Conversations with Coleman

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Latest Episodes:

Roland Fryer on the Cost of Telling the Truth Sep 21, 2026

Show notes

Roland Fryer is a professor of economics at Harvard University, the youngest black academic ever to receive tenure there, and a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal for his research on racial inequality, education, and policing. His findings have often put him at odds with progressive orthodoxy, and he’s paid a real price for it over the years, including death threats and a shot-out window over a program that simply paid kids to do well in school.

Fryer returns to the show to talk with Coleman Hughes about the Jason Arday scandal, which he sees as a symptom of the same institutional cowardice he’s trying to fix. That’s the thinking behind his and Bill Ackman’s new venture, the Carob Trust Prize for Academic Courage, a $1 million prize designed to reward scholars willing to publish research academia is too afraid to touch. They also get into why elite universities avoid academic risk, what Fryer’s own research actually shows about race and intelligence, and how a stint doing stand-up comedy shaped the way he thinks about persuasion.

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The Lie at the Center of Antisemitism, with Dara Horn Sep 17, 2026

Show notes

Dara Horn is a novelist and essayist whose bookPeople Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present examined how contemporary culture sentimentalizes Jewish suffering while ignoring the fullness of Jewish life. Her new book, provocatively titled The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living, goes further, arguing that antisemitism isn’t an ordinary bigotry at all. It’s a lie, always the same lie in different disguises, that Jews are destroying whatever a given society values most. Recorded live onstage at the 92nd Street Y, New York City’s largest Jewish cultural center, she and Coleman Hughes cover why nobody, apparently including a sitting vice president, understands basic antisemitic terms like “blood libel,” and why she thinks curiosity, not debate, is the real antidote to losing a friend to conspiracy theories.

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For the first time in nearly a year, our Bari Weiss is returning to the stage for a rare sit-down discussion with renowned historian Simon Sebag Montefiore. The event is happening on October 1st in New York City. Limited tickets are on sale now at

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bari-weiss-and-simon-sebag-montefiore-live-tickets-1999718620224?aff=oddtdtcreator

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How Do You Talk a Klansman out of the Klan? Ask Daryl Davis. Sep 14, 2026

Show notes

Daryl Davis is a blues musician who has spent over 40 years doing something few people would attempt: sitting down with members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, one on one, to ask them why they hate him. He’s been threatened, physically attacked, and called a race traitor by people on both sides. He’s also convinced over 200 Klansmen to leave their hate groups entirely—not by arguing them out of their beliefs, but by befriending them long enough for their own convictions to fall apart. He joins Coleman Hughes to talk about how he stays calm in the face of open racism, what white supremacists actually fear, why he refuses to give up on anyone, and what he thinks parents should and shouldn’t teach their kids about race.

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He Couldn’t Save His Brother on 9/11. He Spent the Next 25 Years Saving Others. Sep 11, 2026

Show notes

Frank Siller’s youngest brother, Stephen, was orphaned at 10, grew up to become a New York City firefighter, and was driving home from a night shift on the morning of September 11, 2001, when he heard the World Trade Center had been hit. He turned his truck around, grabbed his gear, and ran through the closed Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and up the stairs of the South Tower. He never came out.

Two weeks later, Siller and his siblings started a charity in Stephen’s name. Twenty-five years on, that foundation, Tunnel to Towers, has paid off mortgages for fallen first responders and Gold Star families, built mortgage-free smart homes for catastrophically wounded veterans and first responders, and worked to end veteran homelessness across the country. Siller writes about Stephen—on that morning and the 25 years since—in his new memoir, Let Us Do Good. He joins Coleman Hughes to talk about what it actually took to build one of the largest charities of its kind in America out of a single family’s grief.

The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.

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The Secret Recordings That Reveal How Presidents Really Think Sep 03, 2026

Show notes

Tim Naftali is a presidential historian who spent four years running the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. He’s listened to thousands of hours of secret Oval Office recordings from Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson, and John F. Kennedy. Naftali joins Coleman to break down which president was actually the sharpest, walking through the different kinds of intelligence—tactical, strategic, emotional—that separated men like LBJ and Nixon from each other. They get into why presidents started taping themselves in the first place, and what those recordings actually reveal. Naftali also takes on the recent online rehabilitation of Nixon, the idea that he was a victim of the same deep state that took down Kennedy, and explains why that story falls apart once you look at what he was actually asking the CIA and FBI to do.

