October 9, 2025 • 44 mins
Our nation’s founders built a system to guard against human ego and corruption. In 2025, that system is under siege. Katie talks with Atlantic editor-in-chief (and SignalGate-veteran) Jeffrey Goldberg about the magazine’s monumental new issue, The Unfinished Revolution, which asks whether the American experiment can survive its latest stress test: Donald Trump. It’s a conversation about history repeating itself, the precious fragility of democracy, and why the people who established this nation might be horrified by where it’s headed.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I look too formal? Do I look too? Now?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I got dressed up for you too.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Oh that's nice.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
All right, here we go. I'm really excited to talk
to you, Jeff, because I need a therapy session about
what the fuck is going.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
On, and I'm excited to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
America has long thought of itself as a country and
a people built on revolution. Past tense seventeen seventy six
feels like a long time ago. But in twenty twenty five,
at almost two hundred and fifty years old, it feels
a bit like the country is on the verge of
another revolution, and it looks a lot different this time around.
(00:37):
America's great experiment in democracy is showing signs of strain.
The founders warned that this day could come a time
when our system could fail, a stress test brought about
by a man named Donald Trump. So what happens when
a nation that prides itself on checks and balances starts
ignoring the checks and gets decidedly off balance? Who better
(01:01):
to talk about all of this and more than Jeffrey Goldberg,
who is editor in chief of the Atlantic. They've got
a new issue out called The Unfinished Revolution, which takes
on these questions and ask can the ideals of seventeen
seventy six survive in twenty twenty five? Jeff Goldberg, I'm
(01:23):
so thrilled to talk to you. First of all, congratulations
on this massive, very ambitious issue of The Atlantic, one
of my favorite magazines. I don't know, Jeff, if you know,
but I am.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I know one of them.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Sorry, I would say yes, one of my top two
or three news sources.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
How's that it's getting better.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I go to The Atlantic for perspective and deep dives.
I love the context and the writing and honestly the
deep reporting that you all do. So I've said that
time and time again. I'm not just sucking up, do you, Jeff,
That's what I'm talking you too.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
You say it.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
This is honest, it is and I think this November issue,
as I said, is very ambitious. I guess the biggest
issue yet since The Atlantic was started in what year.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Jeff, eighteen fifty seven. And I'm not one hundred percent
sure of that, but for the purposes of this podcast,
let's just say that it's the biggest issue you've ever done.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Okay, and eighteen fifty seven you are sure of that.
I know Okay, remember eighteen fifty seven, so let's talk
about this issue. I would love to hear the genesis
of this when you all and the other brainiacs at
the Atlantic were sitting around a table talking about tackling
something this major and this consequential. Tell me about that conversation.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
We actually wear capes and tights at the brainiac table.
So I mean it's actually, look, we had to do
so everybody wants to and has to do something around
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary coming up. I mean
it's really interesting because because both of us remember nineteen
seventy six as kids, right, and I remember, you know,
it was after Watergate, but mainly I remember the boats.
(03:09):
You know, they had tall ships and there are a
lot of fireworks, and it was great, right, And we
would do something for the two fifty anyway. But right
now there are a lot of questions in America that
we thought were settled questions but seemed to be very unsettled, right,
And so the urgency to do an issue that's not
just not just celebrates America or bemoans something, or it
(03:31):
just says, wow, what a long, strange trip it's been,
But actually looks at what the founders wanted and where
we are right now, and what we can learn from
the founding of America and the motivation behind the revolution.
It seems very very urgent because obviously the and I'm
sure we'll get there, but this is what's on my mind,
so I'm just going to articulate it right now. The
(03:55):
founders were very pessimistic about human nature and designed our
government and our system so that it would be protected
against human ego and human desire for power and human corruption.
Right and it's mainly worked, but it's under some real
challenge today, and so you know, obviously we wanted to
(04:16):
do something around two fifty because we're an American magazine.
We love America and we love the American idea. It
was actually founded in eighteen fifty seven as the Magazine
of the American Idea. That's what the founders actually called it.
And the actual impetus was a conversation I had with
Ken Burns. We've done things together before, and obviously you
and your listeners and viewers know who Ken Burns is.
(04:37):
Obviously he's a great documentarian, a great chronicler of the
American story. He told me this is a long time ago,
already that he was working on an American Revolution documentary
for PBS. This will be out November sixteenth, I think
it starts airing. And I thought, oh, you know, he
taps into some of the same historians and scholars that
(04:57):
we tap into for subjects like this, and I thought,
let's just combine efforts a little bit and we can
be in some ways companions to each other. The print
magazine with the digital expression and his twelve hour documentary,
which I have seen and it's magnificent. It's really fascinating,
and it reinvigorates the It brings the revolution back from
(05:18):
mythology into like, oh, it was a real war, you know.
I mean, we can talk about that too. I love it.
So we thought, let's just do something. Time it to
the release of Ken and Sarah Botstein and others their documentary.
And that's how it originally came to pass. When we
got around the Brainiac Table of Justice, we asked ourselves
(05:40):
a couple of questions, what do we want to know
about the actual revolution that we don't understand? You know?
I was always interested, and I think everybody is is.
You know, was King Georgia Third actually crazy? As a
loan or is there some more complication to that? And
it turns out he ended up kind of nuts, But
he was a complicated, interesting figure. And Rick Atkinson, the
(06:02):
great historian, has a wonderful piece about just the nature
of King George and what he wanted and how he
miscalculated in his relationship with the colonies. But it wasn't
always just craziness like the kind that you are familiar
with from Hamilton. And so we sat around and asked
a lot of questions about the revolution itself and the
battles of the revolution, the role of women and black
(06:26):
people and Native Americans and subjects like that, because of
one of the interesting subjects here is the way the loyalists,
those who were loyal to the king, actually were closer
to the abolitionist ideal than the founders, many of whom
were slaveholders, as you know. And you know, there's some
(06:46):
fascinating history there about how the loyalists in exchange for
the promise on the part of slaves of enslaved Black
Americans to fight on the British side, promising their freedom.
And you know, after the war, everybody included George Washington,
was like, get the slaves back. We're not screwing around
with this. So there's like there's dark elements, there's noble elements,
(07:07):
there's beautiful ideals expressed, there's falling short of those ideals,
and so that's part of it. The second part was
what does the revolution mean to us today? What are
the founding ideals and the founding documents being to us today?
And that's a lot of a lot of the magazine
is that kind of discussion.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Well, I'd love to hear about this intersection of the
present with the past, because obviously, Jeff, you acknowledge that
the American experiment is under extraordinary pressure at the moment,
and I'm curious about the very strange and fascinating timing
(07:44):
of looking at this whole American idea and the American
experiment at this moment in history right now that we're witnessing.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah. Well, like I said, it's like, and I'm sure
you felt this, there are questions that we thought were
settled that just aren't settled. I mean, there are questions
about the durability and effectiveness of the separation of powers
(08:15):
that I think is really interesting. Right now. You know,
the founders of this country, you know, victorious off the
Revolution were obviously most afraid of tyranny, right, having just
freed themselves from a tyrannical king, they were like, how
do we prevent another king or a monarchical view of
how we should be run? How do we prevent that
(08:36):
from happening? And so there's separation of powers as an
executive branch, a legislative branch or judicial branch, and those
things have worked to check each other's power for two
hundred fifty years. Obviously, they've been crises. We had a
Civil War, of course, where everything broke down, but it's
more or less worked. And now we're in a moment
when oh, Congress, I mean, this is again this is
(08:56):
my view. It's not only my view, but my view,
Congress is not fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities to check the
power of the executive. The digital branch is operating independently
and has been in some ways manipulated by the executive branch.
The executive branch is trying to seize as much power
as possible. One of the most interesting questions, and again
(09:18):
we could discuss it, you know, at length. One of
an interesting question is that the executive branch is interested
in accruing as much power for itself as possible right now,
and the legislative branch, or the people who control the
legislative branch, are interested in accruing for the executive branch
as much power as possible. Doesn't make any sense, Like
the system only works, the system that the founder set
(09:39):
up only works if everybody is checking each other's power.
