The Unfinished Revolution with Atlantic EIC Jeffrey Goldberg

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Speaker 1: I look too formal? Do I look too? Now?

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Speaker 2: I got dressed up for you too.

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Speaker 1: Oh that's nice.

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Speaker 2: All right, here we go. I'm really excited to talk to you, Jeff, because I need a therapy session about what the fuck is going.

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Speaker 1: On, and I'm excited to talk to you.

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Speaker 2: America has long thought of itself as a country and a people built on revolution. Past tense seventeen seventy six feels like a long time ago. But in twenty twenty five, at almost two hundred and fifty years old, it feels a bit like the country is on the verge of another revolution, and it looks a lot different this time around. America's great experiment in democracy is showing signs of strain. The founders warned that this day could come a time when our system could fail, a stress test brought about by a man named Donald Trump. So what happens when a nation that prides itself on checks and balances starts ignoring the checks and gets decidedly off balance? Who better to talk about all of this and more than Jeffrey Goldberg, who is editor in chief of the Atlantic. They've got a new issue out called The Unfinished Revolution, which takes on these questions and ask can the ideals of seventeen seventy six survive in twenty twenty five? Jeff Goldberg, I'm so thrilled to talk to you. First of all, congratulations on this massive, very ambitious issue of The Atlantic, one of my favorite magazines. I don't know, Jeff, if you know, but I am.

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Speaker 1: I know one of them.

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Speaker 2: Sorry, I would say yes, one of my top two or three news sources.

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Speaker 1: How's that it's getting better.

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Speaker 2: I go to The Atlantic for perspective and deep dives. I love the context and the writing and honestly the deep reporting that you all do. So I've said that time and time again. I'm not just sucking up, do you, Jeff, That's what I'm talking you too.

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Speaker 1: You say it.

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Speaker 2: This is honest, it is and I think this November issue, as I said, is very ambitious. I guess the biggest issue yet since The Atlantic was started in what year.

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Speaker 1: Jeff, eighteen fifty seven. And I'm not one hundred percent sure of that, but for the purposes of this podcast, let's just say that it's the biggest issue you've ever done.

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Speaker 2: Okay, and eighteen fifty seven you are sure of that. I know Okay, remember eighteen fifty seven, so let's talk about this issue. I would love to hear the genesis of this when you all and the other brainiacs at the Atlantic were sitting around a table talking about tackling something this major and this consequential. Tell me about that conversation.

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Speaker 1: We actually wear capes and tights at the brainiac table. So I mean it's actually, look, we had to do so everybody wants to and has to do something around the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary coming up. I mean it's really interesting because because both of us remember nineteen seventy six as kids, right, and I remember, you know, it was after Watergate, but mainly I remember the boats. You know, they had tall ships and there are a lot of fireworks, and it was great, right, And we would do something for the two fifty anyway. But right now there are a lot of questions in America that we thought were settled questions but seemed to be very unsettled, right, And so the urgency to do an issue that's not just not just celebrates America or bemoans something, or it just says, wow, what a long, strange trip it's been, But actually looks at what the founders wanted and where we are right now, and what we can learn from the founding of America and the motivation behind the revolution. It seems very very urgent because obviously the and I'm sure we'll get there, but this is what's on my mind, so I'm just going to articulate it right now. The founders were very pessimistic about human nature and designed our government and our system so that it would be protected against human ego and human desire for power and human corruption. Right and it's mainly worked, but it's under some real challenge today, and so you know, obviously we wanted to do something around two fifty because we're an American magazine. We love America and we love the American idea. It was actually founded in eighteen fifty seven as the Magazine of the American Idea. That's what the founders actually called it. And the actual impetus was a conversation I had with Ken Burns. We've done things together before, and obviously you and your listeners and viewers know who Ken Burns is. Obviously he's a great documentarian, a great chronicler of the American story. He told me this is a long time ago, already that he was working on an American Revolution documentary for PBS. This will be out November sixteenth, I think it starts airing. And I thought, oh, you know, he taps into some of the same historians and scholars that we tap into for subjects like this, and I thought, let's just combine efforts a little bit and we can be in some ways companions to each other. The print magazine with the digital expression and his twelve hour documentary, which I have seen and it's magnificent. It's really fascinating, and it reinvigorates the It brings the revolution back from mythology into like, oh, it was a real war, you know. I mean, we can talk about that too. I love it. So we thought, let's just do something. Time it to the release of Ken and Sarah Botstein and others their documentary. And that's how it originally came to pass. When we got around the Brainiac Table of Justice, we asked ourselves a couple of questions, what do we want to know about the actual revolution that we don't understand? You know? I was always interested, and I think everybody is is. You know, was King Georgia Third actually crazy? As a loan or is there some more complication to that? And it turns out he ended up kind of nuts, But he was a complicated, interesting figure. And Rick Atkinson, the great historian, has a wonderful piece about just the nature of King George and what he wanted and how he miscalculated in his relationship with the colonies. But it wasn't always just craziness like the kind that you are familiar with from Hamilton. And so we sat around and asked a lot of questions about the revolution itself and the battles of the revolution, the role of women and black people and Native Americans and subjects like that, because of one of the interesting subjects here is the way the loyalists, those who were loyal to the king, actually were closer to the abolitionist ideal than the founders, many of whom were slaveholders, as you know. And you know, there's some fascinating history there about how the loyalists in exchange for the promise on the part of slaves of enslaved Black Americans to fight on the British side, promising their freedom. And you know, after the war, everybody included George Washington, was like, get the slaves back. We're not screwing around with this. So there's like there's dark elements, there's noble elements, there's beautiful ideals expressed, there's falling short of those ideals, and so that's part of it. The second part was what does the revolution mean to us today? What are the founding ideals and the founding documents being to us today? And that's a lot of a lot of the magazine is that kind of discussion.

