Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

What’s really driving the humanities crisis in higher education? As enrollment and reading decline, I asked Jennifer Frey, a professor of philosophy, what it was like to run a liberal arts program that was gutted. I wanted to know whether she thinks the age of A.I. could bring back the kind of education she says is fundamental to human formation.

00:00 - Intro

2:08 - Why study the humanities?

5:00 - Do the humanities mean more morality?

15:00 - Shakespeare vs. John Grisham

24:07 - The Tulsa Honors College

34:43 - Left-wing critiques and specialization

44:10 - Is conservatism a friend to liberal arts?

56:32 - Why the humanities are crucial in the age A.I.

(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)

Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times with Ross Douthat.

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The United States and China are really the only two countries that matter right now in shaping the A.I. future. As President Trump and President Xi Jinping meet in Beijing, there’s a kind of Cold War atmosphere, with people talking about an A.I. arms race. But who is winning? Are we even in a race at all? Kyle Chan, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, says it’s hard to call it a race because the U.S. and China have very different A.I. goals.

00:00:25 U.S. vs. China in A.I.

00:03:07 Everyday A.I. in China

00:07:41 China's A.I. chip limitations

00:12:14 China's A.I. advantage: energy & deployment

00:16:10 China's public mood on A.I.

00:19:44 AI, job displacement and social concerns

00:23:53 Robots for China's labor shortage

00:26:55 China's view on America's AGI fixation

00:31:16 Distilling A.I. models

00:38:39 U.S. needs more A.I. deployment

00:41:48 U.S. chip policy and the hawk's argument

(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)

Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, 

Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

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Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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A stalemated war. Fractured alliances. A rival waiting in the wings. It feels to me that we’re having an “end of the American empire” moment. My guest this week, Ray Dalio, is an unlikely prophet of doom — the billionaire Bridgewater investor conquered Wall Street by studying history and mastering global trends. He foresaw the 2008 financial crisis,and these days he’s warning that the U.S. is repeating the patterns that ended great empires of the past.

0:00 - Intro

01:24 - The rise and fall of empires through big cycles

08:35 - Geopolitical tensions: China, Iran and the Suez Canal

14:27 - Fiat currency or gold?

24:19 - America’s coming ‘heart attack’

30:37 - Acts of nature, A.I. and technology

43:37 - ‘Could we have a Japanese future?’

(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)

Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times with Ross Douthat.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Self-driving cars are here. But what kind of future will they bring: safe roads and extra time or dystopian traffic jams? My guest this week is Andrew Miller, who writes about self-driving cars and transportation policy. I love the open road, so I press him on what’s lost when we give away driving to the robots.

0:00 - Intro

01:27 - The sales pitch for Waymo, Tesla, and Zoox 

12:24 - How autonomous are autonomous cars? 

20:14 - Liability: Who is responsible for an accident?

31:56 - Political obstacles: Spying, data, labor

38:53 - 20:35: The good and bad scenarios

48:25 - Are we losing the “romance of the road”?

(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)

Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times with Ross Douthat.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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One question has haunted my investment strategy for years: What is cryptocurrency actually for? It feels as though the vibes are constantly shifting — one day it’s the dollar’s successor, and the next it’s little more than a meme. My guest this week is bitcoin evangelist Anthony Pompliano, the chief executive of ProCap Financial. We get into whether crypto is a bet against the American empire and whether its volatility is actually a strength.

0:00 - Intro

01:27 - Physical to digital: The evolution of financial assets

05:00 - The wealth inequality gap

09:58 - The global adoption of crypto

14:51 - Bitcoin vs. Ethereum

20:26 - Why "stability" is a financial lie

29:30 - A “digital savings account”

41:57 - The role of Bitcoin in political dynamics

56:05 - “A bet against America”

(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)

Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times with Ross Douthat.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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