Honestly with Bari Weiss

Whether you believe in the story of the virgin birth and the resurrection, or whether you believe that those miracles are myths, one thing is beyond dispute: The story of Jesus and the message of Christianity are among the stickiest ideas the world has ever seen. Within four centuries of Jesus’s death, Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. It had 30 million followers—half of the empire. Today, two millennia later, Christianity is still the largest religion in the world. How and why did Christianity take off, and how did it change the world in such radical ways? Here to have that conversation is historian Tom Holland. Tom is one of the most gifted storytellers in the world, and his podcast, The Rest is History, is one of the most popular out there. Each week, he and his co-host, Dominic Sandbrook, charm their way through history's most interesting characters and sagas. I can't recommend it more highly. Holland's book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind chronicles thousands of years of Christian history, and it argues that Christianity is the reason we have America. That it's the inspiration to both the French and the American Revolutions. That it's the backbone of wokeness as an ideology, but also the liberal forces fighting it. Today, Tom explains how and why the story of Christianity won, how it shaped Western culture and values, and if he thinks our vacation from religion might be coming to an end. Merry Christmas and happy holidays! 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. **** This show is proudly sponsored by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). FIRE believes free speech makes free people. Make your tax-deductible donation today at www.thefire.org/honestly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Merry Christmas, Honestly listeners! We hope you’ve been enjoying the parties, the spirit of charity, the lights, the tree at Rockefeller Center, the schmaltzy movies, and of course, the infectious Christmas music everywhere you turn. But did you know that the Americans who wrote nearly all of the Christmas classics were . . . Jewish? Indeed, many of the writers of your favorite Christmas jingles were the children of parents who had fled Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe during the great wave of immigration between 1880 and 1920. Sammy Cahn, the son of Galician Jewish immigrants, wrote the words to “Let it Snow!” and was known as Frank Sinatra’s personal lyricist. There is also Mel Torme, the singer-songwriter responsible for composing the timeless “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.” His father fled Belarus for America in the early 20th century. Frank Loesser, a titan of Broadway and Hollywood musicals, wrote the slightly naughty “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” He was born into a middle-class Jewish family, his father having left Germany in the 1890s to avoid serving in the Kaiser’s military. Johnny Marks, the man who gave us “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer,” “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”—yes, he was also one of the chosens. Then there’s the greatest American composer of them all, Irving Berlin. His “White Christmas” is one of the biggest-selling singles in the history of American music. Berlin’s earliest memory was of watching his family’s home burn to the ground in a pogrom as his family fled Siberia for Belarus before emigrating to NYC in 1893. Today, Free Press columnist Eli Lake explores why and how it was that American Jews helped create the sound of American Christmas. We hope you enjoy this delightful and surprising jaunt through musical history. Happy holidays! *** This show is proudly sponsored by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). FIRE believes free speech makes free people. Make your tax-deductible donation today at www.thefire.org/honestly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just a few years ago, as AI technology was beginning to spill out of start-ups in Silicon Valley and hitting our smartphones, the political and cultural conversation about this nascent science was not yet clear. I remember asking former Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Honestly in January 2022 if AI was just like the sexy robot in Ex Machina. I literally said to him, “What is AI? How do you define it? I do not understand.” Today, not only has it become clear what AI is and how to use it—ChatGPT averages more than 120 million active daily users and processes over a billion queries per day—but it’s also becoming clear with the political and cultural ramifications—and the arguments and debates—around AI are going to be over the next few years. Among those big questions are who gets to lead us into this new age of AI technology, what company is going to get there first and achieve market dominance, how those companies are structured so that bad actors with nefarious incentives can’t manipulate this technology for evil purposes, and what role the government should play in regulating all of this. At the center of these important questions are two men: Sam Altman and Elon Musk. And if you haven’t been following, they aren’t exactly in alignment.  