Navigating Progress and Backlash with Fareed Zakaria

Big change only happens when someone tells a story people can believe in, and few people tell stories about the world better than Fareed Zakaria, bestselling author, The Washington Post columnist, and CNN host. In this episode, Fareed joins S2G’s Sanjeev Krishnan and Frédéric Michel, strategic advisor to Lupa Systems and former chief strategy and communications advisor to Emmanuel Macron, to unpack the forces rewiring global politics and markets, from why every successful political movement runs on a story to why private companies, not governments, are increasingly the most powerful actors of our era. He asks whether those companies will step up to fill the gaps left by policymakers or just keep making their one narrow ask, and delivers a striking reality check on American market dominance, where the US is 4% of the world's population but 70% of global capital markets. The conversation then turns to AI, and whether it will be winner-take-all or something more like electricity, a commodity that diffuses everywhere and benefits everyone. It's a fast-moving exchange that ends somewhere very human: if AI can write your column, what exactly are you still here to do?

Further Reading:

Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present

Chapters:

2:50 — The French Revolution and why change must be organic
5:00 — Why narrative wins: Trump, Brexit, and the Bezos bet
7:00 — You can't prevent change, but you can arm people for it
10:00 — The backlash against managerial elites
13:30 — When companies fill the gaps left by government
18:00 — America's market dominance and the big AI bet
20:10 — What's left for humans in the age of AI

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