Episodes

“Perfection is the devil. Growth means a greater capaciousness, not a narrowing and an optimisation.” — Daniel Smith Don’t feel bad about feeling bad. That’s the message of Daniel Smith ’s therapeutic new book, Hard Feelings:...

“We can survive. Can we thrive? That’s a different question.” — Corey Nathan Robert Mueller died last week. Educated at Princeton, this Vietnam veteran won a Purple Heart and then enjoyed decades of public service under presi...

“Happiness is a rare commodity. There’s a lot of fuel for the claim that unhappiness is caused by some software, when in fact the roots of unhappiness are way deeper than that.” — Keith Teare If it’s not warfare in Iran, then...

“Why does someone need to be the first trillionaire? The damage it’s doing just to get to that level is extreme.” — Glen Galaich Excessive wealth disorder. It sounds like a disease — which, at least according to Glen Galaich ...

“Friction is what brings us together. If we were never able to communicate in real space, we would not truly learn what it is to be human.” — Stephen Balkam Is social media a drug? In what the Financial Times called a landmar...

“The shortest distance between you and me is a story.” — Colum McCann In 1932, Albert Einstein wrote to Sigmund Freud asking if humanity could cure its “lust for hatred.” Freud said no. Mankind’s instinct for death and destru...

“What conclusion do you draw if you see a system that continues to grow more powerful despite failing at the things it says it’s going to accomplish?” — Jacob Siegel Jacob Siegel grew up in Brooklyn, studied history at Boston...

“If the regime doesn’t lose, it wins.” — Soli Özel It was just past midnight in Istanbul when I reached Soli Özel . The Pentagon had just announced it was deploying 3,000 soldiers — the 82nd Airborne — to the Gulf. Özel — pro...

“The problems start when I conclude that only an uninformed, unintelligent, or evil person could hold the view that you hold.” — Julia Minson In a sneak preview of the 2028 Presidential election, Andy Beshear called JD Vance ...

“AI is a theft of knowledge. I can’t believe we as a society allowed this.” — Noam Cohen Ten years ago, Noam Cohen came on the show to ask if it was “Too Late to Save the Internet from Itself?” Back then, this early Silicon V...

“We read so as not to feel alone.” — C.S. Lewis (possibly) Dan Turello is a cultural historian of medieval Italy, a much published photographer, and the author of the new Connection: How Technology Can Make Us Better Humans ....

“Washington and Hamilton were governed by Willing.” — John Adams, 1813 Thomas Willing voted against the Declaration of Independence. He was the wealthiest man in Philadelphia, the largest merchant trader in North America, an ...

“I don’t know if any rational person ever became a billionaire running a disruptive company.” — Keith Teare Is capitalism by permission of democracy, or is democracy by permission of capitalism? That’s the question Keith Tear...

“We do not exist without nature — unless Silicon Valley figures something out in their bunkers.” — Natalie Kyriacou Forget the Middle East for a moment. Or rather, don’t — because today’s petroleum war is an environmental cat...

“Nobody’s reality is more or less real.” — Kevin Ashton It’s the chicken and egg question. What came first: stories or language? For Kevin Ashton , the answer is stories. In his new book, The Story of Stories , Ashton argues ...

“I don’t like the idea of losing out to a machine because I feel like I’m losing a part of myself in the process.” — Nelson Dellis, six-time USA Memory Champion Most of us can’t remember our spouse’s phone number. We barely k...

“If we don’t fight, then what are we doing?” — Jeff Boyd How do you write fiction about contemporary America when reality itself is stranger than fiction? A country in which “alternative facts” is policy rather than satire. W...

“Had another nation done this, we would regard this as an act of war.” — Arthur Levine, President of Brandeis University Forget Iran for a moment. I asked Brandeis President Arthur Levine whether the Trump administration has ...

“You would not want to be me.” — Elon Musk Yesterday I argued that Dario Amodei is the most interesting man in America because he’s doing something nobody else has the balls to do: acting like a human being in public. Elon Mu...

“Whether you like Amodei or not, at least he’s a leader.” — Andrew Keen Dario Amodei is the most interesting man in America right now. Not because he runs a $500 billion company or because he’s suing the Trump administration ...

“I can point to things. But is that a systemic explanation? I think there the answer is a little less clear. I mean, surely people need love and all of that, but then there’s this risk of just devolving into platitude.” — Dav...

“They all did it. They’re all guilty.” — Amy Littlefield Who killed Roe? Amy Littlefield , the abortion access correspondent at The Nation and big time Agatha Christie fan, has written a true crime book about it. Literally. K...

“It’s about blood. I cover a lot of bloodshed in the book, but I also talk about a different kind of blood: blood that ties, blood that binds families across time and distance.” — Jazmine Ulloa Kristi Noem is gone. Under her ...

“This is not the beginning of a new right-wing revanche fascist era; this is the end of something. But the problem is we can’t get to the new world because the new world is too filled with problems.” — Jonathan Taplin Trump f...