They started off as friends and business partners. In fact, Sam and Elon co-founded OpenAI in 2015. But over the years, Elon Musk grew increasingly frustrated with OpenAI until he finally resigned from the board in 2018. That feud escalated this past year when Elon sued Sam and OpenAI on multiple occasions to try to prevent the company from launching a for-profit arm of the business, a structure that Elon claims is never supposed to happen in OpenAI—and he also argues that changing its structure in this way might even be illegal. On the one hand, this is a very complex disagreement. To understand every single detail of it, you probably need a law degree and special expertise in American tax law. But you don’t need a degree or specialization to understand that at its heart, this feud is about something much bigger and more existential than OpenAI’s business model, although that’s extremely important. What this is really a fight over is who will ultimately be in control of a technology that some say, if used incorrectly, could very well make human beings obsolete. Here to tell his side of the story is Sam Altman. We talk about where AI is headed, and why he thinks superintelligence—the moment where AI surpasses human capabilities—is closer than ever. We talk about the perils of AI bias and censorship, why he donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund as a person who has long opposed Trump, what happens if America loses the AI race to a foreign power like China, and of course, what went wrong between him and the richest man on Earth.  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. *** This show is proudly sponsored by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). FIRE believes free speech makes free people. Make your tax-deductible donation today at www.thefire.org/honestly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last week marked a historic turning point in Syria. Rebel forces seized control of the nation, toppling the regime of Bashar al-Assad and ending his family’s brutal 50-year stranglehold on power. For decades, the Assad dynasty ruled through unimaginable violence—launching chemical attacks on civilians, silencing dissent with mass imprisonment and torture, and presiding over a civil war that killed an estimated 600,000 people and drove 13 million into exile. In cities across the world, jubilant Syrians have celebrated the regime’s downfall, having deemed it to be one of the world’s most oppressive dictatorships. But not everyone is celebrating. Or at least, some people are saying there is reason for caution. That’s because the coalition of rebel forces taking control of Syria now is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a militant Islamist organization which originated as an offshoot of al-Qaeda. Its leader is a Saudi-born Syrian who calls himself Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. A 21-year-old al-Jolani left Syria for Iraq in 2003 to join al-Qaeda and fight against America. There, he was captured by the U.S. and put into Bucca jail, which housed some of the most notorious al-Qaeda prisoners. But since emerging on the world stage in the last week, al-Jolani has indicated that he is a reformed man, leading a moderated organization. He insists his al-Qaeda days and their methods—the detentions and torture and forced conversions—are over, and HTS is not going to persecute religious and ethnic minorities. But is it… true?  Few people in the West might know that answer as well as journalist Theo Padnos. In October 2012, Padnos ventured from Turkey into Syria to report on the Syrian Civil War. There, he was captured by HTS (then known as Jabhat al-Nusra) and held captive for nearly two years.  Throughout his captivity, Padnos endured relentless torture at the hands of his captors. He was savagely beaten until unconscious, given electric shocks, and forced into severe stress positions for hours at a time. All of this is to say nothing of the psychological torment inflicted on him. Today, he joins Michael Moynihan to discuss his harrowing experience, the psychology of jihadists, and what the future of Syria will look like under the leadership of his former captors. 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

Kemi Badenoch just became the first black woman to lead the UK’s Conservative Party, the oldest in British politics, colloquially known as “the Tories.” She’s also 44, has three children, grew up in Nigeria, actually worked at McDonald’s (unlike some American politicians who have claimed to), didn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge, and has a master’s degree in computer engineering. Not exactly your typical Tory party leader profile. But it’s Kemi Badenoch who has just inherited a Conservative Party that has dominated British politics for decades until Labour Party leader Keir Starmer became prime minister earlier this year. The Britain that Starmer inherited—the Britain that Conservatives like David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Rishi Sunak left behind—is a country with enormous debt, a shrinking GDP, a huge immigration challenge, and arguably a national identity crisis. Or as Free Press columnist and British historian Niall Ferguson has bleakly put it, “it seems that the UK has a national suicide wish.”  Can Kemi Badenoch, the woman who has been compared to Margaret Thatcher, turn her party—and ultimately, her country—around? How will the rising star in British politics offer something different than the past five Tory leaders who served before her? And can she beat out not just the Labour left but also the growing threat from a very energized hard right?  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