Sir Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, where he served for twelve years as the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History. In this episode, Robinson and Niall discuss three of the biggest conflicts currently gripping the news—the election in the United States and the two wars between Israel and Hamas on the one hand, and Russia and Ukraine on the other. Undergirding the entire discussion is the question of whether the United States is an empire, whether it is failing, and what the world needs America to be. Niall's most recent book is Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe (Penguin, 2021).

Niall's Website: https://www.niallferguson.com

Doom: https://a.co/d/eWAx65C

OUTLINE

00:00 Introduction

00:44 Niall's Take as a Scottish Historian

05:20 Is the United States an Empire?

12:49 What Does the World Need the United States to Be?

19:47 Is Trump or Harris Better for the Russia-Ukraine War?

26:35 Is Trump Too Dangerous to Have the Nuclear Launch Codes?

29:54 How Terrible Was Biden's Withdrawal from Afghanistan?

34:22 Is the United States on the Precipice of Self-Destruction?

41:08 Will Donald Trump Actually Help the Suffering Poor of America?

46:23 Will Niall Ferguson Vote For Donald Trump?

50:31 The Dangers of American Politics

54:55 The Right Versus the Left on the Wars in Ukraine and Israel

1:00:07 How Has the Media Fed the Israel-Hamas War in Palestine?

1:06:35 Is Benjamin Netanyahu a Satanic Figure?

1:11:19 Is Israel Committing a new Holocaust—Genocide—in Palestine?

1:17:21 Trump, Harris, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Palestine: Do They Even Matter?

Robinson's Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University.