Podcast appearances and mentions of Simon Kuper

This week I'm in South Africa on a book and speaking tour and am chatting at the Franschoek Literary Festival, so we are all South Africa today. A country of contradictions, rich in resources, vibrant in culture, yet S.A. is held back by inequality, corruption, and the long shadow of apartheid. In this episode, we explore its uneasy present and remarkable past: from Mandela's legacy to Elon Musk's childhood, from empire and race to why Donald Trump has fixated on white Afrikaners. We travel through Cape Town and Johannesburg, unpacking it all with FT journalist Simon Kuper, and along the way, we encounter pencil tests, Springboks, slabs of the Berlin Wall, and the political ghosts of the Cold War. Is South Africa being used, once again, as a pawn in someone else's game? Join the gang! https://plus.acast.com/s/the-david-mcwilliams-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Americans, it's time to move to Europe! The American geo-strategist Jason Pack anticipated last week's advice from Simon Kuper and moved to London a few years ago during the first Trump Presidency. Pack, the host of the excellent Disorder podcast, confesses to be thrilled to have escaped MAGA America. He describes the esthetics of contemporary Washington DC as "post-apocalyptic" and criticizes what he sees as the Trump administration's hostile atmosphere, ideological purity tests, and institutional destruction. Contrasting this with Europe's ideological fluidity, Pack warns that Trump's isolationist policies are increasing global disorder by fundamentally undermining America's global leadership role with its erstwhile European allies. Five Key Takeaways* Pack left America because he found the "esthetics" of working in policy and media spaces increasingly distasteful, particularly during Trump's first administration.* He argues that European political systems allow for greater ideological fluidity, while American politics demands strict partisan loyalty.* Pack describes Washington DC as "post-apocalyptic" with institutions functioning like zombies - going through motions without accomplishing anything meaningful.* Unlike European populists who want to control institutions, Pack believes Trump's administration aims to destroy government institutions entirely.* Pack warns that America's deteriorating relationships with traditional allies is creating a "rudderless world" with increased global disorder and potential for conflict. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. Over the last few days, we've been focusing on the impressions of America, of Trump's America around the world. We had the Financial Times' controversial columnist, Simon Cooper, on the show, arguing that it's the end of the American dream. He had a piece in the FT this week, arguing that it's time to move to Europe for Americans. Not everyone agrees. We had the London-based FT writer Jemima Kelly on the show recently, also suggesting that she hasn't quite given up on America. She is, of course, a Brit living in the UK and looking at America from London. My guest today, another old friend, is Jason Pack. He is the host of the Excellent Disorder podcast. Jason's been on the shows lots of times before. He's an observer of the world's early 21st century disorder. And he is an American living in London. So I'm thrilled that Jason is back on the show. Jason, did you have a chance to look at Simon Cooper's piece? Is it time for Americans to move to Europe?Jason Pack: You've already moved. Well, he's just popularizing what I've believed for eight or 10 years already. So yeah, I looked at the piece. I really enjoyed your podcast with him. I don't think many Americans will move because most Americans are not particularly global in their outlook. And as disenchanted as they will be, their networks of family and of perspective are in America. Some elites in media and finance will move. But for me, I just found the aesthetics of America becoming distasteful when I worked in D.C. during the first Trump administration. And that's why I pursued a European citizenship.Andrew Keen: Jason, it's interesting that you choose the word aesthetics. Two thoughts on that. Firstly, America has never been distinguished for its aesthetics. People never came to America for aesthetics. It's never been a particularly beautiful country, a very dynamic place, a very powerful place. So why do you choose that word aesthetic?Jason Pack: Because for most upper middle class Americans, life under Trump, particularly if they're white and heterosexual, will not change tremendously. But the aesthetics of working in the policy space or in the media will change. Having to deal with all the BS that we hear when we wake up and turn on the TV in the morning, having to interact with Republican nutcase friends who say, oh, the fat is being trimmed by the doge and don't worry about all those people who've been being laid off. The aesthetics of it are ugly and mean. And I have found among some Republican colleagues and friends of mine that they love the vileness of this dog-eat-dog aesthetic.Andrew Keen: Yeah, it's an interesting way of putting it. And I understand exactly what you're saying. I'm less concerned with the aesthetics as with the reality. And my sense in some ways of what's happening is that the Trump people are obsessed with what you call aesthetics. They want to appear mean. I'm not actually sure that they're quite as mean as they'd like to think they are.Jason Pack: Oh, they're pretty mean. I mean, people are running around the NIH offices, according to colleagues of mine. And if you're out to the bathroom and your card is inserted in your computer, they go in, they steal the data from your computer.Andrew Keen: Actually, I take your point. What I meant more by that is that whereas most traditional authoritarian regimes hide their crimes against migrants. They deny wrongdoing. My sense of the Trump regime, or certainly a lot of the people involved in this Trump administration, is that they actually exaggerate it because it gives them pleasure and it somehow benefits their brand. I'm not convinced that they're quite as bad as they'd like to think.Jason Pack: Oh, I agree with that. They make Schadenfreude a principle. They want to showcase that they enjoy other people's pain. It's a bizarre psychological thing. Trump, for example, wanted to show his virility and his meanness, probably because he's an inner coward and he's not that feral. But we digress in terms of the aesthetics of the individual American wanting to leave. I experienced American government, like the State Department, and then, the bureaucracy of the policy space, say think tanks, or even the government relations trade space, say working for oil companies and government relations, as already authoritarian and ass-kissing in America, and the aesthetics of those industries I have always preferred in Europe, and that's only diverging.Andrew Keen: One of the things that always struck me about Washington, D.C. It was always uncomfortable as an imperial city. It always has been since the end of the Second World War, with America dominating the world as being one of two or perhaps the only super power in the world. But Washington, DC seems to always have been uncomfortable wearing its imperial mantle cloak in comparison, I think, to cities like London or Paris. I wonder whether, I'm not sure how much time you've spent back in America since Trump came back to power. I wonder if in that sense DC is trying to catch up with London and Paris.Jason Pack: I actually was giving a briefing in Congress to staffers of the House Foreign Affairs Committee only three weeks ago, and DC seemed post-apocalyptic to me. Many of my favorite restaurants were closing. There was traffic jams at bizarre hours of the day, which I think this is because the Trump people don't know how public transport works and they just ride their cars everywhere. So, yes, it seemed very bizarre being back. You were trying to gauge the interlocutor you were speaking to, were they merely pretending to be on board with Trump's stuff, but they actually secretly think it's ridiculous, or were they true believers? And you had to assess that before you would make your comments. So there is a slide to a kind of, again, neo-authoritarian aesthetic. In my conference, it became clear that the Republican Congressional staffers thought that it was all junk and that Trump doesn't care about Libya and he doesn't understand these issues. But we needed to make lip service in how we expressed our recommendations. So, fascinatingly, various speakers said, oh, there's a transactional win. There's a way that cheaper oil can be gotten here or we could make this policy recommendation appeal to the transactional impulses of the administration. Even though everyone knew that we were speaking in a Democrat echo-chamber where the only Republicans present were anti-Trump Republicans anyway.Andrew Keen: Describe DC as post-apocalyptic. What exactly then, Jason, is the apocalypse?Jason Pack: I don't think that the Trump people who are running the show understand how government works and whether you're at state or the NIH or USAID, you're kind of under siege and you're just doing what you're supposed to do and going through the motions. I mean, there's so much of like the zombie apocalypse going on. So maybe it's more zombie apocalypse than regular apocalypse, whereby the institutions are pretending to do their work, but they know that it doesn't accomplish anything. And the Trumpian appointees are kind of pretending to kind of cancel people on DAI, but the institutions are still continuing.Andrew Keen: I'm going to vulgarize something you said earlier. You talked about Trump wanting to appear bigger than he actually is. Maybe we might call that small penis syndrome. Is that, and then that's my term, Jason, let's be clear, not yours. Maybe it's fair or not. He probably would deny it, but I don't think he'll come on this show. He's more than welcome. Is that also reflected in the people working for him? Is there a bit of a small penis syndrome going on with a lot of the Trump people? Are they small town boys coming to America, coming to D.C. And in all their raison d'état trying to smash up the world that they always envied?Jason Pack: 100%. If you look at the Tucker Carlson and the Hegset, who went to Princeton in 03, and obviously Tucker Carlsen's WASP elite background is well known, they wanted to make it conventionally and couldn't. Hegson didn't achieve the rank of lieutenant general or colonel or anything in the army. He didn't make it in finance and Vance, obviously had just a minor career in finance, they didn't make the big time except through their hate and resentment of the establishment that succeeded on merit. So, I mean, you could call that small penis syndrome. I think another thing to point out is that many of them have been selected because whether they've been accused of rape or financial crimes or just meanness, they owe the great leader their ability to be in that position. And if he would throw them overboard they're entirely exposed, so that cash patels of the world and the Hexeds of the world serve at the mercy of the great leader, because if they were thrown to the wolves, they could be devoured for their misdeeds. And I think that that makes it a place where it's all about loyalty to the boss. But maybe we could pivot to the initial topic about how I think Europe is a place where you can reinvent yourself as an individual now. Certainly in the political and ideology space, and America really hasn't been for much of my left.Andrew Keen: Yeah, it's interesting. And this is how actually our conversation you're doing. You're a much better podcast host than I am, Jason. You're reminding us of the real conversation rather than getting led down one Trumpian byway or another. I did a show recently on why I still believe in the American dream. And I was interviewed by my friend, David Maschiottra, another old friend of the show. And I suggested I originally came to America to reinvent myself and that's always been the platform with which Europeans have come to America. You're suggesting that perhaps the reverse is true now.Jason Pack: I really enjoyed that episode. I thought you were a great guest and he was a natural host. But I realized how it wasn't speaking to me. Many of my European friends who work in law, finance, tech, startup, you know, they finished their degrees in Italy or in England and they moved to America. And that's where they raised venture capital and they go on the exact success trajectory that you explained and they fetishize, oh my God, when my green card is gonna come through, I'm gonna have this big party. That never resonated with me because America was never a land of opportunity for me. And it hit me in hearing your podcast that that's because what I've aspired to is to work in government slash think tank or to be a professional expert. And if you don't ally yourself with one of the major political movements, you're always branded and you can never move ahead. I'll give a few examples if you're interested in the way that my trying to be in the center has meant that I could never find a place in America.Andrew Keen: Absolutely. So you're suggesting that your quote-unquote American dream could only be realized in Europe.Jason Pack: So I moved to the Middle East to serve my country after 9/11. If Gore had been elected president, I likely would have joined the army or the Marines or something. But Bush was president and I knew I needed to do this on my own. So, you know, I lived in Beirut, then I went to Iraq. Where did you graduate from, Jason? I graduated from Williams in 2002, but I was changing my studies as soon as the 9-11 happened. I stopped my senior thesis in biology and I pivoted to doing the Middle East. I thought the Middle East was going to be the next big thing. But I didn't realize that if you wanted to do it your own way, for example, living in Syria prior to working in government, then you couldn't get those security clearances. But in the UK, that's not really a problem. If you go to Leeds or Oxford and you got sent to study Arabic in Syria, you can work for the UK government, but not in America. If your went and did that your own way, your loyalties would be questioned. You wouldn't get your security clearance. I got an internship to work at the U.S. Embassy in Muscat, where I fell afoul of my supervisors because I was someone who wanted to speak in Arabic with Omanis and, for example, go to hear prayers at the mosque and really be a part of the society. And I was told, don't do that. But aren't we here to understand about Oman? And they're like, no, it's really important to mostly socialize with people at the embassy. But my British colleagues, they were out there in Omani society, and they were, for example, really participating in stuff because the relationship between the Omanis and the Brits and the Americans is a happy one. That's just a small example, but I wanna make the kind of further point, which is that if you wanna get promoted in think tank world in America, it doesn't matter whether it's Cato or Heritage on the right or New America Foundation or Middle East Institute on the left. You have to buy in hook, line, and sinker to the party line of those institutions. And if that party line is DEI, as it was at the Middle East Institute when I was there, and you're a white heterosexual male, you're not going to get promoted. And if, for example, you want to then interact with some Zionist think tank like FDD, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, I was going to a fellowship there for work that I had done about monitoring ISIS in Libya, and they had proposed a funding line for my project, which was just technically reading jihadi Facebook posts and monitoring them. And then they did some more research on me, ironically, after we had already signed the funds. And they said, oh, we're so sorry, we are going to have to pull back on this. We are going have to pay you a kill fee. We are really, really sorry. And I came to understand why that was. And it was because I had advocated that the Iranians should be allowed to get the bomb so that they could have mutually assured destruction theory with Israel.Andrew Keen: Well, Jason, I take your point, but everyone has their own narrative when it comes to why their career didn't did or didn't take off and how they know what that doesn't happen in Europe. I'm just making a contrast. Let me just come back to my argument about America, which is it isn't necessarily as straightforward as perhaps at first it seems. I think one of the reasons why America has always been a great place for reinvention is because of the absence of memory.Jason Pack: No, but what I'm saying is Google will inspire on you, and if you're not within the ideological cadre, you cannot progress at these kind of institutions.Andrew Keen: Okay, I take your point on that, but thinking more broadly, America is a place where you can, I've done so many different things in this country from being a scholar to being an internet entrepreneur to being an expert on technology to being a critic of technology to being against podcasts, to being a podcaster. And you can get away, and I've failed in practically all of them, if not all of them, but the fact is that because people don't have memory, you can keep on doing different things and people won't say, well, how can you get away with this? Last week you were doing X. My sense, and maybe correct me if I'm wrong about London or Europe, is there is much more memory. You can't get away with perpetual reinvention in Europe as you can in the U.S. and maybe that's because of the fact that in your language, living in Europe with its memory and respect for memory is more aesthetically pleasing. So I'm not suggesting this is as simple as it might appear.Jason Pack: I agree with that last point, but I think I'm trying to bring something else out. In spheres like tech or podcasting, there isn't credentialism in America. And therefore, if you're just good at it, you don't need the credentials and you can get going. And you and other Europeans who had great merit, as you do, have benefited from that. And in Europe, you might run up against credentialism, but, oh, but you didn't work at the BBC, so you don't get the job. I'm making a different point about ideological purity within the very specific realms of, say, working for an American presidential candidate or briefing a policymaker or rising up at a think tank. I have briefed labor MPs, Lib Dem MPs and Tory MPs. And they don't ask my politics. I can go in there and get a meeting with Keir Starmer's people on Libya, and they don't care about the fact that I want him to do something slightly different. Criticized him and praised him at different times on my podcast, try having an influence with some Trump people and then say, Oh, well, you know, I really think that I can help you on this Libya policy, but I happened to run a fairly anti-Trump podcast. No, you just can't get the briefing because America is about ideological purity tests and getting your ticket punch in the government and think tank and exporting professions, and therefore it's not some place you can reinvent yourself. If you're clearly an anti-Trump Republican McCainite, you can't all of a sudden become an AOC Democrat for the purpose of one meeting. But in Europe you can, because you can be a Lib Dem like Liz Truss and then be a Tory Prime Minister. And no one cares what my position on these topics are when they ask me to brief Keir Starmer's people and that's something that I find so fantastic about Europe.Andrew Keen: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you