Richard Hanania's Newsletter: Hanania Show

US-Iran Peace Talks Break Down. What's Next?

Richard Hanania — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 01:50:06 GMT

Michael Tracey joins the livestream to talk about recent events. We start with the end of Orban’s reign in Hungary, discussing that nation’s role in American political discourse. This might be the last time in a while anyone in the US has any reason to care about this small central European country.

The bulk of the conversation focuses on the war with Iran and what comes next. Michael expects Trump to keep going all out for regime change, while my money would be on TACO. We read the tea leaves and debate Trump’s many muddled and contradictory statements.

I don’t have a high degree of confidence in my view; Trump is obviously an increasingly unstable lunatic who can go in any direction, and his babble on this topic is even more incoherent than normal. As I explained on X, I think that Hormuz and his lack of palatable options have broken him. But underneath it all, I believe that he’s first and foremost a political survivor, and that means trying to get the best possible outcome for Republicans in the midterms so nobody investigates his crimes and corruption.

We close with some discussion about the Eric Swalwell situation and questions from the audience.

Links to articles mentioned in the discussion

David Ignatius on what comes next

NYT on how Mojtaba Khamenei became his father’s successor, article and podcast

Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.

Impromptu Interview with James Fishback

Richard Hanania — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 19:15:21 GMT

Something very strange just happened. I was doing a livestream on James Fishback, and the man himself joined us midway through.

This began as a stream with Nikos Mohammadi (X, Substack), a student at Columbia University whose work has appeared in UnHerd, The Spectator, and elsewhere.

As everyone knows, I’ve been fascinated by the Fishback phenomenon. Nikos wrote one of the articles I cited as a sign he was getting a respectful hearing in the right-wing press. My argument has been that those inclined toward populism on the right who are not Groypers have proved too eager to claim Fishback as their own, given his many scandals and shortcomings.

About forty minutes in, someone with the profile name James Fishback showed up in the chat. I was skeptical that this was the real thing, but then I saw one of his campaign staff vouch that it was actually him. Before long, Fishback, sitting in Starbucks, was taking questions on the stream!

I didn’t know exactly what to do with this, and it’s always awkward facing someone you’ve criticized harshly. There were a lot of angles that I could take, but I decided to focus on policy questions. I asked him about school choice, taxes, and crime. Fishback sounded more like a conventional Republican than I expected. On housing, I pushed back on his lack of enthusiasm for removing supply-side constraints, the one thing we really clashed over. I thought this would be more fruitful than fighting him on immigration, where he was less likely to budge. My view is that anti-immigration sentiment is too fundamental to populism to shift people on, but nearly everything else is more incidental, so I could maybe move him and his followers toward YIMBYism. I gathered that racism-related questions would be pointless, as I rarely find it informative when journalists focus on bigoted statements in interviews.

Still, I felt the need to ask about By’rone. I was surprised by the candidness of his response.

Having now personally experienced Fishback’s charm, I can confirm he’s very good at this. He said my name a lot, claimed to have read my book, and complimented me as a keen scholar of the conservative movement — particularly amusing since I have been arguing that his rise is a sign of its decline. After Fishback left, Nikos said he sounded more pro-market with me than he did during the discussions for UnHerd, which gets back to the idea that he is a talented politician. Fishback talked about learning economics from Mankiw’s textbook, which I have mentioned reading before. Maybe it was all coincidental, but the whole thing felt eerily micro-targeted.

Fishback ended up inviting me to come cover his campaign in Florida. I hope to take him up on the offer. Even in the likely case that he loses, I’m quite confident this guy is not going away, and we’re seeing the rise of someone who is going to be a major force in Republican politics for years to come.

Lauren Southern as the Original Egirl

Richard Hanania — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:42:20 GMT

I’ve always seen Lauren Southern (X, Substack) as the original right-wing egirl. While they are a dime a dozen today, and the act has grown pathetically stale, a decade ago it was a fresh thrill to be an online rightoid and see a pretty young girl telling you what you wanted to hear about feminism and Muslim immigration. There had been Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, but they were a bit older and more established, and their relationships with the conservative audience were mediated by TV networks and book publishers. The egirl was directly yours. You could like her posts, leave comments, and, if so inclined, even harass her with non-stop DMs. The audience’s reaction was embedded in the creation of her work.

Lauren eventually dropped off my radar, though I would occasionally see right-wingers seethe about something she said or did. When her memoir This Is Not Real Life was released, I heard good things and decided to check it out.

Though I was involved with a more intellectual crowd, I ended up seeing parallels between her story and mine. If you’re a thoughtful person with a conscience, you eventually realize that conservative politics and media are corrupt to their core. Lauren writes about low journalistic and fundraising ethics, how English street thugs framed their activities as “defending Western civilization,” and even how her old friends didn’t seem to care when she was allegedly raped by Andrew Tate. Her story is a reminder that they were like this before Trump, though he has obviously made it much worse.

