This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 18th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The media landscape has changed dramatically in recent years.

Higher Ed may not be far behind, and dealing with change is, well, difficult.

Barry Weiss, former editor and writer at the Wall Street Journal in the New York Times, says there are reasons

to be optimistic about the opportunities to start anew and rooting those new things in deep

principles.

We spoke late last month.

A while back you and I were talking to some Cato supporters and you were giving us a pretty dower assessment of various elements of life in the United States and you you said, nonetheless, toward the end of our conversation,

nonetheless I am optimistic.

And I thought, boy, I'd really like to understand why.

And so here you are to discuss that.

So in general there's plenty to be bothered about. There are whole schools of thought that

tell us how not to be bothered by all the things

that can bother us in the world around us.

Why are you optimistic about the future?

Well, great to be here, Caleb.

You know, I guess it depends on the morning.

I woke up this morning on the optimistic side of the bed,

but I'll say as a general rule that the more I am untethetering myself from the things that I assumed would always be permanent fixtures of American life,

the more optimistic I am. So what do I mean by that? You know, I grew up in a world in which I assumed that, you know, our elite universities would always be sort of mission- driven in the pursuit of truth. I assumed that

you know the point of K through 12 education was to teach people you you know, not what to think but how to think. You know, I was

...