Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

Епизоди

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  That Daily Brain Rot Break Is Taking Us Back to the Dark Ages 08.10.2026 48мин

  Literacy is declining sharply across the West. In the era of vertical video, who has the time or concentration to read a long article — let alone a whole book? As we lose the ability to read long-form text, we might also be losing the capacity for democratic deliberation and self-governance. That’s the argument this week’s guest, the Times of London columnist James Marriott, makes in his recent book, “The New Dark Ages.” He sits down with guest host Mary Harrington to discuss our return to oral culture, the political consequences and what we can learn from the medieval era about storing information in a digital world.
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  We Are Clueless About What’s Coming 01.10.2026 50мин

  Nick Bostrom rose to prominence for predicting artificial intelligence doom more than a decade ago — garnering support from figures like Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Bill Gates. But now he’s retreating from those warnings, focusing his attention on a more complex question: What if A.I. succeeds beyond humanity’s wildest imaginations? Will we be bored out of our minds? Are we too infantile to understand what’s coming? Guest host Spencer Klavan, the associate editor at the Claremont Review of Books, presses Bostrom on the potential uses and abuses of superintelligence, rationalist ethics and what makes us human.
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  How Worried Should We Be About the Midterm Elections? 24.09.2026 45мин

  Many Americans are losing faith in elections. Proposed solutions from across the political spectrum to restore faith in the process — early voting, mail-in ballot restrictions and voter ID laws — seem to have the opposite effect. But lack of trust in elections is a symptom of a broader problem: America is living through an era of democratic dissatisfaction. That’s what the New York University law professor Richard Pildes argues on this episode of “Interesting Times.” He and the guest host, Sarah Isgur, the editor of SCOTUSblog, discuss why Americans are so worried about the midterms and how to fix our electoral system and restore trust.
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  Introducing ‘Interesting Times’ 06.04.2025 3мин