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History
Breaking History: The Invention That Changed Everything
How air-conditioning became one of the most powerful invisible forces shaping modern life.
Bari Weiss
30M
Ancient Wisdom: Why I Dug Into My Family’s Past
I love Southern history. But I never researched the history of my Louisiana relatives until I was in close range to my 65th birthday. What was keeping…
Nicholas Lemann
Nicholas Lemann on His Genealogy Obsession
Descended from Jewish plantation owners in Louisiana, the author began a new journey in his sixties—uncovering his family history.
Suzy Weiss
32M
Niall Ferguson: Our Own Gilded Age
The late 19th century saw economic dynamism and inequality as well as controversies over tariffs, immigration, and monetary policy. Sounds like 2025…
Niall Ferguson
How New York Became a City of Billionaires
How did this city become so rich and so impoverished? Jonathan Mahler, author of a new history, will join my colleague Peter Savodnik live at 4 p.m…
Joe Nocera
The Ties That Bind Islamists and Progressives
The Gaza war has reignited the strange alliance between the Western left and fanatical Islamists.
Eli Lake
Things Worth Remembering: How P.J. O’Rourke Skewered the Swamp
‘Parliament of Whores’ will make you chuckle so much, you won’t realize it’s teaching you how American power works.
Matthew Continetti
Why the Revolution Never Ends
Marxism didn’t die. It just changed costumes. A historian of communism breaks down how today’s radicals rebranded the ideology for a new generation.
Gary Saul Morson
Niall Ferguson: Milei’s Man-made Miracle
Can a broken economy be fixed? Argentina’s president proves it can. Politics is another story.
Niall Ferguson
The Making of Modern Iran
Eli Lake dives into the paradox at the heart of Iranian history: how a country that has revolted time and again always ends up governed by kings.
Eli Lake
1HR 8M
Things Worth Remembering: ‘Life Is Real! Life Is Earnest!’
These days, it’s embarrassing to take anything too seriously. But if you don’t, as the poets remind us, your life won’t amount to much.
Ryan Holiday
Tyler Cowen: Why Won’t Socialism Die?
The simple explanation is that people like free stuff. What’s actually happening is a nationwide case of bad vibes.
Tyler Cowen
Is Elon Musk the New Ross Perot?
Washington plays by different rules than Silicon Valley. Musk hasn’t mastered them.
Matthew Continetti
The Texas Floods Were an Avoidable Tragedy
This weekend, disaster struck one of the nation’s most flood-prone areas, where centuries of data show casualties were foreseeable and preventable.
Roger Pielke Jr.
The Free Press Guide to Summer Reading
Abigail Shrier on Douglas Murray. Nellie Bowles on Jesus. Niall Ferguson on his favorite sci-fi novel. This is the ultimate Free Press reading list.
Isaac Grafstein
America Has Always Been a Dangerous Idea
The Declaration of Independence wasn’t just a break from empire. It was a challenge to every regime that came after.
Eli Lake
52M
Bari Weiss: American Regeneration
This Independence Day, we don’t just celebrate the birthday of the words that made us—but the choice to live by them two and a half centuries later.
Bari Weiss
The Words That Made America
Akhil Reed Amar explains our founding story and why the American Constitution is the best hope for the future.
Bari Weiss
1HR 28M
Have You Heard the Good News?
Because the progressive left and the MAGA right clearly have not.
Clifford S. Asness and Michael R. Strain
The Free Press Presents: America at 250
Join us for a yearlong celebration of America’s 250th birthday: where we’ve come from, where we are, and where we’re going.
The Editors
Was She the Greatest Kingmaker of the 20th Century?
Or will Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law only be remembered for sex? Tina Brown on the seductive Pamela Harriman.
Tina Brown
The Revisionist History of Pride Month
We have gay rights because thousands of ordinary people were brave enough to live openly, not because a trans woman of color threw a brick at a bar.
River Page
Things Worth Remembering: ‘Endurance Comes Only from Enduring’
I was the last person in the U.S. to interview the great Czesław Miłosz, before he returned to Poland forever.
Cynthia L. Haven
Niall Ferguson: What Comes After Trump’s ‘Surgical Strikes’?
As Kissinger often said, every success in foreign policy is just an admission ticket to the next crisis.
Niall Ferguson
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