Podcasts about american purpose

Yascha Mounk and Francis Fukuyama discuss what a Trump victory means for America, its allies, and the world. Francis Fukuyama is a political scientist, author, and the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Among Fukuyama's notable works are The End of History and the Last Man and The Origins of Political Order. His latest book is Liberalism and Its Discontents. He is also the author of the “Frankly Fukuyama” column, carried forward from American Purpose, at Persuasion. In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and Francis Fukuyama discuss how Trump's 2024 victory repudiates the racial grievance theory of 2016; what a second Trump administration will mean for the rule of law at home and abroad; and the lessons the Democratic Party must learn from its defeat. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by Jack Shields, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FDD Senior Vice President Jon Schanzer delivers timely situational updates and analysis, followed by a conversation with Roya Hakakian, senior fellow at American Purpose and Iranian-American author and journalist.Learn more at: fdd.org/fddmorningbrief/

Selv om kongressen i USA nå har bevilget en ny støttepakke til Ukraina, er utfallet av krigen usikkert. Hva må vi forberede oss på dersom Ukraina skulle tape krigen? Hør ny episode med ansvarlig redaktør i American Purpose, Jeff Gedmin, om hva han tror skjer om Ukraina taper.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this special episode to mark World Press Freedom Day, Jeffrey Gedmin, cofounder and editor-in-chief of American Purpose and former president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, joins Robert McMahon and Carla Anne Robbins to discuss the global state of press freedom. They cover the challenges that a growing number of journalists face in exile or imprisonment, the U.S. role in upholding freedom of the press, and more.    Mentioned on the Podcast   “Exile Journalists Map—Fleeing to Europe and North America,” Reporters Without Borders   “Media Freedom,” Freedom House   2023 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders   Journalists:    Parnaz Azima   Jamal Khashoggi   Alsu Kurmasheva   Monica Lovinescu   Georgi Markov   For an episode transcript and show notes, visit us at: https://www.cfr.org/podcasts/world-press-freedom-day-2024-mounting-threats-renewed-purpose 

More than 20 years since the United States launched its invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the origins of the war remain highly contested, both among scholars and policy practitioners alike. As tensions continue to flare in the region and thousands of U.S. troops continue to deploy to military bases within Iraq, understanding the history of U.S. involvement in this country is critical for understanding the United States's role in the modern Middle East. Joining This episode of The Debrief analyzes the causes and consequences of the Iraq War with Dr. Joseph Stieb, assistant professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and author of The Regime Change Consensus: Iraq in American Politics, 1990 to 2003.About the Speaker:Joseph Stieb joined the U.S. Naval War College in 2022 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at The Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Security Studies. He received a Ph.D. in U.S. history from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2019. He studies U.S. foreign policy, politics, and ideas in the 20th and 21st centuries, particularly the Iraq War and the War on Terrorism. He is the author of The Regime Change Consensus: Iraq in American Politics, 1990-2003 (Cambridge, 2021) and has also published in Diplomatic History, Modern American History, The International History Review, The Washington Post, War on the Rocks, Foreign Policy, American Purpose, and Arc Digital.The views presented by the faculty or other guest speakers do not reflect official positions of the Naval War College, DON or DOD.

On this Salcedo Storm Podcast:Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis represents the 11 congressional District in New York. She sits on the powerful House Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee and also on the Tax Subcommittee on Oversight, the House Select Subcommittee on the China-virus and is the Assistant Whip for the House Republican Conference.

Mike Slater begins today's show with a look at what's happened to Battell Chapel at Yale University and how it's a stark example of the secularization and hollowing out of purpose that's been happening in this country at a RAPID pace over the last few decades. Can anything be done about it? Mike has some thoughts...Following that, Slater speaks to Chris Talgo, Editorial Director at The Heartland Institute, about some new polling data from his organization regarding election fraud in 2020. The results may or may not shock you, but it's important for EVERYONE to hear this conversation as we head into our next U.S. Presidential Election!

Rebecca Burgess will discuss the impact of the Constitution on spiritedness and the unique role of soldiers and citizens to defend it. This event is sponsored by the Jack Miller Center. About the Lecture: Soldier-Citizens and Citizen-Soldiers: Spiritedness and the Constitution - The Founding generation was famously concerned about the dangers to liberty that a standing army could pose. Less well remembered is how that generation's general ambivalence about professional soldiers along with the government's inability to pay them resulted in soldiers besieging Congress in Philadelphia's Independence Hall, demanding redress. Congress fled to Princeton. But the “Pennsylvania Mutiny” resulted in long-lasting effects for both the nation's civilians and military: It showcased significant cracks in the Articles of Confederation government, helping set in motion the Constitutional Convention and the inclusion of a constitutional provision for Congress to support federal armies and a navy. Later on, Alexis de Tocqueville would observe that “it is through the soldiers above all that one can pride oneself on having a democratic army pervaded by the love of freedom and respect for rights that one was able to inspire in the people themselves.” This lecture will consider the ties between the US military and the Constitution, and the mutual contributions of soldiers and citizens to defend their Constitution. About the Speaker: Rebecca Burgess is senior editor of American Purpose, acting director of the Classics in Strategy and Diplomacy project, and an SME consultant for the George W. Bush Institute's Veterans and Military Families program. A visiting fellow in national security with the The Independent Women's Forum, she is a 2021 National Security Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. She's an Advisory Board Member of Combined Arms and of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation/Monticello, and a SME for the NEH Educating for American Democracy: A Roadmap for Excellence in History and Civics Education project. Additionally, she serves on the Reader Review Board of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps Journal. Rebecca researches the political and social institutions of democratic governance, including civics and national security, civil-military relations and the military life cycle, veterans and politics, and theories of political decay, war, empire and expansion. She has nearly two decades of combined public policy, administrative, and academic experience, holding the position most recently as a research fellow both in Foreign and Defense Policy and Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. A Ph.D. (ABD) in politics at the University of Dallas, her work has been solicited for congressional testimonies, and been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, Military Times, Law & Liberty, The American Interest, The Strategy Bridge, and War on the Rocks, among others. ***Learn more about IWP graduate programs: https://www.iwp.edu/academic-programs/ ***Make a gift to IWP: https://interland3.donorperfect.net/weblink/WebLink.aspx?name=E231090&id=18

Rebecca Burgess discussed the impact of the Constitution on spiritedness and the unique role of soldiers and citizens to defend it. This event is sponsored by the Jack Miller Center. About the Lecture: Soldier-Citizens and Citizen-Soldiers: Spiritedness and the Constitution - The Founding generation was famously concerned about the dangers to liberty that a standing army could pose. Less well remembered is how that generation's general ambivalence about professional soldiers along with the government's inability to pay them resulted in soldiers besieging Congress in Philadelphia's Independence Hall, demanding redress. Congress fled to Princeton. But the “Pennsylvania Mutiny” resulted in long-lasting effects for both the nation's civilians and military: It showcased significant cracks in the Articles of Confederation government, helping set in motion the Constitutional Convention and the inclusion of a constitutional provision for Congress to support federal armies and a navy. Later on, Alexis de Tocqueville would observe that “it is through the soldiers above all that one can pride oneself on having a democratic army pervaded by the love of freedom and respect for rights that one was able to inspire in the people themselves.” This lecture will consider the ties between the US military and the Constitution, and the mutual contributions of soldiers and citizens to defend their Constitution. About the Speaker: Rebecca Burgess is senior editor of American Purpose, acting director of the Classics in Strategy and Diplomacy project, and an SME consultant for the George W. Bush Institute's Veterans and Military Families program. A visiting fellow in national security with the The Independent Women's Forum, she is a 2021 National Security Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. She's an Advisory Board Member of Combined Arms and of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation/Monticello, and a SME for the NEH Educating for American Democracy: A Roadmap for Excellence in History and Civics Education project. Additionally, she serves on the Reader Review Board of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps Journal. Rebecca researches the political and social institutions of democratic governance, including civics and national security, civil-military relations and the military life cycle, veterans and politics, and theories of political decay, war, empire and expansion. She has nearly two decades of combined public policy, administrative, and academic experience, holding the position most recently as a research fellow both in Foreign and Defense Policy and Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. A Ph.D. (ABD) in politics at the University of Dallas, her work has been solicited for congressional testimonies, and been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, Military Times, Law & Liberty, The American Interest, The Strategy Bridge, and War on the Rocks, among others. ***Learn more about IWP graduate programs: https://www.iwp.edu/academic-programs/ ***Make a gift to IWP: https://interland3.donorperfect.net/weblink/WebLink.aspx?name=E231090&id=18