Today, Lauren joined me for a livestream where we discussed all that and more. I ask how she’s holding up now, how much what is said online bothers her, the fears she had of going to jail during the Tenet media investigation, and whether her realization about the flaws of right-wingers has made her question the wisdom of right-wing political views.

I was particularly entertained hearing her describe the story of Tommy Robinson. Here is an English hoodlum who once sold cocaine out of his tanning salon, and by making up things about local Muslims, including an underage boy, he would be championed by Elon Musk and other prominent right-wing figures as a persecuted dissident. After Lauren’s experience with Tate, she became the target of attacks, including by Milo Yiannopoulos, who was paid by Tate to go after her and say that she was sleeping with men so they would write articles for her.

I enjoyed the part of our conversation where I asked Lauren whether her experiences made her more sympathetic to feminism. Everywhere she appears to go, men in right-wing spaces are either trying to sleep with her or engaging in attacks related to her sexual behavior. She mentions growing up in an Evangelical background, amidst a high-trust community where she felt safe around men. I reflected on how different this sounds from the way that leftists portray the culture of conservative Christians, where they assume abuse and hypocrisy are rampant but hidden. I also bring up the story of Roger Ailes, as reported on in The Loudest Voice in the Room (review here). It almost seems as if the entire conservative movement at the top is just predators and grifters sucking up and victimizing the most naive members of the public.

It was a fun discussion, and, despite the setbacks she has faced, I hope that Lauren’s time as a public figure isn’t over yet.

What's Next in Iran? w/Graeme Wood of The Atlantic

Richard Hanania — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:43:57 GMT

Graeme Wood (X account), a staff writer for The Atlantic who has reported extensively on the Middle East, joins me on the livestream to discuss the bombing of Iran and what comes next. This is a busy day for him, so I appreciate Graeme making time and fighting through his cough. Just yesterday, he published a well-timed profile of former regime official Jaber Rajabi, who argues that all you need to do is eliminate around ten people for the government to crumble. Well, as of this recording, reports are that the US and Israel may have taken out the top 5-10 members of the regime, with Khamenei confirmed dead. So it appears that we are testing that theory in real time.

We discuss Rajabi’s theory of the regime, and whether it is plausible. The conversation also covers Trump’s decision-making, whether the Iranians could have done anything to avoid this outcome, the logic of attacking the Gulf Arabs, the state of Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies, and the roles of the Europeans and Russians. At the end, I ask Graeme who else to follow to be informed on the situation, and he recommends Karim Sadjapour and Arash Azizi.

I wonder whether, if this intervention works out well, as Venezuela has so far, there may start to be some sense among foreign policy elites in Washington that perhaps Trump has a point in his approach to hostile regimes. I think that while Iraq and Afghanistan were understood to discredit interventionism, it’s anti-interventionism that has had a bad last few years. I lay out some thoughts here on a proper synthesis incorporating all the lessons learned over previous decades, which converges on the view that while trying to do social engineering through force has failed, simply killing bad people and being pragmatic about what comes next makes sense as an approach to American foreign policy.

Wild Teen or "Survivor"?

Richard Hanania — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 01:03:57 GMT

Zoë Booth (X, Substack) is the Content Director for Quillette and host of the Quillette Cetera podcast. Amid all the talk about Epstein, she mentioned to me that when she was 15–16, she had sexual relationships with older men, yet did not consider herself to have experienced pedophilia. I wanted to talk about it, so I invited her on to stream. Funnily enough, the guys got mad at her when she stopped being woke. Yet despite the financial and cultural incentives to do so, she refuses to identify as a “victim” or “survivor.” We also discuss age gap relationships, gooning, safetyism, neuroticism, the evils of locking up female teachers for having relationships with male students, and the causes of actual pedophilia. As you can hear, the Squatty Potty guy is on my mind today. I argue that society is pushing to make heterosexuality resemble lesbianism. This is what ties together pedo hysteria and opposition to age gaps and power disparities within couples.

Near the end, we move on to other topics like immigration to Australia, Zoë’s upcoming marriage, testosterone and hormone replacement therapy, Bryan Johnson and how he makes me root for death, and having kids. A fun conversation, and obviously an enjoyable viewing experience too.

The Judiciary as the Last Bastion of Intellectual Conservatism

Richard Hanania — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 20:04:47 GMT

I just did a livestream during which I read through the decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump. To get the full benefit of this stream, you should watch the video, as I highlight text as I read. I share some thoughts about reading judicial decisions as a general matter, and Supreme Court justices functioning as philosopher kings. Topics addressed throughout the video include the logic of the IEEPA, the major questions doctrine, how much you should read into these opinions the justices’ views of the underlying policy, and the extent to which Trump can achieve the same results through different statutory authority. I argue that by changing the status quo, the Supreme Court has made the lives of Trump officials much more difficult.

