Viewers and listeners to the show know that I'm a big fan of the Financial Times Best Business Books of the Year. Uh last year I was struck by the fact that included on the list amongst books on China and AI of course and uh all sorts of companies like uh Google and Facebook there was a novel. First time I think they've had a a book on the long list, a novel on the long list of the FT Book of the Year for many years. It was an all It was a novel called It is a novel called Drayton and Mackenzie uh by a writer called Alexander Starritt uh Alex uh is also a management consultant uh startup entrepreneur uh and the book is out this week in the United States and I'm thrilled that Alexander Starritt is joining us from London. Alex, congratulations on the success of the book. It did very well in the UK. It's out this week in the US. Were you surprised that it appeared on the short list of uh the FT amongst books Many of these books in fact we've covered books like Karen House's Empire of AI, Steven Witt's The Thinking Machine about Nvidia Dan Wang's uh Breakneck about American Chinese rivalry. Were you uh Were you expecting to be on on the long list of the FT Book of the Year? >> Uh >> >> no, I wasn't. I thought I mean I knew that my publishers had put me forward for it. And uh but it felt like very much a long shot that the FT would pick up on it. Um and I think the fact that they did says as much about the gap for that sort of book than it does about any qualities that the book itself might have. You know, I mean again, but you know, there's you know, the reason that there's been I think it's 15 years since they've had a on that on that list. And a big part of it I think is that the kind of literary world or that kind of cultural world and our business world are so estranged from one another at the moment. And have become so over the past few decades. That there's not you know there's very few people writing about this kind of stuff at all. >> Yeah and another old friend of the show Adrian Wooldridge who loved the book uh wrote a piece for Bloomberg. He's a columnist there. Bring back the big business novel. Were you writing this as a business novel? Did you want to uh emulate people like Tom Wolfe? >> No. I mean I have to I have to admit I've never read that Tom Wolfe book. >> Are you going to? >> No. I mean I I will. I promise I will. The um >> I don't care. >> Yeah. Um I'm promising it to myself. Uh the um No. I didn't think of it as a business book. I thought of it as a book about the search for meaning in life and trying to understand why people's lives turn out the way they do. And I thought that to explain the lives of people living in this moment, to look at the sort of historical forces that are shaping all of us, you have to look at business and technology. You know if when George Eliot wrote Middlemarch and that you know the historical forces that she was talking about were the Reform Act, democratization, and the Industrial Revolution. You know in our period, what is it that's shaping us? I would suggest it's the long fallout from the 2008 financial crisis and the technology revolution that's been happening in California. >> Yeah and I think that's in some ways maybe you'll correct me if I'm wrong reflected in your own life. You This is your third novel. Your first two, The Beast and We Germans, were very well reviewed and they sold presumably quite well. Uh 30, 50 years ago, you'd be a famous young novelist. These days though, you have to make a a living as a publisher. You were a startup entrepreneur. So, what were once uh writers have become entrepreneurs. Is that fair? I'm not suggesting that um you what you've done as a writer is incredibly hard and yet it's um it's probably not particularly lucrative. >> >> I know. I mean, there's there's certainly some truth to that. The I mean, I sometimes read interviews with writers the kind of generation above me and they talk about living in London and getting by on writing a monthly review for the Times Literary Supplement, which now I think will pay you about £100. So, yeah, the material circumstances of writing have changed a lot and it's also true that the novel is not as central in our culture as it was even in say the '80s. Um and so, yeah, people have got to have jobs. >> People have got to have jobs. What's your job, uh Alex? Your day job. >> So, my day job at the moment is so about 8 years ago, a couple of others and I set up a company which does a weekly briefing on international politics and economics mainly for big corporates and some investment funds and government agencies. And the thing I enjoy about it is it's a very different it's a kind of opposite way of looking at the world to fiction writing. You know, it's all about impersonal analysis of what's happening. I think of it as a kind of political economy briefing. >> Your book, Drayton and McKenzie is about a relationship. Two men, an unlikely friendship, a plan that could change the world. Sunday Post called it an epic masterpiece encompassing some of the most pivotal points of our century. Is it a novel about male friendship or is it a novel about contemporary history or both or are those so intertwined that they're impossible to separate? >> It's a novel about both those