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Speaker 2: Well, I'd love to hear about this intersection of the present with the past, because obviously, Jeff, you acknowledge that the American experiment is under extraordinary pressure at the moment, and I'm curious about the very strange and fascinating timing of looking at this whole American idea and the American experiment at this moment in history right now that we're witnessing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, like I said, it's like, and I'm sure you felt this, there are questions that we thought were settled that just aren't settled. I mean, there are questions about the durability and effectiveness of the separation of powers that I think is really interesting. Right now. You know, the founders of this country, you know, victorious off the Revolution were obviously most afraid of tyranny, right, having just freed themselves from a tyrannical king, they were like, how do we prevent another king or a monarchical view of how we should be run? How do we prevent that from happening? And so there's separation of powers as an executive branch, a legislative branch or judicial branch, and those things have worked to check each other's power for two hundred fifty years. Obviously, they've been crises. We had a Civil War, of course, where everything broke down, but it's more or less worked. And now we're in a moment when oh, Congress, I mean, this is again this is my view. It's not only my view, but my view, Congress is not fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities to check the power of the executive. The digital branch is operating independently and has been in some ways manipulated by the executive branch. The executive branch is trying to seize as much power as possible. One of the most interesting questions, and again we could discuss it, you know, at length. One of an interesting question is that the executive branch is interested in accruing as much power for itself as possible right now, and the legislative branch, or the people who control the legislative branch, are interested in accruing for the executive branch as much power as possible. Doesn't make any sense, Like the system only works, the system that the founder set up only works if everybody is checking each other's power. And so that's one subject that we wanted to try to understand. But you know, going into the two fifty issue, you know the fact that we're two hundred fty years old, it's very obvious to me that there's a split in the way Americans think about how to commemorate and celebrate America. There is a brittle view, a very fragile understanding. And I think you hear this from people in the Trump administration and Trump himself that you can't criticize America, that you we must downplay even in our museums. Right, we must.

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Speaker 2: Downrite our national parks or schools.

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Speaker 1: We must downplay the bad parts because we're perfect and always have been perfect. Now, my theologically based a view is that nothing human made is perfect. Put that aside for a second, but it also it's it's it is It's very That's what it alway strucks me. It's very fragile. Like if you say anything bad about America, it means you don't like America, the truth of the truth of the Americans.

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Speaker 2: If America is a snowflake.

