Latest / Masters in Business / Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy

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Anand Giridharadas on the Financial Crisis, Covid and the State of Democracy · Masters in Business

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  Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry rid Hoolds on
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  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio.
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  Speaker 2: My extra special guest this week is anand Gerdadis. He
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  Speaker 2: is the best selling author of four separate books. Previously,
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  Speaker 2: he was a foreign correspondent and columnist for The New
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  Speaker 2: York Times. He has published at The New Yorker, the
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  Speaker 2: Atlantic Time Magazine. He is an on air political analyst
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  Speaker 2: for MSNBC and a publisher of the newsletter The inc.
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  Speaker 2: His previous book, Winners Take All, was a bestseller. His
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  Speaker 2: new book, The Persuaders at the front Lines of the
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  Speaker 2: Fight for the Hearts and Minds of Democracy is out
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  Speaker 2: now onand Welcome to Bloomberg.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I've been following your work for a while and
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  Speaker 2: I'm really excited to talk to you about both the
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  Speaker 2: new book and some of the articles you've published recently.
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  Speaker 2: But let's start out a little bit with your background,
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  Speaker 2: because I've been in journalism for a few decades now.
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  Speaker 2: But you began as a business analyst for McKinsey. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: that's about his establishment as it gets. What was the
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  Speaker 2: career plan?
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  Speaker 1: You know, I actually knew exactly what I wanted to
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  Speaker 1: do from a pretty young age, which is really what
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  Speaker 1: I'm doing now, which is writing and being a journalist.
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  Speaker 1: I figured it out for a semester of my sophomore
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  Speaker 1: year of high school. That was when you could join
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  Speaker 1: the high school newspaper, and with this newspaper at my
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  Speaker 1: high school called Horizon, and I applied, and I got
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  Speaker 1: into the newspaper, and from the first couple weeks of
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  Speaker 1: writing stupid little school newspaper articles, I think I was
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  Speaker 1: assigned to cover sports, and I didn't really play sports.
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  Speaker 1: It was not that the content was so riveting to me,
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  Speaker 1: but the idea that you could go out, look at
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  Speaker 1: the world, see things, talk to people, see things with
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  Speaker 1: your eyes, interpret what they mean, go back, write it up,
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  Speaker 1: process it in your way, think about what you think
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  Speaker 1: it means, and then on this very small scale few
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  Speaker 1: hundred people would get it printed and delivered and they
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  Speaker 1: would see it and it would go into their brains.
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  Speaker 1: It was such an insanely magical concept to me that
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  Speaker 1: I was very clear that first semester of softomore of
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  Speaker 1: high school, like, this is what I want to do.
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  Speaker 1: And you know, fast forward twenty eight years later, if
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  Speaker 1: I have the math right, like, that's what I do
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  Speaker 1: but there was this blip in the middle, and the
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  Speaker 1: reason for the blip, the one year blip, was it
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  Speaker 1: getting into journalism. Getting into writing is harder than getting
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  Speaker 1: into you know, the most exclusive nightclub in Berlin.
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  Speaker 2: You know.
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  Speaker 1: I think it's gotten in some ways better because of
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  Speaker 1: more awareness around how these barriers keep lots of people out.
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  Speaker 1: In some ways it's gotten harder just because there's fewer
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  Speaker 1: journalism jobs now even than when I was fifteen or
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  Speaker 1: seventeen or twenty. But it was always this profession where,
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  Speaker 1: at least in my experience, like there weren't job sites
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  Speaker 1: where these jobs were listed. You kind of had to
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  Speaker 1: figure out your way in and maybe write some freelance
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  Speaker 1: articles for someone. And so as I was finishing college again,
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  Speaker 1: dead set on journalism, applied for jobs, couldn't really find anything,
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  Speaker 1: couldn't you know. I wanted to maybe go overseas, couldn't
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  Speaker 1: find anything. And I got some advice from one of
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  Speaker 1: my mentors, Jill Abramson, who was an editor at the
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  Speaker 1: New York Times then and later became the editor of
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  Speaker 1: the paper, and she said, you know, go out into
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  Speaker 1: the world. Don't try to be a journalist by hanging
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  Speaker 1: around in New York and Washington, like a thousand other
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  Speaker 1: people trying to vuy for one job, one internship, Go
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  Speaker 1: far away, see the world, come back with some knowledge
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  Speaker 1: of something other people don't know, don't have some expertise
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  Speaker 1: in something. Just go collide with the world.
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  Speaker 2: Did you follow that advice?
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  Speaker 1: I did? And so where did you go? So I
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  Speaker 1: went to India, and so I worked for McKinsey, actually
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  Speaker 1: because I basically decided I wanted to go to India,
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  Speaker 1: and then I tried to get a journalism job. My
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  Speaker 1: family had come from India.
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  Speaker 2: My parents had ever grew up in Ohio.
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  Speaker 1: I had never lived in India.
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  Speaker 2: I mean you did you speak the language?
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  Speaker 1: Nope?
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  Speaker 2: I mean everybody speaks English, right.
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  Speaker 1: I mean no, no, no, no, Like really the entire
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  Speaker 1: elite speaks English. One or two percent of people speak
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  Speaker 1: English and no one else does. And so I actually
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  Speaker 1: had this quite tortured relationship to India, which is the
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  Speaker 1: same as many you know, second generation kids where you know,
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  Speaker 1: I always say, like, the first thing I learned about
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  Speaker 1: India was that my parents chose to get out of it.
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  Speaker 1: So it's not the best YELP review, right, But part
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  Speaker 1: of me took this advice of colliding with the world. So,
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  Speaker 1: you know, I should go to a place that I
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  Speaker 1: have difficulty with, not a place that I have ease.
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  Speaker 1: I mean I could go to London or whatever. I
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  Speaker 1: should go to India because it'll be complicated and I'll
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  Speaker 1: have to grapple with things and that'll make me a writer.
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  Speaker 1: I had this kind of fantasy that the that the
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  Speaker 1: forced grappling.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so how was it?
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  Speaker 1: It was incredible. I mean, that job was terrible. I
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  Speaker 1: applied for journalism jobs. You know, no one was going
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  Speaker 1: to send a twenty one year old University of Michigan
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  Speaker 1: graduate to go be a foreign correspondent in India, which
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  Speaker 1: I didn't quite understand at the time. So I started
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  Speaker 1: looking for other things and I applied to the local
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  Speaker 1: office of McKinsey. I think, making fourteen thousand dollars a
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  Speaker 1: year on a local contract, I could barely pay for
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  Speaker 1: my like shared it's like a room in someone else's
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  Speaker 1: apartment because Bombay real estate prices are the same as
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  Speaker 1: New York. Even though my salary was fourteen thousand dollars
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  Speaker 1: a year. Wow, people live with their families or you know,
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  Speaker 1: make make do. So that job was not great, and
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  Speaker 1: I was not cut out for business. So I was
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  Speaker 1: quite miserable that year. But I was miserable in a
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  Speaker 1: way because I'd come to this really interesting place and
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  Speaker 1: working in business. I had no engagement with the place.
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  Speaker 1: I was just doing some random job, and I realized, like,
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  Speaker 1: I need to either leave or I need to dig
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  Speaker 1: into the society in my way, which is writing, thinking, journalism.
