Earlier today, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott entered the race for President. That makes him the sixth Republican candidate to get into the race, in a crowded attempt to beat the current frontrunner, former President Donald Trump. So for today’s episode, a rerun of my conversation with Tim Scott from last summer. As you’ll hear, Scott’s approach is fundamentally different from many of his fellow republicans in that he’s the ultimate optimist. In part, that optimism comes from his own story. Scott’s grandfather picked cotton in the segregated south. He never learned to read or write. Within two generations, without money or connections, his grandson became a U.S. senator, and today, throws his hat in to become President of the United States.Scott told me he is frustrated at all the pessimism, including from inside his own party — and he’s frustrated at the notion that America is in decline. Though I hope Scott is right, you’ll hear that I challenge him on that idea. I see very good reasons for Americans to be fed up with the state of the union and deeply worried about the future of the country.We also talked about Trump, the state of the GOP and what it’s like to be the Senate’s only black Republican. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seventy-five years ago this week, the Jewish community of Palestine (known as the yishuv) gathered in the art museum of Tel Aviv—then a city of less than 200,000 inhabitants—in order to perform a resurrection. Thirty-seven people—36 men and one woman—were about to sign Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which would reestablish Jewish political sovereignty in the Holy Land for the first time since the destruction of the Second Temple 2,000 years ago.They gathered in that museum just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz, just three years after six million Jews were murdered in Europe, to establish Israel as a place where the Jewish people could at last control their own fate and destiny and safety. More than that, in the land of Israel, there was a sense—not just among religious Jews, but all Jews—that they were finally going home.The Israel of the early days—poor, socialist, secular, where food rationing was the norm— feels so far away. Now, Israel is an economic superpower, a world leader in high tech. And the socialist left that built the country has given way to a political right that dominates the Jewish state. But throughout its 75 years, Israel has always prided itself on being the world’s only Jewish democracy. A liberal democracy in a sea of undemocratic regimes.Now, hundreds of thousands of Israelis are worried that that identity—an identity that Israelis pride themselves on and have defended since its existence—is in danger. They’ve been taking to the streets, night after night for the past five months, with Israeli flags in their hands chanting and demanding one thing: “democratya.” Democracy.One of those people is my guest today, Daniel Gordis: rabbi, academic, American Israeli, and author of eight books, including the just published Impossible Takes Longer: 75 Years After Its Creation, Has Israel Fulfilled Its Founders’ Dreams?On today’s episode, Danny helps us make sense of this complicated, tumultuous, beautiful, often indecipherable place: What did Israel’s founders want for the country? Has their promise been fulfilled? How did the Jewish people manage to become a world economic powerhouse after two in every three European Jews had been slaughtered? And in light of the ongoing political turmoil, what does the future of this small, miraculous country—both Jewish and democratic—hold? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A few years ago, writer and cartoonist Tim Urban started becoming troubled by what he saw going on in the world around him. He noticed that while technology was progressing in unbelievable ways—people were going to space on private rocket ships and computers were the size of Starbucks coffee cups—it seemed like people were unhappier than ever before. We were petty. We were turning against each other. We were tribal. And he noticed that the very things that had allowed for unbelievable technological progress—things like democracy, liberalism, and humanism—were under siege.Why was everything such a mess? When did things get so tribal? And why do humans do this stuff to each other? Urban’s new book, What's Our Problem? A Self-Help Book for Societies, is an answer to those questions and more. Like his other work on his blog, Wait But Why, Urban uses comically simple drawings, stick figures, and charts, to make the most complex and profound questions that humans face tangible and affecting. In this book, Urban looks back at hundreds of thousands of years of history and explains how we are now living through more change, more rapidly, than at any other time—the stakes of that are almost too high to comprehend—but what he argues is that the danger we face in the end is not global warming. It’s not an asteroid racing toward Earth. It’s not an impending alien invasion. It’s ourselves.On today’s episode, Tim Urban explains how we got ourselves into this mess, and how we can also get ourselves out of it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Thiel doesn’t shy away from