More than 20 years ago, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama characterized the Information Technology revolution as "benign" but cautioned that "the most significant threat posed by contemporary biotechnology is the possibility that it will alter human nature and thereby move us into a post-human stage of history." From Twitter to CRISPR to ChatGPT, a lot has changed since then. In this episode of Faster, Please! — The Podcast, Dr. Fukuyama shares his thoughts on those developments and the recent advances in generative AI, as well as the cultural importance of science fiction.Dr. Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. His books include The End of History and the Last Man, Our Posthuman Future, and 2022's Liberalism and Its Discontents, among many others. Other writings can be found at American Purpose.In This Episode* The consequences of the IT revolution (1:37)* Can government competently regulate AI? (8:14)* AI and liberal democracy (17:29)* The cultural importance of science fiction (24:16)* Silicon Valley's life-extension efforts (31:11)Below is an edited transcript of our conversationThe consequences of the IT revolutionJames Pethokoukis: In Our Posthuman Future more than 20 years ago, you wrote, “The aim of this book is to argue that [Aldous] Huxley was right [in Brave New World], that the most significant threat posed by contemporary biotechnology is the possibility that it will alter human nature and thereby move us into a ‘posthuman' stage of history. This is important, I will argue, because human nature exists, is a meaningful concept, and has provided a stable continuity to our experience as a species.” But then you added, “It may be that, as in the case of 1984” — and, I think, parenthetically, information technology — “we will eventually find biotechnology's consequences are completely and surprisingly benign.” After 20 years, and the advent of social media, and now it seems like possibly a great leap forward in AI, would you still characterize the IT revolution as “benign”?Francis Fukuyama: That's obviously something that's changed considerably since I wrote that book because the downside of IT has been clear to everybody. When the internet was first privatized in the 1990s, most people, myself included, thought it would be good for democracy because information was power, and if you made information more widely available, that would distribute power more democratically. And it has done that, in fact. A lot of people have access to information that they can use to improve their lives, to mobilize, to agitate, to push for the protection of their rights. But I think it's also been weaponized in ways that we perhaps didn't anticipate back then.And then, there was this more insidious phenomenon where it turns out that the elimination of hierarchies that controlled information, that we celebrated back then, actually turned out to be pretty important. If you had a kind of legacy media that cared about journalistic standards, you could trust the information that was published. But the internet really undermined those legacy sources and replaced it with a world in which anyone can say anything. And they do. Therefore, we have this cognitive chaos right now where conspiracy theories of all sorts get a lot of credibility because people don't trust these hierarchies that used to be the channels for information. Clearly, we've got a big problem on our hands. That doesn't mean that the biotech is not still going to be a big problem; it's just that I think the IT part has moved ahead very rapidly. But I think the biotech will get there in time.While I think most of the concern that I've heard expressed about AI, in particular, has been about these science fiction-like existential risks or job loss, obviously your concern has more to do, as with in Our Posthuman Future, how it will affect our liberal democracy. And you point out some of the downsides of the IT revolution that weren't obvious 30 years ago but now seeing plainly obvious today.To me, the coverage of AI has been really very, very negative, and we've had calls for an AI pause. Do you worry that maybe we've overlearned that lesson? That rather than going into this with kind of a Pollyannaish attitude, we're immediately going into this AI with deep concerns. Is there a risk of overcorrecting?The short answer is, yes. I think that because of our negative experience with social media and the internet lately, we expect the worst from technology. But I think that the possibilities for AI actually making certain social problems much better are substantial. I think that the existential worries about AI are just absurd, and I really don't see scenarios under which the human species is going to face extinction. That seems to be this Terminator, killer, Skynet scenario, and I know very few serious experts in this area that think that that's ever likely to materialize. The bigger fears, I think, are more mundane ones about job loss as a result of advancing technology. And I think that's a very complicated issue. But it does seem to me that, for example, generative AI could actually end up complementing human skills and, in fact, could complement the skills of lower-skilled or lower-educated workers in a way that will actually increase economic equality.Up till now, I think most economists would blame the advance of computer technology for having vastly increased social inequality, because in order to take advantage of existing technologies, if you have a better education, you're going to have a higher income and so forth. But it's entirely possible that generative AI will actually slow that trend because it will give people with lower levels of education the ability to do useful things that they weren't able to do previously. There's actually some early empirical work that suggests that that's already been a pattern. So, yes, I think you're right that we've kind of overreacted. I just think in general, predicting where this technology is going to go in the next 50 years is a fool's errand. It's sort of like in the 1880s asking somebody, “Well, what's this newfangled thing called electricity going to do in 50 years?” Anything that was said back then I think would've been overtaken by events very, very rapidly.Can government competently regulate AI?Anyone who has sat through previous government hearings on social media has been underwhelmed at the ability of Congress to understand these issues, much less come up with a vast regulatory structure. Are you confident in the ability of government to regulate AI, whether it's to regulate deep fakes or what have you — why should I be confident in their ability to do that?I think you've got to decompose the regulatory challenge a little bit. I've been involved here at Stanford, we have a Cyber Policy Center, and we've been thinking about different forms of IT regulation. It's a particular challenge for regulators for a number of reasons. One of the questions you come up with in regulatory design is, “Is this something that actually can be undertaken by existing agencies, or do you actually need a new type of regulator with special skills and knowledge?” And I think, to me, pretty clearly the answer to that is yes. But that agency would have to be designed very differently, because the standard regulatory design, the agency has a certain amount of expertise in a particular sector and they use that expertise to write rules that then get written into law, and then things like the Administrative Procedure Act begins to apply. That's what's been going on, for example, with something like net neutrality, where the FCC put the different regulations up for notice and comment, and you go through this very involved procedure to write the new rules and so forth. I think in an area like AI, that's just not going to work, because the thing is moving so quickly. And that means that you're actually going to have to delegate more autonomy and discretionary power to the regulatory agency, because otherwise, they're simply not going to be able to keep up with the speed at which the technology advances. In normative terms, I have no problem with that. I think that governments do need to exercise social control over new technologies that are potentially very disruptive and damaging, but it has to be done in a proper way.Can you actually design a regulatory agency that would have any remote chance of keeping up with the technology? The British have done this. They have a new digital regulator that is composed of people coming out of the IT industry, and they've relaxed the civil service requirements to be able to hire people with the appropriate knowledge and backgrounds. In the United States, that's going to be very difficult because we have so many cumbersome HR requirements for hiring and promotion of people that go into the federal civil service. Pay, for one thing, is a big issue because we don't pay our bureaucrats enough. If you're going to hire some hotshot tech guy out of the tech sector and offer him a job as a GS-14, it just isn't going to work. So I don't think that you can answer the question, “Can we regulate adequately or not?” in a simple way. I think that there are certain things you would have to do if you were going to try to regulate this sector. Can the United States do that given the polarization in our politics, given all of these legacy institutions that prevent us from actually having a public sector that is up to this task? That I don't know. As you can tell, I've got certain skepticism about that.Is it a worthwhile critique of this regulatory process to think of AI as this discreet technology that you need a certain level of expertise to understand? If it is indeed a general-purpose technology that will be used by a variety of sectors, all sectors perhaps, can you really have an AI regulator that doesn't de facto become an economy regulator?No, you probably can't. This is another challenge, which is that, as you say, AI in general is so broad. It's already being used in virtually every sector of the economy, and you obviously don't want a “one size fits all” effort to govern the use of this technology. So I think that you have to be much more specific about the areas where you think potential harms could exist. There's also different approaches to this other than regulation. In 2020, I chaired a Stanford working group on platform scale, which was meant to deal with the old — at that point it was a kind of contemporary problem­ — but now it seems like an old problem of content mediation on the internet. So how do you deal with this problem that Elon Musk has now revealed to be a real problem: You don't want everything to be available on social media platforms, but how do you actually control that content in a way that serves a kind of general democratic public interest? As we thought about this in the course of this working group deliberation, we concluded that straightforward regulation is not going to work. It won't work in the United States because we're way too polarized. Just think about something like reviving the old fairness doctrine that the FCC used to apply to legacy broadcast media. How are you going to come up with something like that? What's “fair and balanced” coverage of vaccine denialism? It's just not going to happen.And what we ended up advocating was something we called “middleware,” where you would use regulation to create a competitive ecosystem of third-party media content regulators so that when you use the social media platform, you the user could buy the services or make use of the services of a content regulator that would tailor your feed or your search on Google to criteria that you specified in advance. So if you tended progressive, you could get a progressive one. If you only like right-wing media, you could get a content regulator that would deliver what you want. If you wanted to buy only American-made products, you could get a different one. The point is that you would use competition in this sphere because the real threat, as we saw it, was not actually so much this compartmentalization as the power of a single big platform. There's really only three of them. It's Google, Meta, and now X, or the formerly Twitter, that really had this kind of power. The danger to a democracy was not that you could say anything on the internet, the danger was the power of a single big platform owned by a private, for-profit company to have an outsized role over political discourse in the United States. Elon Musk and Twitter is a perfect example of that. He apparently has his own foreign policy, which is not congruent with American foreign policy, but as a private owner of this platform, he's got the power to pursue this private foreign policy. So that was our idea.In that particular case, you could use competition as an alternative to state regulation, because what you really wanted to do was to break up this concentrated power that was exercised by the platforms. So that's one approach to one aspect of digital regulation. It doesn't deal with AI. I don't know whether there's an analog in the AI sphere, but I think it's correct that what you don't want is a single regulator that then tries to write broad rules that apply to what is actually just an enormously broad technology that will apply in virtually every sector of the economy.AI and liberal democracyIn response to the call for a six-month "AI pause," critics of that idea pointed to competition with China. They suggested that given the difficulties of regulating AI, we might risk losing the "AI race" to the Chinese. Do you think that's a reasonable criticism?This is a general problem with technologies. Certain technologies distribute power and other technologies concentrate it. So the old classic 19th-century coal- and steel- and fossil fuel–based economy tended to concentrate power. And certainly nuclear weapons concentrate power because you really need to be a big entity in order to build a nuclear weapon, in order to build all the uranium processing and so forth. But other technologies, like biotech, actually do not concentrate power. Any high school student can actually now use CRISPR to do genetic engineering. And they make biotech labs that will fit in individual shipping