Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics

Christopher Capozzola (03:23.600)

event led to the war. And if you change that one little thing, it could have avoided the war. Your

Christopher Capozzola (03:28.720)

sense is that the drums of war have been beating for quite a while and it would have happened

Christopher Capozzola (03:35.120)

almost no matter what or very likely to have happened. Yes, historians never like to say things

Christopher Capozzola (03:40.400)

are inevitable. And certainly, you know, there were people who could have chosen a different path

Christopher Capozzola (03:45.680)

both in the short term and the long term. But fundamentally, there were irreconcilable conflicts

Christopher Capozzola (03:52.960)

in the system of empires in the world in 1914. I can't see, you know, it didn't have to be this war

Lex Fridman (04:00.000)

but it probably had to be a war. So there was the German Empire, the Austro Hungarian Empire,

Lex Fridman (04:06.640)

there's France and Great Britain, US. Could USP call that empire at that moment yet?

Christopher Capozzola (04:14.320)

When do you graduate to empire status? Well, certainly after 1898 with the acquisition of

Christopher Capozzola (04:20.960)

the former territories of the Spanish Empire, you know, the United States has formal colonial

Christopher Capozzola (04:24.960)

possessions and it has sort of mindsets of rule and military acquisition that would define empire

Christopher Capozzola (04:32.720)

in a kind of more informal sense. So you would say you would put the blame or the responsibility

Lex Fridman (04:40.320)

of starting World War I into the hands of the German Empire and Kaiser Wilhelm II?

Christopher Capozzola (04:45.840)

You know, that's a really tough call to make. And, you know, deciding that is going to keep

Christopher Capozzola (04:52.800)

historians in business for the next 200 years. I think there are people who would lay all of the

Christopher Capozzola (05:01.440)

blame on the Germans, right? And, you know, who would point toward a generation of arms build up,

Christopher Capozzola (05:08.400)

you know, alliances that Germany made and promises that they made to their allies in the Balkans,

Christopher Capozzola (05:14.960)

to the Austro Hungarians. And so yes, there's an awful lot of responsibility there.

Christopher Capozzola (05:20.560)

There has been a trend lately to say, no, it's no one's fault, right? That, you know,

Christopher Capozzola (05:27.360)

that all of the various powers literally were sleepwalking into the war, right? They backed into

Christopher Capozzola (05:32.480)

it inadvertently. I think that lets everyone a little too much off the hook, right? And so I

Christopher Capozzola (05:37.440)

think in between is, you know, I would put the blame on the system of empires itself, on the

Christopher Capozzola (05:44.080)

system. But in that system, the actor that sort of carries the most responsibility is definitely

Christopher Capozzola (05:50.560)

Imperial Germany. So the leader of the Austro Hungarian Empire, Franz Joseph I, his nephews,

Christopher Capozzola (05:58.800)

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, he was assassinated. And so that didn't have to lead to a war. And then

Christopher Capozzola (06:09.840)

the leader of the German Empire, Kaiser Wilhelm II, pressured, sort of started talking trash

Lex Fridman (06:23.920)

and boiling the water that ultimately resulted in the explosion, plus all the other players.

Lex Fridman (06:30.720)

So what can you describe the dynamics of how that unrolled? Well, US, what's the role of US? What's

Lex Fridman (06:36.320)

the role of France? What's the role of Great Britain, Germany, and Austro Hungarian Empire?

Christopher Capozzola (06:41.600)

Yeah, over the course of about four weeks, right, following the assassination of the Archduke

Christopher Capozzola (06:48.800)

in Sarajevo, it sort of triggers a series of political conflicts and ultimately ultimatums,

Christopher Capozzola (06:56.640)

sort of demanding sort of that one or other power sort of stand down in response to the demands of

Christopher Capozzola (07:04.160)

either Britain, France, or in turn, Germany or Russia, at the same time that those alliances

Christopher Capozzola (07:11.520)

kind of trigger automatic responses from the other side. And so it escalates. And once that

Christopher Capozzola (07:18.080)

escalation is combined with the call up of military troops, then none of those powers wants

Christopher Capozzola (07:24.240)

to be sort of the last one to kind of get ready for conflict. So even throughout it, they think

Christopher Capozzola (07:30.720)

they are getting ready in a defensive maneuver. And if they think if there is conflict, well,

Christopher Capozzola (07:38.160)

it might be a skirmish, it might be, you know, sort of a standoff. It could be solved with

Christopher Capozzola (07:43.840)

diplomacy later, because diplomacy is failing now. That turns out not to be the case. Diplomacy fails,

Christopher Capozzola (07:51.120)

it's not a skirmish, it becomes a massive war. And the Americans are watching all of this from

Lex Fridman (07:55.600)

the sidelines. They have very little influence over what happens that summer.

Lex Fridman (07:59.760)

How does it go from a skirmish between a few nations to a global war? Is there a place where

Christopher Capozzola (08:06.960)

there's a phase transition? Yeah, I think the phase transition is in over the course of the fall of

Christopher Capozzola (08:12.480)

1914. When the Germans make an initial sort of bold move into France, in many ways, they're

Christopher Capozzola (08:20.000)

fighting the last war, the Franco Prussian War of 1870. And they really do sort of, you know, kind

Christopher Capozzola (08:28.240)

of want to have a quick sort of lightning strike in some ways against France to kind of bring the war

Christopher Capozzola (08:35.440)

to a speedy conclusion. France turns out to be able to fight back more effectively than the Germans

Christopher Capozzola (08:42.320)

expected. And then the battle lines sort of harden. And then behind that, the French and the Germans,

Christopher Capozzola (08:52.800)

as well as the British on the side of the French, start digging in, literally, and digging trenches.

Christopher Capozzola (09:00.720)

Trenches that at first are three feet deep to avoid shelling from artillery, then become six

Christopher Capozzola (09:08.000)

feet, 10 feet deep, two miles wide, that include telegraph wires, that include whole hospitals in

Christopher Capozzola (09:14.480)

the back. And then at that point, the front is locked in place. And the only way to break that

Christopher Capozzola (09:21.680)

is sort of basically dialing the war up to 11, right? Sort of massive numbers of troops, massive

Christopher Capozzola (09:27.920)

efforts, none of which work, right? And so the war is stuck in this. But that's the phase transition

Christopher Capozzola (09:34.640)

right there. What were the machines of war in that case? You mentioned trenches. What were the guns

Christopher Capozzola (09:42.000)

used? What was the size of guns? What are we talking about? What did Germany start accumulating

Christopher Capozzola (09:50.080)

that led up to this war? One of the things that we see immediately is the industrial revolution

Christopher Capozzola (09:57.440)

of the previous 30 or 40 years brought to bear on warfare, right? And so you see sort of machine

Christopher Capozzola (10:05.200)

guns. You see artillery. These are the key weapons of war on both sides, right? The vast majority of

Christopher Capozzola (10:13.920)

battlefield casualties are from artillery shelling from one side to another, not sort of rifle or

Lex Fridman (10:21.520)

even sort of machine gun kind of attacks. In some ways, the weapons of war are human beings, right?

Christopher Capozzola (10:29.680)

Tens of thousands of them horde over the top in these sort of waves to kind of try to break through

Christopher Capozzola (10:36.400)

the enemy lines. And it would work for a little while. But holding the territory that had been

Christopher Capozzola (10:42.560)

gained often proved to be even more demanding than gaining it. And so often, each side would retreat

Christopher Capozzola (10:50.000)

back into the trenches and wait for another day. And how did Russia, how did Britain,

Lex Fridman (10:58.400)

how did France get pulled into the war? I suppose the France one is the easy one. But what is the

Christopher Capozzola (11:05.120)

order of events here? How it becomes a global war? Yeah. So Britain, France, and Russia are at this

Christopher Capozzola (11:12.000)

time and they're an alliance. And so the conflicts in the summer of 1914 that lead sort of to the

Christopher Capozzola (11:20.560)

declarations of war happened sort of one after another in late August of 1914. And all three

Christopher Capozzola (11:28.480)

powers essentially come in at the same time because they have promised to do so through a series of

Christopher Capozzola (11:34.400)

alliances conducted secretly in the years before 1914 that committed them to defend one another.

Christopher Capozzola (11:42.320)

Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire have their own sort of set of secret agreements

Christopher Capozzola (11:48.240)

that also commit them to defend one another. And what this does is it sort of brings them all into

Christopher Capozzola (11:54.960)

conflict at the exact same moment. They're also, for many of these countries, bringing not just

Christopher Capozzola (12:00.480)

their national armies, but also their empires into the conflict. So Britain and France, of course,

Christopher Capozzola (12:06.640)

have enormous sort of global empires. They begin mobilizing soldiers as well as raw materials.

Christopher Capozzola (12:13.360)

Germany has less of an overseas empire. Russia and the Ottoman Empire, of course, have their own sort

Christopher Capozzola (12:19.200)

of hinterland within the empire. And very soon, all of the warring powers are bringing the entire

Christopher Capozzola (12:26.240)

world into the conflict. Did they have a sense of how deadly the war is? I mean, this is another

Christopher Capozzola (12:33.440)

scale of death and destruction. At the beginning, no, but very quickly, the scale of the devastation

Christopher Capozzola (12:41.600)

of these sort of massive over the top attacks on the trenches is apparent to the military officers

Lex Fridman (12:47.920)

and it very quickly becomes apparent even at home. You know, there is, of course, censorship of the

Christopher Capozzola (12:53.680)

battlefield and specific details don't reach people. But for civilians and in any of the

Christopher Capozzola (13:00.320)

warring powers, they know fairly soon how destructive the war is. And to me, that's

Christopher Capozzola (13:06.400)

always been a real sort of puzzle, right? That by the time the United States comes to decide whether

Christopher Capozzola (13:13.360)

to join the war in 1917, they know exactly what they're getting into, right? They're not backing

Christopher Capozzola (13:19.120)

into the war in the ways that the European powers did. You know, they've seen the devastation,

Christopher Capozzola (13:24.880)

they've seen photographs, they've seen injured soldiers, and they make that choice anyway.

Lex Fridman (13:30.720)

When you say they, do you mean the leaders of the people? Did

Lex Fridman (13:37.520)

the death and destruction reach the minds of the American people by that time?

Christopher Capozzola (13:42.480)

AOB Yes, absolutely. We don't in 1917 have the mass media that we have now, but there are images

Christopher Capozzola (13:51.280)

in newspapers, there are newsreels that play at the movie theaters, and of course, some of it is

Christopher Capozzola (13:57.200)

sanitized. But that combined with press accounts, often really quite descriptive press accounts,

Christopher Capozzola (14:04.960)

gory accounts, reached anyone who cared to read them. Certainly, plenty of people didn't follow

Christopher Capozzola (14:11.120)

the news, felt it was far away. But most Americans who cared about the news knew how devastating this

Christopher Capozzola (14:16.960)

war was. LR Yeah, there's something that happens that I recently visited Ukraine for a few weeks.

Christopher Capozzola (14:24.480)

There's something that happens with the human mind as you get away from the actual front where

Christopher Capozzola (14:32.160)

the bullets are flying, like literally one kilometer away. You start to not feel the war.

Christopher Capozzola (14:38.640)

AOB You'll hear an explosion, you'll see an explosion, you start to get assimilated to it,

Christopher Capozzola (14:44.000)

or you start to get used to it. And then when you get as far away from currently what is Kiev,

Christopher Capozzola (14:51.520)

you know the war's going on, everybody around you is fighting in that war, but it's still somehow

Christopher Capozzola (14:57.520)

distant. And I think with the United States, with the ocean between, even if you have the stories

Christopher Capozzola (15:04.240)

everywhere, it still is somehow distant, like the way a movie is. Like a movie or a video game,

Christopher Capozzola (15:12.400)

it's somewhere else, even if your loved ones are going, or you are going to fight.

Christopher Capozzola (15:17.680)

LR Yeah, that is absolutely the case. And in some ways, that's true even for the home fronts in

Christopher Capozzola (15:22.880)

Europe, except for the areas where, in Belgium and France, where the war is right there in your

Christopher Capozzola (15:29.280)

backyard. For other people, yeah, there's a distance. And soldiers, of course, feel this

Christopher Capozzola (15:35.200)

very strongly. European soldiers, when they're able to go home on leave, often deeply resent

Lex Fridman (15:44.400)

what they see as the luxury that civilians are living in during the war.

Lex Fridman (15:48.400)

LR So how did US enter the war? Who was the president? What was the dynamics involved? And could it have stayed out?

Christopher Capozzola (15:59.120)

LR To answer your last question first, yes. That the United States could have stayed out of the

Christopher Capozzola (16:06.000)

First World War as a military power. The United States could not have ignored the war completely.

Christopher Capozzola (16:14.480)

It shaped everything. It shaped trade. It shaped goods and services, agriculture, whether

Christopher Capozzola (16:22.640)

there was a crop coming, whether there were immigrants coming across the Atlantic to work

Christopher Capozzola (16:27.040)

in American factories. So the US can't ignore the war. But the US makes a choice in 1917 to enter

Christopher Capozzola (16:34.240)

the war by declaring war on Germany and Austria. And in that sense, this is a war of choice,

Lex Fridman (16:44.000)

but it's kicked off by a series of events. So President Woodrow Wilson has been president

Christopher Capozzola (16:50.880)

through this entire period of time. He has just run in the 1916 presidential election on a campaign

Christopher Capozzola (16:58.640)

to keep the United States out of war. But then in early 1917, the Germans in some ways

Christopher Capozzola (17:06.000)

sort of twist the Americans arms. The Germans sort of high command comes to understand that

Christopher Capozzola (17:12.080)

they're stuck. They're stuck in this trench warfare. They need a big breakthrough. Their one

Christopher Capozzola (17:19.440)

big chance is to sort of break the blockade to push through that the British have imposed on them,

Christopher Capozzola (17:26.720)

to break through against France. And so they do. And along with this, they start sinking ships on

Christopher Capozzola (17:35.360)

the Atlantic, including American ships. The Germans know full well this will draw the United States

Christopher Capozzola (17:40.880)

into war. But the Germans look at the United States at this moment, a relatively small army,

Christopher Capozzola (17:47.360)

a relatively small Navy, a country that at least on paper is deeply divided about whether to join

Christopher Capozzola (17:53.360)

the war. And so they say, let's do it. They're not going to get any American soldiers there in time.

Christopher Capozzola (18:01.760)

It was a gamble, but I think probably their best chance. They took that gamble. They lost.

Christopher Capozzola (18:10.160)

Right. In part, because French resistance was strong in part because Americans mobilized much

Christopher Capozzola (18:15.840)

faster and in much greater numbers than the Germans thought they would. So the American

Christopher Capozzola (18:19.680)

people were divided. The American people were absolutely divided about whether to enter this

Christopher Capozzola (18:24.000)

war. Right. From 1914 to 1917, there is a searing debate across the political spectrum. It doesn't

Christopher Capozzola (18:31.360)

break down easily on party lines about whether it was in the US interest to do this, whether American

Christopher Capozzola (18:37.520)

troops should be sent abroad, whether Americans would end up just being cannon fodder for the

Christopher Capozzola (18:45.280)

European empires. Eventually, as American ships are sunk, first in the Lusitania in 1915, then in

Christopher Capozzola (18:54.240)

much greater numbers in 1917, the tide starts to turn and Americans feel that our response is

Christopher Capozzola (19:01.040)

necessary. And the actual declaration of war in Congress is pretty lopsided, but it's not unanimous

Christopher Capozzola (19:07.280)

by any means. Lopsided towards entering the war. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's really interesting

Christopher Capozzola (19:15.840)

because there's echoes of that in later wars where Congress seems to... Nobody wants to be the guy

Christopher Capozzola (19:24.240)

that says no to war for some reason. Once you sense that in terms of, sorry, in terms of

Christopher Capozzola (19:31.280)

politicians, because then you appear weak, but I wonder if that was always the case. So you make

Christopher Capozzola (19:37.920)

the case that World War I is largely responsible for defining what it means to be an American

Christopher Capozzola (19:45.280)

citizen. So in which way does it define the American citizen? When you think about citizenship,

Lex Fridman (19:53.520)

what it means is two things. First of all, what are your rights and obligations? What

Lex Fridman (19:58.000)

is the legal citizenship that you have as a citizen of the United States or any other state?

