Explore every episode of the podcast What Happens Next in 6 Minutes

Our speaker is Ashley Rubin, a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the author of the Vanderbilt and WashU Report The Status of Scholarly Standards in Sociology.

I want to find out how the politicization of sociology has impacted what topics can be researched and what content can be taught.

Our speaker is Stanford Economics Professor Hongbin Li who will discuss his new book The Highest Exam: How Gaokao Shapes China.

I want to find out why a high stakes exam is critical for the Chinese in their college admission as well as getting a job. I want to learn why this exam is believed to be the one thing in Chinese society that cannot be corrupted.

Our first speaker is Allison Pugh who is a Professor of Sociology at John Hopkins and the author of a new book entitled The Last Human Job: Seeing Each Other in an Age of Automation.

Our second speaker is Eddie Monroe who I met on my first day of college and is a very close friend. He is working on teaching AI to love. He is the lead for building artificial intelligence for the Loving AI Research Project.

I want to learn about AI and human connections. I want to find out why Allison is worried that AI will undermine human relationships and risk greater loneliness. And I want to learn why Eddie is optimistic that AI can teach us to love.

Our speaker is Neil Gross, a Professor of Sociology at Colby who will discuss his book What Happened to College, How Politics Broke Higher Education and What We Can Do to Fix It.

I want to learn from Neil how college students’ political affiliations impact their friendships and dating, their classroom interactions with the faculty and other students, and their choice of major and career decisions.

Our speaker is Shlomo Angel who is a Professor of City Planning at NYU and the author of the book entitled Planet of Cities.

I want to learn why all the world’s cities look nearly identical from space, and why we should embrace sprawl and not fight it.

Our What Happens Next Culture Critic Darren Schwartz will be leading us in conversation. We also have a special guest my good friend Ethan Holland who has been a state prosecutor for the past 27 years.

This week’s episode is on Cape Fear. It started with John MacDonalds’ novel the Executioners that was written in the 1950s. The story was adapted into two movies and now a newly released Apple TV series.

The main character is Max Cady an ex-con who is pissed off at his defense attorney. Cady is played by Robert Mitchum in the original 1962 movie and Robert De Niro in the 1991 remake.

Our speaker is Rob Kurzban who is the author of a new book entitled All the Feels: The Evolved Function of Every Human Emotion and Sensation.

I want to learn from Rob about how our basic sensations like hunger, pain, and sense of awe can be explained by Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

Our speaker is Valerie Fridland who is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Nevada at Reno. She is the author of the new book entitled Why We Talk Funny: The Real Story Behind Our Accents.

I want to learn from Valerie why accents develop and if there are rhyme and reason for their differences. I grew up in Chicago and I don’t think I have an accent, yet I hear that the Chicago accent is the most difficult to understand. How is that even possible.

Our speaker is Yossi Sheffi who is a Professor of Engineering at MIT and is a leading scholar in supply chain management. He is the author of a new book entitled Unsafe at MIT: A Chronicle of a Campus War on the Jews.

I want to hear from Yossi about MIT’s failure to protect its Jewish and Israeli students from violence. I want to learn why MIT’s Administration managed the situation so poorly, and why MIT’s disregard for its own rules and regulations resulted in chaos.

Our speaker is Robert Colls who is the author of the Orwell biography entitled George Orwell: Life and Legacy.

You know his novels 1984 and Animal Farm but there is so much more to enjoy. I look forward to discussing with Robert about Orwell’s other major novels as well as his essays like Shooting an Elephant and a Hanging.

This episode is -- Is Nolan’s Odyssey a Masterpiece?

Our speakers are Scott Turow the author of Presumed Innocent and Darren Schwartz the What Happens Next Culture Critic.

Our speaker to day is Patrick Allitt who is a Professor of History at Emory where he teaches courses in the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. Patrick also lectures for the Teaching Company with the Great Courses. I have taken six of Patrick’s courses and they are absolutely fabulous that are available on their website.

I want to learn from Patrick about why the British government demanded that American colonies pay their fair for their own defense, and why the Crown chose war instead of reconciliation. Americans learn in school why the patriots fought against taxation without representation, but we didn’t consider why many American colonialists preferred King George’s rule.

Our speaker is H.W. Brands who is a Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of the biography American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington.

I want to learn from Hal about why Washington was chosen to be commander in chief of the revolutionary forces, the head of the constitutional congress, and our first president.

I want to hear about Washington’s leadership style and why it was appropriate for his times. I also want to learn about what happened in the Room Where it Happened.

