The Realignment

Tim Marshall, author of The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World, The Age of Walls: How Barriers Between Nations Are Changing Our World, and Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World, joins The Realignment to discuss how the flashpoints, conflicts, and questions that will define the 21st century through a geographic lens. Subscribe to The Realignment’s Substack Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/ Visit The Realignment’s Bookshop to support the show and purchase Tim Marshall’s books: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-realignment-bookshop Listen to our bonus segment and learn more about Lincoln Network’s FACET Fellowship here: https://www.hackpolicy.org/facet

Will Papper, co-founder of SyndicateDAO and Julian Weisser, On Deck co-founder and ODX investor, join The Realignment to discuss their work as contributors to ConstitutionDAO to purchase one of 11 surviving copies of the U.S. Constitution from a Sotheby’s auction this Thursday via a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO. They discuss their interest in Web3 projects, how Web3 concepts like DAO can fix the internet, and why decentralized organizational models hold so much promise. For more on ConstitutionDAO and additional Web3 resources:https://www.constitutiondao.com/ Packy McCormick, Let’s Buy the Constitution: https://www.notboring.co/p/lets-buy-the-us-constitution Jack Raines, We the Peopl3: https://youngmoneyweekly.substack.com/p/we-the-peopl3?r=lpgtd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=

Michael Shellenberger, author of San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, returns to The Realignment to argue that progressive governance has failed on its own terms to address, why he still considers himself a “liberal” even though many on the right are inclined to agree with his critiques, how to address homelessness and housing shortages, and more... Subscribe to The Realignment’s Substack Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/ Visit The Realignment’s Bookshop to support the show: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-realignment-bookshop

Derek Robertson, Contributing Editor to Politico Magazine, joins The Realigment to discuss what Glenn Youngkin’s Virginia gubernatorial upset means for the future of American politics, how new culture wars over race and education differ from 1990s-2000s fights of gay marriage and abortion, and how President Biden and Democrats will cope. Subscribe to The Realignment’s Substack Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/ Visit The Realignment’s Bookshop to support the show: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-realignment-bookshop

Kyla Scanlon, prominent TikTok and YouTube financial analyst, joins The Realignment to discuss the emerging issues and ideas of the moment: Facebook’s pivot to the metaverse, the inflation debate, the promise (and need for clarifty about) Web3, what some see as the internet’s next evolution, the continuing supply chain crunch, and much, much more. Subscribe to The Realignment’s Substack Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/ Subscribe to Kyla’s Substack: https://kyla.substack.com/ Visit The Realignment’s Bookshop to support the show: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-realignment-bookshop

Today we’re featuring excerpts from our Realignment conference in Miami. Antonio García Martínez on how culture, economics, and politics are downstream from technology. Jacob Helberg on his book: The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power. Mike Solana on local politics when everything’s hyper-nationalized. Subscribe to The Realignment’s Substack Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/ Visit The Realignment’s Bookshop to support the show: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-realignment-bookshop

Ross Douthat, New York Times columnist and author of The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery, returns to The Realignment to discuss his struggle with Lyme disease, the push and pull between what the medical establishment does and doesn’t know, and what it all means for COVID era debates about misinformation/censorship, treatment options, and alternative care. Support The Realignment and purchase Ross Douthat’s new book: The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery at The Realignment’s Bookshop Storefront: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-realignment-bookshop

Subscribe to The Realignment’s Substack Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/ Visit The Realignment’s Bookshop to support the show: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-realignment-bookshop Christopher Mims, author of Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy and Wall Street Journal technology columnist, joins The Realignment to tell the story of the worldwide supply chain crunch, from the 2018 trade war between China and the U.S. to the decline of the trucking industry.

Subscribe to The Realignment’s Substack Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/ Visit The Realignment’s Bookshop to support the show: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-realignment-bookshop Ronald Daniels, President of Johns Hopkins University and author of What Universities Owe Democracy, joins The Realignment to discuss the role of the university system in American democracy, the degree to which it does (or doesn’t) live up to its promise, and answers the critiques of skeptics of the American higher education system.

Parag Khanna, Founder & Managing Partner of FutureMap and author of Move: The Forces Uprooting Us and The Future Is Asian: Commerce, Conflict & Culture in the 21st Century, joins The Realignment to discuss how the unprecedented mass movement of individuals and the rise of Asia and the relative decline of Europe and North America will impact the future politics, business, culture, and technology.

