On this episode of High Noon: After Dark, Emily and Inez discuss Russell Brand and how evaluating MeToo accusations has become impossible without participating in a politically charged humiliation ritual. They also chat about the announced Newsom v. DeSantis debate and how it might be more connected to the choices Americans face than our ostensible national politics. Also, Inez rants about WWII historical ignorance in the USA.

James Hasson, an army captain and Afghanistan veteran who participated in independent evacuation efforts in the 2021 withdrawal, and Jerry Dunleavy, an investigative reporter who now continues that job as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee (although he speaks here in a private capacity), have written a tough but necessary exposé about America’s disastrous withdrawal and evacuation from Kabul, Afghanistan. Hasson and Dunleavy lay out unforgivable mistake after mistake and betrayal after betrayal by the Biden administration and top brass of the military of heroic servicemembers placed in an impossible position by their leaders. Stepman also talks to them about the damage that has been done on the global stage by the failed operation and about the so-far elusive possibility of accountability.

Andrew Hartz is a practicing clinical psychologist and the founder of the Open Therapy Institute. Andrew and Inez discuss how woke ideology is encouraging therapists to violate their professional obligations to patients and making them unable to work with the majority of Americans. Andrew also parries some of Inez’s objections to therapy as a concept, and the two discuss what negative psychological tendencies are encouraged by the culture.

Emily Jashinsky rejoins the High Noon pod at the end of each month. This month, the ladies discuss the Tucker Carlson Trump interview and what it says about new media, then move on to talking about what qualities a good society ought to look for when selecting an elite. Compared to past American elite families, they find our current credentialed class wanting. Finally, they discuss ongoing media dereliction of duty in covering the fire disaster in Lahaina.

 

Tony Kinnett of The Daily Signal has been reporting from Maui, where a devastating fire has officially claimed the lives of 116, but local estimates put the number of lives lost at over 1000. Tony shares what he’s seen in and around Lahaina, what those affected need from the rest of the country, and what next steps are necessary to hold people accountable for unforgivable mistakes that may have cost lives. 

IWF’s own Hadley Heath Manning joins High Noon podcast to talk about an essay she wrote for The New York Times about the birth control pill and sexual revolution. Her voice joins others’ on the Left and Right in expressing some of the downsides with which easy contraceptives and lax sexual mores have left women. Hadley and Inez also discuss hypernovelty and whether our culture can keep up with evolving technologies, and why sexual activity as a whole has declined among Gen Z.

Christopher Rufo rejoins High Noon podcast to discuss his new bestselling book, America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Left Conquered Everything. Chris and Inez talk about which explanation for the roots of wokeness makes the most sense and how to recapture institutional power. They also answer a few of Rufo’s critics on the Left and Right.

Emily Jashinsky is back for another docket episode. The ladies discuss whether independent media is finally breaking through, what the affirmative action SCOTUS decision is doing to the corporate DEI industry, the new trend of retiring the girlboss life for Lazy Girl Jobs, and of course, Barbenheimer.

Delano Squires is a Research Fellow at the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation. He joins High Noon to talk about fatherhood in our culture, the sex wars and who is to blame for them, and why he has a different view about restoring masculinity than the online manosphere.

 

Jennifer Braceras of Independent Women’s Law Center joins High Noon podcast to discuss the blockbuster Supreme Court term and how the headlines are getting a lot of the cases wrong. Inez and Jennifer talk through the legal and political issues involved in the court striking down racial preferences in admissions, upholding freedom of speech for small businesses, and enforcing separation of powers in Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. They close by confronting multiple attacks on the legitimacy of the court from the Left, now that conservatives hold a majority, from court packing to fake “corruption” narratives.

On this episode of High Noon: After Dark, Emily and Inez kick it off by talking about America’s two indicted and/or indictable front runners for 2024, and then move on to putting the bow on the Pride backlash. The ladies also discuss why the number of high schoolers answering yes to the question “I do not enjoy life” is skyrocketing.

