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wherever you get your podcasts. There's

1:04

no blueprint here, right? You know,

1:06

this question of kind of what do you

1:08

do next? It's a very personal one. You

1:10

can look to other examples and you can

1:12

look to who's done it right. But at

1:14

the end of the day, the answer

1:17

is some kind of customized experience

1:19

based on your personality, based on

1:21

your ambition, your interest. And

1:24

what I wanted to do with the book was basically

1:26

offer seven different models that people could kind of miss

1:28

and match and apply to themselves. What

1:32

could go right? I'm

1:34

Zachary Carabell, the founder of The

1:36

Progress Network, and this is our weekly

1:38

podcast, What Could Go Right? Which

1:40

looks at the world with an

1:42

eye toward things being solved rather

1:44

than things being broken. Unlike

1:47

other episodes, I am running solo today

1:49

and not with my co-host, Emma Varvalukas,

1:51

the executive director of The Progress Network.

1:53

Although we will do a news segment

1:56

at the end while we look at things that have

1:58

gone on in the world that... You may

2:00

not have been paying attention to in the midst of all the

2:02

bad things that are going on in the world. One

2:05

thing we don't look at, understandably,

2:07

because we are focused so relentlessly

2:09

on what's happening right now, is

2:11

what happens to people who have

2:13

been in positions of high prominence

2:16

and high office after

2:18

they are no longer in those positions.

2:20

One of the most powerful roles in

2:23

American society is, of course, the American

2:25

presidency. We understand and we don't often

2:27

pay attention to what these individuals are on the

2:29

other side of their presidency. Again,

2:31

because they are no longer in the

2:33

limelight. But it is a fascinating topic

2:36

in a world that's obsessed with power

2:38

to look at what individuals do when

2:40

they no longer have the same power

2:42

or they no longer have the same

2:44

identity. And that is a story that

2:46

is relevant to all of us. So

2:48

we're going to talk to today someone

2:50

who's written a book about what people

2:52

who occupied the presidency do when they

2:54

no longer occupy the presidency. What

2:57

do you do with that? My guest today

2:59

is Jared Cohen, who is the author

3:01

of Life After Power, Seven Presidents and

3:03

their Search for Purpose Beyond the White

3:06

House. He's the author

3:08

of an earlier book called Accidental Presidents,

3:10

which was about people who became president

3:12

accidentally, i.e. vice president

3:14

who assumed the office of

3:16

presidency accidentally or unexpectedly. Jared

3:20

has a fascinating career separate from

3:22

his life as an author. He

3:24

is now president of global

3:26

affairs at Goldman Sachs. He

3:28

is an adjunct fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He

3:32

served for a period of time on the

3:34

policy planning staff under Secretary of State Hillary

3:36

Clinton, but also as

3:38

an advisor to Condoleezza Rice. So he

3:40

has been bipartisan in his public service.

3:44

And before that, he was the president

3:46

of Jigsaw, which is a subsidiary of Google

3:48

focused on internet and

3:50

security and bringing the internet to parts of

3:52

the world that are having a

3:54

hard time getting it. So we're

3:57

going to talk to Jared today about these questions, about

3:59

his new book, And I'm really looking forward to

4:01

it. Jared

4:07

Cohen, such a pleasure.

4:10

We've talked a lot but not much online, so

4:12

this will be a public version of a lot

4:14

of private conversations. And

4:17

I remember you talking about the germination

4:20

for this book, someone following a motif

4:23

of quirky,

4:26

odd eccentric people who

4:28

have been in the Oval Office,

4:30

either as your first book, Accidental

4:32

Presidents, in this case less

4:34

quirky people than what

4:36

lives people live on the other

4:39

side of having been

4:41

elected to the highest office or I

4:44

guess in a few cases initially, assuming

4:46

the highest office without having been elected. I

4:50

have to say like to me this has always

4:52

been one of those fascinating conversations in general about

4:55

what do people do after, right? It's

4:57

like I was joking with someone

4:59

the other day about wanting to write

5:01

a novel or a book that begins

5:03

with a CEO

5:05

on a plane to Davos who is

5:07

fired in mid-flight and then

5:10

lands and he's just, you know, whoever he was

5:12

before he got on that plane, before he had

5:14

that office. And in an odd way, you know,

5:16

once you've been president and

5:19

the rest of your life is being an ex-president,

5:21

it's got to be an odd phenomenon

5:24

and a strange feeling of you've

5:26

been in this position of utter

5:28

centrality and then you're

5:30

just a guy, at least in the United States

5:32

it's always been guys who used

5:34

to be president, right? I

5:36

mean, it's literally the

5:38

most dramatic retirement you

5:40

can possibly imagine and it's

5:42

the most seemingly

5:44

unrelatable retirement you can

5:46

imagine. And I think that's what's so surprising to

5:48

me is that despite presidents seeming pretty

5:51

far from the world that the rest of us

5:53

live in when we sort of think about questions

5:55

of what's next, they fall

5:57

so hard from such a political stratosphere.

6:00

as they come back down to Earth, they actually

6:02

become much more relatable figures and there's a lot that we

6:04

can learn from each of them. So,

6:07

on that vein, who handled

6:09

that transition in your estimation the best

6:11

and who handled it the worst? I'll

6:14

start with the one that handled it the worst because it's always

6:16

good to start with something juicy. You know,

6:18

to me, the biggest ex-presidential disaster is,

6:21

you know, John Tyler. He

6:23

becomes a traitor to the Union, defects during

6:25

the Civil War, and gets elected to the

6:27

Confederate House of Representatives and add insult to

6:29

injury. He dies before being able to take

6:32

his seat and Lincoln denies him a state

6:34

funeral. But there's a sort of

6:36

larger question of, you know, I pick

6:39

seven presidents that I focus on in

6:41

the book. I do Thomas Jefferson, John

6:43

Quincy Adams, Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft,

6:45

Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George W.

6:47

Bush. And so the question is why

6:49

those seven? As I looked

6:51

at the 45 men who've been president 46

6:53

times and you kind of discount the ones

6:55

that died in office, the ones that died

6:57

shortly thereafter, or the ones that are kind

6:59

of too recent to evaluate or still in

7:02

office, I was surprised that you were kind

7:04

of only left, in my opinion, with seven

7:06

that were really worth writing

7:08

about. You know, for most presidents, the

7:10

transition from the most powerful job in

7:12

the world to ordinary civilian life has

7:15

not been a pleasant one. All those

7:17

early presidents, they ended up with massive

7:19

financial troubles. They were big landowners.

