David Volodzko speaks with terrorism expert Jonathan Schanzer about terrorism funding, the efficacy of sanctions, the Iranian regime and Hamas funding, the Israel-Hamas War, the Russo-Ukraine War, China’s potential invasion of Taiwan, and more. Jonathan Schanzer (website, X) is senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and host of the FDD Morning Brief, where he covers the latest news from the Middle East. Schanzer is also a former terrorism finance...

David Volodzko talks with Alexander von Sternberg about Amin al-Husseini, the Nazi godfather of Palestinian nationalism, his early life, his embrace of Nazism, his efforts to send Jewish children to death camps, his legacy since then, and his place in the Palestinian movement today. Von Sternberg is the host of the historical podcast History Impossible. He’s also a writer whose essays and reviews have been published in a number of publications including Queer Majority, Quillette, Merion West,...

David Volodzko speaks with Adam Coleman about fatherlessness in the black community, the insecurity of trans activists, white supremacist logic, the harm of victim mentality, what makes a good marriage, the psychology of happiness, the meaning of life, finding God, the search for purpose, what true empowerment looks like, the hidden value of suffering, and connecting with others. Coleman (X) is the author of “Black Victim to Black Victor,” the founder of Wrong Speak Publishing, author of the...

David Volodzko speaks with Jeff Booth about the nature of inflation, the inevitability of Bitcoin, why other cryptocurrencies are inferior, Bitcoin’s volatility, common criticisms of Bitcoin, global adoption, the possibility of a Bitcoin standard, the social benefits of Bitcoin, and more. Jeff Booth is a tech entrepreneur, founding partner of the Bitcoin venture fund ego death capital, co-founder of addy, giving the public exposure in Canadian real estate, and author of The Price of Tomorrow:...

In this episode, David Volodzko discusses some of the medical questions surrounding the controversial Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, whether Khelif is trans, and what’s ultimately missing from the debate. Near the end, David references his recent essay on the subject, Raging B******t, in which he argues that Khelif’s recent victory against Italian boxer Angela Carini was unjust. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes,...

David Volodzko speaks with Barrington Martin II about Covid, the U.S. presidential election, President Biden’s mental state, the attempted assassination of former President Trump, the danger of political drama, racism in America, cancel culture, calming our political monkey mind, inconvenient truths about slavery, the marketplace of ideas, freedom of speech, the transition to the right of many young black American men, and more. Barrington (X) is a philosopher, writer, host of The Barrington...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theradicalist.com David Volodzko speaks with Ayaan Hirsi Ali about her new Substack project Restoration, the September 11 attacks, her father’s influence on her views, whether Islam can be reformed, the importance of Saudi Arabia’s political shift, what it would take for the West to win its conflict with subversive powers such as Islamism and Marxism, her conversion to C…

A shorter version of this essay was originally published as a Substack Note. If Trump wins, it will be because he has an immovable base. There’s nothing he can say to repulse them. At a campaign rally in January 2016, he claimed, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” If Trump wins, it will be because he’s actually funny sometimes. Elizabeth Warren is a Methodist white woman from Massachusetts who tried to prove she is Cherokee with a DNA...

David Volodzko speaks with Rio Veradonir about an Enlightenment-based liberal approach to gay rights as opposed to the extremism that characterizes so much activism today, neo-Marxist social justice warriors, the liberal solution to trans athletes and sexual displays at Pride festivals, the strategic mistake Democrats are making in highlighting certain concerns, the misconception that Pride is just for gay people, the importance of the gay community in having a positive relationship with...

The socialist magazine Jacobin embarrassed itself this week by claiming the new miniseries Shōgun “shows something rarely seen on screen: the shocking hubris of the colonizer and dehumanization of the colonized.” Social media had a field day with this because, as we all know, Japan was not only never colonized but was one of history biggest colonizers. A friend asked me, why was Japan never colonized? Here’s my answer. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other...

David Volodzko speaks with Doug Klain (website, X), a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, where he focuses on Russia’s war on Ukraine. He is the former assistant director of the Eurasia Center and currently a policy analyst at the nonprofit Razom for Ukraine. The conversation covers the recent German military leak and what was actually said, the kinds of weapons Ukraine needs, the general state of the war, the impact of U.S. politics, Ukrainian grain exports, a...

David Volodzko speaks with Stefan Tompson, the founder of Visegrád 24, which aggregates and curates news and current affairs on various social media platforms including X, where it currently has over 900,000 followers. The conversation covers disinformation on social media, the Israel-Hamas War, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, TikTok as a Chinese psyop, the West’s enemies within, the origins of woke progressivism, the glories of Western civilization, the importance of civil discourse,...