Subscribe to The Realignment’s Substack Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/ Visit The Realignment’s Bookshop to support the show: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-realignment-bookshop Evan Osnos, author of Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury, Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now, and Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, and staff writer at The New Yorker, joins The Realignment to discuss the state of the U.S. and China and what Joe Biden’s presidency means for both countries.

Jacob Helberg, senior adviser at the Stanford University Center on Geopolitics and Technology, former news policy lead at Google, and author of The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power, joins The Realignment to discuss how technological conflict will reshape the world order, describes the hidden back-end battle to control the internet’s hardware, and the past, present, and future of U.S.-China relations through the lens of a potential conflict over Taiwan.

Bradley Tusk, CEO and co-founder of Tusk Ventures, author of The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups from Death by Politics, and host of the Firewall podcast, joins The Realignment to make the case for using mobile to radically increase political participation and move beyond crippling political dysfunction in Washington, D.C.

Andrew Yang, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and author of Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy, joins The Realignment to discuss the Forward Party and why he thinks open party primaries and ranked choice voting are the keys to ending political gridlock in Washington.

For more information on Lincoln Network’s new Fellowship on Emerging Technologies: lincolnpolicy.org/facet Cohosts of the Ink Stained Wretches podcast, Eliana Johnson, Editor-in-Chief of the Washington Free Beacon, and Chris Stirewalt, Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Contributing Editor of The Dispatch, join The Realignment to discuss the state of the media, the takeaways from the 2004-2020 elections, and the future of conservatism.

Max Chafkin, author of The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power and Bloomberg Businessweek reporter, joins The Realignment to discuss the past, present, and future of Silicon Valley and America through.

Alec Ross, author of The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People - and the Fight for Our Future and The Industries of the Future, joins The Realignment to discuss how the 2020s will be defined by the breakdown and reforging of our social contract, what we can learn from 19th-century tumult during industrialization, and the importance of defining the role increasingly powerful corporations will play in the 21st century.

In the last episode of The Realignment’s post 9/11 era foreign policy series, Peter Bergen, author of The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden and Vice President at New America, joins to discuss how Osama bin Laden’s worldview, actions, and strategies defined the post-Cold War world and how he was ultimately undone by his inability to understand how the U.S. would react to 9/11, for good for ill.

Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, co-hosts of The DarkHorse Podcast, James Madison Program Visiting Fellows at Princeton University, and co-authors of A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life, join The Realignment to discuss how an increasingly “hyper-novel” 21st century is pulling our lives and societies apart.

Elbridge Colby, co-founder of The Marathon Initiative, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Strategy and Force Development at the Defense Department, and author of The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict, joins The Realignment to discuss the War on Terror’s legacy, how great power conflict will change U.S. foreign policy, and it will reshape the military and American society as a whole. New Yorker Profile: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/will-the-next-american-war-be-with-china

Adam Tooze, professor of history at Columbia University and author of Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy and Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, joins The Realignment to discuss how Covid reshaped capitalism, geopolitics, the U.S. vs. China, and more...

Ben Mezrich, author of The Accidental Billionaires (adapted into The Social Network, Bitcoin Billionaires, and The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders that Brought Wall Street to Its Knees, joins The Realignment why he believes WallStreetBets represents the first shot in a revolution that could upend the entire financial system.

Mehran Sahami and Jeremy M. Weinstein, Stanford University professors and co-authors (with Rob Reich) of System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot, join The Realignment to discuss their new approach to empowering users, citizens, and technologists, and founders to develop new approaches to the tech industry’s future. You can preorder System Error at our Bookshop or wherever else you purchase your books.

Jeffrey Selingo, special advisor for innovation and professor of practice at Arizona State University and author of Who Gets In & Why: A Year Inside College Admissions, joins The Realignment as a new school year kicks off to discuss COVID’s effect in higher education, plus, debates over affirmative action, endowments, and student debt.

Amy Chua, professor at Yale Law School and author of Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, joins The Realignment to discuss how political and ethnic tribalism undermines American foreign policy and domestic politics.

