676. Has America Lost the Plot?
6/5/20261 hr 5 min
Another war in the Middle East. A retreat from the international order. A presidency built on self-dealing and arbitrary power. It’s enough to make you think the U.S. is in a steep decline — but Fareed Zakaria thinks otherwise.
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SOURCES:
- Fareed Zakaria, journalist and author.
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RESOURCES:
- "Iran is an imperial trap. America walked right in." by Fareed Zakaria (The Washington Post, 2026).
- "‘Bomb and hope’ is not a strategy," by Fareed Zakaria (The Washington Post, 2026).
- Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, by Fareed Zakaria (2024).
- The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder, by Peter Zeihan (2014).
- The Affluent Society, by Jonathan Galbraith (1958).
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EXTRAS:
- "Fareed Zakaria on What Just Happened, and What Comes Next," by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
- "Are We Living Through the Most Revolutionary Period in History?" by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
- "The Folly of Prediction," by Freakonomics Radio (2011).
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsStephen Dubner· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Let me just say this upfront. Predicting the future is hard. We once made an episode called The Folly of Prediction, episode number 41, if you wanna hunt it down. The findings were clear. Most of us are much worse than we think at making predictions, and we're also much more confident than we ought to be. But that doesn't stop us from trying. Look at the huge success of prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket. We are always dying to know what might happen next. I am not immune from this desire. You probably aren't either. One particular temptation is geopolitics. It is so complex and dynamic and important that it's hard to hold yourself back, even if you know that your prediction is, at best, an educated guess. So you might as well get your geopolitical predictions from someone who is extremely educated in these matters. Someone like this.
Fareed Zakaria· Guest0:58
Fareed Zakaria. I work at, at CNN and write a column for The Washington Post and write books.
Stephen Dubner· Host1:03
Zakaria is a foreign policy stud. A political scientist by training, a journalist by vocation, and longtime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, which is why we are having him on the show today for a third time. His last appearance was just after Donald Trump had been reelected to the presidency, but before Trump took office. You did make some predictions last time you came on the show.
Fareed Zakaria· Guest1:28
Uh-oh.
Unknown speaker1:29
[laughs]