know this stuff better than I do. But isn't someone like Truss rooted in ideological purity? She was a Lib Dem when she was at Oxford. Yeah, but that was a long time ago. I can reverse that, Jason, and say, well, when Trump was young, he ran around with Bill and Hillary Clinton, he went to their wedding, he funded them. He never was even a Republican until 2014 or 15. So, I mean, he's an example of the very ideological fluidity that you idealize in Europe.Jason Pack: I agree with your point. I think that he's an exception there and he wouldn't have allowed it from his staffers. They now have essentially loyalty tested everything. It's not a place where if you were Democrat with ideas that would benefit the Trumpian establishment, you can be heard. I'll give an example. I like the Abraham Accords and I have a colleague who wants to help extend the Abraham Accords to Pakistan, she can only work with ideologically pure Republicans in the pitching of this idea. She can't work with someone like me because I don't have the ideological purity, even though this is a nonpartisan idea and it should be embraced if you can get the Trumpians to be interested in it. But that's not how America works and it has not been. Reagan, of course, if you said that you like taxes, and I'm someone who likes taxes and I don't believe in the Laffer curve, and neoliberalism is a sham, you couldn't be on that economic team. So there are different ideological tests. Trump was never a politician, so he's not an expert like me in the expert class where we've been litmus tested our whole careers.Andrew Keen: Interesting. Jason, yesterday I was talking to someone who was thinking of hiring me to do a speech in Europe to a business group, and we were discussing the kinds of speeches I could give, and one of the things I suggested was a defense of America, suggesting that we can believe in America and that everyone's wrong. And these people have hired me before. I've often made provocative counterintuitive arguments, there was a little bit of a silence and they said, you can't make that speech in Europe. No one will take it seriously to a business community. What's generally, I mean, you travel a lot, you talk to lots of different people. Have people really given up on the promise of America, particularly within the establishment, the business establishment, the political establishment?Jason Pack: I don't know. I think that many Europeans still think that this is a passing phase. I will comment on the fact that I do not see anti-Americanism in my daily life as a result of Trump, the way that, for example, you do see anti-Semitism as a results of Netanyahu's policy. The individual Jew is tarred by horrible things happening in Gaza, but the individual American is not tarred by the deporting and illegal detentions and sacking of people by Doge because people in Poland or London or even the Middle East understand that you're likely to not be a Trump supporter and they're not targeting you as an individual as a result of that. So I think they believe in the promise of America and they still might like to move to America. But on individual level if you want to be a political animal inside the beast of campaigns, rising up to be a David Axelrod kind of figure. America has been a place of these litmus tests. Whereas in Europe, you know, I feel that there's tremendous fluidity because in Italy they have so and so many political parties and in Germany, what's the distinction between the SPD at one moment in the CDU and the Greens and there's a tradition of coalitions that allows the individual to reinvent himself.Andrew Keen: One of the things that came up with Cooper, and he's certainly no defender of Marine Le Pen or Meloni in Italy, but he suggested that the Trump people are far to the right of Le Pen and Meloni. Would you agree with that?Jason Pack: Because they want to break down institutions, whereas Le Pen and Meloni simply want to conquer the institutions and use them. They're not full-blown, disordering neopopulists, to use the language of my disorder podcast. When Meloni is in power, she loves the Italian state and she wants it to function merely with her ideological slant. Whereas the Trumpians, they have a Bannonite wing, they don't simply wanna have a MAGA agenda, use the U.S. Government. No, they want to break the Department of Agriculture. They want to break the EPA. They simply want to destroy our institutions. And there's no European political party that wants that. Maybe on the fringe like reform, but reform probably doesn't even want that.Andrew Keen: But Jason, we've heard so much about how the Bannonites idealized Orban in Hungary. A lot of people believe that Project 2025 was cooked up in Budapest trying to model America on Orban. Is there any truth to that? I mean, are the Trump people really re-exporting Orbanism back into the United States?Jason Pack: That there is some truth, but it can be overplayed. It can go back further to Berlusconi. It's the idea that a particularly charismatic political leader can come to dominate the media landscape by either having a state media channel in the Berlusconi sense or cowing media coverage to make it more favorable, which is something that Orban has done geniusly, and then doling out contracts and using the state for patronage, say, Orban's father's construction business and all those concrete soccer stadiums. There is an attempt potentially in Trump land to, through an ideological project, cow the media and the checks and balances and have a one-party state with state media. I think it's going to be difficult for them to achieve, but Chuck Carlson and others and Bannon seem to want that.Andrew Keen: You were on Monocle recently talking about the Pope's death. J.D. Vance, of course, is someone who apparently had a last, one of the last conversations with the Pope. Pope wasn't particularly, Pope Francis wasn't particularly keen on him. Bannon and Vance are both outspoken Catholics. What's your take on the sort of this global religious movement on the part of right-wing Catholics, and how does it fit in, not only to the death of Francis, but perhaps the new Pope?Jason Pack: It's a very interesting question. I'm not a right-wing Catholic, so I'm really not in a position to...Andrew Keen: I thought you were Jason, that's why you could always come on the show.Jason Pack: I think that they don't have the theological bona fides to say that what they call Catholicism is Catholicism because obviously Jesus turned the other cheek, you know, and Jesus didn't want to punish his enemies and make poor black or Hispanic women suffer. But there is an interesting thing that has been going on since 1968, which is that there was a backlash against the student protests and free love and the condom and all the social changes that that brought about. And Catholics have been at the forefront, particularly Catholic institutions, in saying this has gone too far and we need to use religion to retake our society. And if we don't, no one will have children and we will lose out and the Muslims and Africans will rule the roost because they're having babies. And that right-wing Catholicism is caught up in the moral panic and culture wars since 1968. What I argued in the monocle interview that you referenced from earlier today is something quite different, which is that the Catholic Church has a unique kind of authority, and that that unique kind of authority can be used to stand up against Trump, Bannon, Orban, and other neopopulists in a way that, say, Mark Carney or Keir Starmer cannot, because if Mark Kearney and Keir Stormer say, you guys are not sufficiently correctly American and you're not following the American laws, blah, blah blah, the kind of Americans who support Trump are not convinced by that because they say, these are just, you know, pinko Brits and Canadians. I don't even care about Mark Kearny, but it's quite different if the next Pontiff is someone who comes not only from the school of Francis, but maybe more so is a great communicator vested in the real doctrines of the church, the Lateran Councils and Vatican too, and can say, actually this given thing that Trump has just said is not in line with the principles of Jesus. It's not inline with what the Vatican has said about, for example, migration or social equity. And I find that that is a unique opportunity because even the right-wing Catholics have to acknowledge the Pope and Christian doctrine and the ability of the Catholic hierarchy to say this is not in line with our teachings. So I think there's a very interesting opportunity right now.Andrew Keen: Perhaps that brings to mind Stalin's supposedly famous remarks to Churchill at Potsdam when they were talking about the Pope. Stalin said to Churchill, the Pope, how many divisions does he have? In other words, it's all about ideology, morality, and ultimately it doesn't really. It's the kind of thing that perhaps if some of the Trump people were as smart as Stalin, they might make the same remark.Jason Pack: That was a physical war, and the Pope didn't have divisions to sway the battles in World War II, but this is an ideological or an influence war. And the Pope, if you've just seen from media coverage over the last week, is someone who has tremendous media influence. And I do think that the new pontiff could, if he wanted to, stand up to the moral underpinnings of Trump and pull even the most right-wing Catholics away from a Trumpian analysis. Religion is supposed to be about, because Jesus didn't say punish your enemies. Don't turn the other cheek and own the libs. Jesus said something quite different than that. And it will be the opportunity of the new Catholic leader to point that out.Andrew Keen: I'm not sure if you've seen the movie Conclave, which was very prescient, made by my dear London friend, or at least produced by Tessa Ross at House Productions. But I wonder in these new conversations whether in the debates about who should the new Pope be, they'll mull over TikTok presence.Jason Pack: I hope they will. And I want to point out something that many people probably are not aware, which is that the College of Cardinals that constitutes the conclave does not have to pick one of their member to be pope. For the last six centuries, they have always chosen one of their own number, but they don't have to. So they could choose someone who has not only an ability to make great TikToks, but someone who can put forth a vision about climate change, about tax equity, for example, maybe about AI and what constitutes humanity from within the Catholic tradition, but reaching new faithful. And I think that they might actually consider we're doing this because in places like Western Europe, attendance is down, but in Eastern Europe and Latin America, it isn't. And in Africa, it's surging. So they may want to reach new millennials in Gen Z with a new message, but one which is rooted in their tradition. And I think that that would be a great counterbalance to what Trump and his ilk have done to how media coverage place things like climate change and migrants these days.Andrew Keen: Speaking of Trump and his ilk, Jason, lots of conversations here about the first cracks in his monolith. Speaking to me from London, I always look at the front page of The Telegraph, a conservative English newspaper. I refuse to give the money, so I never actually read any of the pieces. But I'm always curious as to the traditional conservative media attitude to Trump. What do not so much the Conservative Party, which seems to be in crisis in the UK, but what does Conservative media, Conservative thinkers, what's their take currently on Trump? Are you seeing a crack? Are people seeing this guy's absolutely insane and that the tariff policy is going to make all of us, everybody in the world poorer?Jason Pack: Well, Trump has always been a vote loser in the UK. So that even though Farage brags about his relationship, it isn't something that gets him more votes for reform. And whether it's Sunak or Badnak, and Badnak is the current leader of the Tory party, which is an opposition, she can't so closely associate herself with Trump because he's not popular in even right-wing British circles. However, the Tory media, like the telegraph and the spectator, they love the idea that he's owning the Libs. We talked about Schadenfreude, we talked about attacking the woke. The spectator has taken a very anti-woke turn over the last five to 10 years. And they love the ideal of pointing out the hypocrisies of the left and the effeminacy of it and all of that. And that gets them more clicks. So from a media perspective, there is a way in which the Murdoch media is always going to love the click bait, New York post bait of the Trump presidency. And that applies very much, you know, with the sun and the Daily Mail and the way that they cover media in this country.Andrew Keen: Although I was found in the U.S. That perhaps the newspaper that has been most persistently and usefully critical of Trump is the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Murdoch.Jason Pack: Yeah, but that's a very highbrow paper, and I think that it's been very critical of the tariff policy and it said a lot of intelligent things about Trump's early missteps. It doesn't reach the same people as the New York Post or the Daily Mail do.Andrew Keen: Finally, Jason, let's go back to Disorder, your excellent podcast. You started it a couple of years ago before this new Trump madness. You were always one of the early people on this global disorder. How much more disordered can the world become? Of course, it could become more disorded in terms of war. In late April 2025, is the world more disordered than it was in April 2024, when Biden was still in power? I mean, we still have these wars in Gaza, in Ukraine, doesn't seem as if that much has changed, or am I wrong?Jason Pack: I take your point, but I'm using disorder in a particularly technical sense in a way by which I mean the inability of major powers to coordinate together for optimal solutions. So in the Biden days of last year, yes, the Ukraine and Gaza wars may be waging, but if Jake Sullivan or Blinken were smarter or more courageous, they could host a summit and work together with their French and British and Argentinian allies. Put forth some solutions. The world is more disordered today because it doesn't have a leader. It doesn't have institutions, the UN or NATO or the G7 where those solutions on things like the Ukraine war attacks could happen. And you may say, but wait, Jason, isn't Trump actually doing more leadership? He's trying to bring the Ukrainians and the Russians to the table. And I would say he isn't. They're not proposing actual solutions. They don't care about solving underlying issues. They're merely trying to get media wins. He wants the Japanese to come to Washington to have the semblance of a new trade deal, not a real trade deal. He's trying to reorder global finance in semblance, not in reality. So the ability to come to actual solutions through real coordinating mechanisms where I compromise with you is much weaker than it was last year. And on the Disorder Podcast, we explore all these domains from tax havens to cryptocurrency to cyber attacks. And I think that listeners of Keen On would really enjoy how we delve into those topics and try to see how they reflect where we're at in the global system.Andrew Keen: Yeah, it's a strongly, I would strongly agree with you. I would encourage all keen on listeners to listen to Disorder and vice versa if this gets onto the Disorder podcast. What about the China issue? How structural is the tariff crisis, if that's the right word, gonna change US relations with China? Is this the new Cold War, Jason?Jason Pack: I'm not an economist, but from what I've been told by the economists I've interviewed on my podcast, it's absolutely completely game changing because whether it's an Apple iPhone or most pieces of manufactured kit that you purchase or inputs into American manufacturing, it's assembled everywhere and the connections between China and America are essential to the global economy. Work and it's not like you can all of a sudden move those supply chains. So this trade war is really a 1930s style beggar thy neighbor approach to things and that led to and deepened the great depression, right? So I am very worried. I had the sense that Trump might back off because he does seem to be very sensitive to the markets. But maybe this is such an ideological project and, you know, Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC was just saying, even though he's willing to back off if the T bill rate changes, he thinks that his strategy is working and that he's going to get some deals. And that terrifies me because that's not what's happening. It isn't working. And God forbid that they'll push this to its logical conclusion and cause a new recession or depression.Andrew Keen: I know you've got to run Jason. So final question, let's return to where we began with America and the changing nature of America. Your last episode of Disorder was with Corey Sharpe, who is a very, very good and one of Washington DC's, I think, smartest foreign policy analysts. She asks, what's America without allies? If this continues, what, indeed, I mean, you're happy in London, so I don't sound like you're coming back, whatever. But what will America become if indeed all these traditional allies, the UK, France, Germany, become, if not enemies, certainly just transactional relationships? What becomes of America without allies?Jason Pack: Wow, great question. I'm gonna treat this in two parts, the American cultural component and then the structural geopolitical component. I'm a proud American. Culturally, I work on Sundays. I don't take any holiday. I get angry at contractors who are not direct. I am going to be American my whole life and I want an American style work ethic and I wanna things to function and the customer to always be right. So I didn't move to Europe to get European stuff in that way, and I think America will still be great at new inventions and at hard work and at all of that stuff and will still, the NFL will still be a much better run sports league than European sports leagues. Americans are great at certain things. The problem is what if America's role in the world as having the reserve currency, coordinating the NATO allies. If that's eviscerated, we're just going to be living more and more in the global enduring disorder, as Corey Schacke points out, which is that the Europeans don't know how to lead. They can't step up because they don't have one prima inter Paris. And since the decline of the British Empire, the British haven't learned how, for example, to coordinate the Europeans for the defense of Ukraine or for making new missile technologies or dealing with the defense industry. So we're just dealing with a rudderless world. And that's very worrying because there could be major conflict. And then I just have to hope that a new American administration, it could be a Republican one, but I think it just can't be a Trumpian one, will go back to its old role of leadership. I haven't lost hope in America. I've just lost hope in this current administration.Andrew Keen: Well, I haven't lost hope in Jason Pack. He is an ally of ours at Keen On. He's the host of the Excellent Disorder podcast. Jason, it's always fun to have you on the show. So much to discuss and no doubt there will be much more over the summer, so we'll have you back on in the next month or two. Thank you so much. Keep well. Stay American in London. Thank you again.Jason Pack: It was a great pleasure. Thanks, Andrew. See you then. 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