This week, Paula Scanlan, college athlete and former teammate of Lia Thomas, speaks out about what it was like for the girls competing alongside and sharing a pool and locker room with a man. Paula and Inez also discuss the psychological effects of the silencing tactics used by institutions that refuse to acknowledge even the most obvious truths about sex differences.

Alexis Carré is the 2022-23 Thomas W. Smith Postdoctoral Research Associate of the James Madison Program at Princeton University. His work deals with war and liberal democracy, and both are exactly what he joins the High Noon pod to talk about. Carré explains how, far from being too polarized, our politics have gotten too far away from the natural consequences of disagreement between citizens, and how the degradation of our discourse is more like dogs barking at each other from behind a fence than true enmity. Alexis and Inez also discuss how liberalism and mass democracy cannot evade fundamental and classical questions of governance forever.

Emily and Inez (reluctantly) talk through the latest in the 2024 race and what sort of primary competition mud-slinging could be good vs. bad for the Right. They discuss how the prophetic Christian Right called the slippery slope in advance, and how a new culture war coalition ought to mediate between that faction and newly-arrived moderates who believe there’s a hard break between social liberalism and wokeness. The ladies close the episode by exploring the balance between tolerance and celebration, and discuss whether that’s a balance that can hold over time.

Reverend Hans Fiene is a Lutheran pastor, host of the channel Lutheran Satire, and a contributor to The Federalist. Hans and Inez wade through their sometimes-similar and sometimes-different perspectives on Christian nationalism, the role of religion in the public square and affairs of state, wokeness as religion, “new atheism,” therapeutism vs. theology, suffering, and more.

Gail Heriot, professor at University of San Diego School of Law and commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, joins the podcast to explain how legal changes made to the Civil Rights Act in the 1990s forced radical politics and easy offense out of academia and directly into corporate America. Gail convincingly explains how concepts like microaggressions, racial identity politics, and respecting the 87 genders took off in the ’90s thanks to a combination of malincentives written into the law, bad court decisions, and a hefty dose of private sector CYA. She gives Inez an alternative explanation for the origins and timeline of wokeness.

This week, Ted Frank joins the podcast. Frank is the director of litigation at the conservative public-interest law firm he founded, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, and has argued and won cases in front of the Supreme Court as well as several federal courts of appeals.

 

Heather Mac Donald rejoins High Noon podcast to discuss her critical book When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. Heather and Inez discuss how unfair racial preferences have jumped from the courtroom to private institutions, and how they’ve seriously undercut scientific progress and artistic accomplishment. They also talk about how the inability to speak frankly about group differences in culture or accomplishment endangers Americans of every color thanks to a police pullback.

On the 100th episode of High Noon, Emily Jashinsky is back on the pod to take a step back and think about some of the news items that have been firehosing the media for the last month. Emily and Inez discuss some of the positive and negative possibilities regarding Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News and what it might do to the media landscape. They also dive back into the uncynical world of the early 2000s, and wonder whether the same limitless impulse that put Americans on the moon and led MLK Jr. to his optimism about the “arc of history” bending towards justice might have met its end with the now-obvious naïveté of George W. Bush’s failed crusade to rid all cultures around the world of tyranny. Finally, the ladies make an attempt to have a real discussion — not another circular fight about gun control and “mental health” — about the school shooting phenomenon, why this particular outlet for “American Devils” is the curse of our particular couple decades, and what, if anything, can actually be done about it.

Margot Cleveland, senior legal correspondent at The Federalist and adjunct professor at Notre Dame, joins the podcast to expose the scandal no one is talking about: the lawfare being waged against lawyers who step out of line politically. Margot outlines how lawyers who worked for Donald Trump, or even on behalf of controversial issues like abortion or gun control, are being targeted for professional sanction, as well as how the politicization of the law and cutting off half the country from the mainstream legal world impacts everyone else.