The Free Press
Bridgit Mendler on Quitting Hollywood—and Starting a $100M Space Company
updated
In the 2010s, Ryan Holiday was the head of marketing for the controversial clothing brand American Apparel, and the sought-after media strategist for people like the womanizing blogger Tucker Max. Then he wrote an exposé called Trust Me, I’m Lying, which lifted the veil on his world of media manipulation.
Now, he is an advocate of the ancient philosophy of stoicism, which he roughly defines as the idea that we do not control what happens but we do control how we respond, and that it’s best to respond with four key virtues: courage, wisdom, temperance, and justice.
His series of books on stoic virtues have sold over three million copies worldwide. His latest book, "Right Thing, Right Now," is about the necessity of living justly—even when it is hard.
Today: why power corrupts, how ego can destroy you, whether we should remain loyal to people even when they do abhorrent things, the limits of free speech, and how to treat people in our everyday lives.
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Michael discusses the political turmoil engulfing South Korea with Geoffrey Cain, a journalist, author, and scholar who specializes in East and Central Asia.
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Batya speaks to Rod Dreher to delve into the controversy over Netflix’s decision to cast an Israeli Jewish actress in the title role of its Christmas film Mary. Read his full piece in The Free Press: https://thefp.pub/41kcHff
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Michael Moynihan and Batya Ungar-Sargon discuss the latest reports that Trump is poised to replace Pete Hegseth with Ron DeSantis for his Defense Secretary nominee.
This morning on The Free Press Live:
Michael Moynihan and Batya Ungar-Sargon are joined by The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles to discuss the future of social conservatism under Trump’s Republican Party.
They will also be speaking to Rod Dreher about Netflix’s new Virgin Mary film, Geoffrey Cain about what’s going on in South Korea, and—you won’t want to miss this—Michael and Batya are going to debate one another about tariffs.
Enjoy!
Michael Moynihan sits down with the journalist Haviv Rettig Gur, one of the sharpest minds on Middle East politics.
In this conversation, they unpack what’s going on in Syria, the root causes of tribal war and dysfunction across the Arab world, the ceasefire in Lebanon, what comes next in Gaza, the weakening of Iran, and what all of this means for Israel and the United States.
Today on The Free Press Live, FP reporter Olivia Reingold joins Michael Moynihan to discuss her recent reporting on the ongoing trial of Daniel Penny, including a viral minute-by-minute video of his fatal encounter with Jordan Neely released earlier this week.
Today on The Free Press Live, Batya Ungar-Sargon and The FP's Eli Lake debate the merits of Tulsi Gabbard as Trump's pick for DNI.
Today on The Free Press Live, Rep. Dan Crenshaw joins our hosts Michael Moynihan and Batya
Ungar-Sargon for what became a heated discussion on Trump's immigration plan, the war in Ukraine, and whether Congress should vote to ban their members from stock trading.
Peggy Noonan does what we try to do every day at The Free Press: tell the truth, make sense of things plainly and without pretension, frame the news in a way that helps the reader make sense of things, and put things in a historical context that gives the day-to-day depth and meaning.
The very annoying thing about Peggy Noonan is that she makes the thing that we know is so very hard look so very easy. And she does it week after week after week in The Wall Street Journal—which adds up to more than 400 columns over the last 25 years.
In her newest—and ninth—book, A Certain Idea of America, she collects 80 of her best columns published over the last eight years. Now, the idea that old newspaper columns might be good fodder for a book sort of seems like a weird idea, given that newspapers are most famous for being the next day’s fish wrapper. But somehow this book feels urgent and timeless. Which means that Peggy Noonan’s old columns are better than most people’s brand-new ones.
That’s probably because she knows a thing or two about rhetoric and American politics. She was a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan. She helped President George H.W. Bush get elected. She consulted for the TV show The West Wing.
In today’s conversation, we talk about how Peggy understands Trump’s win and the political revolution that we’re living through, what it feels like to lose in a values war, and what it feels like to defend things like civility and decency in 2024. We also talk about Trump’s appointments so far, Peggy’s first meeting with Trump, and how, despite our troubles, America remains a good and great country—and why it’s so important for young people to know that.
But what really happened?
For the first time, our exclusive compilation of bodycam and bystander footage reveals, minute-by-minute, the scene on that train.
