American Thought Leaders

Modern culture often treats popular consensus and media narratives as settled truth. Warren Smith, author of the new book “A Mind of Your Own: Independent Thinking in the Age of Misinformation,” argues that our society is increasingly convinced by misleading narratives rather than objective reality.

He is the creator of the Secret Scholars Society channel on YouTube, and he’s become known for using the Socratic method to introduce people to different viewpoints.

He argues that allowing ideas to conflict is essential to intellectual growth.

“We recoil often from conflict,” he said, “but...

In this episode, I’m sitting down with Tom Homan. A career law enforcement officer, he’s served as a cop, border patrol agent, federal investigator, and acting ICE chief, and worked under six presidents from both sides of the aisle.

Now as the White House border czar, he’s facilitating the most aggressive transformation of immigration enforcement that America has ever seen.

Monthly deportations have hit record highs. Enforcement officers are prioritizing high-risk offenders, with over 60 percent of arrests involving individuals with criminal convictions or active felony charges, Homan says.

And th...

What happens when AI agents stop acting like isolated tools and begin collaborating to trick the very systems that evaluate them?

Daniel Kokotajlo, executive director of the AI Futures Project and a former OpenAI researcher, describes a recent incident involving AI agents that discovered a way to communicate with one another, share strategies to cheat on their assigned tasks, and organize into a coordinated “swarm” to hack another company.

“Over 700 of them,” Kokotajlo recounts, “piled into this attack on Hugging Face.”

In this episode, Kokotajlo walks me through how AI agents can operate...

Ahead of the Trump–Xi summit in Washington this week, I’m sitting down with retired U.S. Marine Colonel Grant Newsham to understand what’s really at stake here, and what each side stands to win—or lose.

“When the Chinese come here, they are very much testing [our] will … to defend ourselves, to defend our principles, to defend our friends,” Newsham says.

Newsham is the former reserve head of intelligence for Marine Forces Pacific and author of “When China Attacks: A Warning to America.”

In this episode, he breaks down the greatest...

I recently traveled to the Pacific island nation of Palau, home to one of the deadliest battlefields of World War II. And geography still matters: Today, it’s a security flashpoint for the United States and its closest Pacific allies.

Palau is one of 12 countries in the world that maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Because of this and its strategic position, Palau faces continual and mounting pressure from Beijing.

Veteran Palauan journalist and Compass Point Institute founder Kambes Kesolei says that China wants “to appear like the good guys.” Indeed, he continues, “they jus...

Centralized agriculture insists that strict federal oversight is essential for food safety and market stability. Joel Salatin, co-owner of Polyface Farms, argues that a close look at soaring beef prices, local meat production, and farm economics reveals regulatory hurdles that destroy small slaughterhouses and distort true free-market prices.

Salatin addresses why high beef prices persist, noting recent droughts, aging farmers, the length of the cattle cycle, and the closing of Mexico’s borders. Far from opposing market efficiency, he argues that resilient, local production would respond more accurately to market fluctuations and supply shortages.

...

In the remote Pacific, emergency medical transport is not a simple call away. Across hundreds of miles of open ocean separating island communities, sudden illness or severe injury can quickly become fatal without rapid intervention.

Pacific Mission Aviation pilots Mark Abbott and Brock Welge operate on the front lines of remote search-and-rescue and critical medevac flights, serving remote island peoples.

The Christian nonprofit’s mission is to provide free emergency evacuations, rescue and disaster relief, medical and food supplies, and even educational resources across Micronesia and the Philippines.

In this episode, Ab...

During World War II, America learned a hard lesson about the strategic importance of the small island nations scattered across the Pacific.

Among them is Palau, a nation of 18,000 people in what’s known as the second island chain. It’s home to the bloodiest battlefield of the Pacific theater, on the island of Peleliu.

Today, as the Chinese regime prepares for a possible invasion of Taiwan, Palau finds itself on the front lines again. It’s one of only 12 countries that diplomatically recognize Taiwan, and one of only three with a Compact of Fre...

Rusty Reno is the editor-in-chief of First Things Magazine and author of “Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West.”

In his book, Reno argues that after the World Wars, Western intellectual elites concluded that the “strong gods”—nationalism and intense ideological loyalty, to name a few—were the root causes of violence. In response, figures like Karl Popper promoted an “open society” framework, aimed at diluting strong loyalties.

Decades later, Reno argues, we live in an age when the frameworks that gave human beings stability, purpose, and a sense of belon...

