On the last Angry Planet of 2025, novelist and Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay returns to reflect on a year of spectacle and cruelty.

Between the Pentagon’s boat strikes and the administration’s constant barrage of grotesque memes, it feels like America is a crueler and cruder place. For better and worse, the Presidency sets a moral standard for the country and Trump has lowered that standard. Klay wrote about all this in a piece at The New York Times and he’s here with us today to talk through it.

• “It’s too easy to condemn.”
• The project is spectacles of cruelty
• “You’re not supposed to be joining a gang of thugs.”
• What is this doing to us as a nation?
• The lust for cruelty and domination
• Klay’s review of Hegseth’s first year
• War vs. Defense
• “Read long things.”
• Living in the Hell of opinions
• Ending on a high note

What Trump Is Really Doing With His Boat Strikes

Trump Admin’s Racist Halo Memes Are ‘A New Level of Dehumanization of Immigrants’

Trump has accused boat crews of being narco-terrorists. The truth, AP found, is more nuanced

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Earlier this year journalist Ben Makuch caught a glimpse of Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, dancing at a club in Kyiv. It was a surreal moment, a snapshot of a tragic war that the West thinks is defining the future of conflict. Tech executives have flocked to Ukraine, courting the country in an attempt to get at a resource more precious than gold: data. Makuch was just there and has written about what he saw for The New Republic and he’s on the show today to talk about it.

• Some light smoking banter
• Ben’s timeline
• Google’s CEO dancing in a bar in Kyiv
• Ukraine as laboratory for war tech
• The JSOC era is over
• In defense of the majestic American turkey
• The great America vs China speculation
• War, cheaper
• On the actual frontline
• Wheat fields of fiber optic line
• The buzz of the drone
• Life in the bloodlands
• The human suffering of living in Ukraine
• FPV-made propaganda
• “Never underestimate human innovation when it comes to killing other humans.”
• What’s Erik Prince doing in Ukraine?

New York Times on Military Reform

The Medieval—and Highly Effective—Tactics of the Ukrainian Protests

Who Is St. Javelin and Why Is She a Symbol of the War in Ukraine?

‘Cope Cages’ on Busted Tanks Are a Symbol of Russia’s Military Failures

‘Unauthorized’ Edit to Ukraine’s Frontline Maps Point to Polymarket’s War Betting

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Another week and another Angry Planet about the horrifying systems that rule our lives.

Is there a depressive theme running through the work right now? Possibly. I promise we’ll soon replace it with rage.

This week on the show we have Sven Beckert to talk about his new book Capitalism: A Global History. Beckert is a professor of history at Harvard and his tome is an attempt to capture the entire history of an economic system in one book. It’s a doorstop, but it’s also readable and clear-eyed. Some come with me on a journey that runs through the plantations of South Carolina to the tech markets of Shenzhen.

• Cotton as an entry point to the history of capitalism
• The economic big bang
• Industrial Revolution as mutation
• “It’s still being born.”
• Human data is oil to be fracked
• The Quaker Oats metaphor
• “The market is God.”
• Ascribing morality to economics
• When Gary Hart ushered in Neoliberalism
• “Capitalism is a series of regime changes.”
• Moments of great change offer opportunities

Capitalism: A Global History

The Old Order Is Dead. Do Not Resuscitate.

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