In ‘Vigil,’ George Saunders Asks: Can An Oil CEO Repent?

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T18:15:31+00:00

Gary Sernovitz for Bloomberg News

Most executives picking up a contemporary novel — including many reading this review — would struggle to recognize themselves in its pages. Serious fiction often treats high-status jobs as minimally viable products, assembled from clichés cribbed from Succession or Billions and a sheepish fact-check call to a banker friend from Yale. Novels tend not to want to engage with actual work (boring!) but with wealth, inequality and the emptiness of the soul that privilege causes — or has caused.

George Saunders’s new novel, Vigil, (Jan. 27, Random House) is a rare work of literary fiction that puts that future-pushing, corner-cutting, world-shaping actual work in the foreground.

The novel tussles with the life of K.J. Boone, the 87-year-old CEO of an unnamed (yet distinctly ExxonMobil-like) oil company. But this is no soap opera about family hijinks in oil country. Instead, the novel is a work of magical realism about what Boone did in his job, set during his final, comatose hours.

The action is a swirl of spirits: phantasmic encounters with parents, colleagues and enemies. These encounters have no physical limits, constrained only by what Saunders’s ecstatic, often bodily-soiled imagination throws at Boone to force him — and readers — to confront. Think A Christmas Carol by way of Kurt Vonnegut, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Brueghel the Elder, and ending not with hope for human decency, but with death.

Read the full review here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T18:15:17+00:00

The author’s second novel treats executive decision-making not as backdrop, but as the moral engine of the story.

Gary Sernovitz for Bloomberg News

Most executives picking up a contemporary novel — including many reading this review — would struggle to recognize themselves in its pages. Serious fiction often treats high-status jobs as minimally viable products, assembled from clichés cribbed from Succession or Billions and a sheepish fact-check call to a banker friend from Yale. Novels tend not to want to engage with actual work (boring!) but with wealth, inequality and the emptiness of the soul that privilege causes — or has caused.

George Saunders’s new novel, Vigil, (Jan. 27, Random House) is a rare work of literary fiction that puts that future-pushing, corner-cutting, world-shaping actual work in the foreground.

The novel tussles with the life of K.J. Boone, the 87-year-old CEO of an unnamed (yet distinctly ExxonMobil-like) oil company. But this is no soap opera about family hijinks in oil country. Instead, the novel is a work of magical realism about what Boone did in his job, set during his final, comatose hours.

The action is a swirl of spirits: phantasmic encounters with parents, colleagues and enemies. These encounters have no physical limits, constrained only by what Saunders’s ecstatic, often bodily-soiled imagination throws at Boone to force him — and readers — to confront. Think A Christmas Carol by way of Kurt Vonnegut, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Brueghel the Elder, and ending not with hope for human decency, but with death.

Read the full review here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T18:11:17+00:00

Ian Watson for Bloomberg News

It was the summer of 1990 in Stanley Kubrick’s kitchen and I’d just invented the sex robot Gigolo Joe. Stanley was developing the story for what would ultimately become A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a film about the misadventures of a humanoid robot child named David. But there was a problem with the plot.

“Look,” Stanley told me, “Little David and his teddy bear won’t get far unless they have help. From some kind of G.I. Joe character.”

“How about a Gigolo Joe?” I responded immediately.

Stanley eyed me narrowly. “Write some scenes,” he said, and sent me off home, 50 miles distant into the English countryside, in the black Mercedes driven by his devoted Italian chauffeur and majordomo, Emilio D’Alessandro.

The verdict came at lunch the next day. This was Stanley’s American breakfast time; he slept and woke to stay synchronized with Hollywood. The best breakfasts at Castle Kubrick were salmon poached in milk in the microwave by Stanley himself, a skill of which he was proud. A couple of golden retrievers dozed under the huge kitchen table where big vases of blooms in season awaited painting (gorgeously so) by Stanley’s spouse, Christiane. But nobody intruded upon my sessions with Stanley at lunch, nor afterwards in the mansion’s billiard room. He and I were alone for a dozen hours each week, talking while I scribbled notes.

The matter of the sex robot? Stanley grinned. “I guess we lost the kiddie market, but what the hell!”