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Nathan Cofnas on Race, IQ, and the Jason Arday Scandal That Made Him Famous Aug 27, 2026

Show notes

Nathan Cofnas is the academic researcher who broke the story alleging Jason Arday had fabricated his biography and plagiarized his PhD thesis, a scandal that led to Arday’s resignation from Cambridge University and, weeks later, his death.

But Cofnas has his own history of controversy. He’s a self-described race realist who says that genetic differences between population groups explain average IQ gaps. His argument has gotten him attacks from both the right and left, the termination of his research post at Cambridge’s Emmanuel College, and a since-lifted suspension from Ghent University. He joins Coleman Hughes to walk through the Arday scandal in detail, then defends his research directly. They get into whether ideas about race and IQ should be discussed openly among elites, whether cultural explanations for racial disparities hold up, and whether mainstreaming these claims about IQ would tear society apart rather than heal it. Hughes argues that most people are incapable of separating a claim about group averages from how they judge individuals, and that this is exactly why the conversation is so dangerous to bring into the mainstream.

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This Is How AI Starts a Nuclear War Aug 24, 2026

Show notes

Robert Wright has spent decades writing about human nature, evolution, and the forces that shape history. In his latest book, The God Test, he argues AI is forcing a test humanity can’t afford to fail: whether we can finally get past the tribalism that’s defined most of our history. He joins Coleman Hughes to walk through a real scenario where competition between the U.S. and China over AI dominance escalates into an arms race, one that could end in nuclear war if either side believes falling behind means losing everything. The actual danger, in his telling, comes from human beings racing each other into a corner, not the technology itself.

On Tuesday, September 8th, Coleman will be live at the 92Y in conversation with Dara Horn, author of the new book The Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Tickets are going fast, and you can find them here:https://www.92ny.org/event/dara-horn-with-coleman-hughes

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The Lie That Killed Comedy for a Decade, with The Babylon Bee’s Seth Dillon Aug 17, 2026

Show notes

Seth Dillon is the CEO of The Babylon Bee, a Christian satire site that’s been fact-checked and banned more times than most outlets twice its size. He joins Coleman Hughes to argue that comedy is one of the best weapons against ideas unable to survive scrutiny. He also warns that a new problem has arisen. While the culture has moved on from the joyless era of a few years ago, there is now a complete disregard for the truth, with social media platforms rewarding outlandish claims over boring, well-sourced versions of events. They get into how The Bee forced Snopes to change its fact-checking rules, why both President Donald Trump and Joe Biden pose unusual challenges for satire, and the one joke Dillon retracted that he now regrets.

On Tuesday, August 18th, Coleman will be answering your questions in the Free Press Forum. Join the conversation here!

https://www.thefp.com/forum/america-at-250/post/308869859

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Rep. Ro Khanna on Progressive Capitalism, Gaza, and 2028 Aug 10, 2026

Show notes

Ro Khanna represents Silicon Valley in Congress, and he’s spent the last few years building a case that the Democratic Party’s future runs through places like Johnstown and Erie–in his home state of Pennsylvania–not just tech wealth. He calls it progressive capitalism, and he thinks it’s the platform that beats both Donald Trump’s economic nationalism and the socialism of the party’s left flank. He joins Coleman Hughes to make his case, ahead of an expected decision on a 2028 presidential run.

They start with why Khanna broke from his own party to defend the Hunter Biden laptop story, and whether he’d actually seek congressional approval for military action as president or repeat the pattern set by Democratic presidents before him. From there they get into his pitch for why Democrats should pick him over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and his case for targeted tariffs on steel and trucks instead of Trump’s blanket approach. They end on his shift from calling himself a pro-Israel progressive to arguing that Israel’s war in Gaza amounted to genocide.

On Tuesday, August 18th, Coleman will be answering your questions in the Free Press Forum. Join the conversation here!

https://www.thefp.com/forum/america-at-250/post/308869859

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Democrats Need to Ditch ‘Loser Politics,’ with Matthew Yglesias Aug 03, 2026

Show notes

Is there a meaningful difference between a commonsense Democrat and a center-right Republican? Matthew Yglesias thinks so. But he also thinks the Democrats have spent the last decade making it harder and harder to tell. He cofounded Vox and writes the essential Slow Boring Substack. He has been one of the most consistent voices calling for a Democratic politics that is practical and winnable. He joins Coleman Hughes to make that case.

They start with the big picture: why people have started asking politics to give their lives meaning, what that has done to our culture, and whether the loss of monoculture has made us lonelier and more tribal. From there they get into the Democratic Socialists of America’s rise, why housing is the most important issue nobody campaigns on, and why Yglesias thinks public schools should go back to teaching straightforward patriotism.

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