And so that's one subject that we wanted to try
to understand. But you know, going into the two fifty issue,
you know the fact that we're two hundred fty years old,
it's very obvious to me that there's a split in
(10:00):
the way Americans think about how to commemorate and celebrate America.
There is a brittle view, a very fragile understanding. And
I think you hear this from people in the Trump
administration and Trump himself that you can't criticize America, that
(10:20):
you we must downplay even in our museums. Right, we must.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Downrite our national parks or schools.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
We must downplay the bad parts because we're perfect and
always have been perfect. Now, my theologically based a view
is that nothing human made is perfect. Put that aside
for a second, but it also it's it's it is
It's very That's what it alway strucks me. It's very fragile.
(10:50):
Like if you say anything bad about America, it means
you don't like America, the truth of the truth of
the Americans.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
If America is a snowflake.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Well well yes, well by the way, you know, I
don't want to say that America is a snowflake, but
the people who are arguing this line seem like snowflakes.
But the the point is is this one of the
geniuses of America, of the American system, and an American
democratic impulse is that we examine what we're doing, and
(11:20):
when we realize that we're doing something that's wrong, we
fix it. Women didn't have the vote, and then they did.
There was slavery, and then the North went to war
against the South to end slavery. Right, and the story
of America is the story of the expansion of rights. Right.
That's a beautiful thing, and a lot of countries can't
(11:41):
point to self criticism is a form of patriotism. I
don't agree with like, I don't like people who think
that America is I think America has ultimately played a
positive and ameliative role in the world. I think if
you just look at the last century, I think the
feet of fascism and communism, global fascism and global communism,
(12:04):
that was pretty good. That was overall a pretty good
record for a century. And and so I'm immensely proud
of that. I'm also proud as an American of the
fact that when we go down wrong pathways, we have
the ability as a group of people, as citizens, and
we have the mechanisms within our system, including a free
press and an independent judiciary. We have the mechanisms to
(12:26):
make things better that were bad. And so celebrating that,
like not talking about slavery doesn't make slavery go away.
Not talking about slavery denies us the opportunity to talk
about ways we try to make things better, of course,
and that's that's the lesson for the rest of the world.
I mean, you look at Russia, China, Iran, North Korea.
(12:49):
You look at these places and you say, those are
not Those are countries that could really benefit from some
openness and independent thought and self criticism in the American model,
and they don't have it. So I think we should
be I think we should be celebrating that. But again,
I think right now We're in this really weird moment
where there's a whole group of powerful people who think,
(13:11):
don't talk about it, don't say anything about it, and
I don't know why, and they are I guess they
are just definitionally snowflakes.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
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(13:49):
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(14:09):
or book your own free personalized fitting. Let's talk about
where we went wrong. If, in fact, you feel we're
in the midst of very disturbing times right when some
(14:32):
of the principles and the goals of the Founding Fathers
are being ignored. Is this because the Founding Fathers didn't
think of certain things oh, you one thing.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
They didn't think of social media. I'm not even kidding.
I mean, look, James Madison, you know, one of the
most important founders, drafter of the Constitution, James Madison. He
was a very past simistic about human nature. I mean
they all were to some degree. Jefferson believed that virtue,
(15:05):
you know, resided in the Yeoman farmer, and you know,
the cities were dens of iniquity and corruption. John Adams
was pretty is serbic. George Washington. I'd love to talk
about George Washington a second, because, I mean he did
the most amazing thing, especially given what we have now
in the White House. He did the most amazing thing
a president has ever done.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
I'll get to and I know what that is.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
He chopped down to the Surry Tree.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
No, he's only served one.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Term, he said.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
He you know, when where he didn't want to serve
a second.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
People said to him, why don't you just become king?
He was like, nope, that's he literally almost said, nope,
you haven't been paying attention so what we were doing here.
You know, thank you very much. It's very kind of
you to think that I am, you know, worthy of
being you're a leader forever. But I would like to
just go home now, and somebody else can do this,
(15:56):
because I'm not actually indispensable, and everybody should take their
turn running the country and then step away from power.
That and by the way, one could argue that, you know,
FDR would have run forever and maybe won forever if
he had not died in nineteen forty five. But all
(16:16):
of our presidents until today have recognized the virtue in
Washington's approach to the office, which is that the White
House is not their house. It's they're borrowing the house
for a little while from the American people. Anyway, I'm
diverting from I moved from Madison to Washington, and I
want to come back to Madison. I'll talk about George
(16:38):
Washington all day and defend them all day, even though
they're bad parts of his record quite obviously, but Madison
was very pessimistic, so pessimistic that he thought the experiment
was failing, even as it was just information. And one
of the reasons he was pessive he was pessimistic about
the ability of human beings to wisely, cool and reasonably
(17:01):
govern themselves. Not Americans, just all humans. By our nature,
and Madison worried. This is fascinating given where we are now.
Madison worried that that the the uh innovation of the
daily newspaper was going to kill our democracy once and
(17:22):
for all, because the people would be given too much
information to rationally process. In other words, the daily delivery
of new information, once a day delivery of new information
was too much cognitively for humans to absorb.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Right, how prescient?
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Right, it turns out, you know, we adjusted fairly well
to the daily newspaper. But to me, it's an open
question can we adjust to our new reality of endless
torrents of information, information and bad information? So you throw
in so it's and I'll give you an example. I've
(18:06):
always thought about this one as an interesting example of
something that couldn't happen in the social media era when
this is from you know, relatively recent times. You know,
when Richard Nixon had the idea that, oh, you know what,
maybe we should have relations with communist China. He sent
Henry Kissinger to Pakistan on a secret mission to meet
with high Chinese officials, and Pakistan was going to host
(18:28):
it discreetly. Henry Kissinger disappeared. I don't know the exact
number of days, seven eight, nine days, and he flew
off secretly to Pakistan, and he and the Chinese came
to an agreement that allowed for the opening for Richard
Nixon's historic visit to China that opened up the relationship.
The State Department lied about Henry Kissinger's They said he
had a cold and he was off, you know, resting,
(18:51):
or he had the flu or something that ain't going
to happen today. One can argue that that's misleading the
American people, you know, not telling them what our secretary
state doing. But you know what, if people had found out,
the deal would never have been done. And in this age,
we expect to know everything about where people are all
the time. And it's just that it's a minor example ultimately,
(19:13):
but it's so interesting to me because, I mean, the
Constitutional Convention wouldn't have worked if it had been covered
and discussed the way social media discusses things today. So
we are we're paralyzed by social media, and we're confused
by social media, and we're angered by social media in
a way that makes cool, rational, civically minded decision making
(19:35):
really really difficult. And so that's one thing that we
have today that they didn't have to deal with back
in the day.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
And do you think James Madison would ever envision Jeff
a time when there is no common understanding of truth?
You know, that the facts are manipulated depending on who's
whose side they suit, right, Yeah, and facts are just
(20:05):
no longer facts, or the truth is no longer truth,
or their versions of it. Do you think that's one
of the primary reasons that our democracy is under such strain.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, I mean it's a little bit more complicated answer
because back in those days, I mean, you know, and
this is one of the interesting things about what ken
Burns does and what I think we try to do
in our in the issue, we try to bring the
revolution and the revolutionary period back into history and strip
it of some of its myth. I mean, the founders
(20:39):
were also ordinary men who had resentments and angers, and
the press was a you know, it was there were
dirty stuff going on, and there was there is calumny,
and there was accusation, and there were libel Remember how
Hamilton died. I mean, these guys were not you know,
they weren't a bunch of Dalai Lamas sitting there, you know,
selflessly trying to make decisions only in the best interests
(21:02):
of the people. So the press was filled with yellow
journalism back then. But what was different is that I
do believe what was true in seventeen seventy six was
also true in the seventies and eighties and nineties of
the previous century, that there was more or less a
(21:23):
shared reality like here, this is a thing that is true,
and this is a thing that's not true. Right. By
the way, we haven't even gotten to the subject of
what would the founders of America make of the possibility
of ai agi and the idea and deep fakery. I mean,
(21:46):
I do what we're doing right now is we're performing
a completely unregulated experiment on the stress points of democracy,
right and the stress points of human reality, like how
much how much you know, how much pressure can we
put reality under before it just splinters apart? And I
(22:09):
think that's what you're you're getting at. We don't have
you want to hear a great example. I'll give you.
