Coleman Hughes — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 09:02:54 GMT

Sam Harris is one of the great thinkers of our time. The philosopher, neuroscientist, and host of the Making Sense podcast joined me to discuss some of the defining issues of the moment. We began with the ongoing war in Iran. While Harris is in favor of regime change given the Islamic regime’s hostility to its own people as well as the United States, he…

The Forgotten History of Slavery in the Islamic World

Coleman Hughes — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 09:03:14 GMT

Justin Marozzi is a historian and travel writer whose work has long explored the history of the Islamic world. In his new book, Captives and Companions, he turns to a subject that remains surprisingly under-examined: the history of slavery across Islamic societies. Stretching from the time of the prophet Muhammad to the modern era, the system he describ…

Niall Ferguson vs. Richard Haass: Is Regime Change in Iran Possible?

Coleman Hughes — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 09:01:32 GMT

The question on the minds of many Americans is: What should we make of the war in Iran?

To explore that, I brought together historian and Free Press contributor Niall Ferguson and veteran diplomat Richard Haass, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, to discuss their differing views on the operation.

While Ferguson is broadly supportive o…

He Wanted to Teach Western Civilization. So He Quit Harvard.

Coleman Hughes — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 09:02:59 GMT

A Renaissance historian, James Hankins left his longtime post at Harvard University in December to join the little-known Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. As he wrote in an essay that sent shock waves through higher education, he says he did so because the Hamilton School is committed to teaching the history…

What Does ‘Winning’ Look Like in Iran?

Coleman Hughes — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 19:46:02 GMT

As coordinated American and Israeli strikes on Iran continue, I wanted to sit down with Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a leading expert on Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. sanctions policy.

I asked Mark the most pressing questions to emerge since the major conflict began over the weekend: How does this serve Americ…

Yuval Levin on What Conservatism Is for Today

Coleman Hughes — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 10:00:57 GMT

Yuval Levin, founding editor of National Affairs and the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, has spent his career studying the institutions that shape American life. I wanted to sit down with him to discuss this unsettled moment in American politics—one in which both parties are fractured and go…

Why Longer Prison Sentences Don’t Work

Coleman Hughes — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 10:02:27 GMT

Debates over crime policy are often driven by emotion. People argue based on their feelings about police presence on their streets, or narratives about the social conditions they believe produce criminals. But Jennifer Doleac, an economist who focuses on criminal justice, contends that emotion shouldn’t be the basis of this conversation. Like sound econ…

The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories with Michael Shermer

Coleman Hughes — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 10:00:00 GMT

As the founder of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer has long been defending reason against pseudoscience, investigating claims about life after death, paranormal phenomena, and even the mysteries of firewalking. In the early 2000s, he became widely known for his critiques of religion alongside other major figures in the New Atheism movement. In his new …

Is Your Life Morally Ambitious Enough?

Coleman Hughes — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 10:00:36 GMT

Throughout his career, Dutch historian Rutger Bregman has put forth ideas that challenge the consensus. He famously criticized billionaires for evading taxes while speaking at Davos to an audience of billionaires. In his book Utopia for Realists, he advocated for policies like a 15-hour workweek, open borders, and universal basic income, years before UB…

Separating Fact from Moral Panic in the Epstein Case

Coleman Hughes — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 10:01:00 GMT

It’s undeniable that the Jeffrey Epstein case has become a cultural obsession. How could it not? We’ve been sold a story of a multimillionaire financier who ran a global pedophile ring, supplied children to be abused by presidents, prime ministers, and princes, and secretly recorded powerful men in compromising positions to blackmail them on behalf of i…

Lionel Shriver on the Immigration Taboo

Coleman Hughes — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 10:02:29 GMT

I’ve noticed that the more morally charged a topic becomes, the harder it is to talk about it honestly. Immigration is a good example. The public conversation has flattened into slogans, while engagement with real disagreements is treated as suspect, if not outright taboo.

The emotional effect of cultural change is a human response—and yet it is not acknowledged consistently. While it would be widely accepted for a black resident of Harlem to say he wants to preserve the culture of his neighborhood, the same sentiment, expressed by a white resident of Arizona, would almost certainly be condemned.

This dynamic is what drew me to A Better Life, the new novel by Lionel Shriver. Rather than making an argument about immigration policy, the book stages a simple experiment. A family that strongly supports open immigration agrees to take a migrant into their home. The book then follows what happens when ideals that feel virtuous at a distance collide with the practical realities of daily life.

What’s interesting about the novel is its refusal to resolve that tension cleanly. The migrant is neither presented as good or bad. The family members are not presented as heroes or villains. Shriver captures something that is often missing from political debate: that human beings are inconsistent, that generosity has limits, and that, in practice, ideology can get muddled by real life.

I sat down with Shriver to talk about her book, and to have some healthy debate about immigration, cultural change in the West, and why policing speech has become an obstacle to understanding what’s actually at stake.

The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.

Designer Babies and AI Jobs Are No Longer Sci-Fi

Coleman Hughes — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 10:02:52 GMT

In the aftermath of Covid, one lesson should have been obvious: Our ability to generate powerful technologies has far outpaced our ability to talk honestly about their risks. That gap between capability and judgment is why I wanted to sit down with Jamie Metzl, a former National Security Council official turned biotech futurist, and one of the earliest …

Why Liberal Religion Is Losing Ground

Coleman Hughes — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 10:01:11 GMT

Rabbi David Wolpe has spent his career thinking seriously about belief. He debated the New Atheists at the height of their influence, led one of the largest synagogues in the country, taught at Harvard Divinity School, and has written widely about theology in the modern age. Along the way, Newsweek once named him the most influential rabbi in America, a…

The Real Reasons Greenland Matters

Coleman Hughes — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 10:01:50 GMT

Greenland—a vast, frozen island most Americans could barely place on a map—has suddenly found itself at the center of a rapidly intensifying global contest. In this episode, I’m joined by Heather A. Conley, an authority on Europe, NATO, and Arctic security, to discuss how Greenland became one of the most strategically important places on Earth.

Heather e…