taking big bets. From Facebook (he was the company’s first outside investor) to Gawker (he successfully conspired to put the website out of business) and, of course, to Trump (he threw his support behind the nominee in 2016).Unlike many in the Silicon Valley set, who often say the popular thing in public and the thing they actually believe behind closed doors, Thiel has used his voice and his fortune to steer the country in the direction he believes is right—despite tremendous blowback. That was true in last year’s midterms, when Thiel threw his support behind two anti-establishment Republican candidates: Arizona’s Blake Masters and Ohio’s JD Vance. But the billionaire entrepreneur and investor tells me in this conversation that he’s changing course. When I asked him who he’d back in 2024, he demurred. He says he’s decided to step away from supporting select politicians and instead is urging the political right to shift its focus from the culture wars to issues he believes matters more: like economic growth and tech innovation. We cover a lot in this conversation. Why does Thiel believe that Democrats are the evil party and Republicans are the stupid party? Why is our infrastructure so far behind other nations? And why are Americans so impressed by the apps on our phones instead of dreaming of the next Sputnik?Also: A.I., China, TikTok, Twitter, the right way to defeat what Elon Musk musk calls the “woke mind virus” and what Thiel’s going to bet on next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just six months ago, few outside of Silicon Valley had heard of OpenAI, the company that makes the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT. Now, this application is used daily by over 100 million users, and some of those people use it more often than Google. Within just months of its release, it has become the fastest-growing app in history. ChatGPT can write essays and code. It can ace the bar exam, write poems and song lyrics, and summarize emails. It can give advice, scour the internet for information, and diagnose an illness given a set of blood results, all in a matter of seconds. And all of the responses it generates are eerily similar to those of an actual human being. For many people, it feels like we’re on the brink of something world-changing. That the technology that powers ChatGPT, and the emergent AI revolution more broadly, will be the most critical and rapid societal transformation in the history of the world to date. If that sounds like hyperbole, don’t take it from me: Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai said AI’s impact will be more profound than the discovery of fire. Computer scientist and Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng said AI is the new electricity. Some say it’s the new printing press. Others say it’s more like the invention of the wheel, or the airplane. Many predict the AI revolution will make the internet seem like a small step. And just last month, The Atlantic ran a story comparing AI to nuclear weapons.But there’s a flip side to all of this optimism, and it’s a dark one. Many smart people believe that AI could make human beings obsolete. Thousands of brilliant technologists—people like Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak—are so concerned about this software that last month they called for an immediate pause on training any AI systems more powerful than the current version of ChatGPT. One of the pioneers of AI, Eliezer Yudkowsky, claims that if AI continues on its current trajectory, it will destroy life on Earth as we know it. He recently wrote, “If somebody builds a too-powerful AI, under present conditions, I expect that every single member of the human species and all biological life on Earth dies shortly thereafter.”Which is it? Is AI the end of the world? Or the dawn of a new one? To answer that question for us today: Sam Altman. Sam is the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, which makes him arguably one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley, and if you believe the hype about AI, the world. I ask him: is the technology that powers ChatGPT going to fundamentally transform life on Earth as we know it? In what ways? How will AI affect our basic humanity, our jobs, our understanding of intelligence, our relationships? And are the people in charge of this powerful technology, people like himself, ready for the responsibility? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonathan Rosen has spent the last few years trying to understand the story of his closest childhood friend, Michael Laudor. Michael Laudor was, by all accounts, a genius. Maybe even a prodigy. Academically, he excelled beyond belief. Things that are hard for most young students, like reading and comprehending large volumes of material, came easily for him. His charm was infectious, and seemed to immediately attract the attention of any room he entered. As he navigated young adulthood and college, and eventually law school at Yale, one thing was clear: everyone was drawn to Michael.Then Michael did something unimaginable: he killed his fiancée.  