things and the the thing that drew me to the novel I mean I've been a bit surprised by this aspect of the reaction in a way and I think this is quite typical for novelists who have these sort of superstructures in their novel. You know, I was drawn to this by the kind of historical forces element of it and on a kind of almost literary technical level I thought I want to have this sort of relationship between two men as the kind of engine for it because the book needs an needs an engine. And I also thought we've all read too many books and seen too many films about the relationships you know, sexual relationships, romantic relationships and there's other type of relationships and in fact incredibly important to all of us which is friendship and it doesn't get as much of a look in. And so I just thought it'd be more interesting to write about that. >> You're a startup entrepreneur. Um you you were involved with you were on the founding team of the policy platform Apolitical which in 2018 was listed as one of the world's most innovative companies. That's usually a kiss of death. >> >> I I've been in the startup world too. It doesn't seem and maybe correct me if I'm wrong, it doesn't lend itself to close friendships between men and men and men or men and women often because you're not supposed to go to bed with your your colleagues. You get into trouble for that in America. Uh but also there's a great deal of rivalry. Do you think in your own experience as a startup entrepreneur that it it brings out friendship? We of course live in an age supposedly of anxiety, of loneliness, where we're increasingly incapable of creating friendships, of talking to one another. >> >> Well, it's an interesting question. My own experience is, you know, that policy platform uh it was set up by two women, which is a bit of a different vibe anyway. And I think the kind of companies that I'm talking about and that company were very mission-driven. You know, it wasn't just about make getting ourselves rich, which we did not. It um and I think in those sorts of companies there's much more scope for people to become friends because you all have you have this kind of collective sense of purpose, which really binds people together. I mean, a cynic would say that mission-driven companies exploit that sense of purpose to hire people for less money than they should be paid and get more out of people than you should be able to get out of them. But I think it does it does give people that feeling. >> We live in unusual times. Some people would call them surreal times. Next week I have an interview with the the very successful American surrealist Ben Fountain. He has a new book out Rasputin Swims the Potomac the Potomac um a satire of of our Trump age in which he calls reality hyperreality or surrealism. You're much more of a realist writer. You're writing about the UK rather than the US, which is probably more realistic, less surrealistic or hyperreal. But do you think that your tools of realism as a writer, you you write about them not you you use them obviously in in Drayton and McKenzie, but also in your first two books. Um the beast and we Germans. Is it sufficient or are they sufficient to make sense of our bizarre world, the world of Trump and Putin and every other bizarre thing that's happening these days? >> >> I think so. And I would argue in fact that >> >> that bizarreness mostly applies to, you know, the discourse. Most, you know, even more so the online discourse than it does to people's actual lives. You know, the stuff that Trump comes out with is bizarre often, but I should be careful. I'm coming to the US soon. >> >> Yeah, you won't get in, Alex. Alex or you'll get punched >> Please scratch that from the record. >> not by ice agent. >> Um but I think when you look at what's actually happening in people's lives, it's you know, it's explicable by all the things that people used to explain lives 150 years ago. You know, it's economic change, technological change. You know, precariousness in the workplace. It's all, you know, I don't think actually the time we're living in, even though it is a sort of time of flux and and things are changing rapidly. I think it's a mistake and I see lots of people who believe this to think that everything has become so sort of frothy and fervent and mixed up that you know, it can't really be understood anymore. And to those people I kind of think like get off Twitter and just like go and meet some real people and that feeling will fade away. >> So social media isn't central. Your your your book greatness and McKenzie is not a a critique of social media like so much else these days. >> No. I mean, I I loved I loved pre-Musk era Twitter. I thought it was amazing and I used it a lot for my work. I thought it was the world's premier English language news source at that time. So, I don't I don't have a sort of like you know, reflexive antipathy towards it, but I do also note that I've I've got rid of all of mine apart from Twitter, which I still have to use for work and will get rid of it when I can. Just because it it does rot your brain. >> >> Speaking of Elon Musk, your book has been extremely well reviewed, but the one slightly negative review I read, which is always the most interesting