Social Decay and The Pandemic - with Yuval Levin | Call Me Back

Bret Stephens on Geopolitics Post Corona: It seems like analysts of foreign affairs and super power politics are always worrying that “the world is a mess”. But has the international order - to the extent it existed in recent years - become even more disorderly due to the pandemic? What effect has covid had on Great Power politics? As a new president assembles his national security team and develops a grand strategy, I thought it would be good to sit down with Bret Stephens of the New York Times to take a quick tour around the world and talk about China, Russia, Europe and the Middle East. What’s changed - and changing - as a result of the pandemic? What does it mean for America’s foreign policy? by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

59 min listen

When IS Post Corona, anyway? Part 2 - Turning the Corner: How will we know when we actually arrive at the Post-Corona phase? This is the second part of a two part conversation on this question, the first of which was when we looked at Israel (Vaccination Nation). Today, we’ll talk about the US -- when we will arrive at post-corona and what is standing in our way? To help us understand what is happening in the US, we welcome Scott Gottlieb, who served as the 23rd commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Gottlieb is currently on the boards of Pfizer and Illumina and a special partner with the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

56 min listen

Billy Beane on the future of sports: Billy Beane, Executive Vice President of the Oakland Athletics, joins Dan to discuss the future of sports. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

75 min listen

"God and the Pandemic": News just out of the CDC has created fresh opportunities for normal, communal time together, indoors — just like we did pre-Corona. One of the rituals I have missed over the past year has been attending synagogue. But long before the Covid-19 pandemic, participation in organized religion - across all walks of religious life - was on the decline. Americans had become less engaged in religious institutions, whether it was regular attendance or membership and donations to their local congregation. Did the pandemic arrest these trends? Did virtual platforms provide new opportunities for religious and communal engagement? Joel Kotkin is a professor and bestselling author. He has been described by The New York Times as “America’s uber-geographer.” He has authored numerous books, including The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, and also The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us. He is also a regular contributor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. Joel recently au by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

51 min listen

Post Corona Has Arrived - And This Is What It Sounds Like: Today we’re doing something… different. After 15 months of avoiding business travel, I boarded a plane to attend meetings in Israel. When I landed, it felt more like I boarded a DeLorean and time-traveled ahead to the era of Post Corona - a land far, far away. WIth 85% of Israelis, 16 and older, inoculated, and with hospitals emptying out, it was clear that as far as Israelis are concerned - the pandemic is now just another chapter in history. Life in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem felt like a movie trailer for the rest of the world - coming soon to a theater near you. I wanted to capture this intangible energy and bring it to your ears. So I called up Tuli, a Tel Aviv sound engineer and friend of ours who usually works on Israel’s leading films and television shows. He joined me for an afternoon of conversations at the heart of Tel Aviv’s bustling streets. I started with Amit Aronson, a well-known restaurant critic in Israel, by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

57 min listen

How Will History Judge 2020?: Dan sits down with Niall Ferguson, a historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, to discuss how history will remember 2020. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

52 min listen

Adam Grant on the future of work: Adam Grant, a professor of organizational psychology at Wharton, joins Dan to discuss the future of work. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

42 min listen

Delta... This is New York!: This was supposed to be the summer that we returned to normal, here in New York City and in every major city around the world. Right? But now there’s increasing speculation that it might not happen, because of the Delta variant, and other variants that may hit us from the mutating virus. How should our government and public health leaders respond? How should we respond? We wanted to sit down with frequent Post-Corona guest John Podhoretz for a midsummer check-in on where we are with the City’s return. Specifically, we wanted to return to a topic John joined us to discuss last year - Broadway - when would Broadway really re-open, as that’s a proxy for New York’s return to its vibrant and striving pre-Corona past. John Podhoretz is the editor-in-chief of Commentary Magazine, a columnist for the New York Post, and a long-time writer about live theater, films and popular culture. He’s also a fellow New Yorker, with whom I banter with on an ongoing basis abo by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

68 min listen

Is New York Over? Part 1 - The Subway: Dan invites Reihan Salam and Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute to discuss the hotly debated question: "Is New York over?" On this episode of Post Corona, Dan and his guests explore how subways play a role in the city's future. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