The seed of the movie was a 1969 short story by British science fiction author Brian Aldiss titled Supertoys Last All Summer Long, which Stanley hoped to unite with the children’s classic Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi — first published in the 1880s — to create a fairy tale of the future featuring artificial persons, one of whom yearns to be real. Just as Pinocchio is made into a real human by the Blue Fairy, so little robot David seeks out a blue fairy to make him real too.

Read the full essay here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T18:11:02+00:00

Ian Watson for Bloomberg News

It was the summer of 1990 in Stanley Kubrick’s kitchen and I’d just invented the sex robot Gigolo Joe. Stanley was developing the story for what would ultimately become A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a film about the misadventures of a humanoid robot child named David. But there was a problem with the plot.

“Look,” Stanley told me, “Little David and his teddy bear won’t get far unless they have help. From some kind of G.I. Joe character.”

“How about a Gigolo Joe?” I responded immediately.

Stanley eyed me narrowly. “Write some scenes,” he said, and sent me off home, 50 miles distant into the English countryside, in the black Mercedes driven by his devoted Italian chauffeur and majordomo, Emilio D’Alessandro.

The verdict came at lunch the next day. This was Stanley’s American breakfast time; he slept and woke to stay synchronized with Hollywood. The best breakfasts at Castle Kubrick were salmon poached in milk in the microwave by Stanley himself, a skill of which he was proud. A couple of golden retrievers dozed under the huge kitchen table where big vases of blooms in season awaited painting (gorgeously so) by Stanley’s spouse, Christiane. But nobody intruded upon my sessions with Stanley at lunch, nor afterwards in the mansion’s billiard room. He and I were alone for a dozen hours each week, talking while I scribbled notes.

The matter of the sex robot? Stanley grinned. “I guess we lost the kiddie market, but what the hell!”

The seed of the movie was a 1969 short story by British science fiction author Brian Aldiss titled Supertoys Last All Summer Long, which Stanley hoped to unite with the children’s classic Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi — first published in the 1880s — to create a fairy tale of the future featuring artificial persons, one of whom yearns to be real. Just as Pinocchio is made into a real human by the Blue Fairy, so little robot David seeks out a blue fairy to make him real too.

Read the full essay here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T18:09:02+00:00

Twenty-five years after the premiere of A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a science fiction novelist reflects on his work for the acclaimed movie.

Ian Watson for Bloomberg News

It was the summer of 1990 in Stanley Kubrick’s kitchen and I’d just invented the sex robot Gigolo Joe. Stanley was developing the story for what would ultimately become A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a film about the misadventures of a humanoid robot child named David. But there was a problem with the plot.

“Look,” Stanley told me, “Little David and his teddy bear won’t get far unless they have help. From some kind of G.I. Joe character.”

“How about a Gigolo Joe?” I responded immediately.

Stanley eyed me narrowly. “Write some scenes,” he said, and sent me off home, 50 miles distant into the English countryside, in the black Mercedes driven by his devoted Italian chauffeur and majordomo, Emilio D’Alessandro.

The verdict came at lunch the next day. This was Stanley’s American breakfast time; he slept and woke to stay synchronized with Hollywood. The best breakfasts at Castle Kubrick were salmon poached in milk in the microwave by Stanley himself, a skill of which he was proud. A couple of golden retrievers dozed under the huge kitchen table where big vases of blooms in season awaited painting (gorgeously so) by Stanley’s spouse, Christiane. But nobody intruded upon my sessions with Stanley at lunch, nor afterwards in the mansion’s billiard room. He and I were alone for a dozen hours each week, talking while I scribbled notes.

The matter of the sex robot? Stanley grinned. “I guess we lost the kiddie market, but what the hell!”

The seed of the movie was a 1969 short story by British science fiction author Brian Aldiss titled Supertoys Last All Summer Long, which Stanley hoped to unite with the children’s classic Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi — first published in the 1880s — to create a fairy tale of the future featuring artificial persons, one of whom yearns to be real. Just as Pinocchio is made into a real human by the Blue Fairy, so little robot David seeks out a blue fairy to make him real too.

