Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Jeremy Suri,
00:00:02 a historian at UT Austin,
00:00:05 whose research interests and writing
00:00:07 are on modern American history
00:00:10 with an eye towards presidents
00:00:11 and in general individuals who wielded power.
00:00:15 Quick mention of our sponsors,
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00:00:23 Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
00:00:26 As a side note, let me say that in these conversations,
00:00:30 for better or worse, I seek understanding, not activism.
00:00:34 I’m not left nor right.
00:00:36 I love ideas, not labels.
00:00:39 And most fascinating ideas are full of uncertainty,
00:00:41 tension, and trade offs.
00:00:43 Labels destroy that.
00:00:45 I try ideas out, let them breathe for a time,
00:00:48 try to challenge, explore, and analyze.
00:00:51 But mostly, I trust the intelligence of you, the listener,
00:00:54 to think and to make up your own mind, together with me.
00:00:58 I will try to have economists and philosophers on
00:01:02 from all points on the multidimensional political spectrum,
00:01:06 including the extremes.
00:01:08 I will try to both have an open mind
00:01:10 and to ask difficult questions when needed.
00:01:12 I’ll make mistakes.
00:01:14 Don’t shoot this robot at the first sign of failure.
00:01:16 I’m still under development.
00:01:18 Pre release version 0.1.
00:01:21 This is the Lex Friedman podcast,
00:01:23 and here is my conversation with Jeremy Suri.
00:01:27 You’ve studied many American presidents throughout history,
00:01:31 so who do you think was the greatest president
00:01:34 in American history?
00:01:35 The greatest American president was Abraham Lincoln.
00:01:38 And Tolstoy reflected on this himself, actually,
00:01:42 saying that when he was in the caucuses,
00:01:45 he asked these peasants in the caucuses
00:01:48 who was the greatest man in the world that they had heard of,
00:01:51 and they said Abraham Lincoln.
00:01:53 And why?
00:01:54 Well, because he gave voice to people
00:01:57 who had no voice before.
00:01:58 He turned politics into an art.
00:02:00 This is what Tolstoy recounted,
00:02:02 the peasants in the caucuses telling him.
00:02:04 Lincoln made politics more than about power.
00:02:07 He made it an art.
00:02:08 He made it a source of liberation.
00:02:10 And those living even far from the United States
00:02:13 could see that model, that inspiration from Lincoln.
00:02:17 He was a man who had two years of education,
00:02:20 yet he mastered the English language,
00:02:22 and he used the language
00:02:24 to help people imagine a different kind of world.
00:02:27 You see, leaders and presidents are at their best
00:02:30 when they’re doing more
00:02:31 than just manipulating institutions and power,
00:02:34 when they’re helping the people imagine a better world.
00:02:36 And he did that as no other president has.
00:02:40 And you say he gave voice to those who are voiceless.
00:02:43 Who are you talking to about in general?
00:02:46 Is this about African Americans,
00:02:47 or is this about just the populace in general?
00:02:50 Certainly part of it is about slaves, African Americans,
00:02:54 and many immigrants,
00:02:56 immigrants from all parts of Europe and other areas
00:02:59 that have come to the United States.
00:03:00 But part of it was just for ordinary American citizens.
00:03:03 The Republican Party,
00:03:04 for which Lincoln was the first president,
00:03:06 was a party created to give voice to poor white men,
00:03:11 as well as slaves and others.
00:03:13 And Lincoln was a poor white man himself,
00:03:15 grew up without slaves and without land,
00:03:17 which meant you had almost nothing.
00:03:20 What do you think about the trajectory of that man
00:03:22 with only two years of education?
00:03:24 Is there something to be said
00:03:26 about how does one come from nothing
00:03:28 and nurture the ideals that kind of make this country great
00:03:36 into something where you can actually be a leader
00:03:38 of this nation to espouse those ideas,
00:03:41 to give the voice to the voiceless?
00:03:43 Yes, I think you actually hit the nail on the head.
00:03:46 I think what he represented was the opportunity,
00:03:50 and that was the word that mattered for him,
00:03:52 opportunity that came from the ability to raise yourself up,
00:03:57 to work hard, and to be compensated for your hard work.
00:04:00 And this is at the core of the Republican Party
00:04:02 of the 19th century, which is the core of capitalism.
00:04:05 It’s not about getting rich.
00:04:07 It’s about getting compensated for your work.
00:04:09 It’s about being incentivized to do better work.
00:04:11 And Lincoln was constantly striving.
00:04:13 One of his closest associates, Herndon, said,
00:04:17 he was the little engine of ambition that couldn’t stop.
00:04:20 He just kept going, taught himself to read,
00:04:23 taught himself to be a lawyer.
00:04:24 He went through many failed businesses
00:04:25 before he even reached that point, many failed love affairs.
00:04:29 But he kept trying, he kept working,
00:04:31 and what American society offered him,
00:04:33 and what he wanted American society to offer everyone else
00:04:36 was the opportunity to keep trying to fail
00:04:38 and then get up and try again.
00:04:40 What do you think was the nature of that ambition?
00:04:42 Was there a hunger for power?
00:04:44 I think Lincoln had a hunger for success.
00:04:46 I think he had a hunger to get out
00:04:50 of the poor station he was in.
00:04:52 He had a hunger to be someone
00:04:54 who had control over his life.
00:04:56 Freedom for him did not mean the right
00:04:58 to do anything you wanna do,
00:05:00 but it meant the right to be secure
00:05:02 from being dependent upon someone else.
00:05:05 So independence, he writes in his letters
00:05:08 when he’s very young that he hated
00:05:10 being dependent on his father.
00:05:11 He grew up without a mother.
00:05:13 His father was a struggling farmer,
00:05:15 and he would write in his letters
00:05:16 that his father treated him like a slave on the farm.
00:05:19 Some think his hatred of slavery came from that experience.
00:05:22 He didn’t ever wanna have to work for someone again.
00:05:25 He wanted to be free and independent,
00:05:26 and he wanted, again, every American,
00:05:28 this is the kind of Jeffersonian dream,
00:05:30 to be the owner of themself and the owner of their future.
00:05:34 You know, that’s a really nice definition of freedom.
00:05:36 We often think kind of this very abstract notion
00:05:39 of being able to do anything you want,
00:05:41 but really, it’s ultimately breaking yourself free
00:05:43 from the constraints, like the very tight dependence
00:05:48 on whether it’s the institutions or on your family
00:05:54 or the expectations or the community or whatever,
00:05:57 being able to be, to realize yourself
00:06:01 within the constraints of your own abilities.
00:06:03 It’s still not true freedom,
00:06:05 because true freedom is probably sort of
00:06:08 almost like designing a video game character,
00:06:09 something like that.
00:06:11 I agree, I think that’s exactly right.
00:06:13 I think freedom is not that I can have any outcome I want.
00:06:19 I can’t control outcomes.
00:06:20 The most powerful, freest person in the world
00:06:21 cannot control outcomes,
00:06:23 but it means at least I get to make choices.
00:06:25 Someone else doesn’t make those choices for me.
00:06:29 Is there something to be said about Lincoln
00:06:32 on the political game front of it,
00:06:36 which is he’s accomplished some of them?
00:06:38 I don’t know, but it seems like
00:06:40 there was some tricky politics going on.
00:06:42 We tend to not think of it in those terms
00:06:44 because of the dark aspects of slavery.
00:06:48 We tend to think about it in sort of ethical and human terms,
00:06:51 but in their time, it was probably
00:06:55 as much a game of politics,
00:06:58 not just these broad questions of human nature, right?
00:07:02 It was a game.
00:07:03 So is there something to be said
00:07:04 about being a skillful player in the game of politics
00:07:07 that you take from Lincoln?
00:07:08 Absolutely, and Lincoln never read Karl von Clausewitz,
00:07:12 the great 19th century German thinker
00:07:14 on strategy and politics,
00:07:15 but he embodied the same wisdom,
00:07:17 which is that everything is politics.
00:07:18 If you want to get anything done,
00:07:21 and this includes even relationships,
00:07:23 there’s a politics to it.
00:07:24 What does that mean?
00:07:25 It means that you have to persuade, coerce,
00:07:29 encourage people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do.
00:07:32 And Lincoln was a master at that.
00:07:34 He was a master at that for two reasons.
00:07:36 He had learned through his hard life to read people,
00:07:38 to anticipate them, to spend a lot of time listening.
00:07:41 One thing I often tell people
00:07:43 is the best leaders are the listeners, not the talkers.
00:07:47 And then second, Lincoln was very thoughtful
00:07:50 and planned every move out.
00:07:52 He was thinking three or four moves,
00:07:54 maybe five moves down the chessboard,
00:07:56 while others were move number one or two.
00:07:59 That’s fascinating to think about him just listening,
00:08:02 just studying.
00:08:03 They look at great fighters in this way,
00:08:06 like the first few rounds of boxing and mixed martial arts,
00:08:10 you’re studying the movement of your opponent
00:08:13 in order to sort of define the holes.
00:08:16 That’s a really interesting frame to think about it.
00:08:18 Is there, in terms of relationships,
00:08:23 where do you think as president or as a politician
00:08:28 is the most impact to be had?
00:08:30 I’ve been reading a lot about Hitler recently,
00:08:33 and one of the things that I’m more and more starting
00:08:35 to wonder, what the hell did he do alone in a room
00:08:40 with one on one with people?
00:08:42 Because it seems like that’s where
00:08:44 he was exceptionally effective.
00:08:46 When I think about certain leaders,
00:08:50 I’m not sure Stalin was this way, I apologize.
00:08:53 Been very obsessed with this period of human history.
00:08:57 It just seems like certain leaders
00:08:59 are extremely effective one on one.
00:09:01 A lot of people think of Hitler in Lincoln
00:09:05 as a speech maker, as a great charismatic speech maker,
00:09:08 but it seems like to me that some of these guys
00:09:11 were really effective inside a room.
00:09:14 What do you think?
00:09:15 What’s more important?
00:09:17 Your effectiveness to make a hell of a good speech,
00:09:23 sort of being in a room with many people,
00:09:25 or is it all boiled down to one on one?
00:09:28 Well, I think in a sense, it’s both.
00:09:31 One needs to do both, and most politicians,
00:09:33 most leaders are better at one or the other.
00:09:35 It’s the rare leader who can do both.
00:09:37 I will say that if you are going to be a figure
00:09:41 who’s a president or the leader of a complex organization,
00:09:45 not a startup, but a complex organization
00:09:47 where you have many different constituencies
00:09:49 and many different interests,
00:09:51 you have to do the one on one really well,
00:09:53 because a lot of what’s going to happen
00:09:55 is you’re going to be meeting with people
00:09:56 who represent different groups, right?
00:09:58 The leader of the labor unions,
00:10:00 the leader of your investing board, et cetera,
00:10:03 and you have to be able to persuade them,
00:10:04 and it’s the intangibles that often matter most.
00:10:07 Lincoln’s skill, and it’s the same that FDR had,
00:10:11 is the ability to tell a story.
00:10:13 I think Hitler was a little different,
00:10:14 but what I’ve read of Stalin is he was a storyteller too.
00:10:17 One on one storyteller?
00:10:18 Yeah, that’s my understanding is that he,
00:10:21 and what Lincoln did,
00:10:22 I don’t want to compare Lincoln to Stalin,
00:10:24 but what Lincoln did is he was not confrontational.
00:10:30 He was happy to have an argument
00:10:32 if an argument were to be had,
00:10:33 but actually what he would try to do
00:10:35 is move you through telling a story
00:10:38 that got you to think about your position in a different way,
00:10:41 to basically disarm you.
00:10:43 And Franklin Roosevelt did the same thing.
00:10:44 Ronald Reagan did the same thing.
00:10:46 Storytelling is a very important skill.
00:10:49 It’s almost heartbreaking that we don’t get to have,
00:10:53 or maybe you can correct me if I’m wrong on this,
00:10:55 but it feels like we don’t have a lot of information
00:10:58 how all of these folks were in private,
00:11:00 one on one conversations.
00:11:02 Even if we get stories about it,
00:11:06 it’s like, again, sorry to bring up Hitler,
00:11:09 but people have talked about his piercing gaze
00:11:15 when they’re one on one.
00:11:16 There’s a feeling like he’s just looking through you.
00:11:19 I wonder, it makes me wonder,
00:11:21 was Lincoln somebody who was a little bit more passive,
00:11:24 like who’s more, the ego doesn’t shine.
00:11:27 It’s not like an overwhelming thing,
00:11:29 or is it more like, again,
00:11:32 don’t want to bring up controversial figures,
00:11:34 but Donald Trump, where it’s more menacing, right?
00:11:37 There’s a more like physically menacing thing,
00:11:39 where it’s almost like a bullying kind of dynamic.
00:11:43 So I wonder, I wish we knew.
00:11:47 Because from a psychological perspective,
00:11:50 I wonder if there’s a thread
00:11:52 that connects most great leaders.
00:11:53 That’s a great question.
00:11:55 So I think the best writer on this is Max Weber, right?
00:11:58 And he talks about the power of charisma,
00:12:00 that the term charisma comes from Weber, right?
00:12:02 And Weber’s use of it actually to talk about profits.
00:12:05 And I think he has a point, right?
00:12:07 Leaders who are effective in the way you describe
00:12:10 are leaders who feel prophetic,
00:12:12 or Weber says they have a kind of magic about them.
00:12:15 And I think that can come from different sources.
00:12:17 I think that can come from the way someone
00:12:20 carries themselves.
00:12:21 It can come from the way they use words.
00:12:24 So maybe there are different kinds of magic
00:12:26 that someone develops.
00:12:27 But I think there are two things
00:12:29 that seem to be absolutely necessary.
00:12:31 First is you have to be someone who sizes up the person
00:12:33 on the other side of the table.
00:12:35 You cannot be the person who just comes in
00:12:36 and reads your brief.
00:12:38 And then second, I think it’s interactive.
00:12:42 And there is a quickness of thought.
00:12:44 So you brought up Donald Trump.
00:12:45 I don’t think Donald Trump is a deep thinker at all,
00:12:47 but he’s quick.
00:12:49 And I think that quickness is part of,
00:12:51 it’s different from delivering a lecture
00:12:53 where it’s the depth of your thought.
00:12:55 Can you for 45 minutes analyze something?
00:12:57 Many people can’t do that,
00:12:59 but they still might be very effective
00:13:01 if they’re able to quickly react,
00:13:03 size up the person on the other side of the table
00:13:05 and react in a way that moves that person
00:13:07 in the way they wanna move them.
00:13:09 Yeah, and there’s also just coupled with the quickness
00:13:13 as a kind of instinct about human nature.
00:13:17 Sort of asking the question,
00:13:19 what does this person worry about?
00:13:22 What are the biggest problems?
00:13:24 Somebody, what is this, Stephen Schwartzman, I think,
00:13:27 said to me, he’s this businessman.
00:13:29 I think he said like, what I’ve always tried to do
00:13:33 is try to figure out, like ask enough questions
00:13:36 to figure out what is the biggest problem
00:13:38 in this person’s life.
00:13:40 Try to get a sense of what is the biggest problem
00:13:42 in their life, because that’s actually
00:13:44 what they care about most.
00:13:45 And most people don’t care enough to find out.
00:13:48 And so he kind of wants to sneak up on that
00:13:52 and find that, and then use that to then build closeness
00:13:58 in order to then probably, he doesn’t put it in those words,
00:14:00 but to manipulate the person into whatever,
00:14:03 to do whatever the heck they want.
00:14:04 And I think part of it is that,
00:14:09 and part of the effect that Donald Trump has
00:14:11 is how quick he’s able to figure that out.
00:14:14 You’ve written a book about how the role
00:14:17 and power of the presidency has changed.
00:14:19 So how has it changed since Lincoln’s time,
00:14:25 the evolution of the presidency as a concept,
00:14:28 which seems like a fascinating lens
00:14:30 through which to look at American history.
00:14:33 As a president, we seem to only be talking
00:14:36 about the presidents, maybe a general here and there,
00:14:40 but it’s mostly the story of America is often told
00:14:43 through presidents.
00:14:45 That’s right, that’s right.
00:14:46 And one of the points I’ve tried to make
00:14:48 in my writing about this and various other activities
00:14:52 is we use this word president as if it’s something timeless,
00:14:55 but the office has changed incredibly.
00:14:58 Just from Lincoln’s time to the present,
00:15:00 which is 150 years, he wouldn’t recognize the office today.
00:15:05 And George Washington would not have recognized it
00:15:07 in Lincoln, just as I think a CEO today
00:15:10 would be unrecognizable to a Rockefeller
00:15:13 or a Carnegie of 150 years ago.
00:15:16 So what are some of the ways in which the office has changed?
00:15:18 I’ll just point to three, there are a lot.
00:15:21 One, presidents now can communicate with the public directly.
00:15:25 I mean, we’ve reached the point now
00:15:26 where a president can have direct,
00:15:28 almost one on one communication.
00:15:30 President can use Twitter if he so chooses
00:15:32 to circumvent all media.
00:15:35 That was unthinkable.
00:15:36 Lincoln, in order to get his message across,
00:15:38 often wrote letters to newspapers.
00:15:40 And waited for the newspaper for Horace Greeley
00:15:42 in the New York Tribune to publish his letter.
00:15:44 That’s how he communicated with the public.
00:15:46 There weren’t even many speaking opportunities.
00:15:48 So that’s a big change, right?
00:15:49 We feel the president in our life much more.
00:15:52 That’s why we talk about him much more.
00:15:55 That also creates more of a burden.
00:15:56 This is the second point.
00:15:57 Presidents are under a microscope.
00:15:59 Presidents are under a microscope.
