The United States of Oddity: Madeleine Schwartz on How the World Sees America at 250

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It's 07/01/2026. Although, I think I'm gonna run this on Independence Day in three days on 07/04/2026 when America's celebrating its two hundred and fiftieth year anniversary. Rather than looking internally on July 4, I thought we might reverse the angle, so to speech, or reverse the lens. Where is America seen around the world? There's a fascinating new book out. It's called How We See It, the World Looks at America in the Age of Trump. It's a collection of essays by Writers on the Dial, a new magazine, which is edited out of Paris. The editor of that magazine is our guest today, Madeleine Schwartz. Madeleine, congratulations on the new book. I know it's a bestseller, so you must be thrilled with that.

00:01:27 Madeleine Schwartz: Well, we're very pleased. Bestseller, I don't know, but it's doing quite well. And, you know, we've been I've just come back from a three week tour around The United States to talk about it, and people are really curious because I think, as you say, it's the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the United States. There's a lot of talk about what that means internally to The US. But, of course, many people are seeing how much our foreign policy is changing and how much, the world's idea of America is changing, and this book is really an opportunity to talk about that.

00:02:01 Andrew Keen: Tell me about yourself, Madeleine. You sound to me American, although we before we went live, you're talking to me from Paris, and I know you have some French background too. Did you grow up in The US?

00:02:12 Madeleine Schwartz: So I grew up, mostly in The US, though. My mom is American and my father is French, and they split when I was just a baby. So I spent my childhood going from one place to the other, which was a very early introduction into the world of being a foreign correspondent and how important it is for people from different places to actually know how to talk to each other. I now live in France. I've been based here for six years as an adult, almost six years. Though, of course, I'm in The US all the time.

00:02:39 Andrew Keen: Do you miss America?

00:02:42 Madeleine Schwartz: That's a difficult question to answer. And I think, you know, one of the things that we really got to in this book was the extraordinary sense of ambivalence that so much of the world has about The United States, especially at this moment, and ambivalence that I think in some sense, it's almost hard for people within The United States to really grapple with and an area in which this kind of outsider perspective is so important. And that is an ambivalence that, that really comes through in the pages of our book.

00:03:17 Andrew Keen: What do you mean by ambivalence? Is it love hate? Is it most people around the world aren't quite sure what to make of America? Do they trust themselves and what they're seeing?

00:03:27 Madeleine Schwartz: Yeah. So one of the things that we tried to do in this book, which, you know, I'll just show off here for your audience, it's so it's 12 different essays, from around the world, from places as, as varied as Argentina, Ukraine, South Africa, Canada. And each of the essays really takes on a different perspective. We didn't want it to be a book that was, you know, solely or primarily about Trump, but rather a book that tried to explain or at least ask the question of how we got to this moment. And so each of the essays is very distinct. And but one of the things that comes through, I think, in a lot of the pieces that we, that we ran is a sense that The United States, you know, at the one hand considers itself a purveyor of, hope and democracy around the world, and I think that's how many Americans would like to think of The United States. And yet, at the other hand, you know, is a vast imperial and economic power and one which dictates how much of the world, lives their lives much to, those people's, chagrin or frustration. And so a lot of what the different writers of the book get at is this tension about the way in which The United States has shaped the rest of the world, often in ways that I think many Americans would not even be aware of.

00:04:55 Andrew Keen: Madeleine, we've done many shows on this subject, and, there seems to be some disagreement both amongst Americans and people watching America about whether America is a different kind of superpower. It clearly is a superpower, for better or worse. It was the dominant power in the world for a while, maybe now shares the stage with China. But do you get a sense, and the writers on the dial, the contributors to, how we see it, Do you see America as a different kind of superpower?