The original Rocky film was released 50 years ago, and today we are going to review the entire Rocky series. Our discussion will be led by the What Happens Next Culture Critic Darren Schwartz with us is a special guest Scott Holstein who is one of my oldest friends.

My objective of this podcast is to discuss why Rocky won best picture and why you need to rewatch it. This series is a Stallone production: He wrote it, directed several of the films, and acted in it. He is the real hero that made this franchise successful, and my plan is to talk about how he did it.

Our speaker is Michael Kahana who is one of the world’s leading experts on memory. He is a former Professor of Psychology at Penn, and he is now the founder of Nia Therapeutics which is a company seeking to bring a medical device to patients that can radically improve memory for individuals with a brain injury, dementia, or Alzheimer’s.

I want to hear from Michael about how memory function works and how a medical device can improve human memory retrieval to improve cognitive abilities.

Our speaker is Patrick Ruffini is a pollster and the author of his own Substack entitled The Intersection that includes frequent analysis on topics like gerrymandering, realignment, and polling errors.  He is also the author of a book Party of the People.

I want to learn from Patrick about who will win the midterms in the House and Senate.  My plan is to get into the weeds and find out what the issues will be, what the state of play looks like now, and who will win the close races.

Our speaker is Paul Rozin who is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

This discussion was held at a conference that I hosted in Philadelphia so the questions will be asked by me as well as my friends.

I want to learn from Paul about why our future may have substantially less meat because of cost, health and moral reasons despite the fact that many of us find it delicious.

Our speaker is Seth Cropsey is the President of the Yorktown Institute and the author of a new book entitled Breaking the New Axis: A US Grand Strategy for Eurasia.

I want to learn from Seth about why the Eurasian land mass is critical to American security.  In addition, I want to hear about why the lack of ideological coherence of our adversaries is a weakness that we can exploit.

Our two speakers are Eyal Azoulay and Ellie who are the founders of an Israeli Not-for-profit called ColEven. Terrorists successfully move money from their Western supporters to the Middle East to fund their nefarious affairs. This happens despite the best efforts of American and European banks who spend billions of dollars trying to stop it.

ColEven uses the latest technologies in coordination with a staff of former Israeli intelligence professionals who inform the banks that bad actors are using their institutions.

I was introduced to Coleven at the Miami Beach Impact Forum. This organization has an annual Jewish charity shark tank event. At the dinner, four different charities explained what they do and then the audience picks charities to support. I was super impressed by Coleven’s mission and accomplishments and donated to them.

Our speaker is Daniel Diermeier who is the Chancelor of Vanderbilt.  I want to hear from Daniel about how the administration can build a culture of political neutrality on campus. I want to learn about creating a university culture that encourages free speech and allows for debate without shaming the opposing perspective.

Our speaker is Ari Ciment. Ari ran the Covid Ward at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami Beach and is the former president of the hospital’s medical staff.  He is probably best known for being my doctor.

Our speaker is Polk Wagner, who's the deputy dean of Penn Law School, who has been charged with figuring out how to adapt the law school curriculum to the AI revolution. I want to hear from Polk about how law schools will adapt as their graduate's jobs will no longer focus on document creation, but instead more complex legal analysis.

This podcast was taped at a conference that I hosted so many of the questions will be asked by my friends. And in the audience was David Stellings, who's the managing partner of law firm Leif Cabreze. I want to learn from David about how AI would change the structure of law firms as the work process will need to change and I want to find out if the by the hour billing practice will end and what will replace it.

I also want to hear from my friends who use legal services about how they plan to use AI to negotiate contracts, to understand complex legal agreements, and to draft documents that previously would have been delegated to their attorneys.

Our speaker is Josh Gottlieb who is a professor of Economics at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Health and Co-Director of the Becker Friedman Institute’s Health Economics Initiative.

I want to learn from Josh about what the barriers are to getting more doctors and what we can do to solve seemingly intractable problems to increase the quality and productivity of our healthcare.

This podcast was taped at a conference where I hosted several Penn Professors on a variety of topics. The audience included my friends who will join me in asking questions.

Our speaker is Phil Tetlock who is a Professor at Wharton and the author of a book entitled Superforecasting. Often, we get our news and analysis from experts who make predictions that are terribly wrong. Phil has analyzed methods of forecasting and has found individuals and groups who are fantastic predictors of politics, war, and sports.

I want to learn how AI and superforecasters working together will revolutionize the prediction process and why that is helpful to markets and mankind.