00:16:00 You have to be very careful what you do and what you say.
00:16:02 And you’re judged by a lot of the elements of your behavior
00:16:06 that are not policy relevant.
00:16:07 In fact, the things we judge most
00:16:09 and make most of our decisions on about individuals
00:16:12 are often that.
00:16:13 And then third, the power the president has.
00:16:17 It’s inhuman, actually.
00:16:19 And this is one of my critiques
00:16:20 of how the office has changed.
00:16:21 This one person has power on a scale
00:16:24 that’s I think dangerous in a democracy.
00:16:27 And certainly something the founders 220 years ago
00:16:31 would have had trouble conceiving.
00:16:34 Presidents now have the ability to deliver force
00:16:36 across the world to literally assassinate people
00:16:39 with a remarkable accuracy.
00:16:41 And that’s an enormous power that presidents have.
00:16:44 So your sense, this is not to get conspiratorial,
00:16:48 but do you think a president currently has the power
00:16:53 to initiate the assassination of somebody,
00:16:59 of a political enemy or a terrorist leader
00:17:03 or that kind of thing to frame that person in a way
00:17:07 where assassination is something that he alone
00:17:10 or she alone could decide to do?
00:17:12 I think it happens all the time
00:17:13 and it’s not to be conspiratorial.
00:17:14 This is how we fought terrorism by targeting individuals.
00:17:19 Now you might say these were not elected leaders of state,
00:17:21 but these were individuals with a large following.
00:17:23 I mean, the killing of Osama Bin Laden
00:17:25 was an assassination operation.
00:17:28 And we’ve taken out very successfully
00:17:32 many leaders of terrorist organizations
00:17:34 and we do it every day.
00:17:35 You’re saying that back in Lincoln’s time
00:17:37 or George Washington’s time,
00:17:39 there was more of a balance of power?
00:17:40 Like a president could not initiate
00:17:42 this kind of assassination?
00:17:43 Correct, I think presidents did not have
00:17:46 the same kind of military or economic power.
00:17:49 We could talk about how a president can influence a market
00:17:52 by saying something about where money is gonna go
00:17:56 or singling out a company or critiquing a company
00:18:00 in one way or another.
00:18:01 They didn’t have that kind of power.
00:18:02 Now, much of the power that a Lincoln or a Washington had
00:18:06 was the power to mobilize people
00:18:08 to then make their own decisions.
00:18:09 At the start of the Civil War,
00:18:11 Lincoln doesn’t even have the power
00:18:12 to bring people into the army.
00:18:13 He has to go to the governors
00:18:15 and ask the governors to provide soldiers.
00:18:18 So the governor of Wisconsin,
00:18:19 the governor of Massachusetts.
00:18:20 Could you imagine that today?
00:18:22 So, but yeah, so they use speeches and words
00:18:27 to mobilize versus direct action in closed door environments,
00:18:32 initiating wars, for example.
00:18:34 Correct.
00:18:37 It’s difficult to think about,
00:18:39 if we look at Barack Obama, for example,
00:18:43 if you’re listening to this
00:18:45 and you’re on the left or the right,
00:18:47 please do not make this political.
00:18:49 In fact, if you’re a political person
00:18:51 and you’re getting angry at the mention of the word Obama
00:18:54 or Donald Trump, please turn off this podcast
00:18:56 that I’ve just described.
00:18:57 We’re not gonna get very far.
00:18:59 I hope we maintain a political discussion
00:19:02 about even the modern presidents
00:19:05 that view through the lens of history.
00:19:07 I think there’s a lot to be learned
00:19:09 about the office and about human nature.
00:19:13 Some people criticize Barack Obama
00:19:15 for sort of expanding the military industrial complex,
00:19:19 engaging in more and more wars,
00:19:22 as opposed to sort of the initial rhetoric
00:19:25 was such that we would pull back
00:19:28 from sort of be more skeptical
00:19:30 in our decisions to wage wars.
00:19:33 So from the lens of the power of the presidency,
00:19:36 as the modern presidency,
00:19:39 the fact that we continued the war in Afghanistan
00:19:41 and different engagements in military conflicts,
00:19:46 do you think Barack Obama could have stopped that?
00:19:52 Do you put the responsibility on that expansion
00:19:55 on him because of the implied power
00:19:58 that the presidency has?
00:19:59 Or is this power just sits there
00:20:01 and if a president chooses to take it, they do,
00:20:04 and if they don’t, they don’t?
00:20:06 Almost like you don’t want to take on the responsibility
00:20:10 because of the burden of that responsibility.
00:20:12 So a lot of my research is about this exact question,
00:20:16 not just with Obama.
00:20:17 And my conclusion, and I think the research
00:20:19 is pretty clear on this, is that structure
00:20:21 has a lot more effect on us than we like to admit,
00:20:24 which is to say that the circumstances,
00:20:26 the institutions around us drive our behavior
00:20:29 more than we like to think.
00:20:30 So Barack Obama, I’m quite certain,
00:20:32 came into the office of the presidency committed
00:20:34 to actually reducing the use of military force overseas
00:20:37 and reducing presidential war making power.
00:20:40 As a trained lawyer, he had a moral position
00:20:43 on this actually, and he tried.
00:20:45 And he did withdraw American forces from Iraq
00:20:47 and was of course criticized by many people for doing that.
00:20:50 But at the same time, he had some real problems
00:20:52 in the world to deal with, terrorism being one of them.
00:20:55 And the tools he has are very much biased
00:20:59 towards the use of military force.
00:21:01 It’s much harder as president to go and get Vladimir Putin
00:21:04 and Xi Jinping to agree with you.
00:21:06 It’s much easier to send these wonderful toys we have
00:21:09 and these incredible soldiers we have over there.
00:21:12 And when you have Congress, which is always against you,
00:21:15 it’s also easier to use the military
00:21:17 because you send them there.
00:21:18 And even if members of Congress from your own party
00:21:21 or the other are angry at you,
00:21:23 they’ll still fund the soldiers.
00:21:24 No member of Congress wants to vote
00:21:25 to starve our soldiers overseas.
00:21:27 So they’ll stop your budget,
00:21:29 they’ll even threaten not to pay the debt,
00:21:31 but they’ll still fund your soldiers.
00:21:33 And so you are pushed by the circumstances you’re in
00:21:36 to do this, and it’s very hard to resist.
00:21:39 So that’s, I think the criticism of Obama,
00:21:42 the fair one would be that he didn’t resist the pressures
00:21:45 that were there, but he did not make those pressures.
00:21:47 So is there something about putting the responsibility
00:21:52 on the president to form the structure around him locally
00:21:57 such that he can make the policy that matches the rhetoric?
00:22:01 So what I’m talking to is hiring.
00:22:05 So basically just everybody you work with,
00:22:08 you have power as a president to fire and hire
00:22:12 or to basically schedule meetings in such a way
00:22:16 that can control your decision making.
00:22:19 So I imagine it’s very difficult to get out of Afghanistan
00:22:24 or Iraq when most of your scheduled meetings
00:22:28 are with generals or something like that.
00:22:31 But if you reorganize the schedule
00:22:33 and you reorganize who you have like late night talks with,
00:22:37 you potentially have a huge ripple effect on the policy.
00:22:41 I think that’s right.
00:22:42 I think who has access to the president
00:22:44 is absolutely crucial.
00:22:45 And presidents have to be more strategic about that.
00:22:48 They tend to be reacting to crises
00:22:50 because every day has a crisis.
00:22:52 And if you’re reacting to a crisis,
00:22:53 you’re not controlling access
00:22:54 because the crisis is driving you.
00:22:56 So that’s one element of it.
00:22:57 But I also think, and this is the moment we’re in right now,
00:23:00 presidents have to invest in reforming the system,
00:23:04 the system of decision making.
00:23:05 Should we have a national security council
00:23:07 that looks the way it does?
00:23:09 Should our military be structured the way it is?
00:23:11 The founding fathers wanted a military that was divided.
00:23:14 They did not want a unified department of defense.
00:23:17 That was only created after World War II.
00:23:19 Should we have as large a military as we have?
00:23:20 Should we be in as many places?
00:23:23 There are some fundamental structural reforms
00:23:25 we have to undertake.
00:23:26 And part of that is who you appoint,
00:23:28 but part of that is also how you change the institutions.
00:23:30 The genius of the American system
00:23:32 is that it’s a dynamic system.
00:23:34 It can be adjusted.
00:23:35 It has been adjusted over time.
00:23:37 That’s the heroic story.
00:23:39 The frustrating story is it often takes us a long time
00:23:43 to make those adjustments until we go
00:23:45 into such bad circumstances that we have no choice.
00:23:48 So in the battle of power of the office of the president
00:23:53 versus the United States military,
00:23:56 the department of defense,
00:23:58 do you have a sense that the president
00:24:00 has more power ultimately?
00:24:01 So to decrease the size of the department of defense,
00:24:06 to withdraw from any wars,
00:24:08 or increase the amount of wars,
00:24:11 is the president, you’re kind of implying
00:24:13 the president has a lot of power here in this scale.
00:24:16 Yes, the president has a lot of power
00:24:18 and we are fortunate and it was just proven
00:24:20 in the last few years that our military,
00:24:22 uniquely among many countries with large militaries,
00:24:26 is very deferential to the president
00:24:27 and very restricted in its ability
00:24:29 to challenge the president.
00:24:31 So that’s a strength of our system.
00:24:33 But the way you reform the military
00:24:35 is not with individual decisions.
00:24:37 It’s by having a strategic plan
00:24:40 that reexamines what role it plays.
00:24:43 So it’s not just about whether we’re in Afghanistan or not.
00:24:45 The question we have to ask is,
00:24:47 when we look at our toolbox
00:24:48 of what we can do in our foreign policy,
00:24:51 are there other tools we should build up
00:24:54 and therefore some tools in the military we should reduce?
00:24:58 That’s the broader strategic question.
00:25:00 Let me ask you the most absurd question of all
00:25:03 that you did not sign up for,
00:25:04 but I’ve been hanging out
00:25:06 with a guy named Joe Rogan recently,
00:25:08 so it’s very important for me and him to figure this out.
00:25:13 If a president, because you said,
00:25:15 you implied the president’s very powerful,
00:25:17 if a president shows up and the US government is in fact
00:25:21 in possession of aliens, alien spacecraft,
00:25:25 do you think the president will be told?
00:25:28 A more responsible adult historian question version of that
00:25:32 is, is there some things that the machine of government
00:25:37 keeps secret from the president?
00:25:40 Or is the president ultimately at the very center?
00:25:42 So if you map out the set of information and power,
00:25:46 you have CIA, you have all these organizations
00:25:49 that do the machinery of government,
00:25:53 not just the passing of bills,
00:25:55 but gaining information, homeland security,
00:26:01 actually engaging in wars, all those kinds of things.
00:26:06 How central is the president?
00:26:09 Would the president know some of the shady things
00:26:11 that are going on?
00:26:14 Aliens or some kind of cybersecurity stuff
00:26:18 against Russia and China, all those kinds of things,
00:26:21 is the president really made aware?
00:26:23 And if so, how nervous does that make you?
00:26:26 So presidents like leaders of any complex organizations
00:26:30 don’t know everything that goes on.
00:26:32 They have to ask the right questions.
00:26:34 This is Machiavelli.
00:26:35 Most important thing a leader has to do
00:26:38 is ask the right questions.
00:26:40 You don’t have to know the answers.
00:26:41 That’s why you hire smart people,
00:26:43 but you have to ask the right questions.
00:26:45 So if the president asks the US government,
00:26:48 those who are responsible for the aliens
00:26:50 or responsible for the cyber warfare against Russia,
00:26:53 they will answer honestly, they will have to,
00:26:56 but they will not volunteer that information in all cases.
00:27:00 So the best way a president can operate
00:27:01 is to have people around him or her
00:27:04 who are not the traditional policymakers,
00:27:06 this is where I think academic experts are important,
00:27:09 suggesting questions to ask
00:27:12 to therefore try to get the information.
00:27:14 It makes me nervous because I think human nature
00:27:18 is such that the academics, the experts,
00:27:23 everybody is almost afraid to ask the questions
00:27:27 for which the answers might be burdensome.
00:27:32 Yes.
00:27:33 And so that’s right.
00:27:34 And you can get into a lot of trouble not asking,
00:27:37 it’s the old elephant in the room.
00:27:40 Correct, correct.
00:27:42 This is exactly right.
00:27:44 And too often mediocre leaders
00:27:46 and those who try to protect them try to shield themselves.
00:27:49 They don’t want to know certain things.
00:27:51 So this is part of what happened
00:27:53 with the use of torture by the United States,
00:27:55 which is a war crime during the war on terror.
00:27:59 President Bush at times intentionally did not ask
00:28:02 and people around him prevented him from asking
00:28:04 or discouraged him from asking questions
00:28:06 he should have asked to know about what was going on.
00:28:09 And that’s how we ended up where we did.
00:28:12 You could say the same thing about Reagan and Iran Contra.
00:28:15 I wonder what it takes to be the kind of leader
00:28:18 that steps in and asks some difficult questions.
00:28:21 So aliens is one, UFO spacecraft, right?
00:28:25 Another one, yeah, torture is another one.
00:28:28 The CIA, how much information
00:28:30 is being collected about Americans?
00:28:32 I can see as a president being very uncomfortable
00:28:35 asking that question.
00:28:37 Because if the answer is a lot of information
00:28:39 is being collected by Americans,
00:28:41 then you have to be the guy
00:28:43 who lives with that information.
00:28:46 For the rest of your life, you have to walk around.
00:28:50 You’re probably not going to reform that system.
00:28:53 It’s very difficult.
00:28:54 You probably have to be very picky
00:28:55 about which things you reform.
00:28:57 You don’t have much time.
00:28:58 It takes a lot of sort of effort to restructure things.
00:29:01 But you nevertheless would have to be basically lying
00:29:06 to yourself, to others around you
00:29:11 about the unethical things.
00:29:13 Depends of course what your ethical system is.
00:29:17 I wonder what it takes to ask those hard questions.
00:29:20 I wonder if how few of us can be great leaders like that.
00:29:25 And I wonder if our political system, the electoral system
00:29:29 is such that makes it likely
00:29:32 that such leaders will come to power.
00:29:34 It’s hard and you can’t ask all the right questions
00:29:36 and there is a legal hazard if you know things
00:29:39 at certain times.
00:29:40 But I think you can, back to your point on hiring,
00:29:42 you can hire people who will do that in their domains.
00:29:45 And then you have to trust that when they think
00:29:47 it’s something that’s a question you need to ask,
00:29:49 they’ll pass that on to you.
00:29:51 This is why it’s not a good idea to have loyalists
00:29:54 because loyalists will shield you from things.
00:29:57 It’s a good idea to have people of integrity
00:29:59 who you can rely on and who you think will ask
00:30:01 those right questions and then pass that down
00:30:03 through their organization.
00:30:06 What’s inspiring to you, what’s insightful to you
00:30:10 about several of the presidencies
00:30:12 throughout the recent decades?
00:30:14 Is there somebody that stands out to you
00:30:16 that’s interesting and sort of in your study
00:30:19 of how the office has changed?
00:30:21 Well, Bill Clinton is one of the most fascinating figures.
00:30:25 Why can’t I, I apologize.
00:30:26 Bill Clinton just puts a smile on my face
00:30:28 every time somebody mentions him at this point.
00:30:30 I don’t know why.
00:30:31 I guess it’s charisma, I suppose.
00:30:33 Well, and he’s a unique individual,
00:30:36 but he fascinates me because he’s a figure
00:30:41 of such enormous talent and enormous appetite
00:30:45 and such little self control and such extremes.
00:30:50 And I think it’s not just that he tells us
00:30:53 something about the presidency,
00:30:53 he tells us something about our society.
00:30:56 American society, this is not new to our time,
00:30:58 is filled with enormous reservoirs of talent and creativity.
00:31:02 And those have a bright and a dark side.
00:31:05 And you see both with Bill Clinton.
00:31:06 In some ways, he’s the mirror of the best and worst
00:31:09 of our society.
00:31:10 And maybe that’s really what presidents are in the end.
00:31:13 They’re mirrors of our world
00:31:14 that we get the government we deserve,
00:31:16 we get the leaders we deserve.
00:31:18 I wish we embraced that a little bit more.
00:31:20 A lot of people criticize Donald Trump
00:31:22 for certain human qualities that he has.
00:31:24 A lot of people criticize Bill Clinton
00:31:27 for certain human qualities.
00:31:28 I wish we kind of embraced the chaos of that.
00:31:32 Because he does, you’re right, in some sense represent,
00:31:35 I mean, he doesn’t represent the greatest ideal of America,
00:31:39 but the flawed aspect of human nature is what he represents.
00:31:43 And that’s the beautiful thing about America,
00:31:45 the diversity of this land with the mix of it,
00:31:49 the corruption within capitalism,
00:31:53 the beauty of capitalism, the innovation,
00:31:56 all those kinds of things,
00:31:57 the people that start from nothing and create everything,
00:32:01 the Elon Musk’s of the world and the Bill Gates and so on.
00:32:04 But also the people, Bernie Mados and all,
00:32:08 as the Me Too movement has showed the multitude of creeps
00:32:11 that apparently permeate the entirety of our system.
00:32:15 So I don’t know, there is something, there is some sense
00:32:21 in which we put our president on a pedestal,
00:32:24 which actually creates a fake human being.
00:32:30 Like the standard we hold them to
00:32:33 is forcing the fake politicians to come to power
00:32:36 versus the authentic one, which is in some sense,
00:32:39 the promise of Donald Trump is like,
00:32:42 it’s a definitive statement of authenticity.