In contrast with yesterday's guest, the Paris based Financial Times writer Simon Kuper, the newspaper's London based columnist Jemima Kelly hasn't quite given up on the United States of America. Trump, she suggests, might be the end of the line for the MAGA movement. Indeed, like another recent guest on the show, former Wired editor Peter Leyden, Kelly suggests that the Republicans might be flirting with the destruction of their brand for the next political generation. Unlike Leyden, however, Kelly isn't particularly bullish on the future of the Democratic Party, arguing that there is a desperate need for a formal national opposition to Trump's MAGA Republicanism. And in contrast with Leyden, Kelly doesn't see much of an opposition - moral or otherwise - from seemingly spineless tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg or Marc Andreessen. 5 Key Takeaways* Kelly is most concerned about Trump's "utter disregard for the legal system and the kind of lawlessness" that characterizes his second administration.* She believes Democrats lack cohesive opposition structure, noting America could benefit from a shadow cabinet system like the UK's to provide clear alternative voices.* Kelly predicts "MAGA is going to finish with Trump" as there's no viable successor who can match his charisma and stage presence.* She criticizes tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg for capitulating to Trump, questioning how they justify abandoning values for business interests.* Kelly argues that maintaining moral principles is crucial for Democrats, as sinking to Trump's level only erodes institutional trust, which has already been significantly damaged. Full Transcript Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It is Wednesday, April the 23rd, 2025. Headlines today remain dominated by Donald Trump. Every story above the fold, at least above the digital fold in the Financial Times, seems to be about him. Yesterday, we talked to FT columnist Simon Cooper, a Dutchman living in Paris, who had an interesting piece earlier this week suggesting Americans should move to Europe, indicating the American dream was over. Cooper seemed to relish this news. Today, we're talking to another FT columnist, Jemima Kelly. She's based in northeast London, in Hackney, and she's talking to us today from the FT offices in the heart of London City. Jemima, what's your take on Simon's column this week? Is it indeed time for most Americans to move to Europe?Jemima Kelly: I thought it was a very interesting column. I'm particularly interested in this idea that you discussed on your show about the brain drain that has been going in the direction of America and that might start to come back in the other direction, which I hadn't really properly considered before in those terms. But I must say that I'm not really a fan of encouraging people to all be digital nomads. He's actually followed it up with a piece today about how to be a digital nomad in Paris. I'm not really a fan of that kind of lifestyle because I think that it means people aren't particularly invested in their local communities, and I think it makes a bit of a crappy neighborhood if everyone is just working their own jobs. The dream of earning a US salary while working remotely living in Europe—I'm just like, please don't do that because then we're just importing inequality.Andrew Keen: Although to be fair, was Simon actually saying that?Jemima Kelly: I think he did say that the ultimate life, the ultimate arbitrage was doing that. And it's true, it is the ultimate arbitrage. It's just not one that I would particularly want people to pursue. It's like the Airbnb culture—it's destroyed a lot of cities and priced out local people, meaning certain cities you visit have no locals, just tourists, which is quite crap as a tourist.Andrew Keen: I guess the other critique of Simon's piece, which is an extension of yours, is for Americans who don't like Trump—and there are many, including myself—it's not time to move to Europe. It's not time to retreat. It is time to stay and fight and try to change America. So there's no reason why you have to shift. Jemima, you're a columnist at what you call on your X account "Friends of the Deep State" (FT). I'm using you as the voice of the European deep state. What's the take from London on Trump on April 23, 2025? It's so hard to make any sense of it. In a meta sense, in a structural sense, what's your take on what's happening?Jemima Kelly: I'm going to answer that in three parts. First, the "Friends of the Deep State" is obviously a reference to Liz Truss, who referred to the FT as the deep state.Andrew Keen: I want to come on to Truss later, another rather clownish character, your version of Donald Trump.Jemima Kelly: Yes, Britain's proudest export. Second, I would probably not want to speak for Europe or Britain. Maybe I can start by saying what I think the mood is.Andrew Keen: You live in Hackney in northeast London, so maybe you can speak on behalf of Hackney. What's the take on Trump from Hackney?Jemima Kelly: Just utter dismay. And I mean, I would say that's probably the mood I'm getting, even from people who thought there was too much hyperbole used about Trump in the run-up to his election. I didn't think comparisons to Hitler were particularly helpful.Andrew Keen: You're not alone. We've had that conversation many times on the show. I strongly agree with you.Jemima Kelly: So while there were people who were very hysterical about the idea of a Trump 2.0 being worse than the first time, I think so far, it does seem kind of worse, doesn't it?Andrew Keen: I'm asking you.Jemima Kelly: I would say there is a sense that things are quite scary at the moment. I think what I personally find most worrying, and that many balanced people are talking about, is the utter disregard for the courts and the rule of law. I was amazed looking at Truth Social earlier. I saw a post from Trump about an alleged MS-13 gang member.Andrew Keen: The Venezuelan who was illegally extradited or seized and taken to El Salvador.Jemima Kelly: I think this guy is actually Salvadoran. Trump has posted a picture of an alleged knuckle tattoo with four symbols which some people have extrapolated to mean MS-13. It's very obviously just computer-generated text superimposed on the image. Trump has posted it and appears to believe this is actually tattooed onto the man's knuckles, using that as justification. I think the utter disregard for the legal system and the lawlessness of Trump 2.0 is for me the most disturbing aspect because where does that end? It's just utter chaos.I might write this week about how Trump sees the world as just deal-making and transactions. The ends will always justify the means. He's openly saying he's going to keep pushing as hard as he can to get what he wants. But his followers, who are constantly rushing to justify everything he does, including his vice president, are glorifying the means themselves, which Trump himself doesn't even really believe in. People are willing to take what he says at face value and make it happen, like Vance going to Greenland on this supposed visit.Andrew Keen: You said in an excellent column earlier this month that Vance has "the zeal of the convert" and that's the problem.Jemima Kelly: Yes, because he once called Trump "America's Hitler."Andrew Keen: And he didn't mean it in a complimentary way.Jemima Kelly: I don't think he did.Andrew Keen: So, Jemima, stand back a little. Simon noted that he'd always believed in America growing up. A lot of his friends went to America. You're a slightly younger generation from Simon. When you graduated from university, did a lot of your friends go to America? Did you ever think maybe you should go to America as a singer or a journalist?Jemima Kelly: Did any of my friends? It's quite difficult as a British person going to America. Quite a few of my friends have ended up there, particularly in LA for some reason. I almost moved to New York with my previous employer, Reuters, and have considered it, but wanted to stay in London. I love America; it's a completely amazing and fascinating place. But it does feel like people I speak to at the moment are feeling concerned. Someone in New Orleans told me that when conservative columnists in the New York Times are writing that it's time for some kind of uprising...Andrew Keen: That was David Brooks. And Simon wrote about a friend of his in Georgia who said he couldn't even go out because he was scared to bump into Trump people.Jemima Kelly: I saw that. That's not how I personally believe that divisions should be handled. The idea that you shouldn't go out because you might bump into some Trump fans—I don't know about that.Andrew Keen: I couldn't agree more. Your last column, in the spirit of Easter, was titled "It's the hope that saves you." It was a broader column, not just about America. But do you still have a vestige, a glimmer of hope in America? Have you given up?Jemima Kelly: Oh, God, yes, I still have hope. I am an optimist. But I also believe that being optimistic and hopeful, which as I explain in the column are slightly different things, gives you a higher chance of things going well. If you don't resort to cynicism and nihilism, which I don't think is particularly helpful.Another column I would like to write in the coming weeks is that I am becoming convinced that MAGA is going to finish with Trump. There is no MAGA after Trump. One thing that convinced me of this was listening to the "Triggered" podcast with Donald Trump Jr. I tried to listen to a range of podcasts, some more painful than others, and I listened to a full episode the other day and couldn't believe the level of imbecility.Andrew Keen: Well, we know what you mean anyway, even if that isn't the word.Jemima Kelly: And he's the best friend of the vice president, who's supposedly this genius.Andrew Keen: I'm sure in a year or two JD will have moved on to other "best friends."Jemima Kelly: Maybe, but I think they've been friends for a while. The thing with Trump is that he masks so much with his charisma and stage presence and what he calls "flexibility," not U-turning. And his people skills. Then you get the distilled version of him without all of that, and it's just so painfully bad and unpersuasive. There's no successor. Vance is the only one who the bookies currently have as the favorite, but that's because there's no leader on the other side; we don't know who the Democratic leader is.Andrew Keen: Peter Leyden, who was on the show a few days ago, the former editor-in-chief of Wired, believes that Trump is essentially destroying the Republican brand for a generation. It does provide an opportunity for the Democrats in the long term, although the Democrats probably have many problems of their own. Do you agree that ultimately the Republican brand has been decimated and is headed for 20 or 30 years of political isolation?Jemima Kelly: I think what they have going for them is that MAGA has its own name—there was always the MAGA part of the Republican Party and then the "other part" and the RINOs. Now they have somewhat merged, but I imagine that will start to separate if the Trump project keeps doing as badly as it seems to be. But it doesn't feel like there's any separation now between Trump and the institutions that are supposedly independent, with the Fed being an exception despite his saying he'd terminate Powell and then claiming the press made a big deal of it. It does feel like it will be difficult for Republicans to extricate themselves from Trump. There isn't anyone standing up and being vocally anti-Trump on that side at the moment.Andrew Keen: You noted that your satirical X profile "Friends of the Deep State" was borrowed from Liz Truss, who made a fool of herself and now is in political exile. Can we learn anything from the Truss fiasco? It seems to me as if Trump a couple of weeks ago on the bond front was, so to speak, "Trussed"—the market spoke and he had to retreat. Can we learn anything from recent British political or economic history to make sense of what's happening in the US, particularly in terms of Truss, who was humiliated by the markets?Jemima Kelly: Trump has the advantage of shamelessness, doesn't he?Andrew Keen: So you're saying that Liz Truss is not shameless?Jemima Kelly: That's a very good point. You could see the embarrassment on her face. Maybe that is just my projection of how I would feel.Andrew Keen: For people just listening, it's a picture of Liz Truss in New York with a MAGA hat on looking like a complete idiot.Jemima Kelly: Just before the inauguration saying, "It can't come soon enough."Andrew Keen: And she says "the West needs it," whatever that means.Jemima Kelly: She's constantly "saving the West." She was at a Bitcoin conference last weekend giving a speech on saving the West. It's really exciting that we have such capable hands to save the West.Andrew Keen: Especially at the Bitcoin conference.Jemima Kelly: Exactly. They're the real people to do it. What can we learn from Truss? What we can learn, and this takes us into the Democrats, is that a few people have floated the idea that America should have some form of shadow cabinet. One of the reasons that Truss lasted for only 42 days—less than the lettuce—was that we have such a vocal opposition in this country. It's very clear who the spokesperson is from the opposing party. So when a journalist is writing a story about Truss's mini budget, right away, you've got the shadow chancellor to tell you why it's a terrible idea. In America, it's not so clear, and I think that's a disadvantage.Andrew Keen: You wrote an excellent column in the last month on why America needs a "serious opposition."Jemima Kelly: It really opened my eyes, this idea of the shadow cabinet. Obviously, the government has a different structure in the US, and it's not a monarchy, etc. But the idea of some form—even if just in name only—if the Democrats were able to put forward a representative for each of the major government departments, it would help. It made me think that American media often sees itself as "the resistance"—the media is the resistance. I feel like our job is to report the news. Too often it feels like the media was trying to stop Trump from getting reelected or trying to hide that Biden was too old for another four years. The media is far too often doing the work that an opposition should be doing.It dawned on me that this is partly because of the lack of structure that we have with the constant back and forth. As a journalist, rather than having to explain why the Liz Truss mini-budget was bad, you've got someone on the other side to tell you. The Democrats are in disarray. Usually, there's nothing like a common enemy to unite you, and Trump should be that. Amid the tariffs, the trade war, the deportation of immigrants, threats to deport others to horrific Salvadoran prisons—if there were a time to be united, it would be now. This is peak Trump fear, and yet the Democrats have record low approval ratings among their supporters. A Gallup poll showed Republican approval of their congressmen is at 76 percent while Democrats are at 39 percent among Democrats. There is a real void of cohesive or coherent opposition.Andrew Keen: You've been quite critical of the Democrats. Back in July, you talked about the "Biden debacle" and the absurdity of a man clearly out of his depth. But you've also written more recently about Democrats not abandoning their morals. When historians look back, how much of a debacle was the Biden regime? Will it be seen as the trigger that enabled Trump 2.0, or would these things be seen separately?Jemima Kelly: I don't think it was Biden's administration; I think it was the cover-up of his physical decline.Andrew Keen: I wasn't surprised by that debate he had with Trump. He clearly was way beyond his shelf life. It was self-evident if you watched interviews with him.Jemima Kelly: It was already evident. I got into trouble for talking about this before the 2020 election because he had gotten the name of an interviewer wrong, and fact-checking organizations rushed in to say he hadn't. They were lying on his behalf, which shocked me.Andrew Keen: Does that make Trump's point on Truth Social that the media is really the Democratic party, or the two are inseparable?Jemima Kelly: It's funny because every time I've written about this, I've gotten pushback. I was the first "ritual sacrifice" on BlueSky a few months ago because I dared to say it was an echo chamber. Apparently, I implied that I wanted more Nazis on BlueSky, which is obviously sarcasm. One thing I find interesting—if you type "New York Times" into BlueSky, you'll get people complaining about how pro-Trump they are or how they're "both-sides-ists." If you type "New York Times" into X, you'll get people complaining about how anti-Trump they are and how it's just an extension of the Democratic Party.I think there's something like 3-4% of American journalists who vote Republican, so clearly, the media does lean left or Democrat. Trump is now letting really marginal right-wing news outlets into his briefings, which in some ways I don't think is all bad. I think it would be good to have a more balanced media.Andrew Keen: You wrote a good piece in December, "Democrats must not abandon their morals," which I guess goes without saying. There are still morals in the Republican party. Well, certainly ex-Republicans like David Brooks and Peter Wehner seem to be the most convincingly moral Americans. But that's another issue. What advice would you give the Democrats? On one hand, you've got a civil war within the party between its left—Bernie Sanders and AOC—versus centrists. They agree on almost nothing apart from being in the same big tent party. What advice would you give Democrats?Jemima Kelly: I don't feel in a position to give advice.Andrew Keen: What would you like to see then?Jemima Kelly: Just to be clear about the "Democrats shouldn't abandon their morals" column, that was written after Biden pardoned his son Hunter, which I found uncool. I hate that. I was arguing that if you're going to talk about how immoral the Trump project is and how full of lies it is—and it is all those things—then you have to show that you're better. I felt that was a failure during the first Trump term.I think outlets like the New York Times are doing better this time around. But there was an op-ed written after the first Trump victory about how objectivity needed to be abandoned, like there was a new game to play. I think that's really short-termist and will set a terrible precedent. Trump has come in again on the back of a massive loss of trust in institutions, which was already happening but was made worse by COVID—all the debates about origins, vaccines, etc. That chipped away at trust in science, government, and institutions in general.I write a lot about virtue and honor. I just wrote about hope. I don't think we think about values enough. Only the right in America seems to talk about religion. I'm not even a Christian myself—I was raised Catholic but don't consider myself that anymore—but I feel that values and morality aren't spoken about enough. The Democrats need to take the high ground. They were pulling up placards saying "Lie" at Trump's address to Congress, wearing colors to represent protest. AOC was doing videos saying "choose your fighter," trying to appeal to young people. It was all so cringe and inauthentic. When Trump is being seen as authentic, and Bernie Sanders, who does come across as authentic, there's such a vacuum of authenticity.Andrew Keen: You noted that one of the reasons why Trump is so successful is his eccentricity. That's one of his attractive qualities. A couple of quick questions before we go. You're at the FT, so you're supposed to understand the global economy. Back in September, you talked about America's crypto election. I have a nagging suspicion that crypto might be one of the things that ultimately blows up Trump. There is a lot of fraud within the administration on crypto, with some people making vast fortunes. Trump or his administration is in bed with the Bitcoin bros. What do you make of this association? Because Trump historically has always been ambivalent about crypto. Is this a sideshow or could it become the main show?Jemima Kelly: I don't think it could become the main show just because crypto is still not systemically important enough. If we compare it to the trade war, it pales in comparison in terms of numbers. The IMF downgrading forecasts by one percentage point for the US—that is far more likely to bring down Trump economically.Andrew Keen: Could we be seeing a restructuring of the global financial economy where crypto becomes an alternative to the Fed, given Trump's hostility towards the Fed?Jemima Kelly: God, no, not in my opinion. My ultimate point with crypto—and by the way, people who believe in Bitcoin (and I use the word "believe" deliberately because I do regard it as a belief system) think that Bitcoin is different from other crypto because it's the first one and will only have 21 million coins ever minted. But these are just strings of digits. Then someone comes along and says, "oh no, Bitcoin and Ethereum," and someone else adds Dogecoin as well.These aren't companies like the S&P 500 where there's a finite list. Each of these coins does absolutely nothing, and there's no limit to the number that can exist. I could speak about crypto for hours, but I always come back to the fact that there is no scarcity. Bitcoiners hate when I say this because they claim Bitcoin is different. There is no limit to the number of cryptocurrencies that can exist. If you look at CoinMarketCap.com, they used to count how many cryptocurrencies there were, but I think it got embarrassing because the counter disappeared. There are tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands at this point. How can there be value when there's no scarcity?Andrew Keen: I hope you're right on that front. Finally, you've been very critical of Silicon Valley and big tech. You wrote a piece recently on Mark Zuckerberg caving into Trump. Zuckerberg caved in, Bezos appears to have with the Washington Post, some law firms have, some haven't. Do you think this will come back to haunt opportunists like Zuckerberg? Is it in the interest, not just moral but economic, of American business leaders, university leaders, and heads of law firms to stand up to all this nonsense?Jemima Kelly: I think so, yes. We have so glorified wealth that people only seem to think value exists in financial terms. If I were Mark Zuckerberg, I would care about what people thought of me, but that's even superficial. I would care about being able to sleep well at night. I don't know how these people justify it.I heard a Mark Andreessen podcast a few months ago where he said, "The one thing people don't understand about billionaires is they don't care about money. They just want people to like them." I thought that was really interesting, but it doesn't seem to match their actions.Andrew Keen: Well, we probably should end. I'm not sure if you've written any columns on Musk, but he seems to represent all of this. He's clearly distancing himself from Trump, just as Trump is distancing himself from Musk. Are we beginning to see the end of this love affair between the Musks and the Andreessens with Trump?Jemima Kelly: It's interesting because Musk was supposedly the savior of electric cars, but the current-day Musk would be so skeptical of electric cars. It's weird that he was that guy and now has to keep being that guy to a certain extent because it's his brand. I think he's been radicalized by people not liking him, and he's being pushed further into this corner because he wants to feel part of a tribe. Now he feels like he fits in at Mar-a-Lago and hangs out with Trump.Do I think that's the end of their relationship? It's hard to know. I wouldn't be surprised if they did fall out quite soon. But they're both very strange people, aren't they?Andrew Keen: To put it mildly. You've got a big picture of the two of them in a Tesla on the cover of the Financial Times. I think they're both secretly fans of Millwall Football Club with their famous song "Nobody Loves Us, We Don't Care."Jemima Kelly: What?Andrew Keen: I'm joking, but maybe the same is true of Donald Trump and certainly Elon Musk.Jemima Kelly: They care so much. That's what's funny. Trump cares more than anyone about people loving him. I think that's what drives him. He really wants to be seen as a good president, which comforts me when things are going badly because I think he wants people to love him. He really wants the Nobel Peace Prize, which is hilarious, but he does want that.Andrew Keen: Well, one thing we've resolved today is that Donald Trump is not a fan of Millwall Football Club. He wants everybody to love him. He does care if they don't. Jemima, I know you don't really care because you're someone who will always say what you think. We'll have to get you back on the show for The View from London. Not an eccentric view, but an irreverent view. Thank you so much, Jemima Kelly, columnist of the FT. We will have you back on the show. Keep well.Jemima Kelly: Thank you, you too. 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