Christopher Capozzola (1:00:05.040)

you know, to mobilize against Germany, uh, described a more formidable enemy than it

Lex Fridman (1:00:10.240)

really was by 1941 and 42.

Christopher Capozzola (1:00:12.440)

Yeah. I mean, I could see both cases. Uh, one is that duct tape doesn't make the man,

Lex Fridman (1:00:19.400)

but also as an engineer, I'm a huge fan of duct tape because it does seem to solve a

Christopher Capozzola (1:00:24.680)

lot of problems. And, uh, I do worry that this perspective that the book presents about

Christopher Capozzola (1:00:32.200)

drugs is somehow to the mind really compelling because it's almost like the mind, or at least

Christopher Capozzola (1:00:39.520)

my mind searches for an answer. How could this have happened? And it's nice to have

Christopher Capozzola (1:00:44.760)

a clean explanation and drugs is one popular one. When people talk about steroids and sports,

Christopher Capozzola (1:00:50.680)

the moment you introduced the topic of steroids, somehow the mind wants to explain all success

Christopher Capozzola (1:00:56.400)

in the context was because this person was on steroids, Lance Armstrong. Well, it's,

Christopher Capozzola (1:01:04.320)

it like, it's a very sticky idea. Certain ideas, certain explanations are very sticky.

Lex Fridman (1:01:09.360)

And I think that's really dangerous because then you lose the full context. And also in

Christopher Capozzola (1:01:13.520)

the case of drugs, it removes the responsibility from the person, both for the military genius

Lex Fridman (1:01:20.480)

and the evil. And I think you, I mean, it's a very dangerous thing to do because something

Christopher Capozzola (1:01:27.160)

about the mind, maybe it's just mind that's sticky to this. Well, drugs explain it. If

Christopher Capozzola (1:01:31.440)

the drugs didn't happen, uh, then it would be very different. Yeah. It worries me how

Christopher Capozzola (1:01:37.480)

compelling it is of an explanation, you know? Yeah. So that's why it's maybe better to think

Christopher Capozzola (1:01:42.600)

of it as a window into the third, right? Is that an explanation of it? But it's also a

Christopher Capozzola (1:01:47.320)

nice exploration of Hitler, the man. For some reason, discussing his habits, especially

Christopher Capozzola (1:01:52.320)

later in the war, um, his practices with drugs gives you a window into the person. It reminds

Christopher Capozzola (1:02:00.000)

you that there's a human, this is a human being, like a human being that gets emotional

Christopher Capozzola (1:02:06.800)

in the morning, gets thoughtful in the morning, hopeful, sad, depressed, angry, like a story

Christopher Capozzola (1:02:14.560)

of emotions of the human being. Somehow we construct, um, which is a pretty dangerous

Christopher Capozzola (1:02:20.940)

thing to do, construct an evil monster out of Hitler when in reality he's a human being

Christopher Capozzola (1:02:26.040)

like all of us. I think the lesson there is the soldier needs to lesson, which is all

Christopher Capozzola (1:02:30.320)

of us to some degree are capable of evil. Um, or maybe if you want to make it less powerful

Christopher Capozzola (1:02:38.440)

a statement, many of our leaders are capable of evil. That this Hitler is not truly singular

Christopher Capozzola (1:02:45.440)

in history. That, uh, yeah, when the resentment of the populace matches the right charismatic

Christopher Capozzola (1:02:51.960)

leader, it's, it's easy to make the kind of, not easy, but it's possible to frequently

Christopher Capozzola (1:02:57.280)

make the kind of, uh, initiation of military conflict that happened in World War, World

Christopher Capozzola (1:03:04.480)

War II. By the way, because you said not a trained historian, one of the, one of the

Christopher Capozzola (1:03:12.360)

most compelling and I don't know, entertaining and fascinating exploration of World War I

Christopher Capozzola (1:03:17.960)

comes from Dan Carlin. I don't know if you've gotten a chance to listen to his sort of podcast

Christopher Capozzola (1:03:24.180)

form telling of the blueprint for Armageddon, which is the telling of World War I. What

Lex Fridman (1:03:29.600)

do you think about Dan Carlin, you yourself as a historian who has studied, who has written

Christopher Capozzola (1:03:34.600)

about World War I? Do you, do you enjoy that kind of telling of history? Absolutely. And

Christopher Capozzola (1:03:40.960)

I think, um, again, you know, uh, you don't need a PhD in history to, to be a historian.

Christopher Capozzola (1:03:46.160)

Um, does every historian agree with that? Uh, he gets quite a bit of criticism from

Christopher Capozzola (1:03:50.240)

historians. Uh, you know, I mean, we, you know, we like to argue with each other and

Christopher Capozzola (1:03:54.800)

nitpick with each other, but, um, but the one thing I have no patience for is when we

Christopher Capozzola (1:03:58.880)

like pull rank on each other. Um, you know, I think, um, we depend on, uh, you know, if

Christopher Capozzola (1:04:05.040)

you're, you know, a historian in a university with degrees and research materials, you know,

Christopher Capozzola (1:04:09.880)

you depend on the work of people in some local community, like recording oral histories,

Christopher Capozzola (1:04:15.120)

saving documents. And history is a, it's a social science, but it's also a storytelling

Christopher Capozzola (1:04:21.120)

art. Um, and you know, uh, history books are the ones you find on the shelves and bookstores

Christopher Capozzola (1:04:26.940)

that people read for, for fun. And, and then, and you can appreciate both the, the knowledge

Christopher Capozzola (1:04:32.400)

production, um, as well as the storytelling. Um, and when you get a good oral storyteller

Christopher Capozzola (1:04:37.720)

like Dan Carlin, um, there's a reason that thousands and hundreds of thousands of people

Christopher Capozzola (1:04:42.840)

tune in. Yeah. But he definitely suffers from anxiety about getting things correct. And

Christopher Capozzola (1:04:48.400)

it's very, it's very difficult. Well, our first job is to get the facts, uh, the facts

Christopher Capozzola (1:04:52.800)

correct and then, and then to tell the story off of those. But the, the facts are so fuzzy.

Lex Fridman (1:04:58.160)

So it's a, I mean, you have the, probably my favorite telling of World War II is William

Christopher Capozzola (1:05:05.440)

Shire's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. And, uh, or at least not telling of Nazi Germany.

Lex Fridman (1:05:12.320)

And that goes to primary sources a lot, which is like, I suppose that's the honest way to

Christopher Capozzola (1:05:20.960)

do it. But it's tough. It's really tough to write that way, to really go to primary sources

Christopher Capozzola (1:05:26.880)

always. And I think the, one of the things that Dan tries to do, which is also really

Christopher Capozzola (1:05:34.520)

tough to do, perhaps easier in, in oral history is, uh, try to make you feel what it was like

Christopher Capozzola (1:05:41.480)

to be there. Which, uh, I think he does by trying to tell the story of like individual

Christopher Capozzola (1:05:48.280)

soldiers and, um, do you find that telling like individual citizens? Do you find that

Lex Fridman (1:05:55.960)

kind of telling of history compelling?

Christopher Capozzola (1:05:58.080)

Yeah. I mean, I think we need, uh, historical imagination. Um, and I think historical imagination

Christopher Capozzola (1:06:07.800)

teaches something very valuable, which is humility, um, to realize that there are other

Christopher Capozzola (1:06:15.520)

people, um, who've lived on this planet and they organized their lives differently and,

Christopher Capozzola (1:06:20.560)

you know, they made it through just fine too. Um, and, um, you know, I think that, that,

Christopher Capozzola (1:06:27.760)

that kind of, of, of meeting other people from the past can be actually a very useful

Lex Fridman (1:06:34.400)

skill for meeting people unlike you in the present.

Christopher Capozzola (1:06:38.560)

Unlike you, but also like you. I think both are, uh, both are humbling. One realizing

Christopher Capozzola (1:06:43.600)

that they did live in a different space and time, but two realizing that if you, if you

Christopher Capozzola (1:06:49.280)

were placed in that space and time, you might have done all the same things, whether it's

Lex Fridman (1:06:54.320)

the brave, good thing or the evil thing.

Christopher Capozzola (1:06:57.320)

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and you get a, also a sense of, um, uh, of possibility. You know,

Christopher Capozzola (1:07:04.040)

there's this famous line, right? That, um, you know, those who do not learn history are

Christopher Capozzola (1:07:07.920)

condemned to repeat it. Um, but I think the other half is true, uh, as well, which is

Christopher Capozzola (1:07:12.920)

those who do not learn history don't get the chance to repeat it, right? Um, you know,

Christopher Capozzola (1:07:17.280)

that we're not the first people on this planet to face, you know, any certain kinds of problems.

Christopher Capozzola (1:07:21.640)

Um, you know, other people have, have lived through worlds like this one before.

Christopher Capozzola (1:07:26.320)

It's like when you fall in love as a teenager for the first time, there's, and then there's

Christopher Capozzola (1:07:29.980)

a breakup. You think it, it's the greatest tragedy, tragedy that has ever happened in

Christopher Capozzola (1:07:36.240)

the world. You're the first person. Even though, like, Romeo and Juliet and so on had, had

Christopher Capozzola (1:07:43.440)

this issue, you're the first person that truly feels the catastrophic heartbreak of that

Christopher Capozzola (1:07:49.400)

experience. It's good to be reminded that no, the human condition is what it is. We

Lex Fridman (1:07:55.920)

have lived through it at the individual and the societal scale.

Christopher Capozzola (1:07:59.480)

Let me ask you about nationalism, which I think is at the core of I want you poster.

Christopher Capozzola (1:08:07.400)

Is nationalism destructive or empowering to a nation? And we can use different words like

Christopher Capozzola (1:08:13.320)

patriotism, which is in many ways synonymous to nationalism, but in recent history, perhaps

Christopher Capozzola (1:08:19.960)

because of the Nazis has, has, um, slowly parted ways that somehow nationalism is when

Christopher Capozzola (1:08:26.440)

patriotism, patriotism gone bad or something like this.

Christopher Capozzola (1:08:30.240)

Yeah, they're, they're different, right? Um, patriotism, um, you know, patriotism is in

Christopher Capozzola (1:08:36.320)

some ways best thought of as an emotion, right? Uh, and a feeling of, of love of country,

Christopher Capozzola (1:08:41.560)

right? Um, you know, uh, literally, um, uh, and in some ways that's a necessary condition

Christopher Capozzola (1:08:47.800)

to participate in nationalism. Um, you know, whether to me, I think nationalism is crucial,

Christopher Capozzola (1:08:56.840)

um, in a world organized around nation states. Um, and you have to sort of believe that you

Christopher Capozzola (1:09:04.400)

are engaged in a common project together, right? Um, and so, you know, in the contemporary

Christopher Capozzola (1:09:09.480)

United States, um, you know, uh, in some ways that that question is actually on the table

Christopher Capozzola (1:09:15.280)

in ways that it hasn't been in the past, but you know, you have to believe that you're

Christopher Capozzola (1:09:19.260)

engaged in a common project, that you have something in common with the person with whom

Christopher Capozzola (1:09:24.240)

you share this nation. Um, and, um, and that you would sacrifice for them, whether it's

Christopher Capozzola (1:09:29.640)

by paying taxes for them or, um, you know, we're going to war to defend them. Um, that's

Christopher Capozzola (1:09:34.880)

a vision of, you know, what we might call civic nationalism. Um, uh, that's, that's

Christopher Capozzola (1:09:39.920)

the good version. The question is whether you could have that, um, without having, um,

Christopher Capozzola (1:09:46.400)

exclusionary nationalism, you know, hating the other, right? Fearing the other saying,

Christopher Capozzola (1:09:51.680)

uh, yeah, you're part of this nation, uh, against all others. Um, and I think there's

Christopher Capozzola (1:09:58.240)

a long tradition in America of a very inclusive, uh, nationalism, um, that is open, uh, inclusive,

Christopher Capozzola (1:10:06.600)

um, and, you know, new people to this shared project. Um, that's something to be defended.

Christopher Capozzola (1:10:14.240)

Exclusionary nationalism is based on, you know, um, uh, uh, ethnic hatreds and others

Lex Fridman (1:10:19.880)

that we see throughout the world. Um, those are things to be afraid of.

Lex Fridman (1:10:24.120)

But there is a kind of narrative in the United States that a nationalism that includes the

Christopher Capozzola (1:10:29.840)

big umbrella of democratic nations, nations that strive for freedom and everybody else

Christopher Capozzola (1:10:36.240)

is against, is against freedom and against human nature. And it just so happens that

Christopher Capozzola (1:10:41.680)

it's half and half split across the world. So that's imperialism that feels like it beats

Christopher Capozzola (1:10:48.800)

the drum of war.

Christopher Capozzola (1:10:51.160)

Yeah. And I, I mean, I don't want to paint too rosy a picture and certainly, you know,

Christopher Capozzola (1:10:55.840)

the United States, um, as a nation has often found it easier to define ourselves against

Lex Fridman (1:11:01.360)

something than to clarify exactly what we're for.

Christopher Capozzola (1:11:06.400)

Yeah. Yeah. The Cold War, China today. That's not only United States. I suppose that's,

Christopher Capozzola (1:11:16.680)

that's human nature. It's, we need a competitor. It's almost like maybe the success of human

Christopher Capozzola (1:11:23.200)

civilization requires figuring out how to construct competitors that don't result in

Lex Fridman (1:11:31.280)

global war.

Christopher Capozzola (1:11:32.840)

Yes. Or figuring out how to turn enemies into rivals and competitors. There's a real difference.

Christopher Capozzola (1:11:41.400)

You know, you can, you, you know, you compete with competitors. You, you fight with enemies.

Christopher Capozzola (1:11:47.000)

Yeah. With competitors is a respect, maybe even a love underlying the competition.

Lex Fridman (1:11:55.960)

What lessons, what are the biggest lessons you take away from World War I? Maybe we talked

Christopher Capozzola (1:12:02.120)

about several, but you know, you look back at the 20th century. What, as a historian,

Lex Fridman (1:12:10.480)

what do you learn about human nature, about human civilization, about history from looking

Lex Fridman (1:12:17.160)

at this war?

Christopher Capozzola (1:12:19.480)

I think the, the lesson I would want everyone to take from the story of the First World

Christopher Capozzola (1:12:29.840)

War is that human life is not cheap. That all of the warring powers thought that just

Christopher Capozzola (1:12:41.320)

by throwing more men and more material at the front, they would solve their political

Christopher Capozzola (1:12:48.000)

problems with military force. And at the end of the day in 1918, one side did win that,

Lex Fridman (1:12:56.620)

but it didn't actually solve any of those political problems.

Lex Fridman (1:12:59.560)

And in the end, the regular people paid the price with their lives.

Christopher Capozzola (1:13:06.120)

They did. And people who, people who had been told that their lives were cheap remembered

Christopher Capozzola (1:13:12.680)

that, right? And it sort of, you know, reshapes mass politics for the rest of the 20th century,

Lex Fridman (1:13:19.440)

both in Europe and around the world.

Christopher Capozzola (1:13:21.400)

Yeah. The, yeah, the cost of a death of a single soldier is not just, or a single civilian

Christopher Capozzola (1:13:29.000)

is not just the cost of that single life. It's the resentment, that the anger, the hate

Christopher Capozzola (1:13:35.520)

that reverberates throughout. One of the things I saw in Ukraine is the birth of, at scale

Christopher Capozzola (1:13:42.480)

of generational hate, not towards administrations or leaders, but towards entire peoples. And

Christopher Capozzola (1:13:50.320)

that hate, I mean, overnight that hate is created and it takes perhaps decades for that

Lex Fridman (1:13:56.520)

hate to dissipate.

Christopher Capozzola (1:13:58.660)

It takes decades and it takes, it takes collective effort to build institutions that divert that

Lex Fridman (1:14:04.960)

hate into other places.

