Podcasts about Evan Osnos

A mega-donor to the Republican Presidential campaign, Elon Musk got something no other titan of industry has ever received: an office in the White House and a government department tailor-made for him, with incalculable influence in shaping the Administration. But even with Musk out of Washington, it remains a fact that the influence of wealth in America has never been greater. As one case in point, Donald Trump's “big beautiful bill” is estimated to raise or leave flat the taxes of about 57 million households, while the top five per cent of earners will have their taxes cut by more than $1.5 trillion. From his perch in Washington, Evan Osnos has for years been looking at the politics of hyper-wealth. While the wealthy have always held outsized influence, Osnos explains how tech tycoons, in particular, sought far greater influence under Donald Trump's second Administration. “These are guys who really believed that they were the greatest example of entrepreneurship,” he tells David Remnick, “and that all of a sudden they found that, no, they were being called monopolists, that they were being accused of invading people's privacy, that in fact they had been blamed for the degradation of democracy, of our children's emotional health, of our attention spans. They suddenly saw that there was a new President who would not only forgive any of those kinds of mistakes and patterns of abuse but would in fact celebrate them, and would roll back any of the regulation that was in their way.” Osnos's new book, collected from his reporting in The New Yorker, is “The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich.”

There are more billionaires now than ever before. We know their names, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Theil, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. But we don't really know their lives. We share the same planet, but they occupy a different world. The New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos began writing about the uber rich when Americans who professed disdain for billionaires then elected one as President. His essays come together in a book that offers a rare view from the penthouse that reveals the habits, fixations and obsessions of the very rich and how they see the rest of us. The book is called "The Haves and the Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich."

Following Donald Trump's election in 2016, New Yorker reporter Evan Osnos wanted to understand what the president's wealth and status represented in the minds of his supporters – and in American culture at large. Osnos began reporting on the lives of the ultrawealthy, including the small but growing billionaire class. Now, Osnos has published a collection of essays The Haves and Have-Yachts, which explores the American relationship to immense wealth through anecdotes about superyachts, private concerts with pop stars, and doomsday preppers. In today's episode, Osnos speaks with NPR's Frank Langfitt about widening inequality, status anxieties among oligarchs, and what it feels like to live in a new Gilded Age.To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookofthedayLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Sources tell NBC News that Trump is considering his options on Iran, including a potential U.S. strike. Then, oil giant executives warn of major supply disruptions and price volatility as Israel-Iran conflict intensifies. Plus, Ukraine faces its deadliest attack from Russia as the G7 is cut short. Jeff Mason, Leigh Ann Caldwell, Amna Nawaz, Dan Nathan, Max Chafkin, Julia Ioffe and Evan Osnos join The 11th Hour this Tuesday.

No U.S. secretary of state ever achieved such celebrity while in office as Henry Kissinger; immersed in the philosophy of Kant and the diplomacy of Metternich, he was hailed as one of the most important strategic thinkers America has ever produced. Yet no former secretary of state has been more vehemently criticized, most notably for sins of omission and commission in countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chile and East Timor. In this episode – recorded live at the 2024 Writers Conference – renowned historian NIALL FERGUSON, now completing the second of his two-volume biography of Kissinger, talks to New Yorker staff writer and National Book Award-winning author EVAN OSNOS about his subject's complicated legacy and considers what he might have made of our current foreign policy landscape. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Let me tell you about the very rich”, Scott Fitzgerald once said. “They are different from you and me”. One way they are different, the New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos reports, is that they own yachts - very very big, expensive yachts. In The Haves and The Have-Yachts, Osnos' dispatches about today's ultrarich, he takes us on board these boats to reveal the obscenity of our new gilded age. From Mark Zuckerberg's obsession with Augustus Caesar to the thin-skinned grievances of figures like Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk, Osnos explores how the personal quirks and anxieties of just 19 American plutocrats - the 0.00001% - are now reshaping our entire society. He argues we're living in an era of "flamboyant oligarchy," where billionaires openly flaunt their wealth. Citing the extraordinary tableau of tech moguls lining up in homage to Trump at his inauguration, Osnos describes our age as "the complete and total fusion of politics and plutocracy in the United States." five key takeaways1. We're Living in an Era of "Flamboyant Oligarchy" Unlike past wealthy elites who stayed hidden ("a whale that never surfaces doesn't get harpooned"), today's billionaires openly compete for attention and flaunt their wealth, fundamentally changing the relationship between extreme wealth and public life.2. Just 19 People Could Control 18% of America's Wealth The 0.00001% - currently 19 Americans - control 1.8% of national wealth today. If current trends continue, this could reach 18% within 40 years, representing an unprecedented concentration of economic power in human history.3. Personal Quirks Have Massive Social Consequences Billionaires' individual obsessions and blind spots shape society at scale - from Facebook being blue because Zuckerberg is colorblind, to his Augustus Caesar fixation influencing how he thinks about power and empire-building.4. The Complete Fusion of Politics and Plutocracy Trump's inauguration, featuring tech moguls "lined up in homage," represents the total merger of political and economic power in America - what Osnos calls a "sultanistic oligarchy" where billionaires have elevated Trump to rule on their behalf.5. Billionaires Are Surprisingly Thin-Skinned and Aggrieved Despite their wealth, figures like Musk and Andreessen are easily offended and resentful about public criticism, leading them not to retreat but to actively seek control over politics and media to reshape the narrative in their favor. BiographyEvan Lionel Richard Osnos (born December 24, 1976) is an American journalist and author who has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2008, specializing in politics and foreign affairs coverage in the United States and China. Osnos continues to be one of America's most prominent foreign correspondents and political journalists, known for his deep reporting and narrative storytelling that bridges international and domestic affairs.Current PositionsOsnos is currently a staff writer at The New Yorker, a CNN contributor, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, based in Washington D.C.Early Life and EducationOsnos was born in London when his parents, Susan (née Sherer) Osnos and Peter L.W. Osnos, were visiting from Moscow, where his father was assigned as a correspondent for The Washington Post. He graduated with high honors from Harvard University with a Bachelor's Degree. Career HighlightsEarly Career: In 2002, he was assigned to the Middle East, where he covered the Iraq War and reported from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere. In 2005, he became the China correspondent. Chicago Tribune: Prior to The New Yorker, he worked as the Beijing bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune, where he contributed to a series that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. The New Yorker: Osnos joined The New Yorker in September 2008 and served as the magazine's China correspondent until 2013, maintaining a regular blog called "Letter from China" and writing articles about China's young neoconservatives, the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, and the Wenzhou train crash. Major Publications* "Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China" (2014): Won the 2014 National Book Award for nonfiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. * "Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now" (2020): Published in October 2020, based on lengthy interviews with Biden and revealing conversations with more than a hundred others, including President Barack Obama. * "Wildland: The Making of America's Fury" (2021): Published in September 2021, about profound cultural and political changes occurring between September 11, 2001, and January 6, 2021. The book was a New York Times bestseller. * "The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich" (2025): His latest book, published in June 2025, exploring American oligarchy and the culture of excess. Awards and RecognitionOsnos has received the Asia Society's Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia, the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, and a Mirror Award for profile-writing. He received two awards from the Overseas Press Club and the Osborn Elliott Prize for excellence in journalism from the Asia Society. Personal LifeHe has been married to Sarabeth Berman since July 9, 2011. He lives with his wife and children near Washington, This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The Washington Roundtable discusses President Trump's deployment of uniformed troops in Los Angeles, the Administration's attempt to blur the distinction between the military and law enforcement, and this weekend's parade in D.C. to celebrate the Army's two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary, which also happens to be the President's seventy-ninth birthday. Plus, the handcuffing of California Senator Alex Padilla at a press conference given by Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security. “To suddenly see this guy being thrown around on the ground—it really brought back all of the feelings I've had about living in places like Egypt and in China,” says the staff writer Evan Osnos. “When the highest office-holders in the land start to get brutalized, that just tells you that really anybody out there is being treated in much harsher ways.” This week's reading: “Donald Trump's Dictator Cosplay,” by Susan B. Glasser “Donald Trump Enters His World Cup Era,” by Jon Allsop “Looking for the National Guard in Los Angeles,” by Emily Witt “Immigration Protests Threaten to Boil Over in Los Angeles,” by E. Tammy Kim “The Farmers Harmed by the Trump Administration,” by Peter Slevin “The Victims of the Trump Administration's China-Bashing,” by Michael Luo “The Department of Veterans Affairs Is Not O.K.,” by David W. Brown To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Ali Velshi is joined by NBC News' Jacob Soboroff, Senior Director at Brennan Center for Justice Faiza Patel, Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones, Lead Plaintiff in Texas Abortion Ban lawsuit Amanda Zurawski, Professor of Law at NYU Melissa Murray