It's official. The American Dream is dead. And it's been resurrected in Europe where, according to the FT columnist Simon Kuper, disillusioned Americans should relocate. Compared with the United States, Kuper argues, Europe offers the three key metrics of a 21st century good life: “four years more longevity, higher self-reported happiness and less than half the carbon emissions per person”. So where exactly to move? The Paris based Kuper believes that his city is the most beautiful in Europe. He's also partial to Madrid, which offers Europe's sunniest lifestyle. And even London, in spite of all its post Brexit gloom, Kuper promises, offers American exiles the promise of a better life than the miserable existence which they now have to eek out in the United States. Five Takeaways* Quality of Life.:Kuper believes European quality of life surpasses America's for the average person, with Europeans living longer, having better physical health, and experiencing less extreme political polarization.* Democratic Europe vs Aristocratic America: While the wealthy can achieve greater fortunes in America, Kuper argues that Europeans in the "bottom 99%" live longer and healthier lives than their American counterparts.* Guns, Anxiety and the Threat of Violence: Political polarization in America creates more anxiety than in Europe, partly because Americans might be armed and because religion makes people hold their views more fervently.* MAGA Madness: Kuper sees Trump as more extreme than European right-wing leaders like Italy's Meloni, who governs as "relatively pro-European" and "pro-Ukrainian."* It's not just a Trump thing. Kuper believes America's declining international credibility will persist even after Trump leaves office, as Europeans will fear another "America First" president could follow any moderate administration.Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello everybody. It's Monday, April the 21st, 2025. This conversation actually might go out tomorrow on the 22nd. Nonetheless, the headlines of the Financial Times, the world's most global economic newspaper, are miserable from an American point of view. US stocks and the dollar are sinking again as Donald Trump renews his attack on the Fed chair Jay Powell. Meanwhile Trump is also attacking the universities and many other bastions of civilization at least according to the FT's political columnist Gideon Rachman. For another FT journalist, my guest today Simon Kuper has been on the show many times before. All this bad news about America suggests that for Americans it's time to move to Europe. Simon is joining us from Paris, which Paris is that in Europe Simon?Simon Kuper: I was walking around today and thinking it has probably never in its history looked as good as it does now. It really is a fabulous city, especially when the sun shines.Andrew Keen: Nice of them where I am in San Francisco.Simon Kuper: I always used to like San Francisco, but I knew it before every house costs $15 million.Andrew Keen: Well, I'm not sure that's entirely true, but maybe there's some truth. Paris isn't exactly cheap either, is it? Certainly where you live.Simon Kuper: Cheaper than San Francisco, so I did for this article that you mentioned, I did some research on house prices and certainly central Paris is one of the most expensive areas in the European Union, but still considerably cheaper than cities like New York and San Francisco. A friend of mine who lives here told me that if she moved to New York, she would move from central Paris to for the same price living in some very, very distant suburb of New York City.Andrew Keen: Your column this week, Americans, it's time to move to Europe. You obviously wrote with a degree of relish. Is this Europe's revenge on America that it's now time to reverse the brain drain from Europe to America? Now it's from America to Europe.Simon Kuper: I mean, I don't see it as revenge. I'm a generally pro-American person by inclination and I even married an American and have children who are American as well as being French and British. So when I went to the US as firstly as a child, age 10, 11, I was in sixth grade in California. I thought it was the most advanced, wonderful place in the world and the sunshine and there was nowhere nice than California. And then I went as a student in my early 20s. And again, I thought this was the early 90s. This is the country of the future. It's so much more advanced than Europe. And they have this new kind of wise technocratic government that is going to make things even better. And it was the beginning of a big American boom of the 90s when I think American quality of life reached its peak, that life expectancy was reached, that was then declined a long time after the late 90s. So my impressions in the past were always extremely good, but no longer. The last 20 years visiting the US I've never really felt this is a society where ordinary people can have as good a life as in Europe.Andrew Keen: When you say ordinary people, I mean, you're not an ordinary person. And I'm guessing most of the people you and your wife certainly isn't ordinary. She's a well known writer. In fact, she's written on France and the United States and parenthood, very well known, you are well known. What do you mean by ordinary people?Simon Kuper: Yeah, I mean, it's not entirely about me. Amazingly, I am not so egomaniac as to draw conclusions on some matters just looking at my own situation. What I wrote about the US is that if you're in the 1% in the US and you are pursuing great wealth in finance or tech and you have a genuine shot at it, you will achieve wealth that you can't really achieve in Europe. You know, the top end of the US is much higher than in Europe. Still not necessarily true that your life will be better. So even rich Americans live shorter than rich Europeans. But OK, so the 1% America really offers greater expansion opportunities than Europe does. Anywhere below that, the Europeans in the bottom 99%, let's say, they live longer than their American equivalents. They are less fat, their bodies function better because they walk more, because they're not being bombarded by processed food in the same way. Although we have political polarization here, it's not as extreme as in the US. Where I quote a European friend of mine who lives in the American South. He says he sometimes doesn't go out of his house for days at a time because he says meeting Trump supporters makes him quite anxious.Andrew Keen: Where does he live? I saw that paragraph in the piece, you said he doesn't, and I'm quoting him, a European friend of mine who lives in the American South sometimes doesn't leave his house for days on end so as to avoid running into Trump supporters. Where does he live?Simon Kuper: He lives, let me say he lives in Georgia, he lives in the state of Georgia.Andrew Keen: Well, is that Atlanta? I mean, Atlanta is a large town, lots of anti-Trump sentiment there. Whereabouts in Georgia?Simon Kuper: He doesn't live in Atlanta, but I also don't want to specify exactly where he lives because he's entitled.Andrew Keen: In case you get started, but in all seriousness, Simon, isn't this a bit exaggerated? I mean, I'm sure there are some of your friends in Paris don't go outside the fancy center because they might run into fans of Marine Le Pen. What's the difference?Simon Kuper: I think that polarization creates more anxiety in the US and is more strongly felt for a couple of reasons. One is that because people might be armed in America, that gives an edge to any kind of disagreement that isn't here in Europe. And secondly, because religion is more of a factor in American life, people hold their views more strongly, more fervently, then. So I think there's a seriousness and edge to the American polarization that isn't quite the same as here. And the third reason I think polarization is worse is movement is more extreme even than European far-right movements. So my colleague John Byrne Murdoch at the Financial Times has mapped this, that Republican views from issues from climate to the role of the state are really off the charts. There's no European party coeval to them. So for example, the far-right party in France, the Rassemblement National, doesn't deny climate change in the way that Trump does.Andrew Keen: So, how does that contextualize Le Pen or Maloney or even the Hungarian neo-authoritarians for whom a lot of Trump supporters went to Budapest to learn what he did in order to implement Trump 2.0?Simon Kuper: Yeah, I think Orban, in terms of his creating an authoritarian society where the universities have been reined in, where the courts have been rained in, in that sense is a model for Trump. His friendliness with Putin is more of a model for Trump. Meloni and Le Pen, although I do not support them in any way, are not quite there. And so Meloni in Italy is in a coalition and is governing as somebody relatively pro-European. She's pro-Ukrainian, she's pro-NATO. So although, you know, she and Trump seem to have a good relationship, she is nowhere near as extreme as Trump. And you don't see anyone in Europe who's proposing these kinds of tariffs that Trump has. So I think that the, I would call it the craziness or the extremism of MAGA, doesn't really have comparisons. I mean, Orban, because he leads a small country, he has to be a bit more savvy and aware of what, for example, Brussels will wear. So he pushes Brussels, but he also needs money from Brussels. So, he reigns himself in, whereas with Trump, it's hard to see much restraint operating.Andrew Keen: I wonder if you're leading American liberals on a little bit, Simon. You suggested it's time to come to Europe, but Americans in particular aren't welcome, so to speak, with open arms, certainly from where you're talking from in Paris. And I know a lot of Americans who have come to Europe, London, Paris, elsewhere, and really struggled to make friends. Would, for Americans who are seriously thinking of leaving Trump's America, what kind of welcome are they gonna get in Europe?Simon Kuper: I mean, it's true that I haven't seen anti-Americanism as strong as this in my, probably in my lifetime. It might have been like this during the Vietnam War, but I was a child, I don't remember. So there is enormous antipathy to, let's say, to Trumpism. So two, I had two visiting Irish people, I had lunch with them on Friday, who both work in the US, and they said, somebody shouted at them on the street, Americans go home. Which I'd never heard, honestly, in Paris. And they shouted back, we're not American, which is a defense that doesn't work if you are American. So that is not nice. But my sense of Americans who live here is that the presumption of French people is always that if you're an American who lives here, you're not a Trumpist. Just like 20 years ago, if you are an American lives here you're not a supporter of George W. Bush. So there is a great amount of awareness that there are Americans and Americans that actually the most critical response I heard to my article was from Europeans. So I got a lot of Americans saying, yeah, yeah. I agree. I want to get out of here. I heard quite a lot of Europeans say, for God's sake, don't encourage them all to come here because they'll drive up prices and so on, which you can already see elements of, and particularly in Barcelona or in Venice, basically almost nobody lives in Venice except which Americans now, but in Barcelona where.Andrew Keen: Only rich Americans in Venice, no other rich people.Simon Kuper: It has a particular appeal to no Russians. No, no one from the gulf. There must be some there must be something. They're not many Venetians.Andrew Keen: What about the historical context, Simon? In all seriousness, you know, Americans have, of course, fled the United States in the past. One thinks of James Baldwin fleeing the Jim Crow South. Could the Americans now who were leaving the universities, Tim Schneider, for example, has already fled to Canada, as Jason Stanley has as well, another scholar of fascism. Is there stuff that American intellectuals, liberals, academics can bring to Europe that you guys currently don't have? Or are intellectuals coming to Europe from the US? Is it really like shipping coal, so to speak, to Newcastle?Simon Kuper: We need them desperately. I mean, as you know, since 1933, there has been a brain drain of the best European intellectuals in enormous numbers to the United States. So in 1933, the best university system in the world was Germany. If you measure by number of Nobel prizes, one that's demolished in a month, a lot of those people end up years later, especially in the US. And so you get the new school in New York is a center. And people like Adorno end up, I think, in Los Angeles, which must be very confusing. And American universities, you get the American combination. The USP, what's it called, the unique selling point, is you have size, you have wealth, you have freedom of inquiry, which China doesn't have, and you have immigration. So you bring in the best brains. And so Europe lost its intellectuals. You have very wealthy universities, partly because of the role of donors in America. So, you know, if you're a professor at Stanford or Columbia, I think the average salary is somewhere over $300,000 for professors at the top universities. In Europe, there's nothing like that. Those people would at least have to halve their salary. And so, yeah, for Europeans, this is a unique opportunity to get some of the world's leading brains back. At cut price because they would have to take a big salary cut, but many of them are desperate to do it. I mean, if your lab has been defunded by the government, or if the government doesn't believe in your research into climate or vaccines, or just if you're in the humanities and the government is very hostile to it, or, if you write on the history of race. And that is illegal now in some southern states where I think teaching they call it structural racism or there's this American phrase about racism that is now banned in some states that the government won't fund it, then you think, well, I'll take that pay cost and go back to Europe. Because I'm talking going back, I think the first people to take the offer are going to be the many, many top Europeans who work at American universities.Andrew Keen: You mentioned at the end of Europe essay, the end of the American dream. You're quoting Trump, of course, ironically. But the essay is also about the end of the America dream, perhaps the rebirth or initial birth of the European dream. To what extent is the American dream, in your view, and you touched on this earlier, Simon, dependent on the great minds of Europe coming to America, particularly during and after the, as a response to the rise of Nazism, Hannah Arendt, for example, even people like Aldous Huxley, who came to Hollywood in the 1930s. Do you think that the American dream itself is in part dependent on European intellectuals like Arendt and Huxley, even Ayn Rand, who not necessarily the most popular figure on the left, but certainly very influential in her ideas about capitalism and freedom, who came of course from Russia.Simon Kuper: I mean, I think the average American wouldn't care if Ayn Rand or Hannah Arendt had gone to Australia instead. That's not their dream. I think their American dream has always been about the idea of social mobility and building a wealthy life for yourself and your family from nothing. Now almost all studies of social ability say that it's now very low in the US. It's lower than in most of Europe. Especially Northern Europe and Scandinavia have great social mobility. So if you're born in the lower, say, 10% or 20% in Denmark, you have a much better chance of rising to the top of society than if you were born at the bottom 10%, 20% in the US. So America is not very good for social mobility anymore. I think that the brains that helped the American economy most were people working in different forms of tech research. And especially for the federal government. So the biggest funder of science in the last 80 years or so, I mean, the Manhattan Project and on has been the US federal government, biggest in the world. And the thing is you can't eat atom bombs, but what they also produce is research that becomes hugely transformative in civilian life and in civilian industries. So GPS or famously the internet come out of research that's done within the federal government with a kind of vague defense angle. And so I think those are the brains that have made America richer. And then of course, the number of immigrants who found companies, and you see this in tech, is much higher than the number percentage of native born Americans who do. And a famous example of that is Elon Musk.Andrew Keen: Yeah, and you were on the show just before Christmas in response to your piece about Musk, Thiel and the shadow of apartheid in South Africa. So I'm guessing you don't want the Musks and Thiels. They won't be welcome in Europe, will they?Simon Kuper: I don't think they want to go. I mean, if you want to create a tech company, you want very deep capital markets. You want venture capital firms that are happy to bet a few billion on you. And a very good place to do that, the best place in the world by far, is Silicon Valley. And so a French friend of mine said he was at a reception in San Francisco, surrounded by many, many top French engineers who all work for Silicon Valley firms, and he thought, what would it take them to come back? He didn't have an answer. Now the answer might be, maybe, well, Donald Trump could persuade them to leave. But they want to keep issuing visas for those kinds of people. I mean, the thing is that what we're seeing with Chinese AI breakthroughs in what was called DeepSeek. Also in overtaking Tesla on electric cars suggests that maybe, you know, the cutting edge of innovation is moving from Silicon Valley after nearly 100 years to China. This is not my field of expertise at all. But you know the French economist Thomas Filippon has written about how the American economy has become quite undynamic because it's been taken over by monopolies. So you can't start another Google, you can start another Amazon. And you can't build a rival to Facebook because these companies control of the market and as Facebook did with WhatsApp or Instagram, they'll just buy you up. And so you get quite a much more static tech scene than 30 years ago when really, you know, inventions, great inventions are being made in Silicon Valley all the time. Now you get a few big companies that are the same for a very long period.Andrew Keen: Well, of course, you also have OpenAI, which is a startup, but that's another conversation.Simon Kuper: Yeah, the arguments in AI is that maybe China can do it better.Andrew Keen: Can be. I don't know. Well, it has, so to speak, Simon, the light bulb gone off in Europe on all this on all these issues. Mario Draghi month or two ago came out. Was it a white paper or report suggesting that Europe needed to get its innovation act together that there wasn't enough investment or capital? Are senior people within the EU like Draghi waking up to the reality of this historical opportunity to seize back economic power, not just cultural and political.Simon Kuper: I mean, Draghi doesn't have a post anymore, as far as I'm aware. I mean of course he was the brilliant governor of the European Central Bank. But that report did have a big impact, didn't it? It had a big impact. I think a lot of people thought, yeah, this is all true. We should spend enormous fortunes and borrow enormous fortunes to create a massive tech scene and build our own defense industries and so on. But they're not going to do it. It's the kind of report that you write when you don't have a position of power and you say, this is what we should do. And the people in positions of power say, oh, but it's really complicated to do it. So they don't do it, so no, they're very, there's not really, we've been massively overtaken and left behind on tech by the US and China. And there doesn't seem to be any impetus, serious impetus to build anything on that scale to invest that kind of money government led or private sector led in European tech scene. So yeah, if you're in tech. Maybe you should be going to Shanghai, but you probably should not be going to Europe. So, and this is a problem because China and the US make our future and we use their cloud servers. You know, we could build a search engine, but we can't liberate ourselves from the cloud service. Defense is a different matter where, you know, Draghi said we should become independent. And because Trump is now European governments believe Trump is hostile to us on defense, hostile to Ukraine and more broadly to Europe, there I think will be a very quick move to build a much bigger European defense sector so we don't have to buy for example American planes which they where they can switch off the operating systems if they feel like it.Andrew Keen: You live in Paris. You work for the FT, or one of the papers you work for is the FT a British paper. Where does Britain stand here? So many influential Brits, of course, went to America, particularly in the 20th century. Everyone from Alfred Hitchcock to Christopher Hitchens, all adding enormous value like Arendt and Ayn Rand. Is Britain, when you talk of Europe, are you still in the back of your mind thinking of Britain, or is it? An island somehow floating or stuck between America, the end of the American dream and the beginning of the European dream. In a way, are you suggesting that Brits should come to Europe as well?Simon Kuper: I think Britain is floating quite rapidly towards Europe because in a world where you have three military superpowers that are quite predatory and are not interested in alliances, the US, China and Russia, the smaller countries, and Britain is a smaller country and has realized since Brexit that it is a small country, the small countries just need to ally. And, you know, are you going to trust an alliance with Trump? A man who is not interested in the fates of other countries and breaks his word, or would you rather have an alliance with the Europeans who share far more of your values? And I think the Labor government in the UK has quietly decided that, I know that it has decided that on economic issues, it's always going to prioritize aligning with Europe, for example, aligning food standards with Europe so that we can sell my food. They can sell us our food without any checks because we've accepted all their standards, not with the US. So in any choice between, you know, now there's talk of a potential US-UK trade deal, do we align our standards with the US. Or Europe? It's always going to be Europe first. And on defense, you have two European defense powers that are these middle powers, France and the UK. Without the UK, there isn't really a European defense alliance. And that is what is gonna be needed now because there's a big NATO summit in June, where I think it's going to become patently obvious to everyone, the US isn't really a member of NATO anymore. And so then you're gonna move towards a post US NATO. And if the UK is not in it, well, it looks very, very weak indeed. And if UK is alone, that's quite a scary position to be in in this world. So yeah, I see a UK that is not gonna rejoin the European Union anytime soon. But is more and more going to ally itself, is already aligning itself with Europe.Andrew Keen: As the worm turned, I mean, Trump has been in power 100 days, supposedly is limited to the next four years, although he's talking about running for a third term. Can America reverse itself in your view?Simon Kuper: I think it will be very hard whatever Trump does for other countries to trust him again. And I also think that after Trump goes, which as you say may not be in 2028, but after he goes and if you get say a Biden or Obama style president who flies to Europe and says it's all over, we're friends again. Now the Europeans are going to think. But you know, it's very, very likely that in four years time, you will be replaced by another America first of some kind. So we cannot build a long term alliance with the US. So for example, we cannot do long term deals to buy Americans weapons systems, because maybe there's a president that we like, but they'll be succeeded by a president who terrifies us quite likely. So, there is now, it seems to me, instability built in for the very long term into... America has a potential ally. It's you just can't rely on this anymore. Even should Trump go.Andrew Keen: You talk about Europe as one place, which, of course, geographically it is, but lots of observers have noted the existence, it goes without saying, of many Europe's, particularly the difference between Eastern and Western Europe.Simon Kuper: I've looked at that myself, yes.Andrew Keen: And you've probably written essays on this as well. Eastern Europe is Poland, perhaps, Czech Republic, even Hungary in an odd way. They're much more like the United States, much more interested perhaps in economic wealth than in the other metrics that you write about in your essay. Is there more than one Europe, Simon? And for Americans who are thinking of coming to Europe, should it be? Warsaw, Prague, Paris, Madrid.Simon Kuper: These are all great cities, so it depends what you like. I mean, I don't know if they're more individualistic societies. I would doubt that. All European countries, I think, could be described as social democracies. So there is a welfare state that provides people with health and education in a way that you don't quite have in the United States. And then the opposite, the taxes are higher. The opportunities to get extremely wealthy are lower here. I think the big difference is that there is a part of Europe for whom Russia is an existential threat. And that's especially Poland, the Baltics, Romania. And there's a part of Europe, France, Britain, Spain, for whom Russia is really quite a long way away. So they're not that bothered about it. They're not interested in spending a lot on defense or sending troops potentially to die there because they see Russia as not their problem. I would see that as a big divide. In terms of wealth, I mean, it's equalizing. So the average Pole outside London is now, I think, as well off or better than the average Britain. So the average Pole is now as well as the average person outside London. London, of course, is still.Andrew Keen: This is the Poles in the UK or the Poles.Simon Kuper: The Poles in Poland. So the Poles who came to the UK 20 years ago did so because the UK was then much richer. That's now gone. And so a lot of Poles and even Romanians are returning because economic opportunities in Poland, especially, are just as good as in the West. So there has been a little bit of a growing together of the two halves of the continent. Where would you live? I mean, my personal experience, having spent a year in Madrid, it's the nicest city in the world. Right, it's good. Yeah, nice cities to live in, I like living in big cities, so of big cities it's the best. Spanish quality of life. If you earn more than the average Spaniard, I think the average income, including everyone wage earners, pensioners, students, is only about $20,000. So Spaniards have a problem with not having enough income. So if you're over about $20000, and in Madrid probably quite a bit more than that, then it's a wonderful life. And I think, and Spaniards live about five years longer than Americans now. They live to about age 84. It's a lovely climate, lovely people. So that would be my personal top recommendation. But if you like a great city, Paris is the greatest city in the European Union. London's a great, you know, it's kind of bustling. These are the two bustling world cities of Europe, London and Paris. I think if you can earn an American salary, maybe through working remotely and live in the Mediterranean somewhere, you have the best deal in the world because Mediterranean prices are low, Mediterranean culture, life is unbeatable. So that would be my general recommendation.Andrew Keen: Finally, Simon, being very generous with your time, I'm sure you'd much rather be outside in Paris in what you call the greatest city in the EU. You talk in the piece about three metrics that show that it's time to move to Europe, housing, education, sorry, longevity, happiness and the environment. Are there any metrics at all now to stay in the United States?Simon Kuper: I mean, if you look at people's incomes in the US they're considerably higher, of course, your purchasing power for a lot of things is less. So I think the big purchasing power advantage Americans have until the tariffs was consumer goods. So if you want to buy a great television set, it's better to do that out of an American income than out of a Spanish income, but if you want the purchasing power to send your kids to university, to get healthcare. Than to be guaranteed a decent pension, then Europe is a better place. So even though you're earning more money in the US, you can't buy a lot of stuff. If you wanna go to a nice restaurant and have a good meal, the value for money will be better in Europe. So I suppose if you wanna be extremely wealthy and you have a good shot at that because a lot people overestimate their chance of great wealth. Then America is a better bet than Europe. Beyond that, I find it hard to right now adduce reasons. I mean, it's odd because like the Brexiteers in the UK, Trump is attacking some of the things that really did make America great, such as this trading system that you can get very, very cheap goods in the United States, but also the great universities. So. I would have been much more positive about the idea of America a year ago, but even then I would've said the average person lives better over here.Andrew Keen: Well, there you have it. Simon Cooper says to Americans, it's time to move to Europe. The American dream has ended, perhaps the beginning of the European dream. Very provocative. Simon, we'll get you back on the show. Your column is always a central reading in the Financial Times. Thanks so much and enjoy Paris.Simon Kuper: Thank you, Andrew. Enjoy San Francisco. 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