Olivia Reingold is a writer for The Free Press. This video was produced and edited by Tanya Lukyanova. Jana Kozlowski was the executive producer. Read Olivia’s story, The Trials of Daniel Penny: thefp.com/p/daniel-penny-trial-jordan-neely-killed-subway
Support investigative journalism. Subscribe to The Free Press: https://thefp.pub/3LY0YKB
The rising body count of antisemitism has revealed the uncomfortable truth: The Old World is not coming back. Why is reality still catching us off guard?
On November 12th, Bari Weiss spoke to the General Assembly in Washington D.C., which is an annual convening of The Jewish Federations across North America. The point of the conference is to gather Jews with skin in the game and talk about the issues our community is facing. There was a lot to talk about this year.
Batya Ungar-Sargon explains why she believes—despite widespread claims from elites on the left and right—that it was not woke identity politics that propelled Trump to victory. It was his ability to speak to the real economic pain of working class Americans.
Read Dr. Vinay Prasad's full piece "A Simple Litmus Test for RFK Jr.’s Ideas" at The FP: https://thefp.pub/493txRJ
The FP’s Olivia Reingold has been closely following Daniel Penny’s trial and has obtained footage of his police interrogation.
In the video, Penny initially believes he’s there to report on the “lunatic” who was “threatening people” on the train. But as the questioning unfolds, it becomes clear that the officers don’t see him as a Good Samaritan—they see him as a criminal suspect.
Read the full piece: https://thefp.pub/4hQGv9n
Democrats’ post-election soul searching isn’t limited to the moderate crowd. In the wake of Donald Trump’s victory, “squad” member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Congresswoman representing parts of Queens and The Bronx, asked her Instagram followers if any of them voted for both her and Trump, and why.
Inspired by AOC’s solicitation of insight from split-ticket voters, our roving reporter Ben Kawaller recently spent an afternoon in and around Hunts Point, a Bronx neighborhood where Trump picked up around 25 percent of the vote (in 2020, his share was around 15 percent). He was looking for—and found!—Trump/AOC voters, as well as other residents who helped shed light on why among these black and Latino residents, the Democrats’ 2024 candidate didn’t do as well as the old white man they ran in 2020.
On Tuesday night, president-elect Donald Trump announced that the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, along with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy will head a new initiative in the Trump administration: the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE.”
Aside from the very strange fact that internet meme culture has now landed in the White House—Dogecoin is a memecoin—more importantly, what the announcement solidifies is the triumph of the counter-elite. A bunch of oddball outsiders ran against an insular band of out-of-touch elites supported by every celebrity in Hollywood—and they won. And they are about to reshape not just the government but also the culture in ways we can’t imagine.
And there was one person I wanted to discuss it with. He is the vanguard of those antiestablishment counter-elites: Peter Thiel.
On the surface, Thiel is someone who seems full of contradictions. He is a libertarian who has found common cause with nationalists and populists. He likes investing in companies that have the ability to become monopolies, and yet Trump’s White House wants to break up Big Tech. He is a gay American immigrant, but he hates identity politics and the culture wars. He pays people to drop out of college, but, in this conversation at least, still seems to venerate the way that the Ivy Leagues are an indicator of intelligence.
But perhaps that’s the secret to his success: He’s beholden to no tribe but himself, no ideology but his own.
Today: Thiel explains why so many of his peers have finally come around to Trump; why he thinks Kamala—and liberalism more broadly—lost the election; and why the Trump 2.0 team will be better than last time, with antiestablishment figures who are willing to rethink the system. We talk about the border, trade deals, student debt, Israel and foreign policy, the rise of historical revisionism, the blurry line between skepticism and conspiracy, and his contrarian ideas about what we might face in a dreaded World War III.
Today on The Free Press Live, Michael Moynihan and Batya Ungar-Sargon sit down with Teamsters president Sean O’Brien to discuss the significance of Trump’s victory in last week’s election—and how Democrats lost so much of their working class support.
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, more Free Pressers, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
Today on The Free Press Live, Michael Moynihan and Batya Ungar-Sargon interview Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the recent violence in Amsterdam directed toward Jewish residents—and what this disturbing event signals about ongoing trends in the West.
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
Read the full article: thefp.com/p/who-is-the-new-maga-coalition-trump-tik-tok
Abigail Shrier, Ana Kasparian, Andrew Yang, Vivek Ramaswamy, Anna Khachiyan, Ben Domenech, Brianna Wu, Coleman Hughes, Dasha Nekrasova, Eli Lake, Eliana Johnson, Frank Luntz, Frannie Block, Joe Nocera, John McWhorter, Kat Rosenfield, Kmele Foster, Konstantin Kisin, Marianne Williamson, Mark Halperin, Matthew Continetti, Matt Welch, Michael Shellenberger, Nancy Rommelmann, Nellie Bowles, Olivia Reingold, Olly Wiseman, Peter Savodnik, Rikki Schlott, Ritchie Torres, Ruy Teixeira, Salena Zito, Shane Smith, Jonathan Haidt, Nick Gillespie, Jed Rubenfeld, and Sohrab Ahmari!