7:22

A lot of them sort of struggled to sort

7:25

of separate themselves from their past

7:27

job. They finished their last chapter

7:30

of life, settling old scores, number

7:32

them, developed drinking problems and depression

7:35

challenges. And it's a pretty dark

7:37

story. But the seven that emerge

7:40

that I focus on, what I find

7:42

interesting is each of their post-presidencies

7:44

looked completely different. I mean, there were

7:46

common threads across all of them,

7:48

but each of them represents a

7:50

different archetypal model for how to

7:53

get after this elusive question of what's next.

7:55

And I think that's the part of this

7:57

book that I found the most interesting to

7:59

write. is because you're left realizing

8:01

there's no blueprint here. This

8:04

question of what do you do next, it's a very personal

8:06

one. You can look to other

8:09

examples and you can look to who's done

8:11

it right, but at the end of the

8:13

day, the answer is some

8:15

kind of customized experience based on your

8:17

personality, based on your ambition, your interest,

8:19

and what I wanted to do with

8:21

the book was basically offer seven different

8:23

models that people could miss and match

8:25

and apply to themselves. So

8:29

it's an interesting question of, by the way, Tyler's

8:31

fascinating to me for one reason, which is that

8:33

I think until recently he had two living grandchildren,

8:36

which is extraordinary. He still has one grandson. Right,

8:39

and now he has one living one, which is like utterly

8:41

amazing. If he was president in 1840. He

8:44

was born while George Washington was president. And

8:47

he has a living grandson. I mean, that

8:49

is extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. It's just

8:51

as a like connective tissue to the past

8:54

kind of thing. So

8:56

you didn't write about Grant, right? Ulysses

8:58

Grant is one that I grappled with a

9:01

little bit. So Ulysses Grant in his post-presidency,

9:03

he leaves office and scandal after two terms.

9:06

He hits the lecture circuit, mostly outside of

9:08

the United States to escape the

9:10

scandals. He's still the most famous man in

9:12

America as a general, but was a disaster

9:14

as a president. And he comes

9:17

back to the political scene in 1880 to

9:20

try to run for a nonconsecutive third

9:23

term. He ends up losing on, I think it was

9:25

the 34th ballot to James Garfield,

9:27

who showed up at the convention as the

9:29

campaign manager to the person,

9:32

kind of in third place, and ends

9:34

up as the Republican nominee for

9:36

president. That's the end of Grant's political career.

9:38

The reason Grant's post-presidency is interesting, and I

9:41

make reference to it in the book, but

9:43

I don't feature it, is he really is

9:45

the first president to write a presidential memoir.

9:47

And to this day, his two volume memoir

9:49

on his life is kind of the gold

9:52

standard of presidential memoirs. Thomas Jefferson

9:54

was the first President to write an

9:56

autobiography. He Just didn't write about his time

9:58

as President. He Tackled. not a biography because

10:00

the story of the revolution was being written

10:02

and he was worried that that story was

10:04

going to be told in a way that

10:06

was less than flattering to him. And

10:09

what's interesting about grants? To. Volume

10:11

Autobiography as he rushes to finish it

10:13

while he's dying. Of cancer

10:15

and yo his public bout with

10:17

cancer which played out. In

10:20

the newspapers and magazines of

10:22

the day was a pretty

10:24

significant milestone because he gave

10:26

the public visibility into this.

10:29

Sickness. And to his vulnerability in

10:31

a way that they had never really

10:33

encountered before Imo. It's one of the

10:35

reasons that when James Garfield is shot

10:37

and Lang and his deathbed for one

10:39

hundred and eighty days, there's so much

10:42

trepidation. Yell. About yeah, the public

10:44

narrative and you fast or to Grover

10:46

Cleveland to write about in the book

10:48

Grover Cleveland. You. When he comes

10:50

back for a second term, discovers that

10:52

he has cancer and he was a

10:54

man who always insisted on people telling

10:56

the truth. And he was so

10:59

worried because of what played out so

11:01

publicly with us as Grant and obviously

11:03

his terminal and fatal. Your. Demise

11:05

that the public would go into a

11:07

total state of panic if they knew

11:10

that the President had cancer because they

11:12

were staring the worst economic depression since

11:14

the dawn of the Republic right in

11:16

the face. So. Let's talk about

11:19

Grover Cleveland for a moment because. It

11:22

may come as a surprise to many.

11:24

That. Grover Cleveland is currently the

11:26

most important historical correlate and

11:29

model for Donald Trump. Not

11:31

and. Association that usually makes I am. and

11:33

if you go up to the proverbial person in the

11:35

street. And. You say what is the first thing you

11:37

think of when you say Grover Cleveland? they wouldn't

11:40

say donald trump or net and i second

11:42

the reverse is also true of of this

11:44

is a fascinating thing about bucks to take

11:46

a long time to write you never know

11:48

how they're gonna yell end up being relevant

11:50

to what's happening and when i started writing

11:52

this book in two thousand and twenty i

11:54

wasn't thinking about the twenty twenty four election

11:56

here we are in twenty twenty four and

11:58

it appears as s before the first and

12:00

only time since 1892, you're

12:03

going to have a rematch between two presidents

12:05

who are the nominees of the two major

12:08

parties. The only other time that's happened is in 1892.

12:11

And even then it was different because Grover Cleveland lost

12:13

in 1888, but he didn't lose the

12:15

popular vote. He just lost the electoral college.

12:18

So already that's a difference

12:20

in the experiences. The fact, by

12:23

the way, that this is only going

12:25

to be the second time in history that

12:27

this has happened tells you that our

12:29

sort of political evolution in terms of

12:31

our system, it's really gone off script. And

12:33

this feels like a disruption of the

12:35

natural trajectory. Another way this is

12:38

different is you have the two

12:40

oldest candidates in history as

12:42

the presidents who

12:44

are engaged in this rematch. And

12:46

so this isn't just election for whether Joe

12:48

Biden or Donald Trump is going to be

12:50

the next president. This is an election

12:52

for whether or not Joe Biden or Donald Trump

12:55

is going to be the next president. And

12:57

unlike Grover, unlike Herbert Hoover, who had

12:59

a 32 year post presidency or Jimmy

13:01

Carter, who was an active post president

13:04

for 42 years before he went into

13:06

hospice care, there's not going

13:08

to be a long post presidency after this.

13:10

And so for both men, the elections of

13:12

tremendous consequence. And I think in

13:14

the spirit of going off script, you ask

13:17

the question, how are we in a situation

13:19

where you have a rematch for the first

13:21

time since 1892, the two oldest candidates in

13:23

history? I think it begs the question that

13:25

Alexander Hamilton asked in Federalist 72, which is

13:27

what do we do with ex-presidents? More

13:30

than 200 years later, we have an answer to that

13:32

question. Ex-presidents can either be an ally

13:34

and a symbolic supporter of

13:37

their successors or they can be

13:39

their successors most formidable adversary.