This podcast was taped at a conference where I hosted several Penn Professors on a variety of topics. The audience included my friends who will join me in asking questions.

Our speaker is Karl Ulrich who is a Professor at Penn specializing in Industrial Design and has written a book entitled Product Design and Development.

Karl will speak about designing an ice cream scooper that is beautiful, sexy, and more useful than any that had been manufactured before.

This podcast was taped at a conference where I hosted several Penn Professors on various topics. The audience included my friends who will join me in asking questions.

Our speaker is Cesar de la Fuente is the Director of Penn’s Machine Biology Group. His team uses AI with biology to create new antibiotics that hopefully can save millions of lives.

This podcast was taped at a conference where I hosted several Penn Professors on various topics. The audience included my friends who will join me in asking questions.

Fritz Breithaupt is the speaker, and he is a humanities scholar as well as a cognitive scientist at UPenn where he is studying the relationship between narratives and empathy. Fritz is the author of a new book entitled The Narrative Brain: The Stories Our Neurons Tell.

I want Fritz to talk about how we experience fictional stories in our daydreams to achieve personal growth.

This podcast was taped at a conference where I hosted several Penn Professors on various topics.

The audience included my friends who will join me in asking questions. Our speaker is Stan Goldfarb who was previously the Dean at UPenn responsible for the medical school curriculum.

Our speaker is Peter Grace who is a New Zealand based academic who has a recent book entitled The Intelligence Intellectuals: Social Scientists and the Making of the CIA.

I want to learn from Peter about how just after World War 2 and at the height of the Cold War, American academics worked inside the CIA’s research and analysis department to forecast enemy activity, and how they set up methods and processes that have been applied by the CIA ever since.

Our speaker is Eitan Shamir who is a Political Science Professor at Bar Ilan University, and he previously the head of the National Security Doctrine Department at the Office of Israel’s Prime Minister.

I want to find out from Eitan why we attacked Iran and have we achieved are primary war aims.

Our first speaker is Geoff Baird who is a very close family friend. Geoff recently co-wrote a book entitled The Signal Solution: How Smart Colleges Stop Chasing Applications and Start Converting Students.

Geoff is a consultant working with higher ed institutions to help them persuade accepted student applicants to attend their school. Geoff is particularly excited about using AI to figure out who the admissions committee should focus on in their marketing efforts.

Our second speaker is Bob Zemsky who is a Professor of Education at UPenn and the university’s chief planning officer. He is also the Co-Founder of College-in3- Exchange and is the author of 14 books including The College Stress Test.

Our speaker is Mark Penn who was a senior advisor to President Clinton and was Hillary’s chief strategist for her senate and presidential campaigns. Mark is now the CEO of Stagwell which is a advertising and marketing company.

I want to learn from Mark why the press thinks that the military campaign in Iran is failing and why the Democrats are not supporting arm sales to their Israeli allies at this critical juncture.

I’m joined by John McGinnis, a constitutional law professor at Northwestern.

The Court has decided that about $165 billion will be refunded to importers—money that, in many cases, could be seen as a windfall. I think there may be room here for a bipartisan solution, and John helps us think through what Congress can—and can’t—do.

Today’s topic is Iran’s Rope-a-Dope Strategy.

Our speaker is Anthony King who is a Professor of War at Exeter University in the UK.

Today’s topic is How the Rich Improve Our Democracy.

Our speaker is John McGinnis who is a constitutional law professor at Northwestern Law School.

Today’s topic is Allies Fighting Together. Our speaker is Yaakov Katz the former Editor in Chief of the Jerusalem Post and the author of While Israel Slept about the 10/7 massacre.

I want to learn from Yaakov about how the US and Israel are fighting together and how it is significantly different from our previous wars.

Our speaker is Hal Brands who is a Professor of Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins and former Special Assistant to the Secretary of War for Strategic Planning.

I want to find out from Hal what are our objectives in the war in Iran, how effective American and Israel’s military has been in destroying its adversaries, and what we should expect Iran to do to try to do to improve its negotiating position.

Our speaker is James Holmes who is a Professor of Maritime Strategy at the US Naval War College. He is also the author of the book Red Star over the Pacific.

I want to learn from James about what strategies the US Navy has to open up the Strait of Hormuz including the use of convoys, area defense, tactical offense, and arming the tankers to beat back the influx of drones.

Our speaker is Brig. Gen. (Res.) Eran Ortal is a former Israeli Defense Forces officer who previously served as the Commander of the Dado Center for Interdisciplinary Military Thinking in the IDF Operations Directorate. Today he is the Head of the Military Program at the Begin–Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA Center) and a visiting scholar at the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC). Eran is the author of the book “The Battle Before the War.”

