The Cosmopolicast

From Claire—and now, it’s Wednesday afternoon. The Suez is unblocked. But listen all the same to our Saturday night Cosmopolitan Globalist Partycast, because it is one fine discussion of global shipping and it was a rollicking good Saturday night—by pandemic standards.

We marvel at the weirdness of China’s recent diplomatic self-sabotage. We drink. We ask what Macron’s thinking about Russia. We wonder just who actually believes it. Does he? We gossip about Germany. We gossip about the Atlantic Council. We wander around looking for popcorn. We ask if the United States is really so broke that it should sacrifice Estonia. We miss smoking.

Vivek Kelkar weighs in from Mumbai. Jon Nighswander from Vienna. Rachel Motte from Houston. Owen Lewis from Alberta. Akshaya Jose from Paris—me, too, of course. Toomas Hendrik Ilves from Estonia. (We don’t know where in Estonia he is, exactly, but we understand it involves a promising herd of moose.) Monique Camarra, as usual, runs the Cosmopolicast out of Siena. Thank you, Monique!

The below is extremely paraphrased. Reading it is no substitute for listening to it, as you will find out to your detriment on the final exam.

Part I: The Cosmopolitan Globalists resolve that the Suez Canal crisis is bogus

First we did a go-round to see who had the best idea for getting that ever-loving ship unstuck.

Toomas: Zeus! SOS, Suez! I came up with that yesterday.

A moose snorts in the background.

Claire: Why can’t we just blow it up?

Toomas: The environmental damage wouldn’t be so nice.

Claire: Owen, you’d be good at this. What do we do?

Owen: I’m a geologist, not an engineer.

Claire: I don’t get why the US hasn’t fixed this. You can understand all of US foreign policy in the 20th century if you think of the US as this giant machine designed to keep the SLOCs open. That’s our whole mission in life.

Toomas: A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!

Jon: A lot of Chinese trade to Germany goes through that canal. It’s going to have a lot of knock-on effects.

Claire: I wouldn’t expect Germany to do anything, but this is what America exists to do.

Vivek: The US has never been able to do much about the Suez Canal. Ever. It was shut for eight years between 1967 and 1975! Even after the Sinai accords, you still couldn’t use it for two years because it was full of mines.

Toomas: Maybe it’s not so bad, and global warming has come to our assistance. You can go along the northern route, so who cares?

Claire: Huh? I’m having trouble visualizing this.

Monique gets a map.

Jon: It’s great for China and Russia. Turns Harbin into a major shipping center. Awful for India.

Toomas: Look at Russian side of the northern route. Look at coast of Russia, which used to be frozen in winter. Now it’s open. This is why the PRC is a member of the Arctic Council.

Owen: It’s mostly summer shipping, though.

Toomas: It’s April. You have six months to deal with the Suez Canal. Screw it.

Claire: So this whole Suez Canal crisis is bogus?

Toomas: For India, it’s a disaster.

Rachel: It’s bad for all the boats that are stuck.

Toomas: The next problem—if you go around the Cape of Good Hope: Somali pirates.

Claire: That’s just what I thought! Why did Twitter make fun of me for saying it?

Toomas: They’ll have an orgy.

Claire: I mean yeah, right? Banquet!

Jon: Wouldn’t the Americans come in then?

Toomas: No, they have to go around, too. Imagine a traffic jam in Los Angeles, and people decide this is a perfect time to start robbing cars. The police can’t get to you—they’re stuck in traffic, too—

Claire: How would you fight off Somali pirates if you’re stuck on a ship off the coast of Africa and you’re not properly insured for fighting pirates?

We do a quick go-round.

Claire: And what good does it do to be the mightiest seafaring power the world has ever seen if we can’t deal with a blocked canal and a bunch of pirates? Where is our tax money even going?

Toomas: We’ll see. You do have a US naval presence in the Indian Ocean, and you have Diego Garcia. Maybe they could start doing renditions there again. It doesn’t take that long to get any fleet anyplace—six or seven days, max.

Claire: This has got to be our special area of expertise. If it isn’t, what are they doing with the money?

Toomas: It wasn’t wasted, all kinds of things were prevented.

Jon: If you were to be cynical, US-China trade isn’t really affected, because it mostly goes across the Pacific. So what’s mostly affected is Europe-China trade. It has a dire effect on China. From the US point of view, maybe this isn’t such a bad thing.

