It's Tuesday, November 1st, 2022, and you're watching Goodfellas, a Hoover Institution broadcast examining social, economic, political, and geopolitical concerns.

I'm Bill Whalen. I'm a Hoover Distinguished Policy Fellow. I'll be your moderator today and I literally have a ringside seat to today's show because we are doing this live and a person here at the Hoover Institution because we have a very special guest who I'll get to in a moment. I'm joined as usual by the three stars of our show who we call the Goodfellows. That would be the economist John Cochran, the historian Neil Ferguson, the geostrategist, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster.

And as proof that we actually read what you write to us

in terms of what you want in content

and who you want guests.

Today, here by very popular demand,

you've begged for him, you pleaded for him,

you've beseeched for him.

Here he is live and in person,

the one and only Stephen Kotkin.

Steve Kotkin's the Hoover Institution's Kleinheim Senior Fellow. He's also a senior fellow at Stanford University's Freeman-Spoly Institute for International Studies. He's a Princeton

University professor emeritus.

His field of expertise is geopolitics and authoritarian regimes, a very popular topic here on the show.

Steve, welcome to Goodfellas at long last.

Can you give me the name of the two people who wrote to you asking for me to be on the show?

Mrs. Cockkin was one. I'd like to thank them.

It's great to be here, Bill. Thank you for the invitation.

We've got to start by addressing the elephant in the room.

This is Goodfellows, the movie Goodfellow's star Joe Pesci.

It has been brought to my attention more than once that you sound a little bit like Joe Pesci is. It's just a, it's just something

I'm imagining, or have you heard this before? So when I was growing up, I wanted to be Joe Pesci.

And you succeeded. You always wanted to be a gangster. I grew up and it turned out there was

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