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Speaker 1: Well well yes, well by the way, you know, I don't want to say that America is a snowflake, but the people who are arguing this line seem like snowflakes. But the the point is is this one of the geniuses of America, of the American system, and an American democratic impulse is that we examine what we're doing, and when we realize that we're doing something that's wrong, we fix it. Women didn't have the vote, and then they did. There was slavery, and then the North went to war against the South to end slavery. Right, and the story of America is the story of the expansion of rights. Right. That's a beautiful thing, and a lot of countries can't point to self criticism is a form of patriotism. I don't agree with like, I don't like people who think that America is I think America has ultimately played a positive and ameliative role in the world. I think if you just look at the last century, I think the feet of fascism and communism, global fascism and global communism, that was pretty good. That was overall a pretty good record for a century. And and so I'm immensely proud of that. I'm also proud as an American of the fact that when we go down wrong pathways, we have the ability as a group of people, as citizens, and we have the mechanisms within our system, including a free press and an independent judiciary. We have the mechanisms to make things better that were bad. And so celebrating that, like not talking about slavery doesn't make slavery go away. Not talking about slavery denies us the opportunity to talk about ways we try to make things better, of course, and that's that's the lesson for the rest of the world. I mean, you look at Russia, China, Iran, North Korea. You look at these places and you say, those are not Those are countries that could really benefit from some openness and independent thought and self criticism in the American model, and they don't have it. So I think we should be I think we should be celebrating that. But again, I think right now We're in this really weird moment where there's a whole group of powerful people who think, don't talk about it, don't say anything about it, and I don't know why, and they are I guess they are just definitionally snowflakes.

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Speaker 2: Hi everyone, it's Katie Couric. You know I'm always on the go between running my media company, hosting my podcast, and of course covering the news. And I know that to keep doing what I love, I need to start caring for what gets me there, my feet. That's why I decided to try the Good Feet stores personalized arch support system. I met with a Good Feet arch support specialist and after a personalized fitting, I left the store with my three step system designed to improve comfort, balance and support. My feet, knees, and back are thanking me already. Visit goodfeet dot com to learn more, find the nearest store, or book your own free personalized fitting. Let's talk about where we went wrong. If, in fact, you feel we're in the midst of very disturbing times right when some of the principles and the goals of the Founding Fathers are being ignored. Is this because the Founding Fathers didn't think of certain things oh, you one thing.

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Speaker 1: They didn't think of social media. I'm not even kidding. I mean, look, James Madison, you know, one of the most important founders, drafter of the Constitution, James Madison. He was a very past simistic about human nature. I mean they all were to some degree. Jefferson believed that virtue, you know, resided in the Yeoman farmer, and you know, the cities were dens of iniquity and corruption. John Adams was pretty is serbic. George Washington. I'd love to talk about George Washington a second, because, I mean he did the most amazing thing, especially given what we have now in the White House. He did the most amazing thing a president has ever done.

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Speaker 2: I'll get to and I know what that is.

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Speaker 1: He chopped down to the Surry Tree.

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Speaker 2: No, he's only served one.

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Speaker 1: Term, he said.

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Speaker 2: He you know, when where he didn't want to serve a second.

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Speaker 1: People said to him, why don't you just become king? He was like, nope, that's he literally almost said, nope, you haven't been paying attention so what we were doing here. You know, thank you very much. It's very kind of you to think that I am, you know, worthy of being you're a leader forever. But I would like to just go home now, and somebody else can do this, because I'm not actually indispensable, and everybody should take their turn running the country and then step away from power. That and by the way, one could argue that, you know, FDR would have run forever and maybe won forever if he had not died in nineteen forty five. But all of our presidents until today have recognized the virtue in Washington's approach to the office, which is that the White House is not their house. It's they're borrowing the house for a little while from the American people. Anyway, I'm diverting from I moved from Madison to Washington, and I want to come back to Madison. I'll talk about George Washington all day and defend them all day, even though they're bad parts of his record quite obviously, but Madison was very pessimistic, so pessimistic that he thought the experiment was failing, even as it was just information. And one of the reasons he was pessive he was pessimistic about the ability of human beings to wisely, cool and reasonably govern themselves. Not Americans, just all humans. By our nature, and Madison worried. This is fascinating given where we are now. Madison worried that that the the uh innovation of the daily newspaper was going to kill our democracy once and for all, because the people would be given too much information to rationally process. In other words, the daily delivery of new information, once a day delivery of new information was too much cognitively for humans to absorb.

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Speaker 2: Right, how prescient?