13:42

And Hamilton worried, by the way, he

13:45

asked the question in the Federalist Papers,

13:47

is it good for the stability of

13:49

the republic and our government to have

13:51

half a dozen men who'd served as

13:53

president basically wandering amongst us like discontented

13:55

ghosts? And I think that Hamilton's

13:57

words have particular resonance today.

14:00

But what's interesting about the Grover Cleveland example, you

14:02

know, so again in each chapter, I

14:05

look at one president whose post-president represents a

14:07

model. And I think, you know, Grover Cleveland

14:09

is the model for those who want to

14:12

make a comeback. A lot of people want

14:14

to make a comeback. Few end up actually

14:16

doing it and even fewer are successful. And

14:18

if you look at history, former presidents have

14:20

historically made very bad presidential candidates.

14:23

You know, we had Martin Van Buren try

14:25

as a free soiler in 1848. He

14:28

failed miserably. Millard Fillmore tried as a

14:30

no-nothing candidate in 1856. He

14:33

failed miserably. We talked about Ulysses Grant,

14:35

you know, trying for a nonconsecutive third

14:38

term. He didn't even get the nomination.

14:41

Theodore Roosevelt, you know, tried as a bull moose

14:43

in 1912. He split

14:45

the Republican Party and handed Woodrow

14:47

Wilson presidency. Herbert Hoover contemplated it

14:49

in 1936 and 1940, but his campaign never picked

14:51

up steam. And

14:56

so it's just that the historic training data

14:59

for former presidents running for office

15:01

is not great. But the only other time

15:03

a former president actually got the nomination for

15:05

a major party, they did win the election.

15:08

And of course, unlike Pope Francis,

15:10

who assumes the papacy

15:13

when his predecessor for the first time resigned and

15:15

then lives in Vatican City, Pope

15:17

Benedict, it's not like ex-presidents kind of get

15:20

a little room in the White House and, you

15:22

know, shuffle down for breakfast and give

15:24

advice. That would be one way

15:27

to deal with the ex-president. Yeah, well,

15:29

it's interesting. We talked about Grover

15:31

Cleveland. Grover Cleveland had a very funny saying when somebody

15:33

asked him what to do with ex-presidents and he said

15:36

they should be taken out to, you know, he sort

15:38

of joked they should be taken out to a five

15:40

acre lot and shot. And then he sort of corrected

15:42

himself in a joking manner. And he said, you know,

15:44

in second thought, you know, five acres seems like too

15:47

much. And you know, president of

15:49

the United States has already suffered enough, tells

15:51

you how much he sort of lamented the

15:53

office. We'll

15:58

be right back after this. break. History

16:04

doesn't repeat itself, but it often

16:06

rhymes. That may be a

16:08

Mark Twain quote, but it's just as true

16:10

today as when he originally said it. My

16:12

History Can Beat Up Your Politics is a

16:14

podcast that compares and contrasts history to the

16:16

current events of today. Host Bruce Carlson has

16:19

recently done deep dives on fascinating topics like

16:21

the fall of the Soviet Union, which sets

16:23

the stage for today's geopolitics, the man who

16:25

was in prison and still won a million

16:27

votes for the presidency, and the mystery behind

16:29

George Washington's involvement or lack thereof in the

16:31

Bill of Rights. My History Can

16:34

Beat Up Your Politics offers deep context to

16:36

all these historic stories, especially those that you

16:38

may think you know well and is particularly

16:40

adept at relating them to current events. So

16:43

don't miss out. Listen to My History Can Beat

16:45

Up Your Politics on all platforms. The

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government of Kenya pledged to end gender-based violence

16:49

by 2026. The Ministry

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of Health in Uganda is trying to eradicate

16:54

yellow fever. It's ambitious to make these kinds

16:56

of pledges, but it is much harder to

16:58

achieve these lofty goals. Are these leaders really

17:01

delivering on these promises for women and girls?

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Tune into a new season of

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the Hidden Economics of Remarkable Women,

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a podcast from foreign policy, as

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reporters across Africa meet courageous women

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holding leaders accountable in various sectors,

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including healthcare, startups, and the government.

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Listen to Hidden Economics of Remarkable

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Women wherever you get your podcasts. So

17:26

back on the inadvertent sudden

17:28

relevancy of Grover Cleveland, when

17:31

he gets reelected in 1892, had

17:34

he, like Trump, spent sort

17:36

of a period of time plotting his comeback?

17:39

Did this happen? What

17:42

was the pathway there, and did he get reelected on

17:44

a nostalgia

17:47

tour for what had

17:49

happened between 1884 and 1888? Well,

17:52

first of all, when Grover Cleveland is elected president in 1884,

17:54

he's the first Democrat Elected

17:56

to the White House since

17:58

James Buchanan before... The. Civil

18:00

War. So his election in general kind of

18:03

marks a turning point. In. A

18:05

partisan politics in the U S. Cleveland

18:07

didn't really like being president. He entered

18:09

office as a bachelor. While he was

18:11

president, he courted a young woman who

18:13

he actually been the legal guardian of

18:15

after her father died in a very

18:18

nineteenth century type accident which was a

18:20

horse and buggy. Collision. And

18:22

at twenty one years old, he gets

18:24

married to Cleveland in the White House.

18:26

in becomes the youngest First Lady in

18:28

History. Or. That's to say Grover Cleveland

18:31

fell in love and wanted to start a

18:33

family. And when the election. Of. A

18:35

teenager. Appears. On the horizon

18:37

the big issue of the day as the

18:40

terrorists and Grover Cleveland had a very different

18:42

position that many in his own party and

18:44

even more in the Republican party which is

18:46

he didn't want a high tariff, he didn't

18:49

think it was needed and so he basically

18:51

made a calculated decision to throw away the

18:53

presidency and stand on principle and people told

18:55

him he was throwing. Away the presidency

18:58

and he didn't He didn't care, he wanted He said

19:00

what's the point of being president if you don't do.

19:02

What's. Right? He lost the presidency and he'd

19:04

never been happier than when he threw it

19:06

away personally and professionally. the had no intention

19:08

of going back. Now. The

19:10

young First Lady Frances Cleveland, told the

19:12

White House butler upon their departure not

19:14

to move any the furniture do any

19:17

redecorating because she planned to be back

19:19

there and four years. While. He

19:21

sat in quiet retirement. Again, very, very

19:23

happy. He couldn't help but to see

19:25

what his successor was doing to the

19:27

country you had the first yeah billion

19:29

dollar budget. He saw significant rumblings in

19:32

his own party and the Republican party

19:34

that the U S was at risk

19:36

of gone off the gold standard which

19:38

he thought would devastate the country. The

19:40

issue of terrorists was persistent and as

19:42

an anti Imperialist, he was growing increasingly

19:45

concerned about the tied to annex the

19:47

island of Hawaii. He ends up. You're.

