Hi, this is Bill Whalen from Goodfellows. The Hoover Institution is proud to announce two national competitions honoring the life and work of Thomas Soul, one of the most influential public thinkers of our time. For high school and college students, the Thomas Soul essay contest is a chance to engage deeply with his ideas, whether by applying them to a pressing issue in society or by reflecting on how Dr. Sol's writings have shaped

your own worldview. For creators of all kinds, the multimedia creator competition invites bold,

thoughtful storytelling and video form, no longer the three minutes, responding to a simple but

powerful question. What lesson are teaching for Thomas Sol do Americans most see to learn or

remember today? Each winner will receive $5,000 plus a pay trip to the Hoover Institution here at Stafford

University for a special celebration in Dr. Sol's honor.

Details and submission links are available at the following URL.

Hoover.org.

forward slash Thomas dash soul dash legacy.

Let me repeat that.

Hoover.org forward slash Thomas dash soul dash legacy. Let me repeat that. Hoover.org forward slash Thomas dash soul

dash legacy. Good luck. We hope to see it here at Hoover in the near future.

It's Thursday, September 4th, 2025, 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 today.

This is the first Goodfellows episode of the new academic year here at Stanford, and I'm pleased to report that all of our good fellows are in attendance today.

That would include, of course, the historian, Sir Neil Ferguson. Hello, Neil.

The economist John Cochran, and joining us from the Washington, D.C. office, the Hoover Institution, former presidential national security advisor, Lieutenant General, H.R. McMaster.

Neil, John, and H.R. are all Hoover's senior fellows.

So gentlemen, usually our producer, Scott Immigrant, and I kind of offer you a set menu of what we want to talk about, but today we're going to throw it back to you and let you sort of choose in the buffet of what you want to bring up. Let's have a freewheeling conversation. at HR, let's start with you.

I know you want to talk foreign policy.

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