Ali Velshi is joined by fmr. Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA), Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), fmr. Rep. Charlie Dent (R-FL), Staff Writer at The New Yorker Evan Osnos

The Washington Roundtable discusses the fallout from the messy rupture between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, how battles between maximalist rulers and the mega-wealthy have unfolded in history, and how this week's fighting could portend a new, more combative phase of American oligarchy. They talk about America's new Gilded Age, drawing on “The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich,” a new book by Evan Osnos, just out this week.This week's reading: “The Musk-Trump Divorce Is as Messy as You Thought It Would Be,” by Susan B. Glasser “Donald Trump's Politics of Plunder,” by Evan Osnos “The Sublime Spectacle of Donald Trump and Elon Musk's Social-Media Slap Fight,” by Jessica Winter “The Private Citizens Who Want to Help Trump Deport Migrants,” by Jessica Pishko “Can Public Media Survive Trump?,” by Jon Allsop Tune in wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

There's more billionaires in the world now than ever before. And as wealth is concentrated into the hands of a small group of people, the power of those select few is also growing – particularly in the US, where billionaires have been getting more and more access to Donald Trump. The journalist Evan Osnos tells Matt Galloway about the influence and excesses of the .01%, which he charts in his new book, The Haves and the Have Yachts.

There are less than 1,000 billionaires in the U.S. Why do they matter so much? New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos joins Preet to discuss his new book, “The Haves and Have-Yachts,” which paints a broad portrait of the lives of the ultrarich, the state of American oligarchy, and the dire wealth disparity in this country.  Plus, Preet answers questions about the fake video showing Trump hitting Bruce Springsteen with a golf ball, and whether you can protest policies by not paying your taxes.  Join the CAFE Insider community to stay informed without hysteria, fear-mongering, or rage-baiting. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up. Thank you for supporting our work. Show notes and a transcript of the episode are available on our website.  You can now watch this episode! Head to CAFE's Youtube channel and subscribe. Have a question for Preet? Ask @PreetBharara on BlueSky, or Twitter with the hashtag #AskPreet. Email us at staytuned@cafe.com, or call 833-997-7338 to leave a voicemail. Stay Tuned with Preet is brought to you by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Watch Politics War Room & James Carville Explains on YouTube @PoliticsWarRoomOfficial James and Al celebrate the daring attack by Ukrainian forces against the Russian Air Force and put Trump through the wringer for his treatment of vets and the military while neglecting our allies.  From there, they look at how Democrats can take advantage and welcome journalist Evan Osnos.  Together, they expose the perils of wealth inequality in our new Gilded Age, explore what the policies addressing current class imbalance would look like, and discuss how to take power back from the oligarchy when people like Elon are seemingly being given the keys to the castle (or at least the White House). Email your questions to James and Al at politicswarroom@gmail.com or tweet them to @politicon.  Make sure to include your city– we love to hear where you're from! More from James and Al: Get text updates from Politics War Room and Politicon. Watch Politics War Room & James Carville Explains on YouTube @PoliticsWarRoomOfficial Get updates and some great behind-the-scenes content from the documentary CARVILLE: WINNING IS EVERYTHING, STUPID by following James on X @jamescarville and his new TikTok @realjamescarville James Carville & Al Hunt have launched the Politics War Room Substack Check Out Andrew Zucker's New Politicon Podcast: The Golden Age Check Out Kimberly Atkins Stohr's New Politicon Podcast: Justice By Design Get More From This Week's Guest:  Evan Osnos: Twitter | The New Yorker | Brookings Institution | Website | Author Please Support Our Sponsors: Magic Spoon: Get $5 off your next order of delicious protein-packed Magic Spoon at magicspoon.com/warroom Beam: Sleep better with Beam's best-selling Dream Powder and get up to 40% off for a limited time when you go to shopbeam.com/warroom and use code: WARROOM Harvest Hosts: For 20% off your order, head to HarvestHosts.com and use code WARROOM  

For months, Donald Trump has been heralding his "Big, Beautiful" spending bill - a key piece of his agenda, containing tax cuts for the rich and benefits cuts for the vulnerable. It will also add trillions to America's debt - to the point that some are now sounding the alarm, warning of a "debt bomb" about to hit the US economy. What the White House didn't bet on was that one of those leading critics would be Elon Musk - who's turned fire on his former boss in spectacular fashion, calling the legislation a "disgusting abomination" and ominously warning Senators that voters will fire those politicians who "betray America". Will his words spook Republicans into defying Donald Trump? And how will the President react to Musk's missives?Later, we speak to Evan Osnos, New Yorker writer and author of new book 'The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich". It's a firsthand insight into the lives of America's new oligarchy now running America - what does it tell us about the forces driving voters and how can the Democrats respond? The News Agents USA is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/

Tonight on The Last Word: Elon Musk's time at DOGE is marked by a series of failures. Also, the ultra-wealthy buy influence with Donald Trump. And the Trump administration disbands a task force create to find, seize, and liquidate sanctioned Russians' assets. Gabrielle Emanuel and Evan Osnos join Lawrence O'Donnell.

Evan Osnos, author and New Yorker staff writer, discusses his new book "The Haves and Have-Yachts." The New York Times bestseller breaks down how the ultra-rich hold more of America's wealth now than they ever did, and how a world of superyachts, luxury bunkers and political donations are ushering in a new Gilded Age with staggering disparities of wealth and power. He speaks with Bloomberg's Tom Keene and David Gura.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Who are the ultrarich in America and what do they want? Evan Osnos, author of The Haves and Have-Yachts, pulls back the curtain on the hidden world of the massively wealthy, their unbelievable lifestyles and their unchecked influence on American politics—which directly impacts our lives while distorting the economy.

Elon Musk has announced an end to his time as the head of DOGE with a parting shot at his former boss Donald Trump over a bill that's projected to add trillions to government debt - and now Donald Trump's flagship tariff policy has suffered a major setback as a federal court ruled them illegal. The White House is of course appealing.Krishnan Guru-Murthy speaks to Evan Osnos, staff writer at the New Yorker, and Kenneth P. Vogel, reporter for the New York Times about crypto currencies, unprecedented pardons, and how this all fits into a wider pattern in President Trump's administration.Produced by: Freya Pickford and Calum Fraser

The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos examines the broligarchy’s reckless actions while detailing his new book The Haves and the Have Yachts. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, spells out the cruel attacks in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nicolle Wallace on Trump's tariff whiplash creating chaos and confusion for small business owners, the administration's escalating attacks on Harvard University, and the rank corruption of a new Trump-centered private club opening in Washington. Joined by: Justin Wolfers, David Frum, Cornell Belcher, Dr. Jeremy Faust, Evan Osnos, Basil Smikle, Claire McCaskill, and Jonah Bromwich.