I also explain why the judiciary is the one part of conservatism beyond the president’s ability to shape at will. In the first administration, Trump regretted most of his major appointments. Right-wing media has also been remade in his image, as has Heritage. This time around, he can have all new people in the executive branch, but he’s still stuck with those he put on the courts in the first administration. Moreover, judges go through more of an academic process to get where they are. This leads to some thoughts on the wisdom of lifetime appointments under the Constitution, as we are never one election away from a crazy person getting into power and dismantling norms and institutions. Even if Trump wants judges now who will pledge unending loyalty, there’s no way for him to enforce any promises that are implicitly or explicitly made.

I reflect on whether and how the existence of an individual as flawed as Trump changes the entire process of statutory interpretation. It seems possible to me that Kavanaugh’s dissent is correct that Congress in 1977 meant to give the president some power to implement tariffs. But they never imagined unlimited tariffs for an unlimited period of time without any procedural safeguards, enacted by a president this emotionally immature and economically illiterate. If they had foreseen someone like Trump, they probably would have explicitly limited the power to place tariffs in the IEEPA. If this is true, what does statutory intent actually mean? A lot of things are probably like this, where our laws, norms, and institutions assume a certain amount of good faith that no longer exists in the Trump era. This raises deep questions about the nature of democracy and how to protect the parts of our system that need to be preserved.

Michael Tracey Returns to Slay the Latest Epstein Idiocy

Richard Hanania — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 01:15:50 GMT

Michael Tracey joins me after his brief hiatus offline to talk about the latest in the Epstein saga. As time goes on, we get more and more documentation and insight into who the man was and what he was doing, and believing in any of the conspiracy theories becomes ever more ridiculous. Yet the level of obsession with this story remains high. We talk a little bit about whether interest is increasing or decreasing among figures on the right and left.

Beyond Epstein, Michael and I go off in various directions, as we also discuss the Trump ape-gate controversy, Chuck Johnson getting out of jail, and more. Michael describes the connection between Epstein and Noam Chomsky, who bonded over neuroscience and the help the famed linguist received in a family financial dispute.

In the second half of the conversation, we watch a bit of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Ian Carroll, which practically gives Michael a heart attack. I tried to explain to him that if he wanted to fact check every statement Tucker made, we wouldn’t be able to get through any of the conversation. But the lying was too much to take. I ask Michael whether he has hatred for people who lie like this, and he says no, showing that he is a better man than me.

An overall very fun conversation. This was my first stream from the new house, by the way, so as you can hopefully tell, production quality on these things will be higher than it was before going forward.

Debate with Jeff Maurer about Venezuela

Richard Hanania — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 12:22:55 GMT

Last week, Jeff Maurer, who publishes the I Might Be Wrong Substack, invited me on his podcast to talk about the recent overthrow of Maduro. Jeff used to write for John Oliver, and his Substack is a unique combination of comedy and serious analysis of current events. So kind of like Oliver’s show, but much less dogmatically leftist and more willing to engage with alternative viewpoints.

As Jeff mentions, we are perfectly positioned to have a fruitful conversation, as we have disagreements about a policy while sharing a similar underlying model of the world. This is the sweet spot — there’s not much point in talking to someone you agree with on everything, but when people are living in completely different realities, there’s often not enough common ground for a real exchange of ideas.

If you yourself are unsure about how to think about Venezuela, this is a good place to hear arguments on both sides. I’m rereleasing the podcast here on my own feed. As it is on Jeff’s Substack, here the first approximately twenty-four minutes are free, and you have to be a paid subscriber to get the whole thing.

I end up agreeing with Jeff that from an “America First” perspective, the gains to the US are uncertain and likely to be small. But I do believe in US foreign policy as a tool for spreading freedom abroad. In fact, this could be part of a new basis for national identity, as the inward-looking attempts to build one have in my view been a disaster.

Developments since this podcast was recorded have strengthened my belief in my position. There is now polling data showing that Venezuelans generally support what the US has done. There was a lot of talk in this conversation about a potential backlash in Venezuela or the region. We just do not see that in the data. Venezuelans know that they are poor, that their living standards have fallen in recent memory, and the socialists who run their country are responsible for their problems. They want hope for a better future, and this is something they care more about than abstract concepts like when it is appropriate to use force under international law or even nationalism, or at least the kind of nationalism that would spur them to rally around their failed government.

Unfortunately, amidst this new optimism, political repression is increasing even as the regime seeks to comply with the US on oil and economic issues. This won’t be a straight line towards a better future, but I’m confident there is more hope for Venezuela today than there was a few weeks ago.