19:49

Making a decision to make a comeback

19:51

not because he wants to be president

19:54

again, but he believes there's nobody else

19:56

in his party. Other than spoils,

19:58

men, Who. Did he doesn't want? to see as

20:01

president or candidates like William

20:03

Jennings Bryan who were kind

20:05

of runaway populist who wanted

20:07

cheap money over sound money.

20:09

And so he reluctantly allows

20:11

himself to enter the

20:14

fray again and he gets reelected.

20:16

By the way, it's the third time in a row

20:18

that he wins the popular vote. So he never lost

20:21

the popular vote. But his

20:23

comeback is a cautionary tale. He was

20:25

successful in getting the office back, but

20:28

there's some real lessons learned there, which is a lot

20:30

changes in four years. It's out of your control. And

20:32

by the time he takes the oath of

20:34

office, he inherits the worst financial crisis since

20:37

the beginning of the Republic. He

20:39

inherits a crisis in Hawaii where

20:41

a group of settlers and the

20:43

de facto US ambassador there deposed

20:45

the Hawaiian queen and essentially

20:48

took over the islands. And

20:50

then he feels a lump in the roof

20:52

of his mouth and realizes that he has

20:54

cancer and it might be terminal. So

20:57

all these three things combined mean

20:59

that the very issues that he came back

21:02

to fight for, he couldn't get to until

21:04

he dealt with all of these issues that

21:06

he inherited. And by the time he leaves

21:08

office for the last time in 1896, he is at a

21:10

low point in terms of

21:14

his popularity. He's personally

21:16

unhappy. He's tormented by

21:18

his legacy and his second post

21:20

presidency, he encounters demons that

21:22

he didn't encounter the first time. And I

21:25

think in those final twilight years of his

21:27

life, I think Grover Cleveland reflected

21:29

on the fact that maybe the comeback wasn't all

21:31

that it was cracked up to be. JS.

21:34

Skipping forward into the 20th century,

21:37

first I want to do a little like we do with

21:39

Grant, which is the question of something you didn't write about.

21:41

So how did you make the

21:43

decision about not including Nixon?

21:46

JS. So if I look at

21:48

Richard Nixon, I think his post presidency was complicated.

21:51

I'm not sure that he, you know, the book is called Life

21:53

After Power Seven Presidents and their search for

21:56

purpose beyond the White House. I'm not sure

21:58

that Nixon ever found. The

22:00

sense of purpose, He. Oh, if

22:02

I compare Nixon with Herbert Hoover,

22:04

two men who left office with

22:06

their reputations. In. Tatters I

22:08

think Hoover story of Recovery,

22:10

albeit under very different circumstances,

22:12

is a much more inspired,

22:14

compelling and prescriptive story of

22:16

recovery to the make Richard

22:19

Nixon's post Presidency uninteresting or

22:21

not worthy a study by.

22:23

It. Just wasn't one that

22:25

I felt like was an archetype.

22:28

Sort of an archetypal model that the rest of

22:30

us could drawn as we contemplate what to do

22:32

next. Even. In the.

22:35

Because. Eliminate the same sense into me about

22:37

Nixon is not anything he did per

22:39

se, right, but it's how he managed

22:41

and massaged and. Essentially.

22:43

Drove a revision of his

22:46

reputation. Which. Is I guess some the percent

22:48

of a what your timeout. Not. Interesting

22:50

in these things that were done.

22:52

But. Given that. And. It and of

22:54

as you indicated before about both Trump

22:56

and Biden who are. Likely.

22:59

Old enough such that there's not going to

23:01

be a lot of decades of of them

23:03

able to control their legacy. I.

23:06

Guess unless the singularity is nigh

23:08

and life extension therapy suddenly become

23:10

magical? But that is an interesting aspect

23:12

of. It. The sort of the modern

23:14

presidency, not as much the earlier presidency of

23:16

president's. Being. Like.

23:18

Laser like focus on finding

23:21

their wrecked their their historical

23:23

reputation. Yeah. And buy it here.

23:25

Here's where I think George W. Bush becomes very

23:27

interesting. So. Why lie, Tuesday and

23:29

George W Bush? When I when I

23:31

looked at the active living presidents, one

23:34

of them stood out. Ah, In that,

23:36

George W. Bush is the only one

23:38

whose popularity had basically doubled. Since.

23:40

he left office and he's achieved that

23:43

by investing less energy and time and

23:45

do it than any of his contemporaries

23:47

and i wanted to kind of understand

23:49

why now the simple answer as his

23:51

aides well among republicans in the era

23:53

of trump but i think that over

23:55

simplify said i think that george w

23:57

bush managed to do something that know

23:59

either ex-president has done, which is

24:01

completely move on from politics.

24:03

You know, a lot of them say they're

24:06

going to move on. Obama says he's going

24:08

to move on, but then every now and

24:10

then they weigh in. Or during campaign season,

24:12

they, you know, they take to the trail.

24:15

They occasionally criticize their successors. George W. Bush

24:17

has not once since leaving office publicly

24:19

named one of his successors or

24:22

criticized his successors. He's completely stayed

24:24

out of the political fray. And

24:27

so the question is, is why? And part

24:29

of it is he's not a particularly introspective

24:31

man. And so when the chapter of politics was

24:34

done, he kind of closed the book on it

24:36

and moved on and critics of him, they don't

24:38

like that aspect of his personality, but that's who

24:40

he is. But I spent two days

24:42

up in Kenny Bunkport with him in 2020, you know, interviewing

24:45

him about his

24:47

post-presidency. And we talked a lot about this

24:49

question of legacy. And he

24:51

has a really quarrelsome, almost adversarial view

24:53

of the concept of trying to shape

24:55

legacy. It's not that he thinks legacy doesn't

24:57

matter. And it's not that he doesn't care about

24:59

legacy, but he just cannot fathom why

25:02

somebody would waste time in the present trying

25:04

to influence how they're remembered long after they're

25:06

going to be gone. His view is that's

25:09

just not how legacies get shaped. He talks

25:11

about how, and jokes about how they're still

25:13

writing books about the other George, meaning George

25:15

Washington, by the time they get around to

25:17

him, he'll be long gone. Or he tells the

25:19

story of, you know, giving a speech in Japan

25:22

and just sort of

25:24

reflecting how long it took

25:26

for Japan's reputation and Japan's

25:28

image and identity to transform

25:30

after Hirohito. And

25:33

he thinks that the best way

25:35

to enhance your legacy is to

25:37

let history take care of it.

