The Realignment The Realignment

Welcome to RE: Something Interesting, The Realignment's new Saturday podcast focused on more casual conversations about American culture and society with people who've released something worth diving into. Today's guest is the journalist Jason Del Rey, author of Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart, and the Battle for Our Wallets. Marshall and Jason discuss a listener's question about the state of Black Friday given the decline of in-person shopping, how the rivalry between Amazon and Walmart redefined the shopping experience, why both struggled with their in-person and online experiences, and why many of their efforts and startups they acquired during the 2010s floundered.

Ben Mezrich, author of Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History, returns to The Realignment. Marshall and Ben discuss Elon Musk's prospects for turning X (formerly Twitter) into not only a fundamentally sound business, but also the biggest global platform for speech, whether a profit-driven company can ever achieve free speech goals, post-acquisition successes, failures, and missed opportunities, and whether the platform can ever build the requisite subscriber base to escape its dependence on advertisers.

Adam Hammer, President and Co-Founder of Roadrunner Venture Studios, a new venture studio based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Adam discuss why America fell behind its rivals when it comes to developing emerging deep/frontier technologies, opportunities in quantum science, space, energy, advanced manufacturing, and clean tech, New Mexico's status as a past and future cradle of innovation, and how the "venture studio" model of company formation and funding can address the deep tech blind spots missed by traditional venture capital.

Jennifer Burns, Stanford history professor and author of Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative & Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Jennifer discuss Milton Friedman's legacy, his foundational role in shaping the bipartisan neoliberal approach that supplanted the New Deal in the 1970s and 1980s, whether the 2008 Financial Crisis, the trade policy fueled Trump revolt in 2016, and the COVID supply chain crunch has discredited his market-oriented worldview, and why the return of inflation politics could end up revitalizing his work for future generations.

In this Thanksgiving week edition of The Realignment's Recap and Ask Me Anything, Marshall discusses how to ask questions, the death of Black Friday, subscription recommendations for friends and family, and the show's Thanksgiving plans.

Welcome to RE: Something Interesting, The Realignment's new Saturday podcast focused on more casual conversations about American culture and society with people who've released something worth diving into. Today's guest is Doug Melville, author of Invisible Generals: Rediscovering Family Legacy, and a Quest to Honor America's First Black Generals. After a 2012 Hollywood production wrote out his family, Doug discovered his family's legacy in the segregated U.S. Army before and during World War II.