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Honestly with Bari Weiss

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Honestly with Bari Weiss
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  • The Words That Made America
    America is turning 250. And we’re throwing a yearlong celebration of the greatest country on Earth. The greatest? Yes. The greatest. We realize that’s not a popular thing to say these days. Americans have a way of taking this country for granted: a Gallup poll released earlier this week shows that American pride has reached a new low. And the world at large, which is wealthier and freer than it has ever been in history thanks to American power and largesse, often resents us. We get it. As journalists, we spend most of our time finding problems and exposing them. It’s what the job calls for. But if you only focus on the negatives, you get a distorted view of reality. As America hits this milestone birthday, it’s worthwhile to take a moment to step back and look closely at where we actually are—and the reality of life in America today compared to other times and places. That reality is pretty spectacular. Could Thomas Jefferson and the men gathered in Philadelphia who wrote down the words that made our world—“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”—ever have imagined what their Declaration of Independence would bring? The Constitution. The end of slavery—and the defeat of Hitler. Astonishing wealth and medical breakthroughs. Silicon Valley. The most powerful military in the world. The moon landing. Hollywood. The Hoover Dam. The Statue of Liberty (a gift from France). Actual liberation (a thing we gave France). Humphrey Bogart and Tom Hanks. Josephine Baker and Beyoncé. Hot dogs. Corn dogs. American Chinese food. American Italian food. The Roosevelts and the Kennedys. The Barrymores and the Fondas. Winston Churchill (his mom was from Brooklyn). The Marshall Plan and Thurgood Marshall. Star Wars. Missile-defense shields. Baseball. Football. The military-industrial complex. Freedom of religion. UFO cults. Television. The internet. The Pill. The Pope. The automobile, the airplane, and AI. Jazz and the blues. The polio vaccine and GLP-1s, the UFC and Dolly Parton. The list goes on because it’s really, truly endless. Ours is a country where you can hear 800 languages spoken in Queens, drive two hours and end up among the Amish in Pennsylvania. We are 330 million people, from California to New York Island, gathered together as one. Each of those 330 million will tell you that ours is not a perfect country. But we suspect most of them would agree that their lives would not be possible without it. So for the next 12 months, we’re going to toast to our freedoms on the page, on this podcast and in real life. And we’re doing it the Free Press way: by delving into all of it—the bad and the good and the great, the strange and the wonderful and the wild. And today—on America’s 249th birthday—we’re kicking off this yearlong event with none other than Akhil Reed Amar. Akhil has a unique understanding of this country—and our Constitution. Akhil is a Democrat who testified on behalf of Brett Kavanaugh, is a member of The Federalist Society, who is pro-choice but also anti-Roe—and these seeming contradictions make him perfectly suited to answer questions about the political and legal polarization we find ourselves in today. Akhil is a constitutional law professor at Yale and the author of the brilliant book The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760–1840. He also hosts the podcast Amarica's Constitution, and you might recognize his name from his work in The Atlantic. I ask him about the unique history that created our founding document, the state of the country, our political polarization, the American legal system, and what this country means to him. The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  • Is Iran’s Nuclear Program Damaged or Destroyed?
