The Radicalist

William F. Buckley Jr. was a leading American intellectual who helped shape the modern conservative movement. He founded National Review in 1955, hosted the long-running TV show Firing Line, wrote more than 50 books, and was a profoundly influential figure in U.S. political life throughout the late 20th century.

In William F. Buckley Jr.’s Guide to Friendship in a Polarized Era: Lessons in Civility from a Catholic Conservative Icon, author Josh Cohen explores how meaningful friendships can be sustained even in times of intense political division. Drawing on the life and example of Buckley, who famously engaged pe...

Not even the most advanced form of artificial intelligence can ever replace man. Because there is something in human beings that is irreducible to machine knowledge: self-awareness, free will, doubt, feelings.

* Federico Faggin, Tiscali notizie interview, May 2024

This week, Yevgeny Simkin and I explore the limits of human and artificial intelligence. It’s a conversation about brains, machines, and the fragile thread of freedom that connects them.

Simkin is a Soviet refugee, contributor at The Bulwark, former guest on The Radicalist, founder of the social platform Sez Us, and co-founder of Samizdat Online, wh...

This debate came about after I wrote an essay, “Trans Women Are Trans Women,” in response to Matthew Adelstein’s essay, “Why I Think Trans Women Are Women.” I wanted to have the conversation for two reasons.

First, I’m a student of philosophy and former university lecturer of logic, debate, writing, and public speaking — basically, how to think and express those thoughts — so for me, civil discourse is a personal discipline much like chess or martial arts, two of my favorite pastimes. But it’s also a benefit to society because if more of us openly engaged in civil d...

David Volodzko talks to former guest Kevin Ray about a disturbing experience he recently had on the New York subway, the pathology of woke activism, its influence in the arts and why things are getting worse rather than better, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopian novel We, his experience with compelled speech, and the effort to turn educators into activist therapists.

Kevin Ray is a New York City theater director with over 20 years of experience as an arts educator. He produced and directed “Unearthly Visitants,” based on ghost stories by Edith Wharton, “The Machine Stops,” from EM Forster’s short story...

David Volodzko speaks with Mia Hughes about the different waves of the trans movement, the DSM-V and gender dysmorphic disorder, how the trans movement operates as a cult, legal support for trans activism in U.S. states, prevalence rates, indicators of social contagion, the WPATH scam, how the Biden administration inserted itself into medical standards, autogynephilia, definitional creep of the term “trans,” politically Trans identity, and the science-based treatment for trans identity.

Mia Hughes is senior fellow at MacDonald-Laurier Institute, director of Genspect Canada, co-host of Beyond Gender, author of the WPATH Files, and former researcher on gend...

David Volodzko speaks with Ross Benes about his upcoming book 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times. They discuss the political legacy of Jerry Springer and reality TV, what Beanie Babies and Pokemon can teach us about financial markets, the rise of WWE kayfabe in corporate culture, the dialectic of high and low culture, how porn drove tech adoption on VHS and streaming, Insane Clown Posse and the outsider effect from woke to MAGA, how media deregulation led to the dominance of trash culture writ large but notably in our politics, 1999 as a cultural inflection...

After President Trump announced “Liberation Day” on April 2, the Dow sank 350 points and the S&P 500 recorded a historic three-day loss.

But never mind the regional security risks, or the fact that this should’ve been done through negotiation with our allies rather than unilateral action, what’s perhaps most remarkable about this event is the way it has been received by the MAGA faithful.

David Josef Volodzko speaks with Ilya Shapiro about constitutional originalism, Supreme Court reform, political bias on the bench, DEI in our courts, Shapiro’s scandal at Georgetown Law, free speech on campus, the illiberal takeover of legal education — which is the subject of his new book Lawless — and much more.

Shapiro is a constitutional scholar and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute whose work focuses on free speech, higher education, and the justice system. He is also formerly the executive director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, vice president of the Cato Institute, and director of its Ce...

David Volodzko speaks with Katherine Brodsky about her book No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage—Lessons for the Silenced Majority.

Brodsky is a former guest on the pod, when she appeared to discuss civility and open discourse. She is also the author of the newsletter Random Minds and a columnist at Michael Shermer’s newsletter Skeptic.

In response to escalating Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping lanes, President Trump ordered large-scale airstrikes this week, targeting Houthi military infrastructure in the capital city of Sanaa. These strikes are intended to protect international maritime commerce as well as send a warning shot over the bow to Iran for supporting these pirates, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio called them yesterday.

