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Two years ago, in the wake of burgeoning antisemitism after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, Elise Stefanik sat across from the presidents of Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania and asked them a simple question: Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your university’s code of conduct? Their non-answers…

Over the next four weeks, I’m hosting a video series called What Should Smart People Think About UFOs? As the conversation around UFOs has moved from the fringes of conspiracy culture into serious discussion, including at the highest levels of government, I want to speak with experts who have devoted real attention to the subject, to make sense of what …

Late last night, the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire. But the first day has already proven rocky: Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel all reported missile and drone attacks from Iran; Israel carried out major air strikes against Hezbollah, raising questions about whether Lebanon is included in the ceasefire; and Ira…

On Wednesday night, President Trump delivered a 19-minute address on Iran. As expected, he stressed his accomplishments: “In these past four weeks, our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield. . . . Iran’s navy is gone. Their air force is in ruins. Their leaders, most of them. . . are now dead.” And he issu…

Most people have heard of Scientology, but have a limited understanding of what it really is. To many, it just seems wacky–associated with Tom Cruise jumping on a couch, and science fiction books staged as religious texts. But in preparing for my conversation with Claire Headley, who was born into Scientology and rose to a high-ranking position under leader David Miscavige, I was shocked by the depths of the abuses she endured. Under the control of the “church,” Claire was separated from her parents, subjected to brutal work conditions, indoctrinated into total obedience, and even, horrifically, forced to have an abortion. In Confessions, I sit down with people who have changed their minds to understand what it takes to confront closely held beliefs and pursue true ideological honesty. It’s hard to fathom the courage Claire needed to decide that everything she had known since birth was wrong, and to escape the church with her husband over two decades ago. We discuss her journey to leaving Scientology, how even as a child she sensed that something was wrong, why she decided to sign a billion-year contract with the elite Sea Organization religious order at age 16, and the disturbing patterns of abuse she witnessed at the highest levels of the church that eventually helped her change her mind. We also talk about why––even as people learn the cruel nature of Scientology––it’s remained largely unscathed in the court of law and accepted by Hollywood elites. Though Scientology continues to harass her family, Claire finally feels free—and she has an urgent message for anyone still trapped inside organizations that brainwash, abuse, and surveil.

This week, I sat down with one of the founders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Mohsen Sazegara has witnessed nearly every phase of the modern-day Iranian regime—from the inside. In 1978, at the age of just 23, he was one of Ruhollah Khomeini’s closest aides and advisers, helping plan the final stages of the Iranian Revolution from Khomeini’s commune in Paris. He was then aboard the historic flight that brought Khomeini back to power in Iran after 15 years in exile. After the revolution, Sazegara helped establish the IRGC and held a number of positions in the new government. Then things began to unravel. He was first arrested in 1984 after being falsely accused of involvement in a bombing at the prime minister’s office. Sazegara was held for just 24 hours, during which he heard a guard shout, “Take her to be lashed,” as a young woman in the prison began to cry. The experience shocked him. He raised his concerns with Khomeini, but they fell on deaf ears. It all led Sazegara to revisit the writings of the revolution’s founders and become disillusioned with their ideas. Then his life transformed. He left the government, tried to run for president (but was barred), called for a constitutional referendum, spoke at more than 50 universities in Iran, staged sit-ins, and published critiques of the regime in newspapers and magazines—all in an effort to reform the system. For speaking out, he was thrown in prison multiple times. After his release, Sazegara went into exile—and later advised Iranian activists on how to respond to the Revolutionary Guard during the 2009 Green Movement. Few people have had such an intimate view of a regime that continues to fascinate and horrify the world. And few people have had such a dramatic and consequential change of heart. Today, I ask Sazegara: When did he first feel disillusioned with the revolution he helped bring to life? Why did he decide to speak out against the regime? Why did the 1979 Iranian Revolution fail to deliver on its promises of freedom and democracy? Does he regret his role in building the IRGC? And, as the current war in Iran rages on, what would it take to bring down the regime?

Mass migration. Net-zero carbon goals. Expansive welfare states. Identity politics. Limited defense spending. Throughout the 2010s, all these policies became causes du jour across the European continent. It was an intellectual mood captured by three famous words from former German chancellor Angela Merkel: wir shaffen das roughly meaning “we can handle…

For 50 years, Dennis Prager, one of the most important and influential conservative thinkers of the 21st century, has made a single core argument: Without God, there is no good and evil—only opinion. He advanced it on the radio, in five volumes of biblical commentary, in more than a dozen books on religion, morality, and the foundations of Western civil…

