It's Thursday, October 17th, 2024, and welcome back to Goodfellows, a Hoover Institution broadcast

examining social, economic, political, and geopolitical concerns.

I'm Bill Whalen. I'm a Hoover Distinguished Policy Fellow, and I'll be your moderator for the

course of the next hour. Looking forward to a spirited conversation featuring not one, two,

but all three of our good fellows as we jokingly refer to them. That would be the economist John

Cochran, historian Neil Ferguson, and former presidential national security

advisor, geostrategist, and all around institutional nice guy, Lieutenant General Aethron McMaster.

All three are Hoover Institution senior fellows.

Now before we go any further, you notice we have a different look and field of this show,

that's because we're recording live here at the fall retreat at the Hoover Institution here

on the lovely campus of Stanford University. Special occasions call for special guests and that's what we have

today. We're joined by our Hoover colleague, the Lord Andrew Roberts, prominent historian,

expert on Winston Churchill, and today we're going to talk about, of all things, historical

counterfactuals. Now we did an episode similar to this early in the spring with the great

Stephen Cockkin. Audiences liked it, so we're going to do it again. Each gentleman has brought

a counterfactual with them. Before we get into them, though, Neil, I'd like you to spend a

couple minutes and explain the value of counterfactuals because within your profession

and Lord Roberts and A.J.R.'s profession are all historians. It's a bit of a

controversy of topics. Some historians think the counterfactuals are valuable. Others don't.

What if questions are, I think, part and parcel of life. And we've spent much of today

not really knowing what's going to happen in just a few weeks. I mean, our experts don't

really know what's going to happen in the election few weeks. I mean, our experts don't really know what's going

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