The Bulwark Podcast

His books include The Death of Expertise, which now is an updated and expanded edition.

And the other one is just, I feel like we've earned this. Like, despite the madness around us and the badness, there is something happening today that we can enjoy. Steve Bannon is going to jail.

One of them is just right in your wheelhouse for The Death of Expertise.

He's the author of the Atlantic Daily Newsletter. His books include The Death of Expertise, which now is an updated and expanded edition. And you can get book plates. The book plates are available.

And you can get book plates. The book plates are available.

His books include The Death of Expertise, which has an updated and expanded edition. Lots of fodder for that coming in April.

The Death of Expertise

His books include The Death of Expertise, which has an updated edition.

And I wrote about this look out book plug coming in the new edition of The Death of Expertise.

I talked about this in The Death of Expertise that students graduate from college saying, well, I had an A minus average at a university.

and author of The Atlantic Daily Newsletter. And his books include The Death of Expertise, which I am told has an update coming this winter.

Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic and professor emeritus at the Naval War College and his books include, as you know, The Death of Expertise and our own worst enemy.

It's David Frum. Author of 10 books, most recently Trumpocalypse and Trumpocracy.

author of 10 books, most recently Trumpocalypse and Trumpocracy.

David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic, the author of 10 books most recently, Trumpocalypse and Trumpocracy.

David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic author of 10 books. Most recently, Trumpocalypse and Trumpocracy.

J.D. Vance performed way worse than Mike DeWine in Ohio in the midterms. It was more of a Trump and Trump.

So maybe they've convinced themselves of that. I think more likely it is a pick of we feel comfortable with this person. I think that they feel that J.D. has shown enough loyalty despite all this horrible rhetoric about Trump in 2016 because he's gone there on all of Trump's worst things.

J.D. Vance went whole hog on vaccine conspiracies, whole hog on January 6th, overturning the election. Thanks, Mike Pence didn't have the courage. Whole hog on the Ukraine. It's Joe Biden's fault that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Right. So on all of these things.

J.D. Vance has said far more inflammatory things about Donald Trump than I ever have and ever will. The comparison to Hitler, I wouldn't say that. I actually find that offensive. That is going too far.

It was a range. Not a great, not a very positive range. But you know, I think my big takeaway and you may appreciate this because we talked through your book and I think you've kind of been a friend and a sounding board in my evolution is I was a firebrand earlier and early in my career.

JD Vance, who thought, who mused that Trump might be America's Hitler, right? And is now his biggest fan.

And I think the JD Vance that America met at the RNC is a bit lighter than the dark JD Vance that you're going to see a lot more of now that the RNC performance is over.

I don't know what it was. I didn't read it. I didn't really look at the inter... I just, I watched like a couple clips of them. And I was like, this guy's a douchebag.

I just made a snap judgment. I think this person is a douchebag.

He's real douchey.

JD Vance, the way he demeans and mocks childless cat ladies can probably take a little mocking on his own.

And like the fucking theme of the book is that there is some cultural rot in Appalachia and people need to take responsibility for their lives. These are good people, but like they should take some ownership of their lives and you know, you can achieve.

Like his message last night was that Joe Biden and the elites are the reason why Appalachia is bad. And they're the victims. And J.D. Vance will help them. Big Daddy J.D. will help them.

Like so his whole shtick has flipped. It's all totally phony.

He was once considered kind of an intellectual on the right, you know, wrote the book, you know, Hillbilly Elegy was published in The New York Times.

I got so into reading about this once I understood it and realized, okay, now I understand Donald Trump, that I wrote an 11,000 word article. It was originally like 17,000 words for The Atlantic.

If Donald Trump had been president, he would have sat down with Jefferson Davis and it would have been the art of the deal.

the art of the deal was always based on this swindle. It was always based on this fraud.

And then the title of your book is Confidence Man. Talk to me about that because basically you're saying this is a con man.

Confidence Man can be read two ways, you know, and I think and I think is. And one is that he is indeed somebody who exudes confidence. There's no question about that, you know, and that's what he tries to affix to everything he does.

His books include The Death of Politics, How to Heal Our Freed Republic After Trump.

The New York Times whose books include The Death of Politics, How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.

Also the author of the recent book, The Aftermath, The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America.

He also writes the weekly newsletter, How to Read This Chart, and is the author of the new-ish book, The Aftermath, The Last Days of the Baby Boom, and The Future of Power in America.

Great, exciting book around the Bulwark offices, as some folks know.

And again, the name of your book, which you can get on Amazon, The Aftermath, Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America.

And I think the last time I was on this podcast, I was talking about my book, which looks at the shift, the generational shift in American politics.

The Aftermath, the last days of the baby boom in the future of power in America.

He's also the author of the book, The Aftermath, The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America.

The book is The Aftermath of last days of the Baby Boom and the future of power in America.

The book is The Aftermath. The Aftermath is a sweeping assessment of how the Baby Boom created modern America and where power, wealth and politics will shift as the boom ends.

I think that one of the points of the book is that the Baby Boom generation broadly is misunderstood. And its scale alone leads to sort of negative perceptions among rest Americans.

I just actually finished Robert Draper's recent book I'm trying to think of the exact title but it's really good book actually it's called the Weapons of Mass Delusion

I talked with Robert Draper about his book yesterday that you know the Weapons of Mass Delusion and all of that and and the and the role that people like Donald Trump play but but that I think that this sort of bottom up lack of of belief that the system actually works or that anyone in the system actually should be held to any sort of moral standard that strikes me as a much more fundamental problem here

I am in the middle of reading Draper's book it is very very good and it's not just Trump I mean there are so many Trump wannabes who are coming into the system who are playing on that exact same expectation of voter tolerance

I love this blurb from his new book, Weapons of Mass Delusion, When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind.

So the Weapons of Mass Delusion, there have been so many books written about the various history of the Republican Party losing its mind.

And see this book, Weapons of Mass Delusion, covers the 18 months since January 6th, what you called the pivot point between this is not normal to this is dangerous and it's not going away.

The book is Weapons of Mass Delusion when the Republican party lost its mind it is an incredible riveting urgent immediate read.

also the author of the new book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone? For those of you who are watching us on YouTube, here is the cover. Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The soul of the party in the age of extremes where you are continuing to try to have Democrats. Look in the mirror.

We were dead wrong about the Democrats' ability to hold onto the white working class.

And so you write, we were dead wrong about the Democrats' ability to hold onto the white working class. What did you get wrong, do you think, Ruli?

The book is Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes by Rui Teixeira and John Judas.

Rui is senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and you can read his work on the liberal patriot on Substack. He's also coauthor of the forthcoming book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?

He's also co-author of the forthcoming book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?

Her books include Red Famine, Stalin's war on Ukraine, the Pulitzer Prize winning Gulag, a history and most recently Twilight of Democracy, the seductive lore of authoritarianism, all very uplifting pieces of writing.

Ezra Klein at the end of that podcast on Wednesday gave a book rec. He said the name of the book rec wrong so now everybody's questioning Ezra's mental acuity. The actual book is called Health and Safety, a Breakdown by Emily Witt but here's the bad news. It's not published until September 17th and Ezra is just showing off his coastal elite access to the publishers that he pre-read a book before it's even out in the public.

I guess I'll give you one. I really liked Homegoing recently I read by, I'm going to butcher her name probably, Yaa Gyasi I believe is how you pronounce her name. So you can read that one this weekend. On September 17th you can read Health and Safety, a Breakdown as recommended by Ezra Klein.

Health and Wellness by Emily Witt.

It is the most astonishing memoir about raving and drug culture. Like I did not know anybody could write about this this way ever.

Now there's a darker turn it takes at some point. I'm not going to ruin it for me. This is my escapism.

Health and Wellness a Breakdown I think it's called by Emily Witt. Wonderful.

He recommended *Health and Safety* by Emily Witt, which is not out yet, it's out in September, you can pre-order.

The book was great, Emily Witt writes for the *New Yorker*, she's awesome, but I gotta tell you, it's not an escape.

The first third of the book's about doing drugs, that was a nice escape. The second part of it is about, like, George Floyd and COVID and a relationship breaking down during the Trump era.

I'm going, Ezra, I needed a real escape. I need, I need something, you know, I need like a book about a coming-of-age story in the 1700s, you know, I need like a young Mozart, like give me, give me something totally different, totally away.

Health and Safety I still recommend, but not if you're looking for an escape from politics.

And the only political book I've read that I've liked in the last hundred years is This Town by Mark Leibovich.

And he's like, well, there you go. So you have one model to work for.

And then he gave me five other books that I should read. So now I have to read political books all the time.

It's the burden of this job. And even with that model I had for you, I still struggled until we sat at an Indian restaurant together. I forget the name of it. You'll know because you wrote This Town and you did a diagram on the table for me of how you organize a book.

You can organize it however the fuck you want, and the readers will go along with you because you are the god of the book.

He's the author of five books, including This Town.

and his other books include The Classic, This Town.

I'm a huge, huge evangelist for not only Tim, but also for your book, Why We Did It. Why We Did It. I have it right here.

I know Charles C. Johnson very well.

Back in the day, back when I was an oppo man, we used to kind of trade tips, trade material.

He was deep, deep in the alt-right, maybe before alt-right was even a popularized term in Bannon world.

At the time I was kind of a moderate Republican working for more moderate candidates.

And so occasionally we would have common foes in Republican intraparty fights or sometimes Democrats. And so Charles and I had a relationship for a while where we would trade info and give him stuff for his crazy fucking blog.

There's a really good book about this called Why We Did It. It's about how basically all these assholes that work on all these campaigns all agree with us on everything in private, basically.

Ron Brownstein senior editor of the Atlantic senior political analyst for CNN his most recent book Rock Me on the Water

You know in my mind when I think about you know Rock Me on the Water and like having groupies

Most recent book, Rock Me on the Water, 1974, the year Los Angeles transformed music, movies, television and politics.

My most recent book, "Rock Me on the Water."

And who would have thought that 50 years later America would turn its lonely eyes to essentially Noah Cross, which was the bad guy played by John Houston and who had many things in common with Donald Trump as their savior?

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/rock-me-on-the-water-ronald-brownstein?variant=39387579023394

But in Our Own Worst Enemy, I said, you know, this has been such a long stretch of peace and prosperity and rapidly achieving living standards, that it's easy to convince people that things are terrible just by showing them stuff constantly.

Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic and professor emeritus at the Naval War College and his books include, as you know, the death of expertise and Our Own Worst Enemy.

if I can read The Closing of the American Mind, what conservatives thought about moral relativism, you know, and right and wrong and how that's been completely upended.

one of the books that most electrified conservatives over the last 50 years was Ellen Bloom's, The Closing of the American Mind, which was published in 1987.

The Closing of the American Mind, warned of the dangers posed by moral relativism and nihilism of accepting everything and denying reasons power.

And Bloom argued that the denial of truth and the suppression of reason were leading to a crisis of civilization, and that that was the fault of the new left.

The haunting question raised by Alan Bloom is more relevant now than it was when he first posed it. When there are no shared goals or a vision of the public good, is the social contract any longer possible?

one of the books that most electrified conservatives over the last 50 years was Ellen Bloom's, The Closing of the American Mind, which was published in 1987.

The Closing of the American Mind, warned of the dangers posed by moral relativism and nihilism of accepting everything and denying reasons power.

Bloom argued that the denial of truth and the suppression of reason were leading to a crisis of civilization, and that that was the fault of the new left.

The haunting question raised by Alan Bloom is more relevant now than it was when he first posed it. When there are no shared goals or a vision of the public good, is the social contract any longer possible?

This has been the thing that is, I know I wrote a book about this, I'm supposed to know, and I'm supposed to be the one that the experts, but it's the thing that's most flummoxed me.

I did one with Maggie Smith, who is a poet whose book is on the bestseller list right now.

This book is a follow up to a book that you wrote with Jonathan Haidt back in 2018, The Coddling of the American Mind.

Well, in some ways it's good to read Coddling in the American Mind and Canceling of the American Mind together, or it's helpful to have read Coddling because we in that one we do more of a social science.

And buying on learning liberty and freedom of speech. So, of course, anyway, so Coddling in the American Mind spends more time on figuring out how this happened.

Well, also, when you begin talking about speech in terms of violence and harm, you know, that speech is a harm and that that if this person is allowed to be in that room saying these words, that it makes me feel unsafe. So let's just talk about what's canceled culture and when is it justifiable? Stories in the news today involving the fallout from Gaza. Your organization has jumped headfirst into this. Some of these campus conflicts. We always talk about this NYU law student, Rena Workman, who wrote in a student bulletin that Israel bore full responsibility for the attack on October 7th. I mean, this was got a lot of attention. New York Times reported that she wrote this regime, Israel, of state sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary. I will not condemn Palestinian resistance by which people read Hamas. That same day, major law firm Winston and Strawn withdrew its offer of employment from her. Was that canceled culture? And don't they have the right to do that?

And Charlie, you were actually one of the first people to point this out in your books in the late 80s and early 90s.

This book is a follow up to a book that you wrote with Jonathan Haidt back in 2018, The Coddling of the American Mind.

I'm a parent myself. I am a protective, anxious parent, and I get the instinct to protect your kids no matter what and keep them from harm or difficulty.

the Hayek's road to serfdom I do jumped back up the Amazon charts as all of a sudden people were learning more about you know Austrian school economics

the Hayek's road to serfdom I do jumped back up the Amazon charts as all of a sudden people were learning more about you know Austrian school economics and pocket constitutions were handed out everywhere at Tea Party gatherings

and has a forthcoming book Burn Book. A Tech Love Story. Yeah, we'll be out in March. Kara Swisher February now. John February actually right now. They moved it up. They moved up.

Oath and Honor which is still on the bestseller list and I really urge everybody to read this book or listen to it on audio please and tell everyone you know too it is amazing and it's gripping and it goes really quickly for a few weeks after that was released Tim she didn't remember she was like I don't know if I'm going to run for president I think I was just gonna sell more books but she shut it down pretty quickly and ever since then she's made it clear like she said about bad policy we can live with bad policy we can't live with Trump destroying the constitutional order so she's been very clear about that and I think it's so so energizing not only for us but I think it's gonna break through to people in ways that you know we can't really even count yet we can't like you know quantify it I think it's amazing

She is out now with a new book, a bestselling book. . . Her book is at the top of the Amazon bestsellers list. And I have to tell you, this book, Liz Cheney's Oath and Honor, a memoir and a warning.

This is the story of the moment, she writes, when American democracy began to unravel. It is the story of the men and women who fought to save it and of the enablers and collaborators whose actions ensured that the threat would grow and metastasize.

The subtitle is A Memoir and a Warning, but the story is the warning, isn't it? As you go through in detail, I have to say when I picked up the book, I was not sure that I was going to learn a lot of new things, but you name names and you put it in detail.

My regret is that I ever supported Donald Trump.

The book is Oath and Honor, a Memoir and a Warning by Liz Cheney, national bestseller again.