Honestly with Bari Weiss

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thefp.comYou know the name Woody Allen. Everyone does. He’s made some of the most acclaimed films ever made: Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors—the list goes on and on and on. He’s made an astonishing 50 movies.You see his influence everywhere, from sitcoms to stand-up to just about every rom-com made since Annie Hall premiered in 1977. And in the process, he turned himself into America’s most unlikely leading man: short, thinning hair, bespectacled, and exceptionally neurotic.Now, at age 89, Allen is out with his first novel, What’s With Baum? Its protagonist is an anxious, smart Jewish writer with a messy personal life who gets himself in a great deal of trouble. Yes, it’s like a Woody Allen movie in book form. It’s also funny and delightful, and touches on a major theme of our age: the idea that an accusation, once made, is as good as a conviction.Allen knows something about that. In 1992, his longtime romantic partner Mia Farrow discovered that Allen had begun a relationship with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. Allen was in his 50s at the time, Previn was just 21. All hell broke loose, with Farrow accusing Allen of grooming and preying on her daughter.The scandal became fodder for tabloids and late-night talk shows but soon took a much darker turn, with Farrow accusing Allen of molesting their 7-year-old daughter Dylan in August 1992. The charges were never proven in court—indeed they were twice dismissed—but the court of public opinion was another matter.Today on Honestly, we get into everything about Allen—from the accusations to his subsequent cancellation in the MeToo era to his childhood in Brooklyn and his climb from Flatbush to the commanding heights of American comedy, film, and culture. We delve into how he’s changed and the many ways in which he hasn’t. We talk about his marriage to Previn, which is still going strong after 28 years. He shares his thoughts on President Donald Trump, NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, The New York Times, and American politics more broadly. We’ll hear what he thinks about life, death, and aging as he approaches 90, and much, much more.Click below to listen to our conversation, or scroll down for our favorite moments.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thefp.comOn November 1, 2007, a man named Rudy Guede broke into a random home in Perugia, Italy, then raped and killed Meredith Kercher—a 21-year-old exchange student from the University of Leeds.You might not even remember the names Rudy Guede and Meredith Kercher. But one name you will remember is Meredith’s roommate, Amanda Knox, a 20-year-old exchange studen…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thefp.comHere’s one fun question to ask at a dinner party: What is your favorite conspiracy theory?There’s the idea that the CIA killed John F. Kennedy. The moon landing was fake, and 9/11 was an inside job. Covid was designed by the Gates Foundation to control the world—and the Covid vaccine had a microchip. There’s the deep state. Chemtrails. QAnon. The Illuminati. Reptilian overlords. Pizzagate—which says that high-ranking Democrats were running a child sex-trafficking ring out of a D.C. pizzeria.That one, Pizzagate, is rivaled only by the idea that there is a group of Satan-worshipping globalists and Hollywood celebrities who traffic children in order to harvest adrenochrome, a chemical which, in this scenario, is extracted from their blood. Why? It’s obvious: They inject it in order to stay young.It’s easy to joke about these theories. It’s much harder to reckon with the fact that many Americans believe them sincerely—and their justification is grounded in the fact that some conspiracy theories turn out not to be theories, but fact.The government was poisoning alcohol during Prohibition. The FBI was illegally spying on civil-rights activists like MLK. The U.S. government did let some few hundred black men with syphilis go untreated to study the effects. And Covid likely came from a lab in Wuhan, China.The question is how to tolerate and even encourage healthy speculation and investigation? How do we allow for skepticism of received wisdom, which may actually be wrong, without it leading to reptilian Jewish overlords?In the past few weeks, the speculation surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s life and death is a perfect example of this conundrum. It’s a story filled with smoke and unanswered questions: How did Epstein get so rich in the first place? Was his wealth connected to his crimes? Was he acting alone? Was there a client list—and if so, who was on it? Why did he get such a sweetheart deal? And on and on.And then things get more far-fetched: Was Epstein’s suicide faked? Who could have killed him? Was he connected to foreign intelligence? And my favorite: Was he running a Jewish cabal?To help us understand why conspiracy theories are so compelling—and how we might better engage with those who believe them—is Ross Douthat.Ross Douthat is an opinion columnist at The New York Times and host of the Interesting Times podcast. He has been covering conspiratorial thinking—how to understand it, and what to do about it—for years.In 2020, he wrote: “It’s a mistake to believe most conspiracy theories, but it’s also a mistake to assume that they bear no relation to reality. Some are just insane emanations or deliberate misinformation. But others exaggerate and misread important trends rather than denying them, or offer implausible explanations for mysteries that nonetheless linger unexplained.” Which I thought perfectly encapsulated the conundrum of handling conspiracy theories today.So today on Honestly, I ask Ross: What is the state of conspiracy theories in America? How do we dispel conspiracy theories that are clearly false—without relying on establishment sources the public no longer trusts? And what are the consequences when these theories go unchecked?Click below to listen to our conversation, or scroll down for an edited transcript.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thefp.comDepending on who you ask, some would call the ultrarich “shameless”; others might say “aspirational.” Here’s what I mean: Mukesh Ambani, the Indian centibillionaire, has a room of snow in the Indian tropics—to say nothing of his skyscraper home, 168-car garage, and 600-person-staff. And celebrations for his kids’ weddings featured Rihanna and Beyoncé.This is nothing new. Aristotle Onassis had whales’ teeth carved into pornographic scenes from The Odyssey, and stools upholstered in whale foreskins which he kept aboard his yacht—because where else would you keep that?And one hedge fund billionaire—whose name you won’t even know—bought a 14-foot shark preserved in formaldehyde. Why? Why not?These opulent displays of wealth just scratch the surface. There are blood boys, Basquiats, and bunkers, many of them in New Zealand for the end of the world.From the Kochs to the Kardashians—most of us cannot look away. But one question remains: Do Americans loathe or love the ultrarich?That’s one of the questions raised by Evan Osnos’s new book, The Haves and Have-Yachts.Evan is a staff writer at The New Yorker and an author—several times over. In his newest book, he investigates how this class of people—the “Have-Yachts”—got their money, how they spend it, and how they fight to keep it. It all paints a fascinating picture not just about America and capitalism, but about human nature and the status games we play.The book feels eerily relevant in this moment of social and political breakdown, fueled—perhaps above all—by rage at the economic picture and economic inequality. As Zohran Mamdani—the self-proclaimed socialist and likely future mayor of New York City—says, “Billionaires should not exist.” And anti-elite sentiment grows on the right, too—through voices like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene.Today on Honestly, I ask Evan Osnos what this level of income inequality means for America, if a revolt or a revolution is in our future, and how AI is going to supercharge an already precarious status quo.Click below to listen to our conversation, or scroll down for an edited transcript.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thefp.comLove him or hate him, many consider Elon Musk to be a modern-day genius. He co-founded PayPal, which transformed how people purchase things. He became the CEO of Tesla, which revolutionized electric vehicles—and made it cool to drive them. He founded SpaceX, accomplishing what only superpower nation-states have previously. And he is working to make our species interplanetary—maybe in a few years, we’ll be doing this podcast on Mars.To many, these acts make Elon Musk a genius, perhaps the most important genius in history.But it’s worth asking: What exactly makes him a genius? Is it a particular set of qualities, or is Elon Musk just particularly adept at playing the role of genius? Or at least what we’ve come to expect of geniuses? Is his offensive behavior excused by his genius, or the result of it? And why do human beings value genius, even to the point of deifying it?All of these questions are raised in Helen Lewis’s new book, The Genius Myth. And not just with regard to Musk, but to so many of the figures our culture venerates as geniuses: Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs. Lewis asks: Were these people actually geniuses? Or was their genius based on a myth? And more importantly, how does our perception of “genius” confuse and distort our understanding of success—and how we value, or don’t value, other human beings?Today on Honestly, Bari asks Helen Lewis if some people belong to a special and superior class, what it means to be a genius, and if she believes in geniuses at all.Click below to listen to our conversation, or scroll down for an edited transcript.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thefp.comThere are people who have résumés we might call “diverse” or “wide-ranging.” And then there are people like Mike Huckabee, who, at age 69, has seemingly crammed several lifetimes’ worth of careers into one.He was a televangelist. He was governor of Arkansas for over a decade. He ran for president and won the Iowa caucuses. He hosted his own show on Fox News for seven years. He’s written books on everything from Christmas to weight loss.And now he’s America’s ambassador to Israel. And he’s filling that post at a moment when the longtime status quo in the region is being completely upended. Israel is inching closer to eradicating Hamas in Gaza—but the day-after plan is unclear. Iran is feared to be on the cusp of developing nuclear weapons, and Trump and Steve Witkoff are working hard on a renewed Iran nuclear deal.Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, and even Syria, could normalize relations with Israel. But Islamist terror groups are trying to derail any attempts at lasting peace. And American adversaries like China and Russia are trying to take advantage of any instability in the region. Suffice it to say, it’s a time of great uncertainty.Meanwhile, Huckabee is, in some way, redefining what it means to be Israel’s ambassador. He’s been outspoken in criticizing inaccurate press accounts about the conflict, and he’s been ardent in his support of the Jewish state. And while most ambassadors exist behind the scenes, Mike Huckabee has been in front of the cameras, making the case for Israel and its war with Hamas directly to Americans. It could even be argued that he’s making a better case for Israel than the Israeli government itself.So today on Honestly, Ambassador Huckabee and I discuss all of that and more—the rise of antisemitism in the U.S. and the West more broadly, the future of America’s involvement in the Middle East, and the fight between doves and hawks in Trump’s 2.0 presidency.One final note: This interview ended abruptly. The ambassador took a call from Israel, and at 10 p.m., the rocket sirens blared and he had 90 seconds to get to the shelter. It’s something normalized in Israeli life. Talk to any parents, and they’ll talk about having to wake up their kids several times a week because of these sirens. But it also serves as a constant reminder of the persistent threat that Israel faces, and not just from Hamas.The conversation is thought-provoking and timely, and I think you’ll really enjoy it.Click below to listen to our conversation, or scroll down for an edited transcript.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thefp.comWhen you think about great political comebacks, maybe you think of Donald Trump, or Richard Nixon, or “comeback kid” Bill Clinton.You might soon add Andrew Cuomo to that list. In 2020, Cuomo was at the top of the world. He had been governor of New York for a decade. He had an illustrious career in New York politics—which is sort of the Cuomo family business. He learned how the state worked from his father, three-term Democratic governor Mario Cuomo.When Covid hit, Cuomo’s star just kept rising. Millions of Americans—even outside of New York—tuned into his Covid briefings and his CNN segments with his brother, Chris Cuomo, then of CNN.He was “America’s governor.” On the cover of Rolling Stone. Women and men were even self-identifying as “Cuomosexual.”Then it all came crashing down. With two scandals—one personal and one political.As Covid was peaking in New York City, Andrew Cuomo was hit with a wave of allegations. In the end, state Attorney General Letitia James brought forward a report that alleged Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women. (Cuomo denies wrongdoing.)The other scandal, as many will recall, had to do with Covid. Specifically, Cuomo’s administration was accused of mishandling the readmission of elders who’d had Covid into nursing homes—and many alleged that he misrepresented the nursing home death count. (The governor also disputes that, as you’ll hear today.)On August 10, 2021, Cuomo announced his resignation. His political career appeared to be over.For a time he totally disappeared from public life. He went from having a huge audience—59 million viewers in total—tuning into his Covid briefings… to zero.Today, in May 2025, the picture is dramatically different.Andrew Cuomo is now the front-runner to be the next mayor of New York City. Among Democrats—the party that tore him down—he has a commanding lead, polling at around 37 percent ahead of next month’s primary. His closest competitor, 33-year-old socialist state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, is hovering around 18 percent, according to a Marist poll from just last week.So: What is it about Andrew Cuomo? Will New York choose him again? And if so: Why?What does that say about the state of the city and our political choices? And why does he want the job of mayor at all?Today on Honestly, I ask former governor Andrew Cuomo about all of it: Covid and the harassment allegations; public safety and affordability; school choice; Eric Adams’s tenure; Donald Trump; illegal immigrants in New York City; Zohran Mamdani; the state of the Democratic Party; and getting New York City back on track.Click below to listen to our conversation, or scroll down for an edited transcript.On why he’s running for mayor:Bari Weiss: Why should New Yorkers vote for you? And more importantly, why should they even come out to vote?Andrew Cuomo: One of the reasons we’re in the situation we're in is because people didn’t come out and vote. Come out and vote, otherwise the far-left activists win the day.The city is in real trouble. We cannot take another four years like the past four years. That cannot happen. We’re losing too many New Yorkers. The city is deteriorating too quickly. I’m a lifelong New Yorker and I love New York. And I am sure if you’re a New Yorker you love New York. So come out to save the city.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thefp.comSometimes we have a guest who needs no introduction. You know Dana Perino. She took on the job of White House press secretary when President George W. Bush was at his most unpopular—back in 2007 and 2008, as the Iraq War dragged on. She did not receive a warm welcome from those covering the White House—outlets like The New Republic called her clueless, …