I want to learn from Eran about how the American and Israeli military have moved their command center to the battlefield so that the target can be destroyed before the Iranians have time to react.

Our speaker is Amir Avivi who is a retired Israeli Brigadier General and the Chairman of the Israel Defense and Security Forum – ISDF. Amir is the author of a recent book entitled No Retreat: How to Secure Israel for Generations to Come.

I want to learn how Israel was able to achieve surprise with its initial attack of the Iranian leadership. I plan to discuss the implications of a compromised Iranian command and control structure and why Iran is attacking its neutral neighbors.

Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What Happens Next is a podcast which covers economics, politics, and history. Today’s topic is Bolton on the War in Iran.

John Bolton was the National Security Advisor in Trump’s first term. I want to know from John if attacking Iran is a good idea? Whether it is legal under international law and is constitutional? How he would handle the diplomacy with our allies if he were back in charge, and how this will end up?

Our speaker is Nick Griffin who is the author of The Year of Dangerous Days: Riots, Refugees, and Cocaine in 1980, and he spoke about that book on a previous podcast. Today, Nick is going to speak about his new play English Only which had its opening run at the Colony Theater in Miami Beach.

In 1980 125,000 Cubans arrived in Miami in two months and many of these new Spanish speakers were not fluent in English and that frustrated many native Miamians. I want to discuss with Nick the importance of English being the lingua franca in the US and whether the government should encourage its use by recent immigrants.

President Trump recently nominated Kevin Warsh to be the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.  In October 2022, Kevin spoke on What Happens Next along with my old boss Myron Scholes who was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

In this episode I include excerpts from that previous meeting as well as an additional interview with John Cochrane who is a Professor of Finance and Economics at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute, and he will discuss the challenges that Kevin will face in his new job.

Our speaker is Henry Olsen who is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Henry studies American politics with a focus on populism.

I want to learn from Henry about why Trump is successful with his non-traditional and outrageous speaking style. No other world leader talks like Trump with the use of threats and hyperbole.  Is that going to change if there is a perception that it is successful? I want to find out if Henry thinks that we should expect other politicians to mimic Trump’s methods in social media and public speaking in the 2028 presidential campaign.

Our speaker is Giles Tremlett who is the author of several books on the Spanish civil war and his most recent work is entitled El Generalisimo: A Biography of Francisco Franco.

I want to hear from Giles about what triggered the civil war, why did it become a proxy war between Hitler and Stalin, and what happened to Spain after Franco’s nationalists won the conflict.

Our speaker is Francisco Rodriguez who is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the author of the recent book The Collapse of Venezuela: Scorched Earth Politics and Economic Decline, 2012-2020.

I want to learn from Francisco about the importance of sanctions to explain the catastrophic performance of Venezuela’s economy for the past 20 years. I also want to hear about whether the US should encourage a negotiated settlement between members of the regime and its opposition to create a functioning civil society.

Our speaker is Amir Avivi who is a retired Israeli Brigadier General and the Chairman of the Israel Defense and Security Forum – ISDF. Amir is the author of a recent book entitled No Retreat: How to Secure Israel for Generations to Come.

I want to learn from Amir about why he thinks that Israel should encourage the Palestinians to govern themselves using city states instead of a single state sovereign. In addition, I want to discuss why Amir believes that Israel’s previous negotiating position was flawed and that going forward that Israel should focus foremost seeking borders that can be easily defended with its neighbors and with the Palestinians.

Our first speaker is Seth Jones who is the president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies – CSIS. Seth is also the author of a new book entitled The American Edge: The Military Tech Nexus and the Sources of Great Power Dominance. Our second speaker is a very good friend of mine and golf partner David Susser who is the President of HEICO Distribution Group which is a leading company in commercial and defense aviation.

Our speaker is Abby Pogrebin who is the author of My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew. Abby was previously the President of the Board of Central Synagogue where I am a member. Central’s head rabbi is our friend Angela Buchdahl who has managed Central to be the leading reform synagogue in the world.

Our speaker is William Howell who is the inaugural Dean of Johns Hopkins School of Government and Policy. This is a new academic division located at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in DC that plans to develop innovative, evidenced based public policy solutions. William is the co-author with Terry Moe of a new book entitled Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency. I want to learn from William about why he opposes the will of a popularly elected president and why he thinks that congress is incapable of controlling expanding presidential power.