The tragedy of Michael’s story is captured in Jonathan’s new book, The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions. It’s a breathtaking account of friendship, the harrowing and insidious nature of mental illness as it takes over someone’s life, and most of all, it investigates the invisible forces—cultural, political, and ideological—that shaped Michael’s terrible fortune, and America’s ongoing failure to get people like Michael the help that they so desperately need. On today’s episode, Jonathan shares this personal story of extreme tragedy. Which is also, as we discuss, an American tragedy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Exodus—the story of the Israelites’ freedom from Egyptian slavery 3,000 years ago—is the ultimate story of freedom. And not just for Jews. But for people seeking liberation from subjugation in so many other times and places. Including here in America. From the founding fathers, to abolitionists like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas, to presidents like Lincoln and leaders like Martin Luther King Jr, the themes and symbols and moral truths of the Exodus story have been at the core of how Americans seeking freedom from tyranny have seen themselves. One could argue that without the Exodus there might be no America.To make that case last Passover—and to take us on a tour of the way the Exodus has been used throughout American history—we talked to Rabbi Meir Soloviechik, who teaches at Yeshiva University and helms the oldest synagogue in the United States. We loved the conversation so much that we wanted to share it again this year.You don’t need to be a believer to love this episode. You just need to be concerned with how divided we have become, how we have lost a shared sense of reality, a shared sense of ethics, and shared stories from which we can draw universal meaning and inspiration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New York City has had a rough few years. It lost nearly four percent of its population during the pandemic. There was a historic crime surge, particularly violent crime. Buildings were empty as people continued to work from home. Pundits all over the world declared New York City “over.”Into that breach, last year, stepped a new mayor: Eric Adams.He’s the kid raised in a rat-infested tenement in Bushwick, beaten up by police as a teen, who later became a cop himself. He’s tough on crime, but also critical of police brutality. He’s the health nut who makes his own vegan ice cream, but who also likes to go out on the town. But above all else, he’s the mayor who’s tried-and-true New York City. Adams was elected on the promise of not just bringing back New York, but of reviving an old kind of Democrat that today feels like an endangered species: a practical, personable, no-bullshit type of politician. As one congressman put it: “He’s an antidote to the party’s likeability problem.” More than a year in: has Mayor Adams lived up to the hype?Today, has Mayor Adams fulfilled his promise to make the city safer? How will he address massive educational setbacks in public schools? Does New York City risk becoming like San Francisco? What does he really think of AOC? And is his brand of politics winnable nationally for the Democrats?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People don’t usually think about Adele in the same breath as Johnny Cash. The Beastie Boys in the same breath as Jay-Z. Justin Bieber and Slayer. Neil Young and Lady Gaga. The Dixie Chicks and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But all of these iconic artists have a single person in common: producer Rick Rubin.Ever since Rubin created Def Jam Recordings from his college dorm room forty years ago and helped launch the global phenomenon that is hip hop, Rubin has produced some of the world’s most popular records. If you look at his discography, it’s almost unbelievable. Rubin works on up to ten records a year, and has become something of a high-priest of popular music. Today, I talk to Rubin about his new book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being. We talk about what it means to be creative, how to trust your own gut, separating the art from the artist, what he thinks of growing self-censorship in our music, art and culture, and what it means to listen in an era of non-stop distraction.And to follow Rubin’s next projects, you can visit tetragrammaton.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The last time economist Tyler Cowen was on Honestly about a year ago, inflation was the highest it had been in 40 years, gas prices were nearly $7 a gallon in many parts of the country, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine was leading to a lot of fears about breadlines and nuclear war. A lot has changed since then. Especially in the last two weeks.Today, Cowen is back on the show to once again explain: what the heck is going on with the economy!? We talk about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the psychology of bank runs, whether or not we’re seeing a larger banking crisis, recession anxiety, persistent inflation, a beleaguered tech industry, the seduction of crypto in this moment and the potential salvation of AI. Plus, how many hours Tyler spends on ChatGPT each day, what he thinks of his interview with Sam Bankman-Fried, how altruism is a form of power and why Silicon Valley is a scapegoat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices