The Realignment: Greetings from Miami! + What's Next
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Welcome Back to The Realignment
Greetings from Miami everyone! Right now, I (Marshall) am prepping for tomorrow’s Realignment Conference. Saagar’s about to leave D.C. to get into town late tonight. I got to meet some Realignment listeners last night at Lincoln Network’s event with Peter Thiel and had a great time. Shout-out to everyone who’s able to make it out this week. For those who can’t, we’ll post video from the event on our YouTube page.
Content-wise, we released episodes with Johns Hopkins University President Ronald Daniels and Dr. Parag Khanna. Both guests have books out, so be sure to check them out below.
How Does The Realignment Work and Where Are We Going Next?
Sitting in Miami, right before our conference tomorrow, I’ve had plenty of time to think about the past 2.5 years of the podcast, what we’ve learned, and how we’ll move forward.
The last six months have been absolutely crazy. I host three different podcasts (The Deep End, Counterbalance, and of course The Realignment). That translates to 4-5 long-form interviews a week. Saagar went completely independent and successfully launched Breaking Points. I’ve been happy with what we’ve produced, but at this point, we’re delivering a solid B+. Coming out of this week, we’ve got no excuses for not getting to at least an A.
Request: If you haven’t already, we’d really appreciate it if you left us a 5-Star review on Apple Podcasts. Leave any of your thoughts about the show, and let us know how long you’ve been listening, and what’s resonated. We’d also really like to learn more about what you’re interested in learning about. Not just guest suggestions, but topics and issues.
Also, leave any thoughts and responses to this below in the comments section.
So in no particular order, thoughts on The Realignment:
How we conceive of The Realignment: To paraphrase Ben Thompson’s description of his excellent Stratechery newsletter, The Realignment is an audio journal of Saagar and I trying to figure out how the world works. We’ve mentioned this on the show, but the biggest difference between our first and current seasons is that we’re much less confident that any one side or set of people has the answer. That’s the reason we cringe when people describe The Realignment as “populist” or “conservative.” Not merely because neither of us identifies with those labels, but because that description suggests we’re telling the audience to rest their hopes and dreams on a specific group of people. I promise you, you’ll find the results and offerings wanting.
It’s obvious and conventional-wisdom to say this, but the world’s getting more and more complicated by the day. We want The Realigment to be a space you can come to actually put things together. I don’t want this to be thought of as a podcast that’s telling you what to think. Rather, we’re a platform you can use to come to your own conclusions.How to listen to The Realignment: We put a lot of thought into the type of guests we book and the topics the show covers. We’re ambitious. We don’t just want to talk about DC politics. We want to cover Web3 (more on that soon), the creator economy, and almost everything else under the sun. You should think of The Realignment as an ongoing conversation/investigation into how the world works. That may mean that not every episode is going to be of particular interest. You may only want to hear us talk about populism. That’s OK. We’re well aware of the fact that we could really 10x our downloads if we took a hyper-pointed partisan view, but frankly, there are plenty of other podcasts that do that, and it wouldn’t be an interesting project for us to sustain. So TLDR, take a look at what we release, and take your pick.
What we need to improve on:
1) Less inside-baseball. We’ve gotten a lot of feedback that as we’ve expanded outwards, some of our content has gotten inaccessible. This is a deep show, so some of that goes with the territory. But I know for a fact we can do a better job of introducing episodes and providing context at the start and in this newsletter. Moving forward, we’re going to work harder to build the “library” that feeds this show.
2) Tying it all together: We need to better contextualize what we’re doing show-wise and why it all fits together. It’s great that we cover a lot of topics, but it’s important that it be clear as to why we’re making certain choices and why a podcasts that covers the supply-chain crisis is also talking about the Metaverse.
What’s the long-term plan: We plan on publishing the show for the next 10 years. That’s over a thousand more episodes. So these are early days indeed. We’re so thankful that you all have joined us on this journey. Personal bias aside, what we’re building here is actually really important and under-served in the podcasting market.
There’s a lot here to think about and we’d love to hear your suggestions, so comment below with your own reflections and suggestions:
This Week’s Episodes
Episode 169: Johns Hopkins University President Ronald Daniels: What Universities Owe Democracy
Episode 168: Parag Khanna: How Migration and Asia Will Define the 21st Century
The Realignment Bookshop
As a reminder, we’ve created a Realignment Bookshop affiliate store showcasing books by guests, what we’re actively reading this year, and deeper dives into the featured topic of an episode.
If you purchase a book using our link, the show gets a 10% commission, a local, independent bookseller gets support, and you get an awesome book!
We’re reorganizing our book lists over the next few weeks, so for now, check out our primary one:
Books by Realignment Guests
Let us know what you think about this or any other week’s episodes. Please share The Realignment with anyone who’d enjoy the podcast.
Context: I’ve listened to Breaking Points and then The Realignment since the first Rogan episode. I also listen to Counterbalance and The Deep End.
What ya’ll have nailed is honesty and integrity, however, I’m not sure you’ve figured out authenticity. I think some of the concern about your ‘elite guests’ is actually concern about the two of you becoming ‘elite millennial talking heads.’ The thing about a talking head is that it’s a disembodied entity whose words are destined to become talking points. OK, no more abstractions.
On The Realignment, sometimes the two of you seem like hyper-curated versions of humans. Part of that is the format where all you do is ask questions and deliver statements. The episodes rarely feel like actual conversations between real people, despite being super informative, polished and engaging.
Obviously this is a tricky balance. I’m not asking ya’ll to move towards influencer territory. And the minute you wear a T-shirt, Eric Weinstein’s going to call you out. So I’m not denying this is difficult and it’s a bit of a trap.
On Counterbalance, Doran has pressed Marshall a couple times and those episodes leveled up in my opinion. And the snippets of original content on Substack is absolutely the right direction. One issue directly ahead of ya’ll is who are ya’ll? You don’t want to be the populist podcast and you don’t want to be the conservative podcast. Ok, fine, we hear you. Then you’re going to have to show us who you are, beyond policy positions. You’re going to have to put some flesh on the talking heads that many of us have come to enjoy listening to. And now for a practical idea… (Hopefully this doesn’t come off too prickish. Long-winded, sure. A tad prickish, fine. But it’s a strange thing telling strangers to be less strange.)
Practical idea: Record an actual conversation between the two of you discussing the meta questions of The Realignment and what it’s like on the verge of turning 30 as a bonus episode. Let your hair down, pour a drink, and have a little fun however the two of you normally do while the cameras aren’t rolling. Honesty and authenticity are closely linked, but are still separate virtues to practice.
I think you should spend a week on the role religion plays in American politics. Two guests that should bring is Ryan Burge, who wrote The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going and 20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America. David Campbell, Geoffrey C. Layman, and John C. Green who wrote “Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics”.