Anand Giridharadas in Conversation with Noam Chomsky

Back on October 11th, we hosted a conversation with Anand Giridharadas, the author of Winners Take All, our 2018 Business Book of the Year. He was joined by legendary academic, author, and political activist Noam Chomsky to discuss Anand’s new book, The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy.  

It was a wide-ranging and wonderfully verbose conversation, one it felt like only these two individuals could have had at this time. It is not often in our current political culture, dominated by hyperbolic rhetoric and partisan soundbites, that we get a chance to listen to two individuals talk at such length and breadth about the forces that shaped our current political moment and look in a nuanced way how we might best lend our hands to shape it anew. In these historic and turbulent times, with so much on the line for democracy around the world, they were uniquely able to place today's social, rhetorical, and political landscape in a broader historical context and left us with a little more hope in the end.  

It was an event exclusive to those who had pre-ordered signed copies of the book, but the author and publisher gave us their blessing to share it with a wider audience after a month's time. So, without further ado, here is that conversation.

As Anand recently wrote, the hope of his new book “is admittedly big: to chart a road away from our trajectory into tyranny and civil war—and toward a thriving multi-racial, self-governing, liberal democracy, with justice and freedom for all people.”

If you share that hope, give the interview a listen to hear more about what he learned from people who are battling in the arena of public opinion and working to build bridges in our polarized world. And if you like what you hear, we hope you'll pick up a copy of The Persuaders from your local bookseller.