This episode is sponsored by House of Macadamias -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click Here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get our specially curated box that also comes with the free snack bars and 15% offer for CURVA MUNDIAL listeners! ⁠Also, be sure to visit our merch store!⁠In the Season 11 premier of CURVA MUNDIAL, famed economist, acclaimed author and podcast host Simon Kuper joins us to talk about his love of Dutch football, growing up in Netherlands and the big business of our favorite sport.

I love Simon Kuper's writing. Simon Kuper writes in the FT: I'm belatedly warming up to historical pessimism. Even scientific progress has limited value. We now have vaccines against measles, but also a US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who spreads doubt about vaccines. As for tech, this century it has probably worsened our lives. We now average nearly seven hours a day online, alone, increasingly atomised, stripped of privacy, absorbing nonsense. And think of other technological “advances”. True, vaccines contained Covid-19, but the CIA concluded that the pandemic probably began with a Chinese lab leak. Processed foods fuelled global obesity. Nuclear proliferation may worsen as the US stops protecting its allies. Above all, the technology of burning carbon has caused a kind of untreated planetary cancer. Being raised on Russian children's stories might have helped us grasp all this. https://www.ft.com/content/a3b6e6c1-831f-45bc-8565-81193ce07f5a From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Kuper: Kuper has written several books, starting with the William Hill awarded Football Against the Enemy (1994), which was later released in the United States as Soccer Against the Enemy. The Times wrote of the book: "If you like football, read it. If you don't like football, read it." In 2003 he published his book Ajax, The Dutch, the War: Football in Europe during the Second World War. He co-authored the 2009 book Soccernomics with Stefan Szymanski. The authors subsequently put forward a formula allowing Kuper to predict that Serbia and Brazil would play the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final. His book The Football Men, which was published in 2011, offered a collection of articles about the world of football over a span of 13 years, along with new pieces written specifically for this book. The Independent wrote that "Simon Kuper is a refreshing antidote to the current media obsession with 'getting the nannies [nanny goats = quotes]', however banal, from players. He doesn't mince his words: talking of past greats, he dismisses Bobby Charlton as "a dullard", Michel Platini "a weak character" and Pele "a talking puppet." Kuper's book Barça: The Rise and Fall of the Club that Built Modern Football appeared in 2021. It won the Sunday Times award for Football Book of the Year 2022. Also in 2021, Kuper released The Happy Traitor,[28] an account of the life and motivations of George Blake, a British spy for the Soviet Union. The narrative, praised for its detailed exploration and understanding of Blake's complex character, sheds light on Blake's ideological shifts and personal struggles with identity and marks a significant addition to Kuper's body of work. In 2022 he published Chums - How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, about the connections that enabled a university network to dominate Westminster. Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEYmda1KQTjrhLBeWutKuGA/join https://odysee.com/@LukeFordLive, https://rumble.com/lukeford, https://dlive.tv/lukefordlivestreams Superchat: https://entropystream.live/app/lukefordlive Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/lukeford/ Soundcloud MP3s: https://soundcloud.com/luke-ford-666431593 Code of Conduct: https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=125692 http://lukeford.net Email me: lukeisback@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter.com/lukeford, Best videos: https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=143746 Support the show | https://www.streamlabs.com/lukeford, https://patreon.com/lukeford, https://PayPal.Me/lukeisback Facebook: http://facebook.com/lukecford Book an online Alexander Technique lesson with Luke: https://alexander90210.com Feel free to clip my videos. It's nice when you link back to the original.

Back in 1911, the Mona Lisa didn't get a lot of attention. Art critics considered it an excellent example of a painting from the renaissance era, but the general public wasn't nearly so enamored. That changed in August of that year, when someone plucked it off the wall of the Louvre, busted it out of its glass box and frame, and took off with it. Remember, kids, history hoes always cite their sources! For this episode, Kristin pulled from: “Who stole the Mona Lisa?” by Simon Kuper for Slate “Stolen: How the Mona Lisa became the world's most famous painting,” by James Zug for Smithsonian Magazine “Stealing Mona Lisa,” by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler for Vanity Fair The documentary “Mona Lisa is Missing” “When Picasso went on trial for stealing the Mona Lisa,” by Ian Shank for Artsy.net “The man who stole the Mona Lisa,” by Laura Cumming for The Guardian “The Theft That Made The ‘Mona Lisa' A Masterpiece,” NPR.org Are you enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Then please leave us a 5-star rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts! Are you *really* enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Well, calm down, history ho! You can get more of us on Patreon at patreon.com/oldtimeypodcast. At the $5 level, you'll get a monthly bonus episode (with video!), access to our 90's style chat room, plus the entire back catalog of bonus episodes from Kristin's previous podcast, Let's Go To Court.

It's exactly 10 years to the day that a terrorist attack killed most of the editorial staff at France's satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.The shooting is being marked in a typically-controversial style with a special 10th anniversary edition of the publication.But, how do the French public view Charlie Hebdo now? And in what way did this incident change France?Simon Kuper is a Journalist and Author of ‘Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century'. He joins Seán to discuss.

It's exactly 10 years to the day that a terrorist attack killed most of the editorial staff at France's satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.The shooting is being marked in a typically-controversial style with a special 10th anniversary edition of the publication.But, how do the French public view Charlie Hebdo now? And in what way did this incident change France?Simon Kuper is a Journalist and Author of ‘Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century'. He joins Seán to discuss.