So why did Harris lose in 2024? For one very big reason, according to the progressive essayist Bill Deresiewicz: “because she represented the exhausted Democratic establishment”. This rotting establishment, Deresiewicz believes, is symbolized by both the collective denial of Biden's mental decline and by Harris' pathetically rudderless Presidential campaign. But there's a much more troubling problem with the Democratic party, he argues. It has become “the party of institutionalized liberalism, which is itself exhausted”. So how to reinvent American liberalism in the 2020's? How to make the left once again, in Deresiewicz words, “the locus of openness, playfulness, productive contention, experiment, excess, risk, shock, camp, mirth, mischief, irony and curiosity"? That's the question for all progressives in our MAGA/Woke age. 5 Key Takeaways * Deresiewicz believes the Democratic establishment and aligned media engaged in a "tacit cover-up" of Biden's condition and other major issues like crime, border policies, and pandemic missteps rather than addressing them honestly.* The liberal movement that began in the 1960s has become "exhausted" and the Democratic Party is now an uneasy alliance of establishment elites and working-class voters whose interests don't align well.* Progressive institutions suffer from a repressive intolerance characterized by "an unearned sense of moral superiority" and a fear of vitality that leads to excessive rules, bureaucracy, and speech codes.* While young conservatives are creating new movements with energy and creativity, the progressive establishment stifles innovation by purging anyone who "violates the code" or criticizes their side.* Rebuilding the left requires creating conditions for new ideas by ending censoriousness, embracing true courage that risks something real, and potentially building new institutions rather than trying to reform existing ones. Full Transcript Andrew Keen: Hello, everyone. It's the old question on this show, Keen on America, how to make sense of this bewildering, frustrating, exciting country in the wake, particularly of the last election. A couple of years ago, we had the CNN journalist who I rather like and admire, Jake Tapper, on the show. Arguing in a piece of fiction that he thinks, to make sense of America, we need to return to the 1970s. He had a thriller out a couple of years ago called All the Demons Are Here. But I wonder if Tapper's changed his mind on this. His latest book, which is a sensation, which he co-wrote with Alex Thompson, is Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, its Cover-up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. Tapper, I think, tells the truth about Biden, as the New York Times notes. It's a damning portrait of an enfeebled Biden protected by his inner circle. I would extend that, rather than his inner circle protected by an elite, perhaps a coastal elite of Democrats, unable or unwilling to come to terms with the fact that Biden was way, way past his shelf life. My guest today, William Deresiewicz—always get his last name wrong—it must be...William Deresiewicz: No, that was good. You got it.Andrew Keen: Probably because I'm anti-semitic. He has a new piece out called "Post-Election" which addresses much of the rottenness of the American progressive establishment in 2025. Bill, congratulations on the piece.William Deresiewicz: Thank you.Andrew Keen: Have you had a chance to look at this Tapper book or have you read about Original Sin?William Deresiewicz: Yeah, I read that piece. I read the piece that's on the screen and I've heard some people talking about it. And I mean, as you said, it's not just his inner circle. I don't want to blame Tapper. Tapper did the work. But one immediate reaction to the debate debacle was, where have the journalists been? For example, just to unfairly call one person out, but they're just so full of themselves, the New Yorker dripping with self-congratulations, especially in its centennial year, its boundless appetite for self-celebration—to quote something one of my students once said about Yale—they've got a guy named Evan Osnos, who's one of their regulars on their political...Andrew Keen: Yeah, and he's been on the show, Evan, and in fact, I rather like his, I was going to say his husband, his father, Peter Osnos, who's a very heavy-hitting ex-publisher. But anyway, go on. And Evan's quite a nice guy, personally.William Deresiewicz: I'm sure he's a nice guy, but the fact is he's not only a New Yorker journalist, but he wrote a book about Biden, which means that he's presumably theoretically well-sourced within Biden world. He didn't say anything. I mean, did he not know or did he know?Andrew Keen: Yeah, I agree. I mean you just don't want to ask, right? You don't know. But you're a journalist, so you're supposed to know. You're supposed to ask. So I'm sure you're right on Osnos. I mean, he was on the show, but all journalists are progressives, or at least all the journalists at the Times and the New Yorker and the Atlantic. And there seemed to be, as Jake Tapper is suggesting in this new book, and he was part of the cover-up, there seemed to be a cover-up on the part of the entire professional American journalist establishment, high-end establishment, to ignore the fact that the guy running for president or the president himself clearly had no idea of what was going on around him. It's just astonishing, isn't it? I mean, hindsight's always easy, of course, 2020 in retrospect, but it was obvious at the time. I made it clear whenever I spoke about Biden, that here was a guy clearly way out of his depth, that he shouldn't have been president, maybe shouldn't have been president in the first place, but whatever you think about his ideas, he clearly was way beyond his shelf date, a year or two into the presidency.William Deresiewicz: Yeah, but here's the thing, and it's one of the things I say in the post-election piece, but I'm certainly not the only person to say this. There was an at least tacit cover-up of Biden, of his condition, but the whole thing was a cover-up, meaning every major issue that the 2024 election was about—crime, at the border, woke excess, affordability. The whole strategy of not just the Democrats, but this media establishment that's aligned with them is to just pretend that it wasn't happening, to explain it away. And we can also throw in pandemic policy, right? Which people were still thinking about and all the missteps in pandemic policy. The strategy was effectively a cover-up. We're not gonna talk about it, or we're gonna gaslight you, or we're gonna make excuses. So is it a surprise that people don't trust these establishment institutions anymore? I mean, I don't trust them anymore and I want to trust them.Andrew Keen: Were there journalists? I mean, there were a handful of journalists telling the truth about Biden. Progressives, people on the left rather than conservatives.William Deresiewicz: Ezra Klein started to talk about it, I remember that. So yes, there were a handful, but it wasn't enough. And you know, I don't say this to take away from Ezra Klein what I just gave him with my right hand, take away with my left, but he was also the guy, as soon as the Kamala succession was effected, who was talking about how Kamala in recent months has been going from strength to strength and hasn't put a foot wrong and isn't she fantastic. So all credit to him for telling the truth about Biden, but it seems to me that he immediately pivoted to—I mean, I'm sure he thought he was telling the truth about Harris, but I didn't believe that for one second.Andrew Keen: Well, meanwhile, the lies about Harris or the mythology of Harris, the false—I mean, all mythology, I guess, is false—about Harris building again. Headline in Newsweek that Harris would beat Donald Trump if an election was held again. I mean I would probably beat—I would beat Trump if an election was held again, I can't even run for president. So anyone could beat Trump, given the situation. David Plouffe suggested that—I think he's quoted in the Tapper book—that Biden totally fucked us, but it suggests that somehow Harris was a coherent progressive candidate, which she wasn't.William Deresiewicz: She wasn't. First of all, I hadn't seen this poll that she would beat Trump. I mean, it's a meaningless poll, because...Andrew Keen: You could beat him, Bill, and no one can even pronounce your last name.William Deresiewicz: Nobody could say what would actually happen if there were a real election. It's easy enough to have a hypothetical poll. People often look much better in these kinds of hypothetical polls where there's no actual election than they do when it's time for an election. I mean, I think everyone except maybe David Plouffe understands that Harris should never have been a candidate—not just after Biden dropped out way too late, but ever, right? I mean the real problem with Biden running again is that he essentially saddled us with Harris. Instead of having a real primary campaign where we could have at least entertained the possibility of some competent people—you know, there are lots of governors. I mean, I'm a little, and maybe we'll get to this, I'm little skeptical that any normal democratic politician is going to end up looking good. But at least we do have a whole bunch of what seem to be competent governors, people with executive experience. And we never had a chance to entertain any of those people because this democratic establishment just keeps telling us who we're going to vote for. I mean, it's now three elections in a row—they forced Hillary on us, and then Biden. I'm not going to say they forced Biden on us although elements of it did. It probably was a good thing because he won and he may have been the only one who could have won. And then Harris—it's like reductio ad absurdum. These candidates they keep handing us keep getting worse and worse.Andrew Keen: But it's more than being worse. I mean, whatever one can say about Harris, she couldn't explain why she wanted to be president, which seems to me a disqualifier if you're running for president. The point, the broader point, which I think you bring out very well in the piece you write, and you and I are very much on the same page here, so I'm not going to criticize you in your post-election—William Deresiewicz: You can criticize me, Andrew, I love—Andrew Keen: I know I can criticize you, and I will, but not in this particular area—is that these people are the establishment. They're protecting a globalized world, they're the coast. I mean, in some ways, certainly the Bannonite analysis is right, and it's not surprising that they're borrowing from Lenin and the left is borrowing from Edmund Burke.William Deresiewicz: Yeah, I mean I think, and I think this is the real problem. I mean, part of what I say in the piece is that it just seems, maybe this is too organicist, but there just seems to be an exhaustion that the liberal impulse that started, you know, around the time I was born in 1964, and I cite the Dylan movie just because it's a picture of that time where you get a sense of the energy on the left, the dawning of all this exciting—Andrew Keen: You know that movie—and we've done a show on that movie—itself was critical I guess in a way of Dylan for not being political.William Deresiewicz: Well, but even leaving that aside, just the reminder you get of what that time felt like. That seems in the movie relatively accurate, that this new youth culture, the rights revolution, the counterculture, a new kind of impulse of liberalism and progressivism that was very powerful and strong and carried us through the 60s and 70s and then became the establishment and has just become completely exhausted now. So I just feel like it's just gotten to the end of its possibility. Gotten to the end of its life cycle, but also in a less sort of mystical way. And I think this is a structural problem that the Democrats have not been able to address for a long time, and I don't see how they're going to address it. The party is now the party, as you just said, of the establishment, uneasily wedded to a mainly non-white sort of working class, lower class, maybe somewhat middle class. So it's sort of this kind of hybrid beast, the two halves of which don't really fit together. The educated upper middle class, the professional managerial class that you and I are part of, and then sort of the average Black Latino female, white female voter who doesn't share the interests of that class. So what are you gonna do about that? How's that gonna work?Andrew Keen: And the thing that you've always given a lot of thought to, and it certainly comes out in this piece, is the intolerance of the Democratic Party. But it's