The most powerful members of our society work in predictable ways. So do those who join them.
Bruno Maçães joins Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton to discuss why America is ripe for a re-founding, stagnation in Europe and China, and why liberalism has stopped delivering on progress.
Early Singapore’s authoritarian competency is a model invoked by leaders from China to Rwanda. But its rise was complex, messy, and the result of long factional battles. There are hard limits to how far it can be exported.
The Great Steppe of Eurasia has variously been a bridge and battleground between civilizations. But one thing is now certain: it will be China that will shape the Steppe’s future and the future of those living along its vast plain.
Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton talk with Stephen Wolfram about the role institutions play in generating intellectual progress in science, as well as his development of a new computational paradigm for understanding fundamental physics.
Saffron Huang joins Wolf Tivy to expand on her recent Palladium article on Harvard, particularly about the ways in which elite education can be re-imagined to route around the problem of managerialism.
Harvard prides itself as the training ground for American elites. But that goal has given way to striving managerialism, myopic career goals, and a stunted appetite for risk.
Wolf Tivy and Matt Ellison talk to Charles Fishman about how the capacity and practical expertise built by grand projects like Apollo transformed the American economy.
The consolidation of industrial labor in the 19th century and the rise of the consumer-citizen in the 20th introduced a new moral paradigm of work that has now become fake, leaving workers alienated and loyalties betrayed.
Putin’s Russia is reconciling Stalin, Orthodoxy, and the modern state by crafting a new historical narrative. Beneath the seeming contradictions, the Kremlin is building the first Russian nation-state.
The Apollo Program took an impossible goal and achieved it within a decade. Charles Fishman has written an invaluable history of how social engineers, institution builders, and political deal-brokers made it happen.
Samo Burja joins Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton to discuss how great founders make history through the institutions they create, how political transitions actually work, and what intellectual dark matter exists in our society today.
The knowledge and practices needed for civilization to flourish are commonly lost. Thinkers in the Late Zhou dynasty of ancient China recognized the decline of their era and attempted to overcome it.
Chinese President Xi Jinping believes in inevitable laws of history and makes sure that his government does too. China’s path of peaceful development depends on his continued belief in globalization and the rise of developing economies.
Author and professor Michael Lind joins Wolf Tivy and Matt Ellison to discuss economic pluralism, the new class war between America’s elites and its working class, and how to fix it.
The U.S. pandemic response was undermined by buck-passing and bad judgment at every turn. Tech giants outperformed it thanks to lessons from the past and better incentives for the future.
Universities face a moment of decision for the upcoming fall semester, but instead of embracing fully online content or just throwing the doors wide open, they can develop a serious Green Zone plan to effectively handle the COVID-19 crisis.
Singapore has been held up as a model of governance. But with American political culture threatening its institutions, China’s digital sovereignty may be the strategy that endures.