Dan Drezner on Zombies, Viruses, and Toddlers
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2020
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Joining Benjamin Wittes in the virtual jungle studio is Daniel Drezner, professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and the author of two political science books: one on zombie apocalypses and international relations theory, and a new book on the president as a toddler. These books are serious pieces of political science, are very funny, and in different ways, are highly relevant to the situations we face today as a society. Dan and Ben talked about how zombies are similar to and different from coronavirus, whether international relations theory correctly anticipates how governments will respond to crises, and about Dan's epic Twitter thread on the toddler in chief.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.9 | Trump and an actual toddler, this is an analogy, you know, it breaks down at some point. |
| 0:38.1 | And the reason it breaks down is that toddlers grow up. |
| 0:40.6 | They're behaving the way they're behaving because they have limited cognitive capacities |
| 0:45.1 | to deal with the world. |
| 0:46.8 | And so if they pitch a fit, it's their way of trying to signal what's going on. |
| 0:50.3 | Trump, believe it or not, despite the nature of the threat, I don't think it's going |
| 0:53.6 | to grow into the presidency. |
| 0:55.8 | I'm Benjamin Wittes and this is the LawFair podcast April 1st, 2020. |
| 1:02.2 | Yes, it's April Fools Day and normally under these circumstances, we would defraud |
| 1:07.9 | you with some prank podcast. |
| 1:10.3 | But we're not going to do that today. |
| 1:12.4 | Instead we're going to do something amusing and real. |
| 1:17.6 | Being me remotely in the virtual jungle studio is Daniel Dresner, professor at the Fletcher |
| 1:25.9 | School at Tufts University and the author of two rather remarkable political science |
| 1:32.9 | books, one on zombie apocalypse and international relations theory and a new book on the president |
| 1:41.8 | as a toddler. |
| 1:44.2 | These books are not jokes, at least they're not entirely jokes. |
... |
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