Anna Gát: The Hope Axis - new podcast, episode 1 & 2

What is there in the world to hope for?

Dear Friends,

As you’re probably already aware, I’ve been taking a break from sending you my weekly reading digest. This is because I’m writing a new essay series (book?), building a new platform for Interintellect, and starting a new podcast to support the essay series (book?).

The new podcast is called The Hope Axis. My first guests were

Noah Smith

and

Katherine Dee

— with the third episode coming soon with the great Phil Klay. The “hope axis” is a recent area of inquiry of mine, and something I find worthy of extensive multidisciplinary discussion:

More here.

I posit that the past decade’s cultural standoff between Wokes (past was bad) and Conservatives (past was good) has been replaced by an Autist Culture (future will be good) vs Public Nostalgics (future will be bad) dichotomy.

In my analysis - having spent the past five years nonstop immersed in realtime idea formation and debate on Interintellect - people’s attitude toward the future is the most important thing to look at in politics today, and only through directly discussing it will we not fall into the culture proxy wars that lead absolutely nowhere. The red line that cuts across party affiliations, based solely on our intuitions about the future, is the hope axis.

With my excellent guest, we’ve been exploring how ideological polarities are changing, what remains in the world to hope and work for, and how Millennials coming into power shift the balance — and what our responsibility as the new leaders is.

Watch episode 1 with the economist Noah Smith:

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.

Watch episode 2 with internet anthropologist Katherine Dee:

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

I hope you will enjoy these first two conversations, and that I’ll see you at an Interintellect event - online or offline - soon!

Please leave your thoughts in the comments below or on YouTube.

Warmly,

Anna