and I can hear you chuckling. I'm sure you enjoyed it, too. There was a negative review in the New In the New Statesman, the England's left-wing weekly, suggesting that you cast big tech leaders as Olympian. Do you tend to Does Does the book idealize the Musks and the Altmans and the Bezos's of the world or or is that unfair in terms of the book? >> >> Um it's not totally unfair. I do think you know, I need to run out to an explanation here, but you know, part of what this whole book is about is actually the the limitations of an egocentric approach to life. You know, one of the characters is someone who's incredibly ambitious and kind of you know, would like to be Elon Musk on one level. >> Wouldn't we all, Alex? >> Wouldn't we all? And and part of what the book is about is how arid and ultimately unsatisfying your life is if it's only about winning. If If you only want the gold stars. And so one of the things that happens in the in the novel is that he encounters Elon Musk who has been doing very comparable things to what he's been doing except obviously in a much more success in a much more successful way. And that's quite confronting for him. I mean what I what I would also say about Elon Musk personally is like you know, regardless of his politics or things he says it's you know, there's a good argument to be made that nobody in the world has done more for decarbonization. No other individual has done more for it than Elon Musk. For the simple reason that he made EVs and their associated technologies a real commercial proposition. And he frightened all the other car companies or most of them into getting involved in it as well. And that is huge and that will always be true. >> So how maybe this comes back to my point about hyperrealism or surrealism or the bizarre nature of our world? How do you explain that? I mean he is as you suggest in some ways a great man of history by pioneering EV by leading Tesla, reshaping up the the future of of vehicles. But at the same time he's astonishingly obnoxious. He seems to me at least to be a racist, nostalgic for apartheid South Africa, many other things. He's clearly autistic on many different levels. How do you make sense of that? Are the characters in your Drayton and McKenzie do they have um Musk's complexity or his bizarre qualities of on the one hand being a remarkable man of history and on the other hand an annoyingly obnoxious pain in the neck? >> Well, I would say you put your finger right on it. I think a person like Musk would respond very well to that sort of even Victorian treatment in fiction. You know, the the fully rounded complex character. And the way that Musk is written about in a lot of our journalism is of course you know, very two-dimensional and you know, one side of the other. And yeah, I do think that things like fiction, particularly realist fiction with its emphasis on character and sort of I contain multitudes reality of human beings is very well suited to describing that sort of person. And understanding him. Um you know, and there obviously there are lots you know this already but you know, Henry Ford is maybe a good analogy. These kind of people have always been there. And uh the separation between your abilities in in one field, you know, let's say in the field of technology and your opinions about other things, you know, Henry Ford's opinions of course he was a notorious extremely vehement anti-Semite. You know, those things can coexist in one person. >> Yeah, and of course perhaps the man who did most to make Ford immortal was Huxley in Brave New World that created Fordism that sort of >> Yeah. >> Right. Your your book is another very positive review described it as a punchy satire where Dickens meets the Big Short. But coming back to Musk, we did a show >> >> uh a few months ago with another London-based journalist who had written a book about the inner world of Elon Musk. Your book is about the the outer worlds of a couple of entrepreneurs. Well, although of course it also is intimate in its own Dickensian way. What does the inner world of somebody like Musk look like? Is it too bizarre for even a any kind of novelist, whether they're a surrealist or a realist like yourself to actually describe? >> Well, I mean I you know, I don't know Elon Musk. >> Well, you can imagine. You're a novelist. >> But my speculation would be that I mean, the thing I see one of the things I see in him is a characteristic common to all kinds of engineers and technologists, which is a you know, a kind of profound interests basically in how things work and systems and what the effects of systems are. And in his politics, I think you see and this I would say is very common to engineers as well. You see the the application of that mindset to something where it doesn't really make sense. You know, a lot of Silicon Valley people's political ideas are often you know, I don't want to be I don't want to be harsh, but like >> I do want you to be harsh. You're allowed to be harsh on this show. >> But you know, I mean they're kind of sophomoric a lot of the time. They don't really understand the complexities of what's happening. And that's because they see it all in terms of these kind of simplified decentralized systems. When of course that's