Arash Azizi reacted to my recent essay, The Case for Colonizing Gaza, by responding to a troll who had called the essay “blatantly racist,” to which Arash Azizi replied, “It’s not just racist but outright fascist.” There is nothing racist or fascist about it, any more than there was about the U.S. occupation of Germany since that is precisely what I am recommending. Moreover, when he was a guest on this show, he commiserated with me as I described my anguish over the suffering in the...

David Volodzko speaks with David Brin about comet dust formation, anti-institutionalism in Hollywood, how science-fiction has saved humanity, the moral philosophy of Star Trek, how tolerance and diversity have metastasized into a cancer, the infantile nihilism of Star Wars, how AI may buttress authoritarianism, the sinister laws of Wall Street AI, the existence of alien life, his recent WIRED article on AI, his Newsweek article on “empathy bots,” and much more. David Brin (website, X) is an...

Jonathan Choe (profile, X) is a journalist and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center of Wealth and Poverty, where he focuses on the homelessness crisis in Seattle. In our conversation, we talked about Korea, his family life, his firing from KOMO for covering a Proud Boys rally, the pattern of news outlets caving to radical leftists by firing their own journalists, crime in Seattle and the failure of “defund the police,” Seattle’s stalled revitalization efforts, the...

Ryan Ruffaner (Substack, YouTube) is an industrial-organizational psychologist specializing in organizational development and selection systems. He is also a member of the Committee for the Advancement of Professional Ethics (CAPE) in the Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychologists (SIOP), a DEI researcher, and a member of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). His writing on DEI includes the Quillette essay “Ditching Diversity Myths” and Substack essays such as “DEI...

Ramesh Sepehrrad is an Iranian-American international relations and conflict resolutions expert who is also the advisory board chair of the Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC), a D.C.-based non-profit with 40 chapters nationwide. She is also an adjunct professor of Middle East studies at the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore. During our conversation, we discussed Iran’s influence behind October 7, what the U.S. has done right and done...

Christine Abely is the author of the new book The Russia Sanctions: The Economic Response to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine. She is also an assistant professor of contracts and international business transactions at New England Law. Abely (website, university profile, X) formerly worked at several Massachusetts law firms in business litigation and international trade and sanctions law and was an adjunct lecturer at Boston University School of Law. She has written in the areas of compliance,...

Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware are the authors of God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America. Hoffman is a senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations and has been studying terrorism and insurgency for almost half a century. He is a professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, professor emeritus of terrorism at the University of St. Andrews, and the former corporate chair in counterterrorism at RAND...

Julie Behling was a Christian missionary in Russia in the late 1990s. She earned a dual master’s in Russian languages and literature as well as Russian and East European studies at Florida State University, working on the side as a Russian language teacher. She wrote her thesis on the survival tactics of underground Christian movements in the Soviet Union. In 2022, she published her book, Beneath Sheep’s Clothing: The Communist Takeover of Culture in the USSR & Parallels in Today’s...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit volodzko.substack.com Sam Nara is the author of the book Woke Palestinian Idiot. He lives in the West Bank and has come to understand both sides of the current conflict with more depth and good faith than most people ever will. In this conversation, we discuss how most Palestinians now believe October 7 did not happen, the unparalleled levels of racism in Arab culture, Al Jaz…

Wilfred Reilly is an associate professor of political science at Kentucky State University who is known for fighting dogma with data. His 2019 book Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War, looked at a dataset of 409 allegedly false hate crimes and found that a substantial percentage are hoaxes, such as the Jussie Smollett case. His 2020 book Taboo: 10 Facts [You Can’t Talk About] reviews facts about race, gender, and class that have become taboo in American society. His...

Elizabeth Spalding is the chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) and founding director of the Victims of Communism Museum. She teaches U.S. foreign policy and national security at Pepperdine University and at Hillsdale College, and she is the author of The First Cold Warrior: Harry Truman, Containment, and the Remaking of Liberal Internationalism and co-author with her father Lee Edwards of A Brief History of the Cold War. In this conversation, we discuss North Korea,...

This letter is a response to Benjamin Carlson, the author of the newsletter The Carlson Letter, the former executive editor of The Atlantic and former China correspondent for AFP. His work has also appeared in The New Republic, Esquire, and Rolling Stone, and he was my colleague at GlobalPost. I contacted Ben with the idea of a letter exchange and he selected the topic. Before reading my response below, I suggest starting with his initial letter. This is a public episode. If you’d like to...