The Hope Axis by Anna Gát

The brilliant and always candid Haya Odeh - co-founder and design lead of Replit - and I talked about her company (and her husband and co-founder Amjad Masad), entrepreneurship, and hope — immigration, motherhood, resilience, being your best self, and the great power of not having a plan B.https://x.com/HayaOdehhttps://x.com/Replit

Max Meyer, founder and editor of Arena Magazine, and I sat down to talk about the Army and DOGE, Alex Karp and farming, Love Letters to America and Tocqueville, trust and publishing, fake news and social revolutions, academia and cities...And also the value of travelling around the US, the value of books, the value of people having a say in how their country is run. And establishing the first maga...

#satire #newsletters #DOGE #elonmusk #politics #liberalism #trolls #feminismThis was our 21st episode, and I celebrated its coming of drinking age by inviting my scandal hero mutual Richard Hanania. We talked about the art of satire (and a little trolling). Writing independently and without filter. Why Neoliberalism was, according to Richard, right. Why Liberals must make a comeback. Why women’s i...

The great Kyla Scanlon, economics creator and author of the book 'In This Economy?' (and host of some great Interintellect salons and series) and I talked about polarisation and economic stressors, the 3 types of GenZ, and housing, hope, fertility, DOGE, social fragmentation, bad vibes, the White House — and more! Links: https://kylascanlon.com/ https://kyla.substack.com/ https://www.tikto...

Writer, literary critic, and the man behind the great The Common Reader (https://www.commonreader.co.uk) blog, Henry Oliver joined me to gossip about literature and then dive in and build our own Western Canon. Enjoy! We talked about good literature and bad literature, Tolstoy and Shakespeare, Woolf, Bloom… Romanticism, quests, Goethe, Tolkien... And most importantly we built a from-scratch Wester...

Investor and writer Jim O'Shaughnessy came on The Hope Axis and shared his Theory of Life. We talked about…probably everything? The 80s on Wall Street, reputation and norms, patterns and emotions, financial markets and family, Shakespeare sonnets and journaling, Cold War and conformism, Girard and Jung, reality and instincts, 911 and altruism, the Internet and belief systems, books and obsessi...

The one and only Zena Hitz — Tutor at St. John's College and author of one of my favourite books 'Lost in Thought — joined me to talk about Plato and Christ, contemplation and service, wisdom and being lost, morality and dignity, end goals and anxieties — Agnes Callard and Irina Dumitrescu — Aquinas and Hildegard of Bingen, and happiness! Links:https://www.zenahitz.net/https://press.prince...

Medieval scholar Irina Dumitrescu and I talk about the medieval mindset, faith, doubt, sex, and suicide. And also Margery Kempe and fame, heretics and wives, Strauss and Glück, Girard and Hamlet, pilgrims, saints, madness, vegetarianism, secrets, the Inquisition, and much more. Oh and Monty Python, of course! Irina: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/authors/irina-dumitrescu https://x.com/irinibus https://...

Writer, podcaster, and activist Sarah Haider joined me to discuss New Atheism, neo-religion, spiritual journeys, Cultural Islam. We reminisced about the Four Horsemen era and explored vibe shifts, trads, fanatics, immigration, woke taboos, the lack of constructive dialogue. Can democracy function without religion? What do people do with their big feelings like love, hate, or fear in the age of sec...

Writer and community builder Paul Millerd joined me to discuss his two excellent self-published books The Pathless Path and Good Work, as well as: Scenes and tribes. The Intellectual Renaissance were living through. John Stuart Mill, Sartre, Havel. The end of the corporate default. Language, community, virtue. SF vs Austin, GenZ vs Millennials. Cold emailing and rejection. The implosions of the so...

Co-founder and CEO of the GenZ media company Eternal, Reggie James joined me to talk about how technology could better serve people's spiritual - even religious - needs. We talked about his viral blogposts, his obsession with Marshall McLuhan, and why writing is the ultimate form of design.

The brilliant anonymous blogger Cartoons Hate Her joined me to explore dating and attraction, marriage and work, raising children and being in the media -- and cleared up a lot of misunderstandings around seduction, trads, fame, monogamy, domination and disappointments. https://www.cartoonshateher.com/

Novelist and essayist A. Natasha Joukovksy joined me to talk about status and attraction, mimesis and uniformity, Girard and Austen, Batuman and Kierkegaard, Tolstoy and main character energy, Natasha's first novel and her new one in the making, the positive side of the imitation game, and how individuals can live freely from it all.

Podcaster star Dwarkesh Patel on how his eponymous podcast started, how his niche interests empower him, what he learned about scene-building and getting one's "lucky break", and how he succeeded at landing Mark Zuckerberg, Tony Blair, or Tyler Cowen as interviewees.

Professional end-of-life doula Emma Acker joined me to discuss the mystery of dying -- and the forgotten art of being there with the dying. Her job is just this, and we talked about the various stages of departure, how the family might react, what administrative things one needs to take care of. But also about dying when young versus old, when in pain versus no pain, when religious versus atheist....

Musa al-Gharbi, sociologist, journalism professor, author of the new book 'We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite' (Princeton University Press), and today's popular explorer of Pierre Bourdieu's ideas around symbolic elites and symbolic capitalism talked to me about being an outsider in academia, how symbolic elites buy their legitimacy, and why intelle...

Wesleyan University president Michael S. Roth joined me to talk about virtue and the arts, the campus and the political student of the future, and why he believes the humanities will save us.

Quillette founding editor Claire Lehmann joined me for this exceptional episode where we dive into all the conditions, ideals, and effort that ensure that a new magazine dedicated to democracy and free speech can achieve its goals.

Author, rationalist, finance expert Jacob Falkovich visited The Hope Axis. We talked about data and dating, rationality in love, fertility and polyamory, f*ckability as capital, what most people get wrong about love and family, and why people are not having kids (or even sex).

NYU professor Erica Robles-Anderson joins to discuss her theory of media generations, human suffering, ways of togetherness, what we can learn from megachurches, and the ways out of the loneliness epidemic (if that exists).

National Book Award winning Phil Klay, author of Redeployment and Missionaries, joined me for a conversation about humour and the absurd, humanity and violence, fatherhood and history, and what there remains to hope and work for.

The great Katherine Dee (Default Friend) joined me for this lively discussion (debate?): we talked about happiness, free speech, online creativity, subcultures, why the internet is a good thing, what the kids do on social media these days, 90s digital anthropology, Tumblr, wokes, and more!

Noah Smith and I kick off my new podcast series The Hope Axis. We talk about the future, the economy, India, China, and of course America. We look at ways to be excited about what's coming, and what to do about it as individuals.