I speak to Walter about what makes one a dissident at the moment and what the nature of a coalition can be that unites a Romanian mom with a Hollywood chad-type, the necessity of free speech and freedom for the creative, what the true believer archetype looks like from the top and how many of them there are, what power looks like up close and much more.

Walter Kirn is an American novelist, literary critic, and essayist. He is the author of eight books, including Up in the Air and Thumbsucker, which were turned into major movies. He has written for Time, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, GQ, New York, and Esquire.

His chosen (anti-) subversive is H. G. Wells and his book "The Outline of History".