Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

To call 2021 a historic year is an understatement. But what’s less obvious is how to put the pandemic of 2020 in a historical context. What lessons can be learned about our response to past public health crises? Can these lessons be applied to the one we’re living through now, and what may lie ahead, post-Corona?

As we transition from this most unusual year, Dan checks in with Niall Ferguson. Niall is a historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and he’s the managing director of Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm. Niall is also the author of 15 books including The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook. 

From the earliest days of the pandemic, Niall assembled a slide deck to chronicle everything he was learning about the crisis as it unfolded and provided historical context for his analysis. Almost weekly, he’d update the deck and share it with friends and colleagues, which came to be known as the “Monster Deck” -- now close to a thousand slides. It came to inform a lot of Dan's thinking about Covid 19 and much of it can be found in a book he’s been working on during the pandemic, called Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.

In today’s conversation, we’ll look back at 2020, as we look ahead to 2021. 

Is New York over? It’s a question that’s hotly debated these days. We will return to this question from time to time over a number of episodes in the months ahead. Last week we hosted two experts from the Manhattan Institute to look at the future of subways. On this episode, we take a look at Broadway. The industry of live theater and arguably the beating heart of midtown Manhattan, Broadway has become big business -- and a big employer; it’s central to New York City’s economy. 

But on March 12, the lights on Broadway went dark. The ecosystem of employees and employers that populate this live theater ecosystem scattered.

To help us understand the short history of Broadway’s economic boom and where it goes from here, post-Corona, is a writer, public intellectual, and culture critic, John Podhoretz. John is editor in chief of Commentary Magazine and host of Commentary’s award-winning daily podcast, he’s a columnist for the New York Post, a book author, and was a film critic for the Weekly Standard. 

When will Broadway return? What would it take to bring it back? And what will Broadway look like when we get out of this mess?

Is New York over? It’s a question that’s widely debated these days. We will return to this question from time to time in a number of episodes. On this episode, we look at subways. During the pandemic, subway ridership has been down as much as 90%.

While we’re focused on NYC, this topic matters to everyone living or working in megacities around the world. NYC is a Microcosm.

What’s the state of our subways? Will they come back? What do we need to do to save and transform public transportation?

On this episode Dan welcomes:

-Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow for the infrastructure economy at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor at City Journal, and a columnist for the NY Post. @nicolegelinas

-Reihan Salam, the president of the Manhattan Institute, bestselling author, and contributing editor at The Atlantic and National Affairs. @Reihan

Dan sits down with Billy Beane, who became famous outside the world of sports when Brad Pitt portrayed him in the film adaptation of Michael Lewis’s bestselling book, Moneyball. 

Since March, Billy has been thinking a lot about how the Coronavirus will change sports. Why does this matter? Well, global sports is estimated to be a half-a-trillion dollar industry and growing.  That’s until Covid 19 made its debut, earlier this year. 

What has the sports industry learned from this unprecedented time? How will sports be transformed?

After a macro conversation on the societal effects of shifts in the workforce, Dan sits down with Adam Grant to understand the implications of remote work on individuals.  As a professor of organizational psychology at Wharton, Adam dives into the potential long-lasting effects of a new work from home culture. 

What are some of the benefits of remote work that we’d want to continue after the pandemic is over? How will the fusion of personal and professional life affect our habits, identity, and culture?

In this episode, Dan and Adam discuss  the potential boom of entrepreneurship and creativity in a Post Corona world. 

When the global economy came to a halt this spring, tens of millions of American workers found themselves working from home - and millions more found themselves unemployed. Derek explains the potential long term implications of an economy with a large “telepresence.”

How might this shift out of offices and even out of cities affect America’s cultural and economic future? Dan and Derek sit down to discuss what a Post Corona world might look like.