Claire: Wow, yes.

Jon: Show Europe there are some risks associated with that relationship.

Part II: The Cosmopolitan Globalists wonder what’s wrong with Chinese diplomats

Toomas: Moving on, the utter collapse of EU relations with China in the past week—it’s like progressive FM rock in the late 1960s. Chinese Wolf Warrior diplomacy—

Claire: Yeah, what are they thinking?

Background: China’s ambassador to France was recently summoned and “firmly reminded” not to call French citizens “ideological pests,” “small-time hoodlums” and “crazed hyenas.” Then on March 22, the US, EU, UK, and Canada announced coordinated sanctions against Chinese officials directly involved in the abominations in Xinjiang. China promptly declared that in retaliation it would sanction pretty much everyone who’s anyone in Europe. Those who weren’t on the sanctions list felt properly ashamed.

Toomas: They’re just shooting themselves—

Monique: They’ve been everywhere.

Toomas: Every member state ambassador to the political committee of the EU—these are the people who make all the decisions—they’ve all been declared persona non grata. Ten think tanks, too, including some of the best! So now you’ve declared all these important, crucial people and institutions in the EU under sanction. And your trade is collapsing! There’s no f— way the EU-China trade agreement will in any way stand a chance of being ratified by the European Parliament—

Background: Remember what we wrote about that? Two parts, here and here.

Claire: Why did Merkel even embarrass herself by trying to make that deal?

Toomas: Because they’ll do anything for trade.

Jon: The German auto industry largely dictates foreign policy. When you’re an export nation, you’re always vulnerable.

Toomas: For thirty years, the Germans have caved into Russia because of “Wandel durch Handel!” Change through trade!

Claire: No one wants to see a vulnerable Germany, though. We all know how badly that can go.

Toomas: No. No. They’re too pacifist.

Claire: Compared to what?

Toomas, Jon: The next Chancellor is going to be a Green.

Toomas: They’re too Franco-centric. Even you, Claire, think France is the center of Europe when in fact it’s just part of the periphery.

Claire: I am not at the center, you say?

Part III: The Cosmopolitan Globalists wonder what Macron could possibly be thinking

Toomas: Macron has this grand vision about how he’s going to proceed while ignoring a population of Europe larger than France. And he thinks he can get away with it. “Oh, we will bring zee Russians in!”

Claire: Yeah, none of us understand this. Which constituency is he flattering?

Toomas: —ignoring 75 million East Europeans who are up against Russia, not listening to them, and he goes and does this.

Claire: But no one serious believes his claim that Russia can be seduced into being a normal European power, right? So what does he think he’s doing?

Toomas: I guess he wants to be the roi philosophe. The visionaire.

Claire: But it’s not very visionary. It’s been tried and failed.

Toomas: For about 200 years. The main problem is that the Russians haven’t been in Paris since 1814.

Claire: But he has a competent intelligence staff. They’ve got to be telling him, “This won’t work?”

Toomas: But he doesn’t listen to them. He thinks he’s smarter than they are. “That’s why I’m president and you’re not.” I don’t know, I can’t figure it out, either.

Claire: It’s weird.

Toomas: There’s also a lot of bizarrely Huntingtonian thinking France. “Our ultimate foe is Islam and Russia is a Christian nation.” I’ve heard this from foreign policy people.

Jon: They’ve never heard of Russia’s Muslim population, apparently?

Toomas: Which just gets bigger the more they invade—

Claire: This is the crazy stuff that Russia puts on the Internet, but why would smart people fall for it? Still, Macron put his finger on something a lot of people in Europe are thinking. America is down for the count, or off to the Pacific, and we need to go it alone, and that means making choices …

Toomas: A, I would work to counteract that—yes, the Pacific is the future theater and China is the—but to equate Russia with—

Claire: —it’s no stupider than the strategic fantasy I keep hearing from Americans: “We’re should team up with Russia to take on China!”

Toomas: But the smart people don’t say that.

Claire: They do! I’ve heard genuinely smart people say this.

Toomas: These are clowns. Think tanks bought with Koch Brothers’ money. The Atlantic Council, which used to be the paragon of transatlanticism, suddenly has a new section built up and paid for by the Koch people—

Claire: —Could they be right? Is the US just too broke to take on anything but China?