00:05:29 Madeleine Schwartz: I think when it comes to that question, you know, the way you phrased it, I'm sure there would be many people who would bring a different level of expertise to that. But from my perspective, I actually really think it's important to think of The United States as not particularly exceptional in the kinds of politics that we see right now. And part of my own, reason for starting the dial I'm I'm the founder of the magazine, is a sense that, you know, so much of the conversation about the politics of The US tends to turn inward. But, of course, what's happening in The United States is part of a global turn that has to do with all sorts of macro factors from economic inequality to, you know, the limits of certain forms of democracy that we've had in making people feel represented. And I think thinking about that, about what's happening in The United States in that way is really important to fully understanding it. And that's something that comes out in the book, I would say, a fair amount. We have a really interesting essay from Turkey, for example, by Kaya Genç who talks about how, you know, Erdogan as one leader and Trump as another have really learned from each other over the course of, over the course of the last several decades. And he talks about how actually within the Turkish right, the United States has always been a bit of a beacon, not for any of the reasons that I think Americans would point to, but in large part because the powers of the presidency are so vast and so over overarching that, Turkish leaders have really looked to the American presidency as a model to, to try to follow and in fact have just as at the same time Trump, you know, has looked to Erdogan and other leaders, in his, you know, in his own dealings in The United States. And that kind of comparative look, that kind of way of talking, you know, and of bringing different voices together from around the world, the voices of journalists and writers is really central to what the dial is about.

00:07:42 Andrew Keen: And I wanna talk about the dial in a minute. And, of course, I wanna come to some of the individual articles by writers from, as you say, from Turkey, Ukraine, South Africa, and elsewhere. But tell me about this trip you just made, the three weeks in The US. Where did you go, and what kind of reception did you get?

00:08:01 Madeleine Schwartz: So where did I go? We, I went to New York, DC, Las Vegas, and the Bay Area, and we were very lucky that over the course of that event, we were able to, you know, meet up with several of our authors, who are either based in The United States or were in The United States at that time. And I would say that people were very interested in the book. We generally had, packed houses and sold out of our books which was always nice as the editor. And in part because I think people really want to hear what the outside world is seeing, and I had a lot of questions to, to, you know, that were essentially to the tune of, well, what are people thinking about both The United States right now and about Americans, in you know, as distinct from their government? And that's something that's obviously on a lot of people's minds.

00:09:03 Andrew Keen: Let me rephrase my question then before. You wrote, an excellent essay, for The Guardian a few years ago. I think it was in 2019 on the end of Atlanticism. In terms of your book and in terms of the reception, the subtitle of your book is the world looks at Trump in the age sorry. The world looks at America. That was a Freudian era. The world looks at America in the age of Trump. But might they be looking at America in the age of Biden too? Is Trump central to this narrative, or is it just America in your view, in the view of your writers, and the dial generally is somehow changing over the last fifteen years, and Trump in some ways is as much a symptom as a cause.

00:09:49 Madeleine Schwartz: Yeah. So, you know, the world is looking at America. They're looking at Trump. They're looking at Trump's America. They're also looking at America's Trump, I suppose one could say. What we really wanted to do in this book was try to focus not only on, you know, the year 2026 when the book would be published, but also on all of the factors that brought us here of which, you know, Europe's, the United States relationship and foreign policy is one that we didn't the particular European American relationship, which is what I wrote about in that article and I'm happy to talk about is not one that we get to too deeply in this particular book. One of the things that I think, you know, comes across in a lot of the pieces in the book is just how broken American society seems to someone coming from the outside. Our first essay is a really heartbreaking essay by an Indian writer named Saumya Roy, who I was really lucky to just see in San Francisco where she's now based. And Saumya well, so Saumya wrote a beautiful book about, this homeless people in Mumbai and what is referred to generally as the slums of Mumbai. And she, moved to the Bay Area a few years ago and was really shocked by what she saw there. The number of, of homeless people and in particular, the sense of loneliness and shame that she carried, that they carried with them. And she talks in her essay about how this is actually a big difference between what, between the way that homelessness is perceived and experienced in a place like India and a place like San Francisco that in Mumbai, she writes, you know, the homeless had their community. They when large scale changes happened in the city of Mumbai, there were people communicating and actually, in many cases, people moved to better living situations. In San Francisco, by contrast, everyone who she met believed in some ways that they that he or she was homeless because of a personal failing, and in many ways carried that shame with them to the extent that one of the people she talks to actually, you know, did not ever even admit to his own family that he was living on the street. And that kind of, you know, sense of personal failing, of course, is in some ways the inverse of the American dream that draws so many people to The United States. The idea that you can work hard, and really get ahead will but if you, you know, happen to be homeless, does that mean that it's because you didn't work hard enough? And it's on the level of a society, of course, that creates numerous problems and tensions once you have a situation such as is the case in The United States where many people are living less well than they would like, less well than their parents' generation and feeling their entire quality of life decreasing.