containers. So the regulatory problem is quite different.Now, the problem with AI is that it appears that these large language models really require a lot of resources. In fact, it's interesting, because we used to think the problem was actually having big data sets. But that's actually not the problem; there's plenty of data out there. It's actually building a parallel computer system that's powerful enough to process all the words on the internet, and that's been the task that only the largest companies can do. I think that it's correct that if we had told these companies not to do this, we would be facing international competitive pressures that would make that a bad decision. However, I do think that it's still a risk to allow that kind of power to be not subject to some form of democratic control. If it's true that you need these gigantic corporations to do this sort of thing, those corporations ought to be serving American national interests.And again, I hate to keep referring to Elon Musk, but we're seeing this right now with Starlink. It turns out Starlink is extremely valuable militarily, which has been demonstrated very clearly in Ukraine. Should the owner of Starlink be allowed to make important decisions as to who is going to use this technology on the battlefield and where that technology can be used? I don't think so. I don't think that one rich individual should have that kind of power. And actually, I'm not quite sure, I thought that the Defense Department had actually agreed to start paying Musk for the Ukrainian use of Starlink. I think that's the actual appropriate answer to that problem, so that it should not be up to Elon Musk where Starlink can be used. It should be up to the people that make American foreign policy: the White House and the State Department and so forth. And so, I think by analogy, if you develop this technology that requires really massive scale and big corporations to develop it, it should nonetheless be under some kind of state control such that it is not the decision of some rich individual how it's going to be applied. It should be somehow subject to some kind of democratic control.On a normative level, I think that's very clear, but the specific modalities by which you do that are complicated. For example, let's say there's a gigantic corporation that is run by some lunatic that wants to use it for all sorts of asocial reasons, proliferating deep fakes or trying to use it to undermine general social trust in institutions and so forth. Is that okay? Is that a decision that should be up to a private individual or isn't there some public interest in controlling that in some fashion? I hate speaking about this in such general terms, but I think you have to settle this normative question and then you can get into the narrower technical question of, is it possible to actually exert that kind of control and how would you do that?You've questioned in your previous writings whether liberal democracy could survive a world with both humans and posthumans and where we're manipulating human nature. Can it survive in a world where there are two different intelligences? If we had a human intelligence and we had an artificial general intelligence, would such an entity pose a challenge our civilization, to a democratic capitalist civilization?It's hard to answer that question. You can imagine scenarios where it obviously would pose a challenge. One of the big questions is whether this general intelligence somehow escapes human control, and that's a tough one. I think that the experts that I trust think that that's not going to happen. That ultimately, human beings are going to be able to control this thing and use it for their own purposes. So again, the whole Skynet scenario is really not likely to happen. But that doesn't solve the problem, because even if it's under human control, how do you make sure it's the right humans, right? Because if this falls into the wrong hands, it could be very, very destructive. And that then becomes a political question. I'm not quite sure how you're going to want to answer it.The cultural importance of science fictionYou mentioned Skynet from the Terminator franchise. Do you worry that we're too steeped in dystopian science fiction? It seems like we can only see the downside when we're presented with a new technology like a biotechnology breakthrough or an AI breakthrough. Is that how it seems to you?I actually wrote a blog post about this. I really read a lot of science fiction. I have my whole life. There's a big difference between the sorts of stories that you saw back in the 1950s and ‘60s and the stuff that has come out recently. It's hard to generalize over such a vast field, but space odysseys and space travel was very common, and a lot of that was extremely optimistic: that human beings would colonize Mars and then the distant planets and you'd have a warp drive that would take you out of the solar system and so forth. And it was kind of a paean to unlimited human possibilities. Whereas I do think that, especially with the rise of environmentalism, there was a greater consciousness of the downsides of technological advance. So you got more and more dystopian kinds of imaginings. Now, it is not a universal thing. For example, I also wrote a blog about two kind of global warming–related recent science-fiction books. One is TheMinistry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. And that actually is a very optimistic take on global warming, because it's set in the 2050s and basically the human race has figured out how to deal with global warming. They do it, I think, through a bunch of very implausible political scenarios, but there's a ministry for the future that wisely…That book seems a little too comfortable with violence and compulsion for my taste.The other one is Neal Stephenson's Termination Shock: Basically, there's a single rich oligarch in Texas that takes it upon himself to put all this sulfur dioxide in the upper atmosphere to cool the earth, and he succeeds, and it then changes the climate in China and India. I don't know whether that's optimistic or pessimistic. But I actually do think that it's very useful to have this kind of science fiction, because you really do have to imagine to yourself what some of the both upsides and downsides will be. So it's probably the case that there's more dystopian fiction, but I do think that if you didn't have that, you wouldn't have a concrete idea of what to look for.If you think about both 1984 and Brave New World, these were the big dystopian futures that were imagined in the 1950s. And both of them came true in many ways. It gave us a vocabulary, like, “Big Brother,” the “Telescreen,” or “Epsilons,” and “Gammas,” and “Alphas,” and so forth, by which we can actually kind of interpret things in the present. I think if you didn't have that vocabulary, it would be hard to have a discussion about what is it that we're actually worried about. So yes, I do think that there is a dystopian bias to a lot of that work that's done, but I think that you've got to have it. Because you do have to try to imagine to yourself what some of these downsides are.You mentioned a couple of books. Are there any films or television shows that you've watched that you feel provide a plausible optimistic vision?I don't know whether it's optimistic. One of my favorite book series and then TV series was The Expanse, written by a couple of guys that go by a pseudonym. It's not optimistic, in the sense that it projects all of our current geopolitical rivalries forward into a future in which human beings have colonized, not just the outer planets, but also intergalactically, figured out how to move from one place to another, and they're still having these fights between rich and poor and so forth. But I guess the reason that I liked it, especially the early parts of that series, when you just had an Epstein Drive, I mean, it was just one technological change that allowed you to move. It's sort of like the early days of sailing ships, where you could get to Australia, but it would take you six months to get there. So that was the situation early on in the book, and that was actually a very attractive future. All of a sudden, human beings had the ability to mine the asteroid belt, they could create gigantic cities in space where human beings could actually live and flourish. That's one of the reasons I really liked that: because it was very human. Although there were conflicts, they were familiar conflicts. There were conflicts that we are dealing with today. But it was, in a way, hopeful because it was now done at this much larger scale that gave hope that human beings would not be confined to one single planet. And actually, one of the things that terrifies me is that the idea that in 100 years, we may discover that we actually can't colonize even Mars or the Moon. That the costs of actually allowing human beings to live anywhere but on earth just make it economically impossible. And so we're kind of stuck on planet Earth and that's the human future.I wrote a small essay about The Expanse where I talked about having a positive vision. As I saw it, this is several hundred years in the future, and we're still here. We've had climate change, but we're still here. We've expanded throughout the universe. If an asteroid should hit the earth, there's still going to be humanity. And people were angry about that essay, because this is a future but there's still problems. Yes, because we're still part of that future: human beings.Silicon Valley's life-extension effortsGetting back to biotechnology and transhumanism and living forever, these things you wrote about in Our Posthuman Future: What do you make of the efforts by folks in Silicon Valley to try to extend lifespans? From a cultural perspective, from your perspective as a political scientist, what do you make of these efforts?I think they're terrible. I actually wrote about this and have thought about this a lot, about life extension. In fact, I think human biomedicine has produced a kind of disastrous situation for us right now because by the time you get to your mid-80s, roughly half of the population that's that old has some kind of long-term, chronic, degenerative disease. And I think that it was actually a much better situation when people were dying of heart attacks and strokes and cancer when they were still in their 70s. It's one of those things where life extension is individually very desirable because no individual wants to die. But socially, I think the impact of extending life is bad. Because quite frankly, you're not going to have adaptation unless you have generational turnover. There's a lot of literature now, Neil Howe has just written a new book on this about how important generations are. There's this joke that economists say, that the field of economics progresses one funeral at a time. Because, basically, you're born into a certain age cohort, and to the end of your life, you're going to retain a lot of the views of people that were born going through the same kind of life experiences. And sometimes they're just wrong. And unless that generation dies off, you're just not going to get the kind of social movement that's necessary.We've already seen a version of this with all these dictators like Franco and Castro that refuse to die, and modern medicine keeps them alive forever. And as a result, you're stuck with their kind of authoritarian governments for way too long. And so I think that, socially, there's a good reason why under biological evolution you have population turnover and we humans don't live forever. What's the advantage of everybody being able to live 200 years as opposed to let's say 80 or 90 years? Is that world going to be better? It's going to have all sorts of problems, right? Because you're going to have all of these 170-year-old people that won't get out of the way. How are you going to get tenure if all the tenured people are 170 years old and there's no way of moving them out of the system? I think that these tech billionaires, it's a kind of selfishness that they've got the money to fund all this research so that they hope that they can keep themselves alive, because they are afraid of dying. I think it's going to be a disaster if they're ever successful in bringing about this kind of population-level life extension. And I think we're already in a kind of disastrous situation where a very large proportion of the human population is going to be of an age where they're going to be dependent on the rest of the society to keep them alive. And that's not good economically. That's going to be very, very hard to sustain.Micro Reads▶ IBM Tries to Ease Customers' Qualms About Using Generative A.I. - Steve Lohr, NYT |▶ Six Months Ago Elon Musk Called for a Pause on AI. Instead Development Sped Up - Will Knight, WIRED |▶ AI is getting better at hurricane forecasting - Gregory Barber, Ars Technica |▶ The promise — and peril — of generative AI - John Thornhill, FT |▶ Uber Freight Taps AI to Help Compete in Tough Cargo Market - Thomas Black, Bloomberg |▶ Why AI Doesn't Scare Me - Gary Hoover, Profectus |▶ A top economist who studies AI says it will double productivity in the next decade: ‘You need to embrace this technology and not resist it' - Geoff Colvin, Yahoo! Finance |▶ Meta is putting AI chatbots everywhere - Alex Heath, Verge |▶ The Big AI Risk We're Not Talking About - Brent Skorup, Discourse |▶ Mark Zuckerberg can't quit the metaverse - Laura Martins, Verge |▶ This robotic exoskeleton can help runners sprint faster - Rhiannon Williams, MIT Technology Review |▶ The bizarre new frontier for cell-cultivated meat: Lion burgers, tiger steaks, and mammoth meatballs - Jude Whiley, Vox |▶ A power grab against private equity threatens the US economy - Drew Maloney, FT |▶ Risks Are Growing of a Double-Dip ‘Vibecession' - Jonathan Levin, Bloomberg |▶ NSF partners with the Institute for Progress to test new mechanisms for funding research and innovation - NSF |▶ It's Too Easy to Block a Wind Farm in America - Robinson Meyer, Heatmap |▶ Can we finally reverse balding with these new experimental treatments? - Joshua Howgego, NewScientist | This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe

ROYA HAKAKIAN is a writer and journalist. Her first book, a volume of selected poems in Persian called For the Sake of Water, is listed among the leading works of contemporary Persian poetry in the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Strange Times My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature. She is also the author of three works of prose in English.Her memoir of coming of age in post-revolutionary Iran, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran was a Barnes & Noble's Pick of the Week, Ms. Magazine Must Read of the Summer, Publishers Weekly's Best Book of the Year, Elle Magazine's Best Nonfiction Book of 2004. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction in 2008 for her second book, the Assassins of the Turquoise Palace which was named a Notable Book of 2011by the New York Times Book Review. Her most recent work, A Beginner's Guide to America for the Immigrant and the Curious was published by Knopf in 2021 and was among the Best Books of the Month by the Wall Street Journal. She has also collaborated with leading journalism units on network television, including CBS 60 Minutes. Her essays appear in many publications, including the Atlantic.She's a member of the editorial board of the American Purpose. As a public speaker, she has made countless appearances from offering testimonies at the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee to high schools on native American reservations in Montana. She is a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center and is a fellow at Yale University's Davenport College.Born and raised in a family of Jewish educators in Tehran, Roya arrived as a refugee to the US in 1985.

Omar Sadr talks to Charles Dunst on how to improve quality of democracies. Charles Dunst is deputy director of research & analytics at ⁠The Asia Group⁠⁠, ⁠an adjunct fellow at the ⁠Center for Strategic and International Studies⁠⁠,⁠ and a contributing editor of ⁠American Purpose⁠. Suggested readings: Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman (Hodder & Stoughton, February 2023). Connect with us! ⁠Google⁠, ⁠Apple⁠, ⁠Spotify⁠, ⁠Anchor⁠ Twitter: ⁠@negotiateideas⁠ & ⁠@OmarSadr⁠ Email: negotiatingidea@gmail.com