Toomas: No, no, no. The stupidity of the US and EU not forming and economic-tech alliance—the EU is obsessed with GAFA; the US doesn’t pay attention to Europe, this is my thesis—

Claire: —That is my thesis.

Toomas: Kinetic warfare as we’ve known it is over. Operationally, since 2007, the Newtonian basis of warfare no longer holds. Geography-based security thinking is dead.

Akshaya: To the contrary, the pandemic has really brough geography-based security thinking back.

Toomas: My point is that now you can just shut countries down, at a distance, without missiles.

Claire: You’re both right. So we’re in trouble.

Toomas: We’re in trouble.

Part IV: Pandemic Redux.

Claire: It seems as if with the pandemic we’ve slipped into an entirely new era, doesn’t it? We’re just standing at the edge of a void, staring at it, with no idea what’s on the other side.

It’s the party you’ve always wanted to be invited to. So invite yourself. Our subscribers are always welcome.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

The authors of the Cosmopolitan Globalists’ blueprint for ending the pandemic joined to howl in frustration with the world’s inability to do the obvious and end the pandemic. We’re beside ourselves. Claire and Monique are, anyway. Robert’s clearly at the end of his rope. Rachel is composed. Owen and Jon sound just fine.

From Vienna: Jon Nighswander. From Houston: Rachel Motte. From Paris, Claire Berlinski. From Canada: Owen Lewis. From Colorado (and one day, from Mars): Robert Zubrin. Hosted, again, by Monique in Siena.

Paraphrased Highlights

Robert: Isolate the carriers: It’s ABC. Employers can do it easily. I managed to secure the fast-testing equipment for my company—which is otherwise illegal—by declaring it a “research project.” It worked. It’s all you need to do. Yet the government forbids this even though epidemiologists have begged for it. The Trump Administration wouldn’t get on board because it thought the pandemic was a Democrat hoax; Democrats wouldn’t get on board because they liked watching Trump flail. Every governor in the union failed. A complete failure of civic spirit.

Robert: Don’t confuse safety and effectiveness testing. You can test for safety in a month.

Claire: A month? You sure, Robert?

Robert: Yes I am. (We hash this out a bit.)

Everyone: Why aren’t people more angry at their government’s incompetence?

Claire: It is shocking that there are stockpiles of AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines that aren’t being used.

Robert, Owen, and Claire: There’s something seriously wrong with the FDA. Running an effectiveness test for AstraZeneca—one that only concluded today, and showed exactly what we already knew; to wit, it’s safe and it completely prevents you from dying—even though the vaccine has been in use for months, and has clearly been saving lives, in the UK? A whole jumbo jets’ worth of Americans are dying every single day!

Robert: This is a pandemic. This is a catastrophe. More Americans have died since Biden’s inauguration than died in the First World War. The US government, at gunpoint, is telling you that you can’t have that vaccine—which will keep you from dying of Covid19—but you have a right to a firearm, because the right to self-defense is God-given. How does this make sense?

Robert and Claire: Why hasn’t it dawned on people that in a pandemic, the rules are different? You can’t go by the normal rules. It’s a war. The first dose is worth three times more than the second dose. This isn’t hard. Give people the first dose.

Claire: Did you realize insane French anti-vaxxers have been around since 17th century? Napoléon knew how to handle them.

Robert: He knew you take the war to the enemy.

Claire: Why doesn’t anyone have this kind of vision now?

Everyone: Bureaucratic inertia, and competing bureaucratic impulses, are making everything worse.

Rachel: Talk to anyone in the chronic illness community online: They’ll tell you that they knew this was how it was going to go. The human mind isn’t well-equipped to deal with mortality and disease.

Claire: It’s amazing how many fat people confidently insist, “Just isolate the vulnerable and let the rest of us do what we want.” They still don’t understand they are the vulnerable.

Robert (of course): If Europe wants to end the pandemic, it should invest more in its space program.

Owen: Canada is doing even worse than Europe.

