About this episode
The episode discusses Blake Smith's essay on the tech elite and includes a conversation about political motivations behind Trump's actions.
My guest today is friend of the pod Blake Smith We talk mostly about Blake’s recent essay for Colossus magazine, “ The Education of the Broligarchy,” which is about what we can learn about the tech elite from what’s become known as the Silicon Valley Canon, a widely shared list of books that all aspiring tech overlords should read. . Unrelated to that, I want to share an exchange I had on Substack notes with Vladislav Davidzon, an Eastern European Jewish writer now based in the US. It began when I posted this note. I don’t really get the logic of Trump’s decision to invade. Even if it goes amazingly well, even if a mature liberal democracy magically coalesces in the aftermath, there’s no real constituency for that in the U.S. No one will care in nine months much less two years and nine months. His response: “You really are this clueless??” What’s amusing to me in retrospect is that I genuinely didn’t know which way he was going to go with this, given the dizzying array of theories about the motives for this war and the fact that you can’t even predict, in this case, what someone will say from knowing which side of things they’re on. Is it oil? Israel? Epstein? Dementia? Was it…
People in this episode
Host: Daniel Oppenheimer
Guest: Blake Smith
Topics covered
- tech elite
- Silicon Valley Canon
- political analysis
- Eastern European Jewish writers
- Trump's decision making
Keywords
- Broligarchy
- Silicon Valley
- tech overlords
- Trump
- politics
- Vladislav Davidzon
- Park MacDougald
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Colossus magazine, Tablet
More episodes of Eminent Americans
- Non-Producer Character (NPC) · April 21, 2026 · 1h 27m
- The Reservation Broadcasting System · April 2, 2026 · 1h 21m
- I Get Schooled on Marx · March 26, 2026 · 1h 26m
- Crime Story · March 19, 2026 · 1h 36m
- Jonathan Lear, Local Exemplar · February 26, 2026 · 1h 25m
- Big Tent Energy · February 19, 2026 · 59 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Eminent Americans podcast page.