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This is Hallie, calling from Atlanta, Georgia. I'm about to watch my childhood best friend defend her PhD dissertation in

neuroscience. Caitlin, I'm really, really proud of you, and I think I understand your research.

Good luck. Fid's podcast was recorded at 12.37 p.m. on Tuesday, November 11, 2025.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we will have a new doctor in the house. Nice. Congrats, Caitlin. Very impressive. Very, very impressive. That's the thing you definitely, like, succeed at, right? Like, we're not, we didn't air that, and then she, like, did not. I'm sure she,? I'm sure she did it. She's a neuroscientist. Yeah. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. And I'm Domenica Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, how a Tucker Carlson podcast episode is forcing the entire

conservative movement to confront some difficult questions about who belongs in the tent. Sarah,

this episode, which I should note has roughly six million views already on YouTube, is between

Carlson and this far right influencer named Nick Fuentes. Let's just start there. Who is Fentes?

Yeah, well, anybody who's been sort of paying attention to right-wing media has likely heard

his name before. He's been around for a while. He's only 27, but he first got on a lot of people's

radar back in 2017 after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which he attended.

You know, he's known for holding a host of extreme views, racist and anti-Semitic views,

including Holocaust denial. He's used violent and degrading rhetoric about women.

And, you know, he has built an online following of largely young men who call themselves

grippers.

Got it.

So how much of those kind of controversial views that you just talked about came up in this

interview with Carlson?

Well, you know, I should say that the two of them talked for more than two hours.

A lot of people have remarked in what a kind of friendly tone this conversation took on. Carlson started by telling Fuentes, you know, look, I've heard about you. I wanted to meet you. I wanted to hear what you really think. And critics on the right and the left have pointed out that he didn't challenge Fuentes very much. He largely stayed away from some of his most extreme and controversial past statements. They did talk

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