00:32:46 It’s like, this is the opposite of the fake politician.
00:32:50 It’s whatever else you wanna say about him
00:32:52 is there’s the chaos that’s unlike anything else
00:32:55 that came before.
00:32:57 One thing, and this is a particular maybe preference
00:33:00 and quirk of mine, but I really admire,
00:33:03 maybe I’m romanticizing the past again,
00:33:05 but I romanticize the presidents
00:33:07 that were students of history.
00:33:09 They were almost like king philosophers,
00:33:17 that made speeches that reverberated through decades after.
00:33:26 Using the words of those presidents,
00:33:28 whether written by them or not,
00:33:30 we tell the story of America.
00:33:33 And I don’t know, even Obama has been an exceptionally good,
00:33:37 as far as I know, I apologize if I’m incorrect on this,
00:33:40 but from everything I’ve seen,
00:33:42 he was a very deep scholar of history.
00:33:45 And I really admire that.
00:33:48 Is that through the history of the office of the presidency,
00:33:53 is that just your own preference
00:33:55 or is that supposed to come with the job?
00:33:58 Are you supposed to be a student of history?
00:34:00 I think, I mean, I’m obviously biased as a historian,
00:34:02 but I do think it comes with the job.
00:34:03 Every president I’ve studied had a serious interest
00:34:08 in history.
00:34:09 Now, how they pursued that interest would vary.
00:34:13 Obama was more bookish, more academic.
00:34:16 So was George W. Bush in strange ways.
00:34:18 George H. W. Bush was less so,
00:34:20 but George H. W. Bush loved to talk to people.
00:34:22 So he would talk to historians, right?
00:34:24 Ronald Reagan loved movies
00:34:27 and movies were an insight into history for him.
00:34:30 He likes to watch movies about another time.
00:34:32 It wasn’t always the best of history,
00:34:34 but he was interested
00:34:35 in what is a fundamental historical question.
00:34:38 How has our society developed?
00:34:40 How has it grown and changed over time?
00:34:43 And how has that change affected who we are today?
00:34:46 That’s the historical question.
00:34:48 It’s really interesting to me.
00:34:50 I do a lot of work with business leaders and others too.
00:34:53 You reach a certain point in any career
00:34:55 and you become a historian
00:34:57 because you realize that the formulas
00:35:00 and the technical knowledge that you’ve gained
00:35:02 got you to where you are.
00:35:04 But now your decisions are about human nature.
00:35:07 Your decisions are about social change
00:35:09 and they can’t be answered technically.
00:35:12 They can only be answered by studying human beings.
00:35:15 And what is history?
00:35:15 It’s studying the laboratory of human behavior.
00:35:19 To sort of play devil’s advocate,
00:35:21 I kind of, especially in the engineering scientific domains,
00:35:27 I often see history holding us back.
00:35:30 Sort of the way things were done in the past
00:35:34 are not necessarily going to hold the key
00:35:36 to what will progress us into the future.
00:35:43 Of course, with history in studying human nature,
00:35:45 it does seem like humans are just the same.
00:35:49 She has like the same problems over and over.
00:35:51 So in that sense, it feels like history has all the lessons,
00:35:55 whether we’re talking about wars,
00:35:56 whether we’re talking about corruption,
00:35:58 whether we’re talking about economics.
00:36:02 I think there’s a difference between
00:36:04 history and antiquarianism.
00:36:06 So antiquarianism, which some people call history,
00:36:10 is the desire to go back to the past
00:36:12 or stay stuck in the past.
00:36:13 So antiquarianism is the desire to have the desk
00:36:16 that Abraham Lincoln sat at.
00:36:17 Wouldn’t it be cool to sit at his desk?
00:36:19 I’d love to have that desk.
00:36:20 If I had a few extra million dollars, I’d acquire it.
00:36:22 So in a way, that’s antiquarianism.
00:36:25 That’s trying to capture and hold on to the past.
00:36:28 The past is a talisman for antiquarians.
00:36:32 What history is, is the study of change over time.
00:36:35 That’s the real definition of historical study
00:36:38 and historical thinking.
00:36:39 And so what we’re studying is change.
00:36:42 And so a historian should never say,
00:36:45 we have to do things the way we’ve done them in the past.
00:36:47 The historian should say, we can’t do them
00:36:49 the way we did them in the past.
00:36:51 We can’t step in the same river twice.
00:36:53 Every podcast of yours is different from the last one.
00:36:56 You plan it out and then it goes in its own direction.
00:37:00 And what are we studying then in history?
00:37:02 We’re studying the patterns of change
00:37:05 and we’re recognizing we’re part of a pattern.
00:37:08 So what I would say to the historian
00:37:10 who’s trying to hold the engineer back,
00:37:11 I’d say, no, don’t tell that engineer not to do this.
00:37:14 Tell them to understand how this fits
00:37:16 into the relationship with other engineering products
00:37:20 and other activities from the past
00:37:22 that still affect us today.
00:37:23 For example, any product you produce
00:37:25 is gonna be used by human beings who have prejudices.
00:37:28 It’s gonna go into an unequal society.
00:37:30 Don’t assume it’s gonna go into an equal society.
00:37:32 Don’t assume that when you create a social media site
00:37:34 that people are going to use it fairly
00:37:36 and put only truthful things on it.
00:37:38 We shouldn’t be surprised.
00:37:39 That’s where human nature comes in.
00:37:42 But it’s not trying to hold onto the past.
00:37:43 It’s trying to use the knowledge from the past
00:37:45 to better inform the changes today.
00:37:48 I have to ask you about George Washington.
00:37:50 Maybe you have some insights.
00:37:52 It seems like he’s such a fascinating figure
00:37:56 in the context of the study of power.
00:37:59 Because I kind of intuitively have come to internalize
00:38:03 the belief that power corrupts
00:38:06 and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
00:38:07 Yes.
00:38:11 And sort of like basically in thinking
00:38:15 that we cannot trust any one individual.
00:38:18 I can’t trust myself with power.
00:38:20 Nobody can trust anybody with power.
00:38:22 We have to create institutions and structures
00:38:24 that prevent us from ever being able
00:38:27 to amass absolute power.
00:38:29 And yet, here’s a guy, George Washington,
00:38:31 who seems to, you can correct me if I’m wrong,
00:38:34 but he seems to give away, relinquish power.
00:38:37 It feels like George Washington did it
00:38:40 almost like the purest of ways,
00:38:43 which is believes in this country,
00:38:46 but he just believes he’s not the person
00:38:48 to carry it forward.
00:38:54 What do you make of that?
00:38:55 What kind of human does it take to give away that power?
00:38:58 Is there some hopeful message we can carry through
00:39:01 to the future to elect leaders like that
00:39:05 or to find friends to hang out with who are like that?
00:39:09 Like what is that?
00:39:10 How do you explain that?
00:39:11 So it’s actually the most important thing
00:39:14 about George Washington.
00:39:14 It’s the right thing to bring up.
00:39:16 What the historian Gary Wills wrote years ago,
00:39:21 I’m gonna quote him,
00:39:22 was that Washington recognized
00:39:23 that sometimes you get more power by giving it up
00:39:26 than by trying to hold on to every last piece of it.
00:39:30 Washington gives up power at the end of the revolution.
00:39:32 He’s successfully carried
00:39:34 through the revolutionary war aims.
00:39:35 He’s commander of the revolutionary forces
00:39:38 and he gives up his command.
00:39:40 And then of course he’s president
00:39:41 and after two terms, he gives up his command.
00:39:43 What is he doing?
00:39:44 He’s an ambitious person,
00:39:46 but he’s recognizing that the most important currency
00:39:49 he has for power is his respected status
00:39:53 as a disinterested statesman.
00:39:56 That’s really what his power is.
00:39:58 And how does he further that power?
00:40:00 By showing that he doesn’t crave power.
00:40:04 So he was self aware.
00:40:05 Very self aware of this
00:40:06 and very sophisticated in understanding this.
00:40:10 And I think there are many other leaders who recognize that.
00:40:14 You can look to, in some ways,
00:40:19 the story of many of our presidents
00:40:20 who even before there is a two term limit
00:40:24 in the constitution, leave after two terms.
00:40:26 They do that because they recognize
00:40:28 that their power is the power of being a statesman,
00:40:32 not of being a president.
00:40:34 I still wonder what kind of man it takes,
00:40:36 what kind of human being it takes to do that.
00:40:39 Because I’ve been studying Vladimir Putin quite a bit.
00:40:43 Right.
00:40:44 And he’s still, I believe he still has popular support
00:40:51 that that’s not fully manipulated.
00:40:54 Because I know a lot of people in Russia
00:40:55 and actually almost the entirety of my family in Russia
00:40:59 are big supporters of Putin.
00:41:01 And everybody I talk to sort of,
00:41:03 that’s not just like on social media.
00:41:05 Right.
00:41:06 Like the people that live in Russia
00:41:08 seem to support him.
00:41:10 It feels like this will be in a George Washington way.
00:41:16 Now will be the time that Putin,
00:41:19 just like Yeltsin, could relinquish power.
00:41:22 And thereby, in the eyes of Russians,
00:41:25 become, in like the long arc of history,
00:41:29 be viewed as a great leader.
00:41:31 You look at the economic growth of Russia,
00:41:34 you look at the rescue from the collapse
00:41:36 of the Soviet Union and Russia finding its footing,
00:41:39 and then relinquishing power in a way that perhaps,
00:41:44 if Russia succeeds, forms a truly democratic state.
00:41:48 This would be how Putin can become
00:41:49 one of the great leaders in Russian history,
00:41:52 at least in the context of the 21st century.
00:41:55 I think there are two reasons why this is really hard
00:41:59 for Putin and for others.
00:42:01 One is the trappings of power are very seductive,
00:42:05 as you said before, they’re corrupting.
00:42:07 This is a real problem, right?
00:42:09 If it’s in the business context,
00:42:10 you don’t wanna give up that private jet.
00:42:13 If it’s in Putin’s context,
00:42:14 it’s billions of dollars every year
00:42:15 that he’s able to take for himself or give to his friends.
00:42:19 It’s not that he’ll be poor if he leaves,
00:42:20 he’ll still be rich,
00:42:21 and he has billions of dollars stored away,
00:42:23 but he won’t be able to get the new billions.
00:42:26 And so that’s part of it,
00:42:27 the trappings of power are a big deal.
00:42:30 And then second, in Putin’s case in particular,
00:42:32 he has to be worried about what happens next.
00:42:34 Will he be tried?
00:42:35 Will someone try to come and arrest him?
00:42:38 Will someone try to come and assassinate him?
00:42:41 Washington recognized that leaving early
00:42:44 limited the corruption and limited the enemies that you made.
00:42:48 And so it was a strategic choice.
00:42:50 Putin is at this point bringing power too long.
00:42:53 And this comes back to your core insight.
00:42:55 It’s a cliche, but it’s true, power corrupts.
00:42:57 No one should have power for too long.
00:42:59 This was one of the best insights
00:43:00 the founders of the United States had,
00:43:02 that power was to be held for a short time
00:43:04 as a fiduciary responsibility,
00:43:07 not as something you owned, right?
00:43:08 This is the problem with monarchy,
00:43:10 with aristocracy, that you own power, right?
00:43:12 We don’t own power, we’re holding it in trust.
00:43:17 Yeah, there’s some probably like very specific
00:43:22 psychological study of how many years it takes
00:43:24 for you to forget that you can’t own power.
00:43:28 That’s right.
00:43:29 That could be a much more rigorous discussion
00:43:32 about the length of terms that are appropriate,
00:43:35 but really there’s an amount,
00:43:37 like Stalin had power for 30 years,
00:43:39 like Putin is pushing those that many years already.
00:43:44 There’s a certain point where you forget
00:43:46 the person you were before you took the power.
00:43:48 That’s right.
00:43:49 You forget to be humble in the face of this responsibility
00:43:52 and then there’s no going back.
00:43:55 That’s right.
00:43:55 And that’s how dictators are born.
00:43:57 That’s how the evil like authoritarians become evil
00:44:01 or let’s not use the word evil,
00:44:05 but counterproductive, destructive
00:44:08 to the ideal that they initially
00:44:11 probably came to office with.
00:44:13 That’s right.
00:44:14 That’s right.
00:44:15 One of the core historical insights
00:44:16 is people should move jobs.
00:44:19 And this applies for CEOs probably.
00:44:21 Absolutely.
00:44:22 They can go become CEO somewhere else,
00:44:24 but don’t stay CEO one place too long.
00:44:26 It’s a problem with startups, right?
00:44:27 The founder, you can have a brilliant founder
00:44:29 and that founder doesn’t want to let go.
00:44:31 Yeah.
00:44:32 Right, it’s the same issue.
00:44:33 At the same time, I mean, this is where Elon Musk
00:44:35 and a few others like Larry Page and Sergey Brin
00:44:41 that stayed for quite a long time
00:44:42 and they actually were the beacon.
00:44:45 They, on their shoulders, carried the dream of the company
00:44:48 where everybody else doubted.
00:44:51 But that seems to be the exception versus the rule.
00:44:54 Well, and even Sergey, for example, has stepped back.
00:44:57 He plays less of a day to day role
00:44:59 and is not running Google in the way he did.
00:45:01 But the interesting thing is he stepped back
00:45:04 in a quite tragic way from what I’ve seen,
00:45:07 which is, I think Google’s mission, initial mission
00:45:12 of making the world’s information accessible to everybody
00:45:15 is one of the most beautiful missions of any company
00:45:17 in the history of the world.
00:45:18 I think it’s what Google has done with the search engine
00:45:22 and other efforts that are similar,
00:45:25 like scanning a lot of books, it’s just incredible.
00:45:29 It’s similar to Wikipedia.
00:45:32 But what he said was that it’s not the same company anymore.
00:45:38 And I know maybe I’m reading too much into it
00:45:41 because it’s more maybe practically saying
00:45:43 just the size of the company is much larger,
00:45:45 the kind of leadership that’s required.
00:45:47 But at the same time, they changed the model
00:45:50 from don’t be evil to it’s becoming corporatized
00:45:54 and all those kinds of things and it’s sad.
00:45:56 There also are cycles, right?
00:45:59 History is about cycles, right?
00:46:01 There are cycles to life, there are cycles to organizations.
00:46:05 It’s sad.
00:46:05 I mean, it’s sad Steve Jobs leaving Apple
00:46:08 by passing away, sad.
00:46:11 You know, what the future of SpaceX and Tesla looks like
00:46:14 without Elon Musk is quite sad.
00:46:16 It’s very possible that those companies
00:46:18 become something very different.
00:46:20 They become something much more like corporate
00:46:24 and stale, yeah.
00:46:28 So maybe most of the progress is made through cycles.
00:46:31 Maybe a new Elon Musk comes along
00:46:33 and all those kinds of things.
00:46:35 But it does seem that the American system of government
00:46:39 has built into it the cycling that makes it effective
00:46:46 and it makes it last very long.
00:46:47 It lasts a very long time, right?
00:46:50 It continues to excel and lead the world.
00:46:53 Sure, sure.
00:46:55 And let’s hope it continues to.
00:46:56 No, I mean, we’re into a third century
00:47:00 and democracies on this scale rarely last that long.
00:47:03 So that’s a point of pride, but it also means
00:47:07 we need to be attentive to keep our house in order
00:47:09 because it’s not inevitable that this experiment continues.
00:47:14 Now it’s important to meditate on that actually.
00:47:17 You’ve mentioned that FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt
00:47:20 is one of the great leaders in American history.
00:47:24 Why is that?
00:47:25 Franklin Roosevelt had the power of empathy.
00:47:29 No leader that I’ve ever studied or been around
00:47:32 or spent any time reading about was able to connect
00:47:35 with people who were so different from himself
00:47:37 as Franklin Roosevelt.
00:47:39 He came from the most elite family.
00:47:40 He never had to work for a paycheck in his life.
00:47:43 When he was president, he was still collecting
00:47:44 an allowance from his mom.
00:47:46 I mean, you couldn’t be more elite than Franklin Roosevelt,
00:47:49 but he authentically connected.
00:47:52 This was not propaganda.
00:47:54 He was able to feel the pain and understand the lives
00:47:57 of some of the most destitute Americans
00:48:00 in other parts of the country.
00:48:02 It’s interesting.
00:48:02 So through one of the hardest economic periods
00:48:06 of American history, he was able to feel the pain.
00:48:08 He was able to, the number of immigrants
00:48:10 I read oral histories from or who have written themselves,
00:48:13 Saul Bellow is one example, the great novelist
00:48:15 who talk about how as immigrants to the US,
00:48:17 Saul Bellow was a Russian Jewish immigrant.
00:48:19 He said, growing up in Chicago, politicians were all trying
00:48:21 to steal from us.
00:48:22 I didn’t think any of them cared until I heard FDR.
00:48:25 And I knew he spoke to me.
00:48:27 And I think part of it was FDR really tried
00:48:31 to understand people.
00:48:32 That’s the first thing, he was humble enough
00:48:33 to try to do that.
00:48:34 But second, he had a talent for that.
00:48:36 And it’s hard to know exactly what it was,
00:48:38 but he had a talent for putting himself,
00:48:40 imagining himself in someone else’s shoes.
00:48:43 What stands out to you as important?
00:48:48 I mean, so he was, he went through the great depression.
00:48:51 The, so the new deal, which some people criticize,
00:48:54 some people see, I mean, it’s funny to look at some
00:48:57 of these policies and their long ripple effects.
00:49:03 But at the time, it’s some of the most innovative policies
00:49:08 in the history of America.
00:49:09 You could say they’re ultimately not good for America,
00:49:12 but they’re nevertheless hold within them very rich
00:49:16 and important lessons.