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  Speaker 1: And so I, luckily after that year, got a job
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  Speaker 1: at the New York Times. It was easier to get
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  Speaker 1: a job once I was there on the ground, set
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  Speaker 1: up new things, new people, and I got this job,
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  Speaker 1: talked my way into this job at the Times, and
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  Speaker 1: I've been a full time writer ever since it.
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  Speaker 2: You wrote a book about your experience.
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  Speaker 1: At the end of that six years in India. I
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  Speaker 1: wrote a book about the transformation of modern India through
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  Speaker 1: the stories of five families. It was so remarkable. Once
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  Speaker 1: I had the right job, you know, and for someone
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  Speaker 1: else doing business in India in that time would have
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  Speaker 1: been a very exciting things my thing in the world.
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  Speaker 1: But once my job was to observe what was around
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  Speaker 1: me and try to process it and make sense of
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  Speaker 1: it and turn it into writing and sometimes even art.
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  Speaker 1: It was just the most remarkable place to be and
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  Speaker 1: here as a remarkable country to be a writer, and
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  Speaker 1: it's a colleague of mine Lydia. Paul Green once said
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  Speaker 1: that there's no shortage of public opinion and it was
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  Speaker 1: a remarkable place to cut my teeth as a as
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  Speaker 1: a journalist.
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  Speaker 2: So, how did your six years of experience in India
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  Speaker 2: affect how you think about the job of seeing what's
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  Speaker 2: happening in the world or in a local space, processing
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  Speaker 2: it and writing it. And secondly, that's a really stratified
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  Speaker 2: class system. How did India affect how you see the
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  Speaker 2: world of you know, the top one percent, the top
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  Speaker 2: point one percent and eventually winner's take all.
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  Speaker 1: Such a good question. I'll do the second one first.
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  Speaker 1: The kind of gruesome inequities of India that have just
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  Speaker 1: been baked into India for a very long time.
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  Speaker 2: Do people do people just assume it's just never going
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  Speaker 2: to change, they just take it for granted, or is
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  Speaker 2: there foment under the surface.
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  Speaker 1: Well, remember, India never had a revolution the way China did, right,
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  Speaker 1: And they never had a revolution the way Russia did, right.
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  Speaker 1: So a lot of countries coming out of colonization in
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  Speaker 1: the twentieth century had these kind of disruptions to the
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  Speaker 1: social order. What is remarkable about modern India is that
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  Speaker 1: it kind of built a liberal democracy coming out of colonization,
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  Speaker 1: with this incredible group of communities and populations that are
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  Speaker 1: as or more diverse than the countries of the European Union,
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  Speaker 1: let's say, right, but all in one country, and it
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  Speaker 1: never really had a rupture with the past where it
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  Speaker 1: got rid of the old social order the way say
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  Speaker 1: the Chinese cracked down on Confucianism or something like that.
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  Speaker 1: So everything new that has been added India is sort
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  Speaker 1: of layered on top of the old, but no old
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  Speaker 1: layer was ever eradicated. And so what that results in
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  Speaker 1: India is a lot of these very hierarchies that have
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  Speaker 1: been pretty undisturbed. The caste system, but also just in
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  Speaker 1: some places, in some rural areas, like the cast system
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  Speaker 1: very much still functions. If you look at the distribution
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  Speaker 1: of who works in the IT industry, it's still very
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  Speaker 1: much follows cast even if people are not conscious of it.
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  Speaker 1: Much like race here, but even more powerful than that
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  Speaker 1: is an idea of caste, The kind of residual idea
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  Speaker 1: of caste is the naturalness of human inequality. When the
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  Speaker 1: Declaration of Independence starts with all men are created equal,
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  Speaker 1: it's a radical statement. It was a radical statement.
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  Speaker 2: Footnote that little three fifths thing will deal with it.
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  Speaker 1: Writer. But even the articulation of that idea we don't
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  Speaker 1: realize because we think that's just a normal idea. And
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  Speaker 1: in fact they didn't go far enough. They didn't include women,
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  Speaker 1: they didn't include black people. But even articulating that in
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  Speaker 1: seventeen seventy six was quite a break, pretty radical from
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  Speaker 1: how people thought. And I think in India you just
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  Speaker 1: see very dramatically the naturalness in people's minds of human inequality.
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  Speaker 1: People are naturally born at different levels people in many ways.
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  Speaker 1: In a lot of Hindu traditions, people believe that you
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  Speaker 1: deserve the station into which you're born. If you were
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  Speaker 1: a humble servant, it's because you did something wrong in
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  Speaker 1: a past life. I know people in my own family
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  Speaker 1: who do heroic work taking care of the poor. But
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  Speaker 1: you've asked them why they think those people who they
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  Speaker 1: take care of are poor. They believe, deep down it's
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  Speaker 1: because they did something wrong in a past life.
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  Speaker 2: That seems like a fantastic mechanism for controlling the pores
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  Speaker 2: to say, we're going to take this belief system and
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  Speaker 2: impose it on you. And yeah, this may be a horrible, miserable,
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  Speaker 2: low paying job, backbreaking job, but hey man, you learned it,
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  Speaker 2: you did something, and now you've got to suffer the concept.
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  Speaker 2: And it's almost puritanical to draw the parallel.
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  Speaker 1: But there's also an incentive structure built into it, which is,
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  Speaker 1: if you now spend this lowly poor existence doing good
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  Speaker 1: thing well the next life, waiting, waiting on your superiors
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  Speaker 1: with alacrity, you know, then you'll be born into a
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  Speaker 1: higher station next time. And the reason I say all
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  Speaker 1: that to you is when you said, how did it
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  Speaker 1: imprint my view of other things? I grew up with
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  Speaker 1: illusions in this country, in the United States that I
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  Speaker 1: think many of us grew up with, or that in
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  Speaker 1: an immigrant, upwardly mobile immigrant family. My family had this
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  Speaker 1: notion of America country where you make your own destiny,
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  Speaker 1: you rise as high as your merit can take you, etc.
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  Speaker 1: And I think we didn't necessarily see the limits of
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  Speaker 1: that truth in our own experience because we were fortunate,
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  Speaker 1: and going to India radicalized me not only about India,
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  Speaker 1: but it actually made me see America in a new way,
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  Speaker 1: because what is true in India in the most dramatic
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  Speaker 1: form is actually true everywhere. Most people in the world
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  Speaker 1: do not, in fact make their destiny. Most people in
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  Speaker 1: the world do not, in fact rise as far as
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  Speaker 1: their merit can take them.
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  Speaker 2: So let me push back, and I'm loving this conversation.
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  Speaker 2: But when you look at feudal England and the monarchy like,
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  Speaker 2: but what still is hanging around of the monarch system
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  Speaker 2: and the lords and the nobles and the dukes and
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  Speaker 2: all that stuff. There are remnants of it. There's some
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  Speaker 2: persistence in landed gentry, but by and large it seems
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  Speaker 2: from afar like the UK is a far more equitable
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  Speaker 2: country today than it was five hundred years ago. What
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  Speaker 2: I'm hearing from you about the cast system is not
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  Speaker 2: only is this an overlay on modern India or an
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  Speaker 2: underlay with modern India built on top, but at a
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  Speaker 2: very first principles level philosophically, not a lot of people
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  Speaker 2: are shrugging it off the way you see the monarchy
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  Speaker 2: sort of being shrugged off in the UK.
