“The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” Winston Churchill
BigTentUSA was honored to host an urgent and “must listen to” conversation with Ed Luce, U.S. national editor and columnist for the Financial Times, and Charlie Sykes, founder and former editor-at-large of The Bulwark and now the Substack Newsletter To The Contrary.
Luce and Sykes unpacked the anti-democratic warning signs and economic threats flashing across the global stage. And as democracy faces mounting threats around the world, Luce’s new biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski offers timely lessons. Luce and Sykes dove into why his legacy matters now—and what it teaches us about today’s shifting geopolitical landscape.
4 Call to Actions:
Subscribe to Charlie Sykes Newsletter HERE
Buy Ed Luce’s Book “Zbig” HERE
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R.E.M. have shared a new benefit EP titled Radio Free Europe 2025. The five-track project includes a new remix of the band’s 1981 debut single, “Radio Free Europe.”The EP is out now digitally. Proceeds will go to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), the editorially independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation that inspired R.E.M.’s early single. LINK
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Edward Luce is the US national editor and columnist at the Financial Times. Luce's forthcoming biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Zbig, The Life of Zbig Brzezinski: America's Great Power Prophet, comes out in May 2025.
Before that he was the FT's Washington Bureau chief. Other roles have included South Asia bureau chief, Capital Markets editor, and Philippines Correspondent. Luce was previously the speechwriter for the US Treasury Secretary, Lawrence H. Summers, in the Clinton administration.
He is the author of three highly acclaimed books, The Retreat of Western Liberalism (2017), Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent (2012), and In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India (2007).
Charlie Sykes is the author of the Substack newsletter, “To the Contrary,” and contributes to The Atlantic and MSNBC. His most recent book, How the Right Lost Its Mind, published by St. Martin’s Press, was released in October 2017.
Sykes has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Weekly Standard, The Washington Post, Commentary, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Time.com, USA Today, National Review, The New York Review of Books, the New York Daily News, and other national publications.
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