00:49:17 But the new deal, obviously World War II,
00:49:20 that entire process, is there something that stands out
00:49:23 to you as a particularly great moment that made FDR?
00:49:30 Yes, I think what FDR does from his first 100 days
00:49:34 in office forward, and this begins with his fireside chats,
00:49:38 is he helps Americans to see that they’re all in it together.
00:49:43 And that’s by creating hope and creating a sense
00:49:46 of common suffering and common mission.
00:49:49 It’s not offering simple solutions.
00:49:51 One of the lessons from FDR is,
00:49:52 if you wanna bring people together,
00:49:54 don’t offer a simple solution.
00:49:56 Because as soon as I offer a simple solution,
00:49:57 I have people for it and against it.
00:50:00 Don’t do that.
00:50:00 Explain the problem, frame the problem,
00:50:04 and then give people a mission.
00:50:05 So Roosevelt’s first radio address in March of 1933,
00:50:10 the banking system is collapsing.
00:50:12 And we can’t imagine it, right?
00:50:13 Banks were closing and you couldn’t get your money out.
00:50:16 Your life savings would be lost, right?
00:50:17 We can’t imagine that happening in our world today.
00:50:20 He comes on the radio, he takes five minutes
00:50:22 to explain how banking works.
00:50:24 Most people didn’t understand how banking worked, right?
00:50:26 They don’t actually hold your money in a vault.
00:50:28 They lend it out to someone else.
00:50:30 And then he explains why if you go and take your money
00:50:33 out of the bank and put it in your mattress,
00:50:35 you’re making it worse for yourself.
00:50:36 He explains this.
00:50:38 And then he says, I don’t have a solution,
00:50:40 but here’s what I’m gonna do.
00:50:42 I’m gonna send in government officers to examine the banks
00:50:46 and show you the books on the banks.
00:50:48 And I want you to help me by going
00:50:50 and putting your money back in the bank.
00:50:52 We’re all gonna do this together.
00:50:54 No simple solution, no ideological statement,
00:50:56 but a sense of common mission.
00:50:58 Let’s go out and do this together.
00:51:00 When you read as I have so many of these oral histories
00:51:03 and memoirs for people who lived through that period,
00:51:06 many of them disagreed with some of his policies.
00:51:08 Many of them thought he was too close to Jews
00:51:10 and they didn’t like the fact he had a woman
00:51:11 in his cabinet and all that, but they felt he cared.
00:51:15 And they felt they were part of some common mission.
00:51:18 And when they talk about their experience fighting
00:51:20 in World War II, whether in Europe or Asia,
00:51:22 it was that that prepared them.
00:51:24 They knew what it meant to be an American
00:51:26 when they were over there.
00:51:27 So that to me is a model of leadership.
00:51:30 And I think that’s as possible today as it’s ever been.
00:51:33 So you think it’s possible, like I was going to ask this,
00:51:37 again, it may be a very shallow view,
00:51:41 but it feels like this country is more divided
00:51:45 than it has been in recent history.
00:51:48 Perhaps the social media and all those kinds of things
00:51:51 are merely revealing the division
00:51:54 as opposed to creating the division.
00:51:56 But is it possible to have a leader
00:52:00 that unites in the same way that FDR did without,
00:52:03 well, we’re living through a pandemic.
00:52:06 This is already, so like, I was going to say
00:52:09 without suffering, but this is economic suffering.
00:52:12 A huge number of people have lost their job.
00:52:14 So is it possible to have, is there one a hunger?
00:52:18 Is there a possibility to have an FDR style leader
00:52:21 who unites?
00:52:22 Yes, I think that is what President Biden is trying.
00:52:25 I’m not saying he’ll succeed,
00:52:27 but I think that’s what he’s trying to do.
00:52:29 The way you do this is you do not allow yourself
00:52:31 to be captured by your opponents in Congress
00:52:35 or somewhere else.
00:52:36 FDR had a lot of opponents in Congress.
00:52:38 He had a lot of opponents in politics,
00:52:39 governors and others who didn’t like him.
00:52:41 Herbert Hoover was still around
00:52:44 and still accusing FDR of being a conspiratist
00:52:47 and all these other things.
00:52:48 So you don’t allow yourself to be captured
00:52:52 by the leaders of the other side.
00:52:53 You go over their heads to the people.
00:52:55 And so today, the way to do this is to explain to people
00:52:59 and empathize with the suffering and dislocation
00:53:01 and difficulties they’re dealing with
00:53:03 and show that you’re trying to help them.
00:53:05 Not an easy solution, not a simple statement,
00:53:08 but here are some things we can all do together.
00:53:11 That’s why I think infrastructure makes a lot of sense.
00:53:13 It’s what FDR invested into, right?
00:53:15 FDR built Hoover Dam.
00:53:17 Hoover Dam turned the lights on for young Lyndon Johnson
00:53:20 who grew up outside of Austin, right?
00:53:22 FDR was the one who invested in road construction
00:53:25 that was then continued by Dwight Eisenhower,
00:53:28 by a Republican with the interstate highway system, right?
00:53:31 FDR invested through the WPA in building thousands
00:53:34 of schools in our country, planting trees.
00:53:37 That’s the kind of work that can bring people together.
00:53:40 You don’t have to be a Democrat or a Republican to say,
00:53:42 you know what, we’d be a lot better off in my community
00:53:45 if we had better infrastructure today.
00:53:47 I wanna be a part of that.
00:53:48 Oh, well, maybe I can get a job doing that.
00:53:49 Maybe my company can benefit from that.
00:53:52 You bring people together and that way
00:53:54 it becomes a common mission,
00:53:56 even if we have different ideological positions.
00:53:59 Yeah, it’s funny.
00:54:01 When I first heard Joe Biden,
00:54:05 many years ago, I think he ran for president against Obama.
00:54:08 That’s correct.
00:54:10 Before I heard him speak, I really liked him.
00:54:13 But once I heard him speak,
00:54:15 I started liking him less and less.
00:54:17 And it speaks to something interesting,
00:54:21 where it’s hard to put into words
00:54:22 why you connect with people.
00:54:24 The empathy that you mentioned in FDR,
00:54:27 you have these bad, pardon the French, motherfuckers
00:54:31 like Teddy Roosevelt that connect with you.
00:54:33 There’s something just powerful.
00:54:35 And with Joe Biden, I wanna really like him.
00:54:39 And there’s something not quite there
00:54:41 where it feels like he doesn’t quite know my pain,
00:54:45 even though he, on paper, is exactly,
00:54:49 he knows the pain of the people
00:54:50 and there’s something not connecting.
00:54:52 And it’s hard to explain.
00:54:53 It’s hard to put into words.
00:54:55 And it makes me not,
00:55:00 as an engineer and scientist,
00:55:01 it makes me not feel good about presidencies
00:55:04 because it makes me feel like it’s more art than science.
00:55:08 It is an art.
00:55:09 And I think it’s exactly an art
00:55:11 for the reasons you laid out, it’s aesthetic.
00:55:13 It’s about feeling, it’s about emotion,
00:55:14 all the things that we can’t engineer.
00:55:16 We’ve tried for centuries to engineer emotion.
00:55:18 We’re never gonna do it.
00:55:19 Don’t try it.
00:55:20 I’m a parent of teenagers.
00:55:21 Don’t even try to explain emotion.
00:55:24 But you hit on the key point
00:55:26 and the key challenge for Biden.
00:55:27 He’s gotta find the right words.
00:55:28 It’s not finding the words to bullshit people.
00:55:32 It’s finding the words to help express.
00:55:34 We’ve all felt empowered and felt good.
00:55:36 When someone uses words
00:55:38 that put into words what we’re feeling,
00:55:41 that’s what he needs.
00:55:41 That’s the job of a leader.
00:55:42 And there’s certain words,
00:55:44 I haven’t heard many politicians use those words,
00:55:47 but there’s certain words that make you forget
00:55:49 that you’re for immigration or against immigration.
00:55:54 Make you forget whether you’re for wars and against wars.
00:55:57 Make you forget about the bickering
00:56:00 and somehow inspire you, elevate you
00:56:04 to believe in the greatness that this country could be.
00:56:07 Yes.
00:56:08 In that same way, the reason I moved to Austin,
00:56:11 it’s funny to say, I just heard words
00:56:15 from people, from friends,
00:56:17 where they’re excited by the possibility of the future here.
00:56:21 I wasn’t thinking like, what’s the right thing to do?
00:56:24 What’s the strategic,
00:56:26 cause I wanna launch a business.
00:56:28 There’s a lot of arguments for San Francisco
00:56:30 or maybe staying in Boston in my case,
00:56:32 but there’s this excitement that was beyond reason.
00:56:37 That was emotional.
00:56:38 Yes, yes.
00:56:38 And that’s what it seems like.
00:56:40 That’s what builds, that’s what great leaders do,
00:56:43 but that’s what builds countries.
00:56:45 That’s what builds great businesses.
00:56:47 That’s right.
00:56:48 And it’s what people say about Austin,
00:56:50 for example, all the time.
00:56:51 A talented people who come here like yourself.
00:56:54 And here’s the interesting thing.
00:56:55 No one person creates that.
00:56:56 The words emerge.
00:56:58 And part of what FDR understood,
00:57:00 you’ve got to find the words out there and use them.
00:57:03 You don’t have to be the creator of them.
00:57:05 Just as the great painter doesn’t invent the painting,
00:57:08 they’re taking things from others.
00:57:10 As a small aside,
00:57:11 is there something you could say about FDR
00:57:15 and Hitler?
00:57:19 I constantly tried to think,
00:57:21 can this person, can this moment in history
00:57:23 have been circumvented, prevented?
00:57:29 Can Hitler have been stopped?
00:57:31 Can some of the atrocities from my own family
00:57:34 that my grandparents had to live through
00:57:37 the starvation in the Soviet Union,
00:57:39 so the thing that people don’t often talk about
00:57:42 is the atrocities committed by Stalin and his own people.
00:57:46 It feels like here’s this great leader, FDR,
00:57:53 that had the chance to have an impact on the world
00:57:59 that he already probably had a great positive impact,
00:58:05 but had a chance to stop maybe World War II
00:58:09 or stop some of the evils.
00:58:12 When you look at how weak Hitler was
00:58:14 from much of the 30s relative to militarily,
00:58:17 relative to everything else,
00:58:19 how many people could have done a lot to stop him?
00:58:23 And FDR in particular didn’t.
00:58:26 He tried to play, not pacify,
00:58:31 but basically do diplomacy and let Germany do Germany,
00:58:36 let Europe do Europe, and focus on America.
00:58:40 Is there something you would,
00:58:42 would you hold his feet to the fire on this?
00:58:44 Or is it very difficult from the perspective of FDR
00:58:47 to have known what was coming?
00:58:50 I think FDR had a sense of what was coming,
00:58:52 not quite the enormity of what Hitler was doing
00:58:55 and not quite the enormity of what the Holocaust became.
00:58:57 I also lost relatives in the Holocaust.
00:59:01 And part of that was beyond the imagination of human beings.
00:59:04 But it’s clear in his papers that as early as 1934,
00:59:08 people he respected, who he knew well,
00:59:10 told him that Hitler was very dangerous.
00:59:12 They also thought Hitler was crazy, that he was a lunatic.
00:59:15 Hamilton Fish Armstrong, who was a friend of Roosevelt’s,
00:59:18 who was actually the Council on Foreign Relations
00:59:20 in New York, had a meeting with Hitler in 1934.
00:59:22 I remember reading the account of this.
00:59:24 And he basically said to FDR,
00:59:25 this man is gonna cause a war.
00:59:27 He’s gonna cause a lot of damage.
00:59:28 Again, they didn’t know quite the scale.
00:59:30 So they saw this coming.
00:59:32 They saw this coming.
00:59:33 FDR had two problems.
00:59:34 First, he had an American public that was deeply isolationist.
00:59:38 The opposite of the problem in a sense
00:59:40 that we were talking about before.
00:59:41 If we’re an over militarized society,
00:59:43 now we were a deeply isolationist society in the 1930s.
00:59:47 The depression reinforced that.
00:59:49 FDR actually had to break the law in the late 30s
00:59:52 to support the allies.
00:59:53 So it was very hard to move the country in that direction,
00:59:57 especially when he had this program at home,
00:59:59 the New Deal, that he didn’t wanna jeopardize
01:00:01 by alienating an isolationist public.
01:00:03 That was the reality.
01:00:04 We talked about political manipulation.
01:00:06 He had to be conscious of that.
01:00:07 He had to know his audience.
01:00:09 And second, there were no allies willing
01:00:12 to invest in this either.
01:00:14 The British were as committed to appeasement, as you know.
01:00:18 You’re obviously very knowledgeable about this.
01:00:19 The French were as well.
01:00:21 It was very hard.
01:00:22 The Russian government, the Soviet government
01:00:23 was cooperating to remilitarize Germany.
01:00:26 So there weren’t a lot of allies out there either.
01:00:30 I think if there’s a criticism to be made of FDR,
01:00:33 it’s that once we’re in the war,
01:00:37 he didn’t do enough to stop,
01:00:39 in particular, the killing of Jews.
01:00:41 And there are a number of historians,
01:00:42 myself included, who have written about this,
01:00:44 and it’s an endless debate.
01:00:45 What should he have done?
01:00:47 There’s no doubt by 1944,
01:00:49 the United States had air superiority
01:00:51 and could have bombed the rail lines to Auschwitz
01:00:53 and other camps,
01:00:54 and that would have saved as many as a million Jews.
01:00:56 That’s a lot of people who could have been saved.
01:00:58 Why didn’t FDR insist on that?
01:01:01 In part, because he wanted to use every resource possible
01:01:04 to win the war.
01:01:05 He did not want to be accused of fighting the war for Jews.
01:01:08 But I think it’s also fair to say
01:01:09 that he probably cared less about Jews and East Europeans
01:01:13 than he did about others,
01:01:15 those of his own Dutch ancestry and from Western Europe.
01:01:18 And so, even their race comes in,
01:01:20 is also the explanation for the internment of Japanese
01:01:22 in the United States,
01:01:23 which is a horrible war crime
01:01:24 committed by this heroic president.
01:01:26 120,000 Japanese American citizens
01:01:29 lost their freedom unnecessarily.
01:01:31 So, he had his limitations.
01:01:33 And I think he could have done more during the war
01:01:37 to save many more lives.
01:01:38 And I wish he had.
01:01:39 And there’s something to be said about empathy
01:01:42 that you spoke that FDR had empathy.
01:01:45 But us, for example,
01:01:47 now there’s many people who describe the atrocities
01:01:49 happening in China.
01:01:51 And there’s a bunch of places across the world
01:01:53 where there’s atrocities happening now.
01:01:55 And we care.
01:01:57 We do not uniformly apply how much we care
01:02:03 for the suffering of others.
01:02:04 That’s correct.
01:02:05 Depending on the group.
01:02:06 That’s correct.
01:02:07 And in some sense, the role of the president
01:02:10 is to rise above that natural human inclination
01:02:15 to protect, to do the us versus them,
01:02:18 to protect the inner circle
01:02:20 and empathize with the suffering of those
01:02:22 that are not like you.
01:02:24 That’s correct.
01:02:25 I agree with that.
01:02:26 Yeah.
01:02:29 Speaking of war, you wrote a book on Henry Kissinger.
01:02:33 It’s not a great transition,
01:02:36 but it made sense in my head.
01:02:39 Who was Henry Kissinger as a man
01:02:41 and as a historical figure?
01:02:43 So Henry Kissinger to me is one of the most fascinating
01:02:45 figures in history,
01:02:47 because he comes to the United States
01:02:49 as a German Jewish immigrant at age 15,
01:02:51 speaking no English.
01:02:53 And within a few years, he’s a major figure
01:02:56 influencing US foreign policy at the height of US power.
01:03:00 But while he’s doing that,
01:03:01 he’s never elected to office
01:03:03 and he’s constantly reviled by people,
01:03:06 including people who are anti Semitic because he’s Jewish,
01:03:10 but at the same time also his exoticism
01:03:13 makes him more attractive to people.
01:03:15 So someone like Nelson Rockefeller wants Kissinger around.
01:03:18 He’s one of Kissinger’s first patrons
01:03:20 because he wants a really smart Jew.
01:03:22 And Kissinger is gonna be that smart Jew
01:03:23 I call Kissinger a policy Jew.
01:03:25 There were these court Jews in the 16th and 17th
01:03:27 and 18th centuries in Europe.
01:03:28 Every king wanted the Jew to manage his banking.
01:03:31 And in a sense in the United States
01:03:33 in the second half of the 20th century,
01:03:35 many presidents want a Jew
01:03:36 to manage their international affairs.
01:03:38 And what does that really mean?
01:03:39 It’s not just about being Jewish,
01:03:41 it’s the internationalism, it’s the cosmopolitanism.
01:03:44 And that’s one of the things
01:03:45 I was fascinated with with Kissinger.
01:03:47 Someone like Kissinger is unthinkable
01:03:48 as a powerful figure in the United States
01:03:50 30 or 40 years earlier,
01:03:52 because the United States is run by WASD.
01:03:54 It’s run by white elites
01:03:56 who come from a certain background.
01:03:58 Kissinger represents a moment when American society
01:04:01 opens up not to everyone,
01:04:03 but opens up to these cosmopolitan figures
01:04:05 who have language skills, historical knowledge,
01:04:08 networks that can be used for the US government
01:04:11 when after World War II, we have to rebuild Europe,
01:04:14 when we have to negotiate with the Soviet Union,
01:04:16 when we need the kinds of knowledge we didn’t have before.