David Volodzko speaks with Allin Kimbrough, who grew up in the Quiverfull movement and its famous branch the Duggar family cult, a group of independent Baptist fundamentalists whose lifestyle was celebrated on The Learning Channel show 19 Kids and Counting and who later became the topic of the grim 2023 Amazon documentary Shiny Happy People, involving the story of how their eldest son molested his own sisters as well as his child pornography conviction.

David and Allin also discuss the cult’s ties to Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz, Mike Pence, and Russia, as well as the day-to-day ro...

The White House press secretary recently called New York Times reporter Peter Baker a “left-wing stenographer” after he questioned Trump’s decision to bar AP for not using the term “Gulf of America.” But just how biased is the NewYork Times, and in what ways?

This week, David Volodzko discusses nonpartisanship and the Oval Office ambush involving President Trump, Vice President Vance, and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy.

David Volodzko speaks with Sarah-Jane Murray about how medieval politics changed the way people at the time told stories, how politics influence narrative structure generally, theoretical frameworks in medieval narratives, the ethics of interpretation, postmodern hermeneutics, storytelling as the foundation of civilization, the universality of story design, and more.

Murray is a professor at Baylor University and an expert in medieval literature who translated the Ovide Moralisé and is the author of From Plato to Lancelot: A Preface to Chrétien de Troyes, Basics of Story Design: 20 Steps to an Insanely Great Screenplay, and the children’s book...

David Volodzko speaks with Alexander von Sternberg about the concept of velvet jihad, which he coined—inspired by French historian David Todd’s A Velvet Empire: French Informal Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century—to describe Islamic cultural imperialism. They also discuss the recent pogrom in Amsterdam, the influence of rhetoric on behavior, Sharia law, the myth of media-induced violence, and more.

Alexander von Sternberg is the host of the podcast History Impossible, a graduate student of history, and a former guest on The Radicalist.

Ashley Rindsberg is senior editor at Pirate Wires and author of the books Tel Aviv Stories and The Gray Lady Winked: How The New York Times’s Misreporting, Distortions & Fabrications Radically Alter History, which he was inspired to write after reading how the paper’s reported that Poland invaded Nazi Germany and not the other way around.

In this conversation, we discuss Israel, our current media environment and public mistrust of news outlets today, why the news needs to be more like Spotify, where Pirate Wires sits in the media landscape, AI-generated news, free speech on Wikipedia, the...

Katherine Brodsky is the author of the newsletter Random Minds and has been a correspondent for Variety for over a decade. She has also contributed to publications such as The Washington Post, WIRED, The Guardian, Esquire, Newsweek, Playboy Magazine, New York Magazine's Vulture, USA Today, and many others. As a journalist, she has mostly covered film, TV, culture, business, travel, tech—and espionage. She has interviewed figures ranging from the Dalai Lama to Elon Musk. She is also the author of the 2024 book No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage―Lessons for the...

Part II:

The debate:

Notice he @’s FIRE, where I work, with claims of slander (never mind slander is spoken while libel is written), as if trying to get me in trouble or fired. This is precisely the disgusting kind of tactics we’ve all come to expect from woke activists.

Respectfully brother, it only seems more clear to me now that I did not misunderstand you. But let’s break this down just in case.

You said X will happen. Namely, if people who oppose identity politics support Zionism, “we will los...

David Volodzko speaks with terrorism expert Jonathan Schanzer about terrorism funding, the efficacy of sanctions, the Iranian regime and Hamas funding, the Israel-Hamas War, the Russo-Ukraine War, China’s potential invasion of Taiwan, and more.

Jonathan Schanzer (website, X) is senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and host of the FDD Morning Brief, where he covers the latest news from the Middle East.

Schanzer is also a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he froze the funding of Hamas and Al-Qaeda, an...

David Volodzko talks with Alexander von Sternberg about Amin al-Husseini, the Nazi godfather of Palestinian nationalism, his early life, his embrace of Nazism, his efforts to send Jewish children to death camps, his legacy since then, and his place in the Palestinian movement today.

Von Sternberg is the host of the historical podcast History Impossible. He’s also a writer whose essays and reviews have been published in a number of publications including Queer Majority, Quillette, Merion West, and Areo Magazine.

For more on this subject, see von Sternberg’s six-hour podcast episode on al-Husseini, The...