Christopher Hitchens was for many years considered one of the fiercest and most eloquent left-wing polemicists in the world. But on much of today's left, he's remembered as a defector, a warmonger, and a sellout—a supporter of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who traded his left-wing principles for neoconservatism after the September 11 attacks. In How Hitchens Can Save the Left, Matt Johnson argues that this easy narrative gets Hitchens exactly wrong. Hitchens was a lifelong champion of free inquiry, humanism, and universal liberal values. He was an internationalist who believed all people should have the liberty to speak and write openly, to be free of authoritarian domination, and to escape the arbitrary constraints of tribe, faith, and nation. He was a figure of the Enlightenment and a man of the left until the very end, and his example has never been more important. Shermer and Johnson discuss: Hitchens on free expression, identity politics, radicalism, interventionism, authoritarianism, patriotism, internationalism, America and Liberalism, reparations, religion, and death • identity politics • hostility to free speech • why Hitch did not become a neoconservative, warmonger, or imperialist • Enlightenment Liberalism • Trump and the division of the right • Hitchens on the precursors to Trump • Putin and Russian nationalism. Matt Johnson writes for Haaretz, Quillette, American Purpose, South China Morning Post, The Bulwark, Areo, Arc Digital, RealClearDefense, The Kansas City Star, and many other publications. His new book is How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment.

Charles Dunst, Deputy Director of Research & Analytics at The Asia Group, a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Contributing Editor of American Purpose, joins Jennifer Anderson, Senior Program Officer for CIPE's Asia & Pacific team to discuss his new book, "Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman," which can be found here: http://linktr.ee/defeatingthedictators @defeatingthedictators | Linktree Defeating the Dictators by Charles Dunst. Out now. linktr.ee In his new book, Dunst writes about how the world is experiencing the lowest levels of democracy in over thirty years. Autocracy is on the rise and may appear to be an attractive option to many. Dictators disrupt democratic foundations from both within and abroad and make those who are disillusioned with current institutions think that authoritarianism could deliver them a better life than democracy could. In this episode, Dunst and Anderson discuss how to combat institutional rot, the relationship between democracy and autocracy, why citizens should be more engaged and interested, and more.

How can democracies reinvigorate themselves to triumph over authoritarianism? Does the West need to decouple from China? These and other questions are considered in Economics Explored episode 180. Foreign affairs expert Charles Dunst talks about his new book Defeating the Dictators with show host Gene Tunny. Among other things, Charles and Gene talk about the potential benefits of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), such as Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's COVID-19 vaccine plan. Please get in touch with any questions, comments and suggestions by emailing us at contact@economicsexplored.com or sending a voice message via https://www.speakpipe.com/economicsexplored. About Charles DunstCharles Dunst is deputy director of research & analytics at The Asia Group, an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a contributing editor of American Purpose. He is the author of Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman (Hodder & Stoughton, February 2023). For further information about Charles, check out https://www.charlesdunst.com/. What's covered in EP180What is the Asia Group and what does it do? [1:35]Is democracy no longer seen as the path to prosperity in developing economies? [5:28]What are the most important organizing principles for a democratic system? [11:38]Accountability and the lack of trust in government [16:34]Best practices for running a democratic country in the 21st century [21:36]Too much money in politics in the US [25:41]Does the West need to decouple from China? [27:37]The role of public private partnerships (PPPs) such as Operation Warp Speed [32:27]How will dictators be defeated if we govern ourselves better? [34:59]The importance of engaging in the conversation through social media and local governance [38:32]Inequality and the Dream Hoarders [39:00]Links relevant to the conversationDefeating the Dictators (Please buy the book via this link to support the show):https://amzn.to/3liQrjxMatthew Engel's FT article “The foreign states that own Britain's railways”:https://www.ft.com/content/e57c5fd0-bf54-11e9-9381-78bab8a70848Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About Ithttps://amzn.to/3LvCOrLTrack Nancy Pelosi's stock portfolio:https://www.capitoltrades.com/politicians/P000197https://twitter.com/PelosiTracker_

Guest: Charles Dunst Charles Dunst is Deputy Director of Research & Analytics at The Asia Group, an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a contributing editor of American Purpose. He joins John to discuss his remarkable book 'Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman'. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This special edition episode features audio from Russia's War on Ukraine at Year One, a virtual event co-hosted by The Eastern Front and American Purpose on February 21. Gen. Philip Breedlove (ret.), Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges (ret.), and Adm. Jamie Foggo (ret.) combine their experience from the Air Force, Army, and Navy in a single discussion for the first time. Show notes: “February 21: Russia's War on Ukraine at Year One ft. Gen. (ret.) Philip Breedlove, Gen. (ret.) Ben Hodges, and Adm. (ret.) Jamie Foggo”.

