Conversations with Coleman

Mark Manson is the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and a former dating coach whose argument cuts against most of the self-help genre: Happiness is the wrong thing to chase. In conversation with Coleman Hughes, he explains why people should aim for purpose and meaning instead, and why he thinks affirmations and manifesting tend to most benefit those who already feel good about themselves. They get into Søren Kierkegaard, how pickup artistry gave way to the manosphere, and when to bring up politics on a first date. Manson also talks about the two-and-a-half years he spent helping Will Smith write his memoir.
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Saritha Komatireddy is the Republican challenger seeking to unseat Democratic incumbent Letitia James as New York Attorney General. She is the Brooklyn-born daughter of Indian immigrants, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, a former federal prosecutor, and the former chief of staff at the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Komatireddy’s campaign has gained unexpected momentum following her viral debate performance, where she pressed AG James hard on public safety, violent crime against women, rising homelessness, rampant and unprosecuted fraud, and selective enforcement of civil rights law.

Certain of their exchanges—including one where James visibly struggled to name a single past attorney general she admired—reached millions of views online. As New York and the country prepare for elections next week in which Democrats are expected to win big, Saritha makes her case for your vote.
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France is burning, and Konstantin Kisin thinks the violence roiling the country is just the tip of the iceberg. Kisin, co-host of the Triggernometry podcast and author of An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West, argues the current unrest is the predictable outcome of decades of mass immigration, without any systemic process for integration. Leaders’ dogged embrace of multiculturalism—even as their own citizens increasingly questioned it—ultimately cost the nation its shared identity, the very thing that holds a society together. And when tensions spill over into neighboring countries, as they inevitably will, it may well prove the continent’s undoing.

Kisin also shares his thoughts on the chaos wrought by Europe’s welfare system, the folly of its climate policy, and the eventual outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

This episode featured audience questions from The Free Press Forum, a platform for subscribers to connect with other Free Pressers. Head to TheFP.com/Forum to join the conversation.

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Did any single man change the course of the 20th century? Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, says the biographies can’t answer that, but the data can. He walks us through Winston Churchill’s dayslong fight to keep Britain in the war, Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore, John F. Kennedy’s brinkmanship in Cuba, and Joseph Stalin’s response to Adolf Hitler’s invasion. Then he explains why basketball coaches are the best laboratory we have for measuring what a leader really changes.
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Megan Phelps-Roper grew up as the public face of the Westboro Baptist Church, the hate group founded by her grandfather, known for picketing veterans’ funerals with signs condemning gay people and Jews. She left the church in 2012 after a series of Twitter conversations exposed cracks in its theology she could no longer ignore.

Since then, she’s built a new career exploring faith, belief, and public discourse from multiple angles, including as host of The Free Press’s The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling. Now, somewhat surprisingly, she’s launched a new podcast called Book Keeper, where she returns to Bible stories she grew up with and tries to figure out which parts of them still hold up, and which don’t.

She joins Coleman Hughes to talk through the exact verse that unraveled her worldview, why she still reads Scripture to her kids despite not believing in God, and why she thinks a society that abandons fixed values is just as dangerous as one that enforces the wrong ones.

Book Keeper is a Longview original series. Listen at longview.report/bookkeeper

For the Bart Ehrman lecture that Coleman mentioned in the show, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CU1EZv-pFo
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