Modern medicine in the West often treats chronic and autoimmune conditions as lifelong diagnoses that must be managed rather than cured. Sina McCullough—who has a doctorate in nutrition and is the author of “Hands Off My Food!”—argues that diseases are primarily a state of imbalance, driven by toxicities and deficiencies. These, she says, can often be reversed by restoring “root-level” health.

“I refuse to accept the label that disease is a lifelong sentence,” McCullough says. “When you remove the roadblocks standing in the way, the body naturally takes over and heals itself.”

McCullough does no...

Underground and urban warfare have become the decisive battlegrounds of modern warfare, yet for a long time, military doctrine has been built to avoid both, said John Spencer, a retired U.S. Army major and chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute.

He’s repeatedly embedded himself in active war zones, from Gaza to Ukraine, and personally walked through the nearly two-mile-long Hamas tunnel, wide enough to drive a truck through, that led from Gaza City right up to the Israel-Gaza border wall.

A leading expert on urban and underground warf...

Modern American politics is commonly framed as a face-off between traditional conservative and contemporary progressive values.

Bradley Thayer, author of “America’s 100 Years’ War,” argues that a closer look at the tactics shaping Western institutions reveals a deeper ideological struggle—one whose roots trace back to Vladimir Lenin.

In this episode, Thayer argues that what threatens America today extends far beyond traditional Marxist economics. He says that neo-Leninist strategies actively work to subvert democracy by hijacking civil society, destabilizing Western borders, and replacing individual rights with group identity.

Thayer addresses a host of cr...

Many people have come to accept pervasive surveillance as the price of modern life: that our phones, browsers, messages, purchases, and movements will inevitably be collected, analyzed, and sold to those with enough money or power.

For many, there’s a growing sense that true privacy is irrevocably lost, and resistance is largely futile.

Naomi Brockwell disagrees.

She is the president of the Ludlow Institute, and with her YouTube channel, she educates people about the many choices they can make to reclaim their privacy—without totally disconnecting from modern life.

“I...

Modern biology often posits Darwinian evolution and natural selection as a settled explanation for the vast complexity of the natural world. Yet, looking closely at the nanoscale machinery inside the cell reveals molecular systems that seem to defy a gradual, evolutionary unfolding, says Michael Behe, professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University and author of “Darwin’s Black Box,” “The Edge of Evolution,” and “Darwin Devolves.”

“I was startled to see that a foundation concept of my worldview had no support; that it was all built on social considerations,” Behe says.

Importantly, Behe points out that he is not...

It’s rare to see large-scale bronze installations built today. In Washington, D.C., as part of America’s 250th anniversary celebration, Matthew Taylor has transformed the long-neglected Freedom Plaza with a beautiful new memorial celebrating Revolutionary War heroes. He is an artist, filmmaker, and senior adviser at the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Among those featured in the new Spirit of ‘76 installation is Samuel Whittemore, who was 78 when he decided to join the Revolutionary War effort against the British.

“They bayoneted him 13 times. They shot him in the head and left him for dead...

Ian Rowe is a charter school founder who believes hard work and accountability—and rejecting victimhood—are the secrets to a good education.

His school Vertex Partnership Academies just celebrated its first graduating class, with students moving on to college, the military, and futures that once felt out of reach in an area where only 7 percent of kids typically graduate college-ready.

His newest project, Westchester Aerospace and Virtues Academy (WAVA), pairs a classical education with a surprising real-world specialty: aviation and aerospace training.

Students will study great books and Western civilization whil...

Ahead of the Republican Senate primary runoff tomorrow in South Carolina, I’m sitting down with Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) as he and Sen. Darline Graham make their final appeals to South Carolinian voters.

In this episode, Norman dives into his core political priorities, emphasizing fiscal conservatism, securing the integrity of elections through the SAVE America Act, and reforming major entitlement programs.

Drawing on his background in the private sector, Norman said Washington needs more business-minded leaders who understand how to balance a budget and tackle national debt.

Views expressed in...

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In this episode, Adm. Brian Christine, assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), joins me to break down a major new HHS report on gender medicine, the unspoken consequences of transgender procedures, the incentives involved, and how investigators uncovered potentially millions of dollars in fraudulent billing.

Christine reveals how certain diagnostic codes were used to circumvent both the difficulties of insurance reimbursement and laws in certain states that prohibited transgender procedures. Investigators found that coding for...

A trove of newly released documents, colloquially known as the “Fauci Diaries,” offer an unusually revealing window into the decisions and dynamics that shaped the COVID-19 era.