an intolerance—it's not a sort of, and I don't like this word, it's not the fascist intolerance of the MAGA movement or of Trump. It's a repressive intolerance, it's this idea that we're always right and if you disagree with us, then there must be something wrong with you.William Deresiewicz: Yeah, right. It's this, at this point, completely unearned sense of moral superiority and intellectual superiority, which are not really very clearly distinguished in their mind, I think. And you know, they just reek of it and people hate it and it's understandable that they hate it. I mean, it's Hillary in a word. It's Hillary in a word and again, I'm wary of treading on this kind of ground, but I do think there's an element of—I mean, obviously Trump and his whole camp is very masculinist in a very repulsive way, but there is also a way to be maternalist in a repulsive way. It's this kind of maternal control. I think of it as the sushi mom voice where we're gonna explain to you in a calm way why you should listen to us and why we're going to control every move you make. And it's this fear—I mean what my piece is really about is this sort of quasi-Nietzschean argument for energy and vitality that's lacking on the left. And I think it's lacking because the left fears it. It fears sort of the chaos of the life force. So it just wants to shackle it in all of these rules and bureaucracy and speech codes and consent codes. It just feels lifeless. And I think everybody feels that.Andrew Keen: Yeah, and it's the inability to imagine you can be wrong. It's the moral greediness of some people, at least, who think of themselves on the left. Some people might be listening to this, thinking it's just these two old white guys who think themselves as progressives but are actually really conservative. And all this idea of nature is itself chilling, that it's a kind of anti-feminism.William Deresiewicz: Well, that's b******t. I mean, let me have a chance to respond. I mean I plead guilty to being an old white man—Andrew Keen: I mean you can't argue with that one.William Deresiewicz: I'm not arguing with it. But the whole point rests on this notion of positionality, like I'm an older white man, therefore I think this or I believe that, which I think is b******t to begin with because, you know, down the street there's another older white guy who believes the exact opposite of me, so what's the argument here? But leaving that aside, and whether I am or am not a progressive—okay, my ideal politician is Bernie Sanders, so I'll just leave it at that. The point is, I mean, one point is that feminism hasn't always been like this. Second wave feminism that started in the late sixties, when I was a little kid—there was a censorious aspect to it, but there was also this tremendous vitality. I mean I think of somebody like Andrea Dworkin—this is like, "f**k you" feminism. This is like, "I'm not only not gonna shave my legs, I'm gonna shave my armpits and I don't give a s**t what you think." And then the next generation when I was a young man was the Mary Gates, Camille Paglia, sex-positive power feminism which also had a different kind of vitality. So I don't think feminism has to be the feminism of the women's studies departments and of Hillary Clinton with "you can't say this" and "if you want to have sex with me you have to follow these 10 rules." I don't think anybody likes that.Andrew Keen: The deplorables!William Deresiewicz: Yes, yes, yes. Like I said, I don't just think that the enemies don't like it, and I don't really care what they think. I think the people on our side don't like it. Nobody is having fun on our side. It's boring. No one's having sex from what they tell me. The young—it just feels dead. And I think when there's no vitality, you also have no creative vitality. And I think the intellectual cul-de-sac that the left seems to be stuck in, where there are no new ideas, is related to that.Andrew Keen: Yeah, and I think the more I think about it, I think you're right, it's a generational war. All the action seems to be coming from old people, whether it's the Pelosis and the Bidens, or it's people like Richard Reeves making a fortune off books about worrying about young men or Jonathan Haidt writing about the anxious generation. Where are, to quote David Bowie, the young Americans? Why aren't they—I mean, Bill, you're in a way guilty of this. You made your name with your book, Excellent Sheep about the miseducation...William Deresiewicz: Yeah, so what am I guilty of exactly?Andrew Keen: I'm not saying you're all, but aren't you and Reeves and Haidt, you're all involved in this weird kind of generational war.William Deresiewicz: OK, let's pump the brakes here for a second. Where the young people are—I mean, obviously most people, even young people today, still vote for Democrats. But the young who seem to be exploring new things and having energy and excitement are on the right. And there was a piece—I'm gonna forget the name of the piece and the author—Daniel Oppenheimer had her on the podcast. I think it appeared in The Point. Young woman. Fairly recent college graduate, went to a convention of young republicans, I don't know what they call themselves, and also to democrats or liberals in quick succession and wrote a really good piece about it. I don't think she had ever written anything before or published anything before, but it got a lot of attention because she talked about the youthful vitality at this conservative gathering. And then she goes to the liberals and they're all gray-haired men like us. The one person who had anything interesting to say was Francis Fukuyama, who's in his 80s. She's making the point—this is the point—it's not a generational war, because there are young people on the right side of the spectrum who are doing interesting things. I mean, I don't like what they're doing, because I'm not a rightist, but they're interesting, they're different, they're new, there's excitement there, there's creativity there.Andrew Keen: But could one argue, Bill, that all these labels are meaningless and that whatever they're doing—I'm sure they're having more sex than young progressives, they're having more fun, they're able to make jokes, they are able, for better or worse, to change the system. Does it really matter whether they claim to be MAGA people or leftists? They're the ones who are driving change in the country.William Deresiewicz: Yes, they're the ones who are driving change in the country. The counter-cultural energy that was on the left in the sixties and seventies is now on the right. And it does matter because they are operating in the political sphere, have an effect in the political sphere, and they're unmistakably on the right. I mean, there are all these new weird species on the right—the trads and the neo-pagans and the alt-right and very sort of anti-capitalist conservatives or at least anti-corporate conservatives and all kinds of things that you would never have imagined five years ago. And again, it's not that I like these things. It's that they're new, there's ferment there. So stuff is coming out that is going to drive, is already driving the culture and therefore the politics forward. And as somebody who, yes, is progressive, it is endlessly frustrating to me that we have lost this kind of initiative, momentum, energy, creativity, to what used to be the stodgy old right. Now we're the stodgy old left.Andrew Keen: What do you want to go back to? I mean you brought up Dylan earlier. Do you just want to resurrect...William Deresiewicz: No, I don't.Andrew Keen: You know another one who comes to mind is another sort of bundle of contradictions, Bruce Springsteen. He recently talked about the corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous nature of Trump. I mean Springsteen's a billionaire. He even acknowledged that he mythologized his own working-class status. He's never spent more than an hour in a factory. He's never had a job. So aren't all the pigeons coming back to roost here? The fraud of men like Springsteen are merely being exposed and young people recognize it.William Deresiewicz: Well, I don't know about Springsteen in particular...Andrew Keen: Well, he's a big deal.William Deresiewicz: No, I know he's a big deal, and I love Springsteen. I listened to him on repeat when I was young, and I actually didn't know that he'd never worked in a factory, and I quite frankly don't care because he's an artist, and he made great art out of those experiences, whether they were his or not. But to address the real issue here, he is an old guy. It sounds like he's just—I mean, I'm sure he's sincere about it and I would agree with him about Trump. But to have people like Springsteen or Robert De Niro or George Clooney...Andrew Keen: Here it is.William Deresiewicz: Okay, yes, it's all to the point that these are old guys. So you asked me, do I want to go back? The whole point is I don't want to go back. I want to go forward. I'm not going to be the one to bring us forward because I'm older. And also, I don't think I was ever that kind of creative spirit, but I want to know why there isn't sort of youthful creativity given the fact that most young people do still vote for Democrats, but there's no youthful creativity on the left. Is it just that the—I want to be surprised is the point. I'm not calling for X, Y, or Z. I'm saying astonish me, right? Like Diaghilev said to Cocteau. Astonish me the way you did in the 60s and 70s. Show me something new. And I worry that it simply isn't possible on the left now, precisely because it's so locked down in this kind of establishment, censorious mode that there's no room for a new idea to come from anywhere.Andrew Keen: As it happens, you published this essay in Salmagundi—and that predates, if not even be pre-counterculture. How many years old is it? I think it started in '64. Yeah, so alongside your piece is an interesting piece from Adam Phillips about influence and anxiety. And he quotes Montaigne from "On Experience": "There is always room for a successor, even for ourselves, and a different way to proceed." Is the problem, Bill, that we haven't, we're not willing to leave the stage? I mean, Nancy Pelosi is a good example of this. Biden's a good example. In this Salmagundi piece, there's an essay from Martin Jay, who's 81 years old. I was a grad student in Berkeley in the 80s. Even at that point, he seemed old. Why are these people not able to leave the stage?William Deresiewicz: I am not going to necessarily sign on to that argument, and not just because I'm getting older. Biden...Andrew Keen: How old are you, by the way?William Deresiewicz: I'm 61. So you mentioned Pelosi. I would have been happy for Pelosi to remain in her position for as long as she wanted, because she was effective. It's not about how old you are. Although it can be, obviously as you get older you can become less effective like Joe Biden. I think there's room for the old and the young together if the old are saying valuable things and if the young are saying valuable things. It's not like there's a shortage of young voices on the left now. They're just not interesting voices. I mean, the one that comes immediately to mind that I'm more interested in is Ritchie Torres, who's this congressman who's a genuinely working-class Black congressman from the Bronx, unlike AOC, who grew up the daughter of an architect in Northern Westchester and went to a fancy private university, Boston University. So Ritchie Torres is not a doctrinaire leftist Democrat. And he seems to speak from a real self. Like he isn't just talking about boilerplate. I just feel like there isn't a lot of room for the Ritchie Torres. I think the system that produces democratic candidates militates against people like Ritchie Torres. And that's what I am talking about.Andrew Keen: In the essay, you write about Andy Mills, who was one of the pioneers of the New York Times podcast. He got thrown out of The New York Times for various offenses. It's one of the problems with the left—they've, rather like the Stalinists in the 1930s, purged all the energy out of themselves. Anyone of any originality has been thrown out for one reason or another.William Deresiewicz: Well, because it's always the same reason, because they violate the code. I mean, yes, this is one of the main problems. And to go back to where we started with the journalists, it seems like the rationale for the cover-up, all the cover-ups was, "we can't say anything bad about our side. We can't point out any of the flaws because that's going to help the bad guys." So if anybody breaks ranks, we're going to cancel them. We're going to purge them. I mean, any idiot understands that that's a very short-term strategy. You need the