01:04:19 And Harvard where he gets his education late,
01:04:22 he started at City College actually,
01:04:23 but Harvard where he gets his education late
01:04:25 is at the center of what’s happening
01:04:26 at all these major universities,
01:04:28 at Harvard, at Yale, at Stanford,
01:04:29 at the University of Texas, everywhere,
01:04:31 where they’re growing in their international affairs,
01:04:34 bringing in the kinds of people
01:04:36 who never would be at the university before,
01:04:38 training them and then enlisting them in Cold War activities.
01:04:42 And so Kissinger is a representative of that phenomenon.
01:04:46 I became interested in him
01:04:47 because I think he’s a bellwether.
01:04:48 He shows how power has changed in the United States.
01:04:52 So he enters this whole world of politics,
01:04:57 what, post World War II in the 50s?
01:05:00 Yes, so he actually, in the 40s even,
01:05:03 it’s an extraordinary story.
01:05:05 He comes to the United States in 1938,
01:05:07 just before Kristallnacht, his family leaves.
01:05:09 He actually grew up right outside of Nuremberg.
01:05:11 They leave right before Kristallnacht in fall of 38,
01:05:16 come to New York.
01:05:17 He originally works in a brush factory, cleaning brushes,
01:05:21 goes to a public high school.
01:05:23 And in 1942, just after Pearl Harbor, he joins the military.
01:05:27 And he’s very quickly in the military,
01:05:30 first of all, given citizenship, which he didn’t have before.
01:05:34 He’s sent for the first time outside of a kosher home.
01:05:36 He had been in a kosher home his entire life.
01:05:38 He’s sent to South Carolina to eat ham for Uncle Sam.
01:05:42 And then he is, and this is extraordinary,
01:05:45 at the age of 20, barely speaking English,
01:05:48 he is sent back to Germany with the US Army
01:05:52 in an elite counterintelligence role, why?
01:05:55 Because they need German speakers.
01:05:57 He came when he was 15,
01:05:58 so he actually understands the society.
01:06:00 They need people who have that cultural knowledge.
01:06:02 And because he’s Jewish,
01:06:04 they can trust that he’ll be anti Nazi.
01:06:07 And there’s a whole group of these figures.
01:06:10 He’s one of many.
01:06:11 And so he’s in an elite circle.
01:06:13 He’s discriminated against in New York.
01:06:15 When he goes to Harvard after that,
01:06:17 he can only live in a Jewish only dorm.
01:06:19 But at the same time,
01:06:20 he’s in an elite policy role in counterintelligence.
01:06:22 He forms a network there that stays with him
01:06:25 the rest of his career.
01:06:27 There’s a gentleman named Fritz Kramer,
01:06:29 who becomes a sponsor of his
01:06:31 in the emerging Pentagon Defense Department world.
01:06:34 And as early as the early 1950s,
01:06:36 he sent them to Korea to comment on affairs in Korea.
01:06:40 He becomes both an intellectual recognized
01:06:42 for his connections,
01:06:44 but also someone who policymakers wanna talk about.
01:06:46 His book on nuclear weapons, when it’s written,
01:06:48 is given to President Eisenhower to read
01:06:51 because they say this is someone writing interesting things.
01:06:54 You should read what he says.
01:06:56 There’s a certain aspect to him
01:06:57 that’s kind of like Forrest Gump.
01:06:59 He seems to continuously be the right person
01:07:02 at the right time in the right place.
01:07:03 That’s right.
01:07:04 Somehow finding him in this.
01:07:05 I don’t wanna, you know,
01:07:07 you can only get lucky so many times
01:07:11 because he continues to get lucky
01:07:13 in terms of being at the right place in history
01:07:17 for many decades, until today.
01:07:19 Yeah, well, he has a knack for that.
01:07:21 I spent a lot of time talking with him.
01:07:24 And what comes through very quickly
01:07:27 is that he has an eye for power.
01:07:30 It’s, I think, unhealthy.
01:07:31 He’s obsessed with power.
01:07:33 Can you explain like an observer of power
01:07:36 or does he want power himself?
01:07:39 Yes, both of those things.
01:07:41 Both of those.
01:07:41 And I think I explained this in the book.
01:07:43 He doesn’t agree with what I’m gonna say now,
01:07:46 but I think I’m right and I think he’s right.
01:07:47 It’s very hard to analyze yourself, right?
01:07:50 I think he develops an obsession with gaining power
01:07:54 because he sees what happens when you have no power.
01:07:57 He experiences the trauma.
01:08:00 His father is a very respected Gymnasium Lehrer in Germany.
01:08:04 Even though he’s Jewish,
01:08:06 he’s actually the teacher of German classics
01:08:09 to the German kids.
01:08:11 That’s great.
01:08:12 And he’s forced to flee and he becomes nothing.
01:08:15 His father never really makes a way
01:08:17 for himself in the United States.
01:08:18 He becomes a postal delivery person,
01:08:21 which is nothing wrong with that,
01:08:22 but for someone who’s a respected teacher in Germany,
01:08:25 and Gymnasium Lehrer are like professors there, right?
01:08:27 To then be in this position.
01:08:29 His mother has to open a catering business
01:08:31 when they come to New York.
01:08:33 It’s a typical immigrant story, but he sees the trauma.
01:08:35 His grandparents are killed by the Nazis.
01:08:38 So he sees the trauma and he realizes how perilous it is
01:08:41 to be without power.
01:08:43 And you’re saying he does not want to acknowledge
01:08:46 the effect of that?
01:08:49 It’s hard.
01:08:49 It’s hard.
01:08:50 I mean, most of us, if we’ve had trauma,
01:08:52 it’s believable that it’s traumatic
01:08:54 because you don’t talk about it.
01:08:55 I have a friend who interviews combat veterans and he says,
01:08:58 as soon as someone freely wants to tell me
01:09:01 about their combat trauma,
01:09:02 I suspect that they’re not telling me the truth.
01:09:05 If it’s traumatic, it’s hard to talk about.
01:09:08 Yeah, sometimes I wonder how much from my own life,
01:09:13 everything that I’ve ever done is just the result
01:09:15 of the complicated relationship with my father.
01:09:21 I tend to, I had a really difficult time.
01:09:23 I did a podcast conversation with him.
01:09:25 I saw it actually.
01:09:26 Yeah, it’s great.
01:09:27 It’s great.
01:09:28 It was, I was thinking I could never do that with my father.
01:09:31 But I remember as I was doing it,
01:09:33 and for months after I regretted doing it,
01:09:37 I just kept regretting it.
01:09:39 And the fact that I was regretting it spoke to the fact
01:09:42 that I’m running away from some truths
01:09:45 that are back there somewhere.
01:09:47 And that’s perhaps what Kissinger is as well.
01:09:50 But is there, I mean, he’s done,
01:09:53 he’s been a part of so many interesting moments
01:09:56 of American history, of world history,
01:09:59 from the Cold War, Vietnam War, until today.
01:10:03 What stands out to you as a particularly important moment
01:10:08 in his career that made who he is?
01:10:13 Well, I think what made his career in many ways
01:10:18 was his experience in the 1950s, building a network,
01:10:23 a network of people across the world
01:10:26 who were rising leaders from unique positions.
01:10:30 He ran what he called the International Seminar at Harvard,
01:10:35 which was actually a summer school class
01:10:37 that no one at Harvard cared about.
01:10:39 But he invited all of these rising intellectuals
01:10:44 and thinkers from around the world.
01:10:46 And he built a network there that he used forevermore.
01:10:50 So that’s what really, I think, boosts him.
01:10:53 The most important moments in terms of making his reputation
01:10:56 and making his career are two sets of activities.
01:10:59 One is the opening to China.
01:11:02 And his ability to, first of all,
01:11:04 take control of US policy without the authority to do that
01:11:07 and direct US policy, and then build a relationship
01:11:11 with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai that was unthinkable
01:11:14 just four or five years earlier.
01:11:16 Of course, President Nixon is a big part of that as well,
01:11:18 but Kissinger is the mover and shaker on that.
01:11:20 And it’s a lot of manipulation, but it’s also a vision.
01:11:23 Now, this is in the moment of American history
01:11:26 where there’s a very powerful anti communism.
01:11:29 Correct.
01:11:30 So communism is seen as much more even though
01:11:33 than today as the enemy.
01:11:35 Correct.
01:11:36 And China in particular,
01:11:37 they were one of our key enemies in Vietnam.
01:11:40 And in Korea, American forces
01:11:42 were fighting Chinese forces directly.
01:11:44 Chinese forces come over the border.
01:11:46 Thousands of Americans die at the hand of Chinese forces.
01:11:49 So for the long time, the United States
01:11:50 had no relationship with communist China.
01:11:52 He opens that relationship.
01:11:54 And at the same time, he also creates a whole new dynamic
01:11:58 in the Middle East.
01:11:59 After the 1973 war, the so called Yom Kippur War,
01:12:02 he steps in and becomes the leading negotiator
01:12:05 between the Israelis, the Egyptians,
01:12:07 and other major actors in the region.
01:12:09 And it makes the United States the most powerful actor
01:12:12 in the Middle East, the Soviet Union far less powerful,
01:12:15 which is great for the United States in the 70s and 80s.
01:12:17 It gets us though into the problems
01:12:19 we of course have thereafter.
01:12:21 So that speaks to the very pragmatic approach
01:12:25 that he’s taken the realistic approach
01:12:28 versus the idealistic approach termed realpolitik.
01:12:34 What is this thing?
01:12:35 What is this approach to world politics?
01:12:38 So realpolitik for Kissinger is really focusing
01:12:43 on the power centers in the world
01:12:46 and trying as best you can to manipulate
01:12:49 those power centers to serve the interests
01:12:51 of your own country.
01:12:52 And so that’s why he’s a multilateralist.
01:12:54 He’s not a unilateralist.
01:12:55 He believes the United States should put itself
01:12:58 at the center of negotiations
01:13:00 between other powerful countries.
01:13:02 But that’s also why he pays very little attention
01:13:03 to countries that are less powerful.
01:13:05 And this is why he’s often criticized
01:13:07 by human rights activists.
01:13:09 For him, parts of Africa and Latin America,
01:13:12 which you and I would consider important places
01:13:14 are unimportant because they don’t have power.
01:13:16 They can’t project their power.
01:13:17 They don’t produce a lot of economic wealth.
01:13:20 And so they matter less.
01:13:21 Realpolitik views the world in a hierarchy of power.
01:13:26 How does realpolitik realize itself in the world?
01:13:32 What does that really mean?
01:13:34 Like how do you push forward the interest
01:13:37 of your own country?
01:13:37 You said there’s power centers,
01:13:40 but it is a big bold move to negotiate
01:13:45 to work with a communist nation,
01:13:47 with your enemies that are powerful.
01:13:50 What is the sort of, if you can further elaborate
01:13:53 the philosophy behind it.
01:13:55 Sure, so there are two key elements
01:13:57 that then end up producing all kinds of tactics.
01:13:59 But the two strategic elements of Kissinger’s way
01:14:01 of thinking about realpolitik,
01:14:03 which are classical ways,
01:14:04 going back to Thucydides and the Greeks,
01:14:07 are to say, first of all,
01:14:08 you figure out who your allies are
01:14:10 and you build webs of connection
01:14:13 so that your allies help you to acquire
01:14:16 what you want to acquire.
01:14:18 This is why, according to Herodotus,
01:14:20 the Greeks beat the Persians.
01:14:21 The Persians are bigger,
01:14:22 but the Greeks, the Spartans, the Athenians,
01:14:24 others are able to work together
01:14:25 and leverage their resources.
01:14:27 So it’s about leveraging your resources.
01:14:28 For Kissinger, this makes Western Europe
01:14:31 crucially important.
01:14:32 It makes Japan crucially important.
01:14:35 It makes Israel and Egypt crucially important
01:14:38 in building these webs.
01:14:39 You build your surrogates,
01:14:41 you build your brother states.
01:14:43 In other parts of the world,
01:14:44 you build tight connections and you work together
01:14:46 to control the resources that you want.
01:14:49 The second element of the strategy
01:14:50 is not to go to war with your adversary,
01:14:53 but to do all you can to limit the power
01:14:56 of your adversary.
01:14:57 Some of that is containment,
01:14:59 preventing the Soviet Union from expanding.
01:15:01 That was the key element of American Cold War policy.
01:15:04 But sometimes it’s actually negotiation.
01:15:07 That’s what detente was about for Kissinger.
01:15:09 He spends a lot of time,
01:15:09 more time than any other American foreign policymaker,
01:15:12 negotiating with Soviet leaders
01:15:14 as well as Chinese leaders.
01:15:15 What does he want to do?
01:15:16 He wants to limit the nuclear arms race.
01:15:18 The United States is ahead.
01:15:20 We don’t want the Soviet Union to get ahead of us.
01:15:22 We negotiate to limit their abilities, right?
01:15:26 We play to our strengths.
01:15:28 So it’s a combination of keeping your adversary down
01:15:31 and building tight webs.
01:15:33 Within that context, military force is used,
01:15:36 but you’re not using war for the sake of war.
01:15:39 You’re using warfare to further your access to the resources,
01:15:43 economic, political, geographic that you want.
01:15:46 To build relationships and then the second thing,
01:15:49 to limit the powers of those you’re against.
01:15:51 Exactly.
01:15:51 So is there any sort of insights
01:15:56 into how he preferred to build relationships?
01:15:59 Are we talking about like, again, it’s the one on one.
01:16:03 Is it through policy or is it through like,
01:16:05 phone conversations?
01:16:06 Is there any cool kind of insights that you could speak to?
01:16:09 Yeah, Kissinger is the ultimate kiss up.
01:16:14 He is, some used to make fun of him.
01:16:16 In fact, even the filmmaker from Dr. Strangelove,
01:16:20 whose name I’m forgetting, Stanley Kubrick,
01:16:23 called him kiss up at that time, right?
01:16:27 He had a wonderful way of figuring out
01:16:30 what it is you wanted, back to that discussion we had before
01:16:33 and trying to show how he could give you more
01:16:35 of what you wanted as a leader.
01:16:36 It was very personalistic, very personalistic.
01:16:40 And he spends a lot of time, for example,
01:16:43 kissing up to Leonid Brezhnev, kissing up to Mao.
01:16:46 He tells Mao, you’re the greatest leader
01:16:48 in the history of the 20th century.
01:16:49 People will look back on you as the great leader.
01:16:52 Some of this sounds like BS, but it’s serious, right?
01:16:55 He’s feeding the egos of those around him.
01:16:58 Second, he is willing to get things done for you.
01:17:02 He’s effective.
01:17:03 You want him around you because of his efficacy.
01:17:05 So Richard Nixon is always suspicious
01:17:07 that Henry Kissinger is getting more of the limelight.
01:17:09 He hates that Kissinger gets the Nobel Peace Prize
01:17:11 and he doesn’t, but he needs him.
01:17:13 Because Kissinger’s the guy who gets things done.
01:17:16 So he performs.
01:17:17 He builds a relationship in almost,
01:17:19 I say this in the book, in almost a gangster way.
01:17:21 He didn’t like that he criticized that part of the book.
01:17:23 But again, I still think the evidence is there.
01:17:26 You need something to be done, boss, I’ll do it.
01:17:29 And don’t forget that I’m doing this for you.
01:17:32 And you get mutual dependency in a Hegelian way, right?
01:17:35 And so he builds this personal dependency
01:17:39 through ego and through performance.
01:17:42 And then he’s so skillful at making decisions
01:17:46 for people who are more powerful
01:17:48 because he’s never elected to office.
01:17:49 He always needs powerful people to let him do things.
01:17:53 But he convinces you it’s your decision when it’s really his.
01:17:55 To read his memos are beautiful.
01:17:57 He’s actually very skilled at writing things
01:17:59 in a way that looks like he’s giving you options
01:18:02 as president, but in fact, there’s only one option there.
01:18:05 Is he, speaking to the gangster, to the loyalty,
01:18:10 is he ever, like the sense I got from Nixon
01:18:14 is he would, Nixon would backstab you if he needed to.
01:18:19 One of the things that I admire about gangsters
01:18:25 is they don’t backstab those in their circle,
01:18:28 like loyalty above all else.
01:18:30 I mean, at least that’s the sense I’ve gotten
01:18:33 from the stories of the past, at least.
01:18:36 Is, where would you put Kissinger on that?
01:18:38 Is he loyalty above all else?
01:18:41 Or is it, or a human, it’s like the Steve Jobs thing,
01:18:45 is like, as long as you’re useful, you’re useful,
01:18:48 but then once, the moment you’re no longer useful
01:18:52 is when you’re knocked off the chessboard.
01:18:55 It’s the latter with him.
01:18:56 He’s backstabbing quite a lot.
01:18:59 And he’s self serving.
01:19:00 But he also makes himself so useful
01:19:03 that even though Nixon knows he’s doing that,
01:19:05 Nixon still needs him.
01:19:07 Yeah.
01:19:09 By the way, on that point, so having spoken with Kissinger,
01:19:13 what’s your relationship like with him
01:19:15 as somebody who is in an objective way writing his story?
01:19:21 It was very difficult
01:19:22 because he’s very good at manipulating people.
01:19:25 And we had about 12 or 13 interviews,
01:19:28 usually informal over lunch.
01:19:32 And this was many years ago.
01:19:34 This is probably now more than 10 years ago.
01:19:37 Did you find yourself being like sweet talked,
01:19:41 like to where you like go back home later
01:19:43 and look in the mirror and it’s like,
01:19:44 wait, what just happened?
01:19:46 He can be enormously charming
01:19:48 and enormously obnoxious at the same time.
01:19:51 So I would have these very mixed emotions
01:19:53 because he gives no ground.