00:13:04 Andrew Keen: So is the system and I live in San Francisco, so I'm all too familiar with, what Saumya Roy talks about. And in fact, I'd like to get her on the show maybe at a future date, especially since she's a local. Is the system, in her view or in your view, is it broken? Can it be reformed, or is it somehow some natural corollary of what some people call neoliberalism in America?

00:13:28 Madeleine Schwartz: Yeah. So, I mean, that question comes up quite a bit in the book, and we have an another essay by a writer named Nataliya Gumenyuk, who's a really extraordinary Ukrainian journalist who, actually does very amazing and difficult work in Ukraine tracking war crimes there. One of the things that so you Nataliya, in addition to all of that work, is the only Ukrainian journalist to have covered every American election since the Obama election in 2008, and that's what she writes about for her essay for us. And she talks in large part about this idea of fake news, which obviously became a kind of buzzword, especially after the first Trump election. And for her, you know, she takes the idea one step farther. She talks not about and she talks about visiting, you know, small towns in places like Ohio where the problem isn't necessarily that people have two different ideas of what the president might be doing or what the government in Washington might be doing. The problem is that people have two different ideas of what's happening in their own town, and even basic events are seen in such different ways that it's actually very hard for people to talk to each other. And she really asks, you know, how can a society function in this way? I think it's a good question. I wish I had an answer to it.

00:14:53 Andrew Keen: And yet, Madeleine, there was a piece, for example, this morning in The Wall Street Journal about the numbers of millionaires America continues to mint, I mean, tens of thousands a year, American living standards. I mean, it's certainly a more unequal society, especially than Europe, and yet it's also much wealthier. Are any of the essays in, in the new collection on how we see it still recognizing that there is a dream in an America, that some people at least who come to this country become very rich and that its economy, whether it's a neoliberal economy, for better or worse, is actually doing rather well compared to most other economies.

00:15:38 Madeleine Schwartz: No. It's an interesting point you bring up. And one of the, you know, one of the first interviews I did with for this book was with, a writer named, Lucía Cholakian Herrera who contributed the chapter for about Argentina for our book, and it's, mainly about how, how much the dollar means to Argentina that actually, I think, unbeknownst to most people in The United States, many are Argentines have really an a huge fascination with the dollar both as a, in their mind, more stable currency, than their own. And there's a long tradition of people, you know, keeping their savings in dollars, but also in part of what you describe of all of these things that America has to offer. And she talks about how actually in the seventies and eighties, people actually used to have dollar parties where they would dress up as the dollar, and that there is particular, you know, a particular vocabulary unique to Argentina to describe different forms of dollars and different, even sort of different generations of dollars depending on how they're printed and that sort of thing. When Lucía and I, we did this, podcast earlier in our press tour, and one of the things that she said is that, you know, a friend of hers in Argentina refers to The United States as, el país de las cosas, so the country of things that, you know, it's a place where you go and there's just amazing consumers and people have so much. And, obviously, for many people, you know, of course, that is a kind of dream. You know, the question for the country is what happens when that dream is accessible to only a segment of the, of the population? Or put another way, you know, what happens when that's all The United States really has to offer?

