The Realignment: Greetings from NYC, New Newsletter Date, Lisa Napoli Returns + 2034 Part II
Update on The Realignment, Marshall's move, and latest episodes
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Greeting from Brooklyn! We’re both up in NYC this weekend. Saagar to visit, and Marshall to start setting up his new apartment. Thanks to everyone who reached out about meeting up this spring and summer. We’ll both get our second doses of the vaccine next week and are pumped to meet up IRL.
As we mentioned last week, this issue of the newsletter’s kicking off a series of announcements we’ll make over the next few issues.
This first one’s obvious: we’re no longer sending the newsletter on Friday late in the afternoon. Instead, it’ll go out on Thursday (ideally, way, way earlier than this issue).
Tune back next week for the next in our series. The long-term TLDRs that we’re going to continue to step the show up and would love to get your feedback on our next steps.
Welcome Back to The Realignment
This week, we aired two episodes: Lisa Napoli, author of the newly released Susan, Linda, Nina, & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR (released on Tuesday) and Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN, and the Birth of Cable News (also available in paperback next month); and Elliot Ackerman, co-author of 2034: A Novel of the Next World War and veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Episode 117: Elliot Ackerman, Part II: What Would a War with China Look Like?
Today’s episode with Elliot is a follow-up to our conversation with his co-author Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Commander of NATO. ICYMI, here’s the audio and video.
We also made a special Bookshop list of Elliot and Admiral Stavridis’s recommendations on China, national security, and warfare.
Episode 116: Lisa Napoli: Understanding Media’s Past to Build Its Future
We first interviewed Lisa last December about Up All Night. If you missed it, definitely go and check it out.
While we were researching for the show, Marshall particularly enjoyed Lisa’s appearance on The Internet History podcast, which focused on her time at The New York Times and MSNBC during the 1990s Dot-Com era.
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.
Most importantly, you don’t need to go with our recommendations if you want to support the show. If you go to Bookshop.org through our link and then purchase *anything* we still get your support. So huge thanks to whoever purchased Star Wars Thrawn: Ascendency (Book II: Greater Good) this morning.
If you purchase a book using our link, the show gets a 10% commission, a local, independent booksellers gets support, and you get an awesome book!
Here are three of the lists we’ve built out:
1) Our list of the best books we read in 2020
2) All of the books we’ve read so far in 2021
3) Books written by Realignment podcast guests
Listener Mail
We’re bringing back listener mail. Email us at realignmentpod@gmail.com, reply to this email, or leave a comment if you’d like to share your thoughts.
Brian writes:
Hi Guys,
I appreciate the way your easy going approach to interviews really brings out your guests' worldview in a way you might not see in an adversarial exchange. It was fun to hear Scarborough unwittingly parody the Washington Consensus or to hear Swati Mylavarapu say "do the work" a million times. I think when they know the lame-o counter punch isn't coming, their positions come out in a much more natural and unscripted way. However, I did have a Tony Soprano panic attack that finally let loose towards the end of that Frank DiStefano episode. Consider the following juicy pieces of gabagool:
-Industrial Policy doesn't have anything to do with the rise of China or other domestic issues (~1:04:00)?
-Obama as a New Deal democrat (1:11:15)?
-Mayor (McKinsey) Pete as a William Jennings Bryan (1:17:10)?
If I can offer you some cheeto crumb covered advice from my couch, it would be sweet to hear you guys push back against some of these absurd points a little harder. It would be nice to hear what responses you get from guests when they are in a disarming environment. Anyways, love the show!
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.