In which I write about interesting things that I have read, heard and seen during the past week:

Destination: Concord Museum – Located at 53 Cambridge Turnpike, Concord Museum is not far from downtown Concord, Massachusetts. The mission of the museum is to share objects and stories about the many elements of the town’s history including its original Indigenous inhabitants; the arrival of the English; the accomplishments and challenges faced by the town’s Black residents; the accomplishments and challenges faced by the town’s female residents; the April 19, 1775, fight at the Old North Bridge that helped start the American Revolution; the town’s role in the abolitionist movement and the Civil War; the many writers of the Transcendentalist movement who lived in the town; and how the town has commemorated all of the above. If you want to understand what happened on April 18 & 19, 1775, this museum is a good place to start. A video storyboard map of the vicinity with accompanying narration provides a timeline of the British advance from and retreat back to Boston and all that happened in between. Period artifacts such as one of the two lamps that hung in the steeple of the Old North Church that evening, enrich the story. I’ve been to Concord Museum many times but I visited it again to see a temporary exhibit called “Revolutionary Legacies” that uses artifacts to explore how the events of April 19th have been remembered and celebrated and how commemorations like the 250th of the founding of the United States cause us to reflect not just on the past but also on how we see our legacy in the future. 

Podcast: Impolitic with John Heilemann – On this episode, host John Heilemann interviewed Josh Tyrangiel, a contributor to The Atlantic who discussed his new book, AI For Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter. The book grew out of a column on AI that Tyrangiel wrote for The Washington Post in which he found people in different fields, mostly outside of Silicon Valley, who were finding new and innovative ways in which artificial intelligence could help them do their jobs better. I haven’t read the book and probably won’t, not because I don’t find the topic interesting but because I have so many other books waiting to be read that I’ll never get to it. But I do find the topic of how to use AI to be fascinating and in this hourlong podcast, Tyrangiel seemed clear-eyed about the possibilities but also the challenges. A big part of all the jobs I have held in my life (Army intelligence officer, lawyer, register of deeds) and in my current avocation as an historian, has been finding and managing information. Since my first experience with a word processor in the early 1980s, I’ve been convinced that computers are a terrific tool for helping with those tasks. From my first use of ChatGPT in December 2022, I saw the enormous potential of AI and nothing I’ve seen since has changed that opinion. That’s the “glass is half full” view of AI. The “glass is half empty” take which Tyrangiel and I share, is that the people who are the chief spokespersons for AI are also the one who stand to benefit the most from it financially. They are also the same people who assured us that social media would be such a positive good for society. That turned out to be about as far from the truth as you can get, so these guys (and they always seem to be males) have no credibility. Their embrace of Trumpism also demonstrates that they have no regard for ordinary people. They want to maximize their power and profits and will ally themselves with whichever political leaders will help facilitate that. For that reason, I see the groundswell of opposition to AI – most recently in fights against data centers and college graduates booing commencement speakers who speak approvingly of AI – as well-founded. For all the good that AI might provide, its current trajectory will eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs with no provision for what the displaced employees will do. If our government was looking out for the best interests of regular people, it would be imposing taxes on profits derived from AI to fund retraining and support for those who lose their jobs. The middle part of our country was shattered by unmanaged deindustrialization in the 1990s and we’re on that same pathway again. However, because of unlimited campaign spending, our government now seems to work for those who profit the most from things like AI and those people have no interest in reducing their profits and power for any reason, so there has been no meaningful effort from either party to address this problem. 

YouTube: Conan O’Brien Commencement Address at Harvard – Conan O’Brien, Harvard class of 1985, returned to the school on May 28, 2026, to deliver this year’s commencement address. Employing his well-known sense of humor and a heavy dose of self-deprecation, O’Brien delivered many insider remarks about life at the school that would have been particularly entertaining to the graduates. He also made some serious points, telling graduates to wear their Ivy League degrees lightly, making it “the least important thing people know about you.”  He criticized the current regime in Washington, saying they viewed empathy as a weakness and acted like America stands “supreme and alone.” At the same time, O’Brien lauded the vital contributions of international students to American society. 

Book Review: The World’s Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations” by Sebastian Mallaby (2004). Most of us have heard of the World Bank but few know anything about it. Recently I heard a podcast interview of Sebastian Mallaby, a longtime journalist who has written a handful of nonfiction books. While the podcast topic was a more recent book, Mallaby talked a bit about his 2004 biography of James Wolfensohn (1933 to 2020), an Australian-born investment banker who served as the president of the World Bank from 1995 to 2005. Established along with the International Money Fund in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference to help rebuild countries devastated by World War II, the World Bank continues to operate as an international financial institution providing low-interest loans, grants, and technical assistance to developing nations, aiming to reduce global poverty and promote sustainable economic growth. Wolfensohn gained prominence for his role in bringing Chrysler out of bankruptcy and led Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. He was nominated for the presidency of the World Bank by President Bill Clinton (it’s an international institution but since the US is the largest investor, its nominee is usually elected president). This book documents the turbulence experienced by the World Bank during Wolfensohn’s tenure from internal factors (bureaucratic infighting; attempts to reform the culture and operational rules; dealing with NGOs) and external factors (the war in Bosnia; the AIDs epidemic; the 9/11 terrorist attacks; and the Iraq War). Mallaby’s assessment of Wolfensohn’s tenure is mixed: he tackled some tough issues that needed to be addressed but he sometimes fell into the frequent trap that the management practices of American private industry are sometimes not all that they are made out to be in the media and therefore are not always appropriate for emulation in government and government-adjacent institutions.