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  Speaker 1: The way I think about it is, I think there
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  Speaker 1: is an arc and a continuum, right what Martin Luther
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  Speaker 1: King talked about as the arc of the moral universe
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  Speaker 1: from systems and structures of extreme hierarchy and extreme kind
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  Speaker 1: of discarding of most people on one end, and then
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  Speaker 1: on other end systems of imagine perfect equality, which of
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  Speaker 1: course exists nowhere. I think there's no question that most
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  Speaker 1: societies and I can think of have moved along the arc.
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  Speaker 1: I think some places like the United States are much
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  Speaker 1: further along the arc in certain ways than a place
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  Speaker 1: like India, you know, large because of affluence. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: it's easier to empower people when you have an American
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  Speaker 1: level of per capita GDP than an Indian level of
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  Speaker 1: per capita GDP. But also there is a philosophical difference.
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  Speaker 1: But I think in this country, in the United States,
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  Speaker 1: we over believe our story that people can just invent
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  Speaker 1: themselves to their chosen level. It's not that it doesn't
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  Speaker 1: happen for anyone. It happens for actually millions and millions
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  Speaker 1: of people. And that's remarkable. That's a new thing in
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  Speaker 1: the world. In America actually in the mid twentieth century
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  Speaker 1: built that and it felt like a new thing in
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  Speaker 1: the world. The idea that you know, average people could
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  Speaker 1: you know, go to college, get a nice house in
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  Speaker 1: the suburbs. But of course it was mostly white people.
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  Speaker 1: But there was a new idea in this country that
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  Speaker 1: you know, that the regular person could could rise. But
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  Speaker 1: I think in more recent decades we've also just become
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  Speaker 1: more aware of the limitations of that and all the
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  Speaker 1: people for whom that doesn't feel like a true story.
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  Speaker 2: Huh. Really quite fascinating. How long? How long were you
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  Speaker 2: writing for The New York Times?
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  Speaker 1: For so I started then in India in two thousand
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  Speaker 1: and five, and I continued for eleven years. So first,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: you know, four and a half years in India. Wrote
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  Speaker 1: my first book about India at the end of that
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  Speaker 1: time in India, and in the writing of that book,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: I decided that writing books is what I wanted to do.
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  Speaker 1: You know, I hadn't I hadn't tried it yet. So
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  Speaker 1: I've been writing, you know, newspaper articles for The Times
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  Speaker 1: about India and social transformation in India, human stories. And
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: then there was something about going deep in a book,
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  Speaker 1: thinking about the same thing in the shower every day
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  Speaker 1: for three years, that instead of a different thing in
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: the shower every day for three years. That really appealed
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  Speaker 1: to me. So I decided that was kind of going
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  Speaker 1: to be my focus. So I continued after that time
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  Speaker 1: to write a column a once in two week kind
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  Speaker 1: of easy, easy, one day, you know, one day every
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  Speaker 1: two weeks of my time a column just to kind
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  Speaker 1: of stay engaged, but kind of pivoted to books and
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  Speaker 1: have have been writing books as my kind of main
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  Speaker 1: thing ever since.
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  Speaker 2: You briefly taught narrative journalism at New York University. Looking
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: at your background BA in history at at University of
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Michigan and some doctoral studies at Harvard, you could have
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: very easily become an academic, which is a fairly comfortable lifestyle.
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  Speaker 2: Did that ever hold any appeal or.
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  Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting you ask in that in between
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  Speaker 1: period of leaving India, winding down my full time job
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  Speaker 1: at the New York Times, finishing that first book. In
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: between them, that's when I was when I went to
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: grad school, and I think at that there was a
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: moment when I was looking at all three right, newspapers
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: at the kind of highest level of immediacy, academia at
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: the kind of lowest level of immediacy and reflection, and
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: then this kind of book public facing book writing as
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  Speaker 1: sort of in between the two, and I really held
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  Speaker 1: all three as options kind of around the time I
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: was turning thirty, and as I progressed and wrote the book,
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  Speaker 1: I realized a couple of things. One, as I said
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  Speaker 1: that I think the newspaper writing felt it felt very
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: come and go. It just felt like you would really
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: work on these things and then everybody would talk about
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  Speaker 1: them if you were very lucky, for like an hour
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: and then and then it was just gone. And some
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: of the most beautiful things I still feel. I ever
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  Speaker 1: wrote when I was in my twenties in India that
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  Speaker 1: human stories India like it's just not part of the
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  Speaker 1: culture anymore in a way that books really last. So
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  Speaker 1: I was drawn to books. And I did try the
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: academic thing by going to grad school, and to be
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: honest without being rude, it kind of disgusted me in
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  Speaker 1: a way. And what I mean by that is I
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: was not in theoretical physics or something like that. I
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: was in the government department at Harvard, which is what
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: they call, you know, politics or political science. And I
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: have never met we now would understand that time into
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  Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, ten eleven, you know, there's a
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  Speaker 1: time when there was a big unraveling already going on
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: after the financial crisis. Democracy. I think you could now
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: trace back some of the democratic unraveling we've since seen,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: you know, to trace it back to those years big
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: things were happening in the country, the tea part, and
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: it was a group of people who often seemed completely
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: removed from the actual experience of what was happening in
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: the country, like everything was turned into regression analysis of
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: kind of trivial questions. And the people in that department,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: and there were several who really did engage in the society,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: were sort of made fun of behind their backs, the
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: not famous ones and also some of the famous ones,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: like some of the ones who are who you and
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: I would know their names, but they actually did not
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: have the respect of anybody in the building, like they
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: were the They were the kind of runts of the
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: litter in that world right to have, you know, I
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: don't mind mentioning one of them who I deeply admire,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Michael Sendel. You know, this is a guy who teaches
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: this course on justice, biggest, one of the biggest courses
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: at Harvard, nine hundred people or something. But he also
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: started spreading this to China, and he's somehow despite the
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Chinese government, he got like millions of people to take
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: this course I think on law YouTube. Yeah, because it
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: was these kind of abstract concepts of justice and it
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: didn't get into you know, democracy, Like he found a
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: way to sneak like like a course on like Western
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: philosophy and political theory into like, I can't think of
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: something more admirable that you should do if you're like
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: a fancy professor at Harvard. And I remember people talk
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: about him as like not a serious academic really, and
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: I was just like, this is the opposite of my
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: moral compass, like and last example.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: But before you move on from that, you're reminding me
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: of I'm gonna I'm gonna mangle this quote. Maybe it'll
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: maybe it'll resonate with you. Why is academic politics so vicious?