25:40

And so he's busy living in the present, his friends talk

25:42

about him as a man who's at peace. And

25:44

I think the thing, if I think about

25:47

why he's so popular today, just statistically,

25:49

and in terms of the polls, he

25:52

has this reverence for the George Washington principle of

25:54

one president at a time. And he adheres to

25:56

it in a more disciplined way than anybody who's

25:58

come before him. And yes, that's... aged well

26:00

in the era of Trump. But he's

26:02

also kind of discovered

26:05

and architected this post-presidential voice

26:07

through painting that allows him

26:09

to still advocate for things

26:11

that people like seeing

26:13

him associated with, veterans, the story of

26:15

American immigrants, you know, etc. And he's

26:18

able to do it through painting in

26:20

ways that don't undermine his successors. And

26:23

I think that it's endeared him to the

26:25

American people in a way that

26:27

even those that did not like his

26:29

presidency, they have a fondness for his

26:31

post-presidency. And you contrast that with Jimmy

26:34

Carter, who had a similar kind

26:36

of popular renaissance, albeit with, you know, certain

26:38

bumps in the road. The two could not

26:40

be more different. I mean, you know, Carter

26:42

did everything he could to insert himself into

26:45

the conversation. He undermined successors on both sides

26:47

of the aisle. And Bush, in a lot of

26:49

respects, was the answer, or has been the anti

26:51

Carter. Yeah, no, it has

26:54

been remarkable how Bush has been sort of

26:56

studiously morally

27:01

not commenting on anything. There was a period

27:03

where I think he did cross

27:05

that self-drawn line a

27:08

little bit with Trump, right? He did say

27:11

a few things or indicated a few things,

27:13

although not nearly as aggressively as Carter had

27:15

by any stretch of the imagination. And

27:17

it is a peculiar thing about George W. And that,

27:20

I mean, honestly, I think we, in

27:23

the age of Trump, have a

27:25

light at a lot of the destructiveness

27:27

of things that were done in the

27:30

George W term. I mean, we're still in

27:32

many ways paying for

27:34

the after effects of the US

27:36

invasion of Iraq, which, you

27:39

know, is on that administration's head as

27:41

just a fact. So

27:43

there's a degree to which his post-presidency,

27:46

while honorable, is in the face of

27:48

something that, well, I

27:50

guess nothing is indefensible. Anyone can defend anything.

27:52

But we are paying the price

27:54

of a massive

27:57

war that destabilized the region in a way that...

28:00

again, has not only

28:02

not resolved itself, but in many

28:04

ways gotten considerably worse. It's an

28:06

interesting question, though, of how ex-presidents

28:08

get saddled with the

28:11

baggage of what happened while

28:13

they were in office, right? You

28:15

know, in Carter's twilight years, people don't

28:17

talk about the Iran hostage crisis anymore.

28:19

They don't talk about economic

28:21

recession in the 70s. And

28:24

Carter managed to outpace the legacy of

28:26

the troubles that brewed while he was

28:28

in office. I think some of that

28:31

is a function of the fact that

28:33

the vast majority of people who

28:35

have come to know Carter weren't

28:37

alive for President Carter, right?

28:39

And so I think that has something to do with it.

28:42

But then you look at somebody like Herbert Hoover. Hoover

28:44

lived for 90 years. He's defined by

28:47

three and a half years in office. As

28:49

recently as I think last week, Herbert

28:52

Hoover ends up back in the news again where

28:55

Trump says, I don't want to be

28:57

like Herbert Hoover and inherit a depression.

28:59

Biden, they're still using Hoover's name. And

29:03

out of all the presidents of the United

29:05

States, the one who had the

29:07

hardest time and still, even

29:09

many years after he's expired,

29:12

the one who still has

29:14

the hardest time running away from the baggage

29:16

of what happened while he was president remains

29:19

Herbert Hoover. And yet Hoover had

29:22

one of the most remarkable post-presidencies

29:24

of any man that's ever served

29:26

that office. And why

29:28

do you think he...like what

29:31

was it about him that made

29:33

it hard for him to walk away? Because he

29:35

had been a career public servant. He had not been really

29:37

a career politician. I mean, it's easier in

29:39

some sense to see those people

29:41

who have lived and breathed the

29:45

verdict of voters and benefited from

29:47

the positive verdict, right? As

29:50

opposed to Hoover, who really was the

29:53

president who was at the end of a kind

29:55

of an atypical career. he

30:00

was president. He was an orphan who rose

30:03

to become a self-made millionaire. So he was

30:05

an acclaimed businessman. He traveled the world.

30:07

He was the man who fed all of Europe after

30:12

World War I, earning the name the Great

30:14

Humanitarian. He was the man who swooped

30:17

in after the 1927 Great Mississippi

30:19

Flood to provide relief mostly to

30:22

the African American community.

30:24

So, I mean, he was a revered bipartisan

30:26

figure. When he's elected in 1928, he basically

30:29

waltzes into the White House. At one

30:31

point, the Democrats wanted him to be

30:33

their nominee for president. And then the

30:35

Great Depression happens, and all of a sudden,

30:38

this self-made millionaire who was once an orphan

30:40

becomes the symbol of the kind of greedy,

30:42

aloof, wealthy class. He loses his status as

30:45

the great humanitarian. All of his good

30:47

works are forgotten. And, okay,

30:49

that's not surprising given

30:51

the breadth of the Great

30:54

Depression. What's surprising is we're

30:56

still talking about Hoover as

30:58

an example. The name Hoovervilles and

31:00

Hoover carts still get resurrected to

31:03

this day. And so the question is, how does that happen? Look,

31:06

I think FDR, in his four times

31:09

getting elected, he had

31:11

a guy who worked for him whose

31:13

main task was to architect an image

31:15

around Herbert Hoover. And it's

31:17

one of the great smear marketing

31:19

campaigns in American history that just

31:21

stuck. I mean, Harry Truman, even

31:23

while working, Truman resurrects Herbert

31:26

Hoover when he inherits the presidency after FDR's

31:28

death for one simple reason, which is, he's

31:30

looking at the end of World War II

31:32

on the horizon and another starvation crisis worldwide.

31:35

And there's only one man in the world

31:37

who knows what it's like to be president

31:39

and how to feed the world. And

31:41

neither Truman nor Hoover had any love loss

31:44

for FDR, so he resurrects him. And

31:46

Hoover once again feeds the

31:48

world this time after World War II,

31:51

not World War I. He recaptures his

31:53

image as a great businessman and executive

31:55

being called upon by both Truman and

31:57

I said, Howard, or reorganize the executive

32:00

branch. of government, and he achieves that

32:02

bipartisan status again as an elder

32:04

statesman in 1960 when Joe

32:06

Kennedy, JFK's famous father, calls on

32:09

Hoover to reconcile Richard Nixon and

32:11

John F. Kennedy to help present

32:14

to the world a picture of

32:16

bipartisan and national unity. So what's

32:19

interesting is Hoover does in his

32:21

lifetime recapture his good

32:23

name. More importantly, in his lifetime, he

32:25

does find a path back to

32:27

service, right, to use the concept by Arthur Brooks.

