Honestly with Bari Weiss

By: The Free Press
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  • Summary

  • The most interesting conversations in American life happen in private. This show brings them out of the closet. Stories no one else is telling and conversations with the most fascinating people in the country, every week from The Free Press, hosted by former New York Times and Wall Street Journal journalist Bari Weiss.
    © 2021 Honestly with Bari Weiss
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Politics & Government Social Sciences
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Episodes
  • Andrew Schulz Has Advice for Dems, Jews, and Comics

    Andrew Schulz Has Advice for Dems, Jews, and Comics
    Mar 13 2025
    Each one of us has a different conception story. For some parents, it’s a romantic night out, maybe over a candlelit dinner. For others, like Bari and Nellie, it involves a trip to a fertility clinic in a mall that doesn’t even validate parking. And of course, for some it’s a long, challenging, emotional process involving needles, hormones, and many false starts. We know a lot of our listeners can relate to that. Now, the topic of infertility often seems like the purview of a doctor’s office or a self-help book, or maybe a women’s health column. Where you might not expect to hear about it in painstaking detail is in Andrew Schulz’s new Netflix special. Schulz’s special is vulnerable, obviously funny, and a look into the taboo topic of male infertility. It’s called Life, and if you haven’t already seen it, blow off your plans tonight and watch Life instead. Now, the last time we had Schulz on this show was three years ago. It was in the thick of the woke culture storm, and Schulz was about to release a comedy special on Amazon. But when the streamer asked him to do what a lot of people at the time were being asked to do in comedy—censor his jokes—Schulz said no. He bet on himself and released the special independently. As he tells Bari today, he ended up making five times what he would have made with Amazon. We’ve been talking a lot on this show about the vibe shift that’s come for politics and tech. And it’s obviously come for comedy. But actually, we think you could make the argument that comedy created the vibe shift that we’re seeing in so many other parts of the culture. And perhaps that’s because comedians with podcasts have become like the Walter Cronkites of American culture. Theo Von is almost Barbara Walters at this point. And Andrew Schulz has found himself right in the thick of it. Last October on his podcast, Schulz sat down with then-candidate Donald Trump as he was running for president, for a candid 90-minute conversation. You can imagine the type of response he got for that. Today on Honestly, Bari asks Schulz about that interview with Trump and whether there are certain people who are beyond the pale. They talk about his difficulty conceiving, what it meant for his masculinity, and she asks about the decision to put his—and his wife’s—vulnerability on camera. And finally, she asks how to resist audience capture. If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 30 mins
  • Meet Sarah Wynn-Williams, Facebook’s Highest-Ranking Whistleblower

    Meet Sarah Wynn-Williams, Facebook’s Highest-Ranking Whistleblower
    Mar 11 2025
    You may have never heard of Sarah Wynn-Williams, but that’s about to change. She’s written a memoir about her nearly seven years at Facebook, the company that has since rebranded as Meta. In doing so, she’s become the company’s highest-ranking whistleblower. Until around 72 hours ago, the book’s existence itself was a secret. Wynn-Williams, a onetime New Zealand diplomat, was effectively the company’s top envoy to governments around the world. She traveled extensively with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg—the company’s two top leaders during her time—and her experiences with them often read like pure comedy, a mix of Succession and The Office. The book, however, is a lot more than that. It’s a shocking insider’s account of working at one of the world’s most powerful companies at the highest level, and the gap between the idealistic way it sold itself to its employees and the world. It’s called Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism. And it coincides with the news that Wynn-Williams has filed an SEC complaint against the company, alleging that Zuckerberg agreed to crack down on the account of a high-profile Chinese dissident living in the U.S. in the hopes that it would help convince Beijing to allow Facebook into China. On today’s Honestly, Bari and Wynn-Williams discuss her bizarre experiences, her thoughts on the future of Facebook, the pushback she’s already received, and why she wrote this book—despite the risk of taking on a corporate behemoth like Meta. Header 6: The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article. Go to groundnews.com/Honestly to get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and unlock world-wide perspectives on today’s biggest news stories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • The Dissidents Who Defeated Russia

    The Dissidents Who Defeated Russia
    Mar 6 2025
    Earlier this week on Honestly, Batya Ungar-Sargon, Brianna Wu, and Christopher Caldwell shared their views on President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance’s showdown with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, and on the Russia-Ukraine war more generally. Simply put, Batya and Chris made the case that Russia is not an American adversary in the way China is and that Trump’s seeming sympathy toward Russian president Vladimir Putin is actually a strategic play to pull Russia away from China and into our orbit. The conversation is provocative. It provoked many of us here at The Free Press. Not all of our listeners agreed with what they heard either. For some, it was frustrating or even angering to hear this perspective. Yes, contrary to popular belief, we do read the comments. And there’s been a tremendous amount of debate inside our newsroom about America’s new posture regarding Russia and Ukraine, just as there is on all of the most important topics of the day. We think that’s our strength. We believe in listening to arguments, in good faith, from people we respect. And if our panel show earlier in the week was dominated by a perspective sympathetic to Trump, today we want to offer a very different perspective from Eli Lake, Free Press reporter and the host of our new podcast, Breaking History. In this episode, Eli explores how a different Republican president—Ronald Reagan—spoke out against Russian aggression. And how his words inspired dissidents from across the Soviet bloc, like the Czech playwright Václav Havel, to lead their own countries to freedom. This is a show that looks to the past to illuminate the present, and we think this episode is especially important right now. So today, Eli Lake on Breaking History. If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today. Go to groundnews.com/Honestly to get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and unlock world-wide perspectives on today’s biggest news stories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    46 mins

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Profile Image for Mao Dom

The 9nly way in 2022...

...to get the news from a serious journalist is to go directly to the journalist, their substance or podcast. Bari Weiss is one of the best.

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Profile Image for Flozee

Genuine people responding to reporter

Many people interviewed and true feelings of the black supporters of Trump Their issues as a black community

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Profile Image for Chris

Podcastly

Bari's intent with this podcast is noble. She wants to bring an honest perspective to issues of the day. (And we have some very troubling issues in America!) While her questions are probing and her topics are the furthest thing from softballs, I find that her guests have a consistent bias in their thinking, which I will leave to you to determine. It reminds me of NPR 15 years ago where the reporting was well-intentioned, interesting, and topical, but you might have wondered what you weren't hearing? I really enjoy her style and she seems like someone I would want to get a beer with; I value the perspective she brings. But her guests' perspectives are just one angle and I need more. I suspect she would 100% advocate getting more angles and that is why I listen to her. Give her a try if you haven't.

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Profile Image for Jen

Thank you so much

I broke down crying in relief while listening to this, thank you so much for standing up for free speech and reality. This is the first podcast I've come across where I've felt so heard, and I'm not a gay man, I'm a textbox 90s Tomboy and, through my own personal experience as a youth and teen, feel genuine worry and concern for today's youth, knowing what path I very likely would have gone down had I been born only a decade or two later. I've felt erased and been called alt right, by people I thought were close friends, so again, thank you.

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Profile Image for Bill Lauderback

Asbury

Bari:
Your Podcast on the Revival that recently took place on the campus of Asbury University was superb. I was particularly impressed by the young reporter you chose to cover the story. Her honesty about that absence of God in her life and yet her profound appreciation for what she witnessed at Asbury was, dare I say, beautifully moving — as if God were speaking through her despite her lack of cognitive recognition of him doing so. When that happens, it is a miracle.
Peace.
Bill

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Profile Image for Ryan

Excellent Interview with A Small But Good Overview

Of RFK Jr. First time listener but will be listening to more Bari in the future.

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