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: And the answer is because it's so meaningless, right, and
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: and that sort of penniness seems like it's along those lines.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: You know, people have this odd way of projecting their
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: own failures and insecurities onto others. I'm a big student
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: of behavioral finance, and you look at the decision making
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: process and it's just full of cognitive errors. But I
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: got to ask one other question related to the academic side.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: It wasn't the teaching and the students, it was everything
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: around it that you found problem.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: At It was the lack of engagement in the world.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: American democracy has been coming apart, and this was a
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: political science slash government department, and it was.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Much more than the admin headaches. No, it was they
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: were in a like a even at Harvard, it's a
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: backwater that's not connected to reality.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Even at Harvard, I think Harvard is like off the
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: charts connected to like the contemporary world. And of course
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: there's parts of Harvard that are very engaged in the world.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: I was not at the Kennedy School, but it just
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: seemed to me in a moment when American democracy was
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: bursting at the seams, it didn't feel to most people
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: around me in that world like it was the project
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: of thinkers and scholars and theorists and data scientists at
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Harvard's political hub to think about how to save the country,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: to think about how to rescue the world from authoritarianism.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: It just felt like it just felt like regression. Analysis
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: of trivialities and the people the exceptions Michael Sandels, they
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: had a scotchpow others who are doing the best work
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: out there. The snide comments about them by others just
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: made me realize what I value here is not what
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: is valued.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: So let me get a little ahead of myself and
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: bring a question from a latter section forward. It's pretty
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: obvious today, with the benefit of hindsight, that you could
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: draw a straight line from the financial crisis and the
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: rescue of the banks to the detriment of homeowners, mortgage holders,
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: the average person in the street. There's a straight line
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: from that to the rise of popular authoritarianism. Let me
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: cut to the chase. Why did we miss so much
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: of that? Well, why did so many of us miss
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: that in real time as it was happening.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know at my newsletter, which you are kind
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: enough to mention the ink. We've been doing a lot
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: on with twenty twenty four trying to pull back and
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: understand why this is happening to our democracy right, not
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: just the day to day, not just who's up and
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: down in New Hampshire, but what has been happening to
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: our democracy that we are in this kind of condition right,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Because you know, when you have a kind of cancer,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: the way our body politic does. Now there's the immediate
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: question of what do you do tomorrow, But there's also
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: the question of what is the context in which this
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: became possible? And I think the financial crisis story is
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: so important because I think there are really two things
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: to me that converged in this authoritarian moment in the
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: weakening of our democratic order. One is when there's enormous
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: social change, as there has been, I would argue positive
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: social change the first side of the ledgers like positive
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: stuff change in progress and gender progress, in racial inclusion,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: you know, shifting demographics and and a kind of a
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: bigger WII in this country. Those kind of changes discombobulate
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: people and cause people to sometimes feel you know, there's
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: that old frame when you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: like oppression if you're not used to it, right, you
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: feel like, hey, hold on, as a white guy, why
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: am I? And it's actually totally surmountable, right, as I'm
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: sure you would attest, Like a whole bunch of white guys,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of white people, whole bunch of men figured
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: it out. Figure out that you know what, I used
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: to be able to pinch someone in the office and
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: we don't do that in this decade anymore. And like,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: millions of people still completely successfully adjust to that, right,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: millions of people completely adjust to you know what, I
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: never thought about race. I never thought about who was
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: talking in a meeting, But I'm aware of that now.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: But millions of people find it harder to sometimes make
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: those adjustments. And so when you have enormous social progress
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: and change and you don't have a real plan for
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: helping the people who are more discombobulated by it, unsettled
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: by it, you don't have a plan for helping them
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: think through it, figure it themselves out. That creates one
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: enormous source of weakness for democracy. And second to the
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: financial crisis point, when you have big events and people
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: are hurt and democracy does not deliver for them, does
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: not do the thing it is supposed to do, which
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: is make their life better through their choosing, that really
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: pisses people off. So so, now, if you think of
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: the era we've lived in story number one, enormous social progress,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: people dislocated, right, it's been just this remarkable era of
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: change and gender in race, in LGBT rights, in demographics.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Story number two, it's been the era of you know, Iraq,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Hurricane Katrina, the financial crisis, COVID, twenty year wars against
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: ragtag militaries that we can't win COVID for sure. Again
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: and again, people have seen their Civics class bravado not
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: come true. This idea that we all learned in seventh
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: grade that like if people choose their leaders and George
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Washington blah blah blah, and it hasn't come true for people.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Like if you were living in New Orleans in two
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: thousand and five, do you think your Civics lesson about
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: how democracy is the best system for giving people the
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: world they want? Do you think that rings true to you?
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Like if your son died in Iraq, or you had
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: multiple children die in Iraq, do you think the notion
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: that democracy is this self correcting force where people realize
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: something's going You know, if you were in COVID and
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: seeing just lots of people die who didn't have to
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: die because public health guidance wasn't clear, or the president
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: was drinking bleach or whatever else, you haven't really experienced
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: democracy delivering. President Biden said this early in his term,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: we have to prove to people that democracy works. When
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: I was growing up in this country. I don't know
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: about you, no one.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: That was an assumption, that was just a given right.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: But he's right. And the reason he said that is
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: because it is no longer self evident to people because
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: of things like the financial crisis.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: So let me give you a little bit of pushback
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: on that. And here's what some of the academics would say.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: Democracy works when people vote. And we are recording this
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: late in January, where just after the Iowa primaries where
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: something like five percent of the population cast to vote.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: All right, but that's a caucus. When we look at
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: the broad presidential elections, the US has amongst the worst
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: voter participation. And I don't want to blame the victim
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: and I don't want to cast a spur that way,
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: but democracy works when people are involved in the democratic process.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: But when half of the eligible voters can't be bothered, well,
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: then you're just letting a small you know, the turning
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: of the minority, tell you exactly what you should do
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: instead of taking charge yourself.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Look, I think I would love to say I think
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: you're right. I mean, first of all, it's important to vote,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: and the fact that about half of people do, even
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: in a moment when everything feels like it's at stake
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: and you could end up with a dictatorship if you
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: kind of go the wrong way. Look, I'm with you. However,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: I think for all the people who do vote and
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: have voted, and who've heard that lecture from you know,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: frustrated from Obama, don't boo vote whatever, and who came
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: out and did this and that, Okay, I think a
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: lot of them would say, I have what did I get?
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: Look?
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: I am as My entire career from India onwards has
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: been in and around the question of democracy. I write
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: a lot about human beings and individual human stories, but
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: it's all. Democracy is my great abiding subject. I believe
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: in it. However, I think we have to reckon with
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: the fact that if it is not a self evident truth,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: but in fact an evidence based truth that needs to
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: prove to people, as the President said, that it works,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: that it's superior to what the Chinese are doing or whatever,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: we have to make the case, and that case has
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: to be felt deeply in people's lives and in you're
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: in my lifetime. I think a great many Americans, including
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Americans who vote, can't be faulted for feeling that when
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: things got dire and they needed help, there was no
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: government there. The government did not help. Democracy did not deliver.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: H really quite fascinating. I want to start talking about winners.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: Take all. This is really kind of a fascinating story,
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: and I have to start by asking which are the
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: winners you describe? This isn't the top ten percent or
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: the top one percent. This is like the zero point
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: zero one percent that really ruled the world.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. This is a book about people I would you know,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: call plutocrats. And the word plutocrats is sort of you know,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: the first part of the word is pluto money, rich, wealth,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: and the second is ruling, like democrat. Plutocrat is someone
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: who rules governs us through their wealth. And so this
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: is a book about a class of very wealthy and
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: powerful people, the billionaire class, you could say. And it's
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: a story of how this billionaire class has amassed extraordinary
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: wealth and power, which is something people know in part,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: and this is the twist, and what I tried to
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: break some ground on in part by using the appearance
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: of giving back, of doing good, of making a difference,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: of philanthropy, of impact investing, of all these things that
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: we talk about these days. The argument of the book
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: is that the richest, most powerful people use giving back
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: and taking care of society as a kind of ruse
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: and a distraction to continue and intensify their grabbing of
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: wealth and power, and essentially have pulled off this brilliant
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: trick of convincing lots of regular people that the billionaire
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: class holds the answers to the problems they are still
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: actively causing, that they are the solution to the problem
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: that they represent.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: So let's let's break that down a bit. And some
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: of this is a little controversial, So I'm gonna I'm
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: gonna put your feet to the fire. Hey has always
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: been ultra wealthy, the Rockefellers, the Gettys, go back to
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: you know, the Norman Kings and what happened in France.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: The wealthy have always been here with us, whether it's
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: Henry Ford or Thomas Edison, They'll always be here with us.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: What's different about today?