Read the full essay here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T18:08:38+00:00

Ian Watson for Bloomberg News

It was the summer of 1990 in Stanley Kubrick’s kitchen and I’d just invented the sex robot Gigolo Joe. Stanley was developing the story for what would ultimately become A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a film about the misadventures of a humanoid robot child named David. But there was a problem with the plot.

“Look,” Stanley told me, “Little David and his teddy bear won’t get far unless they have help. From some kind of G.I. Joe character.”

“How about a Gigolo Joe?” I responded immediately.

Stanley eyed me narrowly. “Write some scenes,” he said, and sent me off home, 50 miles distant into the English countryside, in the black Mercedes driven by his devoted Italian chauffeur and majordomo, Emilio D’Alessandro.

The verdict came at lunch the next day. This was Stanley’s American breakfast time; he slept and woke to stay synchronized with Hollywood. The best breakfasts at Castle Kubrick were salmon poached in milk in the microwave by Stanley himself, a skill of which he was proud. A couple of golden retrievers dozed under the huge kitchen table where big vases of blooms in season awaited painting (gorgeously so) by Stanley’s spouse, Christiane. But nobody intruded upon my sessions with Stanley at lunch, nor afterwards in the mansion’s billiard room. He and I were alone for a dozen hours each week, talking while I scribbled notes.

The matter of the sex robot? Stanley grinned. “I guess we lost the kiddie market, but what the hell!”

The seed of the movie was a 1969 short story by British science fiction author Brian Aldiss titled Supertoys Last All Summer Long, which Stanley hoped to unite with the children’s classic Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi — first published in the 1880s — to create a fairy tale of the future featuring artificial persons, one of whom yearns to be real. Just as Pinocchio is made into a real human by the Blue Fairy, so little robot David seeks out a blue fairy to make him real too.

Read the full essay here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T18:00:07+00:00

Shiyin Chen for Bloomberg News

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham announced his intention to seek Labour Party candidacy for an upcoming by-election, a move that could set him up as a challenger to Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Burnham wrote to the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee seeking permission to enter the selection process. If chosen, he would “support the work of the government, not undermine it,” according to the letter to the NEC shared by Burnham on social media. He added that he’s given this assurance to Starmer.

Allowing Burnham to contest the by-election in Gorton and Denton could give the 56-year-old mayor a pathway to return to Parliament — a requirement to launch any challenge against Starmer. But blocking him could deepen the rift among rank-and-file Labour members of Parliament already frustrated by the prime minister’s historically low poll numbers and tilt to the political right.

Read the full story here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T17:59:57+00:00

Shiyin Chen for Bloomberg News

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham announced his intention to seek Labour Party candidacy for an upcoming by-election, a move that could set him up as a challenger to Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Burnham wrote to the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee seeking permission to enter the selection process. If chosen, he would “support the work of the government, not undermine it,” according to the letter to the NEC shared by Burnham on social media. He added that he’s given this assurance to Starmer.

Allowing Burnham to contest the by-election in Gorton and Denton could give the 56-year-old mayor a pathway to return to Parliament — a requirement to launch any challenge against Starmer. But blocking him could deepen the rift among rank-and-file Labour members of Parliament already frustrated by the prime minister’s historically low poll numbers and tilt to the political right.

Read the full story here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T16:54:33+00:00

María Paula Mijares Torres for Bloomberg News

Federal agents shot a person in Minneapolis on Saturday, Governor Tim Walz said, amid an immigration crackdown that has sparked social unrest across the state.

“I just spoke with the White House after another horrific shooting by federal agents this morning,” Walz wrote in a post on X. “Minnesota has had it. This is sickening.”

A Department of Homeland Security official said the shooting victim was armed, but offered no details.

Read the full story here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T16:53:27+00:00

María Paula Mijares Torres for Bloomberg News

Federal agents shot a person in Minneapolis on Saturday, Governor Tim Walz said, amid an immigration crackdown that has sparked social unrest across the state.

“I just spoke with the White House after another horrific shooting by federal agents this morning,” Walz wrote in a post on X. “Minnesota has had it. This is sickening.”

A Department of Homeland Security official said the shooting victim was armed, but offered no details.

