Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power and prejudices.

It is 2025 and Donald Trump is president once again of the United States.

We will, of course, be following the moves of the Donald and his second administration very closely.

However, it won't just be politics for us this year.

We'll also talk a lot and cover American culture, life and the arts.

I should also remind you, because my producer, Natasha,

will not let me hear the end of it, that we are on Spectator TV. So head to our YouTube channel

to watch that. Hello and welcome back to the Americano podcast. Today we are going to be talking

about the rather large and grandiose sounding theme of reviving the American Mind, which is the cover of the latest edition of the Spectator's World Edition, and that went to press on Friday last week.

And the reviving of the American mind, people who see the cover will notice, intelligent

readers, as we have, will notice that it's a play on the closing of the American mind, which is a

very important book by Alan Bloom in 1987. And the theme of the edition is that Donald Trump's

executive orders on education have given higher education a great

opportunity to undo quite a lot of damage that has been done to the American education system

in the last few decades. And there are lots of good pieces in the edition. I highly recommend

everyone subscribe and read it as soon as

possible. In that edition, there is an excellent interview with Christopher Rufo, who is a very

important figure in this educational moment, if we can call it that, and that interview was

conducted by our editor at large, Ben Dominic, who joins me now.

Ben, welcome. For our listeners, we have quite a few UK listeners on this podcast. For our listeners

who don't know about Christopher Rufo, explain who he is, what he's been doing, why you spoke to him and what you spoke about.

Thank you, Freddie. And it's great to talk to you.

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