Claire: The insane AstraZeneca fiasco in Europe is only one of so many screwups. This latest lockdown in France is designed to cripple what’s left of the French economy. It sure can’t be designed to do anything else. No one is going to obey because it’s been so stupidly designed; the rules keep changing; and everyone has lost confidence in the government. Cases are soaring and so, of course, are deaths. The virus now in circulation is obviously more contagious than before. By the time France vaccinates enough of its citizens to be immune to this strain, a new monster mutant will be sweeping the country and Ursula von der Leyen will again be preventing the EU from a timely purchase of a booster. You can’t get rid of her; she’s like a barnacle.

A question that vexes us: Why aren’t citizens demanding more of their governments? We live in democracies. Isn’t the benefit of democracy supposed to be that the government responds to your needs?

Jon: A lot of people in Europe think this is a long vacation and aren’t really bothered by the pandemic.

(All of us, horrified, silently: He may be right.)

Robert: Anyone with a medical education who isn’t part of the bureaucracy knows how atrocious it is that AstraZeneca vaccines are sitting in a huge stockpile, unused.

Claire: If the French government is willing to ruin its economy, why not control the disease? Lock everyone down for a period of time longer than the time required for the last infected victim to present symptoms. Three weeks. No one goes anywhere, period. Food is delivered. You just stay at home and sit there. Provided the borders are closed, it stops the pandemic dead in its tracks. We know this. China tested it for us.

Robert: Or you could test them.

Claire: Yes, either one would work, but this strategy—wait until the ICUs go to 97 percent capacity, lock down, then open everything up once the ICUs are back down to 80 percent or whatever—is nuts. So is the strategy of tolerating anti-vaccination imbeciles, who are a threat to all of humanity.

Owen: Within a few months, production will be ramped up, and in the West, the problem will be demand, not supply.

Jon: Russia’s done brilliantly: The Sputnik V has been a huge boost to its soft power.

Robert: China is winning the world.

Claire: Barbados has done surprisingly well.

Claire: How can France be allowing people to hesitate about whether they want to get the vaccine—because that’s a personal decision—while they mandate we stay in our homes? How does that make sense? You’re on French social security? You take the vaccine, and if you don’t—out you go. You can’t be in a any space built by taxpayers unless you’re vaccinated.

(Owen can’t quite get his head around this idea. I bet he’ll come around by the time this is over.)

We hate the anti-vaxxers. We hate them so much. What is wrong with them? We discuss. We have many theories.

Claire: This is a chance for the Biden Administration to show the world we’re back, not just say so. If we vaccinate the world, we’re back. Failing that, not so much.

Owen: Make the vaccines open source. Ramp up manufacturing—if Bill Gates can figure this out, why can’t anyone else?

Claire: Why not appoint Bill Gates global vaccination Czar?

Robert: You could vaccinate the whole world for less than 2 percent of the recent Covid relief bill.

All of us: If we don’t put this fire out, it will find new forms. It is already.

We didn’t discuss the situation in Brazil, but if you doubt us, watch this:

Finally: Let us pause to be grateful for the brilliance of the mRNA vaccines. They may in the end save even more lives than the pandemic has cost us. Senseless, stupid wars, led by elderly fools, have led to some of mankind’s greatest medical advances. Alas.

We discussed:

The Coronavirus, Europe, and the United States (Jon discusses the narcissism of the West’s small differences: The US and the EU have been gleeful at the others’ difficulties. Meanwhile, both failed.)

Part I: Finish off Covid19. Hurry. (Owen Lewis: Here are the terrific vaccines we’ve got and how they work.)

PART II: Finish off Covid19. Hurry. (Robert Zubrin: Rapid testing. Now. Vaccines, now. Executives: Get to work, now. )

PART III: Finish off Covid19. Hurry. (Owen explains how to vaccinate the world, in detail.)

Civilization and its Discontents

Illness as Metaphor

One note: I regret saying I wrote to the FDA “at least 30 times,” because I subsequently checked my email and saw that I hadn’t written to them anywhere near so often. What I said wasn’t true.

Second note: As our reader WigWag points out below, Robert and I both misspoke in saying Pfizer licensed vaccine production to Merck. It was Johnson & Johnson that did this. The difference matters, for reasons he explains in the comments.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe. Only your money can keep this venture going. (Special thanks to Matthew S., our first Supersubscriber! You sponsored this podcast.)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

The authors of the Cosmopolitan Globalists’ blueprint for ending the pandemic joined to howl in frustration with the world’s inability to do the obvious and end the pandemic. We’re beside ourselves. Claire and Monique are, anyway. Robert’s clearly at the end of his rope. Rachel is composed. Owen and Jon sound just fine.

