The

The Hello and behind the news.

My name is Doug Henwood.

The world seems unusually

disordered this week, all the more reason for Behind the News to stick to its format. Two guests,

two segments. Andrew Coburn will talk about his new book, Washington is Burning, and Haddaq's

Teer will talk about crypto in the age of Trump. I wanted to have a segment on the war in Iran and the

ceasefire, such as it is, but things

seemed too in flux for a serious contribution.

Next week.

Andrew Coburn is a veteran journalist and Washington editor of Harper's magazine.

He's just out with a collection of essays, Washington is burning, corruption and lies in the

age of Trump, published by Verso.

Most originally appeared in Harper's

in the London Review of Books, and their common theme is, as Verso accurately puts it, the

spectacular greed at the heart of the nation's political system. Andrew Coburn.

You open by saying empires are at their most interesting when they start tumbling into

final decline. Is that where we are?

We can always hope. Yes, I think we are. I mean, over all the signs point in that direction.

You know, we've got declining U.S. influence in the world, the days of the American Empire,

when they could get the rest of the world to hop to on demand seem to have passed. We see China passing the US in terms of economic success and power. And you see a general sort of, didn't someone

once talk about malaise? General Malays, you know, that they, Americans aren't as sort of optimistic,

...