Since the start of the Iran-Israel-U.S. war, there has been reasonable criticism of how the war is being conducted as well as questions about the clarity—and viability—of its end goals. At The Free Press, we have published a range of voices reflecting many sides of that debate. Then there are the people who take it a step too far. Conspiracy theorists have spiraled on both the far right and far left—in some cases, bleeding into overt antisemitism or apologism for the Iranian regime. Take far-right influencer Nick Fuentes: There is “very little upside for Americans and for the United States. As we know, the upside all belongs to Israel. The risk is ours. Blowback, collateral damage, loss of life: That’s ours. That belongs to us. And it’s really looking like we’re being drawn further and further.” Of President Donald Trump, he said: “You are a demonic force. You are a liar. You are diabolical. You are a traitor.” Tucker Carlson has suggested that the Chabad movement, one of the largest Jewish organizations in the world, is helping orchestrate the military campaign against Iran. Meanwhile, on the left, responses have ranged from a popular TikToker composing a ballad for Mojtaba Khamenei—the new Supreme Leader of Iran—to a Students for Justice in Palestine account glorifying an Iranian strike on a U.S. Navy base, to widespread “Hands Off Iran” protests where people are filmed shouting, “The biggest threats in the world today are Israel and the USA.” How has anti-war sentiment on both extremes of the political spectrum morphed into pro-regime propaganda, anti-Americanism, and antisemitism? Elica Le Bon is an Iranian attorney and activist. She explains how the far right and far left found common cause, and how this convergence is shaping the global information war around Iran. She also discusses the privilege of living in a liberal democracy, how that can cloud people’s judgment about dictatorial regimes, and the risks of a scenario in which the regime is weakened but ultimately remains intact.

On Saturday, the United States and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and at least 40 Iranian leaders. Iran is now retaliating against American allies and military assets in a counteroffensive that has killed at least six American service members. In the days since, social media has filled with a single narrative: Israel dragged the United States into a misbegotten war to serve Israeli interests. But Free Press Middle East analyst Haviv Rettig Gur sees it differently. “For years, Iran has funded terrorism, harassed global shipping, threatened America’s allies, and kept the Middle East expensive and unstable,” he wrote in The Free Press. But that’s not all. According to Gur, this war is also about China. Here’s what he means: About 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports go to China, helping Beijing build large oil reserves that could keep its economy running during a naval blockade. China, Russia, and Iran have also held joint naval exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important oil choke points. And Iran’s navy, missile sites, and coastal bases could threaten American ships and global shipping lanes in the event of a wider conflict. In Gur’s view, Iran functions, for China, as an energy supplier, a military outpost, a naval threat to U.S. forces, and a lever over global oil supplies. And in a conflict between the United States and China, Iran would be a critical partner for Beijing. Haviv breaks down how Iran made itself China’s most important ally in the Middle East, how the two countries have become economically and strategically intertwined, why that is so dangerous for the United States, and why—at its core—this isn’t only Israel’s war. It’s America’s.

In the past 15 years, the consensus on marijuana has changed dramatically. After Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize weed in 2012, others quickly followed suit—and marijuana is now legal for recreational use in 24 of the 50 states. With widespread legalization, the stigma that surrounded weed has largely fallen away. Almost overni…

Sex shows up everywhere in American culture. Think: the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders; popular sex icons from Madonna and Britney Spears to Tate McRae and Sabrina Carpenter; the 75-foot Calvin Klein billboard on Houston Street in New York; the millions of “thirst traps” flooding social media; and popular TV shows, from Sex and the City to Heated Rivalry. Don’t get me wrong—I love both shows. But the point is, sex, hypersexualization, and eroticism are inescapable. And yet, despite living in the most sex-saturated culture in history, people are having less of it. Among millennials and Gen Z, one in three men and one in five women report not having had sex in the past year. Among men in this age group, sexual inactivity has almost doubled since the early 2000s. But why? For an answer, I turned to Dr. Debra Soh, a neuroscientist and sex researcher, and the author of the new book Sextinction: The Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy. In the book, she attributes the decline of sexual activity to forces like dating apps, social media, polyamory, the economic and social challenges facing young men, hormone-disrupting chemicals lowering testosterone, fewer Americans having committed partners . . . and the list goes on. In short, our modern world has produced a sex recession. Filling this vacuum, Soh says, are artificial proxies for intimacy, ranging from the fairly standard—OnlyFans and parasocial relationships—to the bizarre: AI sex companions and high-tech sex robots, some costing upward of $100,000, with the ability to vocalize an orgasm in multiple languages . . . who knew! So what is the future of sex? How is this environment distorting marriage and families? Is true intimacy possible without another human being? Are all of these techno-fixes solving a problem or enabling it? And how do we bring back real relationships?

Taylor Fogarty once made $15,000 a month for making content on OnlyFans. She was a self-described “degenerate” party girl in Brooklyn—drinking, doing drugs, dating women, drifting between identities, and eventually signing up for sugar-daddy websites because, as she tells it, “It just felt normal.” Sex work was empowering, she was told. Men were going to…

Before I met my colleague Lucy Biggers, she was an activist fighting to ban plastic straws and posing with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg. In today’s episode of Confessions, Lucy tells us about how she became an activist who built a huge following making videos about the dangers of climate change. In her time in the movement, Lucy protested the Dakota Access Pipeline, pushed for the Green New Deal to be passed, and advocated for a ban on plastic straws. Fast-forward to now, and Lucy describes herself as a climate realist. She doesn’t think the world is going to implode because the Earth is heating up, and she definitely doesn’t think paper straws are going to save us. In our conversation, we talk about the moment Lucy started to question the climate science orthodoxy, what it took to walk away from the cause she was so involved in, and what the science tells us now about climate change.

For much of the past decade, parents of children distressed about their gender were asked by medical providers: “Would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son?” Parents and communities were told it was their responsibility to affirm the identity of every child who said they were transgender and help secure a medical treatment plan. A wave of childr…