We've been fascinated by Bari Weiss, the New York Times opinion editor.

She's not your average Gray Lady opinion writer.

Weiss dared to write that top leaders of  the hallowed Women's March espoused "chilling ideas."

Weiss then made the politically correct left furious by revealing the existence of the "intellectual dark web," where intellectuals conduct civil but lively conversations, making an end run around the mainstream media.

What outrages!

I've been wanting to know more about Weiss, and now  I am delighted to report that Reason magazine has done a terrific podcast of Nick Gillespie interviewing Ms. Weiss.  

First, from Reason's introduction to the podcast, to give you an idea of what kind of venom the 34-year-old Weiss attracts:

Far from bringing some fresh ideas to The Gray Lady's leftish commentary section, her hire, wrote The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald, emodied the paper's "worst failings—and its lack of viewpoint diversity."

In Greenwald's reading, Weiss "has churned out a series of trite, shallow, cheap attacks on already-marginalized left-wing targets that have made her a heroine in the insular neocon and right-wing intelligentsia precincts."

Her widely read pieces about the identity-politics excesses of a lesbian march in Chicago and of the #MeToo Movement, and her chronicling of the "intellectual Dark Web" didn't represent anything new, just more of the same. Greenwald wrote an attack on Weiss's student days at Columbia, claiming that she defamed anti-Israel professors as racists and tried to silence them academically.

I don't know about Ms. Weiss's student days, but I think Mr. Greenwald should look up diversity–it doesn't mean more of the same trendy leftist ideas that dominate the New York Times.

That Weiss has evoked this kind of response from a pillar of the left is a testimony to the diversity she brings to the New York Times.

Gillespie interviewed Weiss at Freedom Fest, a libertarian event. She was a finalist for Reason's Bastiat Prize.

Unfortunately, there is no trascript of the interview, but I urge you to listen to it.

Weiss and Gillespie are funny and incisive. They talk about Jordan Peterson, IWF friend Christina Hoff Sommers ("She is a second wave feminist who is now smeared on campus as a fascist," Weiss says), and the anger that greeted Weiss's revelation of the dark web.

"People were angry that I was pointing out a phenomenon that exists," says Weiss.

I also hadn't known the trajectory of Weiss' career: She started at the New York Sun and has worked at the Wall Street Journal, where she was part of the exodus of journalists who felt that the newspaper was becoming too pro-Trump.

I heartily recommend the podcast..