Episodes

Yesterday, the Canadian writer Diane Francis argued that Donald Trump should consider Xi Jinping’s China a competitor rather than an enemy. Perhaps. But in this zero-sum “competition” between Trump and Xi for top tough guy, there can only be one winner. As Xi Jinping’s father’s biographer, Joseph Torigian explains, Xi had a brutally harsh upbringing. In his new book about Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, Torigian explains that it was a childhood descent from privileged son of a communist party aristocr...

Should America go soft on China? According to the Toronto based foreign affairs writer Diane Francis , the United States ought to consider Xi Jinping’s China a competitor, rather than a enemy. In contrast, Francis views Vladimir Putin’s Russia as not just an enemy, but an existential threat to Europe, North America and free world. Putin Won’t Stop , Francis’ latest Substack post argues. Unless, perhaps, he’s locked in a room with the redoubtable Diane Francis. 1. Francis Views American "Isolatio...

I’ve always considered my friend Keith Teare a bit weird. Maybe it’s living in Palo Alto amidst the tech plutocracy. But I wonder if the That Was The Week weekly tech news publisher has finally lost his mind. In this week’s conversation, he speculates that OpenAI will soon be worth $10 trillion while its closest competitor Anthropic, will be valued at $5 trillion. Has he finally gone totally bonkers? Or is it really possible that these two still private companies will be collectively worth $15 t...

Can Democrats pull a Ronald Reagan? That's the provocative question at the heart of Peter Wehner and Jonathan Rauch 's New York Times intriguing piece about how the Democrats can win back the presidency in 2028. Just as the neo-liberal Reagan crushed the cardigan-wearing Carter by promising economic vitality over malaise, Democrats now have a chance to flip the script—if only they can drop their annoying cultural politics and reclaim the mantle of middle-class prosperity. By owning the American ...

How to write about the kaleidoscopic Sixties in the gloom of 2025? According to James Grady , author of the classic Six Days of the Condor and the new mid-century novel American Sky , the key is calibrating nostalgia with unflinching honesty about the past's complexities. "You can't just write about the past and not have a focus also on current times and really the future," Grady explains. The novelist’s approach involves fictionalizing personal experiences while ensuring memories of traumatic e...

Both the American left and right are revolted by elites. But whereas the right has channeled its distaste for the powers-that-be into Trump and MAGA, the left has mostly failed to capitalize on populist hatred of American elites. So what to do? According to the influential Turkish political theorist Soli Ozel, progressives need to reread Christopher Lasch, author of the 1995 classic, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy . In an essay entitled “ Lasching Out ,” Ozel observes tha...

Dubbed the Meme Queen of Depression by Mashable, Aiden Arata 's real goal on Instagram was to build a big enough following to convince traditional publishers to let her write a book. Thus her new collection of essays, You Have a New Memory , in which Arata reveals the chillingly empty realities about her millennial "Doom" generation's relationship with social media. There really isn't much of an influencer economy, Arata confesses, acknowledging that most social media "stars" are, in fact, grift...

The troubling thing about William F. Buckley , the media savvy founder of modern American conservatism, isn’t so much his politics, but his likability. How could such an overtly reactionary racist and homophobe (even if he was himself gay), be such a charming fellow beloved by all who knew him? That’s one of the central questions which Sam Tanenhaus addresses in his massive new biography Buckley . Tanenhaus reveals shocking new details about the Buckley family's secret funding of segregationist ...

Yesterday, we focused on the death of the American way of work. But today the news on the AI front isn’t quite as dire. According to the New York based economic historian Dror Poleg , AI will be too busy to take your job. That’s the provocative thesis of Poleg’s upcoming book focused on the radical opportunities in our AI age. He argues that AI's massive energy consumption will actually preserve human employment, as society redirects computing power toward critical tasks rather than simply repla...

In 1963, Jessica Mitford published her remarkable account of the American funeral industry, An American Way of Death . Over sixty years later, another distinguished Englishwoman, the workplace futurist Julia Hobsbaw m, is announcing the death of the American way of work. Whereas Mitford exposed the predatory practices of funeral directors, Hobsbawn reveals how corporate America has become equally disconnected from reality—clinging to outdated workplace models while other nations innovate. From T...

It’s an old thesis - that capitalism has created a religion out of money. But nobody, not even Marx, has been quite as theologically explicit as Paul Vigna, author of The Almightier: How Money Became God, Greed Became Virtue, and Debt Became Sin . The former Wall Street Journal reporter argues that money literally functions as our modern deity, complete with faith-based belief systems, sacred rituals of accumulation, and moral frameworks that equate wealth with divine favor. Tracing money's ori...

Douglas Rushkoff has spent decades warning how each new digital technological “revolution” has promised liberation but actually only compounds social and economic injustice. Six months after describing AI to me as the "first native app for the internet," the New York City media theorist and author returns with a provocative historical parallel: AI as the next "dumb waiter." Just as Thomas Jefferson's mechanical food elevator appeared automated but relied on hidden slave labor, today's artificial...