Rod Arquette Show Daily Rundown – Thursday, February 2, 2023 4:20 pm: Representative Stephanie Gricius joins Rod to discuss her bill that would allow pregnant women to drive, without passengers, in the HOV lanes on Utah freeways 4:38 pm: Steve Moore, an Economist with FreedomWorks, joins Rod for their weekly conversation about politics and the nation's economy 6:05 pm: Hans Zeiger, President of the Jack Miller Center joins the program for a conversation about his piece for American Purpose on how recent polls show Americans aren't as divided as it may seem when it comes to the culture wars 6:20 pm: Utah Senate President Stuart Adams joins Rod for their weekly conversation about what's happening on Utah's Capitol Hill, and today they'll discuss a proposal to establish the office of the county sheriff in the state constitution, as well as the state's ongoing water issues 6:38 pm: Thomas Irwin, a contributor to the Orange County Register, joins the program for a discussion about his piece on the dying California dream

Today's episode is one that I was very excited about, but before I get into it, I want to offer a quick update on my recent trip to Berlin. Jeff Gedmin and I were joined by a few journalists as well as a number of Ukrainian, German, and Polish thought leaders to see how the West could come together to join forces in support of Ukraine. This is just the beginning of a series of dialogues RDI will host in coordination with American Purpose. We'll keep you apprised of how these conversations go and what they will produce. And now, onto the episode! I'm joined by Fiona Hill for a conversation on how Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's psychology informs his decision making in the war in Ukraine, and how it may inform the decision making of dictators everywhere. We discuss Putin's calculated choice to escalate the war in Ukraine, the many ways Putin could lose control over Russia, Putin's connection to Zelensky and Trump, the possibility of nuclear war, and the necessity of maintaining a united front against Russian aggression.Fiona was the deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019. She served as a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council from 2006 to 2009. Prior to that, she held numerous positions at the Eurasia Foundation in Washington, D.C. and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Fiona is currently a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center on the United States and Europe and has written extensively on Russian history, Vladimir Putin, and geopolitics. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit renewdemocracy.substack.com

This week on The Hamilton Review Podcast, Dr. Bob welcomes Professor Jeffrey Herf to the show! Professor Herf is a Distinguished University Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park, where he teaches Modern European, especially modern German History. He has published extensively on the origins, nature, consequences  of Nazism, World War II and the Holocaust, and their aftermath in Europe and the Middle East.  In this conversation, Professor Herf discusses his most recent book, Israel's Moment: International Support and Opposition for Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949 (Cambridge U.P., 2022) Enjoy this conversation and share with a friend! "Jeffrey Herf is Distinguished University Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park, where he teaches Modern European, especially modern German History. He has published extensively on the origins, nature, consequences  of Nazism, World War II and the Holocaust, and their aftermath in Europe and the Middle East.  His most recent book is Israel's Moment: International Support and Opposition for Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949 (Cambridge U.P., 2022).  Other recent woks include: The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust (Harvard U.P., 2006); Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (Yale University Press, 2009); and Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967-1989 (Cambridge U.P., 2016).  His commentaries on contemporary history and on contemporary antisemitism have been published in American Interest, American Purpose, The New Republic, The Tablet Magazine, and The Washington Post. He is working on a collection of essays with the working title: "Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left and Islamist." How to contact Professor Herf: Professor Herf on FacebookProfessor Herf on Twitter How to contact Dr. Bob: Dr. Bob on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChztMVtPCLJkiXvv7H5tpDQ Dr. Bob on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drroberthamilton/ Dr. Bob on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bob.hamilton.1656

Jeffrey Gedmin joins Uriel Epshtein for a special conversation from Berlin, Germany. They have spent the week meeting with German lawmakers to make the case that Germany could be doing more to support Ukraine's fight for freedom. In this conversation, they discuss whether German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's commitment to fight authoritarianism will be backed up with concrete policy or if Germany's backlash to the Russian invasion of Ukraine is just talk.Jeffrey Gedmin is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the magazine American Purpose. He is the former CEO of Radio Free Europe and previously ran the Legatum Institute in London and the Aspen Institute in Berlin. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit renewdemocracy.substack.com

Hvorfor blir noen bøker verdenslitteratur? Hva var det med «Ulysses» av James Joyce og «The Waste Land» av T.S. Eliot som gjorde at vi kan kalle dem moderne, og at vi i år markerer 100 år siden utgivelsene? Er det nødvendig å forstå så vanskelige tekster som Joyce og Eliot sine, for å ha utbytte av dem, og vil vi fortsatt lese dem om 100 år? Skribent i American Purpose og i The New Yorker, Matt Hanson, er gjest.

Jeffrey Gedmin of American Purpose provides a first-hand report and analysis of the situation in Ukraine following his visit to Kyiv and surrounding areas. How real are the risks that the war could go nuclear, and how do Ukrainians view America and its support of the war? With Carl Cannon, RealClearPolitics Washington bureau chief, and moderator Andrew Walworth.

In this special edition of The Eastern Front recorded from Ukraine, Giselle interviews Iulia and Dalibor who are on the ground in Ukraine alongside Ambassador Daniel Baer, former U.S. Ambassador to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This special recording includes a small audience and is hosted in a roundtable format by Jeff Gedmin, co-founder and editor-in-chief of American Purpose magazine, and moderated by The Eastern Front's very own Giselle Donnelly. Special thanks to American Purpose for convening this discussion. Part 1 of this episode involves Dalibor, Iulia, and Amb. Baer sharing their eyewitness accounts of Ukraine in wartime and their visits to Bucha, Irpin, and Kyiv. In Part 2, Giselle fields questions from the audience to Dalibor, Iulia, and Amb. Baer on a range of topics, from Ukrainian agriculture to culture to military to politics. Show notes: "https://www.aei.org/op-eds/appeasing-putin-isnt-the-answer/ (Appeasing Putin isn't the answer)" by Dalibor Rohac; "https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/letter-from-kyiv/ (Letter from Kyiv)" by Jeffrey Gedmin.

Dalibor and Iulia report live from Kyiv, Ukraine alongside Jeff Gedmin, co-founder and editor-in-chief of American Purpose magazine. Dalibor, Iulia, and Jeff share their astonishing eyewitness accounts from Kyiv, Bucha, and Irpin of how Ukrainian society is coping with, recovering from, and preparing for future war; Ukrainians' resolve to win the war against Russia; the brutal destruction of Ukrainian cities by Russian forces; and incredible stories of the poise, strength, and even humor of the Ukrainian people. Show notes: "https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/letter-from-kyiv/ (Letter from Kyiv)" by Jeffrey Gedmin.

Med krigen i Ukraina er USA mer opptatt av Europa enn på lenge. Jeff Gedmin, leder for nettstedet American Purpose, mener at Ukraina må vinne en klar seier og ikke komme i en situasjon der landområder må avgis i forhandlinger. Podcasten er på engelsk.

On Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine gave a virtual address to the US Congress, part of a worldwide campaign that included speeches to the Canadian, British and German parliaments. Where is the Biden administration drawing the line on helping Ukraine, and is there any movement toward peace at the negotiating table? RealClearPolitics Washington bureau chief Carl Cannon, Iulia Joja, director and senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and a professor at Georgetown University, and Jeff Gedmin, co-founder and editor in chief of American Purpose and former President and CEO of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty join Andrew Walworth on today's RealClearPolitics Takeaway podcast.

There’s only one story we wanted to do a deep dive into this week: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The conflict has escalated in recent days. It’s a humanitarian story, an economic story and a story of history. Someone who is well familiar with that history is Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist at Stanford University. Fukuyama is known for his 1992 book, “The End of History,” in which he argued that the great ideological battles between East and West are effectively over. On the show today, we check in with Fukuyama about that concept, given today’s context and the significance of a land war on the European continent. “One of the reasons that people have paid special attention to Ukraine is that it sets an important precedent for what will happen in East Asia,” he said. “Ukraine may be kind of a dry run for how much resistance there’s going to be to what’s happening in that theater. The biggest challenge to current world order actually is not Russia, but it’s China, simply because Chinese power is much more multidimensional than Russian power.” In the News Fix, we discuss Western media coverage of the conflict in Ukraine and how it compares to coverage of conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. Plus, the U.S. is the world’s top oil producer, so why does it still import oil from Russia? We’ll explain. Later, we hear from a listener who paid a big price for a cheap app. And we get an answer to the Make Me Smart question that has us wondering about a linguistic phenomenon. (Hopefully you can help us.) Here’s everything we talked about today: “What Next in Ukraine?” by Francis Fukuyama from American Purpose “In reporting Ukraine’s plight, some in media use offensive comparisons” from The Washington Post A Twitter thread about a woman from Sierra Leone trying to leave Ukraine “Why Does the U.S. Buy Russian Oil?” from The Wall Street Journal Texas Primary Election: Live Updates and What to Watch from The New York Times A Twitter thread about how the helium shortage is affecting the National Weather Service Give today to support Make Me Smart.

There’s only one story we wanted to do a deep dive into this week: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The conflict has escalated in recent days. It’s a humanitarian story, an economic story and a story of history. Someone who is well familiar with that history is Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist at Stanford University. Fukuyama is known for his 1992 book, “The End of History,” in which he argued that the great ideological battles between East and West are effectively over. On the show today, we check in with Fukuyama about that concept, given today’s context and the significance of a land war on the European continent. “One of the reasons that people have paid special attention to Ukraine is that it sets an important precedent for what will happen in East Asia,” he said. “Ukraine may be kind of a dry run for how much resistance there’s going to be to what’s happening in that theater. The biggest challenge to current world order actually is not Russia, but it’s China, simply because Chinese power is much more multidimensional than Russian power.” In the News Fix, we discuss Western media coverage of the conflict in Ukraine and how it compares to coverage of conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. Plus, the U.S. is the world’s top oil producer, so why does it still import oil from Russia? We’ll explain. Later, we hear from a listener who paid a big price for a cheap app. And we get an answer to the Make Me Smart question that has us wondering about a linguistic phenomenon. (Hopefully you can help us.) Here’s everything we talked about today: “What Next in Ukraine?” by Francis Fukuyama from American Purpose “In reporting Ukraine’s plight, some in media use offensive comparisons” from The Washington Post A Twitter thread about a woman from Sierra Leone trying to leave Ukraine “Why Does the U.S. Buy Russian Oil?” from The Wall Street Journal Texas Primary Election: Live Updates and What to Watch from The New York Times A Twitter thread about how the helium shortage is affecting the National Weather Service Give today to support Make Me Smart.

The Russian military faltered over the weekend but fighting in Ukraine picked up again on Monday. Mason Clark, Lead Russia Analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, joins Giselle, Dalibor, and Iulia again with updates from the weekend. Mason takes a look at why the fighting paused over the weekend, what's happening in Kharkiv, and the state of Kyiv. Our hosts also discuss Belarus' threat of entering the war, Russian disinformation, and how Europe continues to respond to the conflict. References: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-update-10 (Ukraine Conflict Update 10, Institute for the Study of War); https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/ukraine-and-the-no-fly-zone-temptation/ (Ukraine and the No-Fly Zone Temptation, American Purpose)

Francis Fukuyama is one of the most influential political thinkers of our times. He teaches at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, at Stanford. He is chairman of the editorial board at American Purpose. With Jay, he talks about his upbringing and education. His paternal grandfather came to America from Japan in 1905. His father was born and raised in Los Angeles. Source

Francis Fukuyama is one of the most influential political thinkers of our times. He teaches at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, at Stanford. He is chairman of the editorial board at American Purpose. With Jay, he talks about his upbringing and education. His paternal grandfather came to America from Japan in 1905. His father was born and raised in Los Angeles. The […]

Francis Fukuyama is one of the most influential political thinkers of our times. He teaches at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, at Stanford. He is chairman of the editorial board at American Purpose. With Jay, he talks about his upbringing and education. His paternal grandfather came to America from Japan in 1905. His father was born and raised in Los Angeles. The family was interned, in Colorado, during World War II. In college and graduate school, Fukuyama studied with an array of well-known scholars: Bloom, Deman, Derrida, Barthes, Huntington, Mansfield, et al. Jay further talks with Fukuyama about liberalism, conservatism, America's two-party system, Ukraine, and more. At the end, Fukuyama pays tribute to Alexis de Tocqueville, that great chronicler of America and explicator of democracy. 

Allan and Darren venture far outside their comfort zones this week to give some thoughts on the escalating crisis between Russia, Ukraine and NATO. This is an interesting and important issue because it brings together so many of the central questions in international relations. These include: the use of military coercion and other forms of deterrence; the behaviour of great powers, the role of diplomacy and signalling; the links between strategic and economic interests; the politics of the transatlantic relationship; the role of alliances; and the practical meaning of norms like ‘sovereignty' and ‘self-determination'. While not all of these can be covered in depth in a single episode, they all inform Allan and Darren as they offer initial opinions of the strategic context and stakes involved. These events are important to Australia because of their potential impact on the international order and, in particular, America's role in it. Along the way, the discussion covers the specific phenomenon of “spheres of influence”, the geoeconomic dimensions, and whether there is any scope at all for for multilateral organisations to contribute. The episode finishes by looking at how the Australian government has responded and thinking about what Beijing's perspective might be.   Relevant links Adam Tooze, “Putin's challenge to western hegemony – the 2022 edition”, Chartbook newsletter #68, 12 January 2022: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-68-putins-challenge-to Ross Douthat, “How to retreat from Ukraine”, New York Times, 22 January 2022: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/22/opinion/russia-ukraine-us-nato.html Francis Fukuyama, “Why Ukraine matters”, American Purpose, 24 January 2022: https://www.americanpurpose.com/blog/fukuyama/why-ukraine-matters/ Rob Lee, “Moscow's compellence strategy”, Foreign Policy Research Institute, 18 January 2022: https://www.fpri.org/article/2022/01/moscows-compellence-strategy/ Greg Earl, “Bitcoin vs the IMF, and other great expectations”, Lowy Interpreter, 27 January 2022: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/bitcoin-vs-imf-and-other-great-expectations Plain English podcast, “The Biggest Losers of the Streaming Wars: ESPN, Movie Theatres, Peacock, and More”, 18 January 2022: https://www.theringer.com/2022/1/18/22888915/the-biggest-losers-of-the-streaming-wars-espn-movie-theaters-peacock-and-more   (Other interesting readings, in chronological order) Tyler Cowen, “What Will Putin Do Next? Game Theory Offers Some Clues”, Bloomberg, 19 January 2022: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-01-19/what-will-putin-do-next-time-for-some-game-theory “What would a Ukraine conflict look like” Rachman Review Podcast, 20 January 2022: https://overcast.fm/+2IlRysJbY Edward Fishman and Chris Miller, “The Russia Sanctions That Could Actually Stop Putin”, Politico, 21 January 2022: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/01/21/russia-sanctions-stop-putin-energy-markets-us-invasion-527524 Noah Smith, “Why is Ukraine such an economic failure”, Noahpinion newsletter, 23 January 2022: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-is-ukraine-such-an-economic-failure Fiona Hill, “Putin Has the U.S. Right Where He Wants It”, New York Times, 24 January 2022: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/opinion/russia-ukraine-putin-biden.html?referringSource=articleShare Michael Kofman, “Putin's wager in Russia's standoff with the west”, War on the Rocks, 24 January 2022: https://warontherocks.com/2022/01/putins-wager-in-russias-standoff-with-the-west/ Daniel Drezner, “On deterring Russia”, Washington Post, 26 January 2022: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/01/26/deterring-russia/ Center for Defense Strategies, “How likely is large-scale war in Ukraine?”, The Kyiv Independent, 29 January 2022: https://kyivindependent.com/national/center-for-defense-strategies-how-probable-is-large-scale-war-in-ukraine-analysis/ Kyle Wilson, “Putin's NATO power play stirs disquiet among Russia's security elite”, ASPI Strategist, 29 January 2022: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/putins-nato-power-play-stirs-disquiet-among-russias-security-elite/

The world around us is crumbling, and it's our obligation as Americans to fix these issues. In today's episode, Andy explains how society is working to keep us from realizing our true potential and how taking your personal development seriously can improve America as a whole.