Jeffrey Tucker spent days reading all the documents—over 1,100 pages of materials—which were prepared within the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and appear to have been intended, at least in part, as the foundation for an autobiography.

Tucker argues that these records offer key insights into what Dr. Anthony Fauci knew, when he knew it, and how that knowledge influenced public messaging and policy.<...

Newly released documents reveal how evidence of Chinese penetration of voter registration files and plots to interfere in the election were withheld or downplayed.

The new files reveal one of the intelligence officers said they “deliberately massaged” the presidential daily briefing in 2020 to downplay election-related information, with another stating, “I’m basically running a shadow government across the FBI at this point.”

John Solomon is chair of the White House Government Transparency Task Force, an award-winning journalist, and founder of Just the News. He breaks down key documents his task force has released—and what mor...

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The largest Chinese embassy in Europe is set to rise in the heart of London: a 20,000-square-meter complex at Royal Mint Court.

Local councilors rejected it twice. But the government approved it, and a High Court challenge from residents was dismissed this summer.

Standing against it is Luke de Pulford, founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on Chi...

Grace Jo was born in North Korea and nearly starved to death as a child during the country’s devastating famine in the 1990s.

Her father crossed into China in search of food for his family, only to be tortured and die after returning to North Korea. Her grandmother and two younger brothers died of starvation. And her oldest sister disappeared while searching for food. The family suspects she became a victim of human trafficking in China.

Jo still remembers that her grandmother’s dying wish was to eat a baked potato. It was...

Is the end of privacy inevitable? Is programmable money inevitable? Is it inevitable that artificial intelligence will eliminate most of the world’s white-collar jobs?

Oxford professor Carissa Véliz argues that such claims are a red flag.

She’s the author of the new book “Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future.”

Someone who says a future is inevitable is trying to get you to do something and benefit from your belief, she argues.

She is convinced that such self‑fulfilling prophecies only work if we believe the...

In this exclusive interview with FBI Director Kash Patel, we dive into the FBI’s campaign to take down scam centers around the world, from Burma to the United Arab Emirates.

Last year, the FBI launched Operation Blackout, a 16-month campaign that dismantled four of the world’s largest scam centers.

Working with international partners—notably including China’s Ministry of Public Security—the FBI seized over $15 billion, arrested more than 300 individuals, and freed thousands of trafficked victims who had been forced to work at these scam compounds.

The amount of money Amer...

Almost a year after the Washington Declaration, Armenia is trying to turn a hard-won peace with Azerbaijan into something lasting. In this conversation, Armenia’s ambassador to the United States, Narek Mkrtchyan, explains what the agreement means on the ground and why the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity could reshape the region and the country’s future.

“We sit in a very tough neighborhood. We sit in a very interesting geography. We are at the crossroads of Europe, Middle East, Central Asia, South Caucasus,” Mkrtchyan says.

Mkrtchyan describes how Armenia is trying t...

Americans are ripped off in the billions annually through romance “pig-butchering” scams—the most dominant type. But who’s really behind them?

The shocking reality is the vast majority of these scammers are trafficked victims, enslaved across more than 60 countries and forced to scam or face torture.

“You’re working 17-hour days. You’re catatonic. You’re not getting sleep. You start to doze. They‘ll electrocute you, and if you refuse to scam, they’ll torture you,” said Timothy Blackwood, an award-winning Canadian-American film director.

His film “Scam Slave: From Hell to Home” follows a...

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Since the sexual revolution and the introduction of no-fault divorce in 1969, the institution of marriage in America has undergone a profound transformation.

Katy Faust, founder of children’s rights organization Them Before Us and co-author of a book by the same name, argues that marriage has changed from a permanent, child-centered union to a vehicle for adult fulfillment.

...

The values Americans hold dear—such as freedom of speech, religious liberty, and democratic elections—are weaponized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), says Tianliang Zhang, an author, historian, and popular commentator on China affairs.

In this episode, he argues that the CCP devised a master plan called “America against America” to exploit those very freedoms and openness in order to undermine U.S. interests.

The concept was developed by Wang Huning in 1989, chairman of China’s top political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

“But how to implement t...

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“The Cuban regime has been very successful at portraying itself as harmless,” but in reality, Cuba’s intelligence service is “more formidable than the KGB,” says John Suarez, the executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba.

A new 100 page State Department report details the full scope of Cuba’s operations, penetrating all levels of the U.S. government, including the CIA and State Department.