David Volodzko speaks with Adam Coleman about fatherlessness in the black community, the insecurity of trans activists, white supremacist logic, the harm of victim mentality, what makes a good marriage, the psychology of happiness, the meaning of life, finding God, the search for purpose, what true empowerment looks like, the hidden value of suffering, and connecting with others.

Coleman (X) is the author of “Black Victim to Black Victor,” the founder of Wrong Speak Publishing, author of the Substack Speaking Wrong at the Right Time, and the host of Breaking Bread.

David Volodzko speaks with Jeff Booth about the nature of inflation, the inevitability of Bitcoin, why other cryptocurrencies are inferior, Bitcoin’s volatility, common criticisms of Bitcoin, global adoption, the possibility of a Bitcoin standard, the social benefits of Bitcoin, and more.

Jeff Booth is a tech entrepreneur, founding partner of the Bitcoin venture fund ego death capital, co-founder of addy, giving the public exposure in Canadian real estate, and author of The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation is Key to an Abundant Future. In 2016, Goldman Sachs named him among its 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs, and he currently si...

In this episode, David Volodzko discusses some of the medical questions surrounding the controversial Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, whether Khelif is trans, and what’s ultimately missing from the debate. Near the end, David references his recent essay on the subject, Raging Bullshit, in which he argues that Khelif’s recent victory against Italian boxer Angela Carini was unjust.

David Volodzko speaks with Barrington Martin II about Covid, the U.S. presidential election, President Biden’s mental state, the attempted assassination of former President Trump, the danger of political drama, racism in America, cancel culture, calming our political monkey mind, inconvenient truths about slavery, the marketplace of ideas, freedom of speech, the transition to the right of many young black American men, and more.

Barrington (X) is a philosopher, writer, host of The Barrington Report, and former congressional candidate for Georgia’s 5th District.

David Volodzko speaks with Ayaan Hirsi Ali about her new Substack project Restoration, the September 11 attacks, her father’s influence on her views, whether Islam can be reformed, the importance of Saudi Arabia’s political shift, what it would take for the West to win its conflict with subversive powers such as Islamism and Marxism, her conversion to Christianity, how to balance compassion with practical concerns in the immigration debate, the subversion of our universities and news outlets, the moral awakening of October 7, the importance of freedom of speech and civility, the breakdown of the marketplace of ideas, the hero...

A shorter version of this essay was originally published as a Substack Note.

If Trump wins, it will be because he has an immovable base. There’s nothing he can say to repulse them. At a campaign rally in January 2016, he claimed, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

If Trump wins, it will be because he’s actually funny sometimes. Elizabeth Warren is a Methodist white woman from Massachusetts who tried to prove she is Cherokee with a DNA test that said 0.09% to 1.5%, all becaus...

David Volodzko speaks with Rio Veradonir about an Enlightenment-based liberal approach to gay rights as opposed to the extremism that characterizes so much activism today, neo-Marxist social justice warriors, the liberal solution to trans athletes and sexual displays at Pride festivals, the strategic mistake Democrats are making in highlighting certain concerns, the misconception that Pride is just for gay people, the importance of the gay community in having a positive relationship with police, declining support for same-sex marriage among Republicans, and much more.

Rio Veradonir is the editor-in-chief of Queer Majority, a news outlet that covers issues...

The socialist magazine Jacobin embarrassed itself this week by claiming the new miniseries Shōgun “shows something rarely seen on screen: the shocking hubris of the colonizer and dehumanization of the colonized.”

Social media had a field day with this because, as we all know, Japan was not only never colonized but was one of history biggest colonizers. A friend asked me, why was Japan never colonized? Here’s my answer.

David Volodzko speaks with Doug Klain (website, X), a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, where he focuses on Russia’s war on Ukraine. He is the former assistant director of the Eurasia Center and currently a policy analyst at the nonprofit Razom for Ukraine.

The conversation covers the recent German military leak and what was actually said, the kinds of weapons Ukraine needs, the general state of the war, the impact of U.S. politics, Ukrainian grain exports, a potential Trump presidency, whether Putin will stop at Ukraine if he wins the war, Russ...

David Volodzko speaks with Stefan Tompson, the founder of Visegrád 24, which aggregates and curates news and current affairs on various social media platforms including X, where it currently has over 900,000 followers.

