What does the truth offer us in a post-truth world? That is the question that weighs on the institutions built to safeguard it. Think tanks observe our present, predict our future, and archive our past, and yet today, they are under attack both directly by the Trump government, and indirectly via stakeholders who are shifting resources with the tides of political power. 

So what are think tanks actually for anymore? Do they still matter for us – or only for the stakeholders behind them? To find out, Samuel sits down with Dr. Rosa Balfour, Director of Carnegie Europe and one of the sharpest observers of this political, cultural, and geopolitical moment. 

They get into why think tanks keep struggling to reach the public, how Brexit and Trump ushered in an age of "foreign policy adventurism," the debate Europe still isn't having about who actually pays for its defence spending, why she thinks Europe should stop chasing past greatness and learn to be "small but cool," and what George Eliot's Middlemarch reveals about how differently each generation looks at its future. 

Comments, concerns or suggestions: samuel.dempsey@europeancorrespondent.com 

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