Is it entirely coincidental that some of the leading figures in the MAGA movement - including Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and David Sacks - all grew up in Apartheid South Africa? Not according to Simon Kuper who raised the alarm about “Musk, Thiel and the shadow of apartheid South Africa” in a bracing September Financial Times column. But this is a reactionary shadow, Kuper warns, not just haunting the United States but most of the world. Kuper's faith in globalization, he acknowledges, seems to be in retreat everywhere. And 2025, he laments, is only going to deliver more depressing news for those us who still consider ourselves liberals. So if the progressive age of global politics is over, I asked Kuper, then what is left for us to cherish in the new year?Simon Kuper is a journalist who writes for the Financial Times and publishes in newspapers and magazines around the world. He is one of the world's leading writers on soccer. His book Football Against the Enemy won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. His works are also widely read in translation. Born in Uganda, Kuper spent most of his childhood in the Netherlands and now lives in Paris.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On 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

For centuries, Westminster has been dominated by politicians who attended some of the most prestigious schools in the country. This week on Westminster Insider, host Sascha O'Sullivan finds out whether public schools still dominate or if state educated Rachel Reeves and Bridget Phillipson's move to tax fees reflects the end of the era of Etonians. Sascha visits Eton College and takes a tour around the art school and the theater, hears from an old boy about the kind of education children receive there — and discovers why our prime ministers are far more likely to have been attended this school than any other. Former Labour adviser and old Etonian Patrick Hennessey tells Sascha the confidence a school such as his alma mater instills can easily slip into arrogance. FT journalist and author Simon Kuper explains why privately educated politicians have always tended to banded together in Westminster — and how that can leave those that attended less prestigious institutions out in the cold. Keir Starmer's former adviser Donjeta Miftari describes coming to work in SW1 as a former comprehensive pupil and immediately noticing the networks which the independent sector fosters beyond the school itself. Former David Blunkett adviser Conor Ryan recalls the fights with private school heads when the Blair government axed the state-funded assisted places scheme. Sam Freedman, education expert and former adviser to Michael Gove, explains how the former education's secretary's background informed his attitude to education reform. And Sascha travelled to Brentwood, a private school in Essex, where headteacher Michael Bond tells her Reeves' decision to put VAT on private schools was "punishing" them unfairly, as the private sector was making strides towards making fee-paying schools less exclusive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paris may no longer be home to medieval fortification walls, but that doesn't stop locals talking about Paris intra and extra muros. The wall, in this case, is the périphérique ring road, which has long been a stopper between the city and its suburbs. But a great plan for expanding Paris – and its métro system – outside of these walls into le grand Paris is changing lives, and the very culture of Paris. To explore how and why, Emily is joined by Simon Kuper, a Financial Times journalist and author of Impossible City. https://bookshop.org/p/books/impossible-city-paris-in-the-twenty-first-century-simon-kuper/20664638 Join us on Patreon: patreon.com/parisundergroundradio Find Us OnlineWebsite: https://www.parisundergroundradio.com/navigatingthefrenchFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/parisundergroundradioInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/parisundergroundradio/Credits Host: Emily Monaco. @Emily_in_France; Website: http://www.tomatokumato.com and http://www.emilymmonaco.comProducer: Jennifer Geraghty. @jennyphoria; Website: http://jennyphoria.comMusic Credits Édith Piaf - La Vie en Rose (DeliFB Lofi Remix) 

Simon Kuper host of the Heros and Humans of Football podcast joins Dotun and Tim to discuss the Dutch legend Johan Neeskens and the impact he had on Dutch Football and the Netherlands.SUBSCRIBE TO BRAZILIAN SHIRT NAME EXTRA FOR EARLY ACCESS AND NO ADS:https://brazilian-shirt-name.hubwave.net/FOLLOW THE BRAZILIAN SHIRT NAME ON INSTAGRAM:https://www.instagram.com/brazilshirtpod/FOLLOW THE BRAZILIAN SHIRT NAME ON FACEBOOK:https://www.facebook.com/BrazilShirtPodFOLLOW THE BRAZILIAN SHIRT NAME ON TWITTER:https://twitter.com/BrazilShirtPod LISTEN TO HEROS AND HUMANS HERE:https://podfollow.com/1735004408

Bien qu'aujourd'hui José Mourinho soit devenu une figure incontournable du football du XXIe siècle, rien, dans ses débuts, ne laissait présager qu'il deviendrait l'acteur prépondérant qu'il est aujourd'hui. De sa modeste carrière de joueur à son rôle de traducteur auprès de Bobby Robson, en passant par les bancs de l'université, les débuts de parcours de l'entraîneur portugais n'ont pas été des plus linéaires. Dans l'épisode de cette semaine, accompagné de Simon Kuper, nous revenons sur la jeunesse et les débuts de carrière de celui qui, après avoir soulevé la Ligue des champions avec le FC Porto en 2004, deviendra The Special One.

Exclusive INCOGNI Deal ➼ go to https://incogni.com/podsavetheuk to get 60% off your annual plan!Keir Starmer gave his first Labour Conference speech as Prime Minister this week - but his message of “national renewal” was slightly spoiled by a backdrop of poor polling, infighting and their never ending “garm drama”. Journalist Zoë Grünewald joins Nish and Coco on the couch to search for the “light at the end of the tunnel” promised by the new government.Later, Simon Kuper, Financial Times journalist and author of Good Chaps: How corrupt politicians broke our law and institutions - and what we can do about it, joins the show to  delve into the government's first scandal-not-scandal. They discuss how donations have infected our politics and why there's no such thing as a free box at the Arsenal game.Guests: Simon Kuper https://x.com/KuperSimonZoë GrünewaldAudio Credits: ITV NewsPod Save the UK is a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media.Contact us via email: PSUK@reducedlistening.co.ukWhatsApp: 07494 933 444 (UK) or + 44 7494 933 444 (internationally)Insta: https://instagram.com/podsavetheukTwitter: https://twitter.com/podsavetheukTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@podsavetheukFacebook: https://facebook.com/podsavetheukYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/podsavetheworld

The writer Simon Kuper returns to the podcast to discuss the follow-up to his book Chums, which highlighted the narrow and highly privileged pathway that often funnels attendees of some the UK's top education establishments into the highest seats of power in government. His new book is Good Chaps, an exploration of the idea that most politicians who have followed a privileged route into power will be naturally predisposed to following the rules and doing the right thing. Kuper is known for his writing and columns in the Financial Times, where he comments on topics ranging from politics to culture and sports. Joining him in conversation for this podcast is Josh Glancy, editor of the News Review at The Sunday Times. We are sponsored by Indeed. Go to Indeed.com/IS for £100 sponsored credit. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all of our longer form interviews and Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series - 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events - Our member-only newsletter The Monthly Read, sent straight to your inbox ... Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series ... Already a subscriber? Thank you for supporting our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations! Visit intelligencesquared.com to explore all your benefits including ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content and early access. ... Subscribe to our newsletter here to hear about our latest events, discounts and much more. https://www.intelligencesquared.com/newsletter-signup/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Simon Kuper, Paris-based journalist and author, and Seamus Carey, a passionate athletics fan and communications expert, reflect on the Olympics in Paris.

Simon Kuper and Seamus Carey reflect on the Paris Olympics; Alan Cawley on John O'Shea's return to the Ireland set-up and the League of Ireland weekend, plus Aoife Murray looks back on Cork's win over Galway to win back-to-back camogie championship titles! Game On.

The Olympics provided some welcome respite for Emmanuel Macron and the French from their political headache. Have they learned anything about unity from the Games? In part two of our broadcasts live from Paris, Andrew Mueller speaks with French sports ambassador Laurence Fischer, Le Monde ‘M' magazine editor Marie-Pierre Lannelongue and Paris-based journalist Simon Kuper. Plus: Olympic Games executive director Christophe Dubi.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lange tijd werd gedacht dat de Olympische Spelen een goudmijn zijn voor de stad die ze organiseert, maar inmiddels weten we dat niks minder waar is. Toch kan een gaststad op andere manieren baat hebben bij zo'n groots sportevenement – en dat heeft Parijs dit jaar goed begrepen. Lees hier het artikel: https://decorrespondent.nl/15496/zo-kan-een-stad-wel-profiteren-van-de-olympische-spelen Wil je vrijblijvend kennismaken met ons journalistieke platform? Schrijf je in voor de proefmail en ontvang gratis een selectie van onze beste verhalen in je inbox: decorrespondent.nl/proefmail Voorgelezen door Julius van IJperen Productie: Julius van IJperen, Tom Ruijg Voor vragen, opmerkingen of suggesties mail naar post@decorrespondent.nl

Extravagant but controversial. A scene in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics has angered many for appearing to mock religious symbols. Others say it was a display of inclusivity. But was the host country France trying to convey a message? And if so, what was it? In this episode: Simon Kuper, Columnist, Financial Times.  David Goldblatt, Sports Journalist.  Gerard O'Connell, Vatican Correspondent, America Magazine. Host: Mohammed Jamjoom Connect with us:@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook

Elon Musk is looking to inject $5bn into an AI start-up, and Venezuela's election on Sunday will decide whether Nicolás Maduro will stay in office for more than a decade. Plus, the FT's Simon Kuper explains how big infrastructure updates in Paris might shake up the cultural and political boundaries of the city.Mentioned in this podcast:Elon Musk to seek Tesla board approval for $5bn injection into xAI start-up Venezuela's opposition bets Maduro has miscalculated this time Paris, the Olympics and the reinvention of a city The FT News Briefing is produced by Fiona Symon, Sonja Hutson, Kasia Broussalian and Marc Filippino. Additional help from Mischa Frankl-Duval, Breen Turner, Sam Giovinco, Peter Barber, Michael Lello, David da Silva and Gavin Kallmann. Our engineer is Monica Lopez. Our intern is Prakriti Panwar. Topher Forhecz is the FT's executive producer. The FT's global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. The show's theme song is by Metaphor Music.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The 'good chaps' theory refers to the informal understanding governing what's considered acceptable behaviour from out elected politicians.But what happens when the politicians we elect aren't good chaps?From lobbying to lying in the Commons, the last fourteen years have seen a a degradation in the public's trust in MPs.Oli speaks to author and Financial Times journalist Simon Kuper about his new book Good Chaps: How Corrupt Politicians Broke Our Law and Institutions and What We Can Do About It. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Simon Kuper, author and journalist at the Financial Times, talks to Paul Adamson about his new book 'Good Chaps: How Corrupt Politicians Broke Our Law and Institutions - And What We Can Do About It'.

With under a week to go until polling day, Lucy Fisher and her panel — the FT's Miranda Green and Stephen Bush — pull together the threads of the campaign to explore the remaining ‘known unknowns' in this election. They are joined by FT columnist Simon Kuper whose new book ‘Good Chaps' looks at the disintegration of public service in our national life and examines how to rid our political system of sleaze.Follow Lucy on X: @LOS_FisherWant more? Free links:Reform UK activist calls for migrants to be shotA safe space at the eye of the storm: onboard Rishi Sunak's battle busBlue Wall vulnerable to tactical voting as natural Conservatives turn against partyHow the Conservatives lost touch with England's prosperous southSign up here for 30 free days of Stephen Bush's Inside Politics newsletter, winner of the World Association of News Publishers 2023 ‘Best Newsletter' award. Presented by Lucy Fisher. Produced by Philippa Goodrich and Leah QuinnManuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Original music and audio mix by Breen Turner. The FT's head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Matts are joined by Simon Kuper, FT journalist and author of Good Chaps - an extraordinary book exposing the collapse of morality at the heart of British politics. It's a terrific conversation shedding light on how things got so bad so fast from Thatcher to Truss … and, as bit of a diversion, we also chat about Paris - another of Simon's passions and subject of his book The Impossible City, described by Matt K as the second best memoir on Paris he's ever read. The best? You'll have to listen to find out. Enjoy!Subscription offer! https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/2matts/Join our election night coverage in Whatsapp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Vaia0kiEwEjspYO0MD3j Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

France heads to the polls this weekend, and the far right looks set to come out on top. President Emmanuel Macron threw the dice with this snap election after his Centrist party was trounced by Marine Le Pen's National Rally in recent European Parliament elections. Correspondent Melissa Bell has more on how Le Pen has reshaped the party's dark origins into an apparently palatable mainstream alternative.  Also on today's show: Legal analyst Carrie Cordero on today's US Supreme Court abortion ruling; Simon Kuper, author of Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century; singer-songwriter Aloe Blacc; Civil rights leader Carmen Perez-Jordan; Imara Jones, Founder, TransLash Media  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Simon Kuper, Host of Heroes & Humans of Football Podcast & Financial Times columnist

Theo Delaney's guest is Mehreen Khan, the Economics Editor of The Times and co-host of the brilliant football podcast Heroes and Humans with previous Life Goals guest Simon Kuper. A huge fan of Chelsea, whose biggest games she finds almost unbearable to watch, Mehreen chooses goals from Di Matteo, Lampard, Cole Palmer and more.@MehreenKhn@LifeGoalsTD@theodelaney https://linktr.ee/heroesandhumanshttps://www.theodelaney.com/life-goals-links