From Vienna: Jon Nighswander. From Houston: Rachel Motte. From Paris, Claire Berlinski. From Canada: Owen Lewis. From Colorado (and one day, from Mars): Robert Zubrin. Hosted, again, by Monique in Siena.

Paraphrased Highlights

Robert: Isolate the carriers: It’s ABC. Employers can do it easily. I managed to secure the fast-testing equipment for my company—which is otherwise illegal—by declaring it a “research project.” It worked. It’s all you need to do. Yet the government forbids this even though epidemiologists have begged for it. The Trump Administration wouldn’t get on board because it thought the pandemic was a Democrat hoax; Democrats wouldn’t get on board because they liked watching Trump flail. Every governor in the union failed. A complete failure of civic spirit.

Robert: Don’t confuse safety and effectiveness testing. You can test for safety in a month.

Claire: A month? You sure, Robert?

Robert: Yes I am. (We hash this out a bit.)

Everyone: Why aren’t people more angry at their government’s incompetence?

Claire: It is shocking that there are stockpiles of AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines that aren’t being used.

Robert, Owen, and Claire: There’s something seriously wrong with the FDA. Running an effectiveness test for AstraZeneca—one that only concluded today, and showed exactly what we already knew; to wit, it’s safe and it completely prevents you from dying—even though the vaccine has been in use for months, and has clearly been saving lives, in the UK? A whole jumbo jets’ worth of Americans are dying every single day!

Robert: This is a pandemic. This is a catastrophe. More Americans have died since Biden’s inauguration than died in the First World War. The US government, at gunpoint, is telling you that you can’t have that vaccine—which will keep you from dying of Covid19—but you have a right to a firearm, because the right to self-defense is God-given. How does this make sense?

Robert and Claire: Why hasn’t it dawned on people that in a pandemic, the rules are different? You can’t go by the normal rules. It’s a war. The first dose is worth three times more than the second dose. This isn’t hard. Give people the first dose.

Claire: Did you realize insane French anti-vaxxers have been around since 17th century? Napoléon knew how to handle them.

Robert: He knew you take the war to the enemy.

Claire: Why doesn’t anyone have this kind of vision now?

Everyone: Bureaucratic inertia, and competing bureaucratic impulses, are making everything worse.

Rachel: Talk to anyone in the chronic illness community online: They’ll tell you that they knew this was how it was going to go. The human mind isn’t well-equipped to deal with mortality and disease.

Claire: It’s amazing how many fat people confidently insist, “Just isolate the vulnerable and let the rest of us do what we want.” They still don’t understand they are the vulnerable.

Robert (of course): If Europe wants to end the pandemic, it should invest more in its space program.

Owen: Canada is doing even worse than Europe.

Claire: The insane AstraZeneca fiasco in Europe is only one of so many screwups. This latest lockdown in France is designed to cripple what’s left of the French economy. It sure can’t be designed to do anything else. No one is going to obey because it’s been so stupidly designed; the rules keep changing; and everyone has lost confidence in the government. Cases are soaring and so, of course, are deaths. The virus now in circulation is obviously more contagious than before. By the time France vaccinates enough of its citizens to be immune to this strain, a new monster mutant will be sweeping the country and Ursula von der Leyen will again be preventing the EU from a timely purchase of a booster. You can’t get rid of her; she’s like a barnacle.

A question that vexes us: Why aren’t citizens demanding more of their governments? We live in democracies. Isn’t the benefit of democracy supposed to be that the government responds to your needs?

Jon: A lot of people in Europe think this is a long vacation and aren’t really bothered by the pandemic.

(All of us, horrified, silently: He may be right.)

Robert: Anyone with a medical education who isn’t part of the bureaucracy knows how atrocious it is that AstraZeneca vaccines are sitting in a huge stockpile, unused.

Claire: If the French government is willing to ruin its economy, why not control the disease? Lock everyone down for a period of time longer than the time required for the last infected victim to present symptoms. Three weeks. No one goes anywhere, period. Food is delivered. You just stay at home and sit there. Provided the borders are closed, it stops the pandemic dead in its tracks. We know this. China tested it for us.