01:19:54 He’s unwilling to, and I think this is a weakness,
01:19:58 he’s unwilling to admit mistake.
01:20:03 Others make mistakes, but he doesn’t.
01:20:05 And he certainly won’t take on any of the big criticisms
01:20:07 that are pushed.
01:20:09 I understand why.
01:20:09 I mean, when you’ve worked as hard for what he has
01:20:11 as he has, you’re defensive about it.
01:20:13 But he is very defensive and he’s very fragile about it.
01:20:15 He does not like criticisms at all.
01:20:17 He used to, he hasn’t done this in a while,
01:20:19 but he used to call me up and yell at me on the phone,
01:20:22 quite literally, when I would be quoted
01:20:24 in the New York Times or somewhere saying something
01:20:27 that sounded critical of him.
01:20:28 So for instance, there was one instance
01:20:30 a number of years ago,
01:20:31 where a reporter came across some documents
01:20:34 where Kissinger said negative things about Jews in Russia.
01:20:37 Typical things that a German Jew would say
01:20:39 about East European Jews.
01:20:41 And the New York Times asked me, is this accurate?
01:20:44 And I said, yeah, the documents are accurate.
01:20:46 I’ve seen them, they’re accurate.
01:20:47 He was so angry about that.
01:20:49 So there’s the fragility,
01:20:50 but there’s also the enormous charm
01:20:52 and the enormous intelligence.
01:20:53 The real challenge with him though,
01:20:54 is he’s very good at making his case.
01:20:56 He’ll convince you.
01:20:58 And as a scholar, as an observer,
01:21:02 you don’t wanna hear a lawyer’s case.
01:21:03 You wanna actually interrogate the evidence
01:21:05 and get to the truth.
01:21:07 And so that was a real challenge with him.
01:21:09 So speaking of his approach of realpolitik,
01:21:14 if we just zoom out and look at a human history,
01:21:17 human civilization, what do you think works best
01:21:20 in the way we progress forward?
01:21:25 A realistic approach, do whatever it takes,
01:21:28 control the centers of power,
01:21:30 to play a game for the greater interests
01:21:34 of the good guys, quote unquote.
01:21:36 Or lead by sort of idealism,
01:21:40 which is like truly act in the best version
01:21:46 of the ideas you represent,
01:21:48 as opposed to kind of present one view
01:21:52 and then do whatever it takes behind the scenes.
01:21:55 Obviously you need some of both,
01:21:56 but I lean more to the idealistic side
01:21:58 and more so actually, believe it or not,
01:22:00 as I get into my 40s, as I do more historical work.
01:22:04 Why do I say that?
01:22:05 Because I think, and this is one of my criticisms
01:22:07 of Kissinger, who I also have a lot of respect for,
01:22:10 the realpolitik becomes self defeating
01:22:13 because you’re constantly running to keep power,
01:22:15 but you forget why.
01:22:17 And you often then use power,
01:22:18 and I think Kissinger falls into this
01:22:20 in some of his worst moments, not all of his moments,
01:22:22 where the power is actually being used
01:22:23 to undermine the things you care about.
01:22:25 It’s sort of the example of being a parent
01:22:27 and you’re doing all these things
01:22:28 to take your kid to violin, basketball, all these things,
01:22:32 and you realize you’re actually killing your kid
01:22:33 and making your kid very unhappy.
01:22:35 And the whole reason you were doing it
01:22:36 was to improve the person’s life.
01:22:39 And so you have to remember why it is,
01:22:41 what Hans Morgenthau calls this is your purpose.
01:22:43 Your purpose has to drive you.
01:22:45 Now your purpose doesn’t have to be airy, fiery idealism.
01:22:49 So I believe deeply in democracy is an ideal.
01:22:52 I don’t think it’s gonna ever look like Athenian democracy,
01:22:56 but that should drive our policy.
01:23:00 But we still have to be realistic
01:23:01 and recognize we’re not gonna build that democracy
01:23:03 in Afghanistan tomorrow.
01:23:06 I mean, does it ultimately just boil down again
01:23:07 to the corrupting nature of power
01:23:09 that nobody can hold power for very long
01:23:16 before you start acting in the interest of power
01:23:21 as opposed to in the interest of your ideals?
01:23:23 It’s impossible to be like somebody like Kissinger
01:23:27 who is essentially in power for many, many decades
01:23:32 and still remember what are the initial ideals
01:23:37 that you strove to achieve.
01:23:42 Yes, I think that’s exactly right.
01:23:44 There’s a moment in the book I quote about him,
01:23:48 comes from one of our interviews.
01:23:49 I asked him, what were the guiding ideals for your policies?
01:23:54 And he said, I’m not prepared to share that.
01:23:57 And I don’t think it’s because he doesn’t know
01:23:58 what he thinks he was trying to do.
01:24:00 He realizes his use of power departed quite a lot from.
01:24:04 So it would sound, if he made them explicit,
01:24:08 it would sound hypocritical.
01:24:09 Correct.
01:24:12 Well, on that, let me ask about war.
01:24:15 America often presents itself to its own people,
01:24:20 but just the leaders, when they look in the mirror,
01:24:22 I get a sense that we think of ourselves as the good guys.
01:24:29 And especially this begins sometimes to look hypocritical
01:24:34 when you’re waging war.
01:24:38 Is there a good way to know when you’ve lost all sense
01:24:43 of what it is to be good?
01:24:48 Another way to ask that, is there in military policy
01:24:52 in conducting war, is there a good way to know
01:24:55 what is a just war and what is a war crime?
01:24:59 I mean, in some circles, Kissinger is accused
01:25:03 of contributing, being a war criminal.
01:25:07 Yes, and I argue in the book, he’s not a war criminal,
01:25:10 but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t misuse military power.
01:25:15 I think a just war, a just war,
01:25:20 as Michael Walzer and others write about it,
01:25:21 a just war is a war where both the purpose is just,
01:25:26 and you are using the means to get to that purpose
01:25:29 that kill as few people as necessary.
01:25:33 That doesn’t mean they won’t be killing,
01:25:35 but as few as necessary.
01:25:36 Proportionality, right?
01:25:37 Your means should be proportional to your ends.
01:25:40 And that’s often lost sight of,
01:25:43 because the drive to get to the end often self justifies
01:25:48 means that go well beyond that.
01:25:50 And so that’s how we get into torture in the war on terror.
01:25:55 Is there some kind of lesson for the future
01:25:57 that you can take away from that?
01:26:00 Yes, I think the first set of lessons that I’ve shared
01:26:03 as a historian with military decision makers is,
01:26:06 first of all, always remember why you’re there,
01:26:08 what your purpose is, and always ask yourself
01:26:10 if the means you’re using are actually proportional.
01:26:13 Ask that question.
01:26:15 Just because you have these means that you can use,
01:26:17 just because you have these tools,
01:26:19 doesn’t mean they’re the right tools to use.
01:26:22 And here’s the question that follows from that.
01:26:25 And it’s a hard question to ask,
01:26:26 because the answer is one we often don’t like to hear.
01:26:29 Are the things I’m doing in war actually doing more harm
01:26:33 or more good to the reason I went into war?
01:26:36 We came to a point in the war on terror
01:26:39 where what we were doing was actually
01:26:40 creating more terrorists.
01:26:42 And that’s when you have to stop.
01:26:46 Well, some of that is in the data,
01:26:47 but some of it, there’s a leap of faith.
01:26:49 So from a parenting perspective,
01:26:51 let me speak as a person with no kids and a single guy,
01:26:55 let me be the expert in the room on parenting.
01:26:58 Now, it does seem that it’s a very difficult thing to do,
01:27:05 even though you know that your kid was making a mistake,
01:27:10 to let them make a mistake,
01:27:12 to give them the freedom to make the mistake.
01:27:15 I don’t know what to do,
01:27:16 but I mean, that’s a very kind of lighthearted way
01:27:19 of phrasing the following,
01:27:21 which is when you look at some of the places in the world,
01:27:26 like Afghanistan, which is not doing well.
01:27:32 To move out knowing that there’s going to be
01:27:34 a lot of suffering, economic suffering, injustices,
01:27:40 terrorist organizations growing,
01:27:42 that’s committing crimes on its own people
01:27:44 and potentially committing crimes against allies,
01:27:48 violence against allies, violence against the United States.
01:27:52 So how do you know what to do in that case?
01:27:58 Well, again, it’s an art, not a science,
01:28:01 which is what makes it hard for an engineer to think about.
01:28:04 This is what makes it endlessly fascinating for me.
01:28:07 And I think the real intellectual work
01:28:08 is at the level of the art, right?
01:28:10 And I think probably engineering at its highest level
01:28:13 becomes an art as well, right?
01:28:14 So policymaking, you never know.
01:28:17 But I will say this,
01:28:18 I’ll say you have to ask yourself and look in the mirror
01:28:21 and say, is all the effort I’m putting in
01:28:23 actually making this better?
01:28:25 And in Afghanistan, you look at the 20 years
01:28:28 and two plus trillion dollars that the US has put in.
01:28:32 And the fact that, as you said correctly,
01:28:34 it’s not doing well right now
01:28:36 after 20 years of that investment.
01:28:38 I might like a company that I invest in,
01:28:41 but after 20 years of my throwing money in that company,
01:28:45 it’s time to get out.
01:28:46 Well, in some sense, getting out now, that’s kind of obvious.
01:28:51 I’m more interested in how we figure out in the future
01:28:54 how to get out earlier than, I mean, at this point,
01:28:57 we stayed too long and it’s obvious,
01:28:59 the data, the investment, nothing is working.
01:29:04 The very little data points to us staying there.
01:29:07 I’m more interested in being in a relation,
01:29:11 let me take it back to a safer place again,
01:29:13 being in a relationship
01:29:14 and getting out of that relationship
01:29:16 while things are still good,
01:29:17 but you have a sense that it’s not going to end up
01:29:19 in a good place.
01:29:20 That’s the difficult thing.
01:29:22 You have to ask yourself, whether it’s a relationship
01:29:24 or you’re talking about policymaking
01:29:26 in a place like Afghanistan,
01:29:28 are the things I’m doing showing me evidence,
01:29:31 real evidence that they’re making things better
01:29:34 or making things worse?
01:29:35 That’s a hard question to answer.
01:29:37 You have to be very honest.
01:29:38 And in a policymaking context,
01:29:40 we have to actually do the same thing
01:29:41 we do in a relationship context.
01:29:43 What do we do in a relationship context?
01:29:44 We ask other friends who are observing.
01:29:46 We ask for other observers.
01:29:48 This is actually just a scientific method element actually
01:29:50 that we can’t, the Heisenberg principle,
01:29:52 I can’t see it because I’m too close to it.
01:29:54 I’m changing it by my looking at it.
01:29:57 I need others to tell me in a policymaking context,
01:30:00 this is why you need to hear from other people,
01:30:02 not just the generals,
01:30:03 because here’s the thing about the generals.
01:30:05 They generally are patriotic, hardworking people,
01:30:09 but they’re too close.
01:30:11 They’re not lying.
01:30:12 They’re too close.
01:30:13 I just think they can do better.
01:30:14 Yeah.
01:30:17 How do you think about the Cold War now
01:30:20 from the beginning to end,
01:30:21 and maybe also with an eye towards
01:30:26 the current potential cyber conflict,
01:30:30 cyber war with China and with Russia,
01:30:32 if we look sort of other kind of Cold Wars
01:30:35 potentially emerging in the 21st century,
01:30:38 when you look back at the Cold War of the 20th century,
01:30:43 how do you see it and what lessons do we draw from it?
01:30:46 It’s a wonderful question
01:30:48 because I teach this to undergraduates
01:30:50 and it’s really interesting to see how undergraduates now,
01:30:54 almost all of whom were born after 9 11.
01:30:56 Yeah.
01:30:57 So the Cold War is ancient history to them.
01:30:59 In fact, the Cold War to them is as far removed
01:31:04 as the 1950s were to me.
01:31:07 I mean, it’s unbelievable.
01:31:10 It’s almost like World War II for my generation
01:31:13 and Cold War for them.
01:31:14 It’s so far removed.
01:31:15 The collapse of the Soviet Union
01:31:16 doesn’t mean anything to them.
01:31:20 So how do you describe the Cold War to them?
01:31:23 How do you describe the Soviet Union to them?
01:31:25 First of all, I have to explain to them
01:31:27 why people were so fearful of communism.
01:31:30 Anti communism is very hard for them to understand.
01:31:33 The fact that in the 1950s,
01:31:36 Americans believed that communists
01:31:39 were going to infiltrate our society
01:31:40 and many other societies.
01:31:41 And that after Fidel Castro comes to power in 1959,
01:31:46 that we’re going to see communist regimes
01:31:47 all across Latin America,
01:31:49 that fear of communism married to nuclear power.
01:31:53 And then even the fear that maybe economically
01:31:56 they would outpace us because they would create
01:31:58 this sort of army of Khrushchevian builders of things
01:32:02 and what does Khrushchev said, right?
01:32:04 Say we’re gonna catch Britain in five years
01:32:06 and then the United States after that, right?
01:32:08 So to explain that sense of fear to them
01:32:11 that they don’t have of those others,
01:32:14 that’s really important.
01:32:15 The Cold War was fundamentally about the United States
01:32:19 defending a capitalist world order
01:32:22 against a serious challenger from communism.
01:32:24 An alternative way of organizing everything,
01:32:27 private property, economic activity,
01:32:30 enterprise, life, everything,
01:32:32 organized in a totally different way.
01:32:34 It was a struggle between two systems.
01:32:36 So your sense is, and sorry to interrupt,
01:32:38 but your sense is that the conflict of the Cold War
01:32:41 was between two ideologies
01:32:44 and not just two big countries with nuclear weapons.
01:32:48 I think it was about two different ways of life
01:32:49 or two different promoted ways of life.
01:32:52 The Soviet Union never actually lived communism.
01:32:56 But I think my reading of Stalin
01:32:58 is he really tried to go there.
01:33:00 Khrushchev really believed Gorbachev
01:33:02 thought he was going to reform the Soviet Union
01:33:04 so you would go back to a kind of Bukhar and Lenin
01:33:07 communism, right?
01:33:08 So I do think that mattered.
01:33:10 I do think that mattered enormously.
01:33:11 And for the United States point of view,
01:33:13 the view was that communism and fascism
01:33:16 were these totalitarian threats
01:33:18 to liberal democracy and capitalism,
01:33:21 which went hand in hand.
01:33:22 So I do think that’s what the struggle was about.
01:33:24 And in a certain way, liberal capitalism
01:33:26 proved to be the more enduring system
01:33:28 and the United States played a key role in that.
01:33:30 That’s the reality of the Cold War.
01:33:33 But I think it means different things now
01:33:35 to my students and others.
01:33:38 They focus very much on the expansion of American power
01:33:43 and the challenges of managing.
01:33:47 They’re looking at it from the perspective
01:33:49 of not will we survive,
01:33:51 but did we waste our resources on some elements of it?
01:33:54 It doesn’t mean they were against what America did,
01:33:57 but there is a question of the resources
01:33:59 that went into the Cold War and the opportunity costs.
01:34:02 And you see this when you look at the sort of
01:34:04 healthcare systems that other countries build
01:34:06 and you compare them to the United States, race issues also.
01:34:10 So they look at the costs,
01:34:12 which I think often happens after a project is done,
01:34:14 you look back at that.
01:34:16 Second, I think they’re also more inclined
01:34:19 to see the world as less bipolar,
01:34:23 to see the role of China as more complicated.
01:34:26 Post colonial or anti colonial movements,
01:34:29 independent states in Africa and Latin America,
01:34:32 that gets more attention.
01:34:34 So one of the criticisms now is because you forget
01:34:39 the lessons of 20th century history
01:34:42 and the atrocities committed under communism,
01:34:45 that you may be a little bit more willing
01:34:48 to accept some of those ideologies
01:34:52 into our United States society.
01:34:54 That this kind of, that forgetting that capitalistic forces
01:35:00 are part of the reason why we have what we have today.
01:35:05 There’s a fear amongst some now that we would have,
01:35:11 what would allow basically communism
01:35:14 to take hold in America.
01:35:17 I mean, Jordan and others speak to this kind of idea.
01:35:20 I tend to not be so fearful of it.
01:35:23 I think it’s on the surface, it’s not deep within.
01:35:27 I do see the world as very complicated
01:35:30 as there needing to be a role of having support
01:35:34 for each other on certain political levels,
01:35:36 economic levels, and then also supporting entrepreneurs.
01:35:40 It’s like that the kind of enforcing of outcomes
01:35:45 that is fundamental to the communist system
01:35:47 is not something we’re actually close to.
01:35:50 And some of that is just fear mongering
01:35:52 for likes on Twitter kind of thing.
01:35:56 If I could come in on that,
01:35:57 because I agree with you 100%.
01:35:58 I’ve spent a lot of time writing and looking at this
01:36:00 and talking to people about this.
01:36:02 There’s no communism in the United States.
01:36:04 There never has been, and there certainly isn’t now.
01:36:07 And I’ll say this both from an academic point of view,
01:36:09 but also from just spending a lot of time
01:36:11 observing young people in the United States.
01:36:13 Even those on the farthest left,
01:36:14 take whoever you think is the farthest left,
01:36:16 they don’t even understand what communism is.
01:36:18 They’re not communist in any sense.
01:36:20 Americans are raised in a vernacular
01:36:22 and environment of private property ownership.
01:36:24 And as you know better than anyone,
01:36:26 if you believe in private property,
01:36:27 you don’t believe in communism.
01:36:28 So the sort of Bernie Sanders kind of socialist elements,
01:36:34 that’s very different, right?
01:36:36 And I would say some of that, not all of that,
01:36:39 some of that does hearken back
01:36:40 to actually what won in the Cold War.