So switch off Fox or MSNBC, and tune into The Free Press’s live election coverage on November 5, starting at 7 p.m. ET. Throw a party, grab some friends, and watch history unfold with us.
If there is one thing Iran and its militias fear more than the Israeli Air Force, it is ordinary citizens like Nadia who yearn for change and rise up to oppose their brutal rule.
Over the past year, the Center for Peace Communications, a New York nonprofit, interviewed Shi’ite opponents of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Sunni victims of Hezbollah in Syria, each of whom in their own way has fought back against the group’s depredations. At great personal risk, they let us record and film them bearing witness to the reality Hezbollah hides. To obscure the identity of these brave people, we have illustrated their stories with striking animation. The voices you hear, however, are theirs.
The result is Hezbollah’s Hostages, a Center for Peace Communications production which The Free Press presents exclusively to English-language audiences on successive Mondays.
© 2024 by the Center for Peace Communications. All rights reserved.
Though it shouldn’t be, to have a newsroom that reflects the politics of America has become extraordinarily unusual.
The people whose job it is to tell you about the world in all its complications and contradictions have the same view about almost every important issue in American life. At the Times, every columnist—even the conservatives—opposes Trump’s election.
The staff of The Free Press is split almost exactly three ways in this election: between Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and, well, neither (abstaining, writing in their preferred candidate, or remaining undecided). In other words, our editorial staff is mixed. Just like the country we write about.
At The Free Press, it’s okay to be liberal or conservative or politically nonbinary.
That’s because the fundamental value we share—with each other and with our readers—is a commitment to seeking and telling the truth, which allows us to disagree without disrespecting one another.
Become part of The Free Press today: https://thefp.pub/3LY0YKB
This is the final installment of our Swing State Debates. In the lead-up to the election, Ben Kawaller has embarked on a mission to mend America’s fractured political landscape, orchestrating provocative conversations among voters from different ends of the ideological spectrum.
Taking place in various swing states across the country, each episode focuses on a specific hot-button issue, unfolding as an unpredictable microcosm of America’s broader political drama.
Presented by the David Merage Foundation and @weareevokemedia.
Think for yourself. Subscribe to The Free Press today: https://thefp.pub/3LY0YKB
Coleman Hughes will be with us live and in person to explain how the Democrats rigged the vote on Puerto Rican statehood. Read his full piece in The Free Press: https://thefp.pub/3YM7Hyk
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, more Free Pressers, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
Think for yourself. Subscribe to The Free Press today: https://thefp.pub/3LY0YKB
The Free Press's Peter Savodnik discusses his recent investigation into both Flint, Michigan and East Palestine, Ohio, where residents are still struggling. Read his full piece in The FP: https://thefp.pub/4huk4Xe
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, more Free Pressers, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
Think for yourself. Subscribe to The Free Press today: https://thefp.pub/3LY0YKB
Investigative journalist Catherine Herridge joins to discuss her bombshell scoop on the IRS cover-up of Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020.
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, more Free Pressers, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
Think for yourself. Subscribe to The Free Press today: https://thefp.pub/3LY0YKB
Author Abigail Shrier breaks down her recent piece in The Free Press on the Kinderfada Revolution, a well-coordinated, national effort between teachers, activist organizations, and administrators to indoctrinate American children against Israel.
Read Abigail Shrier's piece in The Free Press: https://thefp.pub/4hma8iB
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, more Free Pressers, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
Think for yourself. Subscribe to The Free Press today: https://thefp.pub/3LY0YKB
Free Press founder Bari Weiss joins to discuss the media’s spin on President Joe Biden’s recent comments on Trump supporters.
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, more Free Pressers, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
This morning on The Free Press Live:
Join Michael Moynihan, Batya Ungar-Sargon, Bari Weiss, Abigail Shrier, Catherine Herridge, Coleman Hughes, and Peter Savodnik to help break down an unbelievable final week of the 2024 election.
Investigative journalist Catherine Herridge joins to discuss her bombshell scoop on the IRS cover-up of Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020.
