Stay Tuned with Preet

The second, last month's Same as Ever, was an instant bestseller and explores the things that never change.

You have a new book, which I think is super interesting for a lot of reasons. It's called Same as Ever, A Guide to What Never Changes.

I try to keep two things in mind in a world that's vulnerable to chance and accident. One is highlighting this book's premise to base predictions on how people behave rather than on specific events.

Predicting what the world will look like 50 years from now is impossible, but predicting that people will still respond to greed, fear, opportunity, exploitation, risk, uncertainty, tribal affiliations and social persuasion in the same way is a bet I'd take.

Forecasting events is hard because it's easy to skip the question, and then what?

You've also commented on this debate and it's confusing to me. I don't know how to think about it. So lots of experts talk about data and evidence and that's how they make their decisions.

But people also talk about stories, right? And narratives and anecdotes. And someone once pointed out that Jeff Bezos has suggested that when anecdotes and data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right.

You've also written, I think that generally speaking, and although you're not a psychologist, you have the word psychology in one of your two books, that if you were generally unhappy before you had money, you're going to probably be unhappy after you have money.

And the reverse is also true. Do you stand by that?

like when he hosted Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, on his podcast.

And I only became interested in his case when he was, you know, literally run off the stage at Middlebury College a couple of years ago, you know, 25 years after he wrote his infamous book, The Bell Curve.

And I always love those stories, you know, Den of Thieves, Barbarians at the Gate, where you really felt immersed like you were in the room.

to embrace the openness of the open society, to use the phrase from Karl Popper, the great philosopher of science who wrote the book The Open Society and Its Enemies,

There's an excellent book by David Leonhardt called Ours Was the Shining Future, in which there's a long chapter about immigration.

I want it done and I don't mind if laws are broken.

I don't mind if laws are broken in the process, sort it out later.

And we are building out, I think, still many more story formats. We are teaching journalists and learning as journalists how to use that. And exponentary journalism, one thing about it is that it's simply long to do that kind of work.

In his new book, he investigates how exactly people get better at the things they do.

This one is called Hidden Potential, The Science of Achieving Greater Things.

If our cognitive skills are what separate us from animals, our character skills are what elevate us above machines.

The book is Hidden Potential, the Science of Achieving Greater Things.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

it's because of like, you know a couple of scenes that involve her sexual fantasies and ruminations That you know are in this, you know, really long Uh book that is, you know about so much else and so that becomes A lightning rod

Her most recent book, Strong Men, Mussolini to the Present, looks at how illiberal leaders use corruption and violence to maintain power and how they can be defeated.

I wrote my book Strongmen, which is case studies starting with Mussolini and Hitler going up to Orban and Trump and Putin.

The book that we have talked about is Strongmen from Mussolini to the Present. I urge everyone to read it.

This information is a serious threat to American national security, I've seen the threat evolve from al-Qaeda to ISIS to cyber to Russia to disinformation coming from within our own country.

And in 2017 I started teaching this national security course and in probably about 2018 I started teaching the Mueller report as part of the national security class on disinformation.

Misinformation, as I define it, is the unwitting spreading of disinformation. So plenty of people read something online, they assume it to be true, and they pass it on.

And I think all of us have likely been what some people refer to as useful idiots or unwitting dupes from time to time with and I realized I had been duped.

A significant number of Americans don't seem to care anymore whether a statement is true what seems to matter instead is whether any given message is consistent with their worldview.

Now he's out with a new book, Win Every Argument, The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking.

So, congratulations on the book.

It's a good crowd. We draw a lot of people. I wish they were here for me and not you. Are you starting an argument? No. So, congratulations on the book. Thank you very much. It's very important at this time.

I'm going to teach you how to Win Every Argument that you want to win. Just because I'm teaching you how to Win Every Argument doesn't mean you have to try and Win Every Argument.

I genuinely believe unless you have tougher, more challenging conversations, we're not gonna be able to save democracy. We're not gonna be able to save our media. We're not gonna be able to save our public spaces.

And then after that, he begins to go on a series of podcasts and begins to incriminate himself on those platforms.

And then after that, he writes a book called Street Legend about himself and about his exploits and confesses in the book to his role in the murder.

Valerie's new book is called Finding My Voice, My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward.

Congratulations on this book, Finding My Voice, My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward.

So, congratulations on the new book, a very important book, Our Unfinished March, the violent past and imperiled future of the vote.

And as you say, the right to vote is the right that ensures all our other rights.

I think those three cases will be viewed 50 years from now, maybe shorter than that, in the same way that we look now at the, I'm getting a little too technical, at the Lochner era cases of the Supreme Court in the early part of the 20th century.

And then we'll get to the particular scenario of gerrymandering that you talk about a lot in your book, Our Unfinished March.

It's always something that I tweet about on the day of that anniversary to remind people of people like Vivian whose names are not maybe known to us now, but who are nevertheless architects of the better America in which we all live.

It's called Democracy Awakening Notes on the State of America.

Originally the thought behind this book was to bring together essays that covered the questions that people were asking me every day. How did the party switch sides? What does liberal mean? What was the Southern strategy?

But what happened was that the more I thought about it and the more I conceptualized the book, I recognized that it was a book about how we got here, where here is, and how we get out of here.

This book is about how a small group of people have tried to make us believe that our fundamental principles aren't true.

And you also say they have made war on American democracy by using language that served their interests, then led us toward authoritarianism by creating a disaffected population, et cetera.