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, and in fact, one of the you know,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I think there's something old and constant in the book
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: and something new. I think the old and constant thing
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: is there's always, as you say, a ruling elite financially
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: And what is also a constant throughout history is ruling
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: elites always invent a story that, by the way, has
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: to be believed, not just by them, because then it
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: wouldn't work. It has to be believed by everybody about
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: why it is best to let them continue being ruling elite. Right,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: so Southern planters, plantation owners, and slave owners and enslavers
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: of people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries couldn't just
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: run their businesses. It was very, very important to invent
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: a story of racism, about the naturalness of white superiority
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: and the naturalness of black inferiority. If you didn't invent
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: that story, and by the way, convince a certain number
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: of people who were not white of the truth of
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: that story, and a certain number of people who were
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: not rich white people but were poor, if you didn't
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: have lots of people believe the story about that ruling
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: order being the best possible ruling order, it would fall apart. Right,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Racism had to be invented to help prop up that
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: kind of regime. Well, the Indian cast system has its story,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: and the British feudal time had its story. Every ruling
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: system has its story. The argument of this book is that. Yes,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: that's a constant. And I'm trying to unpack what that
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: story is now, and I think it's a different story
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: the past stories. It is not. This is natural. It's
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: not inequality as naturally you can't say that, right, No
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: rich person can go out and say I deserve to
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: be here and you all deserve to be the poorest.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Right that stories of old story wouldn't work now. So
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: a lot of the old stories have gone out the window.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: You can't say them anymore. And so I was trying
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: to explain what the news story is, and I think
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: the new story is, Yes, I may have more than
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: everybody else. Yes, these inequalities may be savage and corrosive
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: to the social order. However, I, as a rich person
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: have a unique ability to also heal this society by
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: giving back. And if you cramp my style, if you
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: tax my wealth, if you come after my business or regulation,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: if you do X y Z on the policy side,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: you are actually hurting the society. You are hurting regular
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: people because you're cramping my ability to eradicate diseases, to
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: help democracy, to go to the moon or Mars or whatever.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: So these are all governmental responsibilities. That when the tax
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: base was higher, we did more of And what you're
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: implying in the book is primarily in the Reagan era
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: and beyond when we had both aggressive tax cuts and
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: then under Bill Clinton, where we had a cap on
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: dollar compensation for executives but lots of stock options. We
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: ended up creating a class of There's always been wealthy,
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: but the argument is we've now created a new class
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: of super wealthy that the world has never seen before. Yes,
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: fair statement, yep.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: And I think, you know, going back one hundred years
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: when you really have the birth of modern philanthropy. As
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: I talk about in the book, people have always given money.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: I mean in the Islamic religion, Christian religion, there's been
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: these commandments to give back, tithe whatever. A giving is
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: an old concept. But when I'm talking about philanthropy in
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: the way that you and I would think about gates
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: as philanthropy, that's a relatively new thing, about one hundred
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: years old, and the way political scientists define it is
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: kind of the birth with the Rockefellers and Carnegie of
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: others of fortunes that were so big that they were
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: kind of it was kind of like nation state level
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: money First of.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: All, Ford Foundation, right, is a man still.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: So like you if you have you know, you're a
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: successful guy. If you have a few hundred thousand dollars
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: you want to give to some cause you're not affecting
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: governance in New York City by doing that. You may
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: help some people, you may not, right, But if you
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: had like fifty billion.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: Dollars to give away, you can move the needle.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: But you but you might, but you could also like
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: break the needle. You could also just like lose the
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: needle in your coat pocket, like you like you could
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: make the needle go backwards, like if you had fifty
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: billion dollars and you you know, this is obviously a
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: real example. People like Bill Gates and you had, you know,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Barry's thoughts about education. There's the possibility that you could
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: make education better. And there's the possibility that you could
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: become our unelected, unchosen, illegitimate czar of education creating new
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: standards that are actually a mistake, you know that that
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: have all these unintended consequences. It could work or it
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: could not work. But the question is, like who the
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: heck is you?