possibility of self-criticism and self-difference. I mean that's the thing—you asked me about old people leaving the stage, but the quotation from Montaigne said, "there's always room for a successor, even ourselves." So this is about the possibility of continuous self-reinvention. Whatever you want to say about Dylan, some people like him, some don't, he's done that. Bowie's done that. This was sort of our idea, like you're constantly reinventing yourself, but this is what we don't have.Andrew Keen: Yeah, actually, I read the quote the wrong way, that we need to reinvent ourselves. Bowie is a very good example if one acknowledges, and Dylan of course, one's own fundamental plasticity. And that's another problem with the progressive movement—they don't think of the human condition as a plastic one.William Deresiewicz: That's interesting. I mean, in one respect, I think they think of it as too plastic, right? This is sort of the blank slate fallacy that we can make—there's no such thing as human nature and we can reshape it as we wish. But at the same time, they've created a situation, and this really is what Excellent Sheep is about, where they're turning out the same human product over and over.Andrew Keen: But in that sense, then, the excellent sheep you write about at Yale, they've all ended up now as neo-liberal, neo-conservative, so they're just rebelling...William Deresiewicz: No, they haven't. No, they are the backbone of this soggy liberal progressive establishment. A lot of them are. I mean, why is, you know, even Wall Street and Silicon Valley sort of by preference liberal? It's because they're full of these kinds of elite college graduates who have been trained to be liberal.Andrew Keen: So what are we to make of the Musk-Thiel, particularly the Musk phenomenon? I mean, certainly Thiel, very much influenced by Rand, who herself, of course, was about as deeply Nietzschean as you can get. Why isn't Thiel and Musk just a model of the virility, the vitality of the early 21st century? You might not like what they say, but they're full of vitality.William Deresiewicz: It's interesting, there's a place in my piece where I say that the liberal can't accept the idea that a bad person can do great things. And one of my examples was Elon Musk. And the other one—Andrew Keen: Zuckerberg.William Deresiewicz: But Musk is not in the piece, because I wrote the piece before the inauguration and they asked me to change it because of what Musk was doing. And even I was beginning to get a little queasy just because the association with Musk is now different. It's now DOGE. But Musk, who I've always hated, I've never liked the guy, even when liberals loved him for making electric cars. He is an example, at least the pre-DOGE Musk, of a horrible human being with incredible vitality who's done great things, whether you like it or not. And I want—I mean, this is the energy that I want to harness for our team.Andrew Keen: I actually mostly agreed with your piece, but I didn't agree with that because I think most progressives believe that actually, the Zuckerbergs and the Musks, by doing, by being so successful, by becoming multi-billionaires, are morally a bit dodgy. I mean, I don't know where you get that.William Deresiewicz: That's exactly the point. But I think what they do is when they don't like somebody, they just negate the idea that they're great. "Well, he's just not really doing anything that great." You disagree.Andrew Keen: So what about ideas, Bill? Where is there room to rebuild the left? I take your points, and I don't think many people would actually disagree with you. Where does the left, if there's such a term anymore, need to go out on a limb, break some eggs, offend some people, but nonetheless rebuild itself? It's not going back to Bernie Sanders and some sort of nostalgic New Deal.William Deresiewicz: No, no, I agree. So this is, this may be unsatisfying, but this is what I'm saying. If there were specific new ideas that I thought the left should embrace, I would have said so. What I'm seeing is the left needs, to begin with, to create the conditions from which new ideas can come. So I mean, we've been talking about a lot of it. The censoriousness needs to go.I would also say—actually, I talk about this also—you know, maybe you would consider yourself part of, I don't know. There's this whole sort of heterodox realm of people who did dare to violate the progressive pieties and say, "maybe the pandemic response isn't going so well; maybe the Black Lives Matter protests did have a lot of violence"—maybe all the things, right? And they were all driven out from 2020 and so forth. A lot of them were people who started on the left and would even still describe themselves as liberal, would never vote for a Republican. So these people are out there. They're just, they don't have a voice within the Democratic camp because the orthodoxy continues to be enforced.So that's what I'm saying. You've got to start with the structural conditions. And one of them may be that we need to get—I don't even know that these institutions can reform themselves, whether it's the Times or the New Yorker or the Ivy League. And it may be that we need to build new institutions, which is also something that's happening. I mean, it's something that's happening in the realm of publishing and journalism on Substack. But again, they're still marginalized because that liberal establishment does not—it's not that old people don't wanna give up power, it's that the established people don't want to give up the power. I mean Harris is, you know, she's like my age. So the establishment as embodied by the Times, the New Yorker, the Ivy League, foundations, the think tanks, the Democratic Party establishment—they don't want to move aside. But it's so obviously clear at this point that they are not the solution. They're not the solutions.Andrew Keen: What about the so-called resistance? I mean, a lot of people were deeply disappointed by the response of law firms, maybe even universities, the democratic party as we noted is pretty much irrelevant. Is it possible for the left to rebuild itself by a kind of self-sacrifice, by lawyers who say "I don't care what you think of me, I'm simply against you" and to work together, or university presidents who will take massive pay cuts and take on MAGA/Trump world?William Deresiewicz: Yeah, I mean, I don't know if this is going to be the solution to the left rebuilding itself, but I think it has to happen, not just because it has to happen for policy reasons, but I mean you need to start by finding your courage again. I'm not going to say your testicles because that's gendered, but you need to start—I mean the law firms, maybe that's a little, people have said, well, it's different because they're in a competitive business with each other, but why did the university—I mean I'm a Columbia alumnus. I could not believe that Columbia immediately caved.It occurs to me as we're talking that these are people, university presidents who have learned cowardice. This is how they got to be where they got and how they keep their jobs. They've learned to yield in the face of the demands of students, the demands of alumni, the demands of donors, maybe the demands of faculty. They don't know how to be courageous anymore. And as much as I have lots of reasons, including personal ones, to hate Harvard University, good for them. Somebody finally stood up, and I was really glad to see that. So yeah, I think this would be one good way to start.Andrew Keen: Courage, in other words, is the beginning.William Deresiewicz: Courage is the beginning.Andrew Keen: But not a courage that takes itself too seriously.William Deresiewicz: I mean, you know, sure. I mean I don't really care how seriously—not the self-referential courage. Real courage, which means you're really risking losing something. That's what it means.Andrew Keen: And how can you and I then manifest this courage?William Deresiewicz: You know, you made me listen to Jocelyn Benson.Andrew Keen: Oh, yeah, I forgot and I actually I have to admit I saw that on the email and then I forgot who Jocelyn Benson is, which is probably reflects the fact that she didn't say very much.William Deresiewicz: For those of you who don't know what we're talking about, she's the Secretary of State of Michigan. She's running for governor.Andrew Keen: Oh yeah, and she was absolutely diabolical. She was on the show, I thought.William Deresiewicz: She wrote a book called Purposeful Warrior, and the whole interview was just this salad of cliches. Purpose, warrior, grit, authenticity. And part of, I mentioned her partly because she talked about courage in a way that was complete nonsense.Andrew Keen: Real courage, yeah, real courage. I remember her now. Yeah, yeah.William Deresiewicz: Yeah, she got made into a martyr because she got threatened after the 2020 election.Andrew Keen: Well, lots to think about, Bill. Very good conversation, as always. I think we need to get rid of old white men like you and I, but what do I know?William Deresiewicz: I mean, I am going to keep a death grip on my position, which is no good whatsoever.Andrew Keen: As I half-joked, Bill, maybe you should have called the piece "Post-Erection." If you can't get an erection, then you certainly shouldn't be in public office. That would have meant that Joe Biden would have had to have retired immediately.William Deresiewicz: I'm looking forward to seeing the test you devise to determine whether people meet your criterion.Andrew Keen: Yeah, maybe it will be a public one. Bread and circuses, bread and elections. We shall see, Bill, I'm not even going to do your last name because I got it right once. I'm never going to say it again. Bill, congratulations on the piece "Post-Election," not "Post-Erection," and we will talk again. This story is going to run and run. We will talk again in the not too distant future. Thank you so much.William Deresiewicz: That's good.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The Washington Roundtable discusses the unprecedented corruption of the federal government, including Trump Administration members' self-enrichment through cryptocurrency schemes and the inaugural committee, and the gutting of parts of the government that are responsible for rooting out self-dealing from public life. It is a level of corruption so “outright” and “brazen,” the staff writer Evan Osnos says, that it constitutes “a new phase in American politics.” This week's reading: “Mike Waltz Learns the Hard Truth About Serving Donald Trump,” by Susan B. Glasser “How Donald Trump Is Expanding His Authority While Shrinking the Government,” by Jon Allsop “What Canadians Heard—and Americans Didn't,” by Adam Gopnik “Trump's Deportees to El Salvador Are Now ‘Ghosts' in U.S. Courts,” by Jonathan Blitzer “Will the Trump Tariffs Devastate the Whiskey Industry?,” by Charles Bethea “A Life-Changing Scientific Study Ended by the Trump Administration,” by Dhruv Khullar “The Bureaucratic Nightmares of Being Trans Under Trump,” by Grace Byron “How Trump Is Helping Tycoons Exploit the Pandemic,” by Jane Mayer (July, 2020) To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Washington Roundtable discusses with the Stanford University political scientist Larry Diamond about President Trump's attempts to claim broad powers, why most Republican lawmakers have fallen into line out of fear, and whether the United States has already tipped over into authoritarian territory. Plus, how the courts, Congress, and ordinary citizens might course-correct American democracy.This week's reading: “The Crisis of Democracy Is Here,” by Larry Diamond “Trump's Putinization of America,” by Susan B. Glasser “Pulling Our Politics Back from the Brink,” by Evan Osnos (2020) “Month One of Donald Trump's ‘Golden Age,' ” by Antonia Hitchens “We'd Never Had a King Until This Week,” by Bill McKibben “The Trump Administration Trashes Europe and NATO,” by Dexter Filkins “The Second Trump Administration's New Forms of Distraction,” by Kyle Chayka To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Washington Roundtable—with the staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos—discusses this week's confirmation hearings for Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and Pam Bondi as Attorney General, and the potential for a “shock and awe” campaign in the first days of Donald Trump's second term. Plus, as billionaires from many industries gather around the dais on Inauguration Day, what should we make of President Biden's warning, in the waning days of his Administration, about “an oligarchy taking shape in America”?This segment was originally published January 17, 2025, in The New Yorker's Political Scene podcast.