Before we get back to our regularly scheduled programming on Thursday, we’re kicking this season off with the last extended Q&A episode for the foreseeable future. We’re working on the Realignment’s format this season, so be sure to tune in for more

Retired General Dan Bolger, author of Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, joins The Realignment’s season premiere to discuss the rise and fall of America’s post-9/11 military interventions.

As of today, The Realignment’s released more than 150 episodes, so we’re taking a quick break today. If you’re new, go back and check out our previous episodes! If you haven’t given us a five-star review, purchased a book on our Bookshop, checked out our conference, or subscribed to the Substack, please do so below: https://therealignment.substack.com/ https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-realignment-conference-tickets-158996058491 https://bookshop.org/lists/the-realignment-bookshop We’ll be back with our regular programming on Thursday, the 19th.

Theodore R. Johnson, author of When the Stars Begin to Fall: Overcoming Racism and Renewing the Promise of America and Senior Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, joins The Realignment to discuss race in America through debates over America’s “original sin,” reparations, policing, political preferences, and more...

Spencer Ackerman, writer of the Forever Wars Substack, Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and and Produced Trump, and contributing editor at The Daily Beast joins The Realignment to discuss the post-9/11 era, the legacy of the War on Terror, and the Biden administration’s plans to withdraw from Afghanistan in September.

Kinsey Grant and Josh Kaplan, co-founders of Thinking Is Cool, join The Realignment to discuss the best ways to podcast and build media companies in 2021, debate whether billionaires should exist, whether platforms like Spotify should police their star’s content, and what the successor to cable news could look like.

Vivek Ramaswamy, Executive Chairman of Roivant Sciences and author of Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, joins The Realignment to debate whether companies should take stands on issues like Black Lives Matter, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other political issues, the social contract between corporations and the public, and the role of identity in a hyper-polarized America.

Learn more about Statehouse Futures: http://www.StatehouseFutures.org Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, and Pete Davis, co-founder of the Democracy Policy Network, join The Realignment to discuss Statehouse Futures, their progressive policy and strategy, one of the largest convenings of state and local leaders of the year, why progressives and Democrats have struggled locally the last decade, and how down-ballot candidates should approach culture war issues such as the debate over Critical Race Theory and policing.

Robert Draper, writer at large for The New York Times Magazine and author of To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq, joins The Realignment to discuss the process that led President Bush to make one of the worst foreign policy decisions in American history.

Apply to attend The Realignment’s conference in Miami on October 22nd: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-realignment-conference-tickets-158996058491 Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang, technology reporters at The New York Times and authors of An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination, join The Realignment to discuss Facebook’s fall from grace, whether antitrust action will address complaints about tech companies, and the future of social media platforms after Trump.

Apply to attend The Realignment’s conference in Miami on October 22nd: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-realignment-conference-tickets-158996058491 Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell, authors of The Cult of We: Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion and Wall Street Journal reporters, join The Realignment to discuss what the rise and fall of Adam Neumann’s WeWork says about venture capital, Wall Street, startups, and the future of commercial real estate after COVID-19.

Apply to attend The Realignment’s conference in Miami on October 22nd: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-realignment-conference-tickets-158996058491 Purchase Mercury Rising at The Realignment’s Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-realignment-bookshop Jeff Sheshol, author of Mercury Rising: John Glenn, John Kennedy, and the New Battleground of the Cold War and founding partner at West Wing Writers, joins The Realignment to discuss Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson’s ambitions, how to balance private and public interests in space, and how the space race between NASA and the Soviet Union can help us understand competition between the U.S. and China in the 2020s.

Apply to attend The Realignment’s conference in Miami on October 22nd: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-realignment-conference-tickets-158996058491 Use code “realignment” to get a 50% discount to Lincoln Network’s evening event with Peter Thiel in Miami on October 20th: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-peter-thiel-tickets-157672156665 Bruno Maçães, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of The Dawn of Eurasia, Belt and Road, History Has Begun, and the forthcoming Geopolitics for the End Time: From the Pandemic to the Climate Crisis, returns to the Realignment to discuss the transformation of the international system before, during, and after COVID-19, and how the U.S. can accommodate the new status-quo.