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: And And the issue with modern billionaire philanthropy even when
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: it's well executed like Bill Gates's, and certainly when it's not,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: like you know, others like Bill Gates really does want
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: to get rid of polio, right, He's devoted the second
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: half of his life to thinking about these problems. I
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: do not doubt his sincerity. Where something like GS Gibbs
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: was literally invented during the financial crisis, when it's marketing,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: when there was like New York Times investigations how Goldman had.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: Like so, let me ask you a more challenging question.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: If the very wealthy want to give money to fight disease,
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: or they want to give to the symphony, or they
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: want to put public works, I don't really care about that.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: Where I start to get concerned is where, through the
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: guise of tax exempt deductions, they begin to get very political.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: So you have these think tanks that certainly don't have
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: the common man's best interest at heart, affecting legislation, affecting
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: who gets appointed as judges, affecting tax policy, and all
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: this comes under the guise of philanthropy, when really it's
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: a very And again some of this is specifically mentioned
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: in your book, very very specific tax exempt impact on
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: maintaining the status quo for the carried interest exemption and
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: the exemption on long term capital gains or the shorter
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: ta like, there's a lot of things that are described
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: as philanthropy, but it's really lobbying.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, look, I think you have to look at the
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: whole arc of this money. So I think the American
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: business model, kind of social business model, we've ended up with,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: is telling business people that in phase one of your life,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: you have to make as much money as possible, in
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: as ruthless and corner cutting away as possible. That's just
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: the norm, right, And a lot of the old kind
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: of what is now thought of as inefficiencies that were
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: in corporate America in the fifties, sixties and seventies really
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: got edged out by shareholder pressure, shareholder activism, the McKenzie
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: kind of revolution, etc. Where all slack was eliminated, right,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: and that your janitor who might have been an employee
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: of your company in the fifties and sixties was now
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: a contractor of a contractor of a contractor, no health insurance,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: nothing you know, can and just imagine that writ large
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: for the whole economy, every piece optimized, right, So that
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: happened and the lesson. I think for business people, the
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: message of the post Reagan era was cut every corner
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: you can you get legally or illegally in some cases,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: pay as little as taxes in taxes as you can
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: possibly do. If you have to do double dutch with
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: an Irish sandwich or this and that, do that right.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Pay people as little as possible, take on as little
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: as risk. There's a book called the Great Risk Shift.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Shift as much risk onto workers and consumers as you
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: can so the corporation is not bearing the risk. And
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: then you'll make more money than you would make if
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: you didn't do all those things. Okay, that's phase one.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Phase two is now the Phase two starts with workers
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: being paid less than they would otherwise have been paid,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: the commons in many ways being kind of starved, but
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: companies having more money. And then phase two is like, okay,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: now get back. Now that you've made all this money,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: maybe more money than you would have otherwise made, give
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: back and give to you know, after school programs for
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: boys and coloss here's the problem, right, Phase one of
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: your life in that model has has kind of created
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: these social problems. Or Phase one is why those kids
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: don't have a good education five days a week, and
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: then phase two you might give them a boys and
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: girls club to go to on Thursday afternoons. Right in
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: phase one, you are creating a world in which you
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: know there's not enough money for universal pre k or
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: there's not enough world for community college classes for people
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: to reinvent themselves, and they get laid off. And then
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: in phase two you're creating like a little progra for
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: like one hundred people in Appalachia to you know, transition
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: out of coal mining.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: There's no symmetry though.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: There's no symmetry, but the reality is is what is
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: done by operational daylight is just on a vaster scale,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: infinitely vaster scale then what can be cleaned up by
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: philanthropic moonlight. However, the philanthropic moonlighting is marketed much more
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: heavily than what is done in operational daylight. Right, so
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: we don't really know except when we get occasional glimpses.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about something that I'm intrigued about. In
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: the book, you discuss the concept of the rise of
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: thought leaders, displacing academic experts and public intellectuals, primarily driven
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: through non expertise selection. That we have this group of
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: I don't even want to call them experts, almost self
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: determined experts that very much are influencing policy in a
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: way that true experts might not explain.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a chapter on the rise of the critics,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: called the Critic and the thought Leader, and the rise
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: of the thought leader, as in the way that I
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: define it in the book, a kind of thinker who
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: is safe, who is deemed safe for the kind of
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: plutocratic establishment. And so it goes back to that notion
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: of ruling elites have to invent and nurture a story
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: that justifies their rule. And part of that is that
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: there are certain thinkers out there who are threatening to
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: the official story of the time, and there's other people
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: out there who are kind of willing to play ball
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: and spread ideas that are helpful to the ruling story
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: of the time.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: So, if you think about pick one realm that I
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: write about in the book telling the story of Amy Cutty,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: if you think about the area of the empowerment of
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: women feminism, issues with the workplace and the way workplaces
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: treat women, institutions treat women, there is a non plutocratic
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: friendly way of talking about that issue and advocating on
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: their issue, and there is a plutocratic friendly version, right,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: So the non plutocratic friendly one is like real structural change,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: whether policy things like you know, paid paid family leave
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: and medical leave, which so many women in the political
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: sphare have advocated for, or universal pre K and childcare
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: and things like that that would make it easier for many,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: many women to juggle all their roles and obligations and aspirations.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Kinds of ideas that would really empower women have been
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: shown in other societies to have those effects, but are expensive, right,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: the examples I just gave you all things that would
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: cost company's money, costs rich people money. Right, think about
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: the Elizabeth Warren campaign to cent wealth tax to fund
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: precisely those kinds of things. Well, that's a that's a
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: kind of way of empowering women that is not does
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: not thrill the plutocrats. Okay, now here's another. Here's something
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: they like more lean in, right, I mean one of them,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: a plutocrat herself.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: Wrote literally that book, that's the title.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Cheryl Sandberg's book, right, And what was the argument that actually,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: very much within this system we have, if women just
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: leaned in, raised their hand more tried to be more
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: assertive at the meeting.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: Hey, I did it goodn't you?
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: Correct?
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: I help?
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: That's kind of an arrogant statement.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: I helped just I helped rise. I rose to the
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: top and helped destroy American democracy. Any any sister can
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: do it too.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: And so you look at this kind of Cheryl Sandberg's
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: lean in idea as like, Wow, that is costless empowerment
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: of women. That is a way of empowering women that
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: literally would cost the wealthy establishment nothing.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: As opposed to an equal rights amendment that mandates the
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: same salary for the same job, correct sog.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: So what do you think is going to be on
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: the main stage of TED? Which which talks do you
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: think are going to be given? You think at the
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Clinton Global Initiative there's going to be a talk about
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: how the kinds of wealthy donors that donate to the
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Clinton Foundation.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: So I'm so glad you brought that up, because that's
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: what I've been thinking about. Once you start accepting donations
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: from outside parties, does that mean you lose your academic
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: freedom and now you're beholden to whatever belief system they
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: want to push? Is there is there a way around
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: that or it's just.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: There is actually and I think this is not as
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: hard a problem as it as it seems like. I mean,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: we have lots of institutions that do take money from
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: wealthy people and somehow have some norms around protecting the
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: integrity of the work.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: So, I mean, the New York Times has advertising, you know,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: I think you could make some comments at the margins
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: that you know, the housing section has more about fancy
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: life than it does about right right. But in general,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: I think most people who advertise the New York Times,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: who work in the New York Times, who read the
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: New York Times would generally understand that like Gucci just
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: because it buys an ad is not placing a call
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: to an editor and saying I want this story. Like
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: that's not how the New York Times works. People are
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: going to listen to this thinking I'm crazy, Like it's really.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: There's a firewall.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: There's a firewall. It's a pretty well star firewall, like
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: in these universities, right, even the best universities. I mean
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: they you know, there's this whole issues with donors and
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: these centers. But like the average professor mm hmm. At
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: these years, we've built a pretty good system of the
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: average professor being relatively insulated from what donors want. And
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: part of what is so bizarre right now with the
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: bill Ackmans of the world is like they're trying to
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: maybe should In other words, we have institutions that have
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: a pretty good record of being able to take money,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: whether you whatever you think about that and building some
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: culture and norms. I never met an advertiser once, or
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: spoke to an advertiser once, or spoke to anybody in
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: the advertising department of the New York Times once when
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: I worked there for eleven years. Like those are just
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: not conversations that happen.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: But in the modern world. And we haven't talked about
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: the Koch brothers yet, but you look at the Mercato School,
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: you look at a lot of donations specifically to institutions
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: in academia that come with.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: Absolutely and that's becoming more and more than norm My
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: only point is some places have solved this problem, and
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: we should look at it.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: I think you could have, you know, conferences of ideas
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: that that fine, take money from rich people, and you
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: could create some kind of firewall, norms whatever, and learn
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: from the New York Times. I don't think people have
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: figured out how to do that, but the answer is
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: there is. I'm just suggesting. Look, I would prefer to
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: live in a world in which these fortunes were not
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: so gigantic to begin with, it didn't have this influence.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: But even in the world we live in, there are
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: thoughtful ways to say, you can take the money, but
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: you don't get to decide what's on stage. You don't
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: get to decide what opera we do.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: So I want to connect the two books on that
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: exact point. From worders take all to the Persuaders, And
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: it just happens that within the Persuaders, one of the
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: discussions you have is on the decline of institutions and
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: how they've fallen, which is not a coincidence. There are
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: forces out there that have been trying to do this.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: It just happened. In this week's Business Week there was
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: a whole analysis of all the drops in institutional approval
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: level at just about every level of society. It's really
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: quite astonishing, and it raises the question, how can a
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: democracy persist if the institutional aspects and it's everything. It's
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: the church, and it's the Supreme Court, and it's the military,
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: and it's the police, and it's Congress and as well
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: as the media. If every one of these entities is
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: falling in the belief system of the average individual, what
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: are the ramifications of that for democracy?
