Discovering Sasha Stone
New Outlook Recommends: "Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning," a podcast by former Democrat Sasha Stone, who abandoned the Left and now writes critically about its failures.
LIKE many who’ve walked away from the Left, Sasha Stone has quickly developed a sharp eye for diagnosing the Democratic Party’s internal failings. That’s often how it goes when you spend years embedded in any institution—especially in a position of influence. When you leave, you take with you more than just disillusionment; you carry insider knowledge of how the system truly operates. You know where the bodies are buried, so to speak—and where the tripwires are, because you helped lay them.
Much like a whistleblower revealing institutional corruption through leaked documents, those who leave the Left often carry with them a revealing arsenal of insider knowledge. That’s what makes Stone’s departure so compelling. With decades of experience as a committed Democrat and party loyalist, she knows the tactics—narrative control, propaganda, and the inner workings of partisan politics—from the inside out. Her self-made career, spanning more than twenty years, has taken her deep into powerful institutions, from Hollywood’s film industry and the Oscars to the inner circles of the Democratic Party elite.
In 2020, Stone launched her Substack and podcast—Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning—creating a powerful archive of some of the most thoughtful critiques of the Democratic Party’s failures. Many of these insights rarely find space to surface within liberal circles, which often operate with the rigidity of a closed belief system or cult. It’s no coincidence that, in recent years, the Left has become increasingly fixated on rebranding censorship through euphemisms like “fact-checking,” “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malformation.” To shield their official narratives from scrutiny, they’ve embraced new forms of censorship aimed at suppressing dissent and preventing alternative viewpoints from gaining traction in the public consciousness.
Over the past month, I’ve been hooked on Stone’s podcast with the same intensity I usually reserve for my all-time favorite TV shows—often replaying episodes more than once. Below, I’ve shared a few of my favorite episodes, each with a brief summary. Each one feels like an audio documentary, expertly produced, with Stone’s soft, compelling voice weaving through original source material that captures the defining moments of the past two decades in politics and culture.
Each episode traces Stone’s personal story of breaking from the Left, a journey that may challenge you to rethink the political framework you’ve grown accustomed to. While she’s ultimately embraced the Right, my advice is this: be careful not to mistake escape for freedom if you’re simply exchanging one master for another.
Enjoy!
Published — February 15, 2023
Stone analyzes the ideological framework of the Left, arguing that its underlying structure exhibits characteristics commonly associated with cult behavior.
Published — March 20, 2025
Stone pens an open letter to the Democratic Party. In it, she suggests the party ought to embrace their inner fascist because they’ve clearly been openly flirting with the ideology without fully committing to it. Should they embrace it, they can once and for all be done with their decades long pretense of claiming to care about civil liberties, freedom of speech, and tolerance for alternative viewpoints.
Published — February 10, 2025
In many ways, Trump’s reelection—whatever one makes of it at this point—signals a broader cultural shift in American politics. It reflects a move away from the coddling of the American mind, a return to reality, and a rejection of ideas that emanated from the Left, which struggle to hold up in the real world. Stone unpacks this shift with a deep dive into the changing political landscape.
Published — March 21, 2025
Stone dissects the Democratic Party’s latest gambit: positioning millennial firebrand and self-declared Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the new face of a “reinvented” party, ahead of the 2028 elections.
Published — February 14, 2025
In a satirical take, Stone advises Democrats on the foolproof way to keep losing elections: by disregarding the concerns of average Americans.
Published — April 7, 2025
While the Democrats champion freedom, empathy, and compassion, their actions expose their rhetoric as performative, regularly opposing anything that aligns with true democratic values. Stone unpacks this argument in this episode.
More and more competent and critical folks splitting off of the Blob is a very positive development. At some point the ideologues on their shrinking island will probably have to grapple with the possible flaws and incoherencies of their worldview, but most have so far avoided that reckoning.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/the-schism-of-the-elites