I'm Arcadia Strowski and the host of a new podcast from the economist called Next Year in Moscow.

For many Russians, Vladimir Putin's full-scale innovation of Ukraine also felt like an attack on their own country's future.

Hundreds of thousands fled.

I've been talking to this new exiles because their stories helped bring to life the mystery of why this senseless war began and how it might end.

Next year in Moscow from the Economist is out now on your podcast app. Join me today and start listening.

Action, action, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk USA with me, Al Murray, James Holland and John McManus.

And John, you've decided that what we're going to do is know an enormous bone today, like one of the biggest bones possible.

The ultimate, like enormous bone, Guadalcanal, which is like the epic land sea battle of World War II, at least on some levels.

Just unreal.

Weirdly coincident with Stalingrad that we were talking about, James and I were talking about, and you joined us to talk about Len Lys and Stalingrad.

Weirdly coincident with that event really, isn't it? I mean, it's a peculiar how they sort of sit across each other, don't they?

Yeah, and have something of the same effect on their respective theaters, because after Guadalcanal, certainly the Japanese are on the defensive.

I mean, they were still on the offensive after Midway. I think there's a tendency because Midway is such a big victory for the US Navy to think, okay, well that's the turnaround.

Now Japan's going to lose the war. I really push back over that against that over the years.

But they're still on the offensive in spots, and there's, of course, there's a lot of ways it can still win the war.

Guadalcanal is certainly one of these backbreaker battles they get drawn into, almost similar to where the Germans are drawn into Stalingrad by their own kind of dysfunction.

But the worthiness of the objective on some levels too, but it just doesn't redound at their advantage.

Well, set the scene for us, John. For those who weren't listening last week, we should explain where Guadalcanal is.

It's like the southern tip of the Solomon's, which is, what were we saying last week?

It's east coast of Australia. To get there, you have to fly to Brisbane, and then you fly from Brisbane to Anara, and it's...

I mean, it's like a fire, not enough to have been there, it's absolutely amazing. It's like a fire, fire, or flight.

No, it wasn't us. It's more like three, I think, two and a half, three, something like that.

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