The Realignment

Zachary Karabell, author of Inside Money: Brown Brothers Harriman and the American Way of Power, joins The Realignment to discuss the rise of American finance, the rise and fall of “the establishment,” America and China’s long divorce process, and why American’s will have to adjust to being a “normal” country moving forward. Buy Zachary's book using our Bookshop link: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Purchase Brad’s books (Amazon Unbound, The Upstarts, and The Everything Store) at The Realignment’s Bookshop store: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-realignment-bookshop Brad Stone, Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News and author of Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, joins The Realignment to discuss the challenges, impact, and scope of Jeff Bezos and Amazon’s ambitions in cloud computing, streaming services, news media, retail, politics and more.

Buy a book using our bookshop link: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment Due to a last-minute booking snafu (and a lack of backup episodes), we’re releasing a book recommendations update episode instead of our usual programming. Don’t worry, we’ll be back with new content the rest of the week

Niall Ferguson, author of Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, joins the show to discuss why some societies fall apart while others rise in the face of doom, how a Cold War between the U.S. and China could lead to catastrophe, and analyze the pathologies facing modern America through the lenses of imperial decline, finance, institutional decline, and social fragmentation. Special Niall Ferguson Bookshop Link: https://bookshop.org/lists/niall-ferguson-bookshop Subscribe to The Realignment’s Substack, now released on Thursdays: https://therealignment.substack.com/

Senator Josh Hawley returns to The Realignment to discuss the right’s fraying relationship with the tech industry and what antitrust enforcement can (and can’t), accomplish.

We’re on vacation this week, but rather than not publish anything, we’re releasing a special episode featuring the entire team that puts together the show. Join Marshall, Saagar, Phil, James, and Emma for episode, book, and podcast recommendations to hold you over until next week.

Cade Metz, technology correspondent with The New York Times and author of Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World, joins The Realignment to discuss the past, present, and future of AI and the actors and players that will shape the technology’s future.

Buy a book using our bookshop link: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment Julia Galef, author of The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t and host of the Rationally Speaking podcast, joins The Realignment to make the case for embracing the “scout” mindset in order to make better decisions and avoid tribalism and wishful thinking, as opposed to the knee-jerk bias of the “soldier” mindset.

Note: During today’s episode, we discuss our plans to launch a Supercast subscription in May: https://www.supercast.com/product. A bunch of you have already written that you’d like to support the show financially, so please email us at realignmentpod@gmail.com if you’d subscribe to a paid Realignment membership, plus we’d love to hear any suggestions with what additional features we should add to make it worthwhile. Don’t worry though, we won’t paywall the Tuesday, Thursday, or Reboot episodes we already offer. Marshall and Saagar answer the backlog of Realignment Qs on the impact of a U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East and Central Asia, whether you need elite credentials to impact policy in D.C., how to skeptically discuss marijuana without sounding like a NARC, how to support the show (financially or otherwise), and more...

Buy a book using our bookshop link: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment Zachary Carter, Writer in Residence at the Omidyar Network and author of The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, returns to The Realignment to discuss the government response to COVID, how capitalism will and won’t change after the pandemic, and how economic policy debates played out over the past three decades.