Christopher Capozzola (1:14:10.080)

One of the biggest things I thought was not part of the calculus in when the United States

Christopher Capozzola (1:14:16.460)

invaded Afghanistan and Iraq is the creation of hate. When you drop a bomb, even if it

Christopher Capozzola (1:14:27.520)

hits military targets, even if it kills soldiers, which in that case it didn't, there's a very

Christopher Capozzola (1:14:34.960)

large amount of civilians. What does that do to the, yeah, like, how many years, minutes,

Christopher Capozzola (1:14:45.040)

hours, months, and years of hate do you create with a single bomb you drop? And I calculate

Christopher Capozzola (1:14:50.320)

that like literally in the Pentagon have a chart, how many people will hate us? How many

Christopher Capozzola (1:14:57.200)

people does it take, do some science here, how many people does it take, when you have

Christopher Capozzola (1:15:01.480)

a million people that hate you, how many of them will become terrorists? How many of them

Christopher Capozzola (1:15:09.240)

will do something to the nation you love and care about, which is the United States, will

Christopher Capozzola (1:15:15.120)

do something that will be very costly? I feel like there was not a plot in a chart. It was

Christopher Capozzola (1:15:21.760)

more about short term effects.

Christopher Capozzola (1:15:24.200)

Yes, it's again, it's the idea of using military force to solve political problems. And I think

Christopher Capozzola (1:15:31.480)

there's a squandering of goodwill that people have around the world toward the United States.

Christopher Capozzola (1:15:37.200)

That's a respect for its economy, for its consumer products, and so forth. And I think

Christopher Capozzola (1:15:43.040)

that's been lost, a lot of that.

Lex Fridman (1:15:46.240)

Do you think leaders can stop war? I have perhaps a romantic notion, perhaps because

Christopher Capozzola (1:15:51.440)

I do these podcasts in person and so on, that leaders that get in a room together and can

Christopher Capozzola (1:15:55.760)

talk, they can stop war. I mean, that's the power of a leader, especially one in an authoritarian

Christopher Capozzola (1:16:04.160)

regime that they can, through camaraderie, alleviate some of the emotions associated

Lex Fridman (1:16:14.460)

with ego.

Christopher Capozzola (1:16:16.120)

Yes, leaders can stop war if they get into the room when they understand from the masses

Lex Fridman (1:16:25.800)

in their countries that war is something that they want stopped.

Lex Fridman (1:16:31.920)

So the people ultimately have a really big say.

Christopher Capozzola (1:16:34.600)

They do, that it was mass movements by people in the United States for the nuclear freeze,

Christopher Capozzola (1:16:42.220)

even Russia pushing for openness that brought, for example, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev

Christopher Capozzola (1:16:48.760)

to Reykjavik to sort of debate and eventually sort of put caps on nuclear weapons. Those

Christopher Capozzola (1:16:56.800)

two people made choices in the room that made that possible, but they were both being pushed

Lex Fridman (1:17:04.760)

and knew they were being pushed by their people.

Christopher Capozzola (1:17:07.800)

Boy, that's a tough one. It puts a lot of responsibility on the German people, for example.

Christopher Capozzola (1:17:15.240)

In both wars, we fans of history tend to conceive of history as a meeting of leaders. We think

Christopher Capozzola (1:17:23.120)

of Chamberlain, we think of Churchill and the importance of them in the Second World

Christopher Capozzola (1:17:27.240)

War. We think about Hitler and Stalin and think that if certain conversations happen,

Christopher Capozzola (1:17:32.880)

the war could have been avoided. You tell the story of how many times Hitler and Nazi

Christopher Capozzola (1:17:39.120)

Germany's military might was not sufficient, they could have been easily stopped. And the

Christopher Capozzola (1:17:46.280)

pacifists, the people who believed Hitler or foolish enough to believe Hitler didn't

Christopher Capozzola (1:17:53.720)

act properly. And if the leaders just woke up to that idea, in fact, Churchill is a kind

Christopher Capozzola (1:18:01.680)

of representation of that. But in your conception here, it's possible that Churchill was also

Christopher Capozzola (1:18:06.180)

a representation of the British people, even though seemingly unpopular. That gave birth

Christopher Capozzola (1:18:16.240)

to somebody like Churchill, who said, we'll never surrender, right? She'll fight in the

Lex Fridman (1:18:21.360)

beaches.

Christopher Capozzola (1:18:22.360)

Yeah. And I think World War II Britain is a good example of that. It is clearly a dynamic

Christopher Capozzola (1:18:30.140)

leader who has his pulse on what the people want and demand and are willing to do. And

Christopher Capozzola (1:18:38.120)

you know, it's a dynamic art of leading that and shaping those wants at the same time as

Lex Fridman (1:18:44.400)

knowing that you're bound by them.

Christopher Capozzola (1:18:47.080)

Well then if we conceive of history in this way, let me ask you about our presidents.

Christopher Capozzola (1:18:53.300)

You are taking on the impossibly difficult task of teaching a course in a couple of years

Christopher Capozzola (1:19:00.680)

here or in one year called the history of American presidential elections. So if the

Christopher Capozzola (1:19:08.080)

people are in part responsible for leaders, how can we explain what is going on in America

Christopher Capozzola (1:19:17.040)

that we have the leaders that we do today? So if we think about the elections of the

Christopher Capozzola (1:19:22.920)

past several cycles, I guess let me ask, are we a divided nation? Are we more of a divided

Christopher Capozzola (1:19:31.280)

nation than we were in the past? What do you understand about the American citizen at the

Lex Fridman (1:19:36.480)

beginning of this century from the leaders we have elected?

Christopher Capozzola (1:19:41.760)

Yes, obviously we are a divided country in our rhetoric, in our day to day politics.

Lex Fridman (1:19:54.740)

But we are nowhere near as divided as we have been in other periods in our history, right?

Christopher Capozzola (1:20:01.800)

The most obvious, of course, being in the American Civil War, 150 years ago. And the

Christopher Capozzola (1:20:09.080)

distinction is not just that we haven't come to blows, but that we are fundamentally one

Christopher Capozzola (1:20:16.880)

society, one economy, and sort of deeply integrated as a nation, both domestically and on the

Christopher Capozzola (1:20:26.680)

world stage in ways that look nothing like the United States in 1861. Will political

Christopher Capozzola (1:20:36.880)

rhetoric continue to be extreme? Of course. But we're not as divided as people think we

Lex Fridman (1:20:44.240)

are.

Christopher Capozzola (1:20:47.440)

Well, then if you actually look throughout human history, does it always get, so outside

Christopher Capozzola (1:20:55.240)

of the people, do the elections get as contentious as they've recently been? So there's a kind

Christopher Capozzola (1:21:02.320)

of perception has been very close and there's a lot of accusations, a lot of tensions. It's

Lex Fridman (1:21:08.060)

very heated. It's almost fueling the machine of division. Has that often been the case?

Christopher Capozzola (1:21:14.340)

It has. It hasn't, it hasn't. I mean, I do think right now is different. And there it's

Christopher Capozzola (1:21:20.440)

worth distinguishing, are there deep social or economic divisions, which I don't actually

Christopher Capozzola (1:21:26.560)

think that there are, versus partisanship in particular, sort of the rivalry between

Christopher Capozzola (1:21:31.600)

the two parties. And it's very clear that we are in an era of what political scientists

Christopher Capozzola (1:21:37.480)

call hyper partisanship, right? And that the two parties have taken sort of fundamentally

Christopher Capozzola (1:21:43.640)

different positions and moved further apart from one another. And that is what I think

Christopher Capozzola (1:21:52.800)

people talk about when they say our country is divided. So the country may not be divided

Christopher Capozzola (1:21:57.720)

even if our politics are highly partisan. That is a divergence from other time periods

Christopher Capozzola (1:22:04.160)

in our history.

Lex Fridman (1:22:05.160)

So I wonder if this kind of political partisanship is actually an illusion of division. I sometimes

Christopher Capozzola (1:22:15.280)

feel like we mostly all agree on some basic fundamentals and the things that people allegedly

Christopher Capozzola (1:22:25.880)

disagree on are really blown out of proportion. And there's like a media machine and the politicians

Christopher Capozzola (1:22:31.520)

really want you to pick a blue side and a red side. And because of that, somehow I mean,

Christopher Capozzola (1:22:38.400)

families break up over Thanksgiving dinner about who they voted for. There's a really

Christopher Capozzola (1:22:42.980)

strong pressure to be the red or blue. And I wonder if that's a feature or a bug. Whether

Christopher Capozzola (1:22:50.880)

this is just part of the mechanism of democracy that we want to, even if there's not a real

Christopher Capozzola (1:22:55.800)

thing to be divided over, we need to construct it such that you can always have attention

Lex Fridman (1:23:01.560)

of ideas in order to make progress, to figure out how to progress as a nation.

Christopher Capozzola (1:23:08.520)

I think we're figuring that out in real time. On the one hand, it's easy to say that it's

Christopher Capozzola (1:23:13.400)

a feature of a political system that has two parties. And the United States is in some

Christopher Capozzola (1:23:21.640)

ways unique in not being a parliamentary democracy. And so in some ways, you would think that

Christopher Capozzola (1:23:28.960)

would be the feature that is causing partisanship and to reach these heights. That said, we

Christopher Capozzola (1:23:37.240)

can even see in parliamentary systems all around the world that the same kinds of rhetorics

Christopher Capozzola (1:23:44.960)

of irreconcilable division, a kind of politics of emotion are proliferating around the world.

Christopher Capozzola (1:23:53.280)

Some of that, as you say, I think is not as real as it appears on television, on social

Christopher Capozzola (1:24:01.980)

media and other formats. I don't know that other countries that are experiencing political

Christopher Capozzola (1:24:08.880)

conflict, I'm not sure that they're deeply divided either.

Lex Fridman (1:24:12.960)

So I've had the fortune of being intellectually active through the George Bush versus Al Gore

Christopher Capozzola (1:24:23.240)

election, then the Obama and it's just every election since. And it seems like a large

Christopher Capozzola (1:24:29.920)

percentage of those elections, there's been a claim that the elections were rigged, that

Christopher Capozzola (1:24:36.400)

there is some conspiracy, corruption, malevolence on the other side. I distinctly remember when

Christopher Capozzola (1:24:44.920)

Donald Trump won in 2016, a lot of people I know said that election was rigged and there's

Christopher Capozzola (1:24:52.040)

different explanations, including Russian influence. And then in 2020, I was just running

Christopher Capozzola (1:24:59.940)

in Austin along the river and somebody said like, oh, huge fan of the podcast. And they

Christopher Capozzola (1:25:07.680)

said like, what do you think of it? This is just not right. What's happening in this country

Christopher Capozzola (1:25:11.520)

that the 2020 election was obviously rigged from their perspective in electing Joe Biden

Christopher Capozzola (1:25:21.520)

versus Donald Trump. Do you think there's a case to be made for and against each claim

Lex Fridman (1:25:28.320)

in the full context of history of our elections being rigged?

Christopher Capozzola (1:25:34.760)

I think the American election system is fundamentally sound and reliable. And I think that the evidence

Christopher Capozzola (1:25:49.760)

is clear for that regardless of which election you're looking at. In some ways, whether you

Christopher Capozzola (1:25:57.280)

look at a presidential election or even a local county election for dog catcher or something,

Christopher Capozzola (1:26:04.420)

that the amount of time and resources and precision that go into voter registration,

Christopher Capozzola (1:26:14.160)

vote counting, certification processes are crucial to democratic institutions.

Christopher Capozzola (1:26:22.880)

I think when someone says rigged, regardless of which side of the political spectrum they're

Christopher Capozzola (1:26:29.900)

coming from, they're looking for an answer. They're looking for that one answer for what

Christopher Capozzola (1:26:39.980)

is in fact a complex system. So on the left, when they say rigged, they may be pointing

Christopher Capozzola (1:26:48.480)

to a wide range of ways in which they think that the system is tilted through gerrymandering,

Christopher Capozzola (1:27:01.200)

misrepresentation through the electoral college. On the right, when people say rigged, they

Christopher Capozzola (1:27:06.920)

may be concerned about voter security, about ways in which the mainstream media may control

Christopher Capozzola (1:27:17.720)

messages. And in both cases, the feeling is it's articulated as my vote didn't get counted

Christopher Capozzola (1:27:29.360)

right. But the deeper concern is my vote doesn't count. My voice isn't being heard. So no, I

Lex Fridman (1:27:41.520)

don't think the elections are rigged.

Lex Fridman (1:27:43.400)

So let me sort of push back, right? There's a comfort to the story that they're not rigged.

Lex Fridman (1:27:50.240)

And a lot of us like to live in comfort. So people who articulate conspiracy theories

Christopher Capozzola (1:27:55.760)

say, sure, it's nice to be comfortable, but here's the reality. And the thing they articulate

Christopher Capozzola (1:28:01.400)

is there's incentives in close elections, which we seem to have nonstop close elections.

Christopher Capozzola (1:28:07.000)

There's so many financial interests. There's so many powerful people. Surely you can construct

Christopher Capozzola (1:28:13.280)

not just with the media and all the ways you describe both on the left and the right, the

Christopher Capozzola (1:28:18.520)

elections could be rigged, but literally actually in a fully illegal way manipulate the results

Christopher Capozzola (1:28:28.080)

of votes. Surely there's incentive to do that. And I don't think that's a totally ridiculous

Christopher Capozzola (1:28:37.880)

argument because it's like, all right, well, I mean, it actually lands to the question,

Christopher Capozzola (1:28:46.560)

which is a hard question for me to ask as an optimist of how many malevolent people

Christopher Capozzola (1:28:52.960)

out there and how many malevolent people are required to rig an election. So how many,

Lex Fridman (1:29:00.040)

what is the face transition for a system to become from like a corruption light to high

Christopher Capozzola (1:29:08.480)

level of corruption such that you could do things like rig elections, which is what happens

Lex Fridman (1:29:15.640)

quite a lot in many nations in the world even today.

Lex Fridman (1:29:20.160)

So yes, there is interference in elections and there has been in American history. And

Christopher Capozzola (1:29:24.760)

we can go all the way back into the 18th century. You don't have to go back to Texas in the

Christopher Capozzola (1:29:31.640)

1960s, LBJ to find examples of direct interference in the outcome of elections. And there are

Christopher Capozzola (1:29:39.880)

incentives to do that. Those incentives will only feel more existential as hyper partisanship

Christopher Capozzola (1:29:48.880)

makes people think that the outcome of the elections are a matter of black and white

Christopher Capozzola (1:29:56.360)

or life and death. And you will see people organizing every way they can to shape elections.

Christopher Capozzola (1:30:07.800)

We saw this in the 1850s when settlers, pro and anti slavery, flooded into Kansas to try

Lex Fridman (1:30:15.200)

to determine the outcome of an election. We see this in the reconstruction period, right?

Christopher Capozzola (1:30:22.340)

When the Ku Klux Klan shows up to block the doors for black voters in the South. This

Christopher Capozzola (1:30:30.920)

history is not new, it's there. I think the reason why I think that the system is sound

Christopher Capozzola (1:30:39.920)

is not... When I say I believe that the election system is fundamentally sound, I'm not trying

Christopher Capozzola (1:30:49.040)

to be reassuring or encourage complacency, right? I'm saying this is something that we

Christopher Capozzola (1:30:55.400)

need to do and to work on.

Lex Fridman (1:30:58.280)

So the current electoral mechanisms are sufficiently robust. Even if there is corruption, even

Christopher Capozzola (1:31:05.960)

if there is rigging, the force that self corrects and ensures that nobody gets out of line is

Christopher Capozzola (1:31:13.400)

much stronger than the other incentives, which are the corrupting incentives. And that's

Christopher Capozzola (1:31:18.800)

the thing I talked about visiting Ukraine, talking about corruption, where a lot of people

Christopher Capozzola (1:31:25.840)

talk about corruption as being a symptom. If the system allows, creates these incentives

Christopher Capozzola (1:31:34.800)

for there to be corruption, humans will always go for corruption. That's just, you have to

Christopher Capozzola (1:31:38.960)

assume that. The power of the United States is that it constructs systems that prevent

Christopher Capozzola (1:31:44.120)

you from being corrupt at scale. At least, I mean, it depends what you believe of most

Christopher Capozzola (1:31:47.880)

of us. If you believe in this country, you have to... You believe in the self correcting

Christopher Capozzola (1:31:53.800)

mechanisms of corruption, that even if that desire is in the human heart, the system resists

Lex Fridman (1:32:01.680)

it, prevents it. That's your current belief.

