Returning to the podcast is Robert Kaplan, who holds the Robert Strauss Hoop Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute for three decades.

He reported on foreign affairs for the Atlantic.

He was a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and the U.S. Navy's executive panel.

Foreign Policy magazine twice, named him one of the world's top 100 global thinkers.

He's the bestselling author of 23 books now,

and his latest is a wasteland, a world in permanent crisis. I've got a copy right here. It's out

January 28th. You can pre-order now. Welcome back to Geopolitics and Empire, Mr. Kaplan.

Well, it's a pleasure to be with you. Thanks for coming on. I do want to give out a shout out to Penguin for sending me an advance copy of the book.

And we spoke last time on your previous book, The Loom of Time.

I've got the Kindle edition here so people can check that book out.

And they can check out our previous conversation, which is linked in the description.

And in your new book, you speak of Global Weimar, that the planet is running a strange simulation of the Weimar Republic, that the entire world is one big Weimar.

Now, could you tell us about your book and unpack that for us?

Yeah, it's Weimar.

And it refers to the Weimar Republic, which existed from the end of World War I to the ascension of Adolf Hitler in Germany, from 1919 to 1933.

And this Weimar Germany was so big and so convoluted and complicated in the way that it was run with an upper house,

a lower house, Prussia and Bavaria being laws unto themselves, that there was a constant crisis.

Nobody was ever quite in control.

And it had periods of optimism.

It wasn't all doom and gloom.

Hitler did not have to happen, in other words.

There were many other outcomes.

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