Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on the show today is S.A.S. N.S. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. Joining me on the show today

is Essayst N.S. Lyons. He's the author of a terrific substack newsletter called The Upheaval,

which explores our era of revolutionary, cultural, technological, and political change. He's written

for City Journal a number of times. He's also

written for First Things, Palladium and other top publications. He was previously a geopolitical

analyst based in Washington, D.C. He joins me today to discuss his provocative story in our

spring issue, Foundation of American Folly,

which details the long history of radicalism and bad ideas supported by the Ford Foundation.

So, NS, thanks very much for joining us.

Hi, Brian. Great to be here.

So as this essay you've written for us shows, the Ford Foundation's influence on politics and

society has been and continues to be profound for decades. Largely, you argue, and I would

agree to destructive effect. So let's start with the current situation where the foundation,

as you indicate, has funded a number of far left wing and even what you could describe

as revolutionary causes and groups in America. So I wonder if you could just say what it's

been up to in recent years and how much money does the foundation spend and have on hand to spend?

Well, the Ford Foundation alone is sitting on an endowment of around $16 billion, at least in 2021, which is the last data that I saw.

So really a tremendous amount of money.

That would put it in approximately the Fortune 500 if it was a private firm, but it's not.

So that's untaxed money.

And what they've been funding in the last, let's say the last decade since 2013-14 is essentially the whole Black Lives Matter,

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