Listen now | Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Pseudo-Weekly; Aspirationally Less than 60 Minutes: Key Insights: 1. Putin’s decision to invade came as a great surprise to everyone. 2. The information flow to Putin is very bad, very low quality. 3. Muscovy, St. Petersburg, Novgorod, Minsk, Kyiv are all ‘Rus. 4. But the cultural, political, and linguistic differences between Kyivan and Muscovite ‘Rus are surprisingly deep, historically speaking. 5. Economic sanctions can do a lot to degrade Russia’s war-fighting machine, and should be used to do so. 6. Bounties and rewards for defectors and for the neutralization of equipment might be very effective, and should be promoted. 7. Countries and régimes run on myth, and military defeat is the most effective way that a pernicious myth gets destroyed. 8. Be afraid, be very afraid: Putin’s survival—his personal political, the causes he has invested his life in, and perhaps his mortal—depend on his “winning” in some sense. 9. If appeasement of Putin could be made to work, it might well be worth trying. 10. But it is highly unlikely that appeasement of Putin could be made to work. 11. Really-existing Putinite petro-kleptocracy looks worse than really-existing Brezhnevite socialism.
I appreciate trying to post podcasts that are timely but the audio on this (listened through the web) was appalling. Your guest's comments were consistently garbled. I know that you likely don't have control over the engineering when trying to do a three way recording (and perhaps everything was clear on the call). I gave up after 30 minutes when my ears started to hurt.
I think "a great surprise to everyone" is a bit of rhetorical exaggeration. Lots of folks thought he would, but obviously lots didn't. Kudos to those who got it right.
I appreciate trying to post podcasts that are timely but the audio on this (listened through the web) was appalling. Your guest's comments were consistently garbled. I know that you likely don't have control over the engineering when trying to do a three way recording (and perhaps everything was clear on the call). I gave up after 30 minutes when my ears started to hurt.
I think "a great surprise to everyone" is a bit of rhetorical exaggeration. Lots of folks thought he would, but obviously lots didn't. Kudos to those who got it right.
That Putin is now purging the FSB, apparently in response to what I saw as obvious Ukraine disinformation, tells us a lot...