I'll give you a great example. Two hundred and fifty
years ago, George Washington mandated that the soldiers of the
Continental Army be vaccinated inoculated against smallpox. There was less
(22:33):
controversy over that mandate two hundred forty years ago, then
there's controversy about vaccines today. You know, I always think
when I think about this one, I always think about
the line popularized by President Obama the arc of history
is long, but it bends to our justice. Or you
could say the arc of history is long, but it
(22:54):
bends to our knowledge. Isn't it amazing that we have
a president today or a president surrounded by people in
his cabinet today who have less faith in the science
of vaccination than George Washington. And I don't know if
some people know this, but vaccination back in those days,
inoculation wasn't something you go to CVS and you get
(23:16):
a shot. I mean they would scrape, you know, puss
from the wounds from the smallpox of living people and
then spread that puss into make a cut into another
person's arm and spread that puss. It was horrible.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
I'm glad I haven't eaten breakfast.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
No means no, but it's yeah, it was horrible, but
people like, all right, So, you know, George Washington studied
what the doctors of the day said, Here's why we
think it works, here's why you have to protect your
army against smallpox. And then I reader was like, well, okay,
if that's what the experts of the day say, we're
(23:56):
going to do it.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
And believe me, I've been so upset about this assault
on science, Jeff and expertise, Knowledge and expertise writ large, right.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah, where are we when? I mean, look, by the
way I get it, scientists make mistakes. Doctors make mistakes.
You know that. I know that everybody knows that, but
I don't know. I always think of it this way.
If I went to one hundred doctors and ninety nine
told me that I had emphysema and one said, no,
(24:33):
you're just having an allergic reaction to you know, beef lomaine,
I'd be like, I'm going to go with the ninety nine.
You know what I mean, I wouldn't. I don't know
why I said beef lawmine. I guess it's lunch, the
you know. And it's like we're living in an age.
And this goes exactly to your point, this splintering where
(24:56):
it's like we don't share a reality. A reality tell
you that holds for all of us, that vaccines are
a good and not a bit. Yes, sometimes vaccines go awry.
We know that, our doctors know that, but overall vaccination
inoculation has saved millions and millions, hundreds of millions of lives.
(25:16):
And so why is this now? Why are we doing this?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
It almost goes to our capacity to appreciate our mistakes
in the past. Right, there's a similar ethos at work
where you can't acknowledge that the United States science people
are not perfect and mistakes are made. I think the
question is what do you do with those mistakes? Do
(25:42):
you acknowledge them, do you try to improve on the situation?
Do you look at the sort of the greater good?
I mean, it's just a very very strange time. But Jeff,
I want to ask you about some of the specific
writers because there's some wonderful themes in this issue. Fittono
Tool rights that alex Ander Hamilton, perhaps prophetically quote suggested
(26:04):
that citizens needed politicians who had courage and magnanimity enough
to serve them at the peril of their displeasure, and
that he had a ready made term for the sheer
cowardice of so many legislators in today's Congress, and that
is servile pliancy. I think so many people have been
shocked by what could be described as servile pliancy in Congress,
(26:31):
and you talked earlier about them abdicating their role and
basically serving the purpose of bolstering the executive branch. And
you know, I've talked to many smart people about this, Jeff,
and there really doesn't seem to be any explanation other
(26:53):
than a desperate desire to maintain power and a fear
of being primaried. Essentially.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Yeah, I mean, I look, it's cowardice all the way down.
There is an understandable explanation and a pathetic explanation. You've
articulated the pathetic explanation. They want to keep their jobs
(27:22):
right at the cost of selling their souls right. They
want to be they want to be in power, they
want the trappings of power, and they don't want to
be primary. That's the malignant explanation. The kind of understandable
explanation is they literally fear for their physical safety and
for the safety of their families, as they should because
(27:43):
in the social media age, you know, I go back
to I always go back to what it was like
when we both started as reporters. You know, in the
old days, lunatics who believe that the IRS had planted
a chip in their brain and was spying on them,
or believe whatever that the government was hiding Martians. You know,
(28:04):
you would find them sometimes as a reporter standing outside
a federal building handing out like handing out eight page tracts,
you know, typed single space tracks and right, okay, thanks
a lot. Now those people have podcasts with millions of listeners,
They have websites, they they can they move that information
throughout the so in other words, in other words, it's very,
(28:27):
very easy to form a mob using the tools of
social media. And if you're a legislator who doesn't have
personal protection, you know, doesn't have you know, Capitol police
outside your house or secret Service or whatever, and you
live in a deep pro Trump state, and you know
(28:48):
that the people in your state are being inundated with
messages about how you're not just a bad legislator or
a mistaken whatever, but you're a trader, you're an enemy
or this or that, you're trying to destroy Americans civilization,
you're trying to destroy Christianity, you're trying to destroy whatever.
That's nerve wracking. I understand it. I also I also believe,
(29:08):
like if you can't, if you can't live inside that
tension and live with that level of danger, get out
of the business of trying to represent the people and
you're not fulfilling your oath to defend the Constitution.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Hi, everyone, it's me Katie Couric. You know, if you've
been following me on social media, you know I love
to cook, or at least try, especially alongside some of
my favorite chefs and foodies like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen,
Lighty Hoyke, Alison Roman, and Ininagarten. So I started a
free newsletter called Good Taste to share recipes, tips and
(29:51):
kitchen mustaves. Just sign up at Katiecuric dot com slash
good Taste. That's k A t I E c O
U r Ic slash good Taste. I promise your taste
buds will be happy you did. I think you're touching
(30:16):
on something, Jeff. You know that, in many ways, other
than fear, some of these members of Congress think they
are serving their constituents because their constituents are being served
things that are then putting pressure on their representatives. If
that makes sense, it's the opposite of a virtuous cycle.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Let me delineate between two issues. One is, we're not
talking about the battle of conservative and liberal ideas. Right, Like,
if you're a red state legislator and your constituents are
conservative and believe it a certain vision of how government
should run, the role of business, the whole range of
social and cultural issues, and you represent their views, you
(31:01):
probably already have those views anyway, because you're elected into
power by that state. That's fine, that's the American system, Like,
American democracy works best when liberal ideas and conservative ideas
are coming into collision and publicly vented so that people
can see what the options are. I'm talking about something else,
you know, which is you're an elected legislator. You're supposed
(31:25):
to function as a member of the legislative branch, which
means checking the power of the other two branches, standing
for transparency and fighting corruption, believing that the government should
employ the best people, not people who are friends or
donors to the president. I mean, those are not ideological issues.
(31:49):
That's just corruption versus non corruption. Right, So, like, you
could be the most conservative person on the planet and
support Donald Trump's vision of X or y or Z
and also say, but no, we're not taking a seven
forty seven from the authoritarian regime and Cutter and then
doing business deals with them on the side. Like that's
(32:10):
not ideological, that's just.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
That's just that's right wrong. I'm just right and wrong.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Like like, there's no conservative I mean, there is no theoretically,
there's no liberal view of presidential self dealing or a
conservative view of presidential self dealing. Remember what happened? How
did how did the Watergate drama end? A bunch of
Republicans on the hill set all right, that's it, Nixon,
you gotta go.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
You've crossed the line, crossed the.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Line, and we're not We're not doing this anymore. And
this has been this is the story of our age,
you know, I mean, And here's the thing. You you
know these guys, I know these guys. I know Lindsey Graham. Really,
I know that Lindsey Graham in another age would have
been standing right next to John McCain as John McCain said,
we're not taking a plane from Cutter for air Force
(33:01):
to use this air force one. What are you guys
out of your minds?
