Shabbos Kestenbaum is a graduate student at Harvard University, researching the intersections between between public policy and contemporary Jewish life in the United States. Shabbos is the lead plaintiff against Harvard University alleging pervasive and systemic antisemitism. Shabbos has appeared on CNN, Fox News, and in The New York Times, and has testified in front of the United States Congress, among other forums, to advocate for the American Jewish community. Currently, Shabbos is working with Congress to pass major pieces of legislation to combat antisemitism.

Adam and Shabbos sit down to discuss the raging antisemitism on college...

When he was elected Lt. Governor of Maryland in 2003, Michael Steele made history as the first African American elected to statewide office; and again with his subsequent chairmanship of the Republican National Committee in 2009.

A longtime political analyst and contributor  to MSNBC, Michael is currently the co-host of MSNBC’s “The Weekend,” which airs Saturdays and Sundays at 8AM EST.

Having recently appeared on Michael’s podcast “The Michael Steele Podcast,” Adam turns the tables and is able to ask Michael all about his life , his time as the first black party chairman for the RNC, the raci...

Ron Reagan, the son of former President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan, grew up in Los Angeles and Sacramento while his father served as Governor of California from 1967-1975.
 
After a brief career as a classical ballet dancer, Ron Reagan has spent the past 40 years as a correspondent, host and political commentator in television and radio, chiefly for MSNBC and Air America. He has written for many publications — Esquire, Newsweek, The New Yorker and Playboy among them — and is the author of the New York Times bestseller, My Father at 100. He is a board member of the Freed...

John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. 
John was one of our very first guests on Dirty Moderate over 2 years ago, and we were thrilled to spend time with this deep thinking, generous, loving, and spirited human again. 

A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. His work is a testament to finding meaning not only in our politics but in our lives. 

John’s latest book, “Worth Fighting For” is a primer for...

Stella is an Irish psychotherapist who had her own intense experience with gender as a child, and the resolution of her gender distress has made her curious about the wisdom of early intervention. As a result, in addition to facilitating a parent coaching
site that provides practical help to parents who are navigating their child’s gender-related distress, and acting as the presenter for the documentary, “Trans Kids: It’s Time to Talk (2018), Stella is the director of Genspect, an international organization that offers a healthy approach to sex and gender.

Stella is the co-author of a 2023...

Reed Galen is a co-founder of The Lincoln Project, host of the Lincoln Project podcast and author of The HomeFront Substack, and a self-proclaimed Cassandra.

Reed is an independent political strategist who has spent years advising Fortune 500 companies, and has also worked on several prominent republican campaigns.

He joins Adam to assess the Never Trump movement( of which they are both part) from 30,000 feet and the precariousness of democracy. How will Trump’s legal predicaments affect his electoral fate? What percentage of independent/Haley voters does Biden need to win re-election? Is to easier to ru...

William Inboden is Professor and Director of the Alexander Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, and Peterson Senior Fellow with the Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.  He joins Adam in a discussion centering around his latest book

“The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan in the White House and the World.”

Inboden’s masterly book provides a definitive account of  Reagan’s strategic approach to diplomacy, his nuanced statecraft, and the impact of his decisions on the global stage. This compe...

Alana Newhouse  is an American writer and editor. She is the founder of Tablet magazine, a dynamic hub of Jewish life, which features news, essays, podcasts and opinion pieces.

In November 2022, Alana wrote an essay for Tablet called “Brokenism.” The essay remains deeply compelling because, as Alana argues, that “the real debate today isn’t between the left and the right . It’s between those invested in our current institutions, and those who want to build anew.”

This is a must read essay and Alana and Adam use this piece as a springboard to discuss ou...

Mona Charen is a conservative American journalist, columnist, commentator and best selling author. She is the Policy Editor of The Bulwark, and host of the Beg to Differ podcast, which you need to subscribe to immediately.  

Mona fell hard for William F. Buckley as a teenager, and her first job was as editorial assistant at his National Review. She went on to write speeches for first lady Nancy Reagan and then for the Gipper himself.  Looking toward the 1988 race, Vice President George H.W. Bush wasn’t conservative enough for her. Fast forward through 4 best selling books (see...

As the host of the podcast History of the Land of Israel, and his own YouTube show, Israel Explained, Shaiel Ben-Ephraim spends his time thinking about Israel and assessing Israel’s long term goals. Given Iran’s attack on Israel, we invited Shaiel back to Dirty Moderate so he and Adam could discuss the implications of Iran launching drones and missiles, including ballistic ones, directly at Israel for the first time in Israel’s history. What does this mean for the stability of the region( or instability?) 

Arab nations like Jordan and Saudi Arabia joined Irael in interce...

Mike Gonzalez is the Angeles T Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He is a longtime journalist who currently writes for The Washington Examiner. Prior to that, he wrote for the Wall Street Journal, where he was based in Hong Kong. 

Mike is an ardent conservative and he sees the re-election of Trump as the only stopgap against the progressive onslaught of the left. His latest book is “NextGen Marxism: What it is and How to Combat it,” which might as well his own ideological manifesto.

Mike and Adam don’t agree o...

George Washington claimed that anyone who attempted to provide an accurate account of the war for independence would be accused of writing fiction.
 
At the time, no one called it the “American Revolution”: former colonists still regarded themselves as Virginians or Pennsylvanians, not Americans, while John Adams insisted that the British were the real revolutionaries, for attempting to impose radial change without their colonists’ consent.

With his latest book,  The Cause, Joseph J. Ellis sits down with Adam and discusses how his book takes a fresh look at the events between 1773 and 1783, recovering a war mo...

As a young girl born in Canada, Yasmine Mohammed was born into a strict Islamic household. If she missed a word of her Koran readings, she was beat until her feet were bloody and raw. And the Canadian government said there was nothing they could do to help her. “This is your culture,” they smugly told her. 

But Yasmine escaped the horrors of her childhood and the strictures of her faith to emerge as an important spokesperson for women everywhere, especially lapsed Muslims who have also been emancipated from the patriarchal, repressive dogma of Radic...