Honestly with Bari Weiss

Last week I had the privilege of sitting down with one of the foremost historians of our time, Simon Sebag Montefiore. As I write this, his work has never felt more urgent.

“We’re in a new world of counterhistory,” he said recently. “A new world of counterhistory where neither historical facts nor present-time facts matter if they don’t fit the ideological orthodoxy.”

It is “our responsibility as historians,” he said, “to stand up and be unafraid to contradict conventional wisdom, surging conspiracies, witch hunts, purity tests, pile-ons that are used to crush debate . . . and to say persuasively, ‘This is what happened.’ ”

And that is what he does in his brilliant new book, The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East.

But don’t worry. This is Sebag. I promise you this is not some serious, dry textbook. There is a chapter in his book called “Fat Fucker” (which was the CIA’s code name for King Farouk of Egypt). You will learn in his pages that a Palestine Liberation Organization terrorist was married to a Miss Universe. That Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and President John F. Kennedy were both johns at Madame Claude’s Parisian brothel. And that Saddam Hussein was raised by an uncle who wrote a pamphlet titled “Three Whom God Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews, and Flies.” Okay, maybe that last one was predictable.

Sebag has said that this book is the hardest he has ever written, and is a subject that only someone “bonkers” would tackle. Bonkers or brilliant or both: You’ll decide.

Sebag is, of course, the author of over a dozen other books such as Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, The Romanovs, and Catherine the Great & Potemkin, which are essential to understanding power, politics, revolution, dictatorships, and above all, human nature.

I asked him how he makes sense of the fight within Islam itself, why we’re so fixated on this region, whether the Middle East’s plight is the product of Western intervention or the choices of its own leaders, how the Gulf States came to ally with Israel and Iran with China and Russia, who is winning the current war, and much more.

I am so thrilled to share the conversation I had with him—live—in NYC.
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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.

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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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