Speaker 2 (33:05):
It almost makes me cry when I think of where
are the John McCain's, Jeff, where are the people? And
what the hell has happened to Lindsey Graham and all
these Republicans who are turning a blind eye or even worse,
supporting these kinds of actions that are either you know, corrupt, unconstitutional.
(33:29):
I mean, we could go down a laundry list of descriptions.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
That's the look. I find that it's depressing, is as
you do. I mean sometimes I maybe I over personalize
it and think, oh, if John McCain were alive today,
he would be John McCain, you know, and he would
still be John McCain in the Senate calling calling this out.
I believe very few people are born leaders, I don't know. Again,
(33:57):
fear self interest, you know, and a lot of people,
and this is true in the Democrats, among Liberals, a
lot of people are like, yeah, I don't like the guy.
I don't like what he does on X and Y
and Z, but on this issue that's important to me,
he's with me. So I'm going to make that deal.
But again, like I said, it's not about ideology, it's
about character, personal behavior. Look. One of the things that
(34:21):
and this goes back to the core of what the
founders believed. You know, It's like, if you're gonna have
a democracy, you're gonna have to exercise Everyone is gonna
have to exercise self restraint. Just because you can do
something doesn't mean you should do it. Just because you
can say something doesn't mean you should say it. Being
mature and having self restraint is part and parcel of
how you function in a healthy democracy. And I don't know,
(34:45):
And your question to me is actually the key question,
because none of what we are seeing would be happening. Look,
none of what we're seeing would be happening if ten Republicans,
seven Republican senators after January sixth, said you know what,
I'm going to vote to convict Trump on impeachment charges,
(35:08):
on the charges brought from in the second impeachment because
he fomented an armed insurrection against the conduct of a
free and fair election all he needed, and then he
wouldn't have been Then he would have been almost axiomatically
banned from running for office. So like the whole Republic
that you know, when we look back, who knows, ten
(35:29):
twenty thirty years from now, we might go and say, huh,
if Mitch McConnell and Rob Portman and a handful of
others had just actually lived their ideals or their stated ideals.
We wouldn't have seen all the things that we're seeing
(35:50):
this year so far, the dismantling of our Justice Department,
the dismantling of our foreign aid and information programs, that
dismand of the FBI. I don't have to give you
the laundry list. I don't know. I don't. I don't
know how to explain it other than that human beings
or are flawed creatures.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Before we go, Jeff, I wanted to ask you. You
have so many brilliant writers at the Atlantic. You do
this big issue, Jeff, you have some of the smartest
people I know or I read writing about these various issues.
Are you optimistic about the future. Do you feel that
(36:34):
the things we fought for in the Revolutionary War, the
ideals put forth by the founding fathers and adjusted throughout
history to meet the times we've been in At any
given moment, do you feel hopeful?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
I don't feel hopeful. I wouldn't. I wouldn't put myself
in the unhopeful category either. I think. I mean, what
I honestly think is that we don't know how AI
is going to reshape our collective and individual understanding of reality.
(37:20):
I don't know if democracy can take the pressure that's
about to come down on it. When the feeds that
our citizens, our fellow citizens are receiving are filled with
highly produced, highly credible, seeming fakery. I don't know how
(37:43):
we're going to live in twenty four hour a day
chaos and not just have the capacity in space to
make good decisions. I don't know how we're going to
get the information that's going to lead us to decisions.
So that's what right now. You add that to the
(38:05):
sort of the social media mailstream, that's what I worry about.
And I guess, I mean I'm sounding more negative than positive.
I guess because that's the way I actually feel. But
like we just talked about people like Rob Portman, accomplished
senator from Ohio, former head of the OMB, talked about
Mitch McConnell, talk about all these guys. They're supposed to
be the best of us, right, These are our representatives.
(38:28):
These are the people that the people of their states
chose to represent them in the halls of the capital,
and they abdicated their responsibility out of fear, cowardice. I
don't know what, so what that's what our leaders were like.
So I don't know what the people. I don't know
how the people react will react to the splintering reality
(38:52):
they're seeing, So I I wish I could be hopeful
about it. And we also have a mass literacy crisis.
I don't mean literacy in the classic sense of a
grown up reading at a third grade level or a
second grade level. I mean people who don't know what's
in the Declaration of Independence or don't know what's in
(39:13):
the constitution. You know, the death of civics, the death.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Of an educated electorate.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Have a democracy without an educated electorate. And let me
get very patriotic here. The founders of the country, despite
their huge flaws, set up, in theory, the best system
that any human being could come up with for the
maintenance and growth of a great nation. And we got
(39:42):
to listen. We've got to listen to them. On the left,
people want to throw them all out because they're dead
white males. On the right, people want to say that
they were perfect human beings. Let's not talk about their flaws,
and let's lie in lieu of actually taking what they
say in their most complicated expression. Let's just have a
(40:02):
big parade and get mad at people who don't want
to join the parade. That's where we are right now. Hope,
I hope, I hope. I mean, the American people have
been through much worse. Obviously. I'm sure in eighteen fifty
seven when the Atlantic was founded, people weren't sitting around going, eh,
things are going pretty good. Huh. You know, we had
a really crappy president in eighteen fifty seven wasn't the worst,
(40:26):
and the South was ready to depart, and Lincoln was
an inexperienced yokel who's coming into power. So it was
much I mean, it's kind of a compount to say, ah,
we've been through much worse, but we've been through much worse.
So I just think about the technological overlay is the
thing that might push us over the edge.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
I hope that this magazine, this addition, this examination of
our values and how we got here and how they
withstood not only the test of time but so many
challenges over the last two hundred and fifty years, will
perhaps invigorate people and make them think and talk about
(41:11):
where we are. Jeff, Because like you, I am deeply,
deeply concerned, and you know, I'm kind of a glass
half full person, you know, I think people are basically good.
As my late husband used to say, I'm hardwired for
happiness and positivity. But I really I am really worried. Honestly,
(41:37):
I'm really worried, and I don't know. I hope we
find a way out because I love this country too.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
We've gotten out of worse That's all I can say
is we've gotten out of worse situations. So I mean
that's not a very hopeful statement, but it's you know, resilience,
and look, you know there's a many different versions of this.
Is that you know, Americans will do the right thing
after they do all the wrong things, you know, and
we'll make various mistakes and then we'll figure out the
(42:08):
right path. We go up, we go down, we muddle through.
But yeah, I do. I do think that a prerequisite
is to It doesn't have to be reading The Atlantic.
I mean it should be, but doesn't have.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
To be or listening to next Question.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Or listening to to one of the two or three
greatest podcasts ever made. I'm not going to give you
best because you wouldn't give me best. Who are watching
Ken Burns's documentary, which is great, But everybody has to
go meet the moment of actually being a citizen and asking,
I mean, this is why this is. This is not
(42:43):
to go back on this, but it's like the merry
minimum people should demand is that the government should hire
the best people for the for the job, not people
who are friends of the president.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
And people who know people who very simply, Jeff, do
the right thing.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
I will give you the last word because that was Podcrick.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Jeff, thank you so much. It's great to talk to.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
You, great to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Thanks for listening. Everyone. If you have a question for me,
a subject you want us to cover, or you want
to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would
love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me,
(43:29):
Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter wake Up Call,
go to the description in the podcast app or visit
(43:51):
us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hi everyone, it's
Katie Couric. You know I'm always on the go between
(44:11):
running my media company, hosting my podcast, and of course
covering the news. And I know that to keep doing
what I love, I need to start caring for what
gets me there, my feet. That's why I decided to
try the Good Feet stores personalized arch support system. I
met with a Good Feet arch support specialist and after
(44:32):
a personalized fitting, I left the store with my three
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Means and back are thanking me already. Visit goodfeet dot
com to learn more, find the nearest store, or book
your own free personalized fitting.
