
Why Nothing Works
Who Killed Progress—and How to Bring It Back
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Narrated by:
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David de Vries
About this listen
A provocative exploration about the architecture of power, the forces that stifle us from getting things done, and how we can restore confidence in democratically elected government.
America was once a country that did big things—we built the world’s greatest rail network, a vast electrical grid, interstate highways, abundant housing, the Social Security system, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and more. But today, even while facing a host of pressing challenges—a housing shortage, a climate crisis, a dilapidated infrastructure—we feel stuck, unable to move the needle. Why?
America is today the victim of a vetocracy that allows nearly anyone to stifle progress. While conservatives deserve some blame, progressives have overlooked an unlikely culprit: their own fears of “The Establishment.” A half-century ago, progressivism’s designs on getting stuff done were eclipsed by a desire to box in government. Reformers put speaking truth to power ahead of exercising that power for good. The ensuing gridlock has pummeled faith in public institutions of all sorts, stifled the movement’s ability to deliver on its promises, and, most perversely, opened the door for MAGA-style populism.
A century ago, Americans were similarly frustrated—and progressivism pointed the way out. The same can happen again. Marc J. Dunkelman vividly illustrates what progressives must do if they are going to break through today’s paralysis and restore, once again, confidence in democratically elected government. To get there, reformers will need to acknowledge where they’ve gone wrong. Progressivism’s success moving forward hinges on the movement’s willingness to rediscover its roots.
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Imagine what we could achieve if we actually understood
- By Anonymous User on 03-24-25
By: Michael Lewis
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On Rumours
- How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done
- By: Cass R. Sunstein
- Narrated by: William Hope
- Length: 2 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 2008 US election, many Americans believed Barack Obama was a Muslim. The conspiracy theory book 9/11: The Big Lie has become a best seller. Hearsay has fuelled economic boom and bust - so much so that in many places it's now a crime to circulate false rumours about banks. Why do ordinary people accept rumours, even untrue, bizarre or damaging ones? Does it matter? And, if so, what should we do about it? As Cass Sunstein shows in his brilliant analysis of the phenomenon, there are many different ways in which rumours are dispersed.
By: Cass R. Sunstein
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Why We’re Getting Poorer
- A Realist’s Guide to the Economy and How We Can Fix It
- By: Cahal Moran
- Narrated by: Cahal Moran
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Did you know that while we think of money as notes issued by the government, the truth is that the overwhelming majority of money today is credit created by private banks? Did you know that the reason housing keeps getting less accessible is because we haven’t found a way to separate houses from land in our policies? And did you know that far from globalisation being a mystical force, certain countries and currencies have dominated the way it has played out – to their own advantage?
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must listen
- By Anonymous User on 05-22-25
By: Cahal Moran
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American Struggle
- Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union
- By: Jon Meacham
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of America offers an empowering lens to understand our national debates and divisions from 1619 to the present, with his signature commentary on the consequential speeches, letters, and essays that led us to this moment.
By: Jon Meacham
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The Sirens' Call
- How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource
- By: Chris Hayes
- Narrated by: Chris Hayes
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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We all feel it—the distraction, the loss of focus, the addictive focus on the wrong things for too long. We bump into the zombies on their phones in the street, and sometimes they’re us. We stare in pity at the four people at the table in the restaurant, all on their phones, and then we feel the buzz in our pocket. Something has changed utterly: for most of human history, the boundary between public and private has been clear, at least in theory. Now, as Chris Hayes writes, “With the help of a few tech firms, we basically tore it down in about a decade.”
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Thoughtful and captivating
- By Nancy on 02-02-25
By: Chris Hayes
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The Unaccountability Machine
- Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions - and How The World Lost its Mind
- By: Dan Davies
- Narrated by: Peter Dickson
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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When we avoid taking a decision, what happens to it? In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies examines why markets, institutions and even governments systematically generate outcomes that everyone involved claims not to want. He casts new light on the writing of Stafford Beer, a legendary economist who argued in the 1950s that we should regard organisations as artificial intelligences, capable of taking decisions that are distinct from the intentions of their members.
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Illuminating.
- By Amazon Customer on 04-12-25
By: Dan Davies
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We Have Never Been Woke
- The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite
- By: Musa al-Gharbi
- Narrated by: Musa al-Gharbi
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Society has never been more egalitarian—in theory. Prejudice is taboo, and diversity is strongly valued. At the same time, social and economic inequality have exploded. In We Have Never Been Woke, Musa al-Gharbi argues that these trends are closely related, each tied to the rise of a new elite—the symbolic capitalists.
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Insightful view into “symbolic capitalists”
- By Paul on 10-13-24
By: Musa al-Gharbi
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Abundance
- The Future Is Better Than You Think
- By: Steven Kotler, Peter H. Diamandis
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Space entrepreneur turned innovation pioneer Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler document how progress in artificial intelligence, robotics, digital manufacturing synthetic biology, and other exponentially growing technologies will enable us to make greater gains in the next two decades than we have in the previous 200 years.
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Perhaps multiply his time estimates by 10
- By Rick on 11-06-21
By: Steven Kotler, and others
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Chokepoints
- American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare
- By: Edward Fishman
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 17 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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It used to be that ravaging another country’s economy required blockading its ports and laying siege to its cities. Now all it takes is a statement posted online by the U.S. government. In Chokepoints, Edward Fishman, a former top State Department sanctions official, takes us deep into the back rooms of power to reveal the untold history of the last two decades of U.S. foreign policy, in which America renounced the gospel of globalization and waged a new kind of economic war.
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Impressive
- By Harry Helbock on 06-17-25
By: Edward Fishman
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Disposable
- America's Contempt for the Underclass
- By: Sarah Jones
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of Matthew Desmond’s Evicted and Andrea Elliot’s Invisible Child, Disposable is a poignant exploration of America’s underclass, left vulnerable by systemic racism and capitalism. Here, Sarah Jones delves into the lives of the essential workers, seniors, and people with disabilities who were disproportionately affected by COVID-19—not due to their age or profession, but because of the systemic inequality and poverty that left them exposed.
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Not comparable to Evicted but interesting
- By NMwritergal on 02-27-25
By: Sarah Jones
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Fixer-Upper
- How to Repair America’s Broken Housing Systems
- By: Jenny Schuetz
- Narrated by: Suzie Althens
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Much ink has been spilled in recent years talking about political divides and inequality in the United States. But these discussions too often miss one of the most important factors in the divisions among Americans: the fundamentally unequal nature of the nation's housing systems. Increasingly, important life outcomes—performance in school, employment, even life expectancy—are determined by where people live and the quality of homes they live in. Fixer-Upper is the first book assessing how local, state, and national housing policies affect people and communities.
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Good review
- By A. F. Davis on 09-16-22
By: Jenny Schuetz
Sort of boring
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Only through the beginning, so still on the fence about the argument. Why was Biden so unpopular if he was doing the right thing?
Bad sound quality!
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Must Read
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More historical than practical
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This is a fine and interesting contribution to modern political debates. However, the book struggles when it comes to defining solutions. Although it acknowledges their excesses, the book mourns the disappearance of bold government leaders like Robert Moses. I sympathize with this feeling, but we restricted the power of figures like Moses for good reason. The author distances himself from recent movements that aimed to fix some of these problems Like the so-called “YIMBYs,” because they are too “Jeffersonian“ for his tastes.
Instead, he calls for a return to “Hamiltonian“ governance. Meaning a stronger state wielding power boldly. However, he is not able to define what he thinks this means in practical terms. This would entail hard trade-offs, so I can forgive him for avoiding the subject. But for real change, we must face these issues head on. I think the book suffers for not taking “Jeffersonian“ solutions more seriously. In particular supporting the free market to do what it does more effectively.
Regardless, this book will be a good introduction to the complexities facing reform minded Progressives, and a useful supplement to other texts like Abundance.
A fine contribution to the abundance discourse, but lacking in solutions
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Probably the most frustrating feature is an insistence on labeling everything either Hamiltonian or Jeffersonian. Every other sentence is one or the other, and there are even gems like "These were the ripples created by throwing a Jeffersonian rock into a Hamiltonian pond". The first hundred times I saw Jeffersonian, I was wondering did he mean the Jefferson that was a slave-owning country squire, or the Jefferson who celebrated the bloodbath of the French revolution, or the Jefferson whose slippery political machinations make Mitch McConnell look straight by comparison. By extensive repetition and contrast, it became clear what the author meant was centralization vs decentralization, which are concepts which exist in any democracy and don't need to be tied to particular historical figures loaded with baggage. The book could likely be 20% shorter if he'd written H for Hamiltonian and J for Jeffersonian, or better yet D vs C.
As a political analysis of the 20th century, it falls far behind What's the Matter with Kansas or Nixonland.
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