Hello from Washington, I'm Chuck Todd, and this is the Chuck Tondcast.

We are back with another edition of our annual tradition of what ifs and alternative histories.

Today I'm joined by Paul Levinson and he's going to help me cover a ton of alternative

histories.

Paul is a professor at Fordham University. He teaches media and communications there.

He's also the author of science fiction books. He's a singer-songwriter and sometimes Beatles historian.

He's also been one of this best contributors to of ideas

through our series over the last few years

and has been a wonderful pen pal on this stuff

so we decided to put them to work.

So that's where we're going to start today.

What if John Lennon hadn't been assassinated in 1980? Paul has already put some

thought into this project with a short story he wrote in 2022 called It's Real Life.

We're also going to cover a couple of other what-if scenarios, including a little tour through

Soviet history.

What if Mikhail Gorbachev had not been forced out of office.

What if he had stuck?

And we've got something of a special plan

for Supreme Court buffs.

What if Supreme Court Justice William Wrenquist

had stepped down from the court when Bill Clinton was president.

He had a health ailment.

...