I look too formal? Do I look too? Now?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I got dressed up for you too.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Oh that's nice.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
All right, here we go. I'm really excited to talk
to you, Jeff, because I need a therapy session about
what the fuck is going.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
On, and I'm excited to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
America has long thought of itself as a country and
a people built on revolution. Past tense seventeen seventy six
feels like a long time ago. But in twenty twenty five,
at almost two hundred and fifty years old, it feels
a bit like the country is on the verge of
another revolution, and it looks a lot different this time around.
(00:37):
America's great experiment in democracy is showing signs of strain.
The founders warned that this day could come a time
when our system could fail, a stress test brought about
by a man named Donald Trump. So what happens when
a nation that prides itself on checks and balances starts
ignoring the checks and gets decidedly off balance? Who better
(01:01):
to talk about all of this and more than Jeffrey Goldberg,
who is editor in chief of the Atlantic. They've got
a new issue out called The Unfinished Revolution, which takes
on these questions and ask can the ideals of seventeen
seventy six survive in twenty twenty five? Jeff Goldberg, I'm
(01:23):
so thrilled to talk to you. First of all, congratulations
on this massive, very ambitious issue of The Atlantic, one
of my favorite magazines. I don't know, Jeff, if you know,
but I am.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I know one of them.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Sorry, I would say yes, one of my top two
or three news sources.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
How's that it's getting better.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I go to The Atlantic for perspective and deep dives.
I love the context and the writing and honestly the
deep reporting that you all do. So I've said that
time and time again. I'm not just sucking up, do you, Jeff,
That's what I'm talking you too.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
You say it.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
This is honest, it is and I think this November issue,
as I said, is very ambitious. I guess the biggest
issue yet since The Atlantic was started in what year.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Jeff, eighteen fifty seven. And I'm not one hundred percent
sure of that, but for the purposes of this podcast,
let's just say that it's the biggest issue you've ever done.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Okay, and eighteen fifty seven you are sure of that.
I know Okay, remember eighteen fifty seven, so let's talk
about this issue. I would love to hear the genesis
of this when you all and the other brainiacs at
the Atlantic were sitting around a table talking about tackling
something this major and this consequential. Tell me about that conversation.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
We actually wear capes and tights at the brainiac table.
So I mean it's actually, look, we had to do
so everybody wants to and has to do something around
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary coming up. I mean
it's really interesting because because both of us remember nineteen
seventy six as kids, right, and I remember, you know,
it was after Watergate, but mainly I remember the boats.
(03:09):
You know, they had tall ships and there are a
lot of fireworks, and it was great, right, And we
would do something for the two fifty anyway. But right
now there are a lot of questions in America that
we thought were settled questions but seemed to be very unsettled, right,
And so the urgency to do an issue that's not
just not just celebrates America or bemoans something, or it
(03:31):
just says, wow, what a long, strange trip it's been,
But actually looks at what the founders wanted and where
we are right now, and what we can learn from
the founding of America and the motivation behind the revolution.
It seems very very urgent because obviously the and I'm
sure we'll get there, but this is what's on my mind,
so I'm just going to articulate it right now. The
(03:55):
founders were very pessimistic about human nature and designed our
government and our system so that it would be protected
against human ego and human desire for power and human corruption.
Right and it's mainly worked, but it's under some real
challenge today, and so you know, obviously we wanted to
(04:16):
do something around two fifty because we're an American magazine.
We love America and we love the American idea. It
was actually founded in eighteen fifty seven as the Magazine
of the American Idea. That's what the founders actually called it.
And the actual impetus was a conversation I had with
Ken Burns. We've done things together before, and obviously you
and your listeners and viewers know who Ken Burns is.
(04:37):
Obviously he's a great documentarian, a great chronicler of the
American story. He told me this is a long time ago,
already that he was working on an American Revolution documentary
for PBS. This will be out November sixteenth, I think
it starts airing. And I thought, oh, you know, he
taps into some of the same historians and scholars that
(04:57):
we tap into for subjects like this, and I thought,
let's just combine efforts a little bit and we can
be in some ways companions to each other. The print
magazine with the digital expression and his twelve hour documentary,
which I have seen and it's magnificent. It's really fascinating,
and it reinvigorates the It brings the revolution back from
(05:18):
mythology into like, oh, it was a real war, you know.
I mean, we can talk about that too. I love it.
So we thought, let's just do something. Time it to
the release of Ken and Sarah Botstein and others their documentary.
And that's how it originally came to pass. When we
got around the Brainiac Table of Justice, we asked ourselves
(05:40):
a couple of questions, what do we want to know
about the actual revolution that we don't understand? You know?
I was always interested, and I think everybody is is.
You know, was King Georgia Third actually crazy? As a
loan or is there some more complication to that? And
it turns out he ended up kind of nuts, But
he was a complicated, interesting figure. And Rick Atkinson, the
(06:02):
great historian, has a wonderful piece about just the nature
of King George and what he wanted and how he
miscalculated in his relationship with the colonies. But it wasn't
always just craziness like the kind that you are familiar
with from Hamilton. And so we sat around and asked
a lot of questions about the revolution itself and the
battles of the revolution, the role of women and black
(06:26):
people and Native Americans and subjects like that, because of
one of the interesting subjects here is the way the loyalists,
those who were loyal to the king, actually were closer
to the abolitionist ideal than the founders, many of whom
were slaveholders, as you know. And you know, there's some
(06:46):
fascinating history there about how the loyalists in exchange for
the promise on the part of slaves of enslaved Black
Americans to fight on the British side, promising their freedom.
And you know, after the war, everybody included George Washington,
was like, get the slaves back. We're not screwing around
with this. So there's like there's dark elements, there's noble elements,
(07:07):
there's beautiful ideals expressed, there's falling short of those ideals,
and so that's part of it. The second part was
what does the revolution mean to us today? What are
the founding ideals and the founding documents being to us today?
And that's a lot of a lot of the magazine
is that kind of discussion.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Well, I'd love to hear about this intersection of the
present with the past, because obviously, Jeff, you acknowledge that
the American experiment is under extraordinary pressure at the moment,
and I'm curious about the very strange and fascinating timing
(07:44):
of looking at this whole American idea and the American
experiment at this moment in history right now that we're witnessing.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah. Well, like I said, it's like, and I'm sure
you felt this, there are questions that we thought were
settled that just aren't settled. I mean, there are questions
about the durability and effectiveness of the separation of powers
(08:15):
that I think is really interesting. Right now. You know,
the founders of this country, you know, victorious off the
Revolution were obviously most afraid of tyranny, right, having just
freed themselves from a tyrannical king, they were like, how
do we prevent another king or a monarchical view of
how we should be run? How do we prevent that
(08:36):
from happening? And so there's separation of powers as an
executive branch, a legislative branch or judicial branch, and those
things have worked to check each other's power for two
hundred fifty years. Obviously, they've been crises. We had a
Civil War, of course, where everything broke down, but it's
more or less worked. And now we're in a moment
when oh, Congress, I mean, this is again this is
(08:56):
my view. It's not only my view, but my view,
Congress is not fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities to check the
power of the executive. The digital branch is operating independently
and has been in some ways manipulated by the executive branch.
The executive branch is trying to seize as much power
as possible. One of the most interesting questions, and again
(09:18):
we could discuss it, you know, at length. One of
an interesting question is that the executive branch is interested
in accruing as much power for itself as possible right now,
and the legislative branch, or the people who control the
legislative branch, are interested in accruing for the executive branch
as much power as possible. Doesn't make any sense, Like
the system only works, the system that the founder set
(09:39):
up only works if everybody is checking each other's power.
And so that's one subject that we wanted to try
to understand. But you know, going into the two fifty issue,
you know the fact that we're two hundred fty years old,
it's very obvious to me that there's a split in
(10:00):
the way Americans think about how to commemorate and celebrate America.