32:29

He was a man who needed to be needed,

32:32

and by the end of his life, he was

32:34

needed by everybody. The problem is

32:36

when Hoover died, his name got

32:38

smeared posthumously, and it continues to...

32:41

I mean, I think he would be shocked that in 2024, so

32:44

many years after his presidency, now

32:49

not just the Democrats, but the Democrats and

32:51

the Republicans in some respects are still running

32:53

against his name and what it meant. Yeah,

32:56

I mean, that is quite... I mean, there has been

32:58

some, I think, Hoover revisionism, right? Amity Schlaes wrote a

33:01

book a bunch of years ago sort of making

33:03

the case for him of having been a more

33:06

competent executive, and clearly there have been people who

33:08

have indicated that there were things that

33:10

Hoover was doing in 1932 that Roosevelt

33:12

actually continues. It's not necessarily the

33:14

kind of break that was

33:17

later magnified in the ways that you

33:19

just talked about. I guess there's a

33:22

final couple of questions. One is recent

33:25

post presidents, particularly Obama and Clinton,

33:27

and obviously not George W., which

33:29

you just talked about, have

33:31

gone more in the cashing

33:34

in on the presidency, and I suppose that

33:36

is a negative way of putting it. They've

33:39

done so somewhat differently. Obama's done

33:41

it more in terms of production deals, his Netflix

33:43

deal is translating

33:46

fame into mediums of

33:49

communication. We're not going

33:51

to have that with Biden and Trump, clearly, by

33:53

virtue of age again, unless some sort of massive

33:56

life extension technology intercedes. Do

33:58

you think the... You know, is all

34:01

this provisional, meaning how presidents do their post-presidency

34:04

life? And we're not likely to have another

34:06

John Quincy Adams or another William Howard

34:08

Taft, right? We're not likely to have a president become the

34:10

head of the Supreme Court. We're not likely to have another

34:13

president become a major political figure in Congress.

34:15

But I wonder what you think about, is

34:18

this kind of a natural evolution for presidents

34:20

who are young enough to turn what is

34:22

essentially the fame of the presidency into a

34:24

brand? Look, I think

34:26

that if you look at the story of

34:28

the post-presidency, it's

34:32

evolved in terms of, you know,

34:34

it started off as basically a

34:36

financial death sentence. I mean, most

34:38

of the early ex-presidents, you know,

34:40

were penniless by the time they

34:42

died. It's only much, much later on

34:44

in the mid 20th century that

34:47

you get presidential pensions, you get

34:50

secret service protection for

34:52

life. It is only later that it

34:54

becomes the norm for presidents to write

34:56

memoirs with big advances to get libraries

34:58

that are augmented by both public sector

35:01

support and private sector reports. So it's

35:03

always the sort of exit package, let's

35:05

call it, has evolved over time, and

35:07

it's now become a quite generous exit

35:10

package. And I think what you see Obama

35:12

doing is broadening what that exit package looks

35:14

like. And by the way, Gerald Ford did

35:17

this as well, as did George H.W. Bush

35:19

when they took certain corporate boards. That was

35:21

seen as a broadening of the

35:23

exit package. And my view on this is

35:26

the commoditization of

35:29

the presidency after one

35:31

leaves office is something

35:33

we should expect. It's something that's

35:35

evolved. How icky it feels, I

35:38

think, is a function of the other things

35:40

that an ex-president does with

35:42

that platform. You know, the idea

35:45

of a post-presidency is a very

35:47

democratic concept. We don't have former presidents

35:49

in authoritarian systems, or if we do,

35:51

they're behind bars, or suffering some other

35:54

kind of ill fate. But in

35:56

a democracy, they symbolize something, and

35:58

there's something, you know, majestic about

36:00

it. And I think that the American

36:02

people, while they don't vote for an

36:05

ex-president, ever since Jimmy Carter kind of

36:07

turned the idea of being a former

36:10

into a lifelong appointment, the

36:12

American people actually have expectations of their

36:15

ex-presidents. And when those

36:17

ex-presidents deliver against those

36:19

expectations, I think the public cuts

36:22

them some slack. And when they underperform

36:26

against those expectations, I think the exit

36:28

package just becomes additional fodder for

36:31

critique. It's a function of how our system

36:33

is. People capitalize on stations that

36:35

they've had in the past,

36:37

not something that the early presidents had the

36:40

benefit of. But I think it's

36:42

almost certainly going to continue. You

36:44

mentioned, I guess, as we wrap up, Arthur Brooks,

36:47

who's also a member of the Progress Network. And

36:49

I wonder if that

36:51

points to some lessons

36:53

you found yourself learning and writing this

36:56

and researching it about the

36:58

passage of time, about what to do. David

37:01

Brooks, No Relation, wrote this the second mountain.

37:03

What do you do in the next chapter,

37:05

or what is traditionally

37:07

seen as the final chapter or the

37:09

last chapter of one's life in

37:12

a meaningful way? And I wonder if that was something, I mean,

37:16

you're kind of in the midst of everything, but if

37:18

that was a unexpected lesson

37:20

of, how does one age gracefully?

37:22

How does one embrace different cycles

37:24

of a life and a career?

37:26

And that certainly occurs to me, but

37:29

I'm wondering if any of that became

37:32

more palpable for you as you were writing the

37:34

book. Yeah, you know, it's an

37:36

interesting question. You know, as I think about the

37:38

seven presidents I wrote about in the

37:40

book, when I started the project, I thought I

37:42

was writing about the last chapter of

37:44

life and kind of what you do for your final act.

37:47

By the time I finished the book, I realized that

37:49

I was writing about

37:51

transitions and transitions that can

37:54

happen many, many times throughout life. And

37:56

by the way, at different stages of

37:58

life, the experience of a

38:00

president may relate to somebody more than at

38:02

a different stage of life. And

38:05

I found myself kind of reflecting too

38:07

on, out of each of their examples,

38:09

which one do I find the most

38:11

powerful? I think the

38:13

one that for me really stood out the

38:15

most was John Quincy Adams, because John Quincy

38:17

Adams, that chapter focuses on kind of what

38:20

it looks like to have a really great second act. And

38:23

we typically think of second acts as a

38:25

mid-career thing, not a last chapter

38:27

of career thing, but John Quincy

38:29

Adams presidency, kind of an

38:31

intermission between, I think, two of the greatest

38:33

acts in American history. The first one was

38:36

the one that was shaped for him by his famous

38:38

parents that set him on a course to become president.

38:40

And it was clear what he was chasing

38:42

and everything was geared towards that. His

38:45

second act looked very different, which is,

38:47

you know, he'd already been president, he'd

38:49

already been secretary of state, he'd already served

38:51

in the Senate. And as an ex-president,

38:53

he goes on and gets elected to

38:55

the House of Representatives. And he enters

38:58

the House of Representatives with

39:00

no mission, no cause, he's espousing,

39:02

he just doesn't know how to do anything

39:04

else than serve. And

39:06

he kind of meanders there for a

39:08

few years. And all of

39:10

a sudden, in a much lower station, he

39:13

finds a much higher calling, which is the

39:15

cause of abolition. And he stumbles into

39:17

it because he keeps getting these petitions.

39:19

And the petitions are for abolition of

39:21

the slave trade in Washington, emancipation

39:24

of slaves. And he's just reading these petitions,

39:26

because that's just what you did in Congress

39:29

then. But when he sees the reaction from

39:31

the slaveocracy in Congress, he

39:33

takes it as an affront to the right to petition. And

39:35

abolition at the time in the 1830s, early

39:38

1830s, was seen as a real fringy issue.

39:40

But the right to petition was something very principled for him.

39:42

And so the more they tried to stand in the way

39:45

of the right to petition, the louder he

39:47

got about it, the louder he got about it, the more

39:49

people kept sending the petitions in. And

39:51

what I find so remarkable about his

39:53

story is, he just wakes

39:55

up one day and realizes two things. One,

39:57

he's an abolitionist. Two, he's completely

39:59

made streamed the mission,

40:01

and he's completely mainstreamed the movement

40:04

probably a decade before he was

40:06

ready to. And this is significant

40:08

because John Quincy Adams, a

40:11

man who was first appointed to

40:13

serve in George Washington's administration, goes

40:15

on to be elected nine times in the House, and

40:17

he dies in his ninth term on

40:20

the House floor where he's serving

40:22

alongside a young freshman congressman from

40:24

Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. So

40:26

this living connection between the

40:28

founding generation and Lincoln's generation

40:30

was not just about connecting

40:33

two seemingly disparate chapters of

40:36

history, but his very

40:38

existence at the center of it, I

40:40

believe, accelerated the cause of abolition and

40:42

inspired a young Abraham Lincoln. And Lincoln

40:44

later reflected on how a lot of

40:47

his thinking around the need for a

40:49

constitutional amendment to achieve emancipation, a lot

40:51

of that came from what he learned

40:53

watching John Quincy Adams. Well,

40:55

thank you for the book, Jared. You

40:58

know, again, it's probably going to be a

41:00

little while before we reflect again on a

41:02

post-presidency other than Obama

41:04

and George W's and Clinton's as well, but I

41:06

mean Bill Clinton's. Right.

41:10

I don't know how much more of a chapter there is to write if

41:13

one were going to write a chapter about that, but I

41:15

think this idea of what do you do about

41:18

transitions, as you talked about, is quite potent. It's

41:20

something quite relevant to everybody, whether they've been president

41:22

or not, and frankly, of course, the

41:24

vast majority of us have never been president and never will

41:26

be. But this question of

41:28

how do you transition from one identity to

41:30

another? How do you do so with grace

41:32

and with equanimity? And also

41:35

with service is something I think is quite

41:37

relevant and a reminder of

41:39

also what our political process should be other

41:42

than what our political process often is.

41:45

So go buy the book. It

41:48

is well worth reading for those of

41:50

you who want to read it. In this

41:52

conversation, life after power, and it is just

41:55

a bonus. Thanks, Jared. We'll

42:00

be right back after this break. Shipping

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with the code POD. Welcome

42:37

back to What Could Go Right. So

42:39

at the risk of repeating this endlessly,

42:41

I do find this question that Jared

42:44

talked about at the end of transitions

42:46

about what you do when

42:48

you are no longer in

42:51

a role that was an all-encompassing identity,

42:53

a fascinating and relevant one. Obviously far more relevant

42:56

than just what our presidents do because if that

42:58

were the only lesson of this book and this

43:00

study, it'd be a lesson that

43:02

a handful of people could ever meaningfully digest

43:04

and apply to their own lives. But

43:07

the lesson about what do you do when you

43:09

have identified yourself, when you have become self-identified and

43:11

identified in the eyes of others with

43:13

a role in society, and that role

43:16

is no longer your role, who

43:18

are you? What is one's identity? Now,

43:21

there is a lesson here that we didn't

43:23

get into in the conversation with Jared, which is

43:25

don't become over-identified with your role. Define

43:28

yourself by what you do. Define yourself

43:30

by who you are. That

43:32

is so much easier said in a world

43:34

where particularly in the United States, we have

43:36

this idea that one's professional life, one's work

43:39

should be coincidental

43:42

with one's identity, that

43:44

one's work is one's self and one's self

43:47

is one's work and that those fluidly

43:49

merge together. That's probably not the

43:51

best formula, but it's a very American one.

