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Music Hello and welcome to the David Frum show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at the Atlantic.

This week marks one year of the David Frum show. I'm so grateful to everyone who has watched and listened along the way.

To mark the occasion, I've invited my old friend, Farid Zakaria, to discuss with me what it means to be an American.

Both Farid and I were born citizens of other countries.

He of India, me of Canada.

And we're going to look back on our decision to join our fates to that

of the United States and how we feel about it all these years later. My book this week will be

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, a meditation on words and meanings that casts light on the

decline of literacy in modern American society. Before either the dialogue or the book,

some opening thoughts on the economic troubles gathering for the United States. President Trump's

second term has been economically troubled from the beginning. 2025 was upended by his

decision to impose high tariffs, and that crushed job creation in the United States, very little net new job creation in 2025.

But things are even worse in 26 with the president's decision to open a major war with Iran without apparently thinking through the implications of this war for oil prices.

Experts describe the largest supply shock to energy since the 1970s, maybe the largest of all

time.

And while this shock has only begun to be felt by Americans, more is coming.

It's like the president dropped a giant rock in a bowl of water, and it takes a little

bit of time for the impact of the rock to slosh the water out of the bowl. But everyone, I think, is aware that a shock is coming and they're bracing for. I want to put this shock in some kind of context. Over the 25 years, 1982 to 2007, a quarter century, I graduated from college in 1982.

So for the 25 years of my opening adult life, the American economy lived through a time of

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