Check out Lincoln Network's Policy Hackers program: https://www.hackpolicy.org/ Apply to attend The Realignment's conference on October 22nd in Miami: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-realignment-conference-tickets-158996058491 Antonio García Martínez, author of The Pull Request Substack and Chaos Monkeys; Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley, joins The Realignment to discuss tribalism in America, how social media fuels in-person (and virtual) conflict, the upending of the advertising industry, debates about online privacy, and what the invention of the printing press and religious conflicts tells us about polarization in America today. Buy a book from our bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Apply to join Marshall, Saagar, and Katherine Boyle in Miami on October 22, 2021 for the first Realignment conference: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-realignment-conference-tickets-158996058491 Let us know if you have any questions about the conference at [email protected] George Packer, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of The Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal and The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, joins The Realignment to discuss how America fractured into four parts and how it can come back together again. Buy a book from our bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment

Apply to join Marshall, Saagar, and Katherine Boyle in Miami on October 22, 2021 for the first Realignment conference: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-realignment-conference-tickets-158996058491 Let us know if you have any questions about the conference at [email protected] Katherine Boyle, partner at General Catalyst, joins The Realignment to discuss the prospects for America’s renewal, how the finance and tech diminished interest in public service, and what D.C. and Silicon Valley can learn from each other.

Dr. Julian Zelizer, Princeton professor and author of Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party, joins The Realignment to discuss the state of the Republican Party, how former Speaker Newt Gingrich changed the course of Congress, and how ambitious politicians rise to power. Subscribe to our Substack: https://therealignment.substack.com/ Buy a book from our bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment Purchase a mug on our new website: https://www.therealignment.fm/

Josh Rogin, author of Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century and Washington Post columnist, returns to The Realignment to discuss the continued development of the COVID-19 Wuhan lab leak theory and what the story means for U.S.-China relations, the scientific community, media, domestic politics, and content moderation. Subscribe to our Substack: https://therealignment.substack.com/ Buy a book from our bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignment Purchase a mug on our new website: https://www.therealignment.fm/

Today’s episode is a crossover between The Realignment and Alex Kantrowitz’s podcast/newsletter Big Technology. Alex Kantrowitz returns to The Realignment to discuss the five new bills targeting big tech companies, what Lina Khan’s appointment as chair of the Federal Trade Commission means for the the industry, what the Wuhan lab-leak theory means for the future of content moderation, and whether conservatives get a fair shake on social media platforms.

Dr. Eric Weinstein, host of “The Portal” podcast and managing director at Thiel Capital, makes his third Realignment appearance to discuss where Marshall and Saagar should take The Realignment and Breaking Points, returning heterodox viewpoints to institutions, and why and how those who’ve tried to do so have failed so far.

Conor Dougherty, author of Golden Gates: The Housing Crisis and a Reckoning for the American Dream and New York Times economics reporter, joins The Realignment to unpack the housing crisis, the connection between homelessness and affordability, NIMBYs vs YIMBYs, and what a backlash to policies that increase construction could look like.

Charlotte Alter, a Time national correspondent and author of The Ones Weve Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America joins The Realignment to discuss the careers and impact of the first millennials to hold political office, the prospects for both parties over the next few decades, and whether social media era politicians have the skills to actually address big problems and advance their agendas. Purchase a mug: https://www.therealignment.fm/ Subscribe to our Substack: https://therealignment.substack.com/

Katherine Gehl, author of The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy and founder of The Institute for Political Innovation joins The Realignment to discuss why Washington isn’t actually broken, and instead operates exactly as it was designed, why an increasing number of people feel politically homeless, and how to restore competition to the political system. Purchase a mug: https://www.therealignment.fm/ Subscribe to our Substack: https://therealignment.substack.com/

Frank DiStefano, author of The Next Realignment: Why America’s Parties Are Crumbling and What Happens Next, returns to The Realignment to define what realignments are (and aren’t), how either political party could collapse, and why our system isn’t ready to face the 21st century. Subscribe to Frank’s YouTube Channel for more on realignments: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyI2l4jUJ-GqtbtMhCvsWzg Purchase a mug: https://www.therealignment.fm/ Subscribe to our Substack: https://therealignment.substack.com/

Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski of Krystal Kyle & Friends join The Realignment for a crossover episode to announce the launch of Saagar and Krystal’s new YouTube show/podcast, Breaking Points, launching on June 7th. Subscribe to Breaking Points at: krystalandsaagar.com. Subscribe to the Breaking Points YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/breakingpoints To purchase the long-awaited Realignment mugs, go to The Realignment’s store at therealignment.fm