Christopher Capozzola (1:32:07.200)

Yes, as of today. But I do think that that will require oversight by institutions, ideally

Christopher Capozzola (1:32:20.080)

ones that are insulated as much as possible from partisan politics, which is very difficult

Christopher Capozzola (1:32:24.160)

right now. And it will require the demands of the American people that they want these

Christopher Capozzola (1:32:32.200)

elections to be fair and secure. And that means being willing to lose them, regardless

Christopher Capozzola (1:32:41.620)

of which party you're in favor of.

Lex Fridman (1:32:43.680)

So what do you think about the power of the media to create partisanship? I'm really worried

Christopher Capozzola (1:32:49.040)

that there's a huge incentive, speaking of incentives, to divide the country. The media

Lex Fridman (1:32:55.560)

and the politicians, I'm not sure where it originates, but it feels like it's the media.

Christopher Capozzola (1:33:00.400)

Maybe it's a very cynical perspective on journalism, but it seems like if we're angry and divided

Christopher Capozzola (1:33:06.000)

as evenly as possible, you're going to maximize the number of clicks. So it's almost like

Christopher Capozzola (1:33:11.000)

the media wants to elect people that are going to be the most divisive, maximizing. And the

Christopher Capozzola (1:33:19.080)

worry I have is they are not beyond either feeding or, if you want to be very cynical,

Christopher Capozzola (1:33:27.760)

manufacturing narratives that lead that division, like the narrative of an election being rigged.

Christopher Capozzola (1:33:34.240)

Because if you convinced half the populace that the election was completely rigged, that's

Christopher Capozzola (1:33:39.600)

a really good way to get a lot of clicks. And the very cynical view is I don't know

Christopher Capozzola (1:33:47.040)

if the media machine will stop the destruction of our democracy in service of getting more

Christopher Capozzola (1:33:57.240)

clicks. It may destroy our entire democracy just to get more clicks, just because the

Lex Fridman (1:34:04.600)

fire as the thing burns down will get clicks. Am I putting too much blame on the media here?

Lex Fridman (1:34:13.360)

The machine of it?

Christopher Capozzola (1:34:14.440)

You're diagnosing the incentive structure, you're depicting that with 100% accuracy.

Lex Fridman (1:34:22.260)

But I think history teaches that you might be giving the media too much sort of causal

Christopher Capozzola (1:34:28.760)

power, that the American people are smarter than the media that they consume. Even today,

Christopher Capozzola (1:34:39.160)

we know that. Even people who consume just Fox or just MSNBC know what they're consuming.

Lex Fridman (1:34:50.480)

So I don't think that media will be the solution. And I certainly don't think that returning

Christopher Capozzola (1:34:57.800)

to a media structure of the mid 20th century with three news channels that all tell us

Lex Fridman (1:35:04.800)

one story, that's no golden age that we're trying to get back to, for sure.

Christopher Capozzola (1:35:11.480)

Well, there is a novel thing in human history, which is Twitter and social media and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:35:18.560)

So we're trying to find our footing as a nation to figure out how to think about politics,

Lex Fridman (1:35:23.840)

how to maintain our basic freedoms, our sense of democracy, of our interaction with government

Lex Fridman (1:35:34.520)

and so on, on this new medium of social media. Do you think Twitter, how do you think Twitter

Christopher Capozzola (1:35:42.720)

changed things? Do you think Twitter is good for democracy? Do you think it has changed

Lex Fridman (1:35:49.400)

what it means to be an American citizen? Or is it just the same old media mechanism?

Christopher Capozzola (1:35:56.120)

It has not changed what it means to be an American citizen. It may have changed the

Christopher Capozzola (1:36:05.080)

day to day sound of being and the experience of it. It got noisier, it got louder and it

Christopher Capozzola (1:36:14.000)

got more decentered. I think Twitter, it's paradoxical. On the one hand, it is a fundamentally

Christopher Capozzola (1:36:23.280)

democratic platform. And in some ways, it democratizes institutions that had gatekeepers

Lex Fridman (1:36:33.260)

and authority figures for a very long time. But on the other hand, it's not a democratic

Christopher Capozzola (1:36:37.880)

institution at all. It's a for profit corporation. And it operates under those principles. And

Lex Fridman (1:36:45.240)

so that said, it's an institution of American and global life that the people of the United

Christopher Capozzola (1:36:54.000)

States have the authority to regulate or reshape as they see fit, both that and other major

Christopher Capozzola (1:37:02.200)

media players.

Lex Fridman (1:37:03.200)

So one of the most dramatic decisions that illustrate both sides of what you're saying

Christopher Capozzola (1:37:08.280)

is when Twitter decided to ban, I think permanently, the President of the United States, Donald

Christopher Capozzola (1:37:14.320)

Trump off of Twitter. Can you make the case that that was a good idea and make the case

Lex Fridman (1:37:21.480)

that that was a bad idea? Can you see both perspectives on this?

Christopher Capozzola (1:37:25.360)

Yes, I think, I mean, the simple fact of the matter is, you know, Twitter is a platform,

Christopher Capozzola (1:37:31.880)

it has rules of service. Twitter concluded that President Trump had violated the terms

Christopher Capozzola (1:37:38.120)

of service and blocked him, right? And if you have rules, you have to enforce them.

Christopher Capozzola (1:37:44.800)

Did it have, you know, did it have consequences? It had direct and predictable consequences,

Christopher Capozzola (1:37:54.160)

you know, that of creating a sense among millions of Americans that Twitter had taken a side

Lex Fridman (1:38:04.440)

in politics or confirming their belief that it had done so. Will it have unintended consequences?

Christopher Capozzola (1:38:12.160)

You know, this is where the historian can come in and say, yes, there's always unintended

Christopher Capozzola (1:38:17.000)

consequences. And we don't know, you know, sort of what it would mean for political figures

Christopher Capozzola (1:38:24.240)

to be excluded from various media platforms under sort of under these notions, right,

Christopher Capozzola (1:38:34.680)

that they had violated terms of service, etc. So, you know, so I guess we'll see, I guess.

Christopher Capozzola (1:38:41.320)

Well, to me, so I'm generally against censorship. But to take Twitter's perspective, it's unclear

Christopher Capozzola (1:38:48.480)

to me, in terms of unintended consequences, whether censoring a human being from being

Christopher Capozzola (1:38:56.760)

part of your platform is going to decrease or increase the amount of hate in the world.

Lex Fridman (1:39:05.320)

So there's a strong case to be made that banning somebody like Donald Trump increases the amount

Christopher Capozzola (1:39:11.160)

of resentment among people, and that's a very large number of people that support him, or

Christopher Capozzola (1:39:18.640)

even love him, or even see him as a great president, one of the greatest this country

Christopher Capozzola (1:39:23.120)

has had. And so if you completely suppress his voice, you're going to intensify the support

Christopher Capozzola (1:39:30.740)

that he has, from just the regular support for another human being who ran for president,

Christopher Capozzola (1:39:36.920)

to somebody that becomes an almost heroic figure for that set of people. Now, the flipside

Christopher Capozzola (1:39:43.800)

is removing a person from a platform like Donald Trump might lessen the megaphone of

Christopher Capozzola (1:39:52.000)

that particular person, might actually level the democratic notion that everybody has a

Christopher Capozzola (1:39:59.920)

voice. So basically, removing the loud extremes is helpful for giving the center, the calm,

Christopher Capozzola (1:40:08.600)

the thoughtful voices more power. And so in that sense, that teaches a lesson that don't

Christopher Capozzola (1:40:14.120)

be crazy in any one direction. Don't go full, don't go Lenin, don't go Hitler, don't, don't,

Christopher Capozzola (1:40:23.080)

like you have to stay in the middle. There's divisions in the middle, there's discussions

Christopher Capozzola (1:40:27.560)

in the middle, but stay in the middle. That's sort of the steel man the case for, for censoring.

Lex Fridman (1:40:34.440)

But I, boy, is censorship a slippery slope. And also boys Twitter becoming a thing that's

Christopher Capozzola (1:40:44.280)

more than just a company. It seems like it's a medium of communication that we use for,

Christopher Capozzola (1:40:51.800)

for information, for, for knowledge, for wisdom even, you know, during the period of COVID,

Christopher Capozzola (1:40:59.400)

we use that to gain an understanding of what the hell's going on. What should we do? What's

Christopher Capozzola (1:41:03.760)

the state of the art science? Science fundamentally transformed during the time of COVID because

Christopher Capozzola (1:41:08.600)

you have no time for the full review cycle that science usually goes through. And some

Christopher Capozzola (1:41:13.080)

of the best sources of information for me, from the conspiracy theory to the best doctors

Christopher Capozzola (1:41:19.800)

was Twitter. The data, the stats, all that kind of stuff. And that feels like, like more

Christopher Capozzola (1:41:25.200)

than a com more than a company. And then Twitter and YouTube and different places took a really

Christopher Capozzola (1:41:30.120)

strong stance on COVID, which is the lazy stance in my opinion, which is we're going

Christopher Capozzola (1:41:36.320)

to listen to whatever CDC or the institutions have said. But the reality is you're an institution

Christopher Capozzola (1:41:43.800)

of your own now. You're kind of the press. You're like, there's a, there's a, it's, it's

Christopher Capozzola (1:41:51.880)

a really difficult position. It's a really, really difficult position to take. But I wish

Christopher Capozzola (1:41:57.320)

they've stepped up and take on the full responsibility and the pain of fighting for the freedom of

Christopher Capozzola (1:42:02.840)

speech. Yes, they need, they need to do that. But you know, I'm struck by some of the things

Christopher Capozzola (1:42:14.320)

that you said, ways in which, you know, Twitter has the power to shape the conversation. And

Christopher Capozzola (1:42:22.760)

I don't think in a democratic society, democratic policies should cede that power to, to for

Christopher Capozzola (1:42:30.960)

profit companies. Do you agree that it's possible that Twitter has that power currently? Do

Christopher Capozzola (1:42:38.080)

you sense that it has the power? Is that my sense is Twitter has the power to start wars,

Lex Fridman (1:42:43.000)

like tweets have the power to start wars to, to, yeah, to, to change the direction of elections?

Christopher Capozzola (1:42:50.360)

Maybe in the sense in the ways in which, you know, a wave has the power to wash away sand,

Christopher Capozzola (1:42:56.000)

right? You know, it's, it's the, it's still the medium, right? It's not, it's not in itself

Christopher Capozzola (1:43:02.120)

an actor. It's how actors use the platform, which requires us to scrutinize the structure

Christopher Capozzola (1:43:07.680)

of the platform and access to it. Unfortunately, it's not, maybe it's similar to the wave.

Christopher Capozzola (1:43:11.800)

It's not just a medium. It's a, it's a medium plus, it's a medium that enables virality

Christopher Capozzola (1:43:20.800)

that benefits from virality of engagement. And that means singular voices can, can have

Christopher Capozzola (1:43:29.920)

a disproportionate impact, like not even voices, singular ideas, dramatic ideas can have a

Christopher Capozzola (1:43:36.640)

disproportionate impact. And so that actually threatens, it's almost like I don't know what

Christopher Capozzola (1:43:42.680)

the equivalent is in nature, but it's a, it's a wave that can grow exponentially because

Christopher Capozzola (1:43:48.180)

of the intensity of the, the initial intensity of the wave. I don't know how to describe

Christopher Capozzola (1:43:54.840)

this as a dynamical system, but it feels like, it feels like there, there is a responsibility

Christopher Capozzola (1:44:01.360)

there not to accelerate, not to accelerate voices just because they get a lot of engagement.

Christopher Capozzola (1:44:05.880)

You have to have a proportional representation of that voice. But you're saying that a strong

Christopher Capozzola (1:44:13.080)

democracy should be robust to that. A strong democracy can and should, and will be. I mean,

Christopher Capozzola (1:44:20.000)

I think the other thing a historian will tell you about Twitter is that this too shall pass,

Christopher Capozzola (1:44:24.840)

right? Yeah. But, but I do think, you know, the structures of, of the, of the platform

Christopher Capozzola (1:44:30.700)

of the algorithm of, of this and other major players are, are eligible for scrutiny by,

Christopher Capozzola (1:44:39.400)

by democratic institutions. So in preparing to teach the course, the history of American

Christopher Capozzola (1:44:45.800)

presidential elections leading up to the 2024 elections. So one of the lessons of history

Christopher Capozzola (1:44:52.400)

is this too shall pass. So don't make everything about, this is, this is going to either save

Christopher Capozzola (1:44:57.840)

or destroy our nation. That seems to be like the message of every single election. As I'm

Lex Fridman (1:45:03.280)

doing Trump hands. Do you think Donald Trump, what do you think about the 2024 election?

Lex Fridman (1:45:08.720)

Do you think Donald Trump runs? Do you think the, the tension will grow? Or was that a

Christopher Capozzola (1:45:18.240)

singular moment? Do you think you'll be like AOC versus Trump or whoever, whatever the

Lex Fridman (1:45:25.040)

most maximum drama maximizing thing? Or will things stabilize?

Christopher Capozzola (1:45:30.960)

I think I can, I can, you know, historians don't like to predict the future, but I can

Christopher Capozzola (1:45:34.760)

predict this one that it will not be a calm and, and, and stabilized election. I think

Christopher Capozzola (1:45:40.560)

as of, you know, the time that we're talking in 2022, we don't, there are too many you

Christopher Capozzola (1:45:45.320)

know, sort of open questions, particularly about whether Joe Biden will run for reelection.

Christopher Capozzola (1:45:50.160)

He says he will, but you know, but the jury I think is out on that. You know, I, I can't

Christopher Capozzola (1:45:58.000)

predict whether Donald Trump will run for, for election or not. I think you know, we

Christopher Capozzola (1:46:05.320)

do know that, that, that president Trump doesn't like to, to start things he can't win. And

Christopher Capozzola (1:46:13.680)

if the polling data suggests that he's not a credible candidate, he might be reluctant

Christopher Capozzola (1:46:19.180)

to enter the race and might might find more appealing, the kind of sideline kind of King

Christopher Capozzola (1:46:26.700)

maker role that he's been crafting since he left the White House. You know, I think there

Christopher Capozzola (1:46:32.740)

are plenty of people who are you know, dreaming that there's some sort of centrist candidate

Christopher Capozzola (1:46:38.520)

you know, you know whether it's a conservative Democrat or a liberal Republican who will

Christopher Capozzola (1:46:45.080)

you know, save us from, from, from all of this either within the party or in a third

Lex Fridman (1:46:50.860)

party run. I don't think that's likely.

Lex Fridman (1:46:53.300)

Why aren't we getting them? Why don't you think it's likely? What's the explanation?

Lex Fridman (1:46:56.840)

This seems to be a general hunger for a person like this.

Christopher Capozzola (1:46:59.500)

You would, but the system sorts it out, right? You know, that the, the, that the primary systems

Lex Fridman (1:47:03.960)

and the party you know, party candidate selection systems you know, will favor sort of more,

Christopher Capozzola (1:47:09.920)

you know, more partisan views, right? More conservative Republicans, more liberal Democrats

Lex Fridman (1:47:15.400)

as the kind of center candidates.

Christopher Capozzola (1:47:18.080)

It seems like the system prefers mediocre executor, mediocre leaders, mediocre partisan

Christopher Capozzola (1:47:26.800)

leaders. If I had to take a cynical look, but maybe I'm romanticizing the leaders of

Christopher Capozzola (1:47:31.600)

the past and maybe I'm just remembering the great leaders of the past. And yeah, I can

Lex Fridman (1:47:37.160)

assure you there's plenty of mediocre partisans in the 19th century.

