The Rise and Fall of the Nation State | Interview: Rana Dasgupta

The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg

The Dispatch

News, Politics

4.7 • 6.6K Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2026

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We love talking about nations here at Chateau de Remnant Today, Rana Dasgupta is dropping by to shake things up and discuss his new book, After Nations. Jonah Goldberg and Rana cover nation-states, liberalism, state-corporation cooperation, the iron law of oligarchy, capitalism, economic determinism, mass human migration, creative solutions for changing environments, and the future of power. Show Notes: —After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Greetings and gentlemen, can I please have your attention.
0:18.9	Can you digger?
0:24.9	Greetings, your listeners.
0:27.8	This is Jonah Goldberg, host of the Remnant podcast.
0:29.8	Brought to you by the dispatch and dispatch media.
0:40.9	Very interesting, very exciting first-time guest on the Remnant today with a book and a thesis that is both quite timely and also sort of evergreen. Rana Dasgupta is the author of two novels. He's also written a portrait of 21st
0:47.7	Century Delhi. He's lectured at Princeton and at Brown University. And his most recent book is
0:53.4	After Nations,
0:54.7	The Making and Unmaking of a World Order.
0:59.0	Rana, thank you for coming on The Remnant.
1:01.5	And what's your book about?
1:04.5	Well, thank you for having me.
1:06.0	This book has proved to me timely.
1:08.7	When I started writing it a long time ago,
1:11.5	I don't think many people would give time to the thesis
1:16.5	that there's something raw with the nation-state system.
1:19.6	Trump had just been elected for the first time
1:21.6	when I started thinking about this.
1:23.8	Brexit had happened.
1:25.3	There were a lot of things going on
1:26.8	that proved very, very decisive for many countries.
1:31.5	But I think most people felt that we were still going along a sort of trajectory that we've
	...

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