This episode actually just started off as an interview for the purposes of my reporting on drugs and homelessness. In fact, I wasn't really planning on doing more episodes of this podcast at all. But the conversation I had with recovering addict Jared Klickstein was so fascinating, and I learned so much, that with his permission, I decided to share it. I hope you find it as intriguing and eye-opening as I did. You can follow Jared, by the way, on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MetaGrift....

Suzy Weiss has fast become one of my favorite reporters. Her latest story, on her sister Bari’s Substack, about a baseless #MeToo accusation that got totally out of control, is a doozy. So is her recent reporting on trans swimmer Lea Thomas and on youth gender transition. I had a fun chat with Suzy about each of those stories on my podcast. Hope you’ll give it a listen. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit...

Ethan Strauss, who substacks at House of Strauss, is the author of The Victory Machine, a book about the Golden State Warriors. We talked a little bit about professional sports in this episode — specifically, about the wokeness of the NBA — but mostly we just yakked about whatever came up, which included Elon Musk and Twitter, cancel culture, Tucker Carlson, Black Lives Matter, and the Group Chat. You can read Ethan’s post on the Group Chat here: This is a public episode. If you’d like to...

Zion Lights was a spokesperson for the radical climate change activist group Extinction Rebellion until she realized that it wasn’t enough just to make people panic about the end of the world — you also had to point them to solutions. To the extent that there is a “solution” to climate change, it’s nuclear energy. And yet it’s verboten in some parts of the environmental movement to talk about it. We’re not just in a climate crisis; we’re also in an energy emergency. It’s more important than...

We’re currently teetering on the edge of a world historical mass global famine. The United Nations Security Council has acknowledged as much, as have political leaders in France and the US. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a key factor in the looming catastrophe, but there are other contributors, as well. Those include surging natural gas prices driven by years of misplaced faith in the promise of renewable energy technologies, global supply chain disruptions, and drought in the American...

The Russian invasion of Ukraine feels a bit like something out of another century. It’s not just that it’s a land war in Europe, reminiscent of the mechanized industrial era. It’s that Russia’s casus belli is the opposite of strategic; Putin’s war aims seem mythical and weirdly ancient. Beneath the proximate causes, such as NATO expansion (if you’re even willing to believe that’s anything more than an excuse), lies a vision of Russia as a fallen and now resurgent imperial power, and Ukraine...

Happy New Year! Last month, my friend Razib Khan had me on his podcast, Unsupervised Learning. I highly recommend subscribing to it. It was a great conversation as it always is with Razib, so I thought I’d share it here. Enjoy. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/subscribe

This week I have Catherine Liu on the podcast, Professor of Film & Media Studies at UC Irvine and author of Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class. We had a great conversation about the PMC. Hope you enjoy it and learn a thing or two. —LW This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/subscribe

I met Mike Cernovich a few years ago when I was making a documentary based on Angela Nagle’s book, Kill All Normies. Back then I had the same impression of him that you likely did, and that you probably still do: I thought he was a Trump-loving, men’s rights-touting, right wing troll. But after chatting with him, I liked him anyway. Mike was thoughtful, honest, candid, reasonable, self-disparaging, and fair-minded. I’d read the New Yorker profile of him. I’d seen the tweets and heard the...

A little while back I had this conversation with my old podcast partner Shant Mesrobian when we were both guests on my friend Wayne Hsiung’s podcast, The Green Pill. I think the discussion was really fun and interesting so I wanted to share it here. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. —LW This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/subscribe

Last week I interviewed Alex Gutentag, a former Oakland public school teacher and, in my opinion, one of the best writers on Covid-19 around. Like me, Alex comes from a leftist background rooted in the labor movement, and, like me, she’s become highly skeptical of much of what has become conventional wisdom on the left. In her case, the source of her skepticism is what she believes to be a massive overreaction to Covid, which has come at the cost of our civil liberties and from which some of...

This week on the podcast, I had Kmele Foster from The Fifth Column, Anna Khachiyan from Red Scare, and The Intercept’s Lee Fang on to talk about vaccine mandates and what they may or may not suggest about the future of our civilization. If you’re enjoying the pod, please consider leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! I’m told it actually makes a difference. —LW This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/subscribe

Justin Goodman, my guest on this episode of the Kerfuffle podcast, is Vice President of the White Coat Waste Project, a group that opposes taxpayer-funded scientific experimentation on animals. I’ve been a huge admirer of Justin and White Coat Waste for a long time, for reasons we get into in this episode. Our discussion is about animal rights, an issue I care about more deeply than just about any other. But we get into other subjects as well, which recent circumstances have made relevant to...

My podcast guest this week is a lung doctor and a medical research scientist whom I’ve known since we were both little kids. Katie Hisert, MD, PhD, has an even wider scope than most experts on how microbes like SARS-CoV-2 virus operate, having observed them both from the hospital bedside and in the laboratory. Media reports on Covid-19 have become so politicized that I’ve found it nearly impossible to find reliable answers to basic questions about transmissibility, what’s known and unknown...

This is an unlocked paid subscribers-only post. On the podcast this week I have Matt Taibbi, legendary reporter and author of the outstanding book (among many) Hate, Inc., which is about a lot of the media-related issues I touch on in this Substack. This episode was exclusive to paid subscribers for about a week, and is now unlocked for everyone. —LW This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/subscribe

This is an unlocked subscribers-only post. Here’s Episode 3 of my new podcast, with guest Katie Herzog, co-host of the podcast Blocked and Reported. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading Katie’s reporting on how wokeness is impacting the medical field, over at Bari Weiss’ Substack. Here are some links: For a week, this episode will be for paid subscribers only. Then I’ll release it to the rest of the world. Hope you enjoy it, and if you have any feedback for me or guest...

Here’s the second episode of my new podcast. My guest is journalist Zaid Jilani. Zaid is a good friend of mine. He’s also my former podcasting co-host. We have a lot of interests in common, but perhaps chief among them is the issue of crime and policing. As you’ll learn from this conversation, we both share a deep skepticism of the Defund the Police agenda. We talk about why here. Each episode of this show is available only to paying subscribers to my Substack for about a week before it goes...

Welcome to the debut episode of my new podcast. I decided to start this show because I have the privilege of knowing a lot of brilliant people, and I figure anyone who’s interested in my thoughts will be interested in theirs, too. This is a way to share their perspectives with you. I’m incredibly excited to see where this project goes, and I hope you’ll share some of that excitement, too. My first guest is my friend and collaborator Glenn Greenwald. We talk about the media industry, its...