Robert: Or you could test them.

Claire: Yes, either one would work, but this strategy—wait until the ICUs go to 97 percent capacity, lock down, then open everything up once the ICUs are back down to 80 percent or whatever—is nuts. So is the strategy of tolerating anti-vaccination imbeciles, who are a threat to all of humanity.

Owen: Within a few months, production will be ramped up, and in the West, the problem will be demand, not supply.

Jon: Russia’s done brilliantly: The Sputnik V has been a huge boost to its soft power.

Robert: China is winning the world.

Claire: Barbados has done surprisingly well.

Claire: How can France be allowing people to hesitate about whether they want to get the vaccine—because that’s a personal decision—while they mandate we stay in our homes? How does that make sense? You’re on French social security? You take the vaccine, and if you don’t—out you go. You can’t be in a any space built by taxpayers unless you’re vaccinated.

(Owen can’t quite get his head around this idea. I bet he’ll come around by the time this is over.)

We hate the anti-vaxxers. We hate them so much. What is wrong with them? We discuss. We have many theories.

Claire: This is a chance for the Biden Administration to show the world we’re back, not just say so. If we vaccinate the world, we’re back. Failing that, not so much.

Owen: Make the vaccines open source. Ramp up manufacturing—if Bill Gates can figure this out, why can’t anyone else?

Claire: Why not appoint Bill Gates global vaccination Czar?

Robert: You could vaccinate the whole world for less than 2 percent of the recent Covid relief bill.

All of us: If we don’t put this fire out, it will find new forms. It is already.

We didn’t discuss the situation in Brazil, but if you doubt us, watch this:

Finally: Let us pause to be grateful for the brilliance of the mRNA vaccines. They may in the end save even more lives than the pandemic has cost us. Senseless, stupid wars, led by elderly fools, have led to some of mankind’s greatest medical advances. Alas.

We discussed:

The Coronavirus, Europe, and the United States (Jon discusses the narcissism of the West’s small differences: The US and the EU have been gleeful at the others’ difficulties. Meanwhile, both failed.)

Part I: Finish off Covid19. Hurry. (Owen Lewis: Here are the terrific vaccines we’ve got and how they work.)

PART II: Finish off Covid19. Hurry. (Robert Zubrin: Rapid testing. Now. Vaccines, now. Executives: Get to work, now. )

PART III: Finish off Covid19. Hurry. (Owen explains how to vaccinate the world, in detail.)

Civilization and its Discontents

Illness as Metaphor

One note: I regret saying I wrote to the FDA “at least 30 times,” because I subsequently checked my email and saw that I hadn’t written to them anywhere near so often. What I said wasn’t true.

Second note: As our reader WigWag points out below, Robert and I both misspoke in saying Pfizer licensed vaccine production to Merck. It was Johnson & Johnson that did this. The difference matters, for reasons he explains in the comments.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe. Only your money can keep this venture going. (Special thanks to Matthew S., our first Supersubscriber! You sponsored this podcast.)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

From Claire—I know. You’ve been waiting for the Cosmopolitan Globalists’ reading list. It’s late. You’re impatient. You keep checking your mail, over and over—but nothing shows up. “What could be wrong?” you wonder. “I do hope they’re not all dead.”

Not to worry. We’ll get to it. But today, we have something even better for you. Over the weekend, Monique Camarra—our Cosmopolitan Globalist in Siena and ace podcaster—recorded the inaugural episode of the Cosmopolicast.

We figured it would be incomprehensible if all 68 of us were on at the same time, so in this episode it’s me, Vivek, and Jon Nighswander—or “Vienna Jon,” for those of you who have trouble telling all the Jons apart. In future episodes, we’ll introduce you to everyone else—but not at once, obviously.

Here we discuss everything that’s wrong with journalism, why it’s become so awful, and how the Cosmopolitan Globalist proposes to fix it. Do you hate the media? Do you wonder why you had to suffer through 260,000,000 stories (we counted) about Harry and Meghan, but didn’t see a single analysis of Britain’s new defense and foreign policy blueprint? Well, we explain.