For the Persuasion article cited in the discussion, see here. I would also recommend this profile of Delcy Rodríguez for some context regarding the type of person we are now dealing with. And in case you missed them, my two previous articles on the Maduro operation are here and here.

Maduro in Jail. Is America Back?

Richard Hanania — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 23:21:23 GMT

I just did a livestream with Daniel Di Martino (X) of the Manhattan Institute. He immigrated to the US from Venezuela ten years ago and has a PhD in economics from Columbia University. I temporarily pulled him away from TV appearances and getting protein drinks to talk about what just happened in his home country. We go into the history of Venezuela, its relationship with Cuba, where Chavismo comes from, who actually is going to run the country now, what Maduro’s former vice president is up to, why Trump seems not to like María Corina Machado, and more. The conversation also touches on the conservative wave that seems to be spreading across Latin America.

There are a lot of ways Venezuela can go bad. But I’m sick of pessimism. There are also a lot of ways this can go right, and certainly at least be better than the government that was there before. We remember all the regime changes that led to disaster and forget Grenada and Panama because we’re so overwhelmingly biased towards negativity these days.

Whatever happens tomorrow, today is about congratulating the administration and the people of Venezuela.

In case you missed it, see my article from this morning on why Trump made the right call.

Merry Epstein Christmas

Richard Hanania — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:34:31 GMT

Michael Tracey joins me on the livestream to discuss the latest Epstein file drop. He reminds me of how I thought this thing couldn’t keep going on forever during the summer, and yet we are still here. I acknowledge Michael’s prescience on this. We go through various reveals making their way on social media and he explains why they don’t actually show anything. Near the end we get distracted and start chatting for some time about video games, which people may enjoy. He wants to know why there aren’t more games he likes on the Switch 2. I’m still getting through Donkey Kong Bananza, which we both recommend.

Michael has been tweeting about the big “reveals” in the latest documents. See, in particular, the hoax Epstein letter to Larry Nassar and the document on the crazy person claiming to have been Trump’s driver.

What Really Caused the Great Depression

Richard Hanania — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 12:10:07 GMT

In the last few years, I have started to teach myself monetary policy. While I always had opinions on other related issues like the fundamental causes of growth and labor policy, I had never done a deep dive into topics such as the money supply and how exactly the Fed shapes the economy. Almost a year ago, I heard Scott Sumner discuss these issues on Conversations with Tyler, and it finally motivated me to start looking into them. Part of that process has been reading Scott’s two books: The Money Illusion and The Midas Paradox.

I had known Scott mostly for his excellent Substack, which everyone should subscribe to. I’ve found him to have a sharp mind, whether he is talking about politics, culture, economics, or movies. As the podcast with Tyler reminded me, however, his field of expertise is monetary policy, and I thought after reading his books I would invite him on for an in-person discussion. He just wrote an article that summarizes the arguments about the Great Depression from The Midas Paradox, which you can read as preparation for this conversation.

We begin with a question I’ve always had, which is how free market economists – like Milton Friedman and Scott himself – square their other views with the idea that the monetary system needs to be centrally planned. Scott makes a convincing case for government solving a coordination problem. Then we get to the business cycle, which is another issue I’ve always had questions about. I felt dumb asking, but I wanted to know how exactly a society with a set amount of human capital and other fundamental factors temporarily produces more. Do people just work more hours? Yes, in fact, that is to a large extent the answer!

I harp a bit on how much sticky wages and sticky prices are doing to hold up the entire theory of the business cycle. It seems odd to me that so much can rest on a psychological quirk. But again, Scott explained it in a way that made sense by bringing up an analogy to plate tectonics. I also like the thought experiment of what the world would look like if everything was priced according to apples. This shows that demand for money is a real thing that must be accounted for in any economic model. I had read a lot on monetary policy, but having an expert walk me through the questions and confusions I still had – which won’t necessarily be those of anyone else studying the same topic – was extremely useful. Score one for in-person learning, which I am still able to benefit from long after finishing my official education thanks to working as a podcast host.

After a while, we digress into cultural issues, how life has gotten better but in some limited ways worse, and what is responsible for the fertility crisis. On this last point, we talk about the expansion of and improvement in entertainment options, and why social desirability bias stops us from being open about why this makes people have fewer children. The conversation closes by returning to monetary policy, as Scott explains his preference for central banks targeting nominal GDP rather than inflation.

Once again, Scott’s Substack is highly recommended. Rarely have I intellectually benefited so much from a conversation, and I hope others find it valuable too.

Why Trump Finally Went too Far

Richard Hanania — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 21:33:54 GMT

Just did a livestream discussing my recent article, “JD Vance Is the White Kendi.” I elaborate on the essay a bit, and explain why I think that Vance is overwhelmingly likely to be the Republican nominee in 2028. I also give some advice on how to attack Vance from either the left or right. People are yet to fully dig into the disconnect between the author of Hillbilly Elegy and what he has become. No one is paying close enough attention to this, but I’m going to keep harping on it as we get closer to 2028 and the spotlight shifts more and more to Trump’s presumptive heir.

I go on to discuss anti–Erika Kirk Twitter, a rabbit hole I just fell into. I explain why she triggers a certain kind of person.

Finally, someone asks me why Trump’s Rob Reiner “Truth” caused such a backlash, and I explain the divide between MAGA influencers who have some shame and those who have none.

Epstein BOMBSHELL!!!

Richard Hanania — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 00:28:09 GMT

Michael Tracey joins me to discuss the latest Epstein revelations.

Watch me show him how to open the documents that were just released.

We begin by talking about my discussion with Tara Palmeri. He has a beef with her, but I found her lovely. You can watch that conversation on the MAGA Civil War here.

I wonder how long this can go on. It’s Groundhog Day. The Epstein birthday book came out, there was a press conference, people in Congress made noises. Now some emails that mention Trump come out, and we’ll have press conferences and members of Congress making noises? At some point this must get old, right?

Humor, the Causes of War, and Everything in Between with Steven Pinker

Richard Hanania — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 12:11:03 GMT

There are few (if any!) people alive whose work I think more highly of than Steven Pinker, or whose books have done more to shape my worldview. As he was in Los Angeles as part of his latest book tour, I took the opportunity to invite him on the show for an in-person interview. I did a podcast with him on Rationality, his last book, and wrote the following at the time: “One of the best parts of becoming (sort of) famous in the last year has been getting to meet and form relationships with some of my intellectual heroes. Seeing those I’ve looked up to for years not only become friends but in many cases return the admiration has been extremely rewarding.”

That remains true, and although we’ve corresponded over the years, this discussion was the first time we met in person. The topic was his new book When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.

We begin by discussing the Aumann Agreement Theorem, which I thought sounded trite from the book but came around to believing was endlessly fascinating after hearing Steve explain it. We spend a bit of time on humor, which is such an important part of social relations but rarely given the scholarly attention it deserves, or else we might say the theories that do exist are usually unsatisfying.

I liked our discussion of how presidents and leaders engage in self-deprecating humor, and different public figures that either poke fun at themselves or the other side. I feel like the topic of politics and humor could make a fascinating PhD dissertation. If I had time, I would listen to podcasts and classify when people laughed and according to what criteria, and try to theorize about differences between groups like conservatives and liberals, or centrists and extremists. I think AI could probably help with that at this point. As I told Steve, perhaps we should all decide to support political movements that engage in more self-deprecating humor on the grounds that they are less likely to violate the rights of others! If you’re a graduate student or professor who is interested in doing such work, please reach out, as I would like to help find ways to make it happen.

Moving on from the new book, I got to ask Steve something I’ve been wondering about for a few years, which is whether recent events, particularly the war in Ukraine, have shifted his views on what maintains peace in the international system. As it turns out, we were both surprised that under contemporary conditions you could see two European countries kill each other in such large numbers. Maybe the great run of peace we’ve had since 1945 isn’t a result of, as John Mueller has argued, people realizing that war is stupid, but rather has depended on Western military, economic, and diplomatic power. Were the dreaded neocons perhaps correct? As international norms look a lot more fragile than they did fifteen years ago, this is a question we probably should be asking.

We close with some discussion about the Trump administration’s war on the universities, particularly Harvard. I loved the essay Pinker published in the NYT on “Harvard Derangement Syndrome.” The key passage is here.

Why does this matter? For all its foibles, Harvard (together with other universities) has made the world a better place, significantly so. Fifty-two faculty members have won Nobel Prizes, and more than 5,800 patents are held by Harvard. Its researchers invented baking powder, the first organ transplant, the programmable computer, the defibrillator, the syphilis test and oral rehydration therapy (a cheap treatment that has saved tens of millions of lives). They developed the theory of nuclear stability that has saved the world from Armageddon (Arguable! – RH). They invented the golf tee and the catcher’s mask. Harvard spawned “Sesame Street,” The National Lampoon, “The Simpsons,” Microsoft and Facebook.
Ongoing research at Harvard includes methane-tracking satellites, robotic catheters, next-generation batteries and wearable robotics for stroke victims. Federal grants are supporting research on metastasis, tumor suppression, radiation and chemotherapy in children, multidrug-resistant infections, pandemic prevention, dementia, anesthesia, toxin reduction in firefighting and the military, the physiological effects of spaceflight and battlefield wound care. Harvard’s technologists are pushing innovations in quantum computing, A.I., nanomaterials, biomechanics, foldable bridges for the military, hack-resistant computer networks and smart living environments for the elderly. One lab has developed what may be a cure for Type 1 diabetes.

