It's Wednesday, October the 13th, and welcome back to Goodfellows, a Hoover Institution

broadcast examining social, economic, political, and geopolitical concerns.

I'm Bill Whelan.

I'm a distinguished policy fellow here at Hoover, and I'll be your moderator today. Before I go any further, you'll probably notice something is very different about today's show.

Well, this is the 60th episode of Goodfellas. We've been doing these since spring of last years,

but for the first time we're actually doing this all together in one room.

We've been all on the computer for the past year and a half, but today we're all together. And when I say we,

it's not a Victorian we, it's me and the stars of the show, the reasons why you're watching this in the first place. And who are the stars? The economist Neil Ferguson? Excuse me,

the historian Neil Ferguson. I go promote a motor. Promote a motor. The historian Neil Ferguson.

This is what going live. This is life., real space does to you. The economist,

John Cochran, and the geostrategist, eternal optimist, Lieutenant General, HRMetmaster, Hoover

Institution, senior fellows, all. Fellas, it's good to see you, finally, long-last in person.

Question for you. So here we are sitting in the Commons at the Hoover Institution. If you're

not familiar with the geography of our place, we have two office buildings, and there's an area in

between called the Commons where fellows come to think great thoughts or what passes for

that in today's broadcast or not. I'm curious, a lot of the work that the three of you do is

research, thinking, and writing. That's a lot of alone time. So how do you balance a lone time versus more social settings like this?

Do you want the truth? The truth is that this place is where work came to die.

If you come in here, you are not going to finish the article, much less the book.

And so I have a shameful admission, which is I hardly ever come in here,

except maybe to sneak up a bar of candy when I'm feeling really low energy.

But it's a place that we're supposed to come to and mingle.

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