By the way, if you agree with us, it’s pretty clear what you have to do to solve the problem:

We’ll do our part—we’re giving it everything we’ve got—but ultimately, you get the journalism you pay for. Now, if you don’t want to pay for it, that’s fine! Please continue to enjoy the newsletter for free. But if you’re not paying, why do you think it’s appropriate to send us emails complaining about what we publish? Truly, such missives do not have the rectifying effect on our thought that a few of our readers (and it is only a few) would seem to believe. If you want us to read that dreck, you must subscribe.

But if you do subscribe, you can send us all the complaints, questions, requests, and suggestions you like. And we will read them. And we will take them very much to heart. Our subscribers are like beautiful, exotic birds who’ve flown into our homes, and all we want is to figure out how to make them so happy that they stay.

If you’re inspired by our vision, perhaps you’d consider becoming a supersubscriber? We could use it right now, because we’re about to go big. Very big. But going big means spending money. So if you really want journalism to improve …

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

From Claire—I know. You’ve been waiting for the Cosmopolitan Globalists’ reading list. It’s late. You’re impatient. You keep checking your mail, over and over—but nothing shows up. “What could be wrong?” you wonder. “I do hope they’re not all dead.”

Not to worry. We’ll get to it. But today, we have something even better for you. Over the weekend, Monique Camarra—our Cosmopolitan Globalist in Siena and ace podcaster—recorded the inaugural episode of the Cosmopolicast.

We figured it would be incomprehensible if all 68 of us were on at the same time, so in this episode it’s me, Vivek, and Jon Nighswander—or “Vienna Jon,” for those of you who have trouble telling all the Jons apart. In future episodes, we’ll introduce you to everyone else—but not at once, obviously.

Here we discuss everything that’s wrong with journalism, why it’s become so awful, and how the Cosmopolitan Globalist proposes to fix it. Do you hate the media? Do you wonder why you had to suffer through 260,000,000 stories (we counted) about Harry and Meghan, but didn’t see a single analysis of Britain’s new defense and foreign policy blueprint? Well, we explain.

By the way, if you agree with us, it’s pretty clear what you have to do to solve the problem:

We’ll do our part—we’re giving it everything we’ve got—but ultimately, you get the journalism you pay for. Now, if you don’t want to pay for it, that’s fine! Please continue to enjoy the newsletter for free. But if you’re not paying, why do you think it’s appropriate to send us emails complaining about what we publish? Truly, such missives do not have the rectifying effect on our thought that a few of our readers (and it is only a few) would seem to believe. If you want us to read that dreck, you must subscribe.

But if you do subscribe, you can send us all the complaints, questions, requests, and suggestions you like. And we will read them. And we will take them very much to heart. Our subscribers are like beautiful, exotic birds who’ve flown into our homes, and all we want is to figure out how to make them so happy that they stay.

If you’re inspired by our vision, perhaps you’d consider becoming a supersubscriber? We could use it right now, because we’re about to go big. Very big. But going big means spending money. So if you really want journalism to improve …

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

The Cosmopolitan Globalists get on a Zoom call and ask themselves, “So, what are we doing here?” We also ask why Piero’s friend, a fully-qualified engineer, believes the earth is flat, and we adopt Vivek’s turtle as our mascot—all the way down.

Some of you wrote to me yesterday to ask, “Why can’t I listen to the podcast?”

I assumed you were just whingers. “I don’t know,” I wrote back. “It works for me.”

Then I realized that the podcast, like the rest of the newsletter, is a newsletter. It only works if I send it to you.

So here it is. Le voilà. To the people who wrote to say you couldn’t listen to it, I apologize for thinking you were malingering. It was in fact me who was incompetent.

To the rest of you: Why didn’t you listen to it?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

The Cosmopolitan Globalists get on a Zoom call and ask themselves, “So, what are we doing here?” We also ask why Piero’s friend, a fully-qualified engineer, believes the earth is flat, and we adopt Vivek’s turtle as our mascot—all the way down.

Some of you wrote to me yesterday to ask, “Why can’t I listen to the podcast?”

I assumed you were just whingers. “I don’t know,” I wrote back. “It works for me.”

Then I realized that the podcast, like the rest of the newsletter, is a newsletter. It only works if I send it to you.

So here it is. Le voilà. To the people who wrote to say you couldn’t listen to it, I apologize for thinking you were malingering. It was in fact me who was incompetent.

To the rest of you: Why didn’t you listen to it?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe