Senior Writer
Willis Sparks
Senior Writer
Willis Sparks is a senior editor for GZERO Daily. He is also a Director in the Global Macro practice at Eurasia Group, where he has worked since 2005. He has made speeches on international politics on every continent except Antarctica. Willis holds degrees from Brown University, the Juilliard School, Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. He also holds an honorary degree from the Moscow Art Theatre School. A native of Macon, Georgia, Willis has worked as a stuntman at New York's Metropolitan Opera. As a child, he declined an opportunity to spend an afternoon riding the Great American Scream Machine, a rollercoaster, with Ronald McDonald, for money. He has never regretted that decision.
Aug 16, 2023
During a visit to Beijing last month, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reportedly ate a magic mushroom-based dish known as Jian shou qing. In English, that’s “see hand blue,” a name probably meant to warn those who would consume it that this particular mushroom is hallucinogenic. “I was not aware that these mushrooms had hallucinogenic properties. I learned that later,” Yellen said, and your GZERO team is willing to suspend its disbelief. And they’re supposedly harmless when fully cooked.
But we do have questions. Will the mushrooms Yellen consumed change her US recession forecast? Do these mushrooms allow people to see the data on China’s youth unemployment rate, which has abruptly become invisible to the rest of us? And finally, in the interest of journalistic due diligence, where can we get some of these mushrooms?
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