not the way politics works or not the way history works or human societies do. And and yeah, I would I I think that's that underpins a lot of his political pronouncements, I would imagine. >> Your book is not really about Musk. It's about I won't say failed entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurs who aspire to become Musk. Uh and I'm astonished with how unpopular these successful entrepreneurs have become. I mean, every show I do seems everyone's saying, "Oh, we got to get rid of the billionaires. Oh, they're ruining the world." You wrote a book uh few years ago called We Germans, a novel about remembering the Nazis, the shame of being associated with the Nazis, and as a grandson. Do you think one day in 100 years, people be writing not We Germans, but We Entrepreneurs? Sort of confessional novels or autobiographies about being associated with these destructive individuals? Uh in other words, and and this is obviously a a slightly absurd question. >> No, no, no. >> Uh is there an equivalent in a way between the Nazis and the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs these days? >> I mean, don't forget my first book was set in a tabloid newspaper. >> >> Um >> Yeah, The Beast. >> Yeah. Um I think it's a really interesting question, and I think obviously part of it depends on what happens over the next 10 or 20 years with AI. You know, if we do all lose our jobs, and everyone's living in penury apart from people who are invested in AI companies, then yeah. And I And may I do think in a way perhaps the the great novel of the of the 21st century in America might be a sort of updated retelling of Frankenstein. You know, the kind of excitement and ingenuity and technical skill and giving life to this thing, and then oops, it's out of control. It's destroying things and killing people. >> Yeah, and it's interesting you mentioned Frankenstein. Fountain referred to that in in his in in my conversation with him about his new novel. >> That's interesting. I mean, the And on your on your question, I think personally, yeah, I am always I am always drawn to to like I would say I'm always interested in in what I think the consensus is not seeing. Because on every subject you get this polarization and this kind of this group think that self-radicalizes. So now you have this deep antipathy to business and to Silicon Valley. It like you said, in in among lots of people. And there are good reasons for that. Of course there are, we all know what they are. I don't need to rehash them, but they're like obvious things that those people are missing. You know, in you know, in the book for instance one of the characters is having this kind of conversation and he says, "You know, where do people think airplanes come from? Or the internet? Or penicillin?" Like basically everything that we have in our modern world is made by companies. And you might not like that, but it is the case. And and therefore gives us all a stake in essentially in capitalism functioning well. And there is this I think this kind of lazy and ignorant idea which is encapsulated in the in the phrase late-stage capitalism. That this whole system is decadent and corrupt and coming to an end. And in fact, I think when you look at it outside of the the kind of group think, there's no sign whatsoever that it's coming to an end. There is a late stage that that any of this is going to fall apart anytime soon. And so I would suggest that people should you know, should think more about how to make it function in a way which we all benefit from. Ra- you know, there are obviously all these all these advantages to all the things coming out of Silicon Valley, and we'll want them. You know, that's why they're so successful. And the And to this kind of wholesale rejection of like they're all you know, they're all tech bros, I think it's just foolish, honestly. I think it's it's little different from the the Lancashire weavers getting crossed about the spinning jenny or whatever. >> Well, they got a bit more than crossed. I mean, certainly in Europe uh they're we've done lots of shows on the Luddites. >> Yeah. And yeah. Sorry. Yeah, I think that was all I was going to say. >> >> You Yeah, you mentioned uh AI, and of course your book is features a couple of aspiring management consultants. Is that great apocalypse coming with AI? There was a recent piece in the FT about how AI threatens the giants of consulting, the McKinseys of the world. Your Your book is inhabited by a couple of aspiring McKinsey types. Uh I know you yourself live in that world, too. Is this something that um is when historians look back at the 2020s, is this going to be the most memorable theme of our age about how technology did away with the old ruling class, the kind of characters who exist in your novel? >> Well, I don't think it's going to do away with the old ruling class at all. I mean, I think it will make the old ruling class stronger. What it will do is Uh what I really think is going to happen is that it will be like previous waves of automation. Um the Industrial Revolution. I mean, even just I think it should be seen as part of a continuity with all of the you know, all of the software that's come out of California since the early '80s. I mean, look, for