As Joe Biden leaves office, we're taking one last look at his presidency, and what we've heard said about him since 2020. The New Yorker's Evan Osnos joins Sarah to recap his interviews with Biden over the years and discusses his legacy. Sponsor: Get 15% off OneSkin with the code THEFOCUSGROUP at https://www.oneskin.co/  Show notes: By Evan Osnos: Joe Biden's Last Campaign Joe Biden: The Life, the Presidency, and What Matters Now Wildland: The Making of America's Fury

The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos examines Republican's compliance with Trump’s agenda. Slate's Dahlia Lithwick details Pam Bondi's confirmation hearing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Washington Roundtable revisits an episode recorded after Henry Kissinger's death, in November, 2023. Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer and Evan Osnos evaluate Kissinger's controversial legacy, share anecdotes from his time in and around Washington, and discuss how he continued to shape U.S. foreign policy long after leaving the State Department.“There are not that many hundred-year-olds who insist upon their own relevance and actually are relevant,” Glasser says.This week's reading: “Henry Kissinger's Hard Compromises,” by Evan Osnos “Why Washington Couldn't Quit Kissinger,” by Isaac Chotiner This episode was originally published in December, 2023.To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Washington Roundtable discusses Donald Trump's transition back into the White House, the world he will inherit in 2025, and his provocative nomination of Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense. In their final Roundtable episode of 2024, Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos also reflect on the twists and turns of the past year in politics, including what to make of President Joe Biden's legacy.This week's reading: “The Scandal of Trump's Cabinet Picks Isn't Just Their Personal Failings,” by Susan B. Glasser “Pete Hegseth's Secret History,” by Jane Mayer “The Demise and Afterlife of Donald Trump's Criminal Cases,” by Jeannie Suk Gersen “Biden's Pardon of Hunter Further Undermines His Legacy,” by Isaac Chotiner “Stopping the Press,” by David Remnick “The Immigrants Most Vulnerable to Trump's Mass Deportation Plans Entered the Country Legally,” by Jonathan Blitzer To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

