The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan Andrew Sullivan

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Elizabeth Corey is an academic and writer. She’s an associate professor of political science in the Honors Program at Baylor University and the author of the 2006 book, Michael Oakeshott on Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics. She also writes for First Things and serves on the board of the Institute on Religion and Public Life. After many of you asked me to do a podcast on my intellectual mentor, we delve into the thinking and life of Michael Oakeshott — the philosopher I wrote my dissertation on.
For two clips of our convo — on the genius who shirked fame, and my sole meeting with Oakeshott — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Elizabeth born and raised in Baton Rouge; growing up to be a musician with Bill Evans as her idol; her father was an econ professor at LSU and part of the conservative intellectual movement; Baylor is a Christian school with thought diversity; Eric Voegelin; Hannah Arendt; Friedrich Hayek; how Elizabeth first stumbled upon Oakeshott; his critical view of careerism; living in the now; a championof liberal education; opposing the Straussians and their view of virtue; individualism above all; how he would be horrified by the identity politics of today; calling Augustine “the most remarkable man who ever lived”; Montaigne not far behind; the virtue of changing one’s mind; how Oakeshott was very socially adept; conversation as a tennis match that no one wins; traveling without a destination; his bohemian nature; his sluttiness; Helen of Troy; early Christians; the Tower of Babel; civil association vs enterprise association; why Oakeshott was a Jesus Christian, not a Paul Christian; hating the Reformation and its iconoclasm; the difference between theology and religion; the joy of gambling being in the wager not the winning; the eternal undergraduate as a lost soul; politics as an uncertain sea that needs constant tacking; the mystery of craftsmanship; present laughter over utopian bliss; how following the news is a “nervous disorder”; why salvation is boring; how Oakeshott affected the lives of Elizabeth and myself; and the texts she recommends as an intro to his thought.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Tim Shipman on the UK elections, Erick Erickson on the left’s spiritual crisis, Lionel Shriver on her new novel, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on animal cruelty, Van Jones, and Stephen Fry! Send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com

Nellie is a writer and reporter. She has worked for many mainstream publications, most notably the NYT covering Silicon Valley. Now she is teamed up with her wife, Bari Weiss, to run The Free Press — a media company they launched on Substack in 2021. Nellie’s weekly news roundup, TGIF, is smart and hilarious, and so is her new book, Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches From the Wrong Side of History.
For two clips of our convo — on the scourge of Slack, and questioning whether trans is immutable — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Nellie growing up in SF with divorced parents; her mother the writer and stockbroker; her dad the entrepreneur; Nellie the tomboy who ran the gay-straight alliance to find a girlfriend; reading conservatives (Paglia, Rand, Coulter) as a liberal teen; working at the SF Chronicle; the NYT full of “intense, ambitious people on a political mission”; James Bennet; Dean Baquet and the “racial reckoning”; the 1619 Project; Donald McNeil; the MSM ignoring antifa; Joe Kahn taking a stand; NPR refusing to cover Hunter’s laptop; lab-leak theory; disinfo as a “useful cudgel”; CHAZ/CHOP in Seattle; Prager U; the Shitty Media Men list; Jordan Peterson and “enforced monogamy”; James Damore; a NYT editor calling Bari “a f*****g Nazi”; Nellie falling in love with her; losing friends over their relationship; Nellie being very pregnant right now; male role models for the kids of lesbians; marriage equality; the queer left’s opposition to marriage; when the straights culturally appropriate “queer”; Ptown and Dina Martina; the importance of Pride for small towns; taking my mum to a parade; the US being way behind Europe on trans kids; the profound effects of hormones; the “the science is settled” campaign by GLAAD; detransitioners; Jan 6 and Stop the Steal; right-wing pressure on courts and Congress due to Trump; RFK Jr’s candidacy; the woke blackout on humor; Elon Musk; the mainstreaming of masks and violent rhetoric after Oct 7; Nellie converting to Judaism; and how her book is “not about heroism.”
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Lionel Shriver on her new novel, Tim Shipman on the UK elections, Elizabeth Corey on Oakeshott, Erick Erickson on the left’s spiritual crisis, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on animal cruelty, Van Jones, and Stephen Fry! Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com

George writes a twice-weekly column on politics and foreign affairs for the Washington Post, a column he launched in 1974. He is also a regular contributor to MSNBC and NBC News. The author of 14 books, his latest is American Happiness and Discontents, but the one we primarily cover in this episode is The Conservative Sensibility — which I reviewed for the NYT.
For two clips of our convo — on why the presidency has too much power, and the necessity of stopping Putin — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: growing up in Lincoln country; the son of a philosophy prof and an academic editor; Isaiah Berlin was a family friend; George and I both attending Magdalen College, Oxford; his meeting with Thatcher in late '60s; how socialism is stultifying; Oakeshott; industrial policy as crony capitalism “from the start”; Milton Friedman; why “secure” is the most important word in the Constitution; just war theory; Vietnam as the “professors’ war”; collectivism vs national security; the trauma of 9/11 and the Iraq War; the China threat today; Gaza; why natcons are jealous of progressives; Elizabeth Warren; why Woodrow Wilson criticized the Founding as quaint; FDR and his fireside chats; in praise of Eisenhower; the spread of the administrative state; Caldwell’s The Age of Entitlement; Reagan and the national debt; his bad wager on the Laffer Curve; the meaning of his smile; presentism; Hume at a dinner party; Madison’s genius; George the “amiable low-voltage atheist”; Christian nationalism; evangelicals for Trump; the entitlement crunch with Boomers; “not voting is an opinion”; our disagreement on immigration; the “execrable” 1924 law; climate change as a low priority for Gen Z; why Trump is unprecedented; Biden’s age and his “stupendous act of selfishness” in running again; Gina Raimondo; DEI as the new racial discrimination; the deep distrust in media; the flailing WaPo; “happiness is overrated”; the appeal of baseball; and the reasons why America is exceptional.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Nellie Bowles on the woke revolution, Lionel Shriver on her new novel, Elizabeth Corey on Oakeshott, Tim Shipman on the UK elections, Erick Erickson on the left’s spiritual crisis, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on animal cruelty, Van Jones, and Stephen Fry! Send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com

Noah is a journalist who covers economics and geopolitics. A former assistant professor of Behavioral Finance at Stony Brook University and an early blogger, he became an opinion columnist at Bloomberg in 2014. He left after seven years to focus on his own substack, Noahpinion, which you should definitely check out.
For two clips of our convo — on why we should fear a military strike from China, and the good news about tech and the economy we don’t pay enough attention to — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: the amazing story of Fawlty Towers triggering Noah’s birth in Oklahoma; raised in Aggie country; his father the psych professor; Noah’s clinical depression after his mom died young; trolling X File fans on the early web; the internet as an escape back then, before social media ruined it; joining the early blogs; Jonah Goldberg and Liberal Fascism; Noah living in Japan after Battle Royale gripped him; Yakuza burning down his apartment; the MAX show Tokyo Vice; debunking stereotypes about Japan (e.g. xenophobia); his tech optimism; Ozempic and HIV drugs; wages and wealth growing in the US; tuition falling; inflation leveling; the YIMBY movement; how AI will empower the normies; the collapse of global poverty; the China threat; EVs and tariffs; industrial policy as means for national security; risking global war over Taiwan; Noah downplaying the chips factor; the chance of another Pearl Harbor — from China; TikTok and controlling US media; the woke wars as a distraction; “information tournaments”; debating mass immigration; agreeing about the asylum clusterfucker; questioning whether the US was ever a melting pot; Biden catching up on the border and inflation; how he’s more likely to tighten the budget than Trump; debating which nominee is losing his marbles more; and why Ukraine and Gaza are diversions from China.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Nellie Bowles on the woke revolution, George Will on Trump and conservatism, Lionel Shriver on her new novel, Elizabeth Corey on Oakeshott, Tim Shipman on the UK elections, Erick Erickson on the left’s spiritual crisis, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on animal cruelty, and the great Van Jones! Send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com

Bill needs no introduction, but he’s been the formidable host of HBO’s Real Time for 21 years now, and before that he hosted Politically Incorrect, which ran from 1993 to 2002. He has a new book out, What This Comedian Said Will Shock You — a collection of his best editorials on Real Time. Also check out his podcast, “Club Random,” which he recently expanded into a pod network, Club Random Studios. Bill manages to do all of that and still perform standup on the road — schedule here.
For two clips of our convo — on Bill not caving to political correctness after 9/11, and the two of us debating the credibility of the Gospels — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Bill going to church every Sunday as a kid; his Irish-Catholic dad turning away from the Church after Pope Paul VI; how the left today is bonkers; how Biden is captured by wokeness; the toxicity of the Trump cult; getting his GOP rivals to bend the knee; Ann Coulter’s balls in opposing him; the crisis of mass illegal migration; the dickishness of DeSantis on lab meat and rainbow bridges; his sensible approach to Covid; election deniers; the remarkable progress of legal weed and marriage equality; Bill’s movie Religulous; his admiration for Jesus as a philosopher; Muhammad the invading warrior; slavery in the Bible; the conflicting accounts of the Resurrection; whether Paul was a closeted gay; Christianity starting as a bourgeois religion; the pagan origins of Christian holidays; Richard Dawkins; the rise of the nones; wokeness as a religion; Bronze Age Pervert; Lauren Boebert on church/state; American exceptionalism as Christian heresy; October 7th; the profound illiberalism of Hamas; their Nazi-like tactics; “Hamas wants to commit genocide but can’t — Israel can, but won’t”; Rafah as Dunkirk; Biden’s Morehouse speech; Trump’s insane antics as the ultimate teflon; his humor; wokeness as a gold mine for comedy; comics who cave to PC; Trump’s energy on the trail; and Bill’s grueling book tour offering insight into campaigning.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Nellie Bowles on the woke revolution, Noah Smith on the economy, George Will on Trump and conservatism, Lionel Shriver on her new novel, Elizabeth Corey on Oakeshott, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on animal cruelty; and the great Van Jones! Send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com

Oren is a writer and policy advisor. In 2012, he was the domestic policy director for Romney’s presidential campaign, and in 2018 he wrote The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America. In 2020, he founded the think tank American Compass, where he serves as executive director. He’s also a contributing opinion writer for the Financial Times.
For two clips of our convo — on how China cheats at free trade, and the possibility of Trumpism without Trump — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: growing up in a stable family in suburban Mass; both American parents grew up in Israel; Oren’s progressive charter school; turning to conservatism at his very liberal college; studying political economy; working at Bain; the gap between wealth and happiness; the stagnant protectionist UK before Thatcher; Brexit; how London is almost unrecognizable to older Brits; Adam Smith and David Ricardo; how no one predicted the fall of the Soviet Union; Tiananmen Square; neoliberalism’s obsession with GDP growth; NAFTA and the WTO; the China Shock; how the success of the free market swung the pendulum too far; the meaning of populism; Oren working for the Romney campaign after the Great Recession; the growing trade deficit; Biden following the Trump playbook on tariffs and industrial policy; semiconductors in Taiwan; the CHIPS Act; the left’s disdain for patriotism; the cheap labor of open borders; E-Verify; how the college-for-all model is a “toxic disaster”; Biden’s loan forgiveness; Trump’s advantage in the 2024 election; his growing multi-racial coalition; his tax cuts and their looming expiration; Republicans rethinking labor unions; reformicons like Reihan and Ross; and me calling out Yglesias for never paying for The Weekly Dish. (Subscribe!)
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Nellie Bowles on the woke revolution, Noah Smith on the economy, Bill Maher on everything, George Will on Trump and conservatism, Lionel Shriver on her new novel, Elizabeth Corey on Oakeshott, and the great Van Jones! Send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.