There is a brittle view, a very fragile understanding. And
I think you hear this from people in the Trump
administration and Trump himself that you can't criticize America, that
(10:20):
you we must downplay even in our museums. Right, we must.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Downrite our national parks or schools.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
We must downplay the bad parts because we're perfect and
always have been perfect. Now, my theologically based a view
is that nothing human made is perfect. Put that aside
for a second, but it also it's it's it is
It's very That's what it alway strucks me. It's very fragile.
(10:50):
Like if you say anything bad about America, it means
you don't like America, the truth of the truth of
the Americans.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
If America is a snowflake.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Well well yes, well by the way, you know, I
don't want to say that America is a snowflake, but
the people who are arguing this line seem like snowflakes.
But the the point is is this one of the
geniuses of America, of the American system, and an American
democratic impulse is that we examine what we're doing, and
(11:20):
when we realize that we're doing something that's wrong, we
fix it. Women didn't have the vote, and then they did.
There was slavery, and then the North went to war
against the South to end slavery. Right, and the story
of America is the story of the expansion of rights. Right.
That's a beautiful thing, and a lot of countries can't
(11:41):
point to self criticism is a form of patriotism. I
don't agree with like, I don't like people who think
that America is I think America has ultimately played a
positive and ameliative role in the world. I think if
you just look at the last century, I think the
feet of fascism and communism, global fascism and global communism,
(12:04):
that was pretty good. That was overall a pretty good
record for a century. And and so I'm immensely proud
of that. I'm also proud as an American of the
fact that when we go down wrong pathways, we have
the ability as a group of people, as citizens, and
we have the mechanisms within our system, including a free
press and an independent judiciary. We have the mechanisms to
(12:26):
make things better that were bad. And so celebrating that,
like not talking about slavery doesn't make slavery go away.
Not talking about slavery denies us the opportunity to talk
about ways we try to make things better, of course,
and that's that's the lesson for the rest of the world.
I mean, you look at Russia, China, Iran, North Korea.
(12:49):
You look at these places and you say, those are
not Those are countries that could really benefit from some
openness and independent thought and self criticism in the American model,
and they don't have it. So I think we should
be I think we should be celebrating that. But again,
I think right now We're in this really weird moment
where there's a whole group of powerful people who think,
(13:11):
don't talk about it, don't say anything about it, and
I don't know why, and they are I guess they
are just definitionally snowflakes.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Hi everyone, it's Katie Couric. You know I'm always on
the go between running my media company, hosting my podcast,
and of course covering the news. And I know that
to keep doing what I love, I need to start
caring for what gets me there, my feet. That's why
I decided to try the Good Feet stores personalized arch
(13:49):
support system. I met with a Good Feet arch support
specialist and after a personalized fitting, I left the store
with my three step system designed to improve comfort, balance
and support. My feet, knees, and back are thanking me already.
Visit goodfeet dot com to learn more, find the nearest store,
(14:09):
or book your own free personalized fitting. Let's talk about
where we went wrong. If, in fact, you feel we're
in the midst of very disturbing times right when some
(14:32):
of the principles and the goals of the Founding Fathers
are being ignored. Is this because the Founding Fathers didn't
think of certain things oh, you one thing.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
They didn't think of social media. I'm not even kidding.
I mean, look, James Madison, you know, one of the
most important founders, drafter of the Constitution, James Madison. He
was a very past simistic about human nature. I mean
they all were to some degree. Jefferson believed that virtue,
(15:05):
you know, resided in the Yeoman farmer, and you know,
the cities were dens of iniquity and corruption. John Adams
was pretty is serbic. George Washington. I'd love to talk
about George Washington a second, because, I mean he did
the most amazing thing, especially given what we have now
in the White House. He did the most amazing thing
a president has ever done.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
I'll get to and I know what that is.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
He chopped down to the Surry Tree.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
No, he's only served one.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Term, he said.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
He you know, when where he didn't want to serve
a second.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
People said to him, why don't you just become king?
He was like, nope, that's he literally almost said, nope,
you haven't been paying attention so what we were doing here.
You know, thank you very much. It's very kind of
you to think that I am, you know, worthy of
being you're a leader forever. But I would like to
just go home now, and somebody else can do this,
(15:56):
because I'm not actually indispensable, and everybody should take their
turn running the country and then step away from power.
That and by the way, one could argue that, you know,
FDR would have run forever and maybe won forever if
he had not died in nineteen forty five. But all
(16:16):
of our presidents until today have recognized the virtue in
Washington's approach to the office, which is that the White
House is not their house. It's they're borrowing the house
for a little while from the American people. Anyway, I'm
diverting from I moved from Madison to Washington, and I
want to come back to Madison. I'll talk about George
(16:38):
Washington all day and defend them all day, even though
they're bad parts of his record quite obviously, but Madison
was very pessimistic, so pessimistic that he thought the experiment
was failing, even as it was just information. And one
of the reasons he was pessive he was pessimistic about
the ability of human beings to wisely, cool and reasonably
(17:01):
govern themselves. Not Americans, just all humans. By our nature,
and Madison worried. This is fascinating given where we are now.
Madison worried that that the the uh innovation of the
daily newspaper was going to kill our democracy once and
(17:22):
for all, because the people would be given too much
information to rationally process. In other words, the daily delivery
of new information, once a day delivery of new information
was too much cognitively for humans to absorb.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Right, how prescient?
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Right, it turns out, you know, we adjusted fairly well
to the daily newspaper. But to me, it's an open
question can we adjust to our new reality of endless
torrents of information, information and bad information? So you throw
in so it's and I'll give you an example. I've
(18:06):
always thought about this one as an interesting example of
something that couldn't happen in the social media era when
this is from you know, relatively recent times. You know,
when Richard Nixon had the idea that, oh, you know what,
maybe we should have relations with communist China. He sent
Henry Kissinger to Pakistan on a secret mission to meet
with high Chinese officials, and Pakistan was going to host
(18:28):
it discreetly. Henry Kissinger disappeared. I don't know the exact
number of days, seven eight, nine days, and he flew
off secretly to Pakistan, and he and the Chinese came
to an agreement that allowed for the opening for Richard
Nixon's historic visit to China that opened up the relationship.
The State Department lied about Henry Kissinger's They said he
had a cold and he was off, you know, resting,
(18:51):
or he had the flu or something that ain't going
to happen today. One can argue that that's misleading the
American people, you know, not telling them what our secretary
state doing. But you know what, if people had found out,
the deal would never have been done. And in this age,
we expect to know everything about where people are all
the time. And it's just that it's a minor example ultimately,
(19:13):
but it's so interesting to me because, I mean, the
Constitutional Convention wouldn't have worked if it had been covered
and discussed the way social media discusses things today. So
we are we're paralyzed by social media, and we're confused
by social media, and we're angered by social media in
a way that makes cool, rational, civically minded decision making
(19:35):
really really difficult. And so that's one thing that we
have today that they didn't have to deal with back
in the day.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
And do you think James Madison would ever envision Jeff
a time when there is no common understanding of truth?
You know, that the facts are manipulated depending on who's
whose side they suit, right, Yeah, and facts are just
(20:05):
no longer facts, or the truth is no longer truth,
or their versions of it. Do you think that's one
of the primary reasons that our democracy is under such strain.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, I mean it's a little bit more complicated answer
because back in those days, I mean, you know, and
this is one of the interesting things about what ken
Burns does and what I think we try to do
in our in the issue, we try to bring the
revolution and the revolutionary period back into history and strip
it of some of its myth. I mean, the founders
(20:39):
were also ordinary men who had resentments and angers, and
the press was a you know, it was there were
dirty stuff going on, and there was there is calumny,
and there was accusation, and there were libel Remember how
Hamilton died. I mean, these guys were not you know,
they weren't a bunch of Dalai Lamas sitting there, you know,
selflessly trying to make decisions only in the best interests
(21:02):
of the people. So the press was filled with yellow
journalism back then. But what was different is that I
do believe what was true in seventeen seventy six was
also true in the seventies and eighties and nineties of
the previous century, that there was more or less a
(21:23):
shared reality like here, this is a thing that is true,
and this is a thing that's not true. Right. By
the way, we haven't even gotten to the subject of
what would the founders of America make of the possibility
of ai agi and the idea and deep fakery. I mean,
(21:46):
I do what we're doing right now is we're performing
a completely unregulated experiment on the stress points of democracy,
right and the stress points of human reality, like how
much how much you know, how much pressure can we
put reality under before it just splinters apart? And I
(22:09):
think that's what you're you're getting at. We don't have
you want to hear a great example. I'll give you.