This was published only ten days after my own piece in The Economist touching on many of the same themes.

Given the range and depth of the conversation, I walked away from it wondering how I would summarize Pinker’s career, or how to make sense of my intuition that there’s a line that extends through his books on psychology, linguistics, interpersonal communication, the history of violence, behavioral genetics, and political philosophy. If there is a unifying theme to his career, it’s a belief in reason to illuminate the most important human phenomena, from seemingly trivial – but actually quite deep! – questions like what makes us laugh or blush, to topics as weighty as, at an individual level, what determines the content of our personalities, and, from a more macro perspective, the causes of genocide and how we should arrange our political life. There’s been a progression from embodying enlightenment values in addressing important scientific questions regarding human nature, to explicitly advocating for those same principles in some of his more recent books, most clearly in Enlightenment Now. His two-front war against both wokeness in universities and the creeping authoritarianism of the Trump era is part and parcel of the same story.

As liberalism seems to be on the decline, at least in the short run, there’s never been a better time to delve into Pinker’s articles and books if you haven’t already. Not only for the overt defenses of what Western Civilization has built, but also for his non-political books that show us how the acquisition of knowledge can itself be joyful and life affirming. You will breeze through a joke from Curb Your Enthusiasm or a Woody Allen film (yes, the books are very Jewish), and before you know it you will have grasped a deep insight into the human condition – in a way that is understandable and relatable, but never dumbed down. I hope that this conversation encourages listeners who are not familiar with Pinker’s body of work to decide that it is worth exploring.

Open Borders, the Lessons of UAE, DEI at GMU, and More with Bryan Caplan

Richard Hanania — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 20:30:19 GMT

Bryan Caplan joined me on the livestream today to discuss my recent article, “Economists Should Do More to Fight Misinformation.” We begin by splitting some hairs about whether the misinformation label misleads us about the ultimate origins of false beliefs, and also the difference between something being emotionally unappealing and intuitively incorrect. He ends up agreeing with me though on the major points of the article. We both encourage economists out there to take more pride in their work as intellectuals and fight false beliefs regardless of where on the ideological spectrum they come from.

We then go into his experiences traveling to the Gulf Arab states and Japan. Bryan’s article on the UAE as utopia has stuck with me since I read it almost a year ago as demonstrating how well humans could be living if we simply were able to move beyond commonly held beliefs about markets and nationhood. Arabs built something this amazing! All it took was them believing in freedom. Or maybe just being rational. Bryan mentions to me that when you talk to their government ministers off the record, they believe the story that they’re exploiting the workers, which I found very amusing. There can sometimes be an incredible divergence between intentions and consequences that most people find difficult to fathom.

I also bring up Laurenz Guenther’s recent article on immigration explaining the rise of populism and ask Bryan how he would address its findings in the context of his commitment to open borders. I bring up global demographic trends and ask if they frighten him, which leads to a discussion of South Africa. Somewhere in there we talk about the theories of Daron Acemoglu on why nations become rich or poor. Finally, the conversation closes with me asking Bryan for an update on what’s going on at GMU and his lonely struggle against attempts to make it woke.

Overall, a very stimulating conversation, as always with Bryan. I encourage everyone to follow him on X and subscribe to his Substack.

Christian Nationalism Rising

Richard Hanania — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 03:37:00 GMT

Michael Tracey joins me to talk about the Charlie Kirk memorial service. The conversation somehow devolves into us disagreeing strongly on which parts of the Christian Nationalist spectacle on display were strangest. Michael’s inner new atheist comes out, as we play clips from Erika Kirk, RFK, Pete Hegseth, and others. He notes how out of place this kind of overt sectarianism would have been in any previous administration. I argue that this is one of the signifiers of the right leaning into identitarianism, of which strict restrictionism and all the talk we’re getting about “Heritage Americans” are a part.

One doesn’t have to be a Christian or even believe in God to be a member of the movement in good standing; it’s just about fighting the left. But fighting them on what? Consider how the second Trump administration has completely lost interest in abortion, which has traditionally been the main issue for the Christian Right. Is trans in women’s sports worth all this apocalyptic rhetoric? The dangers of crime in inner cities most Republicans don’t live anywhere near? The conversation also touches on the future of the conservative movement, and whether conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk’s death are going to be a fixture on the right going forward.

What Is "the Left"?

Richard Hanania — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 18:18:04 GMT

I just did a livestream on the latest in the Charlie Kirk investigation, my article yesterday on the killing, and my piece on anti-Indian hate.