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Speaker 1: Right, it turns out, you know, we adjusted fairly well to the daily newspaper. But to me, it's an open question can we adjust to our new reality of endless torrents of information, information and bad information? So you throw in so it's and I'll give you an example. I've always thought about this one as an interesting example of something that couldn't happen in the social media era when this is from you know, relatively recent times. You know, when Richard Nixon had the idea that, oh, you know what, maybe we should have relations with communist China. He sent Henry Kissinger to Pakistan on a secret mission to meet with high Chinese officials, and Pakistan was going to host it discreetly. Henry Kissinger disappeared. I don't know the exact number of days, seven eight, nine days, and he flew off secretly to Pakistan, and he and the Chinese came to an agreement that allowed for the opening for Richard Nixon's historic visit to China that opened up the relationship. The State Department lied about Henry Kissinger's They said he had a cold and he was off, you know, resting, or he had the flu or something that ain't going to happen today. One can argue that that's misleading the American people, you know, not telling them what our secretary state doing. But you know what, if people had found out, the deal would never have been done. And in this age, we expect to know everything about where people are all the time. And it's just that it's a minor example ultimately, but it's so interesting to me because, I mean, the Constitutional Convention wouldn't have worked if it had been covered and discussed the way social media discusses things today. So we are we're paralyzed by social media, and we're confused by social media, and we're angered by social media in a way that makes cool, rational, civically minded decision making really really difficult. And so that's one thing that we have today that they didn't have to deal with back in the day.

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Speaker 2: And do you think James Madison would ever envision Jeff a time when there is no common understanding of truth? You know, that the facts are manipulated depending on who's whose side they suit, right, Yeah, and facts are just no longer facts, or the truth is no longer truth, or their versions of it. Do you think that's one of the primary reasons that our democracy is under such strain.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's a little bit more complicated answer because back in those days, I mean, you know, and this is one of the interesting things about what ken Burns does and what I think we try to do in our in the issue, we try to bring the revolution and the revolutionary period back into history and strip it of some of its myth. I mean, the founders were also ordinary men who had resentments and angers, and the press was a you know, it was there were dirty stuff going on, and there was there is calumny, and there was accusation, and there were libel Remember how Hamilton died. I mean, these guys were not you know, they weren't a bunch of Dalai Lamas sitting there, you know, selflessly trying to make decisions only in the best interests of the people. So the press was filled with yellow journalism back then. But what was different is that I do believe what was true in seventeen seventy six was also true in the seventies and eighties and nineties of the previous century, that there was more or less a shared reality like here, this is a thing that is true, and this is a thing that's not true. Right. By the way, we haven't even gotten to the subject of what would the founders of America make of the possibility of ai agi and the idea and deep fakery. I mean, I do what we're doing right now is we're performing a completely unregulated experiment on the stress points of democracy, right and the stress points of human reality, like how much how much you know, how much pressure can we put reality under before it just splinters apart? And I think that's what you're you're getting at. We don't have you want to hear a great example. I'll give you. I'll give you a great example. Two hundred and fifty years ago, George Washington mandated that the soldiers of the Continental Army be vaccinated inoculated against smallpox. There was less controversy over that mandate two hundred forty years ago, then there's controversy about vaccines today. You know, I always think when I think about this one, I always think about the line popularized by President Obama the arc of history is long, but it bends to our justice. Or you could say the arc of history is long, but it bends to our knowledge. Isn't it amazing that we have a president today or a president surrounded by people in his cabinet today who have less faith in the science of vaccination than George Washington. And I don't know if some people know this, but vaccination back in those days, inoculation wasn't something you go to CVS and you get a shot. I mean they would scrape, you know, puss from the wounds from the smallpox of living people and then spread that puss into make a cut into another person's arm and spread that puss. It was horrible.

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Speaker 2: I'm glad I haven't eaten breakfast.

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Speaker 1: No means no, but it's yeah, it was horrible, but people like, all right, So, you know, George Washington studied what the doctors of the day said, Here's why we think it works, here's why you have to protect your army against smallpox. And then I reader was like, well, okay, if that's what the experts of the day say, we're going to do it.

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Speaker 2: And believe me, I've been so upset about this assault on science, Jeff and expertise, Knowledge and expertise writ large, right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, where are we when? I mean, look, by the way I get it, scientists make mistakes. Doctors make mistakes. You know that. I know that everybody knows that, but I don't know. I always think of it this way. If I went to one hundred doctors and ninety nine told me that I had emphysema and one said, no, you're just having an allergic reaction to you know, beef lomaine, I'd be like, I'm going to go with the ninety nine. You know what I mean, I wouldn't. I don't know why I said beef lawmine. I guess it's lunch, the you know. And it's like we're living in an age. And this goes exactly to your point, this splintering where it's like we don't share a reality. A reality tell you that holds for all of us, that vaccines are a good and not a bit. Yes, sometimes vaccines go awry. We know that, our doctors know that, but overall vaccination inoculation has saved millions and millions, hundreds of millions of lives. And so why is this now? Why are we doing this?

