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Welcome to Recode Media, Peter Kafka. That is me. Recording from New Jersey for a change.

We stepped out of Brooklyn for a minute. Same podcast, though, wherever we're recorded.

Delighted to have Kurt Anderson back on the show. Welcome back, Kurt. Delighted to be back.

You were talking to us last almost four years ago. October 2016, we talked a lot about Donald Trump then.

I think it'll come up again today. You mean candidate Donald Trump? Yes, that was still when we kind of joked about Donald Trump, although it was a I think we stopped joking by then, or at least. I didn't, I wasn't, I never thought it was a slam dunk. No, but there was still, as you, as we all recall, there was a conventional wisdom that this could not happen. Sure. And then it did.

I think that ties into what we're actually going to spend most of our time talking about

today, which is your new book, Evil Geniuses.

You want to start by telling us who the evil geniuses are?

Well, the evil geniuses are some of the people who were part of the process of doing this amazing paradigm shift in America

and this amazing transformation of the norms and rules and laws that govern our political economy

...