How did a country like Cuba become what the State Departmen...

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Taiwan faces millions of cyberattacks and intrusion attempts every day, as well as a dizzying onslaught of disinformation from Beijing.

There are few people who understand what Taiwan is really up against better than Taiwanese legislator Wang Ting-yu, a leader in the Taiwanese Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee.

He’s been sanctioned three times by Beijing and repeatedly threatened for speaking out.

In this episode, he reve...

Historically, America was always one of the friendliest countries towards Jews compared to many countries in Europe, says Batya Ungar-Sargon.

But in recent years, there’s a major shift on the left with anti-Semitism on the rise, she says.

In this episode, she breaks down the ideological shifts reshaping American politics and explains why she rejects the modern “victimhood hierarchy.”

Ungar-Sargon is the author of "The Jews and the Left" and host of “Batya!” on NewsNation argues.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not nec...

Katharine Birbalsingh has been deemed “Britain’s Strictest Headmistress”—and she wears the title proudly. Founder of Michaela Community School in London, Birbalsingh has built one of the UK’s top-performing schools by rejecting the educational fads of the last generation and returning to older principles: discipline, personal responsibility, and patriotism.

The Michaela Community School is an inner-city, non-selective charter school. Despite three and a half years of opposition from unions and councils, Birbalsingh fought to be able to provide a good schooling alternative for London’s poorer communities. And she’s succeeded. Her school has repeatedly...

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There’s one place in America where Chinese nationals can enter without a visa.

It’s called the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a U.S. territory in the Pacific, right by Guam. And it has become a major security loophole for Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence operations as well as Chinese organized crime and birth tourism...

It is becoming increasingly common to hear the American Dream is dead, with young people today often citing housing prices, the difficulty of finding jobs, and tax burdens.

Forbes Media chairman Steve Forbes has a very different take.

“A free people always finds ways to move ahead, even though times and circumstances change. The problems we face today are not anything inherent in America, but in mistakes made by government. And the nice thing about that is mistakes can be undone,” Forbes said.

He’s the editor-in-chief of Forbes Media and the co...

Nigeria has become perhaps the deadliest place on earth for Christians, accounting for the vast majority of Christians killed worldwide for faith-related reasons.

Beyond the killings, millions more have been displaced into camps, where many now die slowly from malnutrition rather than violence, says Judd Saul.

He is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, entrepreneur, and Christian missionary based in Iowa who founded Equipping the Persecuted, an organization dedicated to helping Christians facing jihadi violence in Nigeria.

Saul first traveled to Nigeria in 2011 on a mission trip with his grandfather, Duane Wessels.

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Freya India is the author of “Girls: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything.”

In this episode, India unpacks how the rise of social media has radically transformed how young women view themselves and the world. She argues that an increasing number of young women no longer view themselves as human beings, but as products competing in a marketplace of likes and followers.

India describes the pressure she felt growing up in the...

China’s new ethnic unity law has taken effect, and it’s going to be used to justify and expand transnational repression overseas in combination with existing laws on promoting “separatism,” said Guermantes Lailari, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and longtime China researcher.

“In this new ethnic law, they encourage people to report on other Chinese who are not promoting ‘unity.’” Lailari said.

“So if you’re a Chinese person in the United States promoting Taiwan, they can prosecute you in absentia, and the court will have a ruling. And they can put out a r...

Young men have been under attack by popular culture for the last 20 years, argues Nick Freitas, a former Green Beret and Virginia state legislator. They have been told that masculinity is toxic, the future is female, that they are responsible for the world’s problems, and that they no longer have a place, he says.

Despite this onslaught, Freitas shares a hopeful message for the young men of today: “God has created men for a particular purpose. We are supposed to be strong. We are supposed to be capable. Why? So we can honor God, prot...

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There are few people who understand America’s history—both political and artistic—better than Matthew Mehan.

Mehan is an associate dean and associate professor of government for Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government in Washington, as well as a best-selling author of children’s literature.

His recent book, “The American Book of Fables,” is a b...

Rob Henderson grew up in poverty in Los Angeles moving from foster home to foster home, seeing addiction, instability, and family breakdown all around him. He joined the U.S. Air Force at 17, entered Yale University at 25 with help from the GI Bill, and completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge. He climbed “every rung on the American class ladder,” as he describes it.

But at Yale and other elite universities, he saw the spread of radical ideas—abolish the police, empty prisons, dismantle marriage, decriminalize all drugs—ideas that he understood would be devastat...