Christopher Capozzola (1:47:41.760)

In the 20th. Well, let me ask you about platforming. Do you think Donald, it's the Twitter question,

Lex Fridman (1:47:52.960)

but I was torn about whether to talk to Donald Trump on this podcast. As a historian, what

Lex Fridman (1:47:58.680)

would you advise?

Christopher Capozzola (1:48:01.400)

I think, I mean, you know, this is a, this is a difficult question, right? For, for historians

Christopher Capozzola (1:48:08.420)

who want, you know, sort of want to make sure that they know sort of what Americans are

Christopher Capozzola (1:48:15.320)

thinking and talking about, you know, for centuries later. So one of the things that,

Christopher Capozzola (1:48:21.160)

you know, at least my understanding is that when President Trump was banned from Twitter,

Christopher Capozzola (1:48:27.320)

his account was also deleted. And that is one of the most valuable sources that historians

Christopher Capozzola (1:48:33.920)

will use to understand that the era and parts of it were sort of, you know, archived and

Christopher Capozzola (1:48:40.600)

reconstructed. But, you know, but in that sense, I think that that is also a real loss

Christopher Capozzola (1:48:45.560)

to the historical record. I mean, I think that your podcast shows you'll, you'll talk

Christopher Capozzola (1:48:51.800)

to, you'll talk to anyone. I'm here, right? So, you know, I'm not in the business of saying,

Christopher Capozzola (1:48:59.240)

you know, don't, don't, don't talk, don't talk.

Christopher Capozzola (1:49:01.560)

That's one of the difficult things when I think about Hitler. I think Hitler, Stalin,

Christopher Capozzola (1:49:06.320)

I don't know if World War I quite has the same intensity of controversial leaders. But

Christopher Capozzola (1:49:16.200)

one of the sad things from a historian perspective is how few interviews Hitler has given or

Christopher Capozzola (1:49:21.200)

Stalin has given. And that's such a difficult thing because it's obvious that talking to

Christopher Capozzola (1:49:28.120)

Donald Trump, that talking to Xi Jinping, talking to Putin is really valuable from a

Christopher Capozzola (1:49:35.880)

historical perspective to understand. But then you think about the momentary impact

Christopher Capozzola (1:49:42.080)

of such a conversation and you think, well, depending on how the conversation goes, you

Christopher Capozzola (1:49:46.720)

could steer or a flame. What is it? Feed the flame of war or conflict or, um, abuses of

Christopher Capozzola (1:49:59.080)

power and things like this. And that's, I think the tension between the journalist and

Christopher Capozzola (1:50:04.280)

the historian, because when a journalist interview dictators, for example, one of the things

Christopher Capozzola (1:50:11.440)

that strikes me is they're often very critical of the dictator. They're, they're, they're

Christopher Capozzola (1:50:20.080)

like, um, they're basically attacking them in front of their face as opposed to trying

Christopher Capozzola (1:50:26.000)

to understand. Because what I perceive they're doing is they're signaling to the other journalists

Christopher Capozzola (1:50:32.400)

that they're on the right side of history kind of thing. Um, but that's not very productive.

Christopher Capozzola (1:50:37.360)

That's also why the dictators and leaders often don't do those interviews. It's not

Christopher Capozzola (1:50:42.040)

productive to understanding who the human being is. To understand, you have to empathize.

Christopher Capozzola (1:50:47.720)

Because few people, I think few leaders do something from a place of malevolence. I think

Christopher Capozzola (1:50:54.560)

they really do think they're doing good. And not even for themselves, not even for selfish

Christopher Capozzola (1:50:59.960)

reasons. I think they're doing great for the, they're doing the right thing for their country

Christopher Capozzola (1:51:06.600)

or for whoever the group they're leading. And to understand that you have to, and, and

Christopher Capozzola (1:51:10.960)

by the way, a large percent of the country often supports them. I bet if you poll legitimately

Christopher Capozzola (1:51:17.880)

poll people in North Korea, they will believe that their leader is doing the right thing

Christopher Capozzola (1:51:23.040)

for their country. Um, and so to understand that you have to empathize. So that's the

Christopher Capozzola (1:51:29.680)

tension of the journalist, I think, and the historian, cause obviously the historian doesn't,

Christopher Capozzola (1:51:34.360)

doesn't care. They really want to, they care obviously deeply, but they, they know that

Christopher Capozzola (1:51:39.280)

history requires deep understanding of the human being in the full context. Uh, yeah,

Lex Fridman (1:51:45.760)

it's a tough decision to make.

Christopher Capozzola (1:51:47.120)

Yeah. Well, I think it's, uh, both for journalists and historians, um, the challenge is not to

Christopher Capozzola (1:51:52.960)

be too close to your subject, right? Um, and you know, not to be, um, overly influenced

Lex Fridman (1:51:59.880)

and used by them, right? You know, when you're talking to a living subject, which historians

Christopher Capozzola (1:52:05.000)

do, you know, um, to, um, you know, it's, it's a matter of making sure that you triangulate

Christopher Capozzola (1:52:11.600)

their story with, with the rest of the record, right? Um, uh, and that may paint a different

Christopher Capozzola (1:52:17.920)

picture of, of the person then, um, and will prevent you as a journalist or a historian

Christopher Capozzola (1:52:23.880)

from kind of, you know, just telling someone else's story. And so, and historians also

Christopher Capozzola (1:52:30.000)

have the benefit of going back, you know, 30, 40 years and finding all the other stories

Lex Fridman (1:52:34.800)

and figuring out, you know, uh, playing two truths and a lie, you know, which parts are,

Christopher Capozzola (1:52:40.940)

you know, which parts are accurate, which are, which are not. And journalists do that

Christopher Capozzola (1:52:44.300)

work in a day to day basis, but historians, um, you know, we get a little more time to

Lex Fridman (1:52:48.760)

think about what we're doing.

Christopher Capozzola (1:52:50.240)

Well, I, I personally also think it's deeply disrespectful to the populace, to people,

Christopher Capozzola (1:52:57.760)

to um, censor and ignore a person that's supported by a very large number of people. Like that

Christopher Capozzola (1:53:06.060)

you owe, I personally feel like you owe the citizens of this country a deep, uh, empathy

Lex Fridman (1:53:16.360)

and understanding of the leaders they support, even if you disagree with what they say. I

Christopher Capozzola (1:53:22.080)

mean, that's the, the, to me, I'm much more worried about the resentment of the censorship,

Christopher Capozzola (1:53:28.400)

um, that it's to having a good conversation with Donald Trump is, is ultimately valuable.

Christopher Capozzola (1:53:34.880)

Uh, because he, I think, uh, especially in this case, I agree with you that Donald Trump

Christopher Capozzola (1:53:41.280)

is not a singular person. He is a, he represents a set of feelings that a large number of people

Christopher Capozzola (1:53:47.600)

have and whatever those feelings are, you can try to figure out by talking to people,

Lex Fridman (1:53:52.560)

but also talking to the, the, the, the man and then seeing the interplay there, what

Christopher Capozzola (1:53:57.640)

does this really represent in this period in history, in this slice of the world? Um,

Christopher Capozzola (1:54:04.240)

yeah, ultimately understanding, I think leads to, uh, compassion and love and unity, which

Christopher Capozzola (1:54:11.000)

is how this whole thing progresses. The tension between the different sides is useful to,

Christopher Capozzola (1:54:16.320)

um, have a good conversation, but ultimately coming up with the right answer and progressing

Christopher Capozzola (1:54:21.520)

towards that answer is, is how you make progress. Do you think a pure democracy can work? So

Christopher Capozzola (1:54:28.800)

we have this representative of democracy with these contentious elections and so on. When

Christopher Capozzola (1:54:34.840)

we start a civilization on Mars, which becomes more and more realistic technologically, we

Christopher Capozzola (1:54:41.280)

can have a more direct access to be able to vote on issues and vote for ideas. Do you

Christopher Capozzola (1:54:47.200)

think it can work? I don't think we have to go to Mars, uh, to do it. Right. Um, uh, I

Christopher Capozzola (1:54:53.200)

think, um, the answer is not, you know, to flip a switch and turn on something called

Christopher Capozzola (1:55:00.160)

pure democracy. Um, uh, when people are not ready for it, when their, uh, incentive structures

Christopher Capozzola (1:55:06.640)

are not sort of structured for it, but you can, um, you know, experiment with more democratic

Christopher Capozzola (1:55:12.880)

forms of governance one after another, right? Whether it's, um, you know, sort of experimenting

Christopher Capozzola (1:55:18.600)

with, um, technology to find new ways of sort of, of getting, uh, greater rates of participation

Christopher Capozzola (1:55:25.440)

in democracy. Um, I think that we see some experiments in, um, sort of more complicated

Christopher Capozzola (1:55:32.600)

systems of voting, um, that in fact might actually be more reflective of people's choices

Christopher Capozzola (1:55:38.980)

than simply picking one candidate, right? Sort of ranked choice voting or, uh, runoffs,

Christopher Capozzola (1:55:43.720)

other kinds of things. Um, you know, I think that we can think more, uh, creatively about

Christopher Capozzola (1:55:49.460)

something like participatory budgeting, right? In which, um, you know, uh, we put all this

Christopher Capozzola (1:55:53.620)

money into the government. Um, and then, um, you know, we, we, um, you know, should, as

Christopher Capozzola (1:55:58.480)

a, as a people, there are more democratic ways of, of sort of, of how we spend it. Um,

Lex Fridman (1:56:03.360)

and I think the most urgent in some level is a more, uh, democratic form of foreign

Christopher Capozzola (1:56:06.800)

policymaking, right? That foreign policymaking, decision making, um, uh, about the military,

Christopher Capozzola (1:56:12.240)

about foreign policy, um, is, is very ways insulated from, from popular participation,

Christopher Capozzola (1:56:18.400)

um, in, in modern American history. Um, and I think, you know, there, uh, technology is

Christopher Capozzola (1:56:24.280)

not the, the going to solve this. Um, you know, it's a combination of technology and,

Lex Fridman (1:56:29.640)

and human creativity, but I think, um, you know, I think we can start heading that direction.

Lex Fridman (1:56:35.400)

Whether we get there before we get to Mars, I don't, I don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:56:38.680)

What interesting lessons and thoughts, if you look at the fundamentals of the history

Christopher Capozzola (1:56:43.400)

of American elections, do you hope to reveal when you try to teach the class? And, um,

Lex Fridman (1:56:52.440)

how would those fundamentals be met by the, by the students that received that wisdom?

Lex Fridman (1:57:00.400)

So what do you think about this dance? It's such an interesting idea. And I hope you do

Christopher Capozzola (1:57:05.280)

go through with this kind of idea is look at the history while the next one is happening.

Christopher Capozzola (1:57:11.520)

Yes. I think, you know, it's worth remembering, right? That the students who are typical American

Christopher Capozzola (1:57:20.440)

student who's in college right now, right? Has lived their entire life after, uh, the

Christopher Capozzola (1:57:27.320)

election of 2000 and Bush V Gore, right? Um, and after nine 11 probably. And yeah, absolutely.

Christopher Capozzola (1:57:34.080)

Yes. After all of, after all of these things. Right. And, and, um, so on the one hand they

Christopher Capozzola (1:57:41.560)

take partisanship and contentious elections for granted. Um, they don't, I think share,

Christopher Capozzola (1:57:49.040)

um, you know, sort of some vision that things were, you know, things used to be different,

Christopher Capozzola (1:57:55.280)

right? They don't remember a world that had like lots of moderate Democrats and liberal

Christopher Capozzola (1:58:00.600)

Republicans and, um, you know, sort of running around in it. Um, but, um, you know, so in

Christopher Capozzola (1:58:07.200)

some ways it's a way of, of looking back into the past to find other ways of, of, of organizing

Christopher Capozzola (1:58:12.880)

our politics. Uh, it's also a way of, of reassuring students that we have been through contentious

Lex Fridman (1:58:20.400)

and even, um, sort of violent elections before in our history. Um, and you know, that people

Christopher Capozzola (1:58:26.640)

have defended the right to vote, right? People have risked their lives to vote. Um, uh, you

Lex Fridman (1:58:31.960)

know, I think they will, they will understand that, that as well.

Lex Fridman (1:58:36.760)

And maybe knowledge of history here can help deescalate the emotions you might feel about

Christopher Capozzola (1:58:44.040)

one candidate or another. And I, from a place of calmness, you can more easily arrive at

Christopher Capozzola (1:58:51.280)

wisdom.

Lex Fridman (1:58:52.280)

Uh, that, that's my hope. Um, yeah.

Christopher Capozzola (1:58:57.200)

Just as a brief aside, you, brief aside, but nevertheless, uh, you wrote the book Bound

Christopher Capozzola (1:59:02.960)

by War that describes a century of war in the Pacific. So looking at this slice of geography

Lex Fridman (1:59:13.240)

and power, uh, so most crucially through the partnership between the United States and

Christopher Capozzola (1:59:18.320)

the Philippines, can you tell us some aspect of the story that is often perhaps not considered

Christopher Capozzola (1:59:24.800)

when you start to look more at the geopolitics of Europe and Soviet Union and the United

Lex Fridman (1:59:31.520)

States? What, how did the, the war in, in the Pacific define the 20th century?

Christopher Capozzola (1:59:37.920)

Yeah, I came to this book Bound by War, um, from a sense that, um, that our stories were

Christopher Capozzola (1:59:44.320)

too lopsided, um, toward, toward Europe, right? That American history, when viewed from the

Christopher Capozzola (1:59:50.480)

Pacific, um, specifically in the 20th century, um, helps us understand American power, um,

Lex Fridman (1:59:57.960)

in some new ways, right? Uh, not only American, uh, projection of power into Asia, right?

Lex Fridman (20:05.360)

And the second is a more amorphous definition of what does it mean to belong, to be part of America,

Christopher Capozzola (20:11.280)

to feel American, to love it or hate it or be willing to die for it. And both of those things

Christopher Capozzola (20:18.800)

really are crystal clear in terms of their importance during the war. So both of those

Christopher Capozzola (20:25.040)

things are on the table. Being a citizen who is a citizen who isn't matters. So people who had

Christopher Capozzola (20:32.240)

never carried passports or anything before suddenly have to. But also what it means to

Christopher Capozzola (20:38.800)

be an American, to feel like it, to be part of this project is also being defined and enforced

Christopher Capozzola (20:45.760)

during World War I. So project is a funny way to put a global war. So can you tell the story,

Christopher Capozzola (20:53.760)

perhaps that's a good example of it, of the James Montgomery Flagg's 1916 poster that reads,

Christopher Capozzola (21:02.480)

I want you. A lot of people know this poster. I think in its original form, its memeified form,

Christopher Capozzola (21:09.440)

I don't know. But we know this poster and we don't know where it came from. Or most Americans,

Christopher Capozzola (21:14.560)

I think, me included, didn't know where it came from. And it actually comes from 1916.

Lex Fridman (21:19.920)

Does this poster represent the birth of something new in America, which is a

Christopher Capozzola (21:29.520)

commodification or, I don't know, that propaganda machine that says what it

Lex Fridman (21:35.200)

means to be an American is somebody that fights for their country?

