
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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By: Eric Heinze
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Recoding America
- Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better
- By: Jennifer Pahlka
- Narrated by: Jennifer Pahlka
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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A bold call to reexamine how our government operates—and sometimes fails to—from President Obama’s former deputy chief technology officer and the founder of Code for America.
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Very good, minimally partisan.
- By 95Rb35 on 11-25-23
By: Jennifer Pahlka
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Money, Lies, and God
- Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy
- By: Katherine Stewart
- Narrated by: Patricia Rodriguez
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down.
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Powerful and Important work.
- By Frank Nance on 02-28-25
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Who Is Government?
- The Untold Story of Public Service
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Michael Lewis, Sarah Vowell, John Lanchester, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The government is a vast, complex system that Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone. Michael Lewis invited his favorite writers to find someone doing an interesting job for the government and write about them in a special in-depth series for the Washington Post.
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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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Climate Justice
- What Rich Nations Owe the World—and the Future
- By: Cass R. Sunstein
- Narrated by: Byron Wagner
- Length: 3 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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If you're injuring someone, you should stop—and pay for the damage you’ve caused. Why, this book asks, does this simple proposition, generally accepted, not apply to climate change? In Climate Justice, a bracing challenge to status-quo thinking on the ethics of climate change, renowned author and legal scholar Cass Sunstein clearly frames what’s at stake and lays out the moral imperative: When it comes to climate change, everyone must be counted equally, regardless of when they live or where they live.
By: Cass R. Sunstein
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Poverty for Profit
- How Corporations Get Rich Off America's Poor
- By: Anne Kim
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lam
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Poverty is big business in America. The federal government spends about $900 billion a year on programs that directly or disproportionately impact poor Americans, including antipoverty programs. States and local governments spend tens of billions more. Ironically, these enormous sums fuel the "corporate poverty complex," a vast web of hidden industries and entrenched private-sector interests that profit from the bureaucracies regulating the lives of the poor.
By: Anne Kim
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A Man of Bad Reputation
- The Murder of John Stephens and the Contested Landscape of North Carolina Reconstruction
- By: Drew A. Swanson
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Five years after the Civil War, North Carolina Republican state senator John W. Stephens was found murdered inside the Caswell County Courthouse. Stephens fought for the rights of freedpeople, and his killing by the Ku Klux Klan ultimately led to insurrection, Governor William W. Holden's impeachment, and the early unwinding of Reconstruction in North Carolina.
By: Drew A. Swanson
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Elite Networks
- The Political Economy of Inequality
- By: Vuk Vukovic
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 16 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Elite networks are informal social networks between politicians in power and top executives of politically connected firms where personal ties and long-term interactions build trust and loyalty between involved actors. Both groups draw benefits from these interactions; politicians stay in power, and corporate executives extract rents for their firms. Firms reward connected executives with higher salaries thus widening the dispersion of earnings in society. In Elite Networks, Vuk Vukovic offers a different perspective on the long-run origins of inequality.
By: Vuk Vukovic
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The Technological Republic
- Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West
- By: Alexander C. Karp, Nicholas W. Zamiska
- Narrated by: Nicholas W. Zamiska
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In this groundbreaking treatise, Palantir co-founder and CEO Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska offer a searing critique of our collective abandonment of ambition, arguing that in order for the U.S. and its allies to retain their global edge—and preserve the freedoms we take for granted—the software industry must renew its commitment to addressing our most urgent challenges, including the new arms race of artificial intelligence. The government, in turn, must embrace the most effective features of the engineering mindset that has propelled Silicon Valley’s success.
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Premise no longer applicable
- By Marion B. McGovern on 02-28-25
By: Alexander C. Karp, and others
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Spare Me
- By: Anthony Cumia, Johnny Russo - foreword
- Narrated by: Anthony Cumia
- Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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You won't want to miss the explosive insights and unfiltered perspective in legendary broadcaster Anthony Cumia’s latest book. In his much-anticipated second book, Spare Me, radio personality and podcaster Anthony Cumia returns, unleashing a scorching and unapologetic commentary that spans the spectrum from politics to entertainment, while sparing no particular individual deserving of his legendary wrath.
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great listen!
- By free thinker. on 02-19-25
By: Anthony Cumia, and others
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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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Left Adrift
- What Happened to Liberal Politics
- By: Timothy Shenk
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Politics today doesn’t look much like it did fifty years ago. Electorates that were once divided by economics—with blue-collar workers supporting leftwing parties while the wealthy trended right—are now more likely to split along cultural lines. Campaigns have gone high-tech, hoping to turn electioneering into a science. Meanwhile, a permanent class of political consultants has emerged, with teams of pollsters, message gurus, and field operatives. Taken together, all this amounts to a silent revolution that has transformed politics across much of the globe.
By: Timothy Shenk
What listeners say about Why Nothing Works
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- bartlett c naylor
- 03-02-25
Bad sound quality!
I downloaded three times thinking it was my fault. Recording has por sound quality and needs to be remastered.
Only through the beginning, so still on the fence about the argument. Why was Biden so unpopular if he was doing the right thing?
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- Paul
- 03-03-25
Sort of boring
While the intro was fun, they bulk of the book ended up reading as a somewhat tedious history. There was an interesting story in the end about Massachusetts-Quebec power pipeline. The book would have benefited from more of these
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