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Speaker 2: It almost goes to our capacity to appreciate our mistakes in the past. Right, there's a similar ethos at work where you can't acknowledge that the United States science people are not perfect and mistakes are made. I think the question is what do you do with those mistakes? Do you acknowledge them, do you try to improve on the situation? Do you look at the sort of the greater good? I mean, it's just a very very strange time. But Jeff, I want to ask you about some of the specific writers because there's some wonderful themes in this issue. Fittono Tool rights that alex Ander Hamilton, perhaps prophetically quote suggested that citizens needed politicians who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure, and that he had a ready made term for the sheer cowardice of so many legislators in today's Congress, and that is servile pliancy. I think so many people have been shocked by what could be described as servile pliancy in Congress, and you talked earlier about them abdicating their role and basically serving the purpose of bolstering the executive branch. And you know, I've talked to many smart people about this, Jeff, and there really doesn't seem to be any explanation other than a desperate desire to maintain power and a fear of being primaried. Essentially.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I look, it's cowardice all the way down. There is an understandable explanation and a pathetic explanation. You've articulated the pathetic explanation. They want to keep their jobs right at the cost of selling their souls right. They want to be they want to be in power, they want the trappings of power, and they don't want to be primary. That's the malignant explanation. The kind of understandable explanation is they literally fear for their physical safety and for the safety of their families, as they should because in the social media age, you know, I go back to I always go back to what it was like when we both started as reporters. You know, in the old days, lunatics who believe that the IRS had planted a chip in their brain and was spying on them, or believe whatever that the government was hiding Martians. You know, you would find them sometimes as a reporter standing outside a federal building handing out like handing out eight page tracts, you know, typed single space tracks and right, okay, thanks a lot. Now those people have podcasts with millions of listeners, They have websites, they they can they move that information throughout the so in other words, in other words, it's very, very easy to form a mob using the tools of social media. And if you're a legislator who doesn't have personal protection, you know, doesn't have you know, Capitol police outside your house or secret Service or whatever, and you live in a deep pro Trump state, and you know that the people in your state are being inundated with messages about how you're not just a bad legislator or a mistaken whatever, but you're a trader, you're an enemy or this or that, you're trying to destroy Americans civilization, you're trying to destroy Christianity, you're trying to destroy whatever. That's nerve wracking. I understand it. I also I also believe, like if you can't, if you can't live inside that tension and live with that level of danger, get out of the business of trying to represent the people and you're not fulfilling your oath to defend the Constitution.

00:29:31
Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, it's me Katie Couric. You know, if you've been following me on social media, you know I love to cook, or at least try, especially alongside some of my favorite chefs and foodies like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen, Lighty Hoyke, Alison Roman, and Ininagarten. So I started a free newsletter called Good Taste to share recipes, tips and kitchen mustaves. Just sign up at Katiecuric dot com slash good Taste. That's k A t I E c O U r Ic slash good Taste. I promise your taste buds will be happy you did. I think you're touching on something, Jeff. You know that, in many ways, other than fear, some of these members of Congress think they are serving their constituents because their constituents are being served things that are then putting pressure on their representatives. If that makes sense, it's the opposite of a virtuous cycle.

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Speaker 1: Let me delineate between two issues. One is, we're not talking about the battle of conservative and liberal ideas. Right, Like, if you're a red state legislator and your constituents are conservative and believe it a certain vision of how government should run, the role of business, the whole range of social and cultural issues, and you represent their views, you probably already have those views anyway, because you're elected into power by that state. That's fine, that's the American system, Like, American democracy works best when liberal ideas and conservative ideas are coming into collision and publicly vented so that people can see what the options are. I'm talking about something else, you know, which is you're an elected legislator. You're supposed to function as a member of the legislative branch, which means checking the power of the other two branches, standing for transparency and fighting corruption, believing that the government should employ the best people, not people who are friends or donors to the president. I mean, those are not ideological issues. That's just corruption versus non corruption. Right, So, like, you could be the most conservative person on the planet and support Donald Trump's vision of X or y or Z and also say, but no, we're not taking a seven forty seven from the authoritarian regime and Cutter and then doing business deals with them on the side. Like that's not ideological, that's just.