instance, at Think of secretaries, typists, clerks, all these jobs that existed in huge numbers in our lifetime, and they're all basically gone. They don't really exist anymore. And for those people losing those jobs, yes, that was bad. But it's not as if our society collapsed. The The question, rather, is And I do believe that whatever happens with AI, we will adapt, and new types of jobs will be invented. And overall, it will lead to kind of greater human prosperity. At the The question really is how big is the shock? How fast is the shock? And the bigger and faster the shock is, the harder it will be for us to metabolize it in a way which doesn't ruin lots of people's lives. Because, you know, I know you're interested in the Industrial Revolution. If you look at how long it took for that to be metabolized, you know, for some people, that was their whole life, fundamentally. So, yeah, I it could be very bad, but I think it's just a question of like how fast and how big the shock is. >> Yeah, the only thing we can say, Alex, for sure is in 50 years or 100 years, people will still be talking about late stage capitalism. >> Yeah. >> You can bet on that one. Your You wrote an interesting piece for the Times last year. Stop mocking us millennials. The 2008 crash ruined our lives. You appropriated the millennials to speak about what you went through in 2008, the great crash, and all the rest of it, which in your view, at least, or you maybe compares to 1929 or 1873. What happened to you in in 2008? And how does that appear in the novel? >> Yeah. I should say actually funny enough those headlines those Times headlines I believe are now written or at least drafted by AI. So >> Stop mocking us millennials. >> Yeah, stop mocking us millennials. Pure rage bait obviously. >> We can't even blame editors anymore. We have to blame AI. >> Um so in 2008 I personally graduated from university and soon afterwards lost my first job. I got made redundant from my first job. That autumn. Um but I think >> Psychological rupture. It sounds very painful. >> >> I do think that's true and my argument would be this that from let's say 1990 until 2008 the Western world lived particularly Europe lived in this period of stability, prosperity. The Cold War was won. The whole world basically had adopted capitalism. Even the Chinese and the Russians were kind of opening up to the west. >> Even the Chinese and the Russians Alex. >> Well, the Chinese are run by a committed Communist Party. But even they were opening up to the west and to kind of state directed capitalism. And many people at the time believed of course that China would be so uh changed by this experience that it would become politically closer to the west as well. Of course that didn't happen. But that's what people thought. I remember I think it must have been about 2006. I don't know if it was big in America. We had this this popular campaign in Britain called make poverty history. People would wear these white plastic armbands. And Yeah, you referred to it in you there. Footballers, Stephen Fry I involved, all sorts of prominent people. >> Yeah. And what was What's interesting about this is that at the time, I think, what that indicates is that we felt so affluent, we felt that things were just always continuously improving, that at some point we could eradicate poverty. Like that I mean, millions of people thought that. And now, of course, nobody thinks that. And I would say that, you know, I studied history at university, it was all about turning points. I'd say the turning point was the 2008 financial crisis. And you can see that, for instance, in in the kind of macroeconomic data about things like globalization, international trade, international flows of capital, all that kind of stuff. It was all, you know, everything was getting more international, more globalized until 2008, and then it went bang. And, you know, some examples, the last free trade agreement that the US signed with a new country was in 2007 with Saudi >> And in your piece, you you have a a graph about how GDP per head has flatlined since 2010. >> Yep, exactly. Um and it was the beginning of this, you know, this kind of historical pendulum shift from away from like open borders, ever more tolerance, ever more individualism, back towards protectionism, British jobs for British workers, which was, you'll remember, this scandalous slogan from Gordon Brown in 2009. You know, now British jobs for British workers is a a political philosophy that's basically standard across the Western world. And at the time, it was considered so outrageous that people said it was illegal for the prime minister to say it. Um so, yeah, I mean, in America, of course, the financial crisis brought about the the birth of the Tea Party. You know, it brought that kind of populist right-wing sentiment into the mainstream of the Republican Party. And that that was the sort of I would say the precursor to MAGA. So, I think in lots of ways you can see that 2008 was this turning point. You know, a wave basically from that greater openness and individualism towards protectionism, tariff barriers, nationalism, antipathy to outsiders, all of it. I think that's where it started. >> Do you think one of the reasons why your