01:36:42 There were many social democratic elements
01:36:45 of what the United States did
01:36:46 that led to our winning the Cold War.
01:36:48 For example, the New Deal was investing government money
01:36:53 in propping up business, in propping up labor unions.
01:36:57 And during the Cold War, we spent more money
01:37:00 than we had ever spent in our history on infrastructure,
01:37:03 on schools, on providing social support, social security,
01:37:08 our national pension system being one of them.
01:37:11 So you could argue actually that social democracy
01:37:15 is very compatible with capitalism.
01:37:17 And I think that’s the debate we’re having today,
01:37:19 how much social democracy.
01:37:20 I’ll also say that the capitalism we’ve experienced
01:37:22 the last 20 years is different
01:37:24 from the capitalism of the Cold War.
01:37:26 During the Cold War, there was the presumption
01:37:28 in the United States that you had to pay taxes
01:37:35 to support our Cold War activities,
01:37:38 that it was okay to make money,
01:37:40 but the more money you made, the more taxes you had to pay.
01:37:43 We had the highest marginal tax rates
01:37:45 in our history during the Cold War.
01:37:47 Now, the aversion to taxes,
01:37:50 and of course, no one ever likes paying taxes,
01:37:52 but the notion that we can do things on deficit spending,
01:37:55 that’s a post Cold War phenomenon.
01:37:58 That’s not a Cold War phenomenon.
01:37:59 So, so much of the capitalism that we’re talking about today
01:38:02 is not the capitalism of the Cold War.
01:38:03 And maybe, again, we can learn that
01:38:05 and see how we can reform capitalism today
01:38:09 and get rid of this false worry
01:38:13 about communism in the United States.
01:38:14 Yeah, you know what?
01:38:15 You make me actually realize something important.
01:38:17 What we have to remember is the words we use
01:38:20 on the surface about different policies,
01:38:21 what you think is right and wrong,
01:38:23 is actually different than the core thing
01:38:28 that is in your blood, the core ideas that are there.
01:38:33 I do see the United States as this,
01:38:36 there’s this fire that burns of individual freedoms,
01:38:41 of property rights, these basic foundational ideas
01:38:48 that everybody just kind of takes for granted.
01:38:50 And I think if you hold on to them,
01:38:54 if you’re like raised in them,
01:38:57 talking about ideas of social security,
01:39:00 of universal basic income, of reallocation of resources
01:39:05 is a fundamentally different kind of discussion
01:39:08 than you had in the Soviet Union.
01:39:10 I think the value of the individual
01:39:13 is so core to the American system
01:39:16 that you basically cannot possibly do the kind of atrocities
01:39:21 that you saw in the Soviet Union.
01:39:25 But, of course, you never know,
01:39:26 the slippery slope has a way of changing things.
01:39:30 But I do believe the things you’re born with
01:39:33 is just so core to this country.
01:39:34 It’s part of the, I don’t know what your thoughts are.
01:39:38 We are in Texas, I’m not necessarily,
01:39:42 I don’t necessarily wanna have
01:39:43 a gun control type of conversation,
01:39:45 but the reason I really like guns,
01:39:50 it doesn’t make any sense, but philosophically,
01:39:53 it’s such a declaration of individual rights
01:39:58 that’s so different than the conversations I hear
01:40:01 with my Russian family and my Russian friends,
01:40:04 that the gun, it’s very possible
01:40:06 that having guns is bad for society
01:40:08 in the sense that it will lead to more violence.
01:40:11 But there’s something about this discussion
01:40:20 that proclaims the value of my freedom as an individual.
01:40:24 I’m not being eloquent in it,
01:40:26 but there’s very few debates
01:40:28 where whenever people are saying,
01:40:30 should you have what level of gun control,
01:40:32 all those kinds of things,
01:40:34 what I hear is it’s a fight for how much freedom,
01:40:40 even if it’s stupid freedom, should the individual have.
01:40:44 I think that’s what’s articulated quite often.
01:40:46 I think combining your two points, which are great points,
01:40:49 I think there is something about American individualism
01:40:52 which is deeply ingrained in our culture and our society.
01:40:56 And it means that the kinds of bad things
01:40:58 that happen are different, usually not as bad.
01:41:01 But our individualism often covers up
01:41:04 for vigilante activity and individual violence
01:41:08 toward people that you wouldn’t have
01:41:10 in a more collective culture.
01:41:11 So in the Soviet Union, it was at a much worse scale
01:41:14 and it was done by government organizations.
01:41:17 In the United States, it’s individuals,
01:41:19 the history of lynching in our country, for example.
01:41:22 Sometimes it’s individual police officers,
01:41:23 sometimes it’s others.
01:41:24 Again, the vast majority of police officers are good people
01:41:27 and don’t do harm to people, but there are these examples
01:41:30 and they are able to fester in our society
01:41:33 because of our individualism.
01:41:34 Now, gun ownership is about personal freedom,
01:41:37 I think, for a lot of people.
01:41:39 And there’s no doubt that in our history,
01:41:42 included in the Second Amendment,
01:41:44 which can be interpreted in different ways,
01:41:46 is the presumption that people should have the right
01:41:48 to defend themselves,
01:41:49 which is what I think you’re getting at here.
01:41:51 That you should not be completely dependent
01:41:53 for your defense on an entity
01:41:55 that might not be there for you.
01:41:56 You should be able to defend yourself.
01:41:59 And guns symbolize that.
01:42:01 I think that’s a fair point.
01:42:03 But I think it’s also a fair point to say
01:42:06 that as with everything,
01:42:08 defining what self defense is, is really important.
01:42:10 So does self defense mean I can have a bazooka?
01:42:13 Does it mean I can have weapons that are designed
01:42:16 for a military battlefield to mass kill people?
01:42:19 That seems to me to be very different
01:42:21 from saying I should have a handgun
01:42:23 or some small arm to defend myself.
01:42:26 That distinction alone would make a huge difference.
01:42:28 Most of the mass shootings, at least,
01:42:31 which are a smaller proportion of the larger gun deaths
01:42:34 in the United States, which are larger
01:42:35 than any other society, but at least the mass shootings
01:42:37 are usually perpetrated by people
01:42:39 who have not self defense weapons,
01:42:41 but mass killing, mass killing weapons.
01:42:43 And I think there’s an important distinction there.
01:42:45 The Constitution talks about a right to bear arms
01:42:47 for a well regulated militia.
01:42:49 When the framers talked about arms,
01:42:51 that did not mean the ability to kill
01:42:53 as many people as you wanna kill.
01:42:55 It meant the ability to defend yourself.
01:42:56 So let’s have that conversation.
01:42:57 I think it would be useful as a society.
01:42:59 Stop talking about guns or no guns.
01:43:02 What is it that we as citizens need
01:43:04 to feel we can defend ourselves?
01:43:05 Yes.
01:43:06 Yeah, I mean, guns have this complicated issue
01:43:09 that it can cause harm to others.
01:43:11 I tend to see sort of maybe like legalization of drugs.
01:43:16 I tend to believe that we should have the freedom
01:43:19 to do stupid things.
01:43:20 Yeah, so long as we’re not harming lots of other people.
01:43:23 Yes, and then guns, of course, have the property
01:43:25 that they can be used.
01:43:26 It’s not just a bazooka I would argue is pretty stupid
01:43:30 to own for your own self defense,
01:43:32 but it has the very negative side effect
01:43:35 of being potentially used to harm other people.
01:43:38 And you have to consider that kind of stuff.
01:43:42 By the way, as a side note to the listeners,
01:43:45 there’s been a bunch of people saying
01:43:47 that Lex is way too libertarian for my taste.
01:43:50 No, I actually am just struggling with ideas
01:43:54 and sometimes put on different hats in these conversations.
01:43:57 I think through different ideas,
01:43:59 whether they’re left, right or libertarian.
01:44:02 That’s true for gun control.
01:44:03 That’s true for immigration.
01:44:04 That’s true for all of that.
01:44:05 I think we should have discussions in the space of ideas
01:44:10 versus in the space of bins we put each other in labels
01:44:13 and we put each other in.
01:44:13 I agree 100%.
01:44:15 And also change our minds all the time.
01:44:18 Try out, say stupid stuff with the best of intention,
01:44:23 trying our best to think through it.
01:44:25 And then after saying it, think about it for a few days
01:44:29 and then change your mind and grow in this way.
01:44:32 Let me ask a ridiculous question.
01:44:35 When you zoom out, when human civilization
01:44:38 has destroyed itself and alien graduate students
01:44:41 are studying it like three, four, five centuries from now,
01:44:46 what do you think we’ll remember
01:44:47 about this period in history?
01:44:50 The 20th century, the 21st century, this time.
01:44:55 We had a couple of wars.
01:44:57 We had a charismatic black president in the United States.
01:45:02 We had a couple of pandemics.
01:45:06 What do you think will actually stand out in history?
01:45:11 No doubt the rapid technological innovation
01:45:15 of the last 20 to 30 years.
01:45:18 How we created a whole virtual universe
01:45:21 we didn’t have before.
01:45:23 And of course that’s gonna go in directions
01:45:25 you and I can’t imagine 50 years from now.
01:45:27 But this will be seen as that origin moment
01:45:29 that when we went from playing below the rim
01:45:31 to playing above the rim, right?
01:45:33 To be all in person to having a whole virtual world.
01:45:37 And in a strange way, the pandemic was a provocation
01:45:41 to move even further in that direction.
01:45:43 And we’re never going back, right?
01:45:44 We’re gonna restore some of the things we were doing
01:45:46 before the pandemic, but we’re never gonna go back
01:45:48 to that world we were in before where every meeting
01:45:50 you had to fly to that place to be in the room
01:45:53 with the people.
01:45:54 So this whole virtual world and the virtual personas
01:45:57 and the avatars and all of that,
01:46:00 I think that’s going to be a big part
01:46:02 of how people remember our time.
01:46:03 Also the sort of biotechnology element of it,
01:46:06 which the vaccines are part of.
01:46:10 It’s amazing how quickly, this is the great triumph,
01:46:12 how quickly we’ve produced and distributed these vaccines.
01:46:15 And of course there are problems with who’s taking them,
01:46:18 but the reality is, I mean, this is light speed
01:46:22 compared to what it would have been like,
01:46:23 not just in 1918, in 1980.
01:46:26 Yeah, one of the, I’m sorry if I’m interrupting,
01:46:28 but one of the disappointing things
01:46:30 about this particular time is because vaccines,
01:46:33 like a lot of things got politicized,
01:46:37 used as little pawns in the game of politics,
01:46:40 that we don’t get the chance to step back fully at least
01:46:44 and celebrate the brilliance of the human species.
01:46:49 That’s right.
01:46:51 Yes, there are scientists who use their authority
01:46:55 improperly, that have an ego,
01:46:59 that when they’re within institutions,
01:47:05 are dishonest with the public
01:47:06 because they don’t trust the intelligence of the public,
01:47:09 they are not authentic and transparent,
01:47:11 all the same things you could say about humans
01:47:13 in any positions of power, anywhere.
01:47:15 Okay, that doesn’t mean science isn’t incredible
01:47:18 and the vaccines, I mean, I don’t often talk about it
01:47:23 because it’s so political and it’s heartbreaking to,
01:47:28 it’s heartbreaking how all the good stuff
01:47:31 is getting politicized.
01:47:32 Yeah, that’s right, and it shouldn’t be,
01:47:34 and it’ll seem less political.
01:47:36 Eating the long arc of history.
01:47:37 Yep, it’ll be seen as an outstanding accomplishment.
01:47:42 And as a step toward whatever,
01:47:44 maybe they’re doing vaccines
01:47:46 or something that replaces the vaccine in 10 seconds,
01:47:48 at that point, right?
01:47:49 It’ll be seen as a step.
01:47:50 Those will be some of the positives.
01:47:52 I think one of the negatives they will point to
01:47:54 will be our inability, at least at this moment,
01:47:58 to manage our environment better,
01:48:00 how we’re destroying our living space
01:48:02 and not doing enough even though we have the capabilities
01:48:05 to do more to preserve
01:48:06 or at least allow a sustainable living space.
01:48:09 I’m confident because I’m an optimist
01:48:11 that we will get through this
01:48:12 and we will be better at sustaining our environment
01:48:15 in future decades.
01:48:16 And so in terms of environmental policy,
01:48:18 they’ll see this moment as a dark age
01:48:21 or the beginnings of a better age, maybe as a renaissance.
01:48:26 Or maybe as the last time most people lived on Earth
01:48:31 when a couple of centuries afterwards
01:48:33 we were all dissipated throughout the solar system
01:48:36 and the galaxy.
01:48:37 Very possible.
01:48:38 If the local resident, hometown resident,
01:48:41 Mr. Elon Musk has anything to do with it.
01:48:45 I do tend to think you’re absolutely right.
01:48:49 With all this political bickering,
01:48:51 we shouldn’t forget that what this age will be remembered by
01:48:55 is the incredible levels of innovation.
01:48:57 I do think the biotech stuff worries me more than anything
01:49:02 because it feels like there’s a lot of weapons
01:49:04 that could be yet to be developed in that space.
01:49:06 But I tend to believe that,
01:49:09 I’m excited by two avenues.
01:49:11 One is artificial intelligence.
01:49:16 The kind of systems we’ll create in this digital space
01:49:19 that you mentioned we’re moving to.
01:49:21 And then the other, of course,
01:49:23 this could be the product of the Cold War,
01:49:24 but I’m super excited by space exploration.
01:49:27 There’s a magic to humans being.
01:49:30 And we’re getting back to it.
01:49:31 I mean, we were enthralled with it in the 50s and 60s
01:49:34 when it was a Cold War competition.
01:49:35 And then after the 70s, we sort of gave up on it.
01:49:38 And thanks to Elon Musk and others,
01:49:40 we’re coming back to this issue.
01:49:41 And I think there’s so much to be gained
01:49:44 from the power of exploration.
01:49:47 Is there books or movies in your life,
01:49:50 long ago or recently, that had a big impact on you?
01:49:53 Yes.
01:49:53 Is there something you would?
01:49:54 Yes.
01:49:56 My favorite novel, I always tell people this,
01:49:58 I love reading novels.
01:49:59 I’m a historian.
01:50:01 And I think the historian and the novelist are actually,
01:50:03 and the technology innovator are all actually
01:50:06 one and the same.
01:50:07 They’re all storytellers.
01:50:08 And we’re all in the imagination space.
01:50:11 And I’m trying to imagine the world of the past
01:50:14 to inform us in the present for the future.
01:50:16 So one of my favorite novels that I read,
01:50:18 actually when I was in graduate school,
01:50:20 is Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks.
01:50:23 And it’s the story of a family in Lübeck
01:50:26 in Northern Germany, living through the 19th century
01:50:29 and the rise and fall of family, cycles of life.
01:50:31 Many things we’ve talked about in the last couple of hours.
01:50:34 Cycles of life, challenges of adjusting
01:50:38 to the world around you.
01:50:39 And it’s just a very moving reflection
01:50:42 on the limits of human agency
01:50:44 and how we all have to understand the circumstances
01:50:47 we’re in and adjust to them.
01:50:49 And there’s triumph and tragedy in that.
01:50:51 It’s a wonderful novel.
01:50:52 It used to be a kind of canonical work.
01:50:54 It’s sort of fallen out now.
01:50:55 It’s a big, big novel, but I’m very moved by that.
01:50:59 I’m very moved by Tall Stories, War and Peace.
01:51:01 I assign that every year to my students.
01:51:03 That’s a big, big book.
01:51:04 But what Tall Story challenges
01:51:07 is he challenges the notion
01:51:08 that a Napoleon can rule the world.
01:51:11 And we’re all little Napoleons, right?
01:51:12 We’re all sort of thinking that we’re gonna do that.
01:51:15 And he reminds us how much is contingency, circumstance.
01:51:18 It doesn’t mean we don’t have some control.
01:51:21 You’ve spoke to me a little bit of Russian.
01:51:23 Where does that come from?
01:51:24 So your appreciation of Tall Story,
01:51:26 but also your ability to speak a bit of Russian.
01:51:28 Where’s that from?
01:51:30 So I speak, in addition to English,
01:51:32 I speak reasonably well,
01:51:34 depending on how much vodka I’ve had.
01:51:36 Russian, I speak French and German.
01:51:39 I learned those for research purposes.
01:51:42 I learned French actually when I was in high school,
01:51:44 Russian when I was in college,
01:51:45 German when I was in graduate school.
01:51:47 Now I do have family on my mother’s side
01:51:49 that’s of Russian Jewish extraction,
01:51:52 but they were Yiddish speakers by the time I met them.
01:51:55 By the time they had gone through Germany
01:51:56 and come to the United States,
01:51:57 or really gone through Poland and come to the United States,
01:51:59 they were Yiddish speakers.
01:52:00 So there’s no one really in my family who speaks Russian,
01:52:02 but I do feel a connection there,
01:52:04 at least a long range personal connection.
01:52:07 Is there something to be said about the language
01:52:09 and your ability to imagine history?
01:52:12 Sort of when you study these different countries,
01:52:17 your ability to imagine what it was like
01:52:19 to be a part of that culture, part of that time?
01:52:24 Yes, language is crucial to understanding a culture.
01:52:27 And even if you learn the languages I have,
01:52:30 learning Russian and German and French,
01:52:32 it’s still not the same
01:52:33 as also being a native speaker either, as you know.
01:52:36 But I think language tells you a lot about mannerism,
01:52:39 about assumptions.
01:52:41 The very fact that English doesn’t have a formal U,
01:52:46 but Russian has a formal U, right?
01:52:48 V versus T, right?