Christopher Capozzola (21:40.240)

Yeah. So the image, it's in fact, I think one of the most recognizable images, not only in the

Christopher Capozzola (21:46.080)

United States, but in the entire world. And you can bring it almost anywhere on Earth in 2022,

Lex Fridman (21:53.600)

and people will know what it refers to. And so this is an image that circulated first as a magazine

Christopher Capozzola (22:00.240)

cover, later as a recruitment poster, where the figure is Uncle Sam, sort of pointing at the

Christopher Capozzola (22:06.160)

viewer with his finger, sort of pointing and saying, I want you. And the I want you is a

Christopher Capozzola (22:11.920)

recruitment tool to join the US Army. And this image really kind of starts as a kind of, like I

Christopher Capozzola (22:20.320)

said, a magazine cover in 1916 by the artist James Montgomery Flagg. It initially appears under the

Christopher Capozzola (22:27.040)

heading, What are you doing for preparedness? Meaning to prepare in case war comes to the

Christopher Capozzola (22:32.560)

United States. And at that point in 1916, we're still neutral. In 1917, it's turned into a US

Christopher Capozzola (22:40.800)

Army recruiting poster. And then it reappears in World War Two, reappears generations after,

Christopher Capozzola (22:47.920)

like you said, it's now gets remixed, memefied, it's all over the place. I think for me, it's a

Christopher Capozzola (22:57.280)

turning point, it's a sort of window into American culture at a crucial moment in our history,

Christopher Capozzola (23:03.280)

where the federal government is now embarking on a war overseas that's going to make enormous

Christopher Capozzola (23:07.920)

demands on its citizens. And at the same time, where sort of technologies of mass production

Lex Fridman (23:15.120)

and mass media, and what we would probably call propaganda, are being sort of mobilized for the

Christopher Capozzola (23:22.000)

for the first time in this new kind of way. Well, in some sense, is it fair to say that

Christopher Capozzola (23:28.240)

the Empire is born? The expanding Empire is born from the Noam Chomsky perspective kind of empire

Lex Fridman (23:36.160)

that seeks to have military influence elsewhere in the world?

Christopher Capozzola (23:41.120)

Yes, but I think as historians, we need to be at least as interested in what happens to the people

Christopher Capozzola (23:47.200)

who are getting pointed to by Uncle Sam, right, rather than just the one, you know, whether he's

Lex Fridman (23:52.640)

pointing at us. And, you know, so, so yes, he's asking us to do that. But how do we respond?

Lex Fridman (23:58.480)

And the people responded. So the people are ultimately the the machines of history, the

Christopher Capozzola (24:05.920)

mechanisms of history. It's not Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam can only do so much if the people aren't

Christopher Capozzola (24:10.800)

willing to step up. Absolutely. They and, you know, the American people responded for sure,

Lex Fridman (24:14.960)

but they didn't build what Uncle Sam asked them to do in that poster, right? And I think that's,

Christopher Capozzola (24:21.280)

you know, kind of a crucial aspect that, you know, there never would have been sort of global

Christopher Capozzola (24:26.880)

U.S. power without the response that begins in World War One.

Lex Fridman (24:30.640)

What was the Selective Service Act of 1917?

Lex Fridman (24:34.240)

So one of the very first things that Uncle Sam wants you to do, right, is to register for

Christopher Capozzola (24:38.640)

selective service for the draft, right? And the law is passed very soon after the U.S. enters the

Christopher Capozzola (24:44.240)

war. It's sort of, you know, demanding that all men first between 21 and 30, then between 18 and

Christopher Capozzola (24:51.760)

45, register for the draft, and they'll be selected by a government agency, by a volunteer

Christopher Capozzola (24:58.560)

organization. It's a requirement to sign up. It is a legal requirement to register. Of course,

Christopher Capozzola (25:03.920)

not everyone who registers is selected, but over the course of the war, 24 million men register,

Christopher Capozzola (25:10.480)

almost 4 million serve in some fashion.

Lex Fridman (25:13.280)

What was the response? What was the feeling amongst the American people to have to sign up

Christopher Capozzola (25:18.000)

to the Selective Service Act? Have to register.

Christopher Capozzola (25:22.080)

Yeah. This is a bigger turning point than we might think, right? In some ways, this is a tougher

Christopher Capozzola (25:28.720)

demand of the American public than entering the war. It's one thing to declare war on Germany,

Christopher Capozzola (25:33.760)

right? It's another thing to go down to your local post office and fill out the forms that allow

Christopher Capozzola (25:39.840)

your own government to send you there to fight. And this is especially important at a time when

Christopher Capozzola (25:45.680)

the federal government doesn't really have any other way to find you unless you actually go

Lex Fridman (25:52.000)

and register yourself, right? And so, you know, ordinary people are participating in the building

Christopher Capozzola (25:58.160)

of this war machine, but at least a half a million of them don't, right? And simply never fill out

Christopher Capozzola (26:04.560)

the forms, move from one town to another.

Lex Fridman (26:07.280)

But you said 20 million did? 20 something?

Christopher Capozzola (26:09.840)

Yeah. About 24 million register, at least 500,000.

Lex Fridman (26:13.520)

Is it surprising to you that that many registered? Since the country was divided?

Christopher Capozzola (26:18.240)

It is. And that's what I, you know, sort of tried to dig in to figure out how did you get 24 million

Christopher Capozzola (26:23.840)

people to register for the draft? And it's certainly not coming from the top down, right? You

Christopher Capozzola (26:29.760)

know, there may be a hundred sort of agents in what's now called the FBI. You know, it's certainly

Christopher Capozzola (26:35.920)

not being enforced from Washington. It's being enforced in, you know, through the eyes of everyday

Christopher Capozzola (26:41.360)

neighbors, you know, through community surveillance, all kinds of ways.

Lex Fridman (26:45.680)

Oh, so there was like a pressure.

Christopher Capozzola (26:48.080)

There's a lot of pressure.

Christopher Capozzola (26:49.760)

Interesting. So there was not a significant like antiwar movement as you would see maybe

Lex Fridman (26:57.440)

later with Vietnam and things like this?

Christopher Capozzola (26:59.920)

There was a significant movement before 1917, but it becomes very hard to keep up an organized

Christopher Capozzola (27:07.280)

antiwar movement after that, particularly when the government starts shutting down protests.

Lex Fridman (27:11.760)

So as the Selective Service Act of 1917 runs up against some of the freedoms, some of the rights

Christopher Capozzola (27:20.800)

that are defined in our founding documents, what was that clash like? What was sacrificed? What

Lex Fridman (27:30.160)

freedoms and rights were sacrificed in this process?

Christopher Capozzola (27:33.520)

I mean, I think on some level, the fundamental right is liberty, right? That conscription sort

Christopher Capozzola (27:40.480)

of demands, you know, sacrifice on the behalf of some notionally for the protection of all.

Lex Fridman (27:48.880)

So even if you're against the war, you're forced to fight.

Christopher Capozzola (27:52.160)

Yes. You know, and there were small provisions for conscientious objectors, solely those who

Christopher Capozzola (27:59.280)

had religious objections to all war, right? Not political objections to this war. And so,

Christopher Capozzola (28:05.520)

you know, several thousand were able to take those provisions. But even then, they faced

Christopher Capozzola (28:11.360)

social sanction, they faced ridicule, some of them faced intimidation. So those liberty

Christopher Capozzola (28:17.520)

interests, both individual freedom, religious freedom, you know, those are some of the first

Christopher Capozzola (28:21.840)

things to go.

Christopher Capozzola (28:24.320)

Right. So what about freedom of speech? What's the silencing of the press, of the voices

Lex Fridman (28:32.480)

of the different people that were object?

Christopher Capozzola (28:34.960)

Yes, absolutely. Right. And so very soon after the Selective Service Act is passed, then

Christopher Capozzola (28:39.280)

you get the Espionage Act, which of course is back in the news in 2022.

Lex Fridman (28:43.920)

What's the Espionage Act?

Christopher Capozzola (28:45.200)

The Espionage Act is a sort of omnibus bill. It contains about 10 or different provisions,

Christopher Capozzola (28:49.440)

very few of which have to do with espionage. But one key provision basically makes it illegal

Christopher Capozzola (28:55.920)

to say or do anything that would interfere with military recruitment, right? And that

Christopher Capozzola (29:02.080)

provision is used to shut down radical publications, to shut down German language publications.

Christopher Capozzola (29:08.800)

And, you know, this really has a chilling impact on speech during the war.

Christopher Capozzola (29:14.240)

Could you put into words what it means to be an American citizen that is in part sparked

Christopher Capozzola (29:20.320)

by World War I? What does that mean? Somebody that should be willing to sacrifice certain

Christopher Capozzola (29:30.320)

freedoms to fight for their country? Somebody that's willing to fight to spread freedom

Christopher Capozzola (29:39.040)

elsewhere in the world, spread the American ideals? Does that begin to tell the story

Lex Fridman (29:46.320)

what it means to be an American?

Christopher Capozzola (29:49.440)

I think what we see is a change, right? So citizenship during World War I now includes

Christopher Capozzola (29:56.400)

the obligation to defend the country, right, to serve, and to, if asked, to die for it,

Lex Fridman (2:00:04.440)

But also the ways in which American power affected, uh, people in Asia, right? Um, either

Christopher Capozzola (2:00:10.760)

as, uh, you know, in places like the Philippines where the United States, uh, had a colony

Christopher Capozzola (2:00:15.640)

for almost 50 years or Asian Americans, people who had migrated over their descendants in

Christopher Capozzola (2:00:20.800)

the United States. And those linkages, uh, between the United States and Asia, uh, particularly,

Christopher Capozzola (2:00:26.000)

uh, the U S Philippine connection, I think were something that needed to be traced across

Christopher Capozzola (2:00:30.800)

the 20th century. Cause it's a way kind of a new way of seeing American power, you know,

Christopher Capozzola (2:00:35.680)

from, from a different angle, uh, you see it in, in that way.

Christopher Capozzola (2:00:39.480)

There's some aspect that define America from, from when you take the perspective of the

Lex Fridman (2:00:44.440)

Pacific, what, what military conflict and, and the asymmetry of power there, right?

Lex Fridman (2:00:50.800)

So I start in, uh, in 1898, um, you know, with the U S invasion of the Philippines,

Christopher Capozzola (2:00:56.760)

um, uh, it's a conquest and annexation. Uh, and I think in many ways, this is a defining

Christopher Capozzola (2:01:02.720)

conflict of the 20th century. That's often completely overlooked or described, uh, I

Christopher Capozzola (2:01:07.920)

think incorrectly as merely a war with Spain, right? That the war in the Philippines, um,

Christopher Capozzola (2:01:12.840)

is our, uh, our first extended overseas conflict, our first conflict, um, in what would come

Christopher Capozzola (2:01:18.720)

to be called the developing world or third world. Uh, it's a form of, of counter insurgency.

Christopher Capozzola (2:01:23.600)

Um, you know, this is the U S army sort of learning lessons that are then repeated again

Christopher Capozzola (2:01:29.080)

in the second world war in Korea, Vietnam, and, and even after 9 11.

Lex Fridman (2:01:33.600)

Is the Philippines our friends or enemies in this history?

Christopher Capozzola (2:01:36.320)

Well, that's the interesting part, right? Is that, uh, the book focuses in particular

Christopher Capozzola (2:01:40.580)

on Filipinos, uh, who fight with the Americans who fought, you know, sort of in the U S army

Lex Fridman (2:01:45.840)

and Navy, um, over the course of the 20th century. And they are in a fundamentally ironic

Christopher Capozzola (2:01:50.560)

position, right? They are, they are from the Philippines and they're fighting for the United

Christopher Capozzola (2:01:54.640)

States, um, which is the colonial power, uh, occupying their country. Um, and I think that,

Christopher Capozzola (2:02:00.940)

that irony persists, right? Um, so if you look at sort of polling data where they ask

Christopher Capozzola (2:02:06.120)

people all around the world, you know, you know, do you think positively or negatively

Lex Fridman (2:02:09.960)

about the United States? Um, that the highest, uh, responses are from the Philippines, right?

Christopher Capozzola (2:02:16.880)

Filipinos view the United States more favorably than people from any other country in the

Christopher Capozzola (2:02:21.000)

world, including America, right? That, that they're more think more favorably of Americans

Christopher Capozzola (2:02:26.320)

than Americans do. Um, and so, you know, sort of unpacking that irony is, is part of what

Lex Fridman (2:02:30.680)

I'm trying to get at in the book.

Lex Fridman (2:02:32.520)

What was the people power revolution and what lessons can we learn from it? You kind of

Christopher Capozzola (2:02:37.160)

assign an important, um, a large value to it in terms of what we can learn for the,

Christopher Capozzola (2:02:45.520)

uh, the American project.

Christopher Capozzola (2:02:47.400)

Yeah. So in 1986, um, the, the president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos is overthrown

Christopher Capozzola (2:02:53.480)

by a popular revolution known as people power, um, uh, in the wake of a contested and probably,

Christopher Capozzola (2:02:59.800)

uh, almost certainly rigged election, um, that, that sort of, uh, you know, kind of

Christopher Capozzola (2:03:05.120)

confirms his, his, his rule. Um, when that is over, overturned through sort of mass movements

Christopher Capozzola (2:03:11.640)

in the Philippines, it's also, uh, sort of confirmed in many ways by the, the reluctance

Christopher Capozzola (2:03:17.960)

of the United States to intervene, to prop up a cold war ally. Ferdinand Marcos had supported

Christopher Capozzola (2:03:23.680)

American policy throughout, um, his administration. Um, the Reagan administration, Ronald Reagan's

Christopher Capozzola (2:03:28.440)

president at the time, basically chooses not to support him. That's a personally wrenching

Christopher Capozzola (2:03:33.520)

decision for, for Reagan himself. Um, but it, it he's being shaped in many ways by the

Christopher Capozzola (2:03:39.840)

emerging voices of neoconservative political, uh, foreign policy voices. Um, in particular,

Christopher Capozzola (2:03:46.080)

uh, Paul Wolfowitz and the state department and others who see sort of movements for democracy

Lex Fridman (2:03:51.560)

and democratization that then kind of, uh, take fire in the late 20th century in Latin

Christopher Capozzola (2:03:57.000)

America, um, in South Korea, in Eastern Europe, um, and, you know, all around the world until

Christopher Capozzola (2:04:03.440)

it hits the wall in, in Tiananmen Square in June, 1989.

Christopher Capozzola (2:04:07.640)

Well, what's that wall? Uh, what's, what's the wall, what's the, what, what do you mean

Christopher Capozzola (2:04:13.000)

by it hits the wall? So there are, you know, the, there are global

Christopher Capozzola (2:04:16.600)

movements for pot for democratization, um, for, for, uh, opening up, um, you know, throughout

Christopher Capozzola (2:04:22.400)

the world, um, starting in the 1980s. Um, and, you know, obviously they continue, um,

Christopher Capozzola (2:04:27.320)

in Eastern Europe with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. Um, you know, I say it hits

Christopher Capozzola (2:04:31.680)

the wall in, in, in China, um, in, with the protests in Tiananmen Square and that are,

Christopher Capozzola (2:04:38.440)

that are blocked, um, and that are crushed. And I think represent, uh, a real sort of

Christopher Capozzola (2:04:43.840)

turning point, um, in the history of, of democratic institutions, uh, on a global scale in the

Lex Fridman (2:04:49.040)

late 20th century.

Lex Fridman (2:04:50.760)

So there's some places where the fight for freedom will work and some places not. And

Lex Fridman (2:04:57.120)

that's the kind of lesson from the 20th to take forward to the 21st century.

Christopher Capozzola (2:05:04.840)

Uh, no, I think the lesson is, is maybe one that, that, you know, we talked about earlier

Christopher Capozzola (2:05:09.960)

that there's this dynamic dance between, um, between leaders, whether, uh, totalitarian

Christopher Capozzola (2:05:15.520)

leaders or leaders of democratic movements and the people that they're leading. Um, and

Lex Fridman (2:05:21.000)

some, you know, sometimes it works and sometimes, sometimes it doesn't.

Christopher Capozzola (2:05:24.200)

Let me ask a big, ridiculous question because we talked about, uh, sort of presidential

Christopher Capozzola (2:05:29.160)

elections. Um, now this is objectively, definitively, you have to answer one person. Who is the

Lex Fridman (2:05:34.240)

greatest president in American history?

Lex Fridman (2:05:36.200)

Oh, that's easy.

Christopher Capozzola (2:05:38.000)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:05:39.000)

Abraham Lincoln.

Lex Fridman (2:05:41.360)

Is that easy? Not George Washington?

Christopher Capozzola (2:05:43.320)

Um, you know, Washington had his, uh, had the statesman qualities. He understood his

Christopher Capozzola (2:05:49.520)

power as, as, uh, as the first president.

Lex Fridman (2:05:53.400)

Also relinquished power.

