Introducing How We Got Here -- NLW's new podcast

The host introduces How We Got Here, a new podcast created out of his work on AI Daily Brief. He says important stories often have too much historical and political background to fit into a daily episode, so the new show will provide deeper explanations of how major trends, events, and social phenomena developed. The first episode, “How Tech Lost America,” begins with public anger over data centers and then goes back 15 years to explain how the United States fell out of love with the technology industry. Episode 2 will examine how consumer goods became cheaper while life became more expensive, showing that the podcast will cover society, culture, and economics—not only technology. New episodes are scheduled for Mondays, run approximately 45 minutes to an hour, and include fully illustrated companion essays.

The host explains the broader idea behind the series: much of modern cynicism comes from feeling that the current state of society was inevitable. He argues that today’s conditions were instead produced by a series of decisions, and that understanding those decisions can restore people’s sense of agency over what happens next. He asks listeners to follow, rate, and review the show, emphasizing that those actions matter especially during launch week. The episode then moves into the opening five minutes of the first installment, which uses the backlash against data centers as a starting point for a larger history of changing attitudes toward technology.

The episode opens in June 2025, when Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro announced that Amazon planned to invest $20 billion in the state. Shapiro described the project—new, state-of-the-art data-center campuses—as the largest capital infrastructure investment in Pennsylvania Commonwealth history. He said it would create thousands of good-paying, stable jobs, generate new revenue for local communities, and “ensure that the future of AI runs right through Pennsylvania.” Fourteen months later, on August 18, 2026, Shapiro adopted the opposite tone. In announcing an executive order imposing what he called the nation’s strictest standards for AI data centers, he said he would not allow Pennsylvanians to be “bullied by greedy developers” or “bulldozed” by lawyers working for big technology companies. He also cited constitutional rights to clean air and pure water and warned that data centers could drive up utility bills. The host presents this reversal as evidence that data centers moved rapidly from a mostly ignored issue to a major political flashpoint.

The host traces the speed of the backlash through polling. In August 2025, Americans were nearly evenly divided about whether they would support a data center near their home: 43% supported one and 42% opposed it. By February 2026, opposition had reached 51%; by May it was 70%; and by August, 75% opposed local data-center development, with more than 60% strongly opposed. Journalist Robinson Meyer described the change as a 33-point swing against data centers, faster and deeper than he would have expected on any issue. The issue became bipartisan as the 2026 midterms approached. In Ohio, the Senate GOP’s campaign arm warned in a memo that data centers could cost Republicans the election and circulated the warning to major technology companies and hyperscalers. President Trump argued that data centers benefit communities and that AI— which he had begun calling “SI,” or superintelligence—was essential to American success, but an Economist/YouGov poll found that his message did not even persuade his own base: among 2024 Trump voters, 35% supported a nearby data center while 47% opposed one. The host argues that the backlash is not solely an AI problem. Generative AI entered public life carrying negative associations inherited from earlier technology platforms, companies, and leaders. In 2013, technology was America’s most trusted industry in Edelman’s Global Trust Survey, at 77%, and 71% of Americans told Pew in 2015 that technology companies had a positive effect on the country. By 2019, that Pew figure had fallen to 50%. Gallup’s computer-industry rating dropped from 75% positive in 2017 to 48% in 2026, while the internet industry fell from 59% positive in 2017 to net negative by 2021, with 35% positive and 40% negative. The episode concludes this opening by saying that understanding the change requires returning to the period when technology represented promise and potential.