generation is still so shell-shocked? You maybe the AI talks about it ruining your lives. It certainly shaped your lives 2008. Was as you say it was a hinge moment. You lived both before and after. So, the beforehand was the world of Drayton and McKenzie, the aspiring management consultants who got their first class, not all both of them, but one of them got their first class degrees where I assume the world was their oyster where they could do anything they liked. And they'd be successful and wealthy and travel around the world and go and work in for McKenzie or become startup entrepreneurs. And then after 2008, everything changed. So, the world became a foreign place. Um Fukuyama famously talked about the end of history. Um but what's interesting for your generation is you lived both at the end and the beginning of history. >> Yes, that's exactly right. If we'd been, you know, I was born 1985. Someone 10 years older than me would remember the Cold War and the Soviet Union and all the rest of it. I don't really. And I mean, actually because I'm my mom was German, the the fall of the Berlin Wall was this huge event in our household, one that I barely understood, of course. And >> You were only 4 years old. >> Yeah, I was only 4 years old. And when I was about six I must have been about six, we were staying with my grandparents in the south of Germany. And in the middle of the night we were woken up by this like horrific mechanical screeching. And my grandmother ran in and said, cuz she recognized the sound, said, "Panzer." I being a child and mixed up and half asleep thought, "Panthers?" But of course panzer means tanks. >> Mhm. >> We went out onto the balcony. And it was the one of the or some part of the American border force which had patrolled the inner German border kind of leaving that and going back to its base in Heidelberg. It was sort of the real the real final end of the division of Germany and the Cold War Cold War. So I did see that bit of it. But yeah, you're right. We people my sort of age born in the '80s grew up in what we thought was and what Francis Fukuyama suggested might be the way things were always going to be. And now looking back on it, that was the exception. You know, that period 1990 to 2008, that was the anomaly. That was the Yeah. >> You've written, as I said, about history, we Germans, and this book this new book is contemporary history. Should we blame Can we blame history, Alex, for this? I mean, there's generational guilt, your generation, the millennials often blame my generation, the boomers, for all this. Um or can we blame history? Is history appropriate or easy to blame? I mean, that's a kind of German idea of blaming >> History. I think I think we could we could lay a lot of blame on the idea of progress. Um which is obviously very important to lots of German political thinkers, like Karl Marx. >> And Hegel, of course, who invented the idea of historiography. >> Exactly. Um and yeah, and of course, progress doesn't really exist, I would suggest, in in a in a kind of in the sense of human society. It's a sort of Christian idea brought over into study of history. And lots of people think it's true because they look at technology, which is the one place where progress does exist and is cumulative. And they assume that the same thing must be happening in our societies. You look at, for instance, at books like Steven Pinker's, uh it's called The Better Angels of Our Nature, which basically suggests that we used to be, you know, in Ro- in ancient Roman times, horrific, cruel, violent barbarians. And over the course of the last 2,000 years, we've learned to be gentle, civilized, and kind to each other. Which I think is with all due respect to Steven Pinker, complete bollocks. And we just happened to live recently in this period of relative peace. And the the idea of progress is what's so confounding to people because they can't understand why it's not working. Henry Kissinger, in his PhD thesis, has a very interesting idea. He talks about the the peace that ended the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the Congress of Vienna. And his theory is essentially that that peace was too good. That the world the Europe it created was too stable, too prosperous. And that by nearly 100 years later, 1914, when the First World War broke out, Europeans had forgotten what the real nature of warfare was. They were used to only kind of limited campaigns, foreign adventures, you win, you lose, whatever, it doesn't make that big a difference. And they'd forgotten that war could actually be existential. Which is one reason he suggests why so many Europeans were so enthusiastic about the outbreak of the First World War. And I think something similar has happened less in America, certainly in Europe since 1945 in Western Europe. That we've lived under the American umbrella so completely that we've and I would say until the last few years forgotten that that progress isn't real, that war still exists, that the world can be a kind of Hobbesian place. You know, particularly, you know, Germany is at the center of that and growing up partly in German culture, I was I can see that lots of people in Germany in the in the post-war generations were brought up, including me, to