Dave Rubin

David Joshua Rubin (born June 26, 1976) is an American political commentator, comedian, and host of The Rubin Report, a YouTube interview series focused on politics, culture, and free speech that has exceeded 3.1 million subscribers as of October 2025. Originally a progressive comedian, Rubin shifted toward classical liberalism, emphasizing individual rights, limited government, and skepticism of collectivist ideologies, particularly those he associates with authoritarian excesses on the political left. His program features discussions with diverse guests, including politicians, intellectuals, and critics of mainstream narratives, amassing billions of views and earning YouTube's Silver and Gold Play Buttons for subscriber milestones. Rubin has authored two books promoting independent thinking amid cultural pressures: Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason (2019), a New York Times bestseller, and Don't Burn This Country: Surviving and Thriving in Our Woke Age (2022). As an openly gay married man, he challenges orthodoxies within both left-wing and conservative circles, advocating for empirical reasoning over ideological conformity in public discourse.

David Joshua Rubin was born on June 26, 1976, in Brooklyn, New York, to Ashkenazi Jewish parents. He was raised in a secular Jewish household in Syosset, Long Island, where his family celebrated Jewish holidays. His parents met in Israel in the 1970s while working on a kibbutz and teaching English.

Rubin was raised in a conservative Jewish household in Brooklyn, New York, but as a young adult aligned with the New Atheism movement, publicly identifying as an atheist while maintaining a cultural affinity for Judaism. He has critiqued the New Atheism's aggressive dismantling of religious frameworks, arguing in a 2023 discussion that it represented a "massive mistake" by removing societal "protections" rooted in tradition without adequate replacements, leading to cultural vulnerabilities. This perspective stems from his observation that pure rationalism and empiricism, while valuable, fail to address deeper human needs for meaning and moral structure, a limitation he attributes to the movement's overemphasis on debunking dogma at the expense of constructive alternatives.

Influenced significantly by Jordan Peterson's lectures on biblical narratives and their psychological and societal roles, Rubin announced in December 2019 that he no longer identifies as an atheist, viewing religion not as literal truth but as a repository of archetypal wisdom essential for personal and civilizational order. Peterson's emphasis on the Bible's symbolic depth prompted Rubin to explore Judaism's cultural and ethical contributions more appreciatively, shifting from outright rejection to an openness toward transcendent meaning without endorsing supernatural claims. This evolution reflects a first-hand reckoning with atheism's insufficiency in fostering voluntary self-regulation, as Rubin has described drawing practical insights from religious stories to navigate life's chaos, akin to Peterson's interpretation of myth as evolutionary psychology.