56 min listen

Is China Turning Crisis Into Opportunity? With Josh Rogin: China is in the midst of a global vaccination campaign. According to published reports, China’s Government is supplying 10 times as many doses to other countries as it is to citizens in its own country. China’s vaccination campaign is currently engaging 45 countries spread across multiple continents around the world. Why? What is China getting in return? And should the US also be engaged in vaccine diplomacy? This is just one of many ways in which the Pandemic has upended geopolitics as we know it. To better understand how China seeks to transform a global crisis that originated in China into a foreign policy tool, we sit down with Josh Rogin of the Washington Post. He’s one of the sharpest analysts on China policy and on US policy towards China. Having written about China for years and traveled Asia extensively, Josh is the author of the new book: “Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, XI, and the Battle for the 21st Century”. The Pan by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

60 min listen

Social Decay and The Pandemic - with Yuval Levin: The coronavirus pandemic was a public health crisis and an economic crisis, but was it also a social crisis? Will we look back at Covid19 as being a catalyst for unifying our society, tearing it apart, or simply accelerating trends that were already in the works long before March of 2020? Yuval Levin is one of the most prolific and influential thinkers on the subject of the health of our society - pre… and post corona. He wrote a book about the social breakdown in the U.S. and how to turn it around. It’s called ”A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus. How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream”. As for the book’s timing? Well, it was released just six weeks before the world shut down due to the pandemic. And yet his diagnosis of societal breakdown is as relevant now as before the pandemic… actually more so. It reminds me of a book from the beginning of this century, when Harvar by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

58 min listen

Will We Ever Go To The Movies Again… And Does That Matter?: That phrase - going to the movies - that shared experience in a movie theater full of strangers already makes me nostalgic, like listening to vinyl records. Before the pandemic, the movie theater business was an 11-billion dollar industry in the US alone. In 2020, there were approximately 40,000 screens in 5,798 theaters that employed over 115,000 people. Then, of course, in March of 2020, like all communal entertainment experiences, they were all shut down. Netflix, Amazon and Disney, which were already increasing their market share of the movie experience, replaced movie theaters overnight. But as we crawl out of the pandemic to a post-corona world, will the tension build to return to the movies? Right now, we are seeing early signs of a market for the sanctity of the movie theater experience. To help us understand the history of the film business and where it goes from here, post-corona, John Podhoretz returns to our by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

70 min listen

Is New York Over? Part 2 - Broadway: Dan speaks with John Podhoretz, Editor-in-Chief of Commentary Magazine, to discuss the hotly debated question: "Is New York over?" On this episode of Post Corona, Dan asks John to help us understand the short history of Broadway’s economic boom and where it goes from here. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

59 min listen

Derek Thompson of The Atlantic on the Post-Corona workforce: On the first episode of Post Corona, Dan Senor invites The Atlantic's Derek Thompson to discuss the future of the American labor market. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

58 min listen

China’s Great Wall of Steel? - with Matt Pottinger: China’s borders have been sealed for well over a year now. And those borders will be closed for the foreseeable future. That, obviously, is a result of the pandemic; but, is there a larger grand strategy at play? For decades now, China’s coupling with western economies has been the dominant theme of the global economic landscape - beginning with China’s 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization. But that’s been changing. Fast forward to a speech by President Xi Jinping to mark the hundred year anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. He spoke before a massive crowd in Tiananmen Square: "The Chinese people", Xi said “will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or enslave us. Anyone who tries to do so shall be battered and bloodied colliding with a great wall of steel forged by more than 1.4 billion Chinese people using flesh and blood.” On July 2, Chinese regulators announced an investigation into DiDi Global, a ri by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

63 min listen

Tom Cotton on the Lab Leak Hypothesis of Covid19: The source of SARS-CoV-2 has been a mystery. One theory that was initially met with a scathing response from many in the media and some in the scientific community was that SARS-CoV-2 might have leaked from a research lab in Wuhan, Hubei in China - the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The leading voice elevating the need to investigate this possible scenario back in February of 2019 was U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR). At the time, The New York Times declared Senator Cotton’s remarks a “conspiracy theory.” The Washington Post headlined an article: “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked.” Was it debunked? Or has more light been shed on it that warrants further examination? That’s where we are today, in which we suddenly find the discussion turning. Some in the press and in the science community - and among a bipartisan set of officials - are exploring this hypothesis. To be clear, these vo by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

