How Cultures Define Themselves

Anti-Zionism on the left and the right in America today is a kind of envy — envy of a country that still has permission to define itself, defend itself, and have a future. That's the opening claim Alana Newhouse makes to Jeremy Boreing in this two-hour conversation about Zionism, American identity, and the cultural project of believing in tomorrow.

Jeremy sits down with Alana Newhouse — founder and editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine, author of the breakout essays "Everything Is Broken," "Brokenness," and "Zionism for Everyone" — for a wide-ranging conversation that uses Israel as a lens for diagnosing what's wrong with America.

They get into culture as a "mixing board" (race is loud in Japan, irrelevant in Israel — every culture calibrates differently); America's twin tethers of capitalism and covenant; the four questions Alana says every country has to be able to answer (are your people happy? do they have babies? can they defend themselves? are they future-oriented?); Tucker Carlson's truth-and-lie about Israel and the black pill industrial complex aimed at demoralizing Americans; the Artemis splashdown, the F-15 weapons officer rescue in Iran, and "what are the machines for?"; Alana's four-bucket framework for any institution (conserve, reform, destroy, build new); why she's drawn to leaders like Modi and Milei but skeptical of Orban and "Make America Great Again"; the original meaning of ethnos (it's not bloodline, it's the music a people make together); why anti-Semitism is a symptom and not a cause; and the fertility hiccup, the Gen X reckoning, and the case that creation itself is an act of optimism.

Not a defense of Israeli policy. Not a brief against the contemporary right. A clinical, hopeful argument that the formula that built Israel — particularism plus pragmatism plus idealism — is exportable, and that the future belongs to whoever shows up to build it.

00:00 Anti-Zionism Is Just Envy

05:14 America's Twin Tethers — Capitalism and Covenant

12:22 The "Mixing Board" — Why Cultures Have to Be Different

25:17 The Zionism Formula and the 4 Questions Every Country Must Answer

31:59 What Tucker Carlson Got Wrong About Israel

36:30 The Black Pill Trap and the Lost Faith in the Moon Landing

45:00 Why Alana Built Tablet — Creation as an Act of Optimism

56:35 The Right's Failure on Social Media (and Why AI Is Next)

1:03:22 The 4 Buckets: Conserve, Reform, Destroy, Build New

1:21:39 When Ethnos Goes Wrong — and Why the Nation-State Still Wins

1:28:11 Modi, Milei, Orban — Looking for Joy in World Leaders

1:34:05 The Artemis Diver and the F-15 Rescue: "What Are the Machines For?"

1:46:09 Anti-Semitism Is a Symptom, Not a Cause

1:49:02 Fertility, Gen X, and the Hiccup We Have to Correct