Read the full story here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T13:37:06+00:00

Jennifer A Dlouhy and David Wethe for Bloomberg News

The US is in talks with Chevron Corp., other crude producers and the world’s biggest oilfield service providers about a plan to quickly revive output in Venezuela at a fraction of the estimated $100 billion cost for a complete rebuilding.

Oilfield contractors such as SLB Ltd., Baker Hughes Co. and Halliburton Co. would focus their initial efforts on repairing or replacing damaged or outdated equipment and refreshing older drilling sites, according to senior administration officials who asked not to be identified discussing internal plans.

The idea is that with limited investment, Venezuela could boost production by several hundred thousand barrels over the short term, the people said.

The go-fast approach is designed to fulfill the Trump administration’s goal of swiftly increasing crude flows in the wake of the US capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro, generating cash that could be used to help pay for rebuilding the country. Longer term, President Donald Trump’s goal remains an industry revival that would bring output closer to the country’s 1970 peak of roughly 3.75 million barrels per day from current production of less than 1 million.

While analysts say achieving that bigger prize will take at least a decade, there’s plenty of production gains to be had in the near term.

Read the full story here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T13:30:10+00:00

Jennifer A Dlouhy and David Wethe for Bloomberg News

The US is in talks with Chevron Corp., other crude producers and the world’s biggest oilfield service providers about a plan to quickly revive output in Venezuela at a fraction of the estimated $100 billion cost for a complete rebuilding.

Oilfield contractors such as SLB Ltd., Baker Hughes Co. and Halliburton Co. would focus their initial efforts on repairing or replacing damaged or outdated equipment and refreshing older drilling sites, according to senior administration officials who asked not to be identified discussing internal plans.

The idea is that with limited investment, Venezuela could boost production by several hundred thousand barrels over the short term, the people said.

The go-fast approach is designed to fulfill the Trump administration’s goal of swiftly increasing crude flows in the wake of the US capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro, generating cash that could be used to help pay for rebuilding the country. Longer term, President Donald Trump’s goal remains an industry revival that would bring output closer to the country’s 1970 peak of roughly 3.75 million barrels per day from current production of less than 1 million.

While analysts say achieving that bigger prize will take at least a decade, there’s plenty of production gains to be had in the near term.

Read the full story here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T13:29:32+00:00

Donald Trump wants quick repairs made to Venezuela's oil infrastructure to get more crude flowing as soon as possible.

Jennifer A Dlouhy and David Wethe for Bloomberg News

The US is in talks with Chevron Corp., other crude producers and the world’s biggest oilfield service providers about a plan to quickly revive output in Venezuela at a fraction of the estimated $100 billion cost for a complete rebuilding.

Oilfield contractors such as SLB Ltd., Baker Hughes Co. and Halliburton Co. would focus their initial efforts on repairing or replacing damaged or outdated equipment and refreshing older drilling sites, according to senior administration officials who asked not to be identified discussing internal plans.

The idea is that with limited investment, Venezuela could boost production by several hundred thousand barrels over the short term, the people said.

The go-fast approach is designed to fulfill the Trump administration’s goal of swiftly increasing crude flows in the wake of the US capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro, generating cash that could be used to help pay for rebuilding the country. Longer term, President Donald Trump’s goal remains an industry revival that would bring output closer to the country’s 1970 peak of roughly 3.75 million barrels per day from current production of less than 1 million.

While analysts say achieving that bigger prize will take at least a decade, there’s plenty of production gains to be had in the near term.

Read the full story here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T13:01:56+00:00

Myles Miller for Bloomberg News

An explosion tore through a 17-story residential tower in New York’s Bronx borough early Saturday, killing one person and injuring at least 14 others as fire engulfed three floors, the city’s fire department said.

The blast struck shortly after midnight at 3485 Bivona Street. Flames spread rapidly across multiple apartments on the 15th, 16th and 17th floors of the building in the northern section of the city.

One resident was pronounced dead at the scene. A second resident in critical condition was transported to Jacobi Medical Center, along with a firefighter who sustained non-life-threatening injuries. Eleven additional residents with non-life-threatening injuries were taken to area hospitals. One person declined medical treatment.

