This is the Friends of History Debating Society in Lunditium.

I am Gaius. Germanicus is here. We're in Lunditium and we're speaking live to the 21st

century from the first century AD which is really cool. We've got our problems,

you've got yours, but we can gap 2,000 years and talk about yours,

and you have to just read about ours in the history books.

Now, Germanicus has other thoughts about living in the first century, but right now, this viewpoint we have, it's like Einstein microlensing.

We're hitting a star and being propelled 2,000 years from now. It's harder for us to see

next year than it is to see 2025. And I bring up in 2025, the Americans, those who remember,

are noting the 50th anniversary since the retreat from Saigon.

The reason I mentioned that is because Germanicus and Gaius watched this happen when we were much younger men.

And the question, the open question for the evening, Germanicus has thoughts on this.

Is Ukraine headed the way of Vietnam? Nobody remembers it. Nobody

talks about it. There's a big feature in science magazine about the effects of age in orange.

Well, gee, there are other things to say. That was certainly a tragedy. Asking, is it an eco-apocalypse? Is it an eco-side? In other words, are we going to

indict the Johnson and Nixon administration for Vouch Safegian Agent Orange? That's the only

question of science is asking. Instead, there are many thoughts about how you maintain an empire,

and we'll touch on some of them.

We're going to begin, however, not in Vietnam in 1975, in the retreat from Saigon,

the emergency retreat with Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft

and the seniors who guided us sitting there watching the real-time television

picture of the evacuation. No, we're going to begin instead in 2025 with Vladimir Putin,

who asks a question through Reuters that is significant, especially because we observe it from the point of view of having once had

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