00:32:13
Speaker 2: That's just that's right wrong. I'm just right and wrong.

00:32:16
Speaker 1: Like like, there's no conservative I mean, there is no theoretically, there's no liberal view of presidential self dealing or a conservative view of presidential self dealing. Remember what happened? How did how did the Watergate drama end? A bunch of Republicans on the hill set all right, that's it, Nixon, you gotta go.

00:32:36
Speaker 2: You've crossed the line, crossed the.

00:32:38
Speaker 1: Line, and we're not We're not doing this anymore. And this has been this is the story of our age, you know, I mean, And here's the thing. You you know these guys, I know these guys. I know Lindsey Graham. Really, I know that Lindsey Graham in another age would have been standing right next to John McCain as John McCain said, we're not taking a plane from Cutter for air Force to use this air force one. What are you guys out of your minds?

00:33:05
Speaker 2: It almost makes me cry when I think of where are the John McCain's, Jeff, where are the people? And what the hell has happened to Lindsey Graham and all these Republicans who are turning a blind eye or even worse, supporting these kinds of actions that are either you know, corrupt, unconstitutional. I mean, we could go down a laundry list of descriptions.

00:33:33
Speaker 1: That's the look. I find that it's depressing, is as you do. I mean sometimes I maybe I over personalize it and think, oh, if John McCain were alive today, he would be John McCain, you know, and he would still be John McCain in the Senate calling calling this out. I believe very few people are born leaders, I don't know. Again, fear self interest, you know, and a lot of people, and this is true in the Democrats, among Liberals, a lot of people are like, yeah, I don't like the guy. I don't like what he does on X and Y and Z, but on this issue that's important to me, he's with me. So I'm going to make that deal. But again, like I said, it's not about ideology, it's about character, personal behavior. Look. One of the things that and this goes back to the core of what the founders believed. You know, It's like, if you're gonna have a democracy, you're gonna have to exercise Everyone is gonna have to exercise self restraint. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do it. Just because you can say something doesn't mean you should say it. Being mature and having self restraint is part and parcel of how you function in a healthy democracy. And I don't know, And your question to me is actually the key question, because none of what we are seeing would be happening. Look, none of what we're seeing would be happening if ten Republicans, seven Republican senators after January sixth, said you know what, I'm going to vote to convict Trump on impeachment charges, on the charges brought from in the second impeachment because he fomented an armed insurrection against the conduct of a free and fair election all he needed, and then he wouldn't have been Then he would have been almost axiomatically banned from running for office. So like the whole Republic that you know, when we look back, who knows, ten twenty thirty years from now, we might go and say, huh, if Mitch McConnell and Rob Portman and a handful of others had just actually lived their ideals or their stated ideals. We wouldn't have seen all the things that we're seeing this year so far, the dismantling of our Justice Department, the dismantling of our foreign aid and information programs, that dismand of the FBI. I don't have to give you the laundry list. I don't know. I don't. I don't know how to explain it other than that human beings or are flawed creatures.

00:36:12
Speaker 2: Before we go, Jeff, I wanted to ask you. You have so many brilliant writers at the Atlantic. You do this big issue, Jeff, you have some of the smartest people I know or I read writing about these various issues. Are you optimistic about the future. Do you feel that the things we fought for in the Revolutionary War, the ideals put forth by the founding fathers and adjusted throughout history to meet the times we've been in At any given moment, do you feel hopeful?