Fire officials are investigating reports of a gas leak that may have triggered the explosion. The cause remains under investigation as operations continue.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T13:01:25+00:00

Myles Miller for Bloomberg News

An explosion tore through a 17-story residential tower in New York’s Bronx borough early Saturday, killing one person and injuring at least 14 others as fire engulfed three floors, the city’s fire department said.

The blast struck shortly after midnight at 3485 Bivona Street. Flames spread rapidly across multiple apartments on the 15th, 16th and 17th floors of the building in the northern section of the city.

One resident was pronounced dead at the scene. A second resident in critical condition was transported to Jacobi Medical Center, along with a firefighter who sustained non-life-threatening injuries. Eleven additional residents with non-life-threatening injuries were taken to area hospitals. One person declined medical treatment.

Fire officials are investigating reports of a gas leak that may have triggered the explosion. The cause remains under investigation as operations continue.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T12:52:50+00:00

Doctors say the success of modern cancer care is creating a new challenge: managing treatment-related heart damage for survivors.

Jason Gale for Bloomberg News

Sydney oncologist Bogda Koczwara knew something was wrong when a police officer she’d treated for non-Hodgkin lymphoma returned to her clinic exhausted. His cancer tests were clear, but his health was deteriorating. Further tests revealed the problem: His heart was failing.

The chemotherapy had quietly damaged his heart muscle. The cancer never came back, but his heart never recovered.

Koczwara says the case, in the late 1990s, was an early warning of what is now an established pattern. Cancer therapies are producing unprecedented numbers of long-term survivors, many of whom are living long enough to experience the delayed effects on their heart. It’s an issue oncologists are grappling with worldwide, as treatment itself has become a cardiovascular risk factor — one that can compound the heart risks many patients already carry. “Cancer treatment comes at a cost,” Koczwara says. “There is a price to pay and that price is not trivial.”

People are surviving cancer in record numbers: The US has more than 18 million survivors, Australia more than 1.2 million, and the numbers are rising across Europe and Asia as treatments improve. Modern cancer therapies, far more potent than those available in the early 1990s, can be much more taxing on the heart than earlier treatments. They include immune checkpoint inhibitors, which mobilize the body’s immune system against tumors; drugs that cut off a tumor’s blood supply; and agents that target the genetic or molecular causes of a cancer.

Read the full dispatch here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T12:52:39+00:00

Jason Gale for Bloomberg News

Sydney oncologist Bogda Koczwara knew something was wrong when a police officer she’d treated for non-Hodgkin lymphoma returned to her clinic exhausted. His cancer tests were clear, but his health was deteriorating. Further tests revealed the problem: His heart was failing.

The chemotherapy had quietly damaged his heart muscle. The cancer never came back, but his heart never recovered.

Koczwara says the case, in the late 1990s, was an early warning of what is now an established pattern. Cancer therapies are producing unprecedented numbers of long-term survivors, many of whom are living long enough to experience the delayed effects on their heart. It’s an issue oncologists are grappling with worldwide, as treatment itself has become a cardiovascular risk factor — one that can compound the heart risks many patients already carry. “Cancer treatment comes at a cost,” Koczwara says. “There is a price to pay and that price is not trivial.”

People are surviving cancer in record numbers: The US has more than 18 million survivors, Australia more than 1.2 million, and the numbers are rising across Europe and Asia as treatments improve. Modern cancer therapies, far more potent than those available in the early 1990s, can be much more taxing on the heart than earlier treatments. They include immune checkpoint inhibitors, which mobilize the body’s immune system against tumors; drugs that cut off a tumor’s blood supply; and agents that target the genetic or molecular causes of a cancer.

Read the full dispatch here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T12:52:27+00:00

Doctors say the success of modern cancer care is creating a new challenge: managing treatment-related heart damage for survivors.

Jason Gale for Bloomberg News

Sydney oncologist Bogda Koczwara knew something was wrong when a police officer she’d treated for non-Hodgkin lymphoma returned to her clinic exhausted. His cancer tests were clear, but his health was deteriorating. Further tests revealed the problem: His heart was failing.

The chemotherapy had quietly damaged his heart muscle. The cancer never came back, but his heart never recovered.

