Hey everybody, we got a great one today, you know, for a change. And this time, this time I'm not lying.

The brilliant Ann Applebaum of the Atlantic Monthly is with me from Poland, where she makes her home.

And I could not have a better human being

to walk us through where the war in Ukraine stands and where it is going and why it's going

to be a long war. Because Anne explains what this is, which she says is genocide, which surprised

me. I had always thought of genocide as

Hitler and the Jews and some other instances throughout history where people are targeted. But

Anne says that's what this is, that Putin wants to destroy Ukraine and doesn't see it as a real

country and wants to wipe it off the map.

And she points to what the Russians have done when they have occupied a piece of territory in

Ukraine, which is round up and torture and kill people who speak Ukrainian and ship Ukrainian children

to Russia and make them Russian.

And this is why Ukraine will fight this war to the end,

unless the toll in Russia just becomes intolerable,

and Putin is forced to the table.

But even then, would the Ukrainians just see that as a pause before he can regroup and start

up again?

So there aren't a lot of laughs in this one, actually a few, but I got to say, Ann is amazing,

and you have to listen to this one.

That's why I'm going to make this a relatively short monologue to get right to Ann.

But just one last thing about Ann and this episode, among other things,

Anne is an expert on, besides global politics, on fake news.

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