WTH: Is Europe Lost? Adam O'Neal Explains.
What the Hell Is Going On
AEI Podcasts
4.4 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2025
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Europe’s center of gravity has shifted eastward, and few political leaders stand out as capable of leading the necessary changes to revitalize, rather than regulate, the aging West. The Washington Post’s new editorial vision hopes to address these concerns, shaping how we think about ourselves and our allies in the coming years. The first step in avoiding Europe’s fate here at home is confronting the complacency that assumes we could never backslide. And part of that responsibility rests with the media. What can we learn from Europe? Which policies should we avoid imitating? And how will a more diverse editorial page report on them?
Adam O’Neal currently serves as the Opinion Editor at the Washington Post. Prior to that, Adam worked as a correspondent for The Economist, as an Executive Editor for the Dispatch, and as a Wall Street Journal editorial page writer. Previously he worked as a Vatican correspondent for Rome Reports and as a political reporter in Washington, D.C.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:03.1 | If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. |
| 0:07.1 | Thanks for listening. Here's our show. |
| 0:08.7 | What the hell is going on? |
| 0:10.5 | What's really going on? |
| 0:12.0 | We said, what the hell happened? |
| 0:13.5 | You don't have to know what the hell is on it. |
| 0:15.6 | They see what's going on. |
| 0:16.7 | I don't know what's going on. |
| 0:18.0 | What is going on? |
| 0:20.0 | We must find out what's going on. What is going on? We must find out what is going on. |
| 0:29.2 | Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka. And I'm Martisan. Welcome to our podcast, live from, well, DuPont Circle. |
| 0:36.4 | It's what the hell's going on. |
| 0:38.4 | Mark, what the hell is going on now? Well, in addition to the fact that we're in the studio together, which means you can actually hit me as opposed to reaching across the screen and hitting me. I already have once. I know you did. I should have sat on the other side of the studio. On the other side of the guest. But in addition to all the other reason is that we're here with our guest, Adam O'Neill, |
| 0:57.6 | who's the new opinion editor at the Washington Post. |
| 1:00.3 | He's both the new opinion editor at the Washington Post and also a veteran correspondent who spent |
| 1:05.1 | a lot of time living in and covering Europe. |
| 1:08.2 | And so he talks to us today a little bit about what his new vision is for |
| 1:11.0 | the Washington Post and for the opinion page there. And also, you know, looking at Europe and how |
| 1:17.0 | it informs his thinking about America. Yeah, I think it's, look, we've talked about this a lot on |
| 1:22.2 | the podcast about how the political ructions that are going on inside Europe are, you know, sort of one step away |
| 1:32.7 | and in our future, if we don't get a grip on trampled immigration, if we don't get a grip on |
... |
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