53 min listen

Blackstone’s Jonathan Pollack on Real-Estate Post Corona: Many have been surprised that areas of the real estate market are booming, Post Corona. So what do we know about the pandemic’s impact on an exodus from some cities, and the growth of other cities? One of the ways that I have learned on this limited series podcast is from our top flight guests, but also from our listeners. A business practitioner - an operator or investor - will hear one of our experts on the pod and get a hold of me with an alternative analysis; it’s like I get to crowdsource ideas from our listeners. Well today, we’re bringing one of those subscribers on the show. Jonathan Pollack is a Senior Managing Director at the Blackstone Group and Blackshone’s Global Head of the Real Estate Debt Strategies group. Blackstone is one of the largest owners of real estate in the world. Jon, who is based in New York, manages a large team, overseeing Blackstone’s real estate debt investment strategy. He’s also a member of by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

50 min listen

When IS Post Corona, anyway? Part 1 - Vaccination Nation: How will we know when we actually arrive at the Post-Corona phase? Well, THE milestone along the way will be getting entire populations vaccinated. One country may show us the way - Israel, which is on track to vaccinate its entire population by the end of March. To understand how did Israel become... Vaccination Nation, we welcome Yonatan Adiri, who is the Founder and CEO of Healthy.IO, a fast-growing digital health start-up, headquartered in Tel Aviv. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

63 min listen

The New Inflation - with Mohamed El-Erian: The Covid-19 recession technically ended in April 2020. At two months, it was one of the shortest economic recessions in history. Since then, however, some economists and market practitioners have been screaming from the hilltops about the risk of inflation. That’s because the US Government injected trillions of fiscal and monetary stimulus into the economy - the highest levels in history - and the US Government and governments around the world are still at it. All this spending was against the backdrop of staggering changes in our economy. Are there bright red flashing warning signs of inflation right now? If so, were the inflationary trends already in place prior to the pandemic? Or did the covid response policies of governments here and abroad accelerate them? And how do we unwind an inflationary cycle before it’s too late? Today we have the ideal guest to help us understand what we are dealing with. Dr Mohamed El-Erian is President of Q by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

53 min listen

Vaccination Nation: Is our Post Corona future unfolding now in Israel?: So far more than 70 percent of Israelis, ages 16 and older, have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and many of them two jabs. How has Israel done this? Well, Israel’s prime minister negotiated with Pfizer to obtain millions of vaccine doses early. Israel paid a premium for this upfront supply, but also agreed to provide the company with indispensable clinical data, made possible by Israel’s digital health infrastructure. Now the prime minister has set a goal of getting Israel’s economy completely re-opened by the Spring. To explain what may be heading our way, we have Yonatan Adiri returning to our podcast. Yonatan is the founder and CEO of Tel Aviv digital health startup Healthy.IO. He was also a top technology and diplomatic advisor to then-President Shimon Peres. Has Israel become the world’s Post-Corona laboratory? What can we expect over here from what Israelis are learning over there? by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

51 min listen

Lessons for the 2020s - With Historian Niall Ferguson: The first of our two-part conversation with Naill Ferguson is on applied history’s lessons of the 1920s and the 1970s...for the 2020s. Niall is a historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and he previously taught at Harvard, NYU and Oxford. He’s the managing director of Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm. Niall is also the author of 17 books including “The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook” and “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe”. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

41 min listen

The Covid Presidency with Maggie Haberman: What was the impact of Covid19 on the political landscape? What will it mean for elected leaders who governed during this past year? Today we sit down with someone who knows something about covering a president during a pandemic that consumed his presidency. For the entirety of the Trump administration, Maggie Haberman was a White House correspondent for The New York Times. She joined The Times in 2015, and soon found herself covering Donald Trump’s unlikely campaign. She’s part of a team at the Times that won a Pulitzer. We talk to Maggie today about where journalism goes after the pandemic. What the Trump administration got wrong and what it got right during covid, and where that leaves others political figures - including Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo and Ron DeSantis. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

58 min listen

Revisiting The New Inflation - with Mohamed El-Erian: The Covid-19 recession technically ended in April 2020. At two months, it was one of the shortest economic recessions in history. Since then, we have experienced record inflation. Last summer, we sat down with Mohamed El-Erian, who was an early voice warning about the coming inflation, how to understand it, and what its implications could be. But were the inflationary trends already in place prior to the pandemic? Did the covid response policies of governments here and abroad accelerate those trends? And how do we unwind an inflationary cycle? Today we are reposting that conversation with. Dr Mohamed El-Erian is President of Queens' College, Cambridge University. He serves as part-time Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz and Chair of Gramercy Fund Management. He’s a Professor at The Wharton School, he is a Financial Times contributing editor, Bloomberg Opinion columnist, and the author of two New York Times best sellers. He serves on by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