As soon as I got off, I saw that a Congressman had just tweeted that he will try to permanently ban from social media anyone who “belittles” the Charlie Kirk assassination. He also says such people should not have business or driver’s licenses or be allowed to attend schools. This is by far the most authoritarian thing I can ever remember hearing an elected official say. People who complained that I shouldn’t have had a take so soon after the assassination should look at the kinds of rhetoric that Republican officials and conservative influencers are engaging in. One cannot cede the floor to these people. It would be different if there were a broad norm to not express political opinions on the news of the day in times like this. But that’s not where we are.

I discuss the two-step conservatives engage in, where they:

Point to crazy things said by online leftists on Bluesky and TikTok who have no positions of power or influence
Use that as an excuse to call for repression of mainstream Democrats, even though literally 0% of them talk or act like the leftists the right complains about

This is completely dishonest, and facilitates hysteria by telling conservatives that deranged leftists are half the country rather than a small and isolated minority. You can’t make some mentally ill communist the avatar for an entire side of the political spectrum.

The trick is to start by calling something bad “the Left”, and then declaring half the country responsible for anything they say or do. From the perspective of judging the Democratic Party and mainstream liberals it’s actually impressive that a movement can, among influential figures, be 100% in lockstep in terms of not celebrating the death of a political opponent. Again, that is much more than can be said for conservatives when they face similar circumstances. This is the human capital difference, which applies not just to intelligence, but also ethical norms.

The Real Epstein Conspiracy?

Richard Hanania — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 21:22:22 GMT

Ghislaine speaks! And as it turns out, there is still nothing to the Epstein conspiracies. Michael Tracey has a nice breakdown of how it went, pointing out that there is no indication she is lying, even when you might expect to see signs of her doing so. He joins me to discuss.

I went into this conversation thinking I had learned almost everything important about the Epstein saga. I was wrong. There are so many threads to pull here. But they’re not the ones people expect. The whole case against Ghislaine appears to have been drummed up by trial lawyers who recruited the “victims,” conducted the PR campaign, got journalists on board, and, according to Ghislaine and evidence presented by Alan Dershowitz, were engaging in a blackmail ring that involved threatening to drag more people into the story.

It’s all rotten from top to bottom. It’s always easy to see a moral panic in retrospect. A hallmark of moral panics is that groups normally at odds unite to condemn a target. As Michael alludes to, podcast bros, CNN, and Fox are all on the same side here, making him a rare beacon of truth. They’re still wrong.

We also talk about the role that taking high doses of testosterone might have played in Epstein’s behavior, something that came out during the Ghislaine interviews. He was clearly acting recklessly, which led to his downfall, and we now finally have an explanation of why.

There are some video and audio problems near the middle of the conversation, and Michael disconnects at one point, but he comes back on and we finish the discussion.

Note: I’ve heard from some of you who are paid subscribers that you don’t know how to get the full episodes via your podcast apps. It’s very simple. Just go to the episode page on the newsletter website on your phone or desktop. Don’t do it through the Substack app; it must be a browser. At the top, there will be a tab that says “Listen via…” Choose that, and then pick from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc. It should then allow you to add the show to your feeds, where you’ll automatically get the full versions of all episodes when they come out. Note that you need to do it separately for both shows associated with this newsletter: The Hanania Show and The H&H Podcast.

The End of Prostitution

Richard Hanania — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 22:36:11 GMT

Michael Tracey joins me to talk about the latest saga in the moral panic over pedophilia and its intersection with antisemitic conspiracy theories.

The most interesting part of the conversation is when we discuss how the concept of “prostitution” has disappeared from the culture. Everything is “trafficking” or must involve minors. I note that, with the collapse of social conservatism, we no longer have any basis not to allow legalized prostitution. To justify the current state of the law, then, in addition to the grant money involved, we need a new angle, which exaggerates or invents the coercive aspects of most sex work.

Michael brings up the point that if Elliot Spitzer were arrested today, the women involved would unquestionably be treated as helpless victims.

What Really Happened in the 2016 Election

Richard Hanania — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 01:03:03 GMT

Last month, Tulsi Gabbard in her capacity as the head of DNI released a number of documents pertaining to Russiagate. On the right, an entire mythology has grown around the idea that the Obama administration, Hillary, and Deep State actors fabricated the idea that Russia helped get Trump elected, along with the narrative surrounding ties between his campaign and the Putin regime.