The Washington Roundtable discusses how people in D.C. and across the country are preparing themselves for Donald Trump's second Presidency, and what tools citizens have to protect their rights and push back on abuses of power. The American Civil Liberties Union has called attention to the strategies of litigation, legislation, and mobilization—strategies that are proven to work. David Cole, a former legal director of the A.C.L.U. and a professor of law and public policy at Georgetown University, joins Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos to discuss the checks and balances that exist as guardrails in government and civil society, and how those may be utilized in the coming four years.This week's reading: “What Could Stop Him?,” by David Cole (The New York Review of Books) “The Explosion of Matt Gaetz and Other Early Lessons in Trump 2.0,” by Susan B. Glasser “Donald Trump's Administration Hopefuls Descend on Mar-a-Lago,” by Antonia Hitchens “The Pain Creating a New Coalition for Trump,” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor “The Technology the Trump Administration Could Use to Hack Your Phone,” by Ronan Farrow “Donald Trump's U.F.C. Victory Party,” by Sam Eagan “Understanding Latino Support for Donald Trump,” by Geraldo Cadava  To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

In the end, Donald Trump's rhetoric of another stolen election, and his opponents' warnings that he would once again attempt to subvert a loss, were moot. Trump, a convicted felon and sexual abuser, won not only the Electoral College, but the popular vote—the first time for a Republican President since 2004. Democrats lost almost every swing state, even as abortion-rights ballot measures found favor in some conservative states. David Remnick joins The Political Scene's weekly Washington roundtable—staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos—to discuss Kamala Harris's campaign, Trump's overtly authoritarian rhetoric, and the American electorate's rightward trajectory.

Evan Osnos is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where his work spans everything from national politics to foreign affairs. Just days before the election, Osnos joins Preet to talk about the big questions in American political culture: What does patriotism mean in a divided country? How should we confront cruelty? And is there still room for empathy in our politics?  Plus, Preet offers advice to high school students and to lawyers making the move to private practice. With the election around the corner, and legal questions certain to follow, understanding the law is more important than ever. From now through November, visit cafe.com/november to get 40% off your membership for the first year. For show notes and a transcript of the episode head to: https://cafe.com/stay-tuned/election-trump-harris-evan-osnos/  Have a question for Preet? Ask @PreetBharara on Threads, or Twitter with the hashtag #AskPreet. Email us at staytuned@cafe.com, or call 669-247-7338 to leave a voicemail. Stay Tuned with Preet is brought to you by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today’s show: taking stock of Kamala Harris’s campaign with the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos. What election issues matter most to young voters? Caroline Bauman from Chalkbeat explains. Plus, the San Francisco Chronicle has details on the sentence given to Paul Pelosi’s attacker, the Taliban strips more rights away from women in Afghanistan, and why you might need to rethink your Halloween costume. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.

The Washington Roundtable discusses the avalanche of disinformation that has taken over the 2024 election cycle, including an A.I. video meant to slander Tim Walz and claims that the votes are rigged before they're even counted. Will this torrent of lies tip the election in favor of Donald Trump? Is there a way out of this morass of untruth? “I think the lies are clearly winning,” the staff writer Evan Osnos says. “But I would also say that that doesn't mean that we should abandon the tools that are available.” Osnos notes recent defamation rulings against Rudy Giuliani and Fox News over false statements about the 2020 election as cases in point. This week's reading: “Donald Trump and the F-Word,” by Susan B. Glasser “Can Older Americans Swing the Election for Harris?,” by Bill McKibben “What's the Matter with Young Male Voters?,” by Jay Caspian Kang “Door-Knocking in Door County,” by Emily Witt “What Would Donald Trump Do to the Economy?,” by John Cassidy “The Tight-Knit World of Kamala Harris's Sorority,” by Jazmine Hughes To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

Since July 21st, when Joe Biden endorsed her in the Presidential race, all eyes have been on Vice-President Kamala Harris. The New Yorker's Evan Osnos has been reporting on Harris for months, speaking with dozens of people close to her from her childhood to her days as a California prosecutor, right up to this lightning-round campaign for the Presidency. “What's interesting is that some of those people . . . were asking her, ‘Do you think there should be a process? Some town halls or conventions?,' ” Osnos tells David Remnick. “And her answer is revealing. . . . ‘I'm happy to join a process like that, but I'm not gonna wait around. I'm not gonna wait around.' ” But if Harris's surge in popularity was remarkable, her lead in most polls is razor-thin. “If she wins [the popular vote] and loses the Electoral College, that'll be the third time since the year 2000 that Democrats have suffered that experience,” he notes. “You can't underestimate how seismic a shock and a trauma—that's not an overstatement—it will be, particularly for young Americans who have tried to say, ‘We're going to put our support behind somebody and see if we can change this country.' ” 

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the final stretch of Kamala Harris's Presidential campaign, including a recent media blitz on podcasts and television shows. The Vice-President has never been entirely comfortable with the interview format. “She doesn't ruminate and reflect,” the staff writer Evan Osnos says. “I think it's the self-protection that comes with being aware of people who are always going to doubt her capacity to make history.”  Osnos's deeply reported profile of Vice-President Kamala Harris, “The Ascent,” has just been published. Plus, the panel deconstructs the revelations in Bob Woodward's new book, “War,” about Donald Trump's relationship with the Russian President Vladimir Putin.This episode was updated after the publication of Osnos's piece on the Harris campaign.This week's reading: “The Harris-Trump Endgame Is On: Is It Time to Panic Yet?,” by Susan B. Glasser “How Podcasts Are Transforming the Presidential Election,” by Brady Brickner-Wood ““The Apprentice,” Reviewed: The Immoral Makings of Donald Trump,” by Richard Brody “Has the Presidential Election Become a Game of Random Chance?,” by Jay Caspian Kang “J. D. Vance and the Success Stories of Bidenomics,” by John Cassidy To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

Since July 21st, when Joe Biden endorsed her in the Presidential race, all eyes have been on Vice-President Kamala Harris. The New Yorker's Evan Osnos has been reporting on Harris for months, speaking with dozens of people close to her from her childhood to her days as a California prosecutor, right up to this lightning-round campaign for the Presidency. “What's interesting is that some of those people . . . were asking her, ‘Do you think there should be a process? Some town halls or conventions?,' ” Osnos tells David Remnick. “And her answer is revealing. . . . ‘I'm happy to join a process like that, but I'm not gonna wait around. I'm not gonna wait around.' ” But if Harris's surge in popularity was remarkable, her lead in most polls is razor-thin. “If she wins [the popular vote] and loses the Electoral College, that'll be the third time since the year 2000 that Democrats have suffered that experience,” he notes. “You can't underestimate how seismic a shock and a trauma—that's not an overstatement—it will be, particularly for young Americans who have tried to say, ‘We're going to put our support behind somebody and see if we can change this country.' ”

The Washington Roundtable revisits Vice-President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump's past debate performances and considers how the candidates might approach next week's showdown. “Trump doesn't do subdued self-defense,” Evan Osnos says. “He'll come back furious and basically do a lot of the work for [Harris] of showing, to borrow one of his favorite adjectives, what a ‘nasty' guy he is. I think that could be pretty effective for her.” Plus, where the fund-raising race stands with Election Day only two months away.This week's reading: “Can Red-Baiting Save Trump's Flailing Campaign?,” by Susan B. Glasser “How Kamala Harris's Coalition Changes the Race for Congress,” by Isaac Chotiner “Do Celebrity Presidential Endorsements Matter?,” by Tyler Foggatt To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

The Washington Roundtable discusses the highs and lows of the Democratic National Convention and Vice-President Kamala Harris's rousing acceptance speech, with Evan Osnos and Susan B. Glasser reporting from Chicago. Plus, behind-the-scenes moments from the “festival atmosphere” for delegates, donors, and influencers, at the United Center. This week's reading: “The Speech of Kamala Harris's Lifetime,” by Susan B. Glasser “Proud and Impassioned, Joe Biden Passes the Torch at the D.N.C.,” by Evan Osnos “Kamala Harris's ‘Freedom' Campaign,” by Peter Slevin “Why Was It So Hard for the Democrats to Replace Biden?,” by Andrew Marantz “The Democratic Party Rebrands Itself Before Viewers' Eyes,” by Emily Witt “Can Kamala Harris's Campaign Solve the Latino Turnout Problem?,” by Geraldo Cadava “How the Harris Campaign Beat Trump at Being Online,” by Kyle Chayka “What Kamala Harris May Have to Do Next,” by Jay Caspian Kang Tune in wherever you get your podcasts.