01:52:49 German has a formal U, Z versus D, right?
01:52:53 So the fact that English doesn’t have a formal U
01:52:56 tells you something about Americans, right?
01:52:59 And that’s just one example.
01:53:01 The fact that Germans have such a wider vocabulary
01:53:07 for certain scientific concepts than we have in English
01:53:10 tells you something about the culture, right?
01:53:12 Language is an artifact of the culture.
01:53:14 The culture makes the language.
01:53:16 It’s fascinating to explore.
01:53:17 I mean, even just exactly what you just said,
01:53:19 V, T, which is, there’s a fascinating transition.
01:53:26 So I guess in English we just have U.
01:53:28 There’s a fascinating transition that persists to this day
01:53:34 is of formalism and politeness,
01:53:38 where it’s an initial kind of dance of interaction
01:53:41 that’s different methods of signaling respect, I guess.
01:53:46 We don’t, and language provides that,
01:53:48 and then in the English language,
01:53:51 there’s fewer tools to show that kind of respect,
01:53:53 which has potentially positive or negative effects
01:53:56 on, it flattens the society where like a teenager
01:53:59 could talk to an older person and show like a deference.
01:54:04 I mean, but at the same time,
01:54:06 I mean, it creates a certain kind of dynamic,
01:54:09 a certain kind of society.
01:54:10 And it’s funny to think of just like those few words
01:54:13 can have like a ripple effect through the whole culture.
01:54:16 And we don’t have a history in the United States
01:54:18 of aristocracy.
01:54:20 These elements of language reflect aristocracy.
01:54:23 The serf would never refer to the master,
01:54:26 even if the master is younger,
01:54:27 it’s always Voi, right?
01:54:29 In Turgenev, it’s always Voi, right?
01:54:30 I mean, and so it’s, yeah,
01:54:33 so it tells you something about the history.
01:54:34 That’s why to your question, which was a great question,
01:54:37 it’s so crucial to try to penetrate the language.
01:54:40 I’ll also say something else,
01:54:41 and this is a problem for many Americans
01:54:43 who haven’t learned a foreign language.
01:54:44 We’re very bad at teaching foreign languages.
01:54:46 If you’ve never taught yourself a foreign language,
01:54:49 you have closed yourself off to certain kinds of empathy
01:54:53 because you have basically trained your brain
01:54:55 to only look at the world one way.
01:54:57 The very act of learning another language,
01:55:00 I think tells your brain that words and concepts
01:55:05 don’t translate one to one.
01:55:06 This is the first thing you realize, right?
01:55:07 We can say, you know, these two words mean this thing,
01:55:10 you know, these two words mean the same thing
01:55:12 from two languages, they never mean exactly the same thing.
01:55:15 Dosvidanya is really not goodbye, right?
01:55:19 And there’s something, you know,
01:55:20 right now there’s people talking about
01:55:22 idea of lived experience.
01:55:24 One of the ways to force yourself into this idea
01:55:27 of lived experience is by learning another language,
01:55:30 to understand that you can perceive the world
01:55:32 in a totally different way,
01:55:33 even though you’re perceiving the same thing.
01:55:35 And of course, the way to first learn Russian
01:55:38 for those looking for tutorial lessons for me
01:55:41 is just like as you said, we start by drinking lots of vodka.
01:55:44 Yes, of course.
01:55:45 It’s very difficult to do otherwise.
01:55:48 Is there advice you have for young people about career,
01:55:51 about life, in making their way in the world?
01:55:56 Yes, two things I believe that I say
01:56:00 to a lot of talented young people.
01:56:02 First, I don’t think you can predict
01:56:05 what is gonna be well renumerated 20 years from now.
01:56:08 Don’t pick a profession because you think,
01:56:11 even though your parents might tell you or something,
01:56:13 do this and you’ll make money.
01:56:14 You know, this is the scene in The Graduate
01:56:16 where a guy tells Dustin Hoffman,
01:56:17 go into plastics, money in plastics.
01:56:20 We don’t know.
01:56:21 So many of my students now have parents
01:56:22 who are telling them, bright students, you know,
01:56:25 go to the business school.
01:56:26 That’s what’s gonna set you up to make money.
01:56:29 If you’re passionate about business, yes.
01:56:31 But don’t begin by thinking you know
01:56:33 what’s gonna be hot 20 years from now.
01:56:35 You don’t know what’s gonna be hot from 20 years ago,
01:56:38 20 years from now.
01:56:38 What should you do?
01:56:39 This is advice number one.
01:56:40 Find what you’re passionate about.
01:56:43 Because if you’re passionate about it,
01:56:45 you will do good work in that area if you’re talented
01:56:47 and usually passion and talent overlap.
01:56:50 And you’ll find a way to get people to pay you for it.
01:56:52 I mean, you do it really well, people will wanna pay.
01:56:54 That’s where capitalism works.
01:56:56 People will find it valuable, right?
01:56:57 Whether it’s violin playing, right?
01:57:00 Or engineering or poetry, you will find,
01:57:02 you might not become a billionaire.
01:57:03 That involves other things.
01:57:05 But you’ll find a way to get people to pay you for it.
01:57:07 And then the second thing is it’s really important
01:57:11 at the very beginning of your career,
01:57:13 even before you’re in your job, right?
01:57:16 To start building your networks.
01:57:18 But networks are not just people you’re on Facebook with
01:57:22 or Twitter with, I mean, that’s fine.
01:57:24 It’s actually forming relationships.
01:57:26 And some of that can be mediated in the digital world,
01:57:28 but I mean real relationships.
01:57:30 I like podcasts because I think
01:57:31 they actually open up that space.
01:57:33 I know a lot of people can listen to a podcast
01:57:36 and find someone else who’s listened to that podcast
01:57:38 and have a conversation about a topic.
01:57:40 It opens up that space.
01:57:42 Build those relationships,
01:57:43 not with people who you think will be powerful,
01:57:45 but people you think are interesting
01:57:48 because they’ll do interesting things.
01:57:50 And every successful person I know at some level
01:57:54 had a key moment where they got where they are
01:57:57 because of someone they knew for some other reason
01:58:00 who had that connection.
01:58:01 So use and spread your networks
01:58:03 and make them as diverse as possible.
01:58:05 Find people who are of a different party,
01:58:08 have different interests, but are interesting to you.
01:58:11 That’s brilliant advice.
01:58:12 And some of that on the passion side,
01:58:15 I do find that as somebody who has a lot of passions,
01:58:21 I find the second part to that is committing.
01:58:27 Yes, that’s true too.
01:58:28 Which sucks because life is finite.
01:58:32 And when you commit, you say,
01:58:34 well, I’m never going to be good.
01:58:37 Like when you choose one of the two passions,
01:58:40 one of the two things you’re interested in,
01:58:42 you’re basically saying, I’m letting go.
01:58:45 I’m saying goodbye to.
01:58:47 That’s true.
01:58:48 That’s true.
01:58:49 Which is actually what does goodbye means,
01:58:50 not goodbye, but letting go.
01:58:51 That’s exactly right.
01:58:52 I think that’s exactly right.
01:58:53 I think you do have to make choices.
01:58:55 You do have to set priorities.
01:58:56 I often laugh at students who tell me
01:58:58 they want to have like three majors.
01:59:00 If you have three majors, you have no major, right?
01:59:02 I mean, so I do think you have to make choices.
01:59:04 I also think it’s important that whatever you do,
01:59:09 even if it’s a small thing,
01:59:11 you always do the best you can.
01:59:13 You always do excellent work.
01:59:15 My kids are tired of hearing me say this at home,
01:59:17 but I believe everything you do should be about excellence.
01:59:21 The best you can do.
01:59:22 If I’m going to wash the dishes,
01:59:23 I’m going to be the best person washing the dishes.
01:59:26 If I’m going to write a book review,
01:59:28 I’m going to write the best possible book review I can.
01:59:30 Why?
01:59:30 Because you develop a culture about yourself,
01:59:33 which is about excellence.
01:59:35 Yeah, I was telling you offline about all the kind of stuff,
01:59:39 Google Fiber and cable installation, all that stuff.
01:59:41 I’ve been always a believer, washing dishes.
01:59:45 People don’t often believe me when I say this.
01:59:47 I don’t care what I do.
01:59:50 I am with David Foster Wallace.
01:59:52 I’m unborable.
01:59:53 There’s so much joy for me.
01:59:55 I think for everyone, but okay, let me just speak for me,
01:59:58 to be discovered in getting really good at anything.
02:00:02 In fact, getting good at stuff
02:00:04 that most people believe is boring or menial labor
02:00:09 or impossible to be interesting,
02:00:14 that’s even more joyful to find the joy within that
02:00:17 and the excellence.
02:00:17 It’s the Jiro dreams of sushi,
02:00:19 making the same fricking sushi over and over
02:00:22 and becoming a master that can be truly joyful.
02:00:25 There’s a sense of pride and on the pragmatic level,
02:00:29 you never know when someone will spot that.
02:00:31 And intelligent people who perform
02:00:34 at the level of high excellence look for others.
02:00:36 Who do you say?
02:00:37 And it radiates some kind of signal.
02:00:39 It’s weird.
02:00:40 It’s weird what you attract to yourself
02:00:43 when you just focus on mastery
02:00:45 and pursuing excellence in something.
02:00:48 Like this is the cool thing about it.
02:00:51 That’s the joy I’ve really truly experienced.
02:00:53 I didn’t have to do much work.
02:00:55 It’s just cool people kind of,
02:00:56 I find myself in groups of cool people,
02:00:58 like really people who are excited about life,
02:01:01 who are passionate about life.
02:01:02 There’s a fire in their eyes.
02:01:04 That’s at the end of the day just makes life fun.
02:01:09 And then also money wise,
02:01:11 at least in this society,
02:01:12 we’re fortunate to where if you do that kind of thing,
02:01:15 money will find a way.
02:01:16 Like I have the great,
02:01:17 I say this that I don’t care about money.
02:01:21 I have to think about what that means
02:01:23 because some people criticize that idea.
02:01:25 It’s like, yeah, it must be nice to say that.
02:01:28 Cause I have for much,
02:01:30 many periods of my life had very little money,
02:01:32 but I think we live in a society
02:01:34 where not caring about money,
02:01:36 but just focusing on your passions.
02:01:38 If you’re truly pursuing excellence, whatever that is,
02:01:41 money will find you.
02:01:42 That’s I guess the ideal of the capitalist system.
02:01:44 And I think that the entrepreneurs I’ve studied
02:01:46 and had the chance to get to know,
02:01:48 and I’m sure you’d agree with this,
02:01:49 they do what they do
02:01:50 cause they’re passionate about the product.
02:01:53 They’re not just in it to make money.
02:01:55 In fact, that’s when they get into trouble
02:01:57 when they’re just trying to make money.
02:01:58 Exactly.
02:02:00 You said your grandmother, Emily,
02:02:02 had a big impact on your life.
02:02:04 She lived to 102.
02:02:08 What are some lessons she taught you?
02:02:11 Emily, who was the child of immigrants
02:02:13 from Russia and Poland,
02:02:15 who never went to college,
02:02:18 her proudest day I think was when I went to college.
02:02:21 She treated everyone with respect
02:02:27 and tried to get to know everyone.
02:02:28 She knew every bus driver in the town.
02:02:31 She’d remember their birthdays.
02:02:33 And one of the things she taught me is
02:02:35 no matter how high you fly,
02:02:37 the lowest person close to the ground matters to you.
02:02:41 And you treat them the same way
02:02:43 you treat the billionaire at the top of the podium.
02:02:47 And she did that.
02:02:48 She didn’t just say that.
02:02:49 Some people say that and don’t do it.
02:02:50 She really did that.
02:02:52 And I always remember that it comes up in my mind
02:02:56 at least once a week
02:02:57 because we’re all busy doing a lot of things
02:03:01 and you either see or you even feel in yourself
02:03:04 the desire to just, for the reasons of speed,
02:03:07 to be short or not polite with someone
02:03:09 who can’t do anything to harm you right now.
02:03:13 And I remember her saying to me,
02:03:15 no, you don’t, you treat everyone with respect.
02:03:18 You treat the person you’re on the phone with,
02:03:21 customer service.
02:03:22 You treat that person if you’re talking to Jeff Bezos
02:03:24 or you’re talking to Elon Musk.
02:03:27 And I think making that a culture
02:03:29 of who you are is so important.
02:03:31 And people notice that.
02:03:32 That’s the other thing.
02:03:33 And they notice when it’s authentic.
02:03:34 Everyone’s nice to the person at the bottom
02:03:36 of the totem pole when you want to get ahead in the line
02:03:38 for your driver’s license.
02:03:40 But are you nice to them when you don’t need that?
02:03:42 They notice that.
02:03:43 And even when nobody’s watching,
02:03:45 that has a weird effect on you
02:03:47 that’s going to have a ripple effect and people know.
02:03:51 That’s the cool thing about the internet.
02:03:52 I’ve come to believe that people see authenticity.
02:03:55 They see when you’re full of shit, when you’re not.
02:03:57 That’s right.
02:03:58 The other thing that Emily taught me,
02:03:59 and I think we’ve all had relatives who have taught us this,
02:04:02 that you could be very uneducated.
02:04:04 She was very uneducated.
02:04:05 She had a high school diploma,
02:04:06 but I think she was working in a delicatessen in New York
02:04:11 while she was in high school,
02:04:12 or maybe it was at Gimbels or somebody.
02:04:13 So she probably didn’t take high school very seriously.
02:04:14 She wasn’t very well educated.
02:04:16 She was very smart.
02:04:17 And we can fall into a world
02:04:19 where I’m a big believer in higher education
02:04:21 and getting a PhD and things of that sort,
02:04:24 but where we think those are the only smart people.
02:04:26 Yeah.
02:04:29 Sometimes those are the people,
02:04:31 because of their accomplishments,
02:04:32 because their egos are the ones
02:04:33 who are least educated in the way of the world.
02:04:38 Yeah.
02:04:39 Least curious, and ultimately wisdom comes from curiosity.
02:04:44 And sometimes getting a PhD can get in the way of curiosity
02:04:49 as opposed to empower curiosity.
02:04:54 Let me ask, from a historical perspective,
02:04:58 you’ve studied some of human history.
02:05:00 So maybe you have an insight
02:05:02 about what’s the meaning of life.
02:05:07 Do you ever ask when you look at history, the why?
02:05:10 Yeah, I do all the time, and I don’t have an answer.
02:05:13 It’s the mystery that we can’t answer.
02:05:16 I do think what it means is what we make of it.
02:05:21 There’s no universal, every period I’ve studied,
02:05:24 and I’ve studied a little bit of a lot of periods
02:05:26 and a lot of a few periods,
02:05:28 every period people struggle with this,
02:05:29 and they don’t come to,
02:05:31 wiser people than us don’t come to a firm answer,
02:05:34 except it’s what you make of it.
02:05:37 Meaning is what you make of it.
02:05:38 So think about what you want to care about
02:05:42 and make that the meaning in your life.
02:05:44 I wonder how that changes throughout human history,
02:05:48 whether there’s a constant.
02:05:50 Like I often think,
02:05:52 especially when you study evolutionary biology
02:05:55 and you just see our origins from life and as it evolves,
02:05:59 it’s like, it makes you wonder,
02:06:02 it feels like there’s a thread that connects all of it,
02:06:06 that we’re headed somewhere.
02:06:11 We’re trying to actualize some greater purpose.
02:06:17 Like there seems to be a direction to this thing,
02:06:20 and we’re all kind of stumbling in the dark
02:06:22 trying to figure it out,
02:06:24 but it feels like we eventually will find an answer.
02:06:28 I hope so, yeah, maybe.
02:06:30 I mean, I do think we all want our families to do better.
02:06:35 We are familiar,
02:06:39 and family doesn’t just mean biological family.
02:06:41 You can have all kinds of ways
02:06:42 you define family and community,
02:06:44 and I think we are moving slowly
02:06:47 and in a very messy way toward a larger world community.
02:06:53 To include all of biological life
02:06:54 and eventually artificial life as well.
02:06:58 Yeah, so to expand the lesson to the advice
02:07:05 that your grandmother taught you,
02:07:08 is I think we should treat robots and AI systems
02:07:12 good as well, even if they’re currently not very intelligent
02:07:15 because one day they might be.
02:07:16 Right, right, I think that’s exactly right,
02:07:18 and we should think through,
02:07:21 exactly as a humanist how I would approach that issue.
02:07:24 We need to think through the kinds of behavior patterns
02:07:27 we want to establish with these new forms of life,
02:07:31 artificial life for ourselves also, to your point,
02:07:35 so we behave the right way, so we don’t misuse this.
02:07:39 We started talking about Abraham Lincoln,
02:07:42 ended talking about robots.
02:07:44 I think this is the perfect conversation, Jeremy.
02:07:47 This was a huge honor.
02:07:48 I love Austin, I love UT Austin,
02:07:52 and I love the fact that you would agree
02:07:54 to waste all your valuable time with me today.
02:07:56 Thank you so much for talking to me.
02:07:57 I can’t imagine a better way to spend a Friday afternoon.
02:08:00 This was so much fun, and I’m such a fan of your podcast
02:08:03 and delighted to be a part of it.
02:08:04 Thank you.
02:08:06 Thanks for listening to this conversation
02:08:07 with Jeremy Suri, and thank you to Element, Monkpac,
02:08:11 Belcampo, Four Sigmatic, and Asleep.
02:08:15 Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
02:08:19 And now, let me leave you with some words
02:08:21 from Franklin D. Roosevelt, FDR.
02:08:24 Democracy cannot succeed unless those
02:08:27 who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely.
02:08:31 The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
02:08:35 Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.