Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today by Tim Snyder,

a professor of history at Toronto, author of great history books,

Bloodlands, maybe best known in 2010, I believe, but also great, I don't know what to call

them, a more popular, but nonetheless based on scholarship-type books, addressing the current

moment on tyranny back in, what was that, 2017? I mean, something like that, and then more recently

on freedom, both of which I highly recommend. And Tim is now, as I say, professor of history at

Toronto. And we had a conversation about a year and a half ago, which actually stands up

almost entirely on Ukraine, which stands up very well. You were less pessimistic. I think maybe

was one way to say it than the conventional wisdom at the time and um let's get to ukraine a little bit later and begin

with the u.s if that's okay and yeah of course how do you think things stand i wrote a newsletter this

morning we're talking about what is at october 15th uh that it's getting worse and maybe but i want you

to tell me that it's i don't want you to tell me anything i'd be happy if you told that it's getting worse. And maybe I want you to tell me that it's, I don't want you to tell me anything. I'd be happy if you told me it's not, but if you tell me it is, that's facts are facts, right? Truth is truth. Yeah. So maybe we can, what don't we start with, why don't we start with the ways in which it's bad? And then maybe we can move on to things that are not so bad because I spend a lot of time personally trying to conceptualize how things are bad because

if you can conceptualize it and put labels on it then sometimes that's it's not only like

seeking truth as you say but it's also comforting to know that there are we do have concepts

for all of this it's not all entirely new. And then we have concepts.

It's also easier to get to action. So I've been thinking about the mechanization of lying.

So if you think about Pambandi, you know, giving testimony or Kash Patel, the way that they

don't prepare for the actual substance of the conversation at all

anymore.

And also, and this is going to sound very old-fashioned and conservative of me, but also the way

that they completely disrespect human ideas of social contract or even ideas about speaking

truth because maybe you're under oath or you have some obligation to do so, that all of those human or even beyond human ideas are gone.

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