I'll give you a great example. Two hundred and fifty
years ago, George Washington mandated that the soldiers of the
Continental Army be vaccinated inoculated against smallpox. There was less
(22:33):
controversy over that mandate two hundred forty years ago, then
there's controversy about vaccines today. You know, I always think
when I think about this one, I always think about
the line popularized by President Obama the arc of history
is long, but it bends to our justice. Or you
could say the arc of history is long, but it
(22:54):
bends to our knowledge. Isn't it amazing that we have
a president today or a president surrounded by people in
his cabinet today who have less faith in the science
of vaccination than George Washington. And I don't know if
some people know this, but vaccination back in those days,
inoculation wasn't something you go to CVS and you get
(23:16):
a shot. I mean they would scrape, you know, puss
from the wounds from the smallpox of living people and
then spread that puss into make a cut into another
person's arm and spread that puss. It was horrible.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
I'm glad I haven't eaten breakfast.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
No means no, but it's yeah, it was horrible, but
people like, all right, So, you know, George Washington studied
what the doctors of the day said, Here's why we
think it works, here's why you have to protect your
army against smallpox. And then I reader was like, well, okay,
if that's what the experts of the day say, we're
(23:56):
going to do it.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
And believe me, I've been so upset about this assault
on science, Jeff and expertise, Knowledge and expertise writ large, right.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah, where are we when? I mean, look, by the
way I get it, scientists make mistakes. Doctors make mistakes.
You know that. I know that everybody knows that, but
I don't know. I always think of it this way.
If I went to one hundred doctors and ninety nine
told me that I had emphysema and one said, no,
(24:33):
you're just having an allergic reaction to you know, beef lomaine,
I'd be like, I'm going to go with the ninety nine.
You know what I mean, I wouldn't. I don't know
why I said beef lawmine. I guess it's lunch, the
you know. And it's like we're living in an age.
And this goes exactly to your point, this splintering where
(24:56):
it's like we don't share a reality. A reality tell
you that holds for all of us, that vaccines are
a good and not a bit. Yes, sometimes vaccines go awry.
We know that, our doctors know that, but overall vaccination
inoculation has saved millions and millions, hundreds of millions of lives.
(25:16):
And so why is this now? Why are we doing this?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
It almost goes to our capacity to appreciate our mistakes
in the past. Right, there's a similar ethos at work
where you can't acknowledge that the United States science people
are not perfect and mistakes are made. I think the
question is what do you do with those mistakes? Do
(25:42):
you acknowledge them, do you try to improve on the situation?
Do you look at the sort of the greater good?
I mean, it's just a very very strange time. But Jeff,
I want to ask you about some of the specific
writers because there's some wonderful themes in this issue. Fittono
Tool rights that alex Ander Hamilton, perhaps prophetically quote suggested
(26:04):
that citizens needed politicians who had courage and magnanimity enough
to serve them at the peril of their displeasure, and
that he had a ready made term for the sheer
cowardice of so many legislators in today's Congress, and that
is servile pliancy. I think so many people have been
shocked by what could be described as servile pliancy in Congress,
(26:31):
and you talked earlier about them abdicating their role and
basically serving the purpose of bolstering the executive branch. And
you know, I've talked to many smart people about this, Jeff,
and there really doesn't seem to be any explanation other
(26:53):
than a desperate desire to maintain power and a fear
of being primaried. Essentially.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Yeah, I mean, I look, it's cowardice all the way down.
There is an understandable explanation and a pathetic explanation. You've
articulated the pathetic explanation. They want to keep their jobs
(27:22):
right at the cost of selling their souls right. They
want to be they want to be in power, they
want the trappings of power, and they don't want to
be primary. That's the malignant explanation. The kind of understandable
explanation is they literally fear for their physical safety and
for the safety of their families, as they should because
(27:43):
in the social media age, you know, I go back
to I always go back to what it was like
when we both started as reporters. You know, in the
old days, lunatics who believe that the IRS had planted
a chip in their brain and was spying on them,
or believe whatever that the government was hiding Martians. You know,
(28:04):
you would find them sometimes as a reporter standing outside
a federal building handing out like handing out eight page tracts,
you know, typed single space tracks and right, okay, thanks
a lot. Now those people have podcasts with millions of listeners,
They have websites, they they can they move that information
throughout the so in other words, in other words, it's very,
(28:27):
very easy to form a mob using the tools of
social media. And if you're a legislator who doesn't have
personal protection, you know, doesn't have you know, Capitol police
outside your house or secret Service or whatever, and you
live in a deep pro Trump state, and you know
(28:48):
that the people in your state are being inundated with
messages about how you're not just a bad legislator or
a mistaken whatever, but you're a trader, you're an enemy
or this or that, you're trying to destroy Americans civilization,
you're trying to destroy Christianity, you're trying to destroy whatever.
That's nerve wracking. I understand it. I also I also believe,
(29:08):
like if you can't, if you can't live inside that
tension and live with that level of danger, get out
of the business of trying to represent the people and
you're not fulfilling your oath to defend the Constitution.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Hi, everyone, it's me Katie Couric. You know, if you've
been following me on social media, you know I love
to cook, or at least try, especially alongside some of
my favorite chefs and foodies like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen,
Lighty Hoyke, Alison Roman, and Ininagarten. So I started a
free newsletter called Good Taste to share recipes, tips and
(29:51):
kitchen mustaves. Just sign up at Katiecuric dot com slash
good Taste. That's k A t I E c O
U r Ic slash good Taste. I promise your taste
buds will be happy you did. I think you're touching
(30:16):
on something, Jeff. You know that, in many ways, other
than fear, some of these members of Congress think they
are serving their constituents because their constituents are being served
things that are then putting pressure on their representatives. If
that makes sense, it's the opposite of a virtuous cycle.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Let me delineate between two issues. One is, we're not
talking about the battle of conservative and liberal ideas. Right, Like,
if you're a red state legislator and your constituents are
conservative and believe it a certain vision of how government
should run, the role of business, the whole range of
social and cultural issues, and you represent their views, you
(31:01):
probably already have those views anyway, because you're elected into
power by that state. That's fine, that's the American system, Like,
American democracy works best when liberal ideas and conservative ideas
are coming into collision and publicly vented so that people
can see what the options are. I'm talking about something else,
you know, which is you're an elected legislator. You're supposed
(31:25):
to function as a member of the legislative branch, which
means checking the power of the other two branches, standing
for transparency and fighting corruption, believing that the government should
employ the best people, not people who are friends or
donors to the president. I mean, those are not ideological issues.
(31:49):
That's just corruption versus non corruption. Right, So, like, you
could be the most conservative person on the planet and
support Donald Trump's vision of X or y or Z
and also say, but no, we're not taking a seven
forty seven from the authoritarian regime and Cutter and then
doing business deals with them on the side. Like that's
(32:10):
not ideological, that's just.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
That's just that's right wrong. I'm just right and wrong.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Like like, there's no conservative I mean, there is no theoretically,
there's no liberal view of presidential self dealing or a
conservative view of presidential self dealing. Remember what happened? How
did how did the Watergate drama end? A bunch of
Republicans on the hill set all right, that's it, Nixon,
you gotta go.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
You've crossed the line, crossed the.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Line, and we're not We're not doing this anymore. And
this has been this is the story of our age,
you know, I mean, And here's the thing. You you
know these guys, I know these guys. I know Lindsey Graham. Really,
I know that Lindsey Graham in another age would have
been standing right next to John McCain as John McCain said,
we're not taking a plane from Cutter for air Force
(33:01):
to use this air force one. What are you guys
out of your minds?
Speaker 2 (33:05):
It almost makes me cry when I think of where
are the John McCain's, Jeff, where are the people? And
what the hell has happened to Lindsey Graham and all
these Republicans who are turning a blind eye or even worse,
supporting these kinds of actions that are either you know, corrupt, unconstitutional.
(33:29):
I mean, we could go down a laundry list of descriptions.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
That's the look. I find that it's depressing, is as
you do. I mean sometimes I maybe I over personalize
it and think, oh, if John McCain were alive today,
he would be John McCain, you know, and he would
still be John McCain in the Senate calling calling this out.
I believe very few people are born leaders, I don't know. Again,
(33:57):
fear self interest, you know, and a lot of people,
and this is true in the Democrats, among Liberals, a
lot of people are like, yeah, I don't like the guy.
I don't like what he does on X and Y
and Z, but on this issue that's important to me,
he's with me. So I'm going to make that deal.
But again, like I said, it's not about ideology, it's
about character, personal behavior. Look. One of the things that
(34:21):
and this goes back to the core of what the
founders believed. You know, It's like, if you're gonna have
a democracy, you're gonna have to exercise Everyone is gonna
have to exercise self restraint. Just because you can do
something doesn't mean you should do it. Just because you
can say something doesn't mean you should say it. Being
mature and having self restraint is part and parcel of
how you function in a healthy democracy. And I don't know,
(34:45):
And your question to me is actually the key question,
because none of what we are seeing would be happening. Look,
none of what we're seeing would be happening if ten Republicans,
seven Republican senators after January sixth, said you know what,
I'm going to vote to convict Trump on impeachment charges,
(35:08):
on the charges brought from in the second impeachment because
he fomented an armed insurrection against the conduct of a
free and fair election all he needed, and then he
wouldn't have been Then he would have been almost axiomatically
banned from running for office. So like the whole Republic
that you know, when we look back, who knows, ten
(35:29):
twenty thirty years from now, we might go and say, huh,
if Mitch McConnell and Rob Portman and a handful of
others had just actually lived their ideals or their stated ideals.
We wouldn't have seen all the things that we're seeing
(35:50):
this year so far, the dismantling of our Justice Department,
the dismantling of our foreign aid and information programs, that
dismand of the FBI. I don't have to give you
the laundry list. I don't know. I don't. I don't
know how to explain it other than that human beings
or are flawed creatures.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Before we go, Jeff, I wanted to ask you. You
have so many brilliant writers at the Atlantic. You do
this big issue, Jeff, you have some of the smartest
people I know or I read writing about these various issues.
Are you optimistic about the future. Do you feel that
(36:34):
the things we fought for in the Revolutionary War, the
ideals put forth by the founding fathers and adjusted throughout
history to meet the times we've been in At any
given moment, do you feel hopeful?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
I don't feel hopeful. I wouldn't. I wouldn't put myself
in the unhopeful category either. I think. I mean, what
I honestly think is that we don't know how AI
is going to reshape our collective and individual understanding of reality.
(37:20):
I don't know if democracy can take the pressure that's
about to come down on it. When the feeds that
our citizens, our fellow citizens are receiving are filled with
highly produced, highly credible, seeming fakery. I don't know how
(37:43):
we're going to live in twenty four hour a day
chaos and not just have the capacity in space to
make good decisions. I don't know how we're going to
get the information that's going to lead us to decisions.
So that's what right now. You add that to the
(38:05):
sort of the social media mailstream, that's what I worry about.
And I guess, I mean I'm sounding more negative than positive.
I guess because that's the way I actually feel. But
like we just talked about people like Rob Portman, accomplished
senator from Ohio, former head of the OMB, talked about
Mitch McConnell, talk about all these guys. They're supposed to
be the best of us, right, These are our representatives.
(38:28):
These are the people that the people of their states
chose to represent them in the halls of the capital,
and they abdicated their responsibility out of fear, cowardice. I
don't know what, so what that's what our leaders were like.
So I don't know what the people. I don't know
how the people react will react to the splintering reality
(38:52):
they're seeing, So I I wish I could be hopeful
about it. And we also have a mass literacy crisis.
I don't mean literacy in the classic sense of a
grown up reading at a third grade level or a
second grade level. I mean people who don't know what's
in the Declaration of Independence or don't know what's in
(39:13):
the constitution. You know, the death of civics, the death.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Of an educated electorate.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Have a democracy without an educated electorate. And let me
get very patriotic here. The founders of the country, despite
their huge flaws, set up, in theory, the best system
that any human being could come up with for the
maintenance and growth of a great nation. And we got
(39:42):
to listen. We've got to listen to them. On the left,
people want to throw them all out because they're dead
white males. On the right, people want to say that
they were perfect human beings. Let's not talk about their flaws,
and let's lie in lieu of actually taking what they
say in their most complicated expression. Let's just have a
(40:02):
big parade and get mad at people who don't want
to join the parade. That's where we are right now. Hope,
I hope, I hope. I mean, the American people have
been through much worse. Obviously. I'm sure in eighteen fifty
seven when the Atlantic was founded, people weren't sitting around going, eh,
things are going pretty good. Huh. You know, we had
a really crappy president in eighteen fifty seven wasn't the worst,
(40:26):
and the South was ready to depart, and Lincoln was
an inexperienced yokel who's coming into power. So it was
much I mean, it's kind of a compount to say, ah,
we've been through much worse, but we've been through much worse.
So I just think about the technological overlay is the
thing that might push us over the edge.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
I hope that this magazine, this addition, this examination of
our values and how we got here and how they
withstood not only the test of time but so many
challenges over the last two hundred and fifty years, will
perhaps invigorate people and make them think and talk about
(41:11):
where we are. Jeff, Because like you, I am deeply,
deeply concerned, and you know, I'm kind of a glass
half full person, you know, I think people are basically good.
As my late husband used to say, I'm hardwired for
happiness and positivity. But I really I am really worried. Honestly,
(41:37):
I'm really worried, and I don't know. I hope we
find a way out because I love this country too.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
We've gotten out of worse That's all I can say
is we've gotten out of worse situations. So I mean
that's not a very hopeful statement, but it's you know, resilience,
and look, you know there's a many different versions of this.
Is that you know, Americans will do the right thing
after they do all the wrong things, you know, and
we'll make various mistakes and then we'll figure out the
(42:08):
right path. We go up, we go down, we muddle through.
But yeah, I do. I do think that a prerequisite
is to It doesn't have to be reading The Atlantic.
I mean it should be, but doesn't have.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
To be or listening to next Question.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Or listening to to one of the two or three
greatest podcasts ever made. I'm not going to give you
best because you wouldn't give me best. Who are watching
Ken Burns's documentary, which is great, But everybody has to
go meet the moment of actually being a citizen and asking,
I mean, this is why this is. This is not
(42:43):
to go back on this, but it's like the merry
minimum people should demand is that the government should hire
the best people for the for the job, not people
who are friends of the president.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
And people who know people who very simply, Jeff, do
the right thing.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
I will give you the last word because that was Podcrick.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Jeff, thank you so much. It's great to talk to.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
You, great to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Thanks for listening. Everyone. If you have a question for me,
a subject you want us to cover, or you want
to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would
love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me,
(43:29):
Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter wake Up Call,
go to the description in the podcast app or visit
(43:51):
us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hi everyone, it's
Katie Couric. You know I'm always on the go between
(44:11):
running my media company, hosting my podcast, and of course
covering the news. And I know that to keep doing
what I love, I need to start caring for what
gets me there, my feet. That's why I decided to
try the Good Feet stores personalized arch support system. I
met with a Good Feet arch support specialist and after
(44:32):
a personalized fitting, I left the store with my three
step system designed to improve comfort, balance and support. My feet.
Means and back are thanking me already. Visit goodfeet dot
com to learn more, find the nearest store, or book
your own free personalized fitting.
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