World in crisis: At a time when income inequality, catastrophic climate change, and failing democracy are compounding to create epic wealth disparity and the prospect of a second American civil war, four billionaires are hyping schemes that are designed to divert our attention away from issues that really matter. Each scheme — the metaverse, generative AI, cryptocurrency, space travel, and transhumanism — is an existential threat in moral, political, and economic terms. That’s the premise of Jonathan Taplin’s new book The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto. The book is an exposé, a takedown of what he describes as one of the great con jobs of the twenty-first century being sold by four billionaires — Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreesen, and Elon Musk. Jonathan Taplin is joined by Tom Friedman, who recently returned from Israel, to discuss Taplin’s perceptive insight into the personal backgrounds and cultural power of these billionaires leading to what he believes is the bankruptcy of our society by mass disinformation. They will also discuss the Israel/Hamas war and the crisis in the Middle East, and how the current crisis has been impacted by these issues.