It's fundamentally a worldview of conflict and polarization that I don't think has the means to become hegemonic the way New Deal social democracy was or Reagan's muscular anti-communist liberalism was.

And so what we have is kind of an you know, an empire that is that is maintaining its power through polarization and provocation. And I think any empire that does that is an empire that's in decline or that's in decay or crisis.

Hello and welcome. Happy New Year, I should say, and welcome to a new episode of the Magdi C Street podcast.

I'm here, Usama, with my brothers, Karim, at AUB and SETI in LA.

And we're really delighted to have with us today, Professor Greg Grandin.

Greg is the Peter V&C Van Woodward professor of history at Yale University.

He's also the author of many, many books, award-winning books, best-selling books, including

the Blood of Guatemala, The Last Colonial Massacre, Empire's Workshop, Fordlandia,

the Empire of Necessity, the End of the Myth, which won, of course, the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.

Greg is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of American Historians.

Greg is published widely in many other sort of mainstream outlets, including the nation, where he's a member of the editorial board, and his

latest book is also a New York Times best-selling book with the title, America, America,

A New History of the New World, published by Penguin Random House in 2025. Greg, it's really a pleasure

to have you on with us on Magtesee Street today in January, 2026.

Greg, it's honestly a great pleasure to have you with us.

And also just to say to our viewers and listeners that this is a special sort of addition

of Mahatisi Street, for the first time we're actually going well beyond the Middle East,

but in a sense related in the sense of empire.

And we have with us, obviously, Greg, you're a world-renowned historian of Latin America,

of U.S. empire and imperialism in Latin America, in South America, Central America.

So the question, I guess, for all of us, here we are in Beirut and cities in L.A.,

what is your sort of very briefly, how do we make

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