The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table

Andrew Fox joins Live From The Table to talk about personal courage, Gaza, Hamas casualty numbers, Israel’s military strategy, Iran, the Strait of Hormuz and what modern war actually looks like. Andrew Fox is a former British Army officer (three tours in Afghanistan), now a senior fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank. Fox has been to the frontlines in Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine. He wrote the first papers worldwide exposing the Hamas fatality figures manipulation in Gaza and showing how Israel actually fought on the ground in Gaza from a tactical perspective. mrandrewfox.substack.com https://x.com/mr_andrew_fox 0:00 Intro 1:00 Serving in Afghanistan 4:00 Looking back on the war 7:30 Hamas casualty numbers in Gaza 10:00 Why Andrew looked into the numbers 12:00 Hamas figures, IDF figures, and media coverage 15:30 Civilian casualties and Hamas’s strategy 18:15 Child fighters and Hamas 19:25 Why Andrew speaks up for Israel and Jews 22:00 Problems inside the IDF 28:40 Iran and the wider war 31:50 Why stopping Iran’s nuclear program matters 37:30 Strait of Hormuz 42:00 What kind of Iran deal would make sense? 47:20 Why this is different from the JCPOA 54:00 Gaza casualty ratios and urban war 57:00 Was the Gaza war worth it? 1:02:00 Why Israel went into Gaza first 1:04:30 Final thoughts

Separating Politics from Reality. Is the war going better than we realize?Eliot A. Cohen is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He is a professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University, the author of the forthcoming book The Strategist: How to Think About War and Politics, and a co-host of the Shield of the Republic podcast.

Jamie Kirchick joins the crew for a sharp discussion on ideology, hypocrisy and why smart people can still fall for bad ideas. A wide-ranging, no-filter conversation about Iran, nuclear tensions, global risk—and the dangers of antisemitism. They discuss everyone from Tucker Carlson and Daryl Cooper to Bryon Noem. This episode addresses serious geopolitical stakes and is part political analysis, part philosophical sparring and part classic around the table repartee. Jamie Kirchick is a journalist and the New York Times-bestselling author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington and The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age. He is a contributing opinion writer to the New York Times and a writer at large for Air Mail. https://x.com/jkirchick

Are conspiracies and misinformation beginning to erode the basic assumptions on which public discussion depends? Trump. Israel. JFK. Epstein. Iran. Big Pharma. What is real, and what is conspiracy? In this episode of Live from the Table, we sit down with Gerald Posner to talk about the JFK assassination, conspiracy theories, misinformation, Trump, Israel, Iran, the opioid crisis, RFK Jr. and Jeffrey Epstein. The conversation moves from the enduring debate over whether Oswald acted alone to the ways conspiracy thinking spreads online, distorts public judgment, and reshapes political argument. It also turns to Posner’s reporting on Big Pharma, the Sacklers and the failures that fueled the opioid epidemic, along with his views on Epstein’s finances and the broader culture of suspicion surrounding high-profile events. Gerald Posner is the author of thirteen acclaimed books, including New York Times bestsellers Case Closed, Why America Slept, and God’s Bankers. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in History and contributor to Forbes, he has been called “a merciless pit bull of an investigator” (Chicago Tribune). His 2020 book PHARMA was praised by The New York Times as a “withering, encyclopedic indictment” of the pharmaceutical industry. https://x.com/geraldposner

Featuring Walter Russell Mead, this conversation dives into one of the most dangerous questions in the world right now: what happens if Iran gets the bomb—and is it already too late to stop it?  From the real stakes behind the Strait of Hormuz to the risk of a global oil shock, nuclear proliferation across the Middle East, and the limits of deterrence, Mead breaks down why the situation is far more complex—and more urgent—than most people realize.  The discussion explores whether war with Iran is avoidable, how U.S. politics and leadership shape these decisions, and why history suggests the cost of inaction could be far higher than we think. Mead addresses several important questions:   What happens the day Iran gets a nuclear bomb? Are we already too late to stop Iran? Would a nuclear Iran trigger World War III? Could one chokepoint crash the entire global economy overnight? Is doing nothing the most dangerous option of all? Walter Russell Mead is the Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute, the Global View Columnist at The Wall Street Journal and the Alexander Hamilton Professor of Strategy and Statecraft with the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. He has authored numerous books, including the widely-recognized Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. His most recent book is titled The Arc of A Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People. His recent piece in WSJ https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-is-surprisingly-good-for-the-world-b97e7b8e?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqecxWBrLmx573zbVo7yOBqntjzcRpFCYAQSv7RM5rosCy_YOIAMNCb6yOB0apk%3D&gaa_ts=69cddce9&gaa_sig=HpttmDViumH2cVRMuhAJiCGUkqg0x4FrdbN2ie-VtdgjgeCKjr5ZV_oW2JJzRYiKuyr-Nf6aGXt22IgzXXwylQ%3D%3D Walter Russell Mead on X: https://x.com/wrmead?lang=en