Wavemaker Conversations

Timothy Snyder is one of the world’s leading historians of fascism. His bestseller, On Tyranny, is a palm-sized North Star for democracy — featuring twenty lessons from the 20th century for how each of us can resist authoritarianism and protect our republic — all of which feel doable. He and I had this conversation in 2021. I am sharing it here now as we mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of independence.  America, said Benjamin Franklin, is “a republic, if you can keep it.” Tim Snyder is a guide to keeping it.

When it comes to the global economy — and its impact on politics and society — Liaquat Ahamed has an eagle eye for pattern recognition.   Ahamed won a Pulitzer Prize for Lords of Finance:  The Bankers Who Broke The World — his history of the Great Depression, and its aftermath.   This past weekend, at the Nantucket Book Festival, he and I spoke about his newly released prequel, 1873, about the breathtaking first truly global economic boom, and bubble, and the bust that followed.  We can’t know for sure if 1873 foreshadows what’s to come as a result of the tsunami of money chasing Artificial Intelligence.  But if you want to develop that eagle eye for pattern recognition, while being entertained, I strongly recommend listening to our thoroughly improvisational conversation.  Thanks to Nantucket Community TV — NCTV — for providing the video and audio of this and all the fascinating author events at the 2026 Nantucket Book Festival. 

In this conversation with legendary music executive Clive Davis, Michael tries to figure out how one man, with no musical background, managed to identify, shape and guide so many stars in so many different genres over half a century. Davis died this week at the age of 94. What did he experience that drove him? What did he hear that moved him? Michael and Clive share a lot of laughs and insights exploring those questions together in this 2013 conversation for the radio program CNN Profiles.

Liaquat Ahamed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his history of the Great Depression is out with a prequel called 1873, the story of the breathtaking, first, truly global economic boom, and the bust that followed. I'll be in conversation with Ahamed at The Nantucket Book Festival on June 14th. I reached out to him now for a brief chat, because a lot of educated readers are wondering - is 1873 a preview of what's to come?

Robert Malley is a veteran U.S. Middle East peace negotiator, and, as I’ve come to learn, an inspired and devoted teacher. He has participated in multiple U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. He was on the team that negotiated the Iran nuclear inspection deal in 2015, and more recently served as U.S. Special Envoy to Iran. Under President Obama, he also served as the White House point person in the campaign against the Islamic State. Malley is now a Senior Fellow and lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. There have been so many major developments in the Middle East since we had this conversation last August before a live audience at Nantucket’s Dreamland Theatre. But the stories and insights that Malley shared, are as timely and compelling as ever.

I’m always on the lookout for an inspiring graduation speech. Last weekend, at Yale College, I heard one that I can’t stop thinking about. Min Jin Lee, the Korean-American author of Pachinko, a Yale graduate who, as a student, had far more B’s than A’s, channeled the ancient Greeks, and her own struggles, including a terrifying battle with liver disease, to help us figure out how to “choose the important over the urgent.” Her speech was about an hour. I recommend listening to every minute of it on the Yale youtube channel. But for those of you who are pressed for time right now, I’m offering a couple of key excerpts. It’s not a Wavemaker Conversation. It’s an empowering conversation starter.

AI is shifting the ground beneath us in many fields. When the ground shifts in the world of cyber security, Laura Galante is a great person to have on your side. Galante served as the U.S. government’s Director of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center from 2022 to 2025. She has represented the cyber intelligence community in dozens of White House Situation Room meetings. I reached out to her soon after Anthropic announced that it had created a powerful new AI model, or bot – too powerful to release to the public – called Claude Mythos Preview. Anthropic says that its new bot discovered  vulnerabilities in every major computer operating system and web browser – vulnerabilities it was able to exploit. Which makes this an important time to speak with Laura Galante.

Sometimes my favorite conversations are the ones I never expected to have – encounters made possible by serendipity.

I didn’t expect to meet my featured guest, Nurse Betty Long – at least not on this day. But when she appeared, and we started talking, I suspected that because of the difficult work she does – doing street medicine in a mobile van – and because of the humor she brings to it, we would arrive at a place where curiosity meets hope.

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Azar Nafisi, author of the internationally acclaimed memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran, addresses the question: Where do Iranians who have stood up to their ruthless government get their courage?

I reached out to Nafisi following Iran’s traditional 40-day mourning period for the thousands of people killed by the ruling clerics’ enforcers during nationwide demonstrations against the regime.

It seemed incredible that on the 40th day – after seeing the regime’s use of widespread violence – Iranians would come out yet again.  I wanted to know – is there something about that 40-day tradition, that generates courage?

Nafisi grew up in Iran’s capital, studied in the U.S. in the 1970s, and returned to her homeland after the revolution – for 18 years – to teach western literature to Iranian college students. Her insights on courage come from her personal experience and from a deep understanding of Iranian and Persian history and culture. We had this conversation three days before the war began. Nafisi’s insights will be highly relevant for a long time to come. 

When American figure skating phenom and gold medal favorite Ilia Malinin imploded on the ice at this Winter Olympics, I wanted to discover what we could all learn — and possibly apply to our own lives — from that heartbreaking failure. So I called Noa Kageyama — a veteran performance psychologist on the faculty of the Juilliard School and Cleveland Institute of Music. Why reach out to someone who works with musicians for insights on athletic performance? Because, as you’ll learn in this conversation, the mental training needed to maximize your performance on any stage, or field, or class, or boardroom, have certain things in common — techniques that we can all benefit from when we’re aiming to do our best when it matters most.

For more fascinating insights from Noa Kageyama head over to https://bulletproofmusician.com