Merry Christmas to everyone who’s celebrating! May this holiday season bring a renewed sense of hope, and of common purpose among those we come in contact with. On this week’s State of Belief, Interfaith Alliance’s weekly radio program and podcast, host Rev. Welton Gaddy presents highlights from the Alliance’s interview series The American Purpose. Among […]

Allan and Darren cannot resist focusing on the escalated and seemingly personal spat between Australian PM Scott Morrison and French President Emmanuel Macron over Australia's cancellation of the French submarine contract, then followed by the launch of AUKUS. During Morrison's recent international trip, Macron called him a liar, to which the Australian side responded by leaking details of private text messages the French president had sent the PM just days prior to the announcement. In Morrison's words: “claims were made, claims were refuted”. Who is in the right/wrong here? Stepping back, what is the role of honesty and integrity, or truth and trust, in international diplomacy? How much does it matter? Along the way, Darren finds the temptation to develop a potted academic theory of a “Morrison doctrine” too strong to pass up. Let the debate begin! We thank Mitchell McIntosh for audio editing and Rory Stenning for composing our theme music.          Relevant links Cameron Stewart, “How Biden threw PM under the bus”, The Australian, 2 November 2021: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/how-joe-biden-threw-scott-morrison-under-the-bus/news-story/5dde5b5f35ef17842d83a1f4d74f83a1 Samantha Maiden, “Who is really lying in Scott Morrison, Emmanuel Macron's French submarine feud”, Daily Telegraph, 2 November 2021:  https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/business/work/who-is-really-lying-in-scott-morrison-emmanuel-macrons-french-submarine-feud/news-story/f77df0b11df50eee5d07e681a2ef749d   Phillip Coorey, “‘I don't like losing': Macron ‘knew' the subs contract was in peril”, Australian Financial Review, 1 November 2021: https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/i-don-t-like-losing-macron-knew-the-subs-contract-was-in-peril-20211101-p594xr    Stephen Dziedzic and Georgia Hitch “French ambassador says leaking of text messages between Scott Morrison and Emmanuel Macron 'unprecedented new low'”, ABC News, 3 November 2021: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-03/french-ambassador-jean-pierre-thebault-submarines/100590382   Jake Evans, “Scott Morrison refuses to apologise to President Emmanuel Macron after claims PM lied about submarine deal”, ABC News, 3 November 2021: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-03/scott-morrison-refuses-to-apologise-to-macron/100590506 Diplomacy by Harold Nicolson (Goodreads page): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1678410.Diplomacy Marise Payne “Inaugural Australia-France 2+2 Ministerial Consultations”, 30 August 2021: https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/marise-payne/media-release/inaugural-australia-france-22-ministerial-consultations Daniel Hurst, “Scrapping submarines deal broke trust, Macron tells Australian PM”, The Guardian, 28 October 2021: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/28/france-seeks-tangible-actions-from-australia-after-submarines-row Andrew Tillett, “Defence admits it is looking at back-up plan for French subs deal”, Australian Financial Review, 2 June 2021: https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/defence-admits-it-is-looking-at-back-up-plan-for-french-subs-deal-20210602-p57xdu Paul Kelly, “Morrison had to hurt France to get AUKUS subs deal”, The Australian, 3 November 2021: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/morrison-had-to-hurt-france-to-get-aukus-subs-deal/news-story/7e839a998e2bb7faee42334afae724ce Andrew Probyn, “Scott Morrison rejects French President's criticism over handling of scrapped submarine project”, ABC News, 1 November 2021: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-01/scott-morrison-rejects-emmanuel-macrons-accusations-of-lying/100586680 Ben Herscovitch, “Beijing to Canberra and Back” (newsletter): https://beijing2canberra.substack.com/ Adam Tooze, “Chartbook” (newsletter): https://adamtooze.substack.com/ Heather Cox Richardson, “Letters from an American” (newsletter): https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ Bill Bishop, “Sinocism” (newsletter): https://sinocism.com/ Andrew Daily “The Weekly Dish” (newsletter): https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/ American Purpose (newsletter): https://www.americanpurpose.com/ Rohit, “Why do we dislike rules so much”, Strange Loop Cannon (newsletter), 7 September 2021: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/why-do-we-dislike-rules-so-much

On the next State of Belief Radio, God Gets Everything God Wants. That's the title of a new book from self-described radical inclusion evangelist the Rev. Dr. Katie Hays. Also, Brandan Robertson is back with a Nighttime Devotional for Teen Boys – and an experiment on the youth-oriented social media platform Tik Tok. And a look at Season Two of the Interfaith Alliance interview series The American Purpose, hosted by Alliance President Rabbi Jack Moline.

This week on Reaganism, we're joined by guest host Rachel Hoff, who leads the Reagan Institute's Center for Freedom and Democracy. Our guest this week is Ellen Bork, who has worked for decades in the field of democracy and human rights. She is a member of the Board of Directors for the International Campaign for Tibet and for the Free Russia Foundation. Ellen served in the Reagan Administration at the State Department during the 1980s and on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in the 1990s. Ellen is currently a contributing editor at American Purpose, where she writes about American foreign policy with a focus on Asia.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden arrived in the UK for his first overseas presidential trip: a three-day G-7 summit followed by a NATO meeting next week, which will include his first face-to-face meeting as president with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile Vice President Kamala Harris is back in the US after her own first foreign trip. She visited Guatemala and Mexico to talk about what the administration calls the “root causes' of the crisis on the US southern border, and she returned to a wave of criticism from both the left and right. What does the Administration's debut on the global stage tell us about Biden's worldview and emerging foreign policy agenda? Tom Bevan, president and co-founder of RealClearPolitics, Carl Cannon, Washington Bureau Chief, and Jeff Gedmin, co-founder and editor-in-chief of American Purpose join Andrew Walworth on today's RealClearPolitics Takeaway podcast.

This week, Mike is joined by Asia and human rights expert Ellen Bork, contributing editor at American Purpose, to discuss the geopolitics of Tibet and what it means for the Asia Chessboard. The two begin by discussing Tibet's strategic significance in the region, including the influence of Tibetan Buddhism and China's strategic approach to its “core interests.” Bork also dives deeper into Tibet's relationships with its neighbors, like India, and the transnational impact of the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. How should the U.S. factor Tibet into its Asia Strategy? How can the U.S. and its allies stand up to China when it comes to human rights abuses in Tibet?

Since accelerated progress toward American Purpose will require a cultural shift, America's passion for sport at all levels provides a huge opportunity to harness its power to make that shift.  In this episode we talk with Scott Jenkins who has managed numerous professional sports stadiums across America who also leads the Green Sports Alliance, a collaboration of teams and leagues working to have sports lead that cultural shift.  Listen to Scott's story about the emerging opportunity that sports presents, the early progress, the importance of sustainability science, the threat of greenwashing, and how consumers and youth are demanding that the sports organizations make more progress sooner.