Christopher Capozzola (2:05:54.760)

He was willing to relinquish power. Um, he, you know, uh, but, but Lincoln has the combination

Christopher Capozzola (2:06:02.560)

of personal leadership, um, a fundamental moral character and, um, and just the ability

Christopher Capozzola (2:06:10.840)

to kind of, uh, to fight the, the fight of politics, to play the game of it, um, to get

Christopher Capozzola (2:06:15.960)

where he's going, to play the short game and the long game, um, to kind of, you know, make

Christopher Capozzola (2:06:21.160)

to, uh, you know, to work with his enemies, to, to block them when he had to. Um, and

Christopher Capozzola (2:06:27.440)

you know, I mean, he, uh, gets the United States through the civil war. So you gotta

Christopher Capozzola (2:06:31.360)

give him some credit for that.

Lex Fridman (2:06:32.680)

And he's pretty good at making speeches.

Christopher Capozzola (2:06:34.160)

Uh, it, you know, obviously it helps that he's, uh, uh, a remarkable speaker, um, and

Christopher Capozzola (2:06:39.680)

able to convey those kinds of visions. Um, but, um, you know, but he, but he is first

Lex Fridman (2:06:45.080)

and foremost a politician, um, and probably the best one we have.

Lex Fridman (2:06:49.120)

Both at getting elected and at ruling.

Christopher Capozzola (2:06:52.640)

In some ways better, better at the doing than at the getting elected, right? Um, you know,

Christopher Capozzola (2:06:57.200)

that he, uh, you know, the election of 1860 is a, it's just a hot mess. Um, you know,

Christopher Capozzola (2:07:03.320)

that that could have worked out, um, many different ways. And even the election of 1864,

Christopher Capozzola (2:07:08.200)

um, you know, when we have a presidential election in the middle of a civil war, um,

Christopher Capozzola (2:07:13.600)

it was not a foregone conclusion that Lincoln would be reelected. Um, so, you know, both

Christopher Capozzola (2:07:17.520)

times he's sort of, um, you know, he's not a, a master campaigner, um, by, by any means,

Lex Fridman (2:07:24.360)

but he, he was a master politician as a, as a governor.

Christopher Capozzola (2:07:29.240)

Do we have leaders like that today? Is, is that, so one perspective is like, well, leaders

Christopher Capozzola (2:07:35.560)

aren't, ain't what they used to be. And then another perspective is, well, we always romanticize

Christopher Capozzola (2:07:40.880)

stuff that happens in the past. We forget the flaws and remember the great moments.

Christopher Capozzola (2:07:46.120)

Yeah. Uh, both of those things are true, right? Um, on the one hand, um, you know, we, we

Christopher Capozzola (2:07:52.480)

don't, uh, we are not surrounded by people of, of Lincoln's caliber, um, right now.

Christopher Capozzola (2:07:58.240)

That feels like the case.

Christopher Capozzola (2:07:59.560)

Um, and I think that, I think we can say that with some certainty, but, um, you know, I,

Christopher Capozzola (2:08:05.960)

I always like to point to president Harry Truman who left office with, you know, some

Christopher Capozzola (2:08:12.920)

truly abysmal, uh, uh, presidential ratings, um, was dismissed as a, throughout his presidency

Christopher Capozzola (2:08:19.360)

as a, you know, as a, as unqualified as not knowing what he was doing, et cetera. And

Christopher Capozzola (2:08:25.400)

it's then, you know, turns out, um, uh, with hindsight, we know that he was better at the

Christopher Capozzola (2:08:30.480)

job than anyone understood better at getting elected, right? You remember that sign, do

Christopher Capozzola (2:08:34.980)

he defeats Truman, right? He showed them, right? Uh, and better, better at holding power

Lex Fridman (2:08:39.400)

and better at sort of, um, you know, kind of building the kind of institutions that

Lex Fridman (2:08:44.480)

long after he was gone, um, demonstrated that he, he, he won the long game.

Lex Fridman (2:08:51.200)

And some of that is the victors do write the story. And, um, I asked myself very much,

Lex Fridman (2:08:59.080)

how will history remember Volodymyr Zelensky? It's not obvious. And how will history remember

Christopher Capozzola (2:09:05.640)

Putin? That too is not obvious. Um, because it depends on how the role, the geopolitics,

Christopher Capozzola (2:09:17.400)

the, how the nations, how the history of these nations unravel, unfold rather. So it's very

Christopher Capozzola (2:09:24.560)

interesting to think about. And the same is true for Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Obama, uh,

Christopher Capozzola (2:09:32.560)

George Bush, uh, Bill Clinton, and so on. I think it's a probably unanswerable question

Christopher Capozzola (2:09:41.440)

of which of the presidents will be remembered as a great president from this time. You can

Christopher Capozzola (2:09:46.480)

make all kinds of cases for all kinds of people and they do, but it's unclear. It's fascinating

Christopher Capozzola (2:09:51.800)

to think about when the robots finally take over, uh, what, which of the humans they will

Christopher Capozzola (2:09:56.880)

appreciate the most. Uh, let me ask for advice. Do you have, um, advice for, for young folks

Christopher Capozzola (2:10:05.700)

as they, uh, uh, cause you mentioned the, the, the folks you're teaching, they don't

Christopher Capozzola (2:10:10.280)

even, they don't know what it's like to have waited on the internet for the, for the thing

Christopher Capozzola (2:10:15.740)

to load up for every single webpage is suffering. They don't know what it's like to not have

Christopher Capozzola (2:10:21.200)

the internet and have a dial phone that goes, and then the joy of getting angry at somebody

Lex Fridman (2:10:28.060)

and hanging up with a physical phone. They don't, they don't know any of that. Uh, so

Christopher Capozzola (2:10:32.420)

for those young folks that look at the contention election, contentious elections, they look

Christopher Capozzola (2:10:36.660)

at our contentious world, our divided world. What advice would you give them of how to

Christopher Capozzola (2:10:42.520)

have a career they can be proud of? Let's say they're in college or in high school and

Lex Fridman (2:10:46.720)

how to have a life they can be proud of.

Christopher Capozzola (2:10:49.440)

Oh man, that's a big question. Um, yeah, I've never given a graduation speech. Uh,

Christopher Capozzola (2:10:57.080)

this is like warm up. Let's look for like raw materials before you write it. Uh, if

Christopher Capozzola (2:11:01.480)

I did, um, I think, um, I think I would advise students, um, that history teaches that you

Christopher Capozzola (2:11:11.080)

should be more optimistic than, um, than your current surroundings suggest. Right. And I

Christopher Capozzola (2:11:17.720)

think it would be very easy as a young person today to think, um, there's, there's nothing

Christopher Capozzola (2:11:23.380)

I can do about this politics. There's nothing I can say to this person on the other side

Christopher Capozzola (2:11:28.320)

of the aisle. There's nothing I can do about, you know, the planet, um, uh, et cetera, and

Christopher Capozzola (2:11:34.560)

just sort of give up. Um, and I think history, uh, teaches that, um, you know, uh, you know,

Christopher Capozzola (2:11:42.760)

we don't know who the winners and losers are in the long run, but, um, but we know that

Christopher Capozzola (2:11:47.240)

the people who give up are always the losers. Right. Um, so don't give into cynicism or

Christopher Capozzola (2:11:52.480)

apathy. Yeah. Optimism paves the way. Yeah. Because human beings are deeply, uh, resilient

Lex Fridman (2:11:59.860)

and creative, even under, um, far more difficult circumstances than, um, you know, than we

Christopher Capozzola (2:12:06.480)

face right now. Well, let me ask a question that you don't even need to, that you wouldn't

Christopher Capozzola (2:12:10.440)

even dare cover in your graduation, um, uh, commencement speech. Uh, what's the meaning

Christopher Capozzola (2:12:16.440)

of life? Why are we here? This whole project that history studies and analyzes as if, as

Christopher Capozzola (2:12:23.720)

if there's a point to the whole thing. What is the point? All the wars, all the presidents,

Christopher Capozzola (2:12:32.240)

all the struggles to discover what it means to be human of, uh, or reach for a higher

Christopher Capozzola (2:12:37.800)

ideal. Why? Why do you think we're here? Hmm. I think this is where there is often a handoff

Christopher Capozzola (2:12:48.400)

from the historian, um, to the clergy, um, you know, who, but in the end, um, uh, it's

Christopher Capozzola (2:12:58.920)

less of there's less distance between the two than you think. Right. That, um, you know,

Christopher Capozzola (2:13:05.040)

if you think about some of the kind of, uh, answers to that question, what is the meaning

Christopher Capozzola (2:13:09.400)

of life that are given from religious traditions? Um, often they have a fundamentally historical

Christopher Capozzola (2:13:17.120)

core, right? It's about, you know, unifying the past and the present, um, in some other,

Christopher Capozzola (2:13:24.240)

you know, non earthly, um, sort of dimension. Uh, and you know, so I think there is that,

Christopher Capozzola (2:13:31.400)

I think even for people who, who don't have a religious belief and there's a way in which

Christopher Capozzola (2:13:37.400)

history, um, is about the shared, the shared human condition. Um, and I think historians

Christopher Capozzola (2:13:44.840)

aspire to telling all of that story, right? Um, you know, we, we drill down on the, on

Christopher Capozzola (2:13:51.800)

the miseries of, of war and depressions and, and so forth. But, um, but you know, the story

Christopher Capozzola (2:13:57.520)

is not complete without, you know, blueberries and butterflies and, and, and, and all the

Christopher Capozzola (2:14:03.720)

rest that, that go with it. So both the humbling and the inspiring aspect that you get by looking

Christopher Capozzola (2:14:14.280)

back at human history that, uh, we're in this together. Christopher, this is a huge honor.

Christopher Capozzola (2:14:22.080)

This is an amazing conversation. Thank you for taking us back to a war that, uh, not

Christopher Capozzola (2:14:26.720)

often discussed, but in many ways defined the 20, the 20th century and the century we

Christopher Capozzola (2:14:32.200)

are in today, which is the first world war, the war that was supposed to end all wars,

Lex Fridman (2:14:37.920)

but instead defined the future wars and defines our struggle to, to try to avoid the world

Christopher Capozzola (2:14:43.360)

war three. So it's a huge honor you talk with me today. This is amazing. Thank you so much.

Christopher Capozzola (2:14:49.080)

Thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Christopher Capozzola. To support this

Christopher Capozzola (2:14:54.360)

podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you

Christopher Capozzola (2:14:58.800)

some words from Woodrow Wilson in 1917 about world war one that haunted the rest of the

Christopher Capozzola (2:15:05.760)

20th century. This is a war to end all wars. George Santana, a Spanish American philosopher

Christopher Capozzola (2:15:14.600)

responded to this quote in 1922 by saying, only the dead have seen the end of war. Thank

Christopher Capozzola (2:15:24.440)

you for listening. I hope to see you next time.

Christopher Capozzola (30:03.600)

right? And we certainly see that. And I think we see the close linkage of military service

Lex Fridman (30:11.200)

and US citizenship coming out of this time period. But, you know, when you start making

Christopher Capozzola (30:16.960)

lots of demands on people to fulfill obligations, in turn, they're going to start demanding rights.

Lex Fridman (30:22.880)

And we start to see, not necessarily during the war but after, more demands for free speech

Christopher Capozzola (30:28.400)

protections, more demands for equality, for marginalized groups. And so, you know, obligations

Lex Fridman (30:34.800)

and rights are sort of developing in a dynamic relationship.

Christopher Capozzola (30:38.240)

Oh, it's almost like an overreach of power sparked a sense like, oh crap, we can't trust

Christopher Capozzola (30:45.920)

centralized power to abuse, like to drag us into a war. We need to be able to. So there's

Lex Fridman (30:52.320)

the birth of that tension between the government and the people.

Christopher Capozzola (30:55.280)

It's a rebirth of it. You know, of course, that tension is always there. But in its modern form,

Christopher Capozzola (31:01.280)

I think it comes from this reintensification of it. So what about, you said that World War I gave

Lex Fridman (31:06.800)

birth to the surveillance state in the US. Can you explain?

Christopher Capozzola (31:10.960)

Yeah, so the Espionage Act, you know, sort of empowers federal organizations to watch other

Christopher Capozzola (31:18.080)

Americans. They are particularly interested in anyone who is obstructing the draft, anyone who

Christopher Capozzola (31:24.880)

is trying to kind of organize labor or strikes or radical movements, and anyone who might have

Christopher Capozzola (31:32.080)

sympathy for Germany, which basically means, you know, all German Americans come under surveillance.

Christopher Capozzola (31:38.080)

Initially, you know, this is very small scale. But soon, every government agency gets involved

Christopher Capozzola (31:45.120)

from the Treasury Department Secret Service to the Post Office, which is sort of breeding mail,

Christopher Capozzola (31:50.720)

to the Justice Department, which mobilizes 200,000 volunteers. You know, it's a really

Christopher Capozzola (31:56.640)

significant enterprise. Much of it goes away after the war. But of all the things that go away,

Lex Fridman (32:02.400)

this core of the surveillance state is the thing that persists most fully.

Christopher Capozzola (32:08.640)

Is this also a place where government, the size of government starts to grow

Lex Fridman (32:14.800)

in these different organizations, or maybe creates a momentum for growth of government?

Christopher Capozzola (32:19.600)

Oh, it's exponential growth, right? That, you know, that over the course of the war,

Christopher Capozzola (32:26.240)

by almost any metric you use, right, the size of the federal budget, the number of federal

Christopher Capozzola (32:30.880)

employees, the number of soldiers in the standing army, all of those things skyrocket during the

Christopher Capozzola (32:35.360)

war. They go down after the war, but they never go down to what they were before.

Lex Fridman (32:41.040)

And probably gave a momentum for growth.

Lex Fridman (32:44.640)

Yes, absolutely.

Christopher Capozzola (32:45.600)

Did World War I give birth to the military industrial complex in the United States? So,

Lex Fridman (32:54.240)

war profiteering, expanding of the war machine in order to

Lex Fridman (33:00.160)

financially benefit a lot of parties involved?

Christopher Capozzola (33:04.240)

So, I guess I would maybe break that into two parts, right? That, on the one hand, yes,

Christopher Capozzola (33:11.680)

there is war profiteering. There are investigations of it. In the years after the war,

Christopher Capozzola (33:18.800)

there's a widespread concern that the profit motive had played too much of a part in the war,

Lex Fridman (33:26.480)

and that's definitely the case. But I think when you try to think of this term military industrial

Christopher Capozzola (33:32.080)

complex, it's best to think of it as, at what point does the one side lock in the other,

Christopher Capozzola (33:39.280)

right? That military choices are shaped by industry objectives and vice versa. And I don't

Christopher Capozzola (33:47.120)

think that that was fully locked into place during World War I. I think that's really a

Christopher Capozzola (33:51.440)

Cold War phenomenon, when the United States is on this intense kind of footing for two

Lex Fridman (33:57.360)

generations in a row.

Christopher Capozzola (33:58.560)

So, industrial is really important there, there is companies. So, before then,

Christopher Capozzola (34:03.680)

weapons of war were created, were funded directly by the government. Who was manufacturing the

Lex Fridman (34:10.560)

weapons of war?

Christopher Capozzola (34:12.320)

They were generally manufactured by private industry. There were, of course, arsenals,

Christopher Capozzola (34:18.720)

sort of 19th century iterations where the government would produce its own weapons,

Christopher Capozzola (34:23.040)

partly to make sure that they got what they wanted. But most of the weapons of war for all

Christopher Capozzola (34:29.280)

of the European powers, and the United States, are produced by private industry.

Christopher Capozzola (34:33.840)

So, why do you say that the military industrial complex didn't start then? What was the

Lex Fridman (34:39.040)

important thing that happened in the Cold War?

Christopher Capozzola (34:41.920)

I think one way to think about it is that the Cold War is a point at which it switches

Christopher Capozzola (34:48.320)

from being a dial to a ratchet, right? So, during World War I, the relationship between

Christopher Capozzola (34:54.160)

the military and industry dials up fast and high, and stays that way, and it dials back

Christopher Capozzola (35:01.840)

down. Whereas during the Cold War, sort of the relationship between the two often looks

Lex Fridman (35:07.680)

more like a ratchet.

Christopher Capozzola (35:08.560)

Yeah, it becomes unstoppable.

