Yang Speaks Archives

The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream

Steve Case, cofounder of America Online and Revolution and New York Times bestselling author of The Third Wave, shows how entrepreneurs across the country are building groundbreaking companies, renewing communities, and creating new jobs—in the process reimagining the American landscape and bringing people together around a shared future. […Learn More]

The Loneliest Americans

In 1965, a new immigration law lifted a century of restrictions against Asian immigrants to the United States. Nobody, including the lawmakers who passed the bill, expected it to transform the country’s demographics. But over the next four decades, millions arrived, including Jay Caspian Kang’s parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. They came with almost no understanding of their new home, much less the history of “Asian America” that was supposed to define them. […Learn More]

Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World

A brilliantly reported, global look at universal basic income—a stipend given to every citizen—and why it might be necessary in an age of rising inequality, persistent poverty, and dazzling technology.

Imagine if every month the government deposited $1,000 into your bank account, with nothing expected in return. It sounds crazy. But it has become one of the most influential and hotly debated policy ideas of our time. […Learn More]

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Start Up Delusion

The definitive inside story of WeWork, its audacious founder, and what its epic unraveling says about a financial system drunk on the elixir of Silicon Valley innovation—from the Wall Street Journal correspondents (recently featured in the WeWork Hulu documentary) whose scoop-filled reporting hastened the company’s downfall.
WeWork would be worth $10 trillion, more than any other company in the world. It wasn’t just an office space provider. It was a tech company—an AI startup, even. Its WeGrow schools and WeLive residences would revolutionize education and housing. One day, mused founder Adam Neumann, a Middle East peace accord would be signed in a WeWork. The company might help colonize Mars. And Neumann would become the world’s first trillionaire. […Learn More]

Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse

Everything you need to know about “deepfakes” and what could become the biggest information and communications meltdown in world history.

In a world of deepfakes, it will soon be impossible to tell what is real and what isn’t. As advances in artificial intelligence, video creation, and online trolling continue, deepfakes pose not only a real threat to democracy — they threaten to take voter manipulation to unprecedented new heights. […Learn More]

Humankind: A Hopeful History

If there is one belief that has united the left and the right, psychologists and philosophers, ancient thinkers and modern ones, it is the tacit assumption that humans are bad. It’s a notion that drives newspaper headlines and guides the laws that shape our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we’re taught, are by nature selfish and governed primarily by self-interest. […Learn More]