Charles Coulombe joins Ash Milton to discuss the rise and fall of the WASP ruling class and what we can learn from it.
I went to New York to learn about NFTs and their subculture. I found a vision for society that seems all too familiar.
Samo Burja joins Wolf Tivy to discuss his Palladium 04 article on how rising classes become new elites.
Avetis Muradyan joins Ash Milton in Brazil to discuss his Palladium 04 article on crime. Other topics included favelas, frontiers, and how one learns to be human.
You can’t affect the world in the most important ways from within established patterns of action. You need to spend some time in the wilderness.
In the nineteenth century, America’s most powerful families became a national ruling class. Then came their rapid collapse.
Rulers and crime lords are often made of the same stuff. For those who can handle it, the underworld has valuable lessons to teach about power.
Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss Palladium 04, which launches in Winter 2021. The theme is Cultivating Elites.
Yale’s legendary secret society used to train powerful elites. But it could only reflect elite culture, not define it.
Lebanon’s state is collapsing under the weight of its own dysfunction. Visiting its capital, I found a gallery of street art, urban wreckage, and political nihilism.
Our approach to education is reproducing society’s worst neuroses. The alternative isn’t institutional reform, but a different consciousness.
Both China and the West are embracing scientific population management driven by digital technologies. Why have they given up on mobilizing their populations?
The party cadre Jiao Yulu embodied a Chinese political culture with room for experiments and risk-taking. Xi’s turn to digital technocracy may threaten its survival.
Geremie Barmé joins Ash Milton to discuss his experiences in China during the Cultural Revolution and what prior upheavals can teach us about the Xi era.
America’s elite universities have an aristocratic mission. The Confucian tradition has lessons for how to achieve it.
While in Lebanon to report on a disintegrating state, I found Hezbollah building a different kind of regime.
One man’s thought has become pivotal in China’s new political and cultural crackdowns. That man is not Xi Jinping.
Kevin Kelly joins the salon to discuss his new book and photographic travelogue: Vanishing Asia. Other topics include why history matters for futurists and why Kevin doesn’t regret the vanishing of the past.