Richard Hanania is a political scientist and president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology. He spent about a decade as one of the most influential voices on the online right — first writing pseudonymously in the alt-right, later as one of the intellectual influences on the Silicon Valley tech right. Then he watched his own ideas take power, and changed his mind.
His new book is Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster. Kakistocracy is Greek for rule by the worst. The argument inside it is one very few people are willing to make right now: that Western elites are not overrated but underrated, and that our institutions work far better than we give them credit for.
Zoe and Richard get into Australia's populist surge, what actually makes someone an elite, the backlash against skilled immigration and the H-1B fight in the States, whether Sydney's housing crisis is really about immigration, and what frightens him most — which turns out to have a lot to do with fertility.
Also: is Zoe an elite? Are you? There's a test.
00:00 Who is Richard Hanania
02:27 The case that elites are underrated
04:50 What actually makes someone an elite
07:04 Do people care about the truth?
08:45 When federal bureaucrats became shitposters
09:38 Populism as rule by the id
11:33 Australia's populist surge
15:57 The awkward part: immigration
18:45 Australian vs American assimilation
21:46 Is Pauline Hanson a serious person?
23:33 Getting elites to take immigration seriously
26:06 Cofnas, Arday and academic gatekeeping
30:03 The H-1B backlash explained
32:58 Zero immigration and the fertility problem
34:05 Anti-Indian sentiment in Australia
35:40 Is Sydney's housing crisis about immigration?
38:30 The chapter Zoe couldn't finish
39:12 Are you an elite? Take the test
41:28 The Manosphere, and what a "chud" is
44:14 Nine-fifty in the morning in Sydney
46:32 The thinkers behind the book
48:15 AI, fertility, and what frightens him most
50:50 Why nobody's pairing up
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