The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan Andrew Sullivan

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Vivek is an entrepreneur and a Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential race. He founded a biotech company, Roivant Sciences, after working as an investment partner at a hedge fund. He’s also the author of Woke, Inc. and Nation of Victims. I’ll get ahead of you guys and confess that I liked him in our chat, and decided I wasn’t going to repeat the now-familiar trope of trying to get him to denounce Trump. See what you think, but I learned some stuff about his life.
For two clips of our convo — on whether evangelicals will vote for a Hindu, and whether we should let Russia keep the Donbas — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Vivek’s upbringing in Cincinnati as the son of Indian immigrants; his engineer dad worked for GE; his mom was a geriatric psychiatrist; he took regular trips to his dad’s village in “the boonies of India”; his forebears were British subjects but he doesn’t feel oppressed by it; he thinks Americans’ view of victimhood is narrow and selective; affirmative action is “structurally embedded” and creates a culture of grievance; Vivek was raised Hindu but went to a Jesuit high school — which in fact strengthened his Hinduism; his faith sees Jesus as a son of God; he defends pluralism and Jefferson; Trump lacks any core values of Christianity; why Vivek went into biotech; how Big Pharma saved my life; his problem with “lurking state action” in the market that disguises its role; his problem with woke capitalism; his goal of reducing the federal workforce by 75 percent; his defense of Taiwan as long as the US is dependent on its semiconductors; why he thinks the CHIPS Act was “poorly executed”; his defense of bilateral trade agreements over multilateral; why “person of color” is as flattening as “LGBTQ”; his thoughts about being a visible minority within the GOP; his reply to the common criticisms against him, including Josh Barro’s “that section guy”; and his optimism for the culture war.
Browse the Dishcast archive for another convo you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Leor Sapir on the treatment of kids with gender dysphoria, Ian Buruma on his new book The Collaborators: Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II, and Spencer Klavan, who wrote How to Save the West: Ancient Wisdom for 5 Modern Crises. Later on: Martha Nussbaum, Matthew Crawford, David Brooks and Pamela Paul. Please send any guest recs, pod dissent and other commentary to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

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

Freddie is a writer and academic. He’s been a prolific freelancer at publications such as the NYT, the WaPo, Harper’s, The Guardian, Politico, and The Daily Dish. His first book was The Cult of Smart (reviewed on the Dish as “Bell Curve leftism”), and his new book is How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement. You should also follow his writing on Substack.
For two clips of our convo — on the hypocrisy of helicopter parents on the left, and the relative evil of US foreign policy — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Freddie’s upbringing in NYC as a Red Diaper Baby; coming from a long line of communists; his father was a theater professor who took him to Indonesia; his mother, an environmental activist, died suddenly of brain cancer when he was 7; his father died of alcoholism when Freddie was 15; his bipolar diagnosis at 20; the shame of mental illness and Freddie eventually owning it publicly; his 2017 scandal that “killed my career for understandable reasons” and put him in a psychiatric hospital; the awful side effects of meds; Freud’s view of relative happiness; how performative identify politics is destroying the left; Freddie renaming BLM “Black Professional-Managerial Class Lives Matter”; the loss of black lives skyrocketing after the summer of 2020; how cops disproportionately protect black Americans; how we need better policing and more police; why cops need to do their job even in the face of stigma; how middle-class blacks are more advantaged than white counterparts, especially in academia; how elite colleges “harvest” rich blacks from other countries; how black communities had less crime and more nuclear families before the 1960s; how the introduction of crack and the Drug War in the 1980s exploited black neighborhoods; how the left sees success as zero-sum among the races; white people who denounce themselves; how black Dems have always been a conservative force within the party; the positive changes of MeToo; the online posturing of “MemeToo” and how it has no effect on street harassment; and the dishonest criticism of Freddie’s book by the WaPo.
Browse the Dishcast archive for another convo you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Vivek Ramaswamy on his vision for America, Leor Sapir on the treatment of kids with gender dysphoria, and Ian Buruma on his new book The Collaborators: Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II. Later on: Spencer Klavan, Martha Nussbaum, Matthew Crawford, David Brooks and Pamela Paul. Please send any guest recs and pod dissent to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

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

Sohrab is a founder and editor of Compact: A Radical American Journal, and he’s a contributing editor at The American Conservative. He spent nearly a decade at News Corp. — as the op-ed editor of the New York Post and as a columnist and editor with the WSJ opinion pages in New York and London. His first appearance on the Dishcast addressed what he sees as “the failures of liberalism.” This time, we debate his new book, Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What to Do About It.
For two clips of our convo — on whether low wages are worth the low prices they create, and how hedge funds destroy companies — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: debating the rhetorical use of “coercion”; how the private sector isn’t truly private; “scheduling precarity” — when bosses restrict shifts; how unpredictable shifts harm kids; byzantine contracts; the Hollywood strike; AI and human likeness data; how workers and bosses aren’t symmetrical; Adam Smith wanted labor protections; Hayek and Friedman supported the welfare state; the dominance of private equity firms; turning newspapers into ghost papers of syndication; Wall Street’s obsession with cash flow over investment; remembering that workers are also consumers; the cost of clothing is nothing compared to the past; the sheer variety of the free market; when workers can’t afford the products they make; why half of fast-food workers rely on welfare; a low-wage job is better than no job; why Sohrab champions the New Deal, the Wagner Act, Tripartism and Sabbath laws; my upbringing in a stagnant, state-run economy in England; Thatcher and Blair as capitalists who spent a ton on public goods; sectoral bargaining in Europe; the miracle drugs of Big Pharma; the Silicon Valley Bank collapse; declining life expectancy in the US; the opioid crisis; Trump’s vacant policy agenda; and Sohrab supporting Hawley/Vance/Rubio but also giving credit to Biden for his economic and trade policies.
Browse the Dishcast archive for another convo you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Freddie deBoer on his new book How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, Vivek Ramaswamy on his vision for America, and Leor Sapir on the evolving treatment of gender dysphoria. Please send any guest recs and pod dissent to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

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

Moynihan is one-third of The Fifth Column — the sharp, hilarious podcast he does with Kmele Foster and Matt Welch. He was previously the cultural news editor for The Daily Beast, a senior editor at Reason, and a correspondent and managing editor of Vice.
It’s a fun summer chat with an old friend. We recorded the episode a few weeks ago, on July 24. For two clips — on the conspiracy theories of RFK Jr., and the deepening rift within the Israeli government — pop over to our YouTube page.
Other topics: his Boston upbringing with a “union guy” father and being the first college grad in his family; on the agony of writing as a profession; on the “laziness” of many top writers; on flawless ones like Michael Lewis and John Updike; Moynihan’s review of a new book on Orwell; why Animal Farm was passed over by publishers; Orwell’s distrust of intellectuals and losing many friends on the left; his love of Englishness; wondering how he would react to mass migration and postmodernism; Kingsley Amis and his cohort being the original “lol alt-right”; Enoch Powell and his “Rivers of Blood”; the elections in Spain and the far-right party’s floundering; immigration in Sweden; Brexit; violence against Venezuelan immigrants in Brazil and Colombia; why Islamism is barely discussed anymore; Trump and DeSantis on Social Security; the debate over sex changes for kids; the success of the gay rights movement through persuasion; Brendan Eich; the propaganda around Covid; what Moynihan calls the “the Mis/Disinformation Industrial Complex”; lab leak; Elon Musk; the AIDS denialism of Duesberg and Maggiore; Holocaust deniers; Marty Peretz; Kissinger; Vidal; Hitch of course; Oppenheimer and McCarthyism; Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs; Hollywood’s double-standard when it comes to pro-communist films; “Angels in America”; the big increase in black deaths after BLM in 2020; amnesia over Afghanistan; and the first time I ever did poppers. Good times.
Browse the Dishcast archive for another conversation you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Vivek Ramaswamy on his vision for America, Sohrab Ahmari on his new book Tyranny Inc., and Freddie deBoer on his new book How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement. Also, in the fall: Ian Buruma, David Brooks, Spencer Klavan, Leor Sapir, Martha Nussbaum, Pamela Paul and Matthew Crawford. A stellar roster!
Please send any guest recs and pod dissent to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

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

Josh is an old friend, and a business and political journalist. He has worked for Business Insider, the NYT, and New York magazine. He currently runs his own substack called Very Serious, and he cohosts a legal podcast called Serious Trouble, also on Substack.
We talk Biden — Josh’s political hero. You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app — though Spotify sadly doesn’t accept the paid feed). For two clips of our convo — why Biden isn’t polling better despite the improving economy, and the “emotional terrorism” Hunter has wrought on his family — pop over to our YouTube page.
Other topics: growing up with a dad teaching econ at Harvard and a mom raising four kids; studying psych at Harvard before going into banking; monetary policy and the Fed; props to Mnuchin for the CARES Act; how the stimulus in early Covid helped Trump at the polls; the excessive flood of stimulus in 2021 as an overcorrection to 2008; the subsequent spike in inflation; how the US economy recovered from Covid more quickly than the rest of the West; how wages lagged behind inflation after 2020 but recently surpassed it; today’s low unemployment and high consumer spending; slowing inflation; Biden’s new strategy to quash student debt; how national debt is only a problem relative to GDP and growth; how inflation reduces the burden of debt; the lunacy of Modern Monetary Theory; the excess of Trump’s tax cuts; the continuity of his trade policy toward China into the Biden years; Biden’s factory building; his extremism on cultural issues; what happens when he has a McConnell moment; Trump’s crazed dynamism; the new NYT poll on Trump’s chances against Biden; Josh’s jump to Substack; his porn stache; and his reasons for liking America more than Europe.
Browse the Dishcast archive for another conversation you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Michael Moynihan on Orwell and conspiracy theories, Vivek Ramaswamy on his vision for America, Sohrab Ahmari on his forthcoming book, Freddie deBoer, Leor Sapir, Martha Nussbaum, Spencer Klavan, Ian Buruma, Pamela Paul and Matthew Crawford. Please send any guest recs and pod dissent to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

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

Lee is an investigative journalist. He was a long-time reporter at The Intercept, and in late 2022 he was one of the recipients of the Twitter Files. He left the MSM this year to launch his own substack at leefang.com.
You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app — though Spotify sadly doesn’t accept the paid feed). For two clips of our convo — how wokeness hurts poor communities, and the unsung successes of the Biden administration — pop over to our YouTube page.
Other topics: Lee growing up in a working-class area near DC; his Chinese dad’s immigration story; his granddad’s story of denunciation by the Red Guard and getting sent to a labor camp; the technological ways the CCP now shames and surveils; how journalists these days are more likely to back censorship; how media layoffs contribute to people turning to platforms; Australia forcing platforms to share revenue with journos; how neoliberalism touts “diversity” to deflect from lower wages and de-unionization; how corporate sponsorship at Pride is both progress and cringe; how GOP figures like Rubio and Vance, and mags like Compact, are pushing working-class reform; how the right is increasingly targeting Wall Street; polarized purism vs principled negotiation; Ryan Grim’s report on wokeness paralyzing progressive orgs; the attempted cancellation of Lee over an MLK quote; his growing disillusionment with BLM and the anti-cop movement; the rioting in poor neighborhoods and immigrant businesses; the recent wane of DEI programs; Biden’s wins on factory building and drug pricing; his extreme views in the culture war; non-white Dems being more culturally conservative than white Dems; how opposition to outsourcing is framed as xenophobic; illegal migrants at the mercy of big business; and how the resilience of Trump’s support is rooted in class resentment.
Browse the Dishcast archive for another conversation you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Josh Barro defending the Biden administration, Michael Moynihan on Oppenheimer and commies, and Vivek Ramaswamy on his vision for America. Please send any guest recs and pod dissent to dish@andrewsullivan.com.