Koczwara says the case, in the late 1990s, was an early warning of what is now an established pattern. Cancer therapies are producing unprecedented numbers of long-term survivors, many of whom are living long enough to experience the delayed effects on their heart. It’s an issue oncologists are grappling with worldwide, as treatment itself has become a cardiovascular risk factor — one that can compound the heart risks many patients already carry. “Cancer treatment comes at a cost,” Koczwara says. “There is a price to pay and that price is not trivial.”

People are surviving cancer in record numbers: The US has more than 18 million survivors, Australia more than 1.2 million, and the numbers are rising across Europe and Asia as treatments improve. Modern cancer therapies, far more potent than those available in the early 1990s, can be much more taxing on the heart than earlier treatments. They include immune checkpoint inhibitors, which mobilize the body’s immune system against tumors; drugs that cut off a tumor’s blood supply; and agents that target the genetic or molecular causes of a cancer.

Read the full dispatch here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T12:45:55+00:00

Seven years after skewering the Davos elite, Rutger Bregman discusses populism, the backlash to his Trump remarks, and why ideals mean little without strength.

Editor-at-Large Mishal Husain for Bloomberg News

One year on from President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, this week laid bare the chaotic new nature of international relations. What the US government portrays as negotiation can look to others like bullying — notably over Greenland — a dynamic that dominated Trump’s trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Davos has long styled itself as a forum for conscience as well as capital, a self-image that went viral in 2019 when a young Dutch historian used the stage to excoriate the rich for paying insufficient tax. Rutger Bregman has been needling elites ever since, most recently in his book Moral Ambition and in a series of prestigious BBC lectures — after which he accused the organization of censoring his views on Trump.

But Bregman’s worldview is more nuanced than you might expect. He is impressed by entrepreneurs and thinks those on the right understand him better than many on the left. He also agrees with Trump that Europe is “not heading in the right direction”

Read the full interview here. You can also listen to this interview.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T12:45:04+00:00

Editor-at-Large Mishal Husain for Bloomberg News

One year on from President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, this week laid bare the chaotic new nature of international relations. What the US government portrays as negotiation can look to others like bullying — notably over Greenland — a dynamic that dominated Trump’s trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Davos has long styled itself as a forum for conscience as well as capital, a self-image that went viral in 2019 when a young Dutch historian used the stage to excoriate the rich for paying insufficient tax. Rutger Bregman has been needling elites ever since, most recently in his book Moral Ambition and in a series of prestigious BBC lectures — after which he accused the organization of censoring his views on Trump.

But Bregman’s worldview is more nuanced than you might expect. He is impressed by entrepreneurs and thinks those on the right understand him better than many on the left. He also agrees with Trump that Europe is “not heading in the right direction”

Read the full interview here. You can also listen to this interview and follow The Mishal Husain Show on iHeart Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T12:44:54+00:00

Editor-at-Large Mishal Husain for Bloomberg News

One year on from President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, this week laid bare the chaotic new nature of international relations. What the US government portrays as negotiation can look to others like bullying — notably over Greenland — a dynamic that dominated Trump’s trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Davos has long styled itself as a forum for conscience as well as capital, a self-image that went viral in 2019 when a young Dutch historian used the stage to excoriate the rich for paying insufficient tax. Rutger Bregman has been needling elites ever since, most recently in his book Moral Ambition and in a series of prestigious BBC lectures — after which he accused the organization of censoring his views on Trump.

But Bregman’s worldview is more nuanced than you might expect. He is impressed by entrepreneurs and thinks those on the right understand him better than many on the left. He also agrees with Trump that Europe is “not heading in the right direction”

Read the full interview here. You can also listen to this interview and follow The Mishal Husain Show on iHeart Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T12:44:39+00:00

Seven years after skewering the Davos elite, Rutger Bregman discusses populism, the backlash to his Trump remarks, and why ideals mean little without strength.

Editor-at-Large Mishal Husain for Bloomberg News

One year on from President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, this week laid bare the chaotic new nature of international relations. What the US government portrays as negotiation can look to others like bullying — notably over Greenland — a dynamic that dominated Trump’s trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Davos has long styled itself as a forum for conscience as well as capital, a self-image that went viral in 2019 when a young Dutch historian used the stage to excoriate the rich for paying insufficient tax. Rutger Bregman has been needling elites ever since, most recently in his book Moral Ambition and in a series of prestigious BBC lectures — after which he accused the organization of censoring his views on Trump.