00:17:36 Andrew Keen: Yeah. The Herrera piece is particularly interesting. She wrote a piece recently. I know she contributes to the New York Times too. She wrote a piece about why Peter Thiel is decamping to the end of the world, in other words, going to live in Argentina. I wonder whether, in a way, the extreme manifestation of the American ideology is somehow escaping to a place like Argentina, making Argentina more American than America itself.

00:18:05 Madeleine Schwartz: Well, one of the things that she talks about at length in her piece for us is, you know, the close relationship that Javier Milei has with Trump and that also his, you know, his supporters feel, an affinity for Trump and the politics that Trump espouses, which I think is particularly interesting to readers insofar as, you know, so many Americans are so used to thinking of The United States as an exporter of ideals, but in, you know, in their mind, exporters of ideals of, you know, democracy and, civil liberties and all of these things that I think are really central to the American sense of self. And one of the points that comes up in Lucía's piece is, you know, what are really the ideals that America is exporting now.

00:18:54 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And she's written some interesting other stuff in The New York Times about the majority of Latin Americans apparently endorsing Trump's raid on, Venezuela and, and then, why Argentina is in advanced talks to become a destination for US deportations. How many of the essays, Madeleine, in the collection focus on this issue of immigration of America historically as an immigrant country and this sharp turn away from that in the age of Trump?

00:19:30 Madeleine Schwartz: It's an interesting question because I think it comes up in almost well, maybe not all of the essays, but in many of the essays in different ways that, you know, there's no single essay that really tackles that as a theme, but, of course, so much of what's happening in The United States is on one hand shaped by The United States' long history, as a country of immigrants, and it's very rapidly changing politics about immigration. There's a really beautiful essay by an Egyptian novelist in exile, Ahmed Naji, who talks about his experience in Las Vegas after he, had to leave Egypt because he was imprisoned for a novel that he wrote and really going through, basically, as an asylum seeker in The United States, having his image of, you know, living through tremendous change in The US over that time. And so there's quite a lot about, I would say, this changing image of migration, of asylum as of The United States as a welcoming country, which, you know, I think is used to be a way that many Americans thought of their country and is obviously no longer at the forefront of US policy.

00:20:54 Andrew Keen: You mentioned one of your contributors, Nataliya Gumenyuk, a Ukrainian journalist who spent some time in The US covering elections. Does she address and you, of course, wrote about this in your 2019 piece in The Guardian, the End of Atlanticism. Does she address this retreat, it would seem, from Europe of America, which is manifested most of all in the Ukrainian war?

00:21:21 Madeleine Schwartz: Well, her essay talks a fair amount about, you know, The US's changing politics, about Ukraine, though it's not really focused on that. I think for her, what is so surprising is, is not to, you know, to just sort of summarize her essays, in large part how little faith or even expectation so many Americans have about their own country, and how, you know, in Ukraine, even during wartime, people still have an expectation that things like hospitals will run and, you know, basic there'll be basic functions provided by the state. Whereas in The United States, obviously, in far easier conditions, there's just you know, it's almost accepted that, well, if you're sick and you don't have health insurance, it's going to be very difficult, maybe even impossible to get the kind of treatment that you need.

00:22:18 Andrew Keen: Are there any essays it sounds like a lot of the essays are rather critical of The US, of how we see it. The world looks at America in the age of Trump. Are there any essays which see America still in a traditional light? You wrote, an interesting piece or you gave a speech, I think, in Paris on an interesting speech in, on the un American century, the twenty first century. Of course, the twentieth century was supposedly the American century. Are there any essays in the collection which acknowledge that in some ways, twenty first century could still theoretically, at least, be the American century?