Even as someone who hasn’t followed all the twists and turns of this saga, I knew enough to understand that some of Gabbard’s most sensationalist claims were laughable. With great fanfare, she informed the world that the Obama administration knew that Russia had never hacked the voting machines to deliver a Trump victory. Under the headline “New Evidence of Obama Administration Conspiracy to Subvert President Trump’s 2016 Victory and Presidency,” the DNI press release lists the following bullet points

In the months leading up to the November 2016 election, the Intelligence Community (IC) consistently assessed that Russia is “probably not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means.”
On December 7, 2016, after the election, talking points were prepared for DNI James Clapper stating, “Foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome.”
On December 9, 2016, President Obama’s White House gathered top National Security Council Principals for a meeting that included James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe and others, to discuss Russia.
After the meeting, DNI Clapper’s Executive Assistant sent an email to IC leaders tasking them with creating a new IC assessment “per the President’s request” that details the “tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election.” It went on to say, “ODNI will lead this effort with participation from CIA, FBI, NSA, and DHS.”
Obama officials leaked false statements to media outlets, including The Washington Post, claiming, “Russia has attempted through cyber means to interfere in, if not actively influence, the outcome of an election.”
On January 6, 2017, a new Intelligence Community Assessment was released that directly contradicted the IC assessments that were made throughout the previous six months.

The problem of course is that the administration never claimed that Russia manipulated the vote tally! Everyone who is familiar with the most basic facts surrounding Russiagate knew this already.

Go back to the first bullet point, with the quote that Russia was “probably not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means.” Now look at the complete passage here, on page 2, taken first from the email of an unnamed Obama administration official:

Russia probably is not trying to going to be able to? (sic) influence the election by using cyber means to manipulate computer-enabled election infrastructure. Russia probably is using cyber means primarily to influence the election by stealing campaign party data and leaking select items, and it is also using public propaganda. [emphasis added]

Another email in response concurs with this judgment and repeats the phrase.

The dishonesty is staggering. Put aside all other claims that Gabbard makes, this is so blatantly in bad faith that it’s immediately discrediting, and should make you skeptical of everything else these people say. Especially when this lie is combined with calls for Obama to be prosecuted. The Trump administration is speaking to an audience that it knows is misinformed, or unable to understand the distinction between “Russia tried to influence the election” and “Russia tried to change the election outcome by manipulating voting machines.”

This recent news renewed my interest in the Russiagate story, so I invited my friend Renée DiResta (X, Substack, personal website) on a livestream to talk about it. She is a professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, and the former research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. She also did work on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

I used to take a very dim view of the misinformation crowd, and there are many researchers out there who give the field a bad name. I once saw institutions like the Stanford Internet Observatory as being at the center of a vast censorship complex that sought to simply stamp out all dissent from leftist orthodoxy. As someone who was repeatedly suspended under the old Twitter regime, I joined many on the right in seeing these people as a personal threat to my right to speak.

If only the world could have stayed so simple! I could be a free speech absolutist, and never take any position that risks giving power to people who might eventually censor me. Yet recent years have shown that we need something like a community of responsible academics, intellectuals, and curators of content watching over the misinformed mobs that have been mobilized in the era of social media.

If the flaws of the misinformation studies community made many of us believe in the desirability of an internet without any public or private regulation at all, the Trump movement and Elon’s X have made the best case against that position one can imagine. The flaws of the media and liberal establishment can be dealt with through appeals to morality, compelling counterarguments, and attempts to hold people to their own stated principles. In contrast, there is no way to take a similar approach to MAGA. These people simply lack any interest in building or maintaining truth-seeking institutions, and are appealing to a political base that is so misinformed that it allows them to get away with what more sophisticated observers will recognize as absurd lies.

All of this is to say we need people like Renée. She walks me through the latest Russiagate news, and dissects Gabbard’s claims one-by-one. We start with the aforementioned non sequitur about the Obama administration knowing that Russia did not hack voting machines. We then go on to discuss whether Russia preferred Trump in 2016, the Durham annex, and more.

One important point that needs to be emphasized is that the Senate Select Committee Report, with Marco Rubio serving as chair, concluded that the Russians tried to help Trump in 2016.

This hasn’t been controversial until recently. The two House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence reports quibbled with that conclusion. Note that the HPSCI was chaired by Devin Nunes at the time, whose job is now literally being the head of Truth Social, and working as an aide was Kash Patel, whose job is now literally being the head of the FBI after a time writing children’s books teaching kids to worship Trump, and of course getting consulting fees from Truth Social. Arguments should be judged on their merits, but it tells you something when the mainstream of both parties agree on something, while the only ones who take the opposite position are known grifters and Trump lackeys. And even the HPSCI reports don’t put forward the most radical claims spread by MAGA influencers and Michael Shellenberger types, like the idea that Putin actually preferred Hillary, or that the DNC hack wasn’t carried out by the Russians.

We close by discussing why this matters, what is at stake when we continue to debate Russiagate, AI slop, and what can be done to make social media better.

Important documents

January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment

2019 Mueller Report

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report (August 2020)

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Report (filed September 2020, released July 2025) (not to be confused with the HPSCI report from 2018)

The Durham Report and the annex (May 2023)

Articles

Renée, “Reconning ‘Russiagate’”; her conversation with Shellenberger

NYT 2015 report on Russian internet troll farm