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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power, and prejudices.

This year, 2024, is an election year in America, a presidential election year.

And so we will be doing two podcasts a week, rather than our usual one, because we want to

and because we know you can't get enough Americano in your life.

I am delighted to be joined again by Victor Davis Hansen, who is a historian, classicist and commentator in the American media and in the international media indeed, because you're on this Americano podcast after all.

And we're going to be talking about your book, your new book, which is called The End of Everything, how wars descend into annihilation.

And it is also to pinch the title of your epilogue about how the unthinkable becomes the inevitable.

And in the book, you look at various annihilations, the annihilation of the Thebans, at the hands of Alexander the Great,

the demise of the Carthaginians, at the hands of Scipio, the demise of the Carthaginians at the hands of

Scipio and the Romans, the fall of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantine Empire at the hands

of the Ottomans, and the destruction of the Aztec civilization at the hands of the Spanish conquistadors

and Hernan Cortez. While reading this book, I kept thinking, because the last time I spoke to it was about,

we talked a lot about Donald Trump, about Donald Trump on the campaign, he says quite a lot this year,

that we're closer than ever to World War III and sort of insinuates that some great destruction

is at hand.

And at the end of your book, you touch on this. You talk about

the various conflicts that we have in the world today. In Ukraine, is the obvious one. You have a more

belligerent China and China's threat to Taiwan. You have North Korea, of course, which is

...