Feudal Future

California is overflowing with talent for defense, aerospace, and the space economy, but talent alone does not build ships, pour metal, or ramp a factory. We sit down with Cameron Schiller, CEO of Rangeview, and Sean Randolph from the Bay Area Council Economic Institute to ask a blunt question: is California still competitive when a company needs to move from “cool prototype” to “100,000 square fe...

Loving two countries is easy until those countries move toward war. We sit down with Dr. Nargis Rakin, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at Cerritos College, to talk about the emotional and practical reality of being Iranian American when Iran is treated like a permanent headline and a permanent enemy. She shares what “living in two worlds” actually looks like, from accents and assumptions to...

The fastest way to misunderstand science and religion is to treat them like teams that can only win by making the other side lose. We gather at Chapman University for a live event that replaces the tired conflict narrative with something more honest: a shared, rigorous search for truth, meaning, and responsibility. Along the way, we touch the history people forget, including how figures tied to fa...

A model is told “don’t go online,” and it still finds a way. That’s the gut-punch that kicks off our conversation about AI control, AI safety, and why the current trajectory feels less like innovation and more like building lock-picking predators and calling the cage “alignment.”  Marshall Toplansky and Joel Kotkin are joined by Roni Abovitz (CEO of Synth Bee and longtime AR and tech executive) an...

California can feel like a place where elections happen, but outcomes barely change. We sit down with Gloria Romero, former State Senate Majority Leader and a current candidate for lieutenant governor, and Jennifer Hernandez, a leading land use and environmental attorney, to talk about the real fault lines under California politics and why the next shift may come from voters everyone keeps underes...

Homeownership in California is starting to sound like a luxury product, even for people we rely on every day. We’re at Chapman University’s housing summit with researchers, builders, advocates, lenders, and public officials to ask one simple question with huge consequences: if Californians still want to own a home, why has the system gotten so good at producing rentals and so bad at producing star...

War headlines make U.S.-Iran relations feel like a brand-new emergency, but the roots run straight through 1979 and the decades of habits that followed. We sit down with Professor Mansor Farhang, former Iranian ambassador to the United Nations during the hostage negotiations, and Ambassador John Limbert, a veteran U.S. diplomat who was held hostage in Tehran, to map how a revolution that seemed im...

Europe’s politics is moving under our feet, and the labels are doing more heat than light. We sit down with sociologist and author Frank Furedi and political researcher Jacopo Custodi to sort through the surge of right-wing populism and the state of the far left across Europe, with Italy, Germany, Portugal, and the UK as key reference points. The question we keep coming back to is simple: are vote...

If you can ask a chatbot anything and get an instant answer, what happens to the slower questions that actually shape a life like purpose, morals, and belonging? We sit down with Professor Tony Lemus, an engineer and medical device entrepreneur, and Ponthea Zahrarii, a computer science and engineering graduate, to talk about why the science and religion debate is reappearing in classrooms, labs, a...

The job market can feel like a contradiction: the economy grows, unemployment does not look catastrophic, yet white-collar candidates can barely get a callback. We unpack that tension with two people who live in the data and the day-to-day reality of hiring: Michael Bernick, former director of California’s Employment Development Department, and Gad Levanon, chief economist at the Burning Glass Ins...

Energy shocks don’t just raise prices, they can end expansions. We sit down with Tyler Goodspeed, Chief Economist at ExxonMobil and author of “Recession,” plus energy analyst Robert Bryce, to map how oil, natural gas, and geopolitics can turn into real-world recession risk. Along the way, we test a question we remember from the 1970s: are we watching another classic energy-driven downturn, or some...

The fastest way to spot a broken housing market is brutally simple: compare home prices to incomes. When that price-to-income ratio, often called the median multiple, shoots from a normal “3” to “11” or “12,” you are not looking at a minor housing shortage. You are looking at a system that no longer works for the middle class. We unpack what the latest Demographia housing affordability data says a...