00:36:56
Speaker 1: I don't feel hopeful. I wouldn't. I wouldn't put myself in the unhopeful category either. I think. I mean, what I honestly think is that we don't know how AI is going to reshape our collective and individual understanding of reality. I don't know if democracy can take the pressure that's about to come down on it. When the feeds that our citizens, our fellow citizens are receiving are filled with highly produced, highly credible, seeming fakery. I don't know how we're going to live in twenty four hour a day chaos and not just have the capacity in space to make good decisions. I don't know how we're going to get the information that's going to lead us to decisions. So that's what right now. You add that to the sort of the social media mailstream, that's what I worry about. And I guess, I mean I'm sounding more negative than positive. I guess because that's the way I actually feel. But like we just talked about people like Rob Portman, accomplished senator from Ohio, former head of the OMB, talked about Mitch McConnell, talk about all these guys. They're supposed to be the best of us, right, These are our representatives. These are the people that the people of their states chose to represent them in the halls of the capital, and they abdicated their responsibility out of fear, cowardice. I don't know what, so what that's what our leaders were like. So I don't know what the people. I don't know how the people react will react to the splintering reality they're seeing, So I I wish I could be hopeful about it. And we also have a mass literacy crisis. I don't mean literacy in the classic sense of a grown up reading at a third grade level or a second grade level. I mean people who don't know what's in the Declaration of Independence or don't know what's in the constitution. You know, the death of civics, the death.

00:39:17
Speaker 2: Of an educated electorate.

00:39:21
Speaker 1: Have a democracy without an educated electorate. And let me get very patriotic here. The founders of the country, despite their huge flaws, set up, in theory, the best system that any human being could come up with for the maintenance and growth of a great nation. And we got to listen. We've got to listen to them. On the left, people want to throw them all out because they're dead white males. On the right, people want to say that they were perfect human beings. Let's not talk about their flaws, and let's lie in lieu of actually taking what they say in their most complicated expression. Let's just have a big parade and get mad at people who don't want to join the parade. That's where we are right now. Hope, I hope, I hope. I mean, the American people have been through much worse. Obviously. I'm sure in eighteen fifty seven when the Atlantic was founded, people weren't sitting around going, eh, things are going pretty good. Huh. You know, we had a really crappy president in eighteen fifty seven wasn't the worst, and the South was ready to depart, and Lincoln was an inexperienced yokel who's coming into power. So it was much I mean, it's kind of a compount to say, ah, we've been through much worse, but we've been through much worse. So I just think about the technological overlay is the thing that might push us over the edge.

00:40:46
Speaker 2: I hope that this magazine, this addition, this examination of our values and how we got here and how they withstood not only the test of time but so many challenges over the last two hundred and fifty years, will perhaps invigorate people and make them think and talk about where we are. Jeff, Because like you, I am deeply, deeply concerned, and you know, I'm kind of a glass half full person, you know, I think people are basically good. As my late husband used to say, I'm hardwired for happiness and positivity. But I really I am really worried. Honestly, I'm really worried, and I don't know. I hope we find a way out because I love this country too.

00:41:45
Speaker 1: We've gotten out of worse That's all I can say is we've gotten out of worse situations. So I mean that's not a very hopeful statement, but it's you know, resilience, and look, you know there's a many different versions of this. Is that you know, Americans will do the right thing after they do all the wrong things, you know, and we'll make various mistakes and then we'll figure out the right path. We go up, we go down, we muddle through. But yeah, I do. I do think that a prerequisite is to It doesn't have to be reading The Atlantic. I mean it should be, but doesn't have.

00:42:18
Speaker 2: To be or listening to next Question.

00:42:21
Speaker 1: Or listening to to one of the two or three greatest podcasts ever made. I'm not going to give you best because you wouldn't give me best. Who are watching Ken Burns's documentary, which is great, But everybody has to go meet the moment of actually being a citizen and asking, I mean, this is why this is. This is not to go back on this, but it's like the merry minimum people should demand is that the government should hire the best people for the for the job, not people who are friends of the president.

00:42:52
Speaker 2: And people who know people who very simply, Jeff, do the right thing.

00:42:58
Speaker 1: I will give you the last word because that was Podcrick.

00:43:02
Speaker 2: Jeff, thank you so much. It's great to talk to.

00:43:04
Speaker 1: You, great to talk to you.

00:43:08
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. Everyone. If you have a question for me, a subject you want us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my newsletter wake Up Call, go to the description in the podcast app or visit us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hi everyone, it's Katie Couric. You know I'm always on the go between running my media company, hosting my podcast, and of course covering the news. And I know that to keep doing what I love, I need to start caring for what gets me there, my feet. That's why I decided to try the Good Feet stores personalized arch support system. I met with a Good Feet arch support specialist and after a personalized fitting, I left the store with my three step system designed to improve comfort, balance and support. My feet. Means and back are thanking me already. Visit goodfeet dot com to learn more, find the nearest store, or book your own free personalized fitting.