53 min listen

Is The Problem In Israel Rooted in 1967 or 1948?: When I was in Israel a few weeks ago, a number of the Israelis I interviewed marveled at how quickly things had gone back to normal in Israel, Post-Corona. One of those guests, Yonatan Sagiv - the novelist - told me that we’ll know we’re back to normal when Israelis have to resume dealing with their pre-pandemic problems. Well, over these past 10 days, one conflict lit right back up in a tragic way - Israel’s off-again, on-again war with Hamas. So that’s what we’re going to discuss in this episode. Now, I know that this is not the kind of topic we typically cover on this podcast. But it’s an issue I care a lot about, and so I want to use this conversation to try to shed some light to what is a very heated issue. There’s a ton of noise over here in the West about what just happened between Gaza and Israel - plenty of hot takes, with very little discussion about the history and context. There’s nobody better to help us unpack what just by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

68 min listen

Delta Politics - with Mike Murphy: The Pandemic has either caused a crack-up in our politics or accelerated the crack-up that was well under way. And just when it looked like things were stabilizing, the politics of Covid have evolved along with the Delta variant. Ground zero for how this is playing out right now is California. California is home to approximately 40 million people and the 5th largest economy in the world. It’s about to have an election on whether to re-call its incumbent governor, Gavin Newsom. How California voters have experienced government regulations — from lockdowns, mask mandates, school closings, and not to mention double-standards — shapes the political environment there. Is this a harbinger of what’s to come to our national politics? To help us understand what’s going on in California is the strategist who masterminded the last successful recall election. Mike Murphy was the chief strategist for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election in 2003, which was a re-call by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

55 min listen

The American College Crack-Up - with Niall Ferguson: In this decade we may finally experience a true crack-up in higher education. There have been comparable periods on American college campuses in the past (in the 1960s and 1980s, for example). But our guest today, historian Niall Ferguson, believes what’s happening now is on a whole other level. Niall is doing something about it -- he’s starting a new university. Niall argues that parents -- who had enriching and intellectually diverse experiences when they went to college -- don’t fully appreciate that their own children will experience something completely different when they go off to university. Niall Ferguson has taught at Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and New York University. He’s authored 17 books. He’s currently at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University where he is the MIllbank Family Senior Fellow, and Managing Director of Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm. Order Niall’s most recent book, “Do by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

29 min listen

John Dickerson on The Presidency Post Corona: Will a new American president lead us to a post-Corona return to normal? Or has the American presidency become an impossible job? It is, according to 60 Minutes correspondent John Dickerson, “The Hardest Job In The World”. Has the American presidency finally met its match in a global pandemic? by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

60 min listen

Unexpected Presidential Advisors - with Gary Ginsberg: Who do presidents, prime ministers and business leaders listen to in the midst of managing a crisis? It’s a question that’s always interested me, from my time in government and business and also as a moon-lighting student of history. I thought about that a lot during the covid pandemic. On this podcast series, we’ve talked about how the formal channels in our governments performed these past 18 months. But how about those unofficial channels from outside the government that wind up shaping our leaders' thinking and approach to world-changing events. Think about the number of informed practitioners that government leaders had access to during Covid, outside the regular bureaucracy of government. Practitioners in everything from the markets, to experience with supply chains, to the front lines of medicines. How many of these people had relationships with our leaders from a previous time in their lives, that could or should have mad by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

60 min listen

Is New York Over? Part 3 - Crime and the City: Dan speaks with president of the Manhattan Institute, Reihan Salam, and deputy director of legal policy at the Manhattan Institute, Rafael Manguel, about the role crime will play in slowing, or even halting, the City’s Post-Corona recovery. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

68 min listen

Zoom University: Is Covid The Ultimate Higher Education Disruptor?: When we think about industries that immediately got hardest hit during the pandemic, the images that come to mind include restaurants, travel, theater, sports and - higher education. In the US alone, higher education is almost a three-quarter-of-a-trillion dollar sector. To help us understand what the disruption and the coming transformation might look like, we sit down with my friend Daniel Pianko. Dan has a long venture investing career in the higher education and training sectors. Dan himself is a disrupter. He is co-founder and managing director of the investment funds University Ventures and Achieve Partners. Is the college economic model offering being turned upside down right now? Or due to Covid, is the trend accelerating even faster than Professor Christenson every imagined? And if so, what comes next? by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

52 min listen

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Social Decay and The Pandemic - with Yuval Levin

Social Decay and The Pandemic - with Yuval Levin

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