43:54

But if that has been one's life, if

43:56

you have defined yourself by your work, I

43:58

am X, I am. president of this

44:00

company i am a vice president

44:03

of that company i'm an employee of that startup

44:05

i am a teacher i'm a social worker i'm

44:07

a policeman i'm a chef. If

44:09

who you are is what you do

44:11

and then for whatever life purpose retirement

44:15

accidents economic. Ups

44:17

and downs you are no longer the person who does

44:19

that. It's certainly but who's

44:22

all about to have an identity that

44:24

transcends that x. End

44:26

is greater than that otherwise you're left feeling

44:28

like you have no identity and i'm sure

44:30

it's incredibly difficult. If one

44:32

has been in a position of high office

44:34

and centrality to have that go away

44:36

or to have that. No

44:38

longer be the case but as a

44:40

life lesson of. Try to

44:43

figure out who you are and not define who you

44:45

are by what you do that's probably a good thing

44:47

for all of us. On

44:49

that note let us turn to some of the news

44:51

of the week that you may have missed that we

44:54

think is worth highlighting. Well

44:59

nice of you to join us and i'm a. Are

45:01

you know i thought i get out of my sick bed and

45:03

come here for the new section. You

45:05

missed you missed a good conversation that i had

45:07

with jared but you were there in

45:09

spirit if not in voice thank

45:11

you i'll catch up i'll definitely listen to it

45:13

so you know i have anything to say at the end

45:15

i'll just. Tell me so

45:18

you ready for the new section i am

45:20

so ready for the new section okay

45:23

let's start with hbv. Of

45:25

course i mean why wouldn't we i mean why not

45:28

start with hbv. So people

45:30

might remember we had the first hb

45:32

vaccine back in two thousand six and

45:35

since then we've been waiting for the

45:37

girls and for those of you don't

45:39

know sorry i'm just for the. Jargon

45:42

alert hbv is human papilloma

45:44

virus that's right and i'm untreated

45:46

it can cause cervical cancer other than

45:48

the general words that it can also

45:50

cost which are not pleasant i'm sure

45:52

but so not life threatening. The

45:55

more important thing is that it can cause cervical

45:57

cancer so back in two thousand six we

45:59

developed for. HPV vaccine and since

46:01

then we've been the

46:05

girls that took it before they were active

46:09

you're going to have better protection. So now there

46:12

are all these studies coming out for

46:14

girls that have aged into becoming women

46:16

and the great news is that it's

46:18

working very well. So studies out

46:20

of the US and also Sweden that

46:23

had cervical cancer rates being cut in by 50%

46:25

by 65% and there's a even a new

46:29

one out from Scotland for girls who

46:31

took the vaccine even earlier. So when

46:33

they were 12 to 13 years old

46:35

versus 15 or 16 years old in

46:37

the ones that were from Sweden in

46:40

the US and their rates had dropped

46:42

to basically zero. A new

46:44

study out of Scotland found no

46:46

cases of cervical cancer in women

46:48

who were fully vaccinated. The CDC

46:50

estimates that 13 million Americans are

46:52

infected with HPV every year.

46:56

So there might be a possibility that if

46:58

you know we continue on with

47:00

this world of giving girls HPV

47:02

vaccine when they're around 12-13 years old

47:05

before they're sexually active we might actually

47:07

end cervical cancer. Take

47:12

it which I guess is a whole other question

47:15

of education and culture. I

47:17

was 16 when it came out and I remember there

47:19

was a lot of ooh do you want to take

47:21

this? This is bad back then. So hopefully with these

47:23

study results we'll pass through that. Keeping on

47:26

the global health topic what new

47:28

disease? Zachary

47:30

can you tell me what the

47:32

first disease eradicated in human history

47:35

was? Ooh I feel like this

47:37

is one of these like there should be jeopardy

47:39

music behind me going you know. And

47:43

I have to phrase my answer in the form of a question. The

47:46

first disease eradicated in human

47:48

history. What is smallpox? Yes

47:51

very good excellent. You win I don't know

47:53

five bucks. I got five euro back here. We

47:56

might be on the cusp of eliminating the second. Do

47:58

you want to take a stab? but this one, this one's kind

48:00

of hard. Tuberculosis? No.

48:06

Well, no, not close. It

48:08

is Guinea worm disease. Yeah,

48:10

that wasn't in my top three. Yeah, that's

48:13

the nasty one where the worm emerges out

48:15

of your body after the larva has, you

48:17

know, hatched inside of you. We had around

48:20

3.5 million cases back in the

48:22

80s and this is something, maybe we talked about

48:24

this with Jared, that Jimmy Carter devoted his life

48:27

to after he was

48:29

president. We are down to 13 cases in 2023.

48:32

There were also 13 cases in 2022. So that's human transmission.

48:34

The ones were

48:37

animals are a little higher, but we're

48:39

focusing on human transmission. So very

48:41

difficult to eradicate disease, get it down to,

48:44

you know, absolute zero, but we are super

48:46

close. In

48:48

2006, more than 20,000 people in South Sudan suffered

48:53

from Guinea worm. That

48:55

was about 90% of

48:58

all the world's cases. But

49:00

last year, it just had two

49:02

cases. It's a fantastic turnaround and

49:04

much of the credit goes to

49:06

this man, McCoy Samuel Yibby, the

49:08

head of South Sudan's Guinea worm

49:10

eradication program. We are not going

49:13

to stop until the last case

49:15

is eliminated in South Sudan. And

49:18

last bit, we're gonna move to climate change. So

49:21

carbon emissions from fossil fuels

49:23

hit a blank year low

49:26

in the European Union. So

49:28

carbon emissions are akin to

49:31

emissions as they were what

49:34

decade? What would you guess? Oh, back to the,

49:36

you know, dun dun dun dun dun dun. Yeah,

49:38

I don't know. I feel like quizzing you today.

49:40

Carbon emissions are back to 2012. 2012. No, the

49:42

1960s. Wow. Yeah. I was pretty

49:50

impressed. So carbon emissions from fossil fuels

49:52

hit a 60 year low in

49:54

the EU, hitting levels similar to the

49:57

1960s and over half that drop came from

49:59

cleaner electricity. electricity in the block. And

50:02

as always, that comes with a caveat that

50:04

climate analysis say that emissions are

50:06

not falling fast enough to meet climate

50:08

targets. Yeah, I mean, the work of

50:10

Andy McAfee, who's also a Progress Network

50:12

member, has been pretty consistent about the

50:15

rate at which developed world

50:18

and developed economies emissions are falling

50:20

is way more rapid than you

50:22

would think from public discussion. I

50:24

mean, I suppose it's back to

50:26

the news of things

50:28

changing for the better takes a much longer

50:30

time to penetrate public consciousness than news of

50:33

things getting worse, which seems to enter

50:35

public consciousness almost

50:38

instantaneously. Bad news travels fast,

50:40

good news travels slow. So this is also

50:42

one of these cases where, yeah,

50:45

it's counterintuitive because you think the intuitive

50:47

is it's all

50:49

getting worse very quickly because that's

50:52

the that's what the IPCC, the

50:54

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, all of it

50:56

acts as if these things

50:58

are aggressively getting worse and there's an accumulation

51:00

of them getting worse, meaning we've got decades

51:02

to unwind. So year by year, things do

51:05

in fact get worse. But the rate

51:07

at which they're getting worse and in fact, the

51:09

rate at which they are getting better as you

51:11

just illuminated is much more rapid than we think.

51:14

Yeah. So I think that

51:16

we're not going to get the bow on that until it's

51:18

like rates are falling fast enough to meet climate targets,

51:20

but we don't know.

51:22

Which may never quite happen. Right. So until

51:24

then. So that's what I have for today. Well,

51:27

that's a good series of stuff. Thank you

51:29

all for listening. Sorry for the solo part

51:32

of the hour with me and

51:34

Jared due to Emma's unfortunate unscheduled

51:37

absence, but we will continue our

51:39

regularly scheduled routines next week. As

51:42

always, please sign up for the

51:44

Progress Network newsletter, What Could Go

51:46

Right, which you can do at

51:48

theprogressnetwork.org. It's free. It's easy.

51:50

It's weekly. It's good. It's uplifting. It

51:53

points out some of the stories that

51:55

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51:58

and tell your friends, tell your family. Tell your dogs,

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tell your cats, tell whoever you think might

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follow us on Instagram. I've heard that a

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52:22

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52:25

thank you, Emma. Thank you all. We'll be

52:27

with you next week. Thank you, Zachary. Thanks,

52:29

everyone. What

52:40

Could Go Right is produced by Andrew Steven,

52:42

executive produced by Jeff Umbro and the Plug

52:44

Bomberate. To find out more about

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52:52

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