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: I think we are in this very complicated moment and
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: situation in which we have to kind of there's a
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: circular problem if we have to show people, prove to
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: people the democracy can make their lives better, as you
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: and I were talking about before, but we need them
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: to trust us to even have the authority to make
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: people's lives better.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: In other words, with the kind of Senate that President
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Biden has, these kind of razor thin margins, a hostile house,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: he can't do a lot of things that would make
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: people's lives better. And so then people's lives don't get better,
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: and then people don't vote for you to have more authority.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Give you a bigger House margin, give you a bigger
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: Senate margin, and about it and then complain about it,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: and again, like I think people, I think voters are
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: often wrong about when they kind of try to diagnose
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: what the actual issue is or what the best policy
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: solution would be. But I think voters are very intelligent
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: about do they feel like the people who are in
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: charge care about them and are and are kind of
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: making their life better in a material way. And part
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: of the puzzle of the Republican Party in recent decades
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: has been its ability to win sometimes although not often,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: while not materially delivering for people. And the way it
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: has done that is by kind of weaponizing these social
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: changes we were talking about.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: So let me stop you there because I want to
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: roll this back to the Persuaders and the prologue of
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: the book, which is fascinating, right. So you tell the
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: story of these two women who turn out to be
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: Russian agents. They go on across country trip across America,
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: sort of a little bit of find out who we
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: Americans are in order to report back to the motherland.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: Tell us about these two women and what did they
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: find and how was it weaponized.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: This is a kind of Russian Thumba and Luisa, these
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: two intelligence analysts arrived. They travel around the country. We
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: don't know exactly, you know, who they met with, but
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: they kind of went around, went to probably you know,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: rallies or it kind of took in the political scene,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: maybe met with people all around the country. And we
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: do know that what they were doing was gathering not
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: intel in the in the like Cloak and Daggers covert,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: just like what's going on in this society out in
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: the world, Because what they were actually feeding back home
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: was this giant Russian online campaign to you know, toxify
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: the American discourse.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: The Internet Research Agency cranks out millions of tweets, millions
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: of Facebook posts. The people who run that have not
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: done a good job clearing this out, and it has
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: a huge impact on our discourse.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: And you know, I very like I whenever I can't
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: figure something out, I try to go to the text,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: go to the original sourcemans here, go talk to people
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: with this Russian thing. There was so much stuff in
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: the they were trying to get Trump elected. They were
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: to I was like, let me read this stuff myself, right,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: So I downloaded. I picked two of the most prominent
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: accounts in the Russian effort, and I downloaded thousands of
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: each of their tweets, and I just read through them
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: almost like a book, like read them like a story.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: Started classifying them as this you know, crazy spreadsheet where
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: I was analyzing them and what I realized, I mean,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: one of them was trying to get Trump elected. The
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: other one was like a pro Black Lives Matter left.
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: It's left about It's less about getting something done and
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: more about just creating.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: They I realized as I read these tweets, First of all,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: I read them with this kind of weird hate hate admiration.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Right they I don't know it. It's like when you're
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: in a breakup with someone and they they say something
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: so mean to you, but it's so insightful, you know,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: and it's like, Wow, you really get me, and I
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: never want to be with you ever again. I feel
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: like they saw the truth of us, this this mission,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: and their ability to poke at certain trigger points. It
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: was just a really astute, well informed effort. So what
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: are they getting out of it? If one's trying to
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: get Trump elected, the others not. What is the project?
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: And I think the project, as I started to interpret it,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: was less about this particular outcome and less even just
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: about fomenting division, which is the other thing people said.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: I think it was about promoting a fatalism in Americans
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: about other kinds of Americans.
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: And that that leads to not only distrusting institutions, but
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: us distrusting it.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, and for anyone who's you know, ever been in
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: a relationship or relationship counseling, You know, like, fights are
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: not actually dangerous in a relationship. It's actually couples who
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: don't fight that you got to worry about. Contempt is
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: fatal in a relationship. Can't come back from contempt, very
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: hard to come back from contempt, that kind of writing off, Oh,
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: you are just always that way, You've always been that way. Ugh,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: I couldn't. Why do I even bother that? When couples
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: don't really have much of a shit, that's when it's dead, right,
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: And I realized the specific attitude they were trying to
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: cultivate in US was not division, which is you and
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: I believe in a different tax rate. You and I
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: believe in tax rate eighty percent apart from each other.
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: It's not it's since the tax system we're but me
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: me thinking you're just some money guy, right, and you
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: will never listen to reason you don't care about right.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: That is really different than you and I having a
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: different number in mind for a top tax rate. And
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: what I realized looking at the Russian thing is that
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: they're you know, big, but in some ways modest in
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: terms of the scope of the American conversation. Their effort
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: was to turn us fatalistic about each other, pessimistic about
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: the possibility that we can evolve, change, grow, learn, And
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: we have been playing so brilliantly into their plan and
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: the book The Persuaders as an attempt to say, we
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: got to get off this track. We have to stop
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: being useful idiots for the Russian intelligence services and actually
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: reclaim this notion that people can change. People's minds can change.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: It's the only thing that has ever changed societies. It
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: happens all the time. It happens every day. It still
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: is happening right now, and we have to kind of,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: you know, pull up our bridges and get back to
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: the work of persuasion that we're going to save this country.
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: Huh. Really amazing. You had a really interesting column recently
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: about the upcoming twenty twenty four election. The real battleground
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: of twenty twenty four is emotion. Fascinating stuff.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: Explain why, Look, emotion is the new Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: It's the swing state.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: It's the swing state. And what I mean by that is,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: I think when we talk about politics, we're often talking
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: about the wrong thing. We talk about policies, right, or
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: we talk about crises like the border, or we talk
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: about issues like critical race theory, the agendap issue like that,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: or issues like climate change and what do we do
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: about that? But what is actually motivating voters? Not motivating voters,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: riling people up, not riling people up leading to certain
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: kinds of candidates versus others. Being attractive to people is
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: often deeper stuff, right, And I think those of us
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: who talk and think about politics for a living are
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: often quite blind to that because we are quite interested
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: in policy. We think Medicare for All has an interesting
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: idea to talk about. But I think what I've learned
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: spending most of my life writing about regular people dealing
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: with the big forces of the world, is that for
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: most people, the things that really animate them, the questions
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: that we animate them are much more in the kind
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: of emotional terrain. So taking a shoe like CRT, critical
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: race theory, honest history in schools, all this stuff, right,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: I don't think any of that is about the stuff
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: that it's formally about. I think that is about the
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: universal dread that every parent has that your kid will
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: drift away from you, which, by the way, they will.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: That's the meaning of life of parents. Your kid will
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: drift away from you once they come out, no going
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: back in. Right, it's awful for us parents. You hug
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: your kids close. One day, they stop wanting as many hugs. Right,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: one day they don't come into bed and cuddled anymore.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: Too old for that one day they you know, mom
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: and faught right. The whole process of parenting is like
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: losing your kids slowly into their own life. And what
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: is this CRT stuff? But weaponizing that fear. Your kids
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: are going to learn stuff that will make them think
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: differently from you. Your kids are going to know a
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: different story about the country than the one you know.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: Your kids will be turned a gender according to this
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: fantasy that is not the gender you knew them to me.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: It is all weaponizing this completely human thing of my
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: kids are going to grow up and leave me. Right,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: my kids are going to become out of my control.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: And I think when we I'm just taking that one issue,
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: when we actually start that, you could do that analogy
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: any issue.
