Anne Applebaum is an award-winning historian and journalist who studies democracy and dictatorship. Her latest book, Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, explores how autocracies are working together to undermine democracy across the globe. Fortunately, Applebaum also considers how democracies can maintain their power against the siege of authoritarianism. Today, why is democracy worth fighting for and how can it be protected in the U.S? Plus: Poland as a guide for how to reverse years of democratic backsliding.

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Billionaire investor Mark Cuban has set out to fix the broken U.S. healthcare system, and he’s starting with drug prices. In 2022, Cuban launched the online pharmacy Cost Plus Drugs, which aims to sell generic drugs at huge discounts. He explains the business, how it’s going, and why expensive hospital visits are next on his list. Plus, we get his takes on sports gambling, Silicon Valley’s turn to the right, and AI. 

Note: this episode was recorded before President Trump announced TrumpRx. On X, Cuban gave it a B.

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Arthur Brooks has spent years studying the exact components of a happy life. And now, the bestselling author and Harvard professor has collected his top findings into a new book: The Happiness Files. This week, we ask him how to worry less about money, find your calling, and what research tells us all happy people have in common. 

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Dr. Jessica Knurick is a rare kind of academic: she's also very good at social media, and has recently gone viral for her criticisms of the MAHA movement. A registered dietitian with a PhD in nutrition science, Dr. Knurick says MAHA is right that Americans are notoriously unhealthy, but the movement has the solutions all wrong. This week, we turn to Dr. Knurick for the facts: what do we know about what is good for us, what small things can we do to be healthier every day, and how do we start improving the health of all Americans?

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According to a recent report from data collected in August, when prompted on divisive topics in the news, the top 10 AI chatbots spread false information 35% of the time — and even spread fake stories intentionally planted by Russian disinformation campaigns.

So why are LLMs vulnerable to disinformation and how have Russian operatives have learned to exploit them?

This week, an explanation and solution from the co-founders of NewsGuard, which tracks disinformation online and issued this startling report: Gordon Crovitz, a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and Steve Brill, the founder of Court TV and the American Lawyer magazine.

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Confidence comes easy for Kara Swisher. It’s one of the reasons she walked out of class in second grade (she knew everything), and later built a career as one of Silicon Valley’s most feared and respected journalists.

Kara tells us her secrets to success, why she’s optimistic about the future of media vs. AI, and why so many powerful figures in tech still manage to maintain a victim mentality. Plus: how Steve Jobs would have handled President Donald Trump.

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When will it be relatively normal to request a ride from a flying taxi? Within the next decade, at least according to our guests today: Stuart Simpson, CEO of Vertical Aerospace, and Jason Mudrick, the company’s largest shareholder and founder of Mudrick Capital Management. Vertical Aerospace is one of three companies trying to make flying taxis a reality now. This week, Stuart and Mudrick tell Henry about the aircraft the company is already flying and what it will take to bring it to market. 

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Harvard economist and researcher David Deming studies technology and the future of work. Lately, he’s been doing a lot of research about AI: he’s dug into technological shifts of the past for clues about what might happen to the U.S. labor market now, and he’s even quantified the rapid rate of adoption of generative AI.

Deming doubts AI will cause a jobs apocalypse, but he does believe things will change. Today, he tells us his ideas for how we can AI-proof our jobs, both personally and through education and policy reform. 

David Deming also writes a newsletter called Forked Lightning.

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What would an actually good tariff policy look like? Can the U.S. ever bring back manufacturing jobs, and should it? How bad is the deficit and what can we do to address it? 

In the first episode of Solutions, Henry asks Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman about the most pressing problems facing the U.S. economy — and how he would fix them.

Follow Solutions on TikTok and Instagram @solutionswithhenry 

Paul Krugman writes a newsletter on Substack and teaches at City University of New York Graduate Center. He was a New York Times Opinion columnist from 2000 to 2025.

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It feels like we’re drowning in problems right now. But for every one of our problems, there are smart, enterprising people working hard to solve them. Which is why acclaimed journalist and entrepreneur Henry Blodget is launching a new podcast called Solutions. Every week, he’ll interview leading thinkers across business, tech, politics and beyond about their big ideas for building a better future. Coming to YouTube and other podcast apps Monday August 18th from the Vox Media Podcast Network. 

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