A half-century is long enough for a community to transform, but not long enough for the origin story to stay intact without receipts. We walk through one of the first comprehensive efforts to measure Iranian Americans in the United States, then pressure-test the findings with sharp audience questions and personal reflections that put real faces behind the charts.  We talk about how Iranian immigra...

The Democrats keep asking voters to choose them, but many people still can’t answer a basic question: what do Democrats stand for right now? We bring on public affairs consultant and UCLA lecturer David Gershwin and AEI senior fellow Ruy Teixeira to wrestle with the party’s direction, its internal incentives, and why “winning the next election” can mask deeper strategic failure. We talk about how...

Liberalism didn’t start as a comfortable status quo. It started as a revolt against feudal hierarchy and rigid orthodoxy, and it stayed alive by reinventing itself when capitalism and concentrated power threatened to rot the system from the inside. That’s the premise behind our conversation with Adrian Wooldridge, author of The Revolutionary Center, The Lost Genius of Liberalism, and it’s the thre...

A state can look rich on paper while ordinary life gets harder fast and the bill comes due. We sit down with Hephestion Bolaris of Class Unity and Hank Adler, an accounting professor and former Deloitte tax partner, to ask the uncomfortable question behind every big promise: who pays, how, and what happens when the payers can leave? We pressure-test wealth taxes and “tax the rich” politics against...

Entry-level hiring is getting squeezed, but the reasons aren’t as simple as “the economy is bad.” We sit down with David Brown, Americas CEO of Hays, and James Dusserre, assistant dean for placement and career services, to map what the 2026 job market actually looks like for new grads and early career professionals. The surprising part: GDP and unemployment can look okay while companies still pull...

Religious belief is supposed to fade as societies get richer and more educated. So why do newer surveys show the opposite pattern in the United States, with college grads and post grads often *more* likely to attend church than people with only a high school education? We unpack what the data can and cannot prove, why earlier secularization theories missed key realities, and how a smaller but more...

California’s housing crisis isn’t a riddle; it’s a chain reaction. We trace it from land policy and restrictive growth boundaries to code complexity, construction costs, and the quiet social fallout inside families, schools, synagogues, and neighborhoods. With demographers, advocates, and veteran builders around the table, we unpack why the median home price-to-income ratio ballooned, how the land...

Populism gets blamed for everything from polarization to democratic decay—but what if the louder story is a search for voice and belonging? We sit down with sociologist Frank Furedi to unpack why so many voters are breaking with legacy parties and why the energy behind these movements is less about recession and more about culture. From national identity and neighborly trust to the norms families...

What if the internet that promised liberation ended up centralizing control over what we see, share, and believe? We sit down with Jake Siegel—journalist, former Army intelligence officer, and author of The Information State—to trace how a tool built for openness became the backbone of a new information order. Starting with the Internet Freedom Agenda and moving through 9/11’s surveillance shift,...

Want a clear-eyed map of where AI is taking jobs, education, and leadership over the next five years? We dig past the headlines to examine why tech profits can soar while layoffs spread, why white-collar roles are suddenly vulnerable, and how students and mid-career professionals can protect their earnings in a market that rewards speed, strategy, and human touch. We unpack the difference between...

The headlines shout about winners and losers, but the real story this year is a quiet break in the social fabric: rising costs, collapsing civility, and a middle class pushed to the margins while trillion-dollar platforms set the rules. We take stock without the wishful thinking—where leadership fell short, why media trust eroded, and how populist energy devolved into a performance economy. Then w...

The ground beneath American religion is shifting, but not in a straight line. We dig into why the country’s casual middle is shrinking while conviction grows at the edges—among communities that ask more, not less. With Charles Murray and Terry Mattingley, we trace the data on mainline decline, the plateau of the “nones,” and the surprising surge in tradition-forward spaces where authority, discipl...

A governor with national ambitions, a party tug‑of‑war, and a state wrestling with affordability—this conversation goes straight at the question on everyone’s mind: can Gavin Newsom sell hope to a country tired of anger without getting buried by California’s record? We bring together seasoned strategists to weigh why prediction markets love his chances, how a relentless work ethic and podcast‑firs...