American Checklist

Since 1789, Americans have shared a set of eight recurring fears. Yet, time after time, the country has shown a rare ability to turn those very fears into breakthroughs and innovation. Dan Sullivan and Mark Young explore America's "permanent panic areas" and the concept of creative resilience—unpacking why these cycles of fear and progress seem to happen here and how they continue to shape the nation's future. SHOW NOTES: America has always lived with a set of recurring worries: corruption, tyranny, disorder, foreign enemies, race, decline, ignorance, and collapse. These anxieties are as old as the country itself. While the specifics change—with new technologies, institutions, and adversaries—the same core fears continue to dominate the national imagination. Every generation feels them as intensely as the last. Again and again, the United States has managed to transform its fears into breakthroughs—driving innovation in law, technology, economics, culture, and systems of self-correction. By continually con