believe that war simply belonged to the past, that this kind of like violence, it wasn't it wasn't that it was wrong, it was that we as a civilization had evolved beyond it, you know, in the same way that we don't use horses anymore in the way we used to. And there's when Russia invaded Ukraine, you could see among a lot of these German commentators a kind of psychological rupture, where they just can't could not bring these two ideas into connection with each other, one of which is war belongs to the past and the other is you should not allowed to invade Ukraine. And the the only response to that problem, which is you know, build weapons and give them to Ukrainians, is one that they simply cannot accept. Um so, yes, I think we can blame a lot on our ideas of history. >> You mentioned the P-word a couple of times, prog not peace. You mentioned Kissinger's thesis on peace, but progress. Your book, as I said, has been described as an epic masterpiece, uh at least by the Sunday Post, which is a bit woolly. >> >> It's a book about one thing. Uh uh a treatise, maybe not in in Kissinger's PhD thesis style, but more in a a fictional sense. Is it about the promise, the hope, and the illusion of progress? >> I would say it's a book about two things at the same time. One of those things is that historical hinge moment and the way our lives been shaped by what's all what's all been happening for the last 20 years. And the other the other thing it's about is searching for meaning within within that flux. You know, one of the things that marks out millennials, and you can see it in all the management consultant surveys, is and Gen Z is the same. >> The ones that are left, the ones that haven't been replaced by AI. >> The ones that haven't been AI'd yet. You know, they're all saying or they all look for a sense of purpose in their work. You know, my um my working title for this novel was on purpose because that's what I see all around me, you know, it's a kind of human response to to things be to to the world around you changing unmanageably fast that you start looking for meaning. Um and you see all these Yeah, you see all these people with a sense of vocation about one thing or another. And obviously what where some people find that meaning is in technological progress, particularly as it pertains to climate. You know, there's a lot of people who've made decarbonization a kind of who derive a sense of purpose from that very important work that we're doing. >> Yeah, on purpose is an alternative, as you say, an alternative title. Um Marx famously said, we we make our own histories, but not quite in the way we think we do. Um It is another way of describing on purpose, talking about agency and these men and all of us, your generation, my generation, we're all looking for agency, and of course it's particularly relevant and ironic in an age of AI, where we're supposedly replacing our own agency with smart machines. >> Yeah, I I I really think that's true. Uh yeah, I think there are there are kind of two aspects to it. One is that you know, pre-2008, the thing that we and people like me were all told growing up in schools and universities was, you know, what you're supposed to be doing with your life is fulfill your purpose. You know, there was no concept of of duty, service. These terms even like sound naff and cringe, you know? Nobody, you know, from my grandparents' generation, it was war, national service, wear a uniform, all this stuff. Whereas for my generation, there was no concept that society would ask anything of you. It was just self-realization, self-fulfillment, the search for to like jump as high as you can jump, fundamentally. And I think since 2008, we have seen this this shift back towards the collective in lots of different ways. You know, for people on the right, the nation, the need to kind of define the nation against outsiders, and for people on the left, the need to like save the world from all the things that are going on. So, I do Yeah, I I that's part of it. Um and sorry, I've forgotten the question now. How embarrassing. >> Well, final question, uh Alex. Um you've been very generous with your time. Uh I have a upcoming show in the next couple of days with the economic historian Liaquat Ahamed. Uh his book 1873 is out this week. He's also the author of Lords of Finance, which won the Pulitzer Prize about the the great crash of the the night of the late '20s. I wonder if we look back at history, we in 50 years we I I joked, maybe it's not very funny, that people still be using the term late-stage capitalism. But when we look back, maybe if we're in the 2070s or '50s or '90s, we'll look back at this moment, the moment that you claimed that ruined your lives, the 2008 crash, and actually it's not that big a deal when you compare it to the great crash of 1873, the first great global crash, or certainly to the '20s. Do you really think that we're living in historic historically interesting times, or are we on the brink of something? I know David Runciman once he he had an interesting podcast about an age in which we we always expect to wake up to some massive news. We always think we're on the verge of something historic. Do you think that uh 2008 is a tremor, and that what your friends, Greatna