The conversation covers disinformation on social media, the Israel-Hamas War, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, TikTok as a Chinese psyop, the West’s enemies within, the origins of woke progressivism, the glories of Western civilization, the importance of civil discourse, immigration, the beauty of Muslim and black pride, slavery, white guilt, the Jewish community, drag shows, Roman Catholic faith, and more.

Arash Azizi reacted to my recent essay, The Case for Colonizing Gaza, by responding to a troll who had called the essay “blatantly racist,” to which Arash Azizi replied, “It’s not just racist but outright fascist.”

There is nothing racist or fascist about it, any more than there was about the U.S. occupation of Germany since that is precisely what I am recommending. Moreover, when he was a guest on this show, he commiserated with me as I described my anguish over the suffering in the Israel-Hamas War, so he knows better than anyone not to accuse...

David Volodzko speaks with David Brin about comet dust formation, anti-institutionalism in Hollywood, how science-fiction has saved humanity, the moral philosophy of Star Trek, how tolerance and diversity have metastasized into a cancer, the infantile nihilism of Star Wars, how AI may buttress authoritarianism, the sinister laws of Wall Street AI, the existence of alien life, his recent WIRED article on AI, his Newsweek article on “empathy bots,” and much more.

David Brin (website, X) is an astrophysicist and NASA consultant whose science-fiction novels have won multiple Hugo, Nebula, and other awards. His books include The Postman, whic...

Jonathan Choe (profile, X) is a journalist and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center of Wealth and Poverty, where he focuses on the homelessness crisis in Seattle.

In our conversation, we talked about Korea, his family life, his firing from KOMO for covering a Proud Boys rally, the pattern of news outlets caving to radical leftists by firing their own journalists, crime in Seattle and the failure of “defund the police,” Seattle’s stalled revitalization efforts, the homeless-industrial complex, the fentanyl epidemic, the pro-Palestinian protests in Seattle and their link to the city’s communist...

Ryan Ruffaner (Substack, YouTube) is an industrial-organizational psychologist specializing in organizational development and selection systems. He is also a member of the Committee for the Advancement of Professional Ethics (CAPE) in the Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychologists (SIOP), a DEI researcher, and a member of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR).

His writing on DEI includes the Quillette essay “Ditching Diversity Myths” and Substack essays such as “DEI May INCREASE Surface-Level Divisions, Hurt Information Elaboration” and “DEI Destroys Organizational Justice.”

Ramesh Sepehrrad is an Iranian-American international relations and conflict resolutions expert who is also the advisory board chair of the Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC), a D.C.-based non-profit with 40 chapters nationwide. She is also an adjunct professor of Middle East studies at the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore.

During our conversation, we discussed Iran’s influence behind October 7, what the U.S. has done right and done wrong in its approach to Iran, the persecution of Sepehrrad’s own family under the Iranian regime, the ongoing protests in the...

Christine Abely is the author of the new book The Russia Sanctions: The Economic Response to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine. She is also an assistant professor of contracts and international business transactions at New England Law.

Abely (website, university profile, X) formerly worked at several Massachusetts law firms in business litigation and international trade and sanctions law and was an adjunct lecturer at Boston University School of Law. She has written in the areas of compliance, contracts, and international trade and sanctions.

In this conversation, Abely explains everything you ever wanted to know about Russia...

Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware are the authors of God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America.

Hoffman is a senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations and has been studying terrorism and insurgency for almost half a century. He is a professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, professor emeritus of terrorism at the University of St. Andrews, and the former corporate chair in counterterrorism at RAND Corporation.

Jacob Ware is a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he studies domestic and in...

Julie Behling was a Christian missionary in Russia in the late 1990s. She earned a dual master’s in Russian languages and literature as well as Russian and East European studies at Florida State University, working on the side as a Russian language teacher. She wrote her thesis on the survival tactics of underground Christian movements in the Soviet Union. In 2022, she published her book, Beneath Sheep’s Clothing: The Communist Takeover of Culture in the USSR & Parallels in Today’s America. Now she has written and directed a documentary film based on the book. I saw the official traile...

This week, the Los Angeles Times announced that it has laid off at least 115 people, or more than 20% of its newsroom. They did it via Zoom, took no questions, and gave no answers. Jared Servantez, assistant editor of breaking news at the paper, said a colleague told him, “that was like a drive-by.” The L.A. Times is the 5th largest daily in the nation after The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post. This is cataclysmic, not just because of what it will do to the L.A. Times or the breadth and...