Free Press founder Bari Weiss will discuss the media’s impressive attempts to spin President Joe Biden’s recent comments calling Trump supporters “garbage.”
Author Abigail Shrier will break down her recent piece in The Free Press on the Kinderfada Revolution, a well-coordinated, national effort between teachers, activist organizations, and administrators to indoctrinate American children against Israel.
Coleman Hughes will be with us live and in person to explain how the Democrats rigged the vote on Puerto Rican statehood.
And finally, The FP’s Peter Savodnik will discuss his recent investigation into East Palestine, Ohio, where residents still have not recovered from the Norfolk Southern train derailment in early 2023.
00:00 Bari Weiss: Media’s Biden Spin
17:15 Abigail Shrier: The “Kinderfada”
32:20 Catherine Herridge: DOJ Cover-Up
48:06 Coleman Hughes: Dems Rig Puerto Rico
1:02:35 Peter Savodnik: East Palestine
Think for yourself. Subscribe to The Free Press today: https://thefp.pub/3LY0YKB
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, more Free Pressers, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
Think for yourself. Subscribe to The Free Press today: https://thefp.pub/3LY0YKB
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, more Free Pressers, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
Think for yourself. Subscribe to The Free Press today: https://thefp.pub/3LY0YKB
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, more Free Pressers, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
Think for yourself. Subscribe to The Free Press today: https://thefp.pub/3LY0YKB
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, more Free Pressers, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
This morning on The Free Press Live:
Michael Moynihan and Batya Ungar-Sargon discuss which candidate is making a stronger appeal to voters in the final week of the election.
Then, they’ll be joined by FP reporter Frannie Block to discuss her recent piece on a controversy in Kentucky over school choice. Jay Solomon will discuss the curious case of Ariane Tabatabai—a senior Pentagon official who is facing scrutiny now that her past ties to Iran have come to light.
And last but not least, Michael and Batya will talk through their two biggest media fails of the week.
00:00 Trump vs. Kamala
19:03 Frannie Block on School Choice
32:01 Jay Solomon on Israel-Iran
42:00 Media Hypocrisy
On today’s episode of Swing State Debates, Ben Kawaller sits down with a politically diverse cross-section of Gen Z.
While it’s true that Gen Z skews Democratic in their party preference, they largely identify as moderates—just like the rest of us. And their resulting discussion here centered on gender, race, foreign policy, and the parties’ competing visions for our country’s future.
But more than any other conversation in this series, sitting down with the Gen Z voters of Michigan illuminated just how little we actually interact with arguments we disagree with.
Presented by the David Merage Foundation and @weareevokemedia.
00:00 Introductions
02:58 Democrats vs. Republicans
10:52 Bias in Education
17:30 Gender Gap
33:57 Sociology of Gen Z
39:14 Conforming to Political Culture
45:24 Foreign Policy
49:19 Views on the Future
We are just one week away from a presidential election that will decide if the next four years are helmed by Vice President Kamala Harris or former president Donald Trump, and many are still undecided. Some of them work at The Free Press.
So today, we are hosting a debate between two very smart people who represent each side of the choice that we are going to make a week from today.
Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, philosopher, best-selling author, and host of the podcast Making Sense. Today, he will explain why he is voting for Kamala Harris. On the other side, Ben Shapiro—lawyer, co-founder of The Daily Wire, best-selling author, and host of The Ben Shapiro Show—will explain why he is voting for Donald Trump.
Michael Moynihan addresses MSNBC's unhinged meltdown over Trump's rally in Madison Square Garden over the weekend.
The two outspoken women featured in today’s video describe the hope that drove what became known as the October 17 Revolution. They raised their voices and waved Lebanon’s flag in an atmosphere of heady idealism. Civilians came together across barriers of ethnicity and sect, and women gained prominence as protest leaders, demanding good governance and economic reform.
Hezbollah was not the primary target of their campaign, but it was Hezbollah enforcers who brutally attacked demonstrators while Lebanese police stood on the sidelines. Outside the country, foreign powers who said they were committed to a better future in Lebanon, made no attempt to assist the protesters. Hezbollah swiftly put a violent end to the dream.
Over the past year, the Center for Peace Communications, a New York nonprofit, interviewed Shi’ite opponents of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Sunni victims of Hezbollah in Syria, each of whom in their own way has fought back against the group’s depredations. At great personal risk, they let us record and film them bearing witness to the reality Hezbollah hides. To obscure the identity of these brave people, we have illustrated their stories with striking animation. The voices you hear, however, are theirs.