The New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the sights, sounds, and broader implications of the Democratic National Convention. Marantz describes a convention defined by feelings of unity and a profound sense of relief among party insiders. Plus, they reflect on the D.N.C.'s use of what Marantz describes as “cringe-millennial” culture.This week's reading: Proud and Impassioned, Joe Biden Passes the Torch at the D.N.C., by Evan Osnos. The Obamas' Rousingly Pragmatic Call to Action at the D.N.C., by Vinson Cunningham To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com.

As democrats prepare for their national convention in Chicago next week, we take stock of a presidential race transformed. New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos tells us about the enthusiasm and energy he's seen on the campaign trail with Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.Later TV critic David Bianculli reviews Bad Monkey, the new mystery series starring Vince Vaughan.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the addition of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to the Democratic ticket and Donald Trump's erratic response at a press conference on Thursday. “Walz has scrambled the circuits for Trump because he's not easy to pigeonhole,” Osnos says. “He's not what Trump imagines, in his comic-book way, of what a progressive looks like.” Plus, the campaigns' strategies in the battleground states and what it will take to win key states such as Georgia and Pennsylvania. This week's reading: “Does Anyone in America Miss Joe Biden as Much as Donald Trump?” by Susan B. Glasser “How Generic Can Kamala Harris Be?” by Jay Caspian Kang “How Kamala Harris Became Bigger than Donald Trump,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “What Tim Walz Brings to Kamala Harris's Campaign to Beat Donald Trump,” by Peter Slevin “ ‘Weird' Is a Rebuke to Republican Dominance Politics,” by Katy Waldman “What Does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Actually Want?,” by Clare Malone To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the fiery advertising war between Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. They are joined by Jennifer Lawless, the chair of the politics department at the University of Virginia and the author of “Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era.” Plus, how memes and social media have boosted the Harris campaign. “The Harris campaign will have a couple of uplifting, very positive ads, especially when they announce who the V.P. will be,” Professor Jennifer Lawless says. “But my bet is that this will be a race to the bottom in terms of negativity.” This week's reading: “Trump's Racist Attack on Kamala Harris Was No Accident,” by Susan B. Glasser “The Politics of ‘Weird',” by Jay Caspian Kang “Does Kamala Harris Need a Latino Campaign?,” by Geraldo Cadava To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the start of Kamala Harris's Presidential campaign and the surge of excitement among Democrats on the Internet and at rallies. Plus, who might be her running mate and how Republicans plan to launch “racist, misogynist” attacks against her. This week's reading: “Biden's Exit, Harris's Moment,” by Susan B. Glasser “Why Did Progressive Democrats Support Joe Biden?,” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor “Kamala Harris Should Tell Her Family's Story,” by Jay Caspian Kang “J. D. Vance's Sad, Strange Politics of Family,” by Jessica Winter “Was Biden's Decision to Withdraw ‘Heroic'?” by Isaac Chotiner “Kamala Harris, the Candidate,” by Doreen St. Félix “Who Should Kamala Harris Pick as Her Running Mate?” by Amy Davidson Sorkin “J. D. Vance's Radical Religion,” by Paul Elie To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss President Biden's stunning exit from the 2024 Presidential election and his endorsement for Vice-President Kamala Harris to lead the Democratic ticket. How could this new matchup change the terms of the race, now that Biden's age is no longer a key issue?This week's reading: “Joe Biden's Act of Selflessness,” by Evan Osnos “Joe Biden Leaves the Stage,” by Adam Gopnik “Where Do Republicans and Democrats Stand After the R.N.C.?” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “The Spectacle of Donald Trump's R.N.C.,” by Antonia Hitchens, photography by Sinna Nasseri To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss takeaways from the Republican National Convention, which Glasser reports had the feeling of “a very polite Midwestern cult meeting.” Plus, Donald Trump's selection of J. D. Vance as his running mate and the mounting pressure for President Biden to drop out of the race.This week's reading: “Donald Trump's Second Coming,” by Susan B. Glasser “Doctors Are Increasingly Worried About Biden,” by Dhruv Khullar “The Rise of the New Right at the Republican National Convention,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “Are We Already Moving On from the Assassination Attempt on Trump?” by Jay Caspian Kang “The Paralysis of the Democratic Party,” by Isaac Chotiner “Why Donald Trump Picked J. D. Vance for Vice-President,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells “Bernie Sanders Wants Joe Biden to Stay in the Race,” by Isaac Chotiner “Trump, Unity, and MAGA Miracles at the R.N.C.,” by Antonia Hitchens To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

Today on the show, Fareed is joined by an expert panel to discuss the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer, New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos, and CNN presidential historian Timothy Naftali all join to talk about the political implications of the attack and growing global concerns surrounding the health of American democracy.    Next, CNN's Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller joins Fareed to discuss how the shooter was able to carry out his attack, despite the high levels of security present at the rally in Pennsylvania.    Then, Joanne Freeman, professor of American history at Yale, sits down with Fareed to discuss how the assassination attempt against Donald Trump fits into the longer history of political violence in America.    GUESTS: Ian Bremmer (@ianbremmer), Evan Osnos (@eosnos), Timothy Naftali (@TimNaftali), John Miller, Joanne Freeman(@jbf1755) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On June 27th, long-simmering concerns about President Biden's age – and whether he's fit to serve a second term – exploded after a disastrous debate performance.Biden has been trying to clean up the mess ever since. First at a fiery rally in North Carolina. And some ten days after the debate in a one-on-one interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos. Neither event accomplished the goal of shoring up support for Biden, and now members of Congress are questioning whether the 46th President should remain the democratic nominee.Evan Osnos, New Yorker staff writer and author of a biography on Joe Biden, weighs in on the Biden campaign at a crossroads.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at considerthis@npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

At the beginning of 2021, it seemed like America might be turning a new page; instead, the election of 2024 feels like a strange dream that we can't wake up from. Recently, David Remnick asked listeners what's still confounding and confusing about this Presidential election. Dozens of listeners wrote in from all over the country, and a crack team of political writers at The New Yorker came together to shed some light on those questions: Susan B. Glasser, Jill Lepore, Clare Malone, Andrew Marantz, Evan Osnos, Kelefa Sanneh, and Benjamin Wallace-Wells. Some years ago, the poet Ada Limón moved from New York City to Lexington, Kentucky. In a book called “Bright Dead Things,” she writes about adjusting to a new home, and the constant talk of thoroughbreds. “People always asking, ‘You have so many horses in your poems—what are they a metaphor for?' ” she told the Radio Hour. “I think they're not really a metaphor. Out here, they're just horses.” Limón, who's the current Poet Laureate of the United States, took us on a tour of Keeneland racecourse, in Lexington, and read her poem “How to Triumph Like a Girl.”This segment originally aired on April 13, 2018. 

Evan Osnos of the New Yorker discusses the Biden campaign’s attempts to manage the fallout from the president’s debate performance. The American release of the Donald Trump movie ‘The Apprentice,’ starring Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, is in question, despite a distribution deal on the table. Jada Yuan from the Washington Post has the story. Simone Biles qualified for her third Olympic team. NBC Sports has details. Today’s episode was guest-hosted by Gideon Resnick.

Evan Osnos of the New Yorker describes what he’ll be watching for in tonight’s presidential debate. AI is exhausting the power grid. Tech firms are seeking a miracle solution. The Washington Post’s Evan Halper is on the story. The brain makes a lot of waste. Now scientists think they know where it goes. NPR reports. Today’s episode was guest-hosted by Gideon Resnick.