Episode Transcript: #1573 - Matthew Yglesias

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Showing by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!

Since we don't record an intro for Spotify anymore, so tell me who you are and what you do.

I'm Matthew Glacias, I'm the host of the Weeds Podcast, the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm also the author of the Slow Boring newsletter and a book, One Billion Americans.

And that's what I want to talk to you about. Pull the sucker up so it's like one fist away from your finger.

Alright, closer. One billion Americans.

That's a lot.

So explain if you could, give us the cliff notes of what the concept of one billion Americans is.

Okay, so the concept is that there should be a billion Americans.

I like to keep it simple.

So here's the idea, right? So we've got China, it's growing out there.

There's a lot of concern internationally about America's role in the world.

We've also got a lot of polarization in our politics, a lot of gridlock, deadlock, kind of stagnation and infighting.

And I'm a politics guy, I live in D.C., I cover Congress.

I wanted to write a book that kind of elevates beyond that, thinks about America's role in the world and says,

the way we are going to meet this challenge of rising international competition is the way we became such a great power historically.

And that's by growing our population, with more openness to immigrants, doing more to support parents and young families.

And then everything that comes downstream from that, you know, where are people going to live, how are we going to get around, how are we going to solve those problems?