There are two sides of America. One is the country’s world-leading innovation centers, which offer the highest salaries and potential wealth creation anywhere in the world. The other is the bleak deindustrialized hinterlands where former mines and factories once dotted the landscape. Here, middle class jobs have been casualized or wiped out entirely, leaving behind a depressing and well-trodden tale of economic loss.

Joining host Danny Crichton and Riskgaming director of programming Laurence Pevsner is Michael Beckley, a professor at Tufts University and the author of the recent essay, “The Strange Triumph of a Broken America.” He argues that the decentralized institutions that make America strong are also precisely its most vulnerable feature. Creative destruction is extremely useful in fast-moving fields like software, but is anathema to building an industrial base where capital assets are key. How can America balance between the two without losing both?

We talk about the vagaries of America’s domestic and foreign policies, how to balance decentralization with creating pathways toward greater prosperity, whether America is returning to isolationism and finally, what we can do with left behind regions to return them to prominence and success.

Produced by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Christopher Gates⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠George Ko