The result is Hezbollah’s Hostages, a Center for Peace Communications production which The Free Press presents exclusively to English-language audiences on successive Mondays.
© 2024 by the Center for Peace Communications. All rights reserved.
We don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that we’re standing at the precipice of what could be a third world war. It’s conventional wisdom that American voters don’t prioritize foreign policy. But this year, given the state of the world, that might be different. Which is why we hosted a debate, live in NYC, on this very topic: Should the U.S. still police the world?
Arguing that, yes, the U.S. should still police the world is Bret Stephens. Stephens is an opinion columnist for The New York Times and editor in chief of Sapir. As a foreign affairs columnist of The Wall Street Journal, he was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. And he is the author of America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder.
Bret was joined by James Kirchick, contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, writer at large for Air Mail, and contributing writer for Tablet. He is the author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age. He is also a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
Arguing that no, the U.S. should not still police the world is none other than Matt Taibbi. Taibbi is a journalist, the founder of Racket News, and the author of 10 books, including four New York Times bestsellers. Matt was joined by Lee Fang. Lee is an independent investigative journalist, primarily writing on Substack at LeeFang.com. From 2015 to 2023, he was a reporter for The Intercept.
Be it resolved: The U.S. should still police the world.
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Sean Patrick Cooper joins to discuss Black Lives Matter, remember them? BLM collected tens of millions of dollars in donations back in 2020. According to Sean’s reporting, that money was spent on lavish parties and luxury real estate.
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, more Free Pressers, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
Think for yourself. Subscribe to The Free Press today: https://thefp.pub/3LY0YKB
Michael Moynihan responds to revived attempts to claim that Trump is literally Hitler—and the United States is now once again on the cusp of falling into totalitarian fascism.
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, more Free Pressers, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
Think for yourself. Subscribe to The Free Press today: https://thefp.pub/3LY0YKB
The FP’s Olivia Reingold explains how The New York Times, NBC, Al Jazeera, and others have depended on a source in their coverage of the war in Gaza who is actually a Hamas-linked official.
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, more Free Pressers, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
Think for yourself. Subscribe to The Free Press today: https://thefp.pub/3LY0YKB
This morning on The Free Press Live, with Michael Moynihan, our very own TGIF queen Nellie Bowles joins to discuss Kamala’s recent CNN town hall and the continued fallout from Trump’s recent shift at McDonald’s.
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, more Free Pressers, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
This morning on The Free Press Live, with Michael Moynihan:
Our very own TGIF-queen Nellie Bowles joins to discuss Kamala's recent town hall with CNN and the continued fallout from Trump’s recent shift at McDonalds.
Then, The FP’s Olivia Reingold will explain how The New York Times, NBC, Al Jazeera, and others have depended on a source in their coverage of the war in Gaza who is actually a Hamas-linked official.
Next, Sean Patrick Cooper will share his recent reporting that the tens of millions of dollars raised by Black Lives Matter was spent on lavish parties and luxury real estate.
And more!
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Nellie Bowles!
20:48 Olivia Reingold on NYT Exposé
31:22 Sean Patrick Cooper on BLM
40:55 Trump Is Not Hitler
The eruption of antisemitism on the American left since October 7 is bound to have an effect in the voting booth. For all the anxiety over who the Muslims of Michigan will back come November, it could be the Jews of Pennsylvania who help swing the election. And who they will vote for is the question of this episode of The Swing State Debates.
In the lead-up to the election, Ben Kawaller embarks on a mission to mend America’s fractured political landscape, orchestrating provocative conversations among voters from different ends of the ideological spectrum. Taking place in various swing states across the country, each episode focuses on a specific hot-button issue, unfolding as an unpredictable microcosm of America’s broader political drama.
Presented by the David Merage Foundation and @weareevokemedia.
00:00 Introductions
03:00 Harris v. Trump
08:38 Antisemitism on the Left & Right
19:04 The Candidates on Israel
26:50 The Tree of Life Shooting & October 7th
32:06 Campus Protests
38:40 Jewish Values
44:16 American Foreign Policy
50:38 The Future of Israel
Think for yourself. Subscribe to The Free Press today: https://thefp.pub/3LY0YKB
Michael Moynihan and discuss vice president Harris's interview on Fox.
Tune in next week for another installment with Michael, Batya, more Free Pressers, and other friends of the show to help break down the most important news of the day.
Watch Funny You Should Mention with Mike Pesca here: youtu.be/a_dBXkep-L0