Mackenzie, lived through in the first part of the 21st century isn't really the earthquake? >> Um I don't I do think it's the earthquake. I mean, I should say it was the AI who wrote it ruined our lives. I I don't think it ruined our >> Blame the AI. Okay, so >> No, wait. Let me answer the question. >> Okay, if you were doing the title for that piece, what would you have called it? >> I would have called it something really boring, which nobody would have read. But, I do think I mean, the reason I think it's the earthquake and not the tremor is I mean, in some on some level you're right. Like, these this is kind of what I was saying about there not being any progress. Human societies go through these phases all the time. And we're now going through this phase, which is more kind of nationalistic. And you know, it's not the first time. Where, you know, if it turns into World War III, then it will then it will suddenly be the earthquake. But, I don't know. In terms of what Runciman's saying about we always think that, you know, the new world is about to be revealed. I would say the new world already has been revealed. You know, there's this everyone quotes this that Gramsci dictum. >> Yeah. >> The interregnum quote. >> Yeah. Uh you know, what the old world's died, the new one hasn't been born yet, something like that. But, I actually think the new world politically is very obvious to see. It already exists. You know, you have all over the Western world, you see the same tendencies, which are towards British jobs for British workers, you know, re- reshoring American manufacturing. You know, basically, there's quite a lot of consensus on that in America. Um keeping out illegal immigrants. >> Troublemakers like you, Alex. >> Troublemakers like me coming in, taking your jobs and your women. You know, there's quite a lot of consensus about that. >> And our women. I don't know about our job. >> You know, there are all these things that are so um contested in our public discourse. I think actually, you can see where the new consensus already exists. You know, it's protection for our own companies. It's keep undesirable foreigners like British writers out of the country. And I'm not saying that I agree with any of those things. I'm just saying you can see it happening. I I don't I think the kind of post-liberal world is already here. >> Well, let's end on a positive note. Um you end on a positive note. You you that that essay at least you say that we've given a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change the world, which is in some ways a feature of Drezner and McKenzie. Where where should we be optimistic in uh in late May, early June 2026, Alex? >> >> Well, I mean, I see a great source for a great cause for European optimism, which is maybe not very good news for your listeners, which is essentially >> have European listeners, too. Don't worry. >> Which is basically the even though we painful and costly, the the kind of separation from America that America is forcing upon us is probably for our own good, I think. Um you know, rather than than relying on the White House and essentially having to do what the White House says in many countries like Britain. Um we can take responsibility for ourselves, make our own decisions, run things the way we want to run them. And I think you know, Rumsfeld actually in one of his books has this idea that democracy has to be renewed every now and then. >> Yeah, he wants kids to vote, which actually I think is a rather good idea since grown-ups don't seem to do a very good job of it. >> Yeah, I mean, there are all kinds of ways you could I mean, personally I think that's nuts, but there you know, there are lots of ways you could renew it. And you probably need to use them all like one every 25 years. What And one way that you could renew European democracy I think now is by essentially throwing a lot in with each other to say, you know, China is a big economic rival to us. The Russians are have invaded Eastern Europe. The Americans don't want to help us anymore and call us names the whole time. Maybe the the moment for for Europeans to look after themselves has finally arrived. I mean Europe was the sorts of you know, it was the place where world orders were created basically from the Industrial Revolution to the present day. Um and the And at the And we've been since 1945 living in this period of sorts of ahistorical um I don't know, sort of suspension where we don't really have any agency over anything. Maybe we can get some agency back. >> Maybe we can get some agency back. You certainly can get some agency back by reading uh Alexander Starritt's epic masterpiece "The Strait of Hormuz and the Mackenzie". It's been out in the UK for a while and done very well, won all sorts of awards, was on the Financial Times uh best business book longlist. Now it's out in the United States. Alex, a real honor to talk to you. Best of luck. I'm sure you're working on a new book. >> Thank you, Andrew. Yeah, I am. I am. Um uh something very different, a kind of adventure story. >> Well, we'll have to get you back on the show when your adventure story comes out, but uh that was an adventurous conversation. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Andrew.