00:22:57 Madeleine Schwartz: Well, I think that, you know, I did a few things. The first is that, obviously, being critical of The United States is a proud American tradition in many ways. And so, when we were putting together the book, we were less interested in, you know, are we critical, are we praising, and more interested in what do these people have to say, and what would be actually interesting to convey at this moment in time. I think that, you know, there's been a lot of rushing to say, you know, it's the end of the American presence, in the rest of the world or America's retreating. And the reality is that, you know, even if certain politicians in The United States wish to retreat, and I think in many parts of the world, there's a real desire for more sovereignty and certainly less association or being close to The United States, it's going to be really hard, for even those who wish to disentangle them selves from The United States to do so. One of the essays in the book, which is a quite funny and, really wonderful essay is an essay on Italian tourism or sort of Americans in Italy by Francesco Pacifico, who's an Italian novelist. And, you know, he is very critical in a quiet, joking and way about the American tourist. You know, he describes Americans sort of arriving in Rome like a conquering army and how annoying it is to sort of wait for them to ask every single question at the gelato shop before making a decision. But in many ways, he comes to this conclusion that, you know, as much as he may be critical of the American tourist, you know, the world is now such that everyone is a sort of American tourist, you know, that he is looking himself at his own travels, his own, consumption habits, and seeing that he has the same kinds of behaviors as the very people he criticizes. And I think that essay is really interesting in the context of what you're asking because, you know, it will be it's clear that we're moving towards something else that's different than what we saw in the twentieth century, but it certainly won't be an immediate shift when, you know, so much of the world, you know, speaks English, uses the dollar, all of these things that, that in many ways, keep America very central to the rest of the world.

00:25:28 Andrew Keen: Do any of your contributors in this collection, do they offer an alternative collection of ideas, of principles, of political system? Of course, we've done many shows on the Chinese system versus the American system. Maybe they're becoming more and more similar, especially in the age of Trump with more and more of a kind of statist capitalism. But does anyone present in the essays an alternative to twentieth century America?

00:25:56 Madeleine Schwartz: Yeah. I would say that wasn't necessarily the type of essay that we were looking. You know, the Dial's style is to take, you know, big political ideas and often talk about them in a quite personal, descriptive, and sometimes even literary way. And so when we were commissioning the book, we were really thinking about how can we make these very abstract ideas of, you know, the un American century or, the move toward the multipolar world, feel really visceral to people. And I find that often a manifesto is not the best way to do that. But that said, you know, there are many, I think, ideas that really come through in these essays that are that indicate the kinds of thinking that people are having as, you know, as we all move forward into the unknown. One of our essays, for example, is, from Taiwan and talks about the, you know, the very complicated relationship that Taiwan has had with The United States, as it has sought US, support against China and how now for much of, you know, the Taiwanese that the author talks to, you know, many Taiwanese, you know, feel very prepared to go at it alone. And the essay actually describes the author taking these very popular self defense classes, in order to, you know, be prepared for an eventual Chinese invasion, whether those would work or not. The idea is really, about being, you know, basically as prepared as possible and as prepared as possible without the expectation of outside help. And in the essay, you know, amidst this discussion of defense and self defense, one of the things that Michelle Kuo, the author, really talks about is, you know, for a long time, many Taiwanese hoped that by adhering to certain principles, they would sort of gain the favor of The United States. And now the political thinking is very different. You know, if there are certain ideals, she talks, for example, about, you know, civil liberties and the rights of LGBTQ rights in Taiwan. If those ideals are espoused by people in Taiwan, it's not because people think, oh, you know, The United States must might like or support us more. Is really because people actually want to put forward those ideals. And I think that we will see this more and more, which is to say, you know, for a long time, being a US ally was so important for so many parts of the world because of The US's presence militarily and elsewhere and otherwise. But as The United States retreats, I think there's a lot of hope for many that this will mean, you know, more of a return to some form of sovereignty and, you know, choosing whatever path one's own country wants without thinking about US approval or not.

00:29:02 Andrew Keen: Tell me a little bit. You mentioned The Dial several times. It's, your magazine. You founded it. Tell me a little bit about it and what you're trying to do with it. It's always nice to see a new publication prosper, come up with a best selling book. Tell me what you're trying to do with it and why you founded it.

00:29:25 Madeleine Schwartz: Yeah. So we've been around now, for about four years, and the idea really behind the dial was to try to create a space in this time where it felt like so many bad actors were, you know, learning from each other in so many ways, create a space for journalists and, civil society to really share what they were seeing on the ground. I think if you read anglophone media, it often feels, at least in The United States, that so much of it is just looking inward, and this was, particularly true, I think, during the first Trump administration when it when I had the initial idea for the dial. And, you know, I thought it was very important and my colleagues, you know, who started the who joined us really agreed to find a way to bring the voices from other countries, to the fore. And so we've published work now from some 90 countries, and about a third of what we do is in translation. So we bring together work from, you know, not only people who are writing in different languages, but also, partner publications whose work we bring into English for the first time. And that has been, I think, very, very rewarding for our readers, for our writers, and we've also seen, you know, how much larger media has in many cases followed us. A number of our pieces, you know, actually, two pieces in this book even were reprinted in the Guardian. And since we've started, there have been a few other new little magazines that do similar work. And so it's been you know, I think there's a desire right now when it feels that all of our, you know, national systems are failing to a certain extent, and so many of the problems that we face are international to really try to see what's happening elsewhere and to try to get voices from elsewhere that aren't really mediated by, you know, the Anglophone foreign correspondent.

00:31:28 Andrew Keen: You are books, pieces of Gaza. To what extent in terms of this collection of essays, Madeleine, does America's relationship with Israel and the current situation in Gaza somehow capture, the way in which the world looks at America these days?

00:31:47 Madeleine Schwartz: Well, I think, you know, it's it's undeniable that, The US's relationship with Israel is, you know, being closely watched by, by the entire world and is also very rapidly changing in terms of politics within The United States. The essay in the book, in how we see it, we have an essay written from Gaza by a poet named Muhammad al-Zaqzouq and translated by a wonderful translator, Katharine Halls, in which he talks about, again, going back to this idea of ambivalence, you know, the ambivalence that he has felt over the course of his life about The United States and, and that he's actually traces in many, you know, his attempts to leave, Gaza where he has, he's a father of three, and go to The United States only to find that, you know, under Trump's America, you know, asylum is really no longer a possibility, and he is still there. You know, so it's a it's a very heartbreaking essay. And I'll just, if you bear with me one minute, I will read from the end of it if I just pull up.

00:33:07 Andrew Keen: Please.

00:33:09 Madeleine Schwartz: So this is from the end of his essay. He says, and so the question of America forms again once again within me. At times, I see it as a site of exclusion and segregation, and another time as a specter of another possible life. Through its institutions, it offers the dream of survival, and then the firm hand of diplomacy snatches that dream away. America is ever present in my war weary mind and in my worn out feet, tired from constantly running toward a window, a map, or a word of hope. The question of America is vast. It is unrelenting and unanswerable and will not be silenced. That's from the end of his piece.

00:33:52 Andrew Keen: Finally, Madeline, what are you gonna be doing, July 4 given, given, you're, I would say, an American exile, a little bit of America, and you're not gonna be eating hot dogs, are you, in Paris?

00:34:07 Madeleine Schwartz: I think there are very few circumstances under which, I, I would be eating a hot dog. I did not like them very much, but I will be actually talking about this book, here in Paris. And so anyone who wishes to attend, could join me.

00:34:25 Andrew Keen: Well, congratulations on the new book. It's out now, How We See It, The World Looks at America in the Age of Trump. And, Madeleine, a happy fourth. Thank you so much.

00:34:35 Madeleine Schwartz: Thank you very much, Andrew.