Honestly with Bari Weiss

For the first time in almost a year, Bari is thrilled to host a live Free Press event, on October 1 in New York City. We’d love for you to join us.

Many of you will know the name Dr. Simon Sebag Montefiore. He’s a close friend of The Free Press, a renowned historian, and the author of multiple worldwide bestsellers, including Jerusalem: The Biography, The Romanovs, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, and, to be published this month, The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East.

That last book will be the subject of our urgent conversation. For two decades, the region it covers has shaped U.S. foreign policy and dominated American politics. If we listed all the conflicts, we’d be here all day. Of course, right now we have the ongoing war in Iran, with no end in sight.

Through it all, Simon argues, one truth endures: America’s quagmires in the Middle East stem from a deep misunderstanding of the region—on both the left and the right.

This is the subject of his brilliant new book, and you won’t want to miss us discussing it live. I hope you’ll join us. Tickets are available at TheFP.com/Events. Get them today before they sell out.
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Today, on our inaugural episode of Second Thought, Suzy Weiss sits down with one of the most influential people in YouTube’s history: Casey Neistat. Casey has millions of followers and billions of views to his name—and he saw early on that YouTube would change everything. It certainly changed his own life.

In this conversation, Casey talks about riding the wave of the YouTube tsunami, his love of old technology, and how his career illustrates Andy Warhol’s infamous prediction that “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Plus: the creative power of brothers, Lena Dunham, and who inherited the mantle of Jackass.

He also answers some harder questions: Has the rise of the creator economy and the parasocial relationships that came with it been a net positive? Is it possible to win the algorithm without exploiting your audience? Can artistic expression survive the onslaught of artificial intelligence? On all fronts, the man who saw around the corner of our last media revolution isn’t so sure.

Subscribe to Second Thought for new episodes every week.

Follow Suzy Weiss:

Twitter: https://x.com/SnoozyWeiss

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suzyisonline/

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Honestly is taking a pause. We’ll be back soon.
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This past year wasn’t easy—but it was certainly eventful. Donald Trump returned to the White House, issued a record number of executive orders, deployed the National Guard to American cities—like LA and D.C.—imposed sweeping tariffs on all our trading partners, gutted the government with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and unleashed a massive crackdown on immigration.

But that was only the beginning.

The administration also reached a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas—and all the living hostages came home from Gaza. Israel and the United States struck Iran’s nuclear sites. We got the first American pope. And we haven’t even started listing the pop-culture moments, like the Sydney Sweeney jeans ad, the Travis Kelce–Taylor Swift engagement, or when Lauren Sánchez Bezos and Katy Perry went to space. There was truly so much, and if we kept going we’d be here all day.

But this, after all, is a prediction episode. So what will 2026 bring?

Bari and Free Press deputy editor Olly Wiseman called up some friends of the pod—and experts in their fields—to get a better sense of what’s in store for the year ahead.

They spoke to political analyst and legal expert Sarah Isgur, who told them what to expect in Trump’s second year; to Suzy Weiss on the cultural calendar ahead; to linguist John McWhorter on how new words and language will evolve; to Dr. Mark Hyman on how to get healthier in 2026; to writer and fashionista Leandra Medine Cohen on fashion trends to watch for; and to historian Niall Ferguson on whether or not we’re right to have nightmares about World War III.
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It's Christmas Eve. A holiday celebrated by 2.4 billion people around the world, which centers on a 2,000-year-old story about a Jewish man born in Bethlehem who became a rabbi, who the Romans would later execute in Jerusalem. 

But what most people don’t know is that the first people who believed in Jesus did not think they were starting a new religion. They were a small group of Jews who thought of themselves as history's last generation, with Jesus as their Messiah.

Of course, as we all know now, they were not history’s last generation. Instead, they became history's first Christians. How did that happen? When did Christ's followers begin to see themselves as distinct and separate from Judaism? Why did some Jews refuse to accept Christ as the Messiah? And how was that refusal, and the anti-Judaism of the early Christians, directly connected to the antisemitism burning across the globe today?

These first few centuries are essential for understanding not just Christianity and Judaism, but the way ideas spread, and why many of the ideas of this period—good ones, and also some very bad ones—still persist in our world today.

My guest today, Paula Fredriksen, has spent her career studying this period of history. She is one of the world’s leading scholars of early Christianity and the author of many books including: When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle, and Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years. 

Paula was born in Rhode Island and now lives in Jerusalem, just 20 minutes from Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified.  

This conversation is a Christmas special you won’t want to miss.

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