So who killed privacy? It's the central question of Tiffany Jenkins ' provocative new history of private life, Strangers and Intimates . The answer, according to Jenkins, is that we are all complicit—having gradually and often accidentally contributed to privacy's demise from the 16th century onwards. Luther started it by challenging Papal religious authority and the public sacraments, thereby creating the necessity of private conscience. Then came Enlightenment philosophers like Locke and Hobbe...

Is Mohammed bin Salman a tyrant or an enlightened despot? According to the former Wall Street Journal publisher Karen Elliott House , Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Man Who Would Be King , a new biography of MBS, he might be both. Or neither. House who spent years reporting from and writing on Saudi Arabia, offers a complex (and unofficial) portrait of the Crown Prince's ambitious transformation efforts, his deeply troubling human rights record, and the uncertain fate of his grand vision f...

Sociocide is a chilling word. Coined by the Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung, it means the deliberate destruction of a society's social infrastructure and capacity to function as a cohesive unit. According to Boston College sociologist Charles Derber , this kind of social suicide is now destroying America. In his latest book, Bonfire , Derber argues that America is slipping and sliding into a sociocide of broken social and political relations. Drawing on decades of research, Derber connects r...

It’s the fantasy of countless Wall Street analysts. Amran Gowani traded his lucrative career in hedge funds for the scarily solitary world of novel writing. His debut satirical novel Leverage draws from his insider experience at investment banks and hedge funds, exposing the toxic culture and perverse incentives that drive corporate America's financial sector. In this bracingly frank conversation, Gowani confesses his transformation from organic chemistry PhD dropout to pharmaceutical marketing ...

How can anyone forget those photos of Trump’s sons celebrating over the carcasses of dead animals that they shot in Africa? Fortunately, not all sons of American Presidents behave so tastelessly in the wild. As Nathalia Holt argues in her new history, The Beast in the Clouds , Teddy Roosevelt’s sons found redemption - and regret - in their (peaceful) 1928 quest for the giant panda in northwestern China. Holt argues that their remarkable expedition marked a pivotal moment in conservation history,...

The last time Peter Wehner , who I’ve always imagined as America’s conscience, appeared on the show to talk about the “ethical darkness” that has fallen upon America, I suggested that this was an “important” interview. Today’s conversation is much more important than being simply important. Based on Wehner’s recent Atlantic piece about why MAGA evangelicals have turned their back on PEPFAR, the American relief agency saving the lives of millions of Africa’s AIDS victims, this is a conversation a...

From suburban swimming pools and SUVs to White Lives Matter rallies, the Johns Hopkins anthropologist Anand Pandian has been exploring the everyday walls of American life. In his new book, Something Between Us , Pandian travels across the United States in his search to both climb and overcome these walls. What he finds is a nation tragically at war with itself. Through intimate portraits of communities divided by race, class, and ideology, Pandian reveals how ordinary public spaces have become l...

So what, exactly, is the AI wedge? According to Ewan Morrison , author of For Emma , an already acclaimed novel about our dystopian biotech future, it means a “V-shaped” force that starts small but gradually drives people apart, replacing human connection with technological mediation."It starts off really small. You end up with something like internet dating... it begins as a novelty and then people become dependent on it," Morrison explains. What seemed harmless in the 1990s has evolved to the ...

You've heard it before and you'll hear it again. AI is a gold rush. It will change everything. But 2025 is different, That Was The Week tech newsletter publisher Keith Teare argues. This is the year that the AI gold rush is changing everything. In our reflection of the first six months of 2025, Keith argues that we're witnessing a fundamental "phase shift" - not just another tech cycle, but an inflection point where scale becomes a necessity for survival. From Meta's $100 million developer deals...

On July 4, 2025, is America still worth the fireworks? For Paul Orgel, producer of America 250, C-SPAN's upcoming celebration of 250 years of independence, the answer is a full stars 'n stripes YES! But even this C-SPAN veteran acknowledges the complexity of celebrating America in 2025. "We're not just going to be celebratory," Orgel admits, "but realistic to the good, the bad and the ugly of our country's history." As America stands one year away from its 250th birthday, the question isn't whet...

Few people have spent more of their lives thinking about the Nazis than the English filmmaker and writer Laurence Rees . In his new book, The Nazi Mind , Rees offers a lifetime of knowledge about the Nazis to warn about today’s fragility of democracy. Borrowing from his extensive interviews of both former Nazis and Holocaust survivors, Rees discusses how Nazi ideology developed, why democracy proved so vulnerable in 1930s Germany, and what modern societies must understand about the enduring appe...

If the American dream died in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, then who killed it? According to the crime novelist Terrence McCauley, the JFK assassination was carried out by organized crime. That’s the heart of his new novel, Twilight Town , in which McCauley reexamines the JFK assassination in Dallas. But this wasn't Oliver Stone style CIA or shadowy government conspirators, pulling well-oiled strings from their deep state offices. Instead, McCauley argues it was something far more mundane y...