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: You think there's border things about you think anyone in
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: the country understands the actual nuance immigration positive order. People
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: feel invaded psychologically by the era we live in, people
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: feel like, ah, there's not enough for me. I don't
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: know if I can get ahead, Like the whole world's
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: coming in. Right, that's just like a deep emotional experience
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: that then shows up and oh yeah, the border that
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: sounds like what may be responsible for the way I'm feeling.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: Right, So I find that fascinating that that you managed
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: to take a broad spectrum of high resonance policy issues
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: and just boiled it down to, Hey, they're pushing an
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: emotional hot button, and if you don't figure out how
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: to play that same game, if you're on the other side,
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: you're gonna lose.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: Think about the kids who are so incredibly Areiculate and
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: vision Are and Climate gen Z climate people. First of all,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: they're absolutely right on the policy, and they're the only
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: people who might save us. But I think when I
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: even talk to them, there's it even a deeper thing there,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: like their parents. If you're twenty five, your parents are
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: telling you how much they love you every day. If
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: you're lucky, your parents are leaving you a dying world
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: while telling you they love you. That's really confusing, right,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: So if you are a pro democracy leader who's trying
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: to build coalitions around climate, around honest history, or whatever else.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: I just think the essay was a plea to understand
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: those depths. It doesn't mean the policy issues are not important.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: It means that if you are not speaking to people
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: at the level which they're actually living these things and
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: understanding those dynamics, you're leaving them open to authoritarians who
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: are always good at speaking to emotions.
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: And that's what I found so persuasive about that essay.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: I strongly suggest everybody go read The real bad ground
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: of twenty twenty four is emotion. I only have you
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: for another four or five minutes. Let's jump to our
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: speed round, our favorite questions. We ask all of our guests,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: starting with what have you been listening to or watching?
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: What's been keeping you intellectually challenged these days?
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: Watching? You know, like you have joint bank accounts and
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: individual bank accounts. I have shows for myself and shows
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: for everyone in my family. So my son and I
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: are watching Seinfeld. He's almost nine. We're starting from episode one,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: season one and trying to go all the way through.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: Is nine the right age?
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: I think he's just getting like a literally okay, maybe
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: a year short, but I was right. Yeah, my daughter
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: and I are watching Is It Cake? When I watch
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: with Something with the two of them together, great British
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: bacon show. I watch Atlanta by myself, that's my solo show.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: And I'm watching Veep right now with my wife.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: The first season is very tough to get through. Yeah,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: it's very cringey the first couple episodes, as is politics.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, go ahead.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: Mentors who helped shape your career.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: I talked about her a little bit, Jill Abrams, and
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: she got me in a journalism, gave me a chance,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: advocated for me, and I don't think I'd be a
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: journalist if it wasn't for her.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about books. What are some of your favorites.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: What are you reading currently?
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: I'm reading this book everybody was talking about a couple
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: of years ago, called A Little Life and Novel. It's
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: most wrenching, searing, awfully painful, but brilliant novel by Hannah
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: Hanya Jana Gehara, So so good. And then you know,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: in terms of the books that have been most important
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: to me historical, I would say my genre of narrative nonfiction.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: So of the most important books, Behind the Beautiful Forevers
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: by Catherine Boo Random Family. You know, I'm really interested
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: in these books that kind of do this deep immersive
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: work following, following people through their lives. That's the kind
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: of work that I've dedicated myself to doing.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: And our final two questions, what sort of advice would
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: you give a recent college grad in a career in journalism.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: It's tough. The business model in many ways is gone.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: But I go to parties every month and meet people,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: do all kinds of things, and ninety five percent of
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: people I meet don't believe in what they do. Huh,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: don't think it's socially important. It wasn't the thing that
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: they promised themselves they'd be doing when they were twenty.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: And if you become a journalist and stick with it
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: and find a way throw all the ups and downs,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: you will not be one.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: Of those people like really interesting.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: You will love what you do and believe in what
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: you do and know that you're doing something that is
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: good for the world.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: And our final question, what do you know about the
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: world today? You wish you knew twenty plus years ago
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: when you were first getting started.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: I wish that I knew how fragile the American system
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: is I grew up on a myth of how utterly
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: durable it is, and it turned out not to be.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: And I wish I had seen that earlier and been
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: able to see those cracks earlier. There were always people
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: all along telling us about those things. Sometimes we don't
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: listen to those people early enough. And I've tried to
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: become a better listener to the people telling us things
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: before everybody else.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: That's a really insightful response. And hindsight's always twenty twenty.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: But knowing what you know now, and you go back
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: and look throughout American history, like the red flags were
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: there starting with the communist witch hunts in the fifties,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: how we treated the Japanese during World War Two, how
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: long it took to give women the vote, Like you
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: could just keep going back, Jim oh, and just work
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: your way back decade by decade. There were lots and
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: lots of warnings out there.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: And lots of people waving those red flags who we
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: didn't listen to.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: And no, no, no, the system is fine, which kind
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: of raises a question, is the system really sturdier than
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: we realized it survived all this, or does the cumulative
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: damage of all these little cracks eventually lead to some breakage.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: I think the system has been sturdy in that it's held,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: but under the system, awful things have been able to
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: happen in this country. You know, Slavery was a legal,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: constitutional part of this system until it wasn't. Internment was
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: a legal part of this country and part of the
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: system until it wasn't. Segregation was a part of this
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: country until it wasn't. You know, criminalization of homosexuality was
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: part of the system. So the system has held, but
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: the system can tolerate a great deal of barbarism. And
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: I think we've what we're learning now is that we
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: just have to we have to make sure that our
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: definition of the system holding is not you know, having
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: some kind of formal familiarity of the New Hampshire Primary
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: and this and that and all these kind of rights
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: and rituals that we recognize, while in fact what's going
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: on under the hood is barbarism. And I think that's
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: that's going to be a decisive choice the country faces
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: later this year.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: Really really fascinating on Thank you for being so generous
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: with your time. We have been speaking with on Georgadis.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: He is the author of Winners Take All, and more recently,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: The Persuaders. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and
• 1:05:44
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• 1:05:47
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• 1:05:51
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• 1:05:55
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• 1:06:01
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• 1:06:06
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• 1:06:11
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• 1:06:14
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• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: I'm Barry Dhelts. You've been listening to Masters in Business
• 1:06:34
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