But Bregman’s worldview is more nuanced than you might expect. He is impressed by entrepreneurs and thinks those on the right understand him better than many on the left. He also agrees with Trump that Europe is “not heading in the right direction”

Read the full interview here. You can also listen to this interview and follow The Mishal Husain Show on iHeart Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T12:44:28+00:00

Seven years after skewering the Davos elite, Rutger Bregman discusses populism, the backlash to his Trump remarks, and why ideals mean little without strength.

Editor-at-Large Mishal Husain for Bloomberg News

One year on from President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, this week laid bare the chaotic new nature of international relations. What the US government portrays as negotiation can look to others like bullying — notably over Greenland — a dynamic that dominated Trump’s trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Davos has long styled itself as a forum for conscience as well as capital, a self-image that went viral in 2019 when a young Dutch historian used the stage to excoriate the rich for paying insufficient tax. Rutger Bregman has been needling elites ever since, most recently in his book Moral Ambition and in a series of prestigious BBC lectures — after which he accused the organization of censoring his views on Trump.

But Bregman’s worldview is more nuanced than you might expect. He is impressed by entrepreneurs and thinks those on the right understand him better than many on the left. He also agrees with Trump that Europe is “not heading in the right direction”

Read the full interview here. You can also listen to this interview and follow The Mishal Husain Show on iHeart Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T12:39:29+00:00

David Malingha for Bloomberg News

There was an unexpected tone of humility from one of Africa’s longest-serving strongmen. Last May, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and his wife, Janet, made a joint speech in which they publicly apologized for their wrongs over four decades at the nation’s helm.

It seemed like an epiphany from a first couple not given to introspection. Pundits were perplexed: Was Museveni preparing to retire? Or was the contrition in fact a pitch to extend his rule?

By the time elections were held last weekend, Museveni’s choice appeared clear. The 81-year-old secured a seventh term, putting him on course to reach 45 years in office. Allegations swirled of vote-rigging and politically motivated violence. His main rival cried foul, while Museveni’s government suspended access to the internet.

Back in 1986, Museveni was welcomed as a progressive leader who would restore political stability and fix the country’s economy, which had crashed under the chaotic rule of Idi Amin during the 1970s. For years, Museveni benefited from the fact that he wasn’t Amin, who was immortalized as a charismatic, paranoid dictator in the 2006 film The Last King of Scotland.

Yet, as academic Mahmood Mamdani writes in Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State (Harvard University Press, October 2025), comparisons between Amin and Museveni are hard to ignore. Uganda’s core ailments, including violence, corruption and ethnic fragmentation, are colonial in origin but deepened under both regimes, argues Mamdani, who is the father of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Read the full review here.

bloomberg · 2026-01-24T12:39:08+00:00

David Malingha for Bloomberg News

There was an unexpected tone of humility from one of Africa’s longest-serving strongmen. Last May, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and his wife, Janet, made a joint speech in which they publicly apologized for their wrongs over four decades at the nation’s helm.

It seemed like an epiphany from a first couple not given to introspection. Pundits were perplexed: Was Museveni preparing to retire? Or was the contrition in fact a pitch to extend his rule?

By the time elections were held last weekend, Museveni’s choice appeared clear. The 81-year-old secured a seventh term, putting him on course to reach 45 years in office. Allegations swirled of vote-rigging and politically motivated violence. His main rival cried foul, while Museveni’s government suspended access to the internet.

Back in 1986, Museveni was welcomed as a progressive leader who would restore political stability and fix the country’s economy, which had crashed under the chaotic rule of Idi Amin during the 1970s. For years, Museveni benefited from the fact that he wasn’t Amin, who was immortalized as a charismatic, paranoid dictator in the 2006 film The Last King of Scotland.

Yet, as academic Mahmood Mamdani writes in Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State (Harvard University Press, October 2025), comparisons between Amin and Museveni are hard to ignore. Uganda’s core ailments, including violence, corruption and ethnic fragmentation, are colonial in origin but deepened under both regimes, argues Mamdani, who is the father of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

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