    When we last recorded Saturday night, the U.S. had just announced its strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The U.S. had entered the war. The restrainers had seemingly lost. In the following hours, President Donald Trump said the mission was a “spectacular military success.” And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the program “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites.  But there’s much more to that story than meets the eye. As Jay Solomon wrote in our pages: Before the U.S. struck, 16 cargo trucks entered the fortified mountain complex and moved unidentified equipment to another location. Are the sites destroyed or merely damaged? Was enriched uranium smuggled out? It all remains unclear. Now the war is heating up. Israel has expanded its bombing campaign beyond nuclear facilities to hit regime targets. Qatar has closed its airspace. And just as we write this, Iran has reportedly fired toward Qatar and Iraq. It all begs the question: Was the strike on Iran’s Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant the end of this war—or just the beginning? And what comes next? To understand the state of the nuclear facilities and the state of the war, we’ve brought together three of the most well-read experts: Michael Oren, Jay Solomon, and Matti Friedman. Oren is the former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. He served from 2009 to 2013. He is also a former Knesset member. He is the author of many books, including Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide. Solomon is an investigative journalist who has covered Iran and the region for decades. He just published an explosive piece for The Free Press titled “Did Iran Just Sneak Out Critical Nuclear Material from Fordow?” And, Friedman is our Jerusalem-based columnist, and the author of four books, including his latest, Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai. He just wrote  “After the Bombs: American B-2s Just Changed the Middle East. Now It’s Time to Return the Region to the Humans Who Live Here” for our pages. We’ll note we recorded this Monday morning, starting around 11 a.m. ET, as a Free Press Live event. To join these, you just need to do one thing—and that’s become a Free Press subscriber. Be sure to go to sapirjournal.org/honestly to sign up for your free subscription today! Check out What Could Go Right—available on all major podcast platforms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  • The U.S. Bombs Iran’s Nuclear Program
    On Saturday night at 7:50 pm ET, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. had entered the war against Iran when he posted: “We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.” In the minutes after this historic announcement we assembled six of the top experts on this issue: Haviv Rettig Gur, Michael Doran, Mark Dubowitz, Amit Segal, Eli Lake, and Matt Continetti. We discussed it all: what we actually know about the strikes; what it means for Iran’s nuclear capabilities, how Iran might respond; why Trump struck now; what this means for the Middle East; and what Trump’s national address signalled to the American public, to Israel, and most importantly to Iran. We'll note we recorded this Saturday night starting at 8:30 pm ET as a Free Press live event, and we will be hosting more in days to come. 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. Beekeeper’s Naturals is offering you an exclusive offer: Go to beekeepersnaturals.com/BARI to get 20% off your order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  • Niall Ferguson and Dexter Filkins: Who Will Win the Israel-Iran War?
    It’s the fourth day in the war between Iran and Israel. Many questions hang in the air. Chief among them: Will Israel be able to fulfill its main goal in the war—to end Iran’s nuclear program? Will it put troops on the ground to do so, specifically to blow up Iran’s most important nuclear site? Or will the U.S. get involved? Will Trump provide the bunker-busting bombs necessary to destroy the facility at Fordow? Will the regime fall—and if so, what will come next? How does this struggle fit into the much, much larger geopolitical conflict between the U.S. and China? So today, I have two experts to break it all down: Niall Ferguson and Dexter Filkins. Niall Ferguson is a historian and Free Press columnist who just wrote in our pages, “Israel’s attack restores the credibility of the West.” Dexter Filkins is a longtime foreign correspondent who has reported from Iran. He is a contributor at The New Yorker, has covered this topic for years, and is the author of The Forever War. Visit clearme.com/honestly for two months free! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  • Iran Strikes Israel, Oil Fields Ablaze, and Will the U.S. Enter the War?
    As we taped this episode of Honestly, it was 3 a.m. in Israel. Sirens wailed across the country as Iranian missiles rained down on Israeli towns. At the same time, Israel was striking military and nuclear sites inside Iran, and oil fields were aflame. Meanwhile in Washington, reports were emerging of a heated debate inside the White House over whether the U.S. should get involved in the war. It’s hard to overstate the magnitude of this story—or how uncertain the outcome is for Israel. There’s no one better to help us make sense of this war than Michael Doran—senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East. This has been his story not just for the past few days—for the last decade, no one has written more, and more brilliantly, about Iran’s nuclear aspirations and Washington’s posture toward Iran than Mike.  And he just wrote for The Free Press “The Ultimate Deception: How Trump and Bibi Outfoxed Iran.” We recorded this interview Saturday evening at 6 p.m. as a Free Press subscriber livestream. We’re doing more of these given the speed of the news. To attend one live and ask your own questions, become a Free Press subscriber. Visit ⁠clearme.com/honestly⁠ for two months free! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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About Honestly with Bari Weiss

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.
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