London, and the river that runs through it, is at the heart of the new play London Tide, an adaptation of Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend. Ben Power has adapted the novel and co-written original songs with the singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. He tells Adam Rutherford that although it combines the savage satire and social analysis of the original, it is, in essence, a love letter to the capital. London Tide is playing at the National Theatre until 22nd June.The award-winning architect Amanda Levete reflects on the challenges of designing buildings and public spaces in major historic cities around the world – taking into consideration the aesthetics of the built environment, whilst meeting the needs of the community and tackling sustainability.Amanda Levete considers the Pompidou Centre in Paris to be one of the twentieth century's most iconic buildings and an inspiration for her own architectural practice. The journalist Simon Kuper takes stock of his adopted city, as Paris prepares for the Olympics. In Impossible City he explores today's ‘Grand Paris' project which aims to connect its much famed central areas with its neglected suburbs.Producer: Katy Hickman

Paris is like Marmite – you either love it or you hate it. But it's changing. Physically, through massive expansions in social housing and transport and a €40bn shot of investment, but also politically and psychologically. People are even smiling in the streets these days. Ros Taylor talks to Simon Kuper, Financial Times columnist and author of Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century, about how the French capital is transforming in the lead up to this year's Olympics.  • “One thing that globalisation does is it removes these weird localities – and in Paris, that locality was rudeness.” – Simon Kuper • “Paris is trying to become London with the bad bits left out.” - Simon Kuper  Buy Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century through our affiliate bookshop and you'll help fund The Bunker by earning us a small commission for every sale. Bookshop.org's fees help support independent bookshops too. We are sponsored by Indeed. Go to Indeed.com/bunker for £100 sponsored credit. www.patreon.com/bunkercast    Written and presented by Ros Taylor. Producer: Eliza Davis Beard. Audio editor: Simon Williams. Managing editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Music by Kenny Dickinson and artwork by James Parrett. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. Instagram | Twitter   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We speak with author and journalist Simon Kuper on his new book about Paris, ‘Impossible City – Paris in the Twenty-First Century'. Plus: food titles are invited to a special event at Salone del Mobile, and the return of ‘Saveur' magazine.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Up for discussion this week are France's regional airports. Have you flown into or out of the likes of Limoges, Brest or even Bergerac? No doubt these airports are handy but are they really sustainable? We also look at how France's official Champagne region is going to grow. Could it include part of England one day? And with the Olympics in sight we'll explain, with the help of author Simon Kuper, how Paris and even Parisians are changing.And can you really get €6,000 a month in unemployment benefit in France for a whole year? Yes, you can, but perhaps not for much longer with the French government under pressure to make cuts.And most of the deadly animals in France are in zoos but the numbers of wolves and bears in the wild are growing. We look at where they are and the chances of you encountering one.Host Ben McPartland is once again joined by The Local France's Emma Pearson and Gen Mansfield as well as French politics expert John Lichfield.Further reading:France to revise official Champagne making area due to climate changeWhat are the most dangerous animals in France?Are France's loss-making regional airports under threat?Just how generous is France's unemployment system?How France plans cuts to its generous unemployment systemSimon Kuper's book "Impossible City - Paris in the 21st Century" is published on April 11th and is available in all book shops as well as online. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 Football Against the Enemy, Soccernomics ou encore Barca (Sunday Times Football Book of the Year 2022), les publications marquantes de l'auteur Simon Kuper sont nombreuses. À l'occasion de la sortie de son nouveau livre, Impossible City - Paris in the 21st century, Simon Kuper a raconté à Darren Tulett les cinq matchs qui ont marqué sa vie :Match 1 : France 2-0 Pays-Bas, 18 novembre 1981, Qualifications à la Coupe du Monde 1982Match 2 : Arsenal 0-0 Oxford United, 20 septembre 1986, 1ʳᵉ division anglaiseMatch 3 : Pays-Bas 2-0 URSS, 25 juin 1988, Championnat d'Europe des Nations 1988Match 4 : Angleterre 2-2 Argentine, 30 juin 1998, Coupe du Monde 1998Match 5 : Espagne 1-0 Pays-Bas, 11 juillet 2010, Coupe du Monde 2010

Simon Kuper, Financial Times columnist & author living in Paris

Aimar Bretos entrevista al periodista y escritor Simon Kuper. 

Aimar Bretos entrevista al periodista y escritor Simon Kuper. 

Simon Kuper is a jack of many journalistic trades. He is a columnist for the Financial Times. He is a prominent soccer writer. He has written a book about George Blake, the British spy for the Soviets. He recently wrote a bracing column titled “What if Russia wins?” He has lived in many parts of […]

Simon Kuper is a jack of many journalistic trades. He is a columnist for the Financial Times. He is a prominent soccer writer. He has written a book about George Blake, the British spy for the Soviets. He recently wrote a bracing column titled “What if Russia wins?” He has lived in many parts of the world. He has highly interesting things to say about sports and the rest. Spend a bit of time with... Source

Simon Kuper is a jack of many journalistic trades. He is a columnist for the Financial Times. He is a prominent soccer writer. He has written a book about George Blake, the British spy for the Soviets. He recently wrote a bracing column titled “What if Russia wins?” He has lived in many parts of the world. He has highly interesting things to say about sports and the rest. Spend a bit of time with him.

In this episode of Connected Leadership Podcast Gold, Andy Lopata explores the influence of Oxford University and the Oxford Union on the British political landscape with guest Simon Kuper, Financial Times columnist and author of Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK. The conversation looks into the historical ties between British prime ministers and Oxford University, specifically the Oxford Union, emphasising the prevalence of individuals from similar backgrounds in political leadership. Simon Kuper, a contemporary of Boris Johnson, David Cameron, Michael Gove and others at Oxford in the 1980s, sheds light in his observations and insights into the dynamics of this establishment, extending beyond politics into various aspects of life. Simon's book, Chums, highlights the rise of a group of individuals, primarily educated at Oxford, groomed from a young age to rule the UK. Andy and Simon examine the dominance of Oxford in shaping the top echelons of political life, the role of the PPE degree, and the significant impact of the Oxford Union Debating Society as a nursery for future politicians' rhetoric and debating skills. A key theme emerges as Simon Kuper addresses the power of the establishment in modern society, not just in the UK but globally. Andy and Simon explore the barriers faced by those not from the same privileged background and strategies to break into entrenched circles. The podcast delves into the concept of an "Oxbridge" elite and its impact on British public life. Simon Kuper shares insights into the superficial nature of certain degrees and the emphasis on speaking and writing skills over a deep understanding of policy and issues. The discussion also touches on the role of foreign influence in business, drawing parallels with the diversity seen in the business world as opposed to the political landscape. Andy Lopata brings attention to the contrast between the ability to speak eloquently and the grasp of policy details, questioning whether the former has gained an undue advantage in British politics. Simon Kuper provides a nuanced perspective, acknowledging the importance of effective communication skills while critiquing the prioritisation of such skills over substance. The conversation extends to the impact of Oxford Union training on political leaders and the significance of debating and rhetoric skills in shaping political narratives. Simon highlights how these skills, learned at Oxford, have played a crucial role in shaping the political landscape and influencing election outcomes. This episode of The Connected Leadership Podcast provides a comprehensive exploration of the influence of Oxford University and the Oxford Union on British public life. It delves into the complexities of leadership, the impact of traditional backgrounds, and the need for a more inclusive and diverse leadership landscape. Connect with Andy Lopata Website Connect with Simon Kuper Twitter "Oxford teaches you above all to speak well and write well, even when you don't know much about what you're talking about" Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK by Simon Kuper  

1/2::  #Ukraine: Simon Kuper of FT.com asks what a Russian victory means for Ukraine, for Europe, for NATO? Anatol Lieven, Quincy Institute. https://on.ft.com/3NAyIim 1902 Stalin

2/2::  #Ukraine: Simon Kuper of FT.com asks what a Russian victory means for Ukraine, for Europe, for NATO? Anatol Lieven, Quincy Institute. https://on.ft.com/3NAyIim 1918 Red Guard

Journalist and author Simon Kuper joins Eamon to talk about the unexpected success of Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom in the recent election in the Netherlands and the rise of far-right parties across Europe. Simon is writes a regular column in the Financial Times and is author of a number of books including Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK and Barça: The rise and fall of the club that built modern football.Recorded on Tuesday 28th November 2023. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/the-stand-with-eamon-dunphy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you haven't realized it yet, soccer (aka 'actual football') is a great way to connect with people from countries and cultures around the world. And especially for us Americans, it can serve as a diplomatic avenue to show an appreciation for others' cultures. Today's episode discusses that very idea, but also what it's like to simply stumble upon opportunities, almost serendipitously, to add some footy into your pre-existing travel plans. We hope you enjoy this one, as our guest, Keving Godlberg, recalls two such instances, both of them involving World Cup Qualifiers - one in 2004 in Argentina, the other in 2008 in Eswatini (FKA Swaziland). Recommended reading: Kevin mentions two great books on our book shelves that every footy fan should read - How Soccer Explains the World, by Franklin Foer and Soccer Against the Enemy, by Simon Kuper.   * EPISODE 50 is on its way... and you could be on it! * We want to celebrate this major milestone by featuring your footy travel questions on the episode. Whatever your question is, record it on a voice memo app, try to keep it to 30 seconds or less, and email it to . Tell us your name, where you're from, and we'll select the best, most-well composed ones to answer right here, on Episode 50 of Footy Travelers Podcast. Foot(y)notes: Our favorite footy for good organization, the Craig Willinger Fund, is looking for its next set of honorees! If you are (or know) a young person fighting a critical illness, visit their website to apply to be an honoree today. The Footy Travelers Fan Shop is NOW OPEN! Grab our latest jersey release or a brilliantly designed supporter scarf. Here's a good write-up on the World Cup 2030 announcement, and another on why all roads lead to Saudi Arabia 2034. Euro 2024 tickets are available in the initial application phase until October 26, 2023 (2pm CET). More tickets available after draw on December 2, 2023. Keep your eyes on the CONMEBOL website and channels for news on Copa America 2024. Check out our friends at Race2Adventure (R2A) and their upcoming trips to Morocco and Scotland.   Episode Outline 01:42 | Footy travel news review 14:52 | Fantasy Premier League comiserating 18:31 | Why was Kevin in Argentina and Eswatini (FKA Swaziland) in the first place? 22:22 | The beautiful practice of integrating the beautiful game into pre-existing travel  25:06 | Argentina 2004 33:51 | Swaziland 2008 begins... 34:35 | ...but first, a fantastic opportunity to support a great (footy) cause 36:24 | The Swaziland vs Togo experience (DJ set included) 46:30 | Xavi saves Kevin at the Madrid airport 48:00 | Footy as a diplomatic tool for culture exchange 55:37 | Using soccer to establish street cred 58:12 | Kevin makes Dutch news

Welcome Back Greyhounds! We missed you this summer, but we're back with another book to discuss! Join us we debate whether the book is called Football Against the Enemy or Soccer Against the Enemy. (Bex is uploading it though and she says, 3 Americans against 1 Scot means it's Soccer!). In our more depth sections of the episode, Marita talks about the author, Simon Kuper, superstitions in sports, and the player directed nature of Dutch football (soccer!). Then Andrea delves into politics and racism in sports. Michaela builds off of this idea focusing in particular on aspects of British politics and considers the episode where Sam's restaurant is vandalized. Finally, Bex wraps it up with a discussion about how just as there are many ways to enjoy a book or a sport, there are just as many ways to engage in fandom. We hope you enjoy! Follow the podcast on Twitter @beardsbookclub

For our very special 150th episode: We're back from a busy start to the school year to review SAFC's recent results. A run of 0-0 ties followed by a disappointing 2-1 loss at Tulsa. What's wrong? We discuss. Then, we get into our summer reading book: Soccer Against the Enemy by Simon Kuper. How was it? What holds up well? What doesn't? Does soccer really prop up dictators around the world? Plus, we answer listener questions about the book. Finally, a Free Kick: the USA plays twice this weekend against authoritarian regimes. What a coincidence! Enjoy,

Simon Kuper, the author of Ajax, The Dutch, The War: Football in Europe During the Second World War, sits down with the book club to talk about his work. It's a fantastic discussion with the author of an important book for both historians and soccer fans. This conversation took place in late May, 2023.

On the podcast this week: In his cover piece for The Spectator, Adrian Wooldridge argues that meritocracy is under attack. He says that the traditional societal pyramid – with the upper class at the top and the lower class at the base – has been inverted by a new culture which prizes virtue over meritocracy. He joins the podcast alongside journalist and author of Chums: How a tiny caste of Oxford Tories took over the UK, Simon Kuper, to debate (01:04). Also this week: In the magazine, ad-man Paul Burke suggests how the Tories should respond to Labour's attack adverts. Released last week, the adverts have caused a stir for attacking the Conservative's recent record on curbing child abuse, and accuses Rishi Sunak directly of negligence on the issue. Paul is joined by Carl Shoben, who leads strategic communications for Survation and was strategy director under Jeremy Corbyn (17:47). And finally: In the books section of the magazine Philip Hensher reviews Sarah Bakewell's new book Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Thinking, Enquiry and Hope. Philip says that he admires the humanists of the past, and find them consistently kinder, more decent and generous than their contemporaries. Both Philip and Sarah join the podcast (31:34).  Hosted by Lara Prendergast.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

Doug speaks with Simon Kuper, Financial Times columnist and author of Chums, on the upper-class caste that's been ruling Britain for a decade. Then, an interview with James Meadway, director of the Progressive Economy Forum, on the dispiriting economics of the leader of the Labour Party, the drab Kier Starmer.Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive here: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.