Lex Fridman (35:10.320)

It goes up again.

Christopher Capozzola (35:12.240)

In the way that you start, I think, the way the military industrial complex is often

Christopher Capozzola (35:17.600)

discussed as a system that is unstoppable, like it expands. If you take a very cynical

Christopher Capozzola (35:29.280)

view, it creates war so that it can make money. It doesn't just find places where it can help

Christopher Capozzola (35:39.840)

through military conflict. It creates tensions that directly or indirectly lead to military

Christopher Capozzola (35:49.440)

conflict that it can then fuel and make money from.

Christopher Capozzola (35:53.600)

That is certainly one of the concerns of both people who are critical of the First

Christopher Capozzola (36:01.360)

World War, and then also of Dwight Eisenhower, right, when he's president and sort of in

Christopher Capozzola (36:05.920)

his farewell address, where he sort of introduces the term military industrial complex. And

Christopher Capozzola (36:11.360)

some of it is about the profit motive, but some of it is a fear that Eisenhower had that

Christopher Capozzola (36:16.960)

no one had an interest in stopping this, right, and that no one had a voice in stopping it,

Lex Fridman (36:22.560)

and that the ordinary American could really do nothing to dial things down.

Christopher Capozzola (36:31.120)

Is it strange to you that we don't often hear that kind of speech today, with Eisenhower

Christopher Capozzola (36:39.920)

speaking about the military industrial complex? For example, we'll have people criticizing

Christopher Capozzola (36:45.680)

the spending on war efforts, but they're not discussing the machinery of the military industrial

Christopher Capozzola (36:55.040)

complex, like the basic way that human nature works, that we get ourselves trapped in this

Christopher Capozzola (37:02.480)

thing. They're saying, like, there's better things to spend money on, versus describing

Christopher Capozzola (37:07.760)

a very seemingly natural process of when you build weapons of war that's going to lead

Lex Fridman (37:15.040)

to more war. Like, it pulls you in somehow.

Christopher Capozzola (37:19.520)

RW. Yeah, I would say throughout the Cold War, and even after the end of it, there has

Christopher Capozzola (37:27.120)

not been a sustained conversation in the United States about our defense establishment, right,

Lex Fridman (37:35.600)

what we really need, and what serves our interest, and to what extent sort of other things like

Christopher Capozzola (37:46.960)

blanket forces, profit motives, belong in that conversation. What's interesting is that

Christopher Capozzola (37:53.600)

in the generation after the First World War, that conversation was on the table, right,

Christopher Capozzola (37:59.040)

through a series of investigations in the US, the Nye Committee in Britain, the Royal

Christopher Capozzola (38:03.920)

Commission, journalistic exposés. This would have been just talked about constantly in

Christopher Capozzola (38:10.240)

the years between about 1930 and 1936, as people were starting to worry that storm clouds

Christopher Capozzola (38:16.440)

were gathering in Europe again.

Christopher Capozzola (38:18.240)

LR. Yeah, but it always seems like those folks get pushed to the fringes. You're made an

Christopher Capozzola (38:26.360)

activist versus a thinking leader.

Christopher Capozzola (38:32.480)

RW. Those discussions are often marginalized, framed as conspiracy theory, etc. I think

Christopher Capozzola (38:40.680)

it's important to realize that in the generation after World War I, this was a serious civic

Christopher Capozzola (38:47.640)

conversation. It led to investigations of defense finance. It led to experiments in

Christopher Capozzola (38:55.520)

Britain and France in public finance of war material. I think those conversations need

Lex Fridman (39:01.200)

to be reconvened now in the 21st century.

Christopher Capozzola (39:04.880)

LR. Is there any parallels between World War I and the war in Ukraine? The reason I bring

Christopher Capozzola (39:12.060)

it up is because you mentioned there was a hunger for war, a capacity for war that was

Christopher Capozzola (39:23.720)

already established, and the different parties were just boiling the tensions. So there's

Christopher Capozzola (39:31.000)

a case made that America had a role to play, NATO had a role to play in the current war

Christopher Capozzola (39:36.800)

in Ukraine. Is there some truth to that when you think about it in the context of World

Lex Fridman (39:44.240)

War I? Or is it purely about the specific parties involved, which is Russia and Ukraine?

Christopher Capozzola (39:51.680)

RW. I think it's very easy to draw parallels between World War I and the war in Ukraine,

Lex Fridman (40:02.240)

but I don't think they really work. The First World War in some ways is generated by a fundamental

Christopher Capozzola (40:14.760)

conflict in the European system of empires, in the global system of empires. In many ways,

Christopher Capozzola (40:22.320)

if there's a parallel, the war in Ukraine is the parallel to some of the conflicts in

Christopher Capozzola (40:29.800)

the Mediterranean and the Balkans in 1911 to 1913, that then later there was a much

Christopher Capozzola (40:40.540)

greater conflict. So I think if there's any lessons to be learned for how not to let World

Christopher Capozzola (40:48.440)

War III look like World War I, it would be to make sure that systems aren't locked into

Lex Fridman (40:55.000)

place that escalate wars out of people's expectations.

Christopher Capozzola (40:58.880)

LR. That's I suppose what I was implying, that this is the early stages of World War III. That in the same way that several wolves are licking their chops or whatever the expression is, they're creating tension, they're

Christopher Capozzola (41:17.200)

creating military conflict with a kind of unstoppable imperative for a global war. Many people that

Christopher Capozzola (41:29.280)

are looking at this are really worried about that. Now the forcing function to stop this

Christopher Capozzola (41:36.920)

war is that there's several nuclear powers involved, which has at least for now worked

Christopher Capozzola (41:42.880)

to stop full on global war. But I'm not sure that's going to be the case. In fact, what

Christopher Capozzola (41:49.080)

is one of the surprising things to me in Ukraine is that still in the 21st century, we can

Christopher Capozzola (41:58.680)

go to something that involves nuclear powers, not directly yet, but awfully close to directly,

Christopher Capozzola (42:05.960)

go to a hot war. And so do you worry about that, that there's a kind of descent into

Lex Fridman (42:14.440)

a World War I type of scenario?

Christopher Capozzola (42:16.720)

RW. Yes, I mean, that keeps me up at night, and I think it should keep the citizens of

Christopher Capozzola (42:22.640)

both the United States and Russia up at night. And I think, again, it gets back to what I

Christopher Capozzola (42:31.640)

was saying, that in the summer of 1914, even then, things that looked like a march toward

Christopher Capozzola (42:40.720)

war could have been different. And so I think it's important for leaders of both countries

Lex Fridman (42:49.260)

and of all of the related countries, of Ukraine, of the various NATO powers, to really imagine

Christopher Capozzola (42:56.760)

off ramps and to imagine alternatives and to make them possible. Whether it's through

Christopher Capozzola (43:04.800)

diplomacy, whether it's through other formats, I think that that's the only way to prevent

Christopher Capozzola (43:13.440)

sort of greater escalation.

Christopher Capozzola (43:14.840)

LR. What's the difference between World War I and the Civil War? In terms of how they

Christopher Capozzola (43:19.120)

defined what it means to be an American, but also the American citizen's relationship with

Lex Fridman (43:25.960)

the war, what the leaders were doing, is there interesting differences and similarities?

Christopher Capozzola (43:34.880)

Besides the fact that everybody seems to have forgot about World War I in the United States

Lex Fridman (43:38.400)

and everyone still remembers Civil War.

Christopher Capozzola (43:40.520)

RW. I mean, it's true. And the American Civil War defines American identity in some ways,

Christopher Capozzola (43:50.720)

along with the Revolution and the Second World War, more so than any other conflict. And

Christopher Capozzola (43:57.160)

it's a fundamentally different war. It's won because it is a civil war, because of secession,

Christopher Capozzola (44:06.120)

because of the Confederacy. This is a conflict happening on the territory of the United States

Christopher Capozzola (44:12.800)

between Americans. And so the dynamics are really quite different. So the leaders particularly

Christopher Capozzola (44:20.480)

Lincoln have a different relationship to the home front, to civilians, than they say Wilson

Christopher Capozzola (44:27.760)

or Roosevelt have in World War I and II.

Christopher Capozzola (44:30.040)

LR. Also the way you would tell the story of the Civil War, perhaps similar to the way

Christopher Capozzola (44:34.720)

we tell the story of World War II, there's like a reason to actually fight the war. The

Christopher Capozzola (44:40.200)

way we tell the story is we're fighting for this idea that all men are created equal,

Christopher Capozzola (44:45.000)

that the war is over slavery in part. Perhaps that's a drastic oversimplification of what

Christopher Capozzola (44:54.520)

the war was actually about in the moment, like how do you get pulled into an actual

Christopher Capozzola (44:58.940)

war versus a hot discussion. And the same with World War II, people kind of framed the

Christopher Capozzola (45:07.840)

narrative that it was against evil, Hitler being evil. I think the key part of that is

Christopher Capozzola (45:15.820)

probably the Holocaust, is how you can formulate Hitler's being evil. If there's no Holocaust,

Christopher Capozzola (45:22.840)

perhaps there's a case to be made that we wouldn't see World War II as such a quote

Christopher Capozzola (45:28.400)

unquote good war, that there's an atrocity that had to happen to make it really, to be

Christopher Capozzola (45:35.680)

able to tell a clear narrative of why we get into this war. Perhaps such a narrative doesn't

Christopher Capozzola (45:40.260)

exist for World War I, and so that doesn't stay in the American mind. We try to sweep

Christopher Capozzola (45:46.060)

it under the rug, given though overall 16 million people died. So to you the difference

Christopher Capozzola (45:54.720)

is in the fact that you're fighting for ideas and fighting on the homeland. But in terms

Lex Fridman (46:02.240)

of people's participation, you know, fighting for your country, was there similarities there?

Christopher Capozzola (46:10.480)

Yeah. I mean, I think, I mean the Civil War in both the North and the South, troops are

Christopher Capozzola (46:17.840)

raised overwhelmingly through volunteer recruitment. There is a draft in both the North and the

Christopher Capozzola (46:24.040)

South, but it's not significant. Only 8% of Confederate soldiers came in through conscription.

Lex Fridman (46:35.160)

And so in fact, the mobilization for volunteers often organized locally around individual

Christopher Capozzola (46:44.060)

communities or states, creates sort of multiple identities and levels of loyalty, where people

Christopher Capozzola (46:50.800)

both in the North and the South have loyalty both to their state regiments, to their sort

Lex Fridman (46:55.840)

of community militias and as well to the country. They are fighting over the country, right?

Christopher Capozzola (47:01.500)

Over the United States. And so the Union and the Confederacy have conflicting and ultimately

Christopher Capozzola (47:07.280)

irreconcilable visions of that. But that sort of nationalism that comes out of the Union

Christopher Capozzola (47:15.680)

after the victory in the war is a kind of crucial force shaping America ever since.

Lex Fridman (47:21.660)

So what was the neutrality period? Why did US stay out of the war for so long? What was

Christopher Capozzola (47:26.320)

going on in that interesting, like, what made Woodrow Wilson change his mind? What was the

Lex Fridman (47:36.120)

interesting dynamic there?

Christopher Capozzola (47:38.520)

I always say that the United States entered the war in April of 1917, but Americans entered

Christopher Capozzola (47:45.520)

it right away, right? They entered it. Some of them actually went and volunteered and

Christopher Capozzola (47:50.860)

fought almost exclusively on the side of Britain and France. At least 50,000 joined the Canadian

Christopher Capozzola (47:59.380)

army or the British army and served. Millions volunteer. They sent humanitarian aid. I think

Christopher Capozzola (48:06.160)

in many ways, modern war creates modern humanitarianism, and we can see that in the neutrality period.

Lex Fridman (48:13.920)

And even if they wanted the United States to stay out of the war, a lot of Americans

Christopher Capozzola (48:18.920)

get involved in it by thinking about it, caring about it, arguing about it. And at the same

Christopher Capozzola (48:25.640)

time, they're worried that British propaganda is shaping their news system. They are worried

Christopher Capozzola (48:32.840)

that German espionage is undermining them. They're worried that both Britain and Germany

Christopher Capozzola (48:37.640)

are trying to interfere in American elections and American news cycles. And at the same

Christopher Capozzola (48:43.600)

time, a revolution is breaking out in Mexico. So there are sort of concerns about what's

Christopher Capozzola (48:49.760)

happening in the Western Hemisphere as well as what's happening in Europe.

Lex Fridman (48:54.200)

So World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars, and it didn't. How did World

Christopher Capozzola (49:02.520)

War I pave the way to World War II? Every nation probably has their own story in this

Christopher Capozzola (49:09.960)

trajectory towards World War II. How did Europe allow World War II to happen? How did the

Christopher Capozzola (49:16.520)

Soviet Union, Russia allow World War II to happen, and how did America allow World War

Lex Fridman (49:22.480)

II to happen? And Japan?

Christopher Capozzola (49:24.520)

Yeah, you're right. The answer is different for each country, right? That in some ways

Christopher Capozzola (49:29.320)

in Germany, the culture of defeat and the experience of defeat at the end of World War

Christopher Capozzola (49:35.680)

I leads to a culture of resentment, recrimination, finger pointing blame that makes German politics

Lex Fridman (49:45.280)

very ugly. As one person puts it, brutalizes German politics.

Christopher Capozzola (49:50.920)

It places resentment at the core of the populace and its politics.

Christopher Capozzola (49:56.440)

Yeah. And so in some ways, that lays the groundwork for the kind of politics of resentment and

Christopher Capozzola (50:02.280)

hate that comes from the Nazis. For the United States, in some ways, the failure to win the

Christopher Capozzola (50:09.120)

peace sets up the possibility for the next war, that the United States, through Wilson,

Christopher Capozzola (50:18.840)

is sort of crafting a new international order in order that this will be the war to end

Christopher Capozzola (50:23.800)

all wars. But because the United States failed to join the League of Nations, you see the

Christopher Capozzola (50:30.200)

United States really sort of on the hook for another generation.

Christopher Capozzola (50:34.360)

In Asia, the story is more complicated, right? And I think it's worth bearing that in mind

Christopher Capozzola (50:38.320)

that World War II is a two front war. It starts in Asia for its own reasons. World War I is

Christopher Capozzola (50:45.420)

transformative for Japan, right? It is a time of massive economic expansion. A lot of that

Christopher Capozzola (50:51.960)

sort of economic wealth is poured into sort of greater industrialization and militarization.

Lex Fridman (50:58.900)

And so when the military wing in Japanese politics takes over in the 1930s, they're

Christopher Capozzola (51:04.640)

in some ways flexing muscles that come out of the First World War.

Lex Fridman (51:09.760)

Can you talk about the end of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles? What's interesting

Christopher Capozzola (51:15.880)

about that dynamics there, of the parties involved, of how it could have been done differently

Lex Fridman (51:24.640)

to avoid the resentment? Or again, is it inevitable?

Lex Fridman (51:30.380)

So the war ends and very soon, even before the war is over, the United States in particular

Christopher Capozzola (51:38.120)

is trying to shape the peace, right? And the United States is the central actor at the

Christopher Capozzola (51:43.440)

Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Woodrow Wilson is there, he's presiding, and he knows that

Lex Fridman (51:49.680)

he calls the shots.

Lex Fridman (51:51.000)

So he was respected.

Christopher Capozzola (51:52.960)

He was respected, but resentfully in some ways by the European powers, Britain and France

Lex Fridman (51:59.920)

and Italy to a lesser extent, who felt that they had sacrificed more. They had two goals,

Christopher Capozzola (52:06.720)

right? They wanted to shape the imperial system in order to make sure that their kind of fundamental

Christopher Capozzola (52:13.160)

economic structures wouldn't change. And they also wanted to sort of weaken Germany as much

Lex Fridman (52:19.100)

as possible, right? So that Germany couldn't rise again.

Lex Fridman (52:23.100)

What this leads to is a peace treaty that maintains some of the fundamental conflicts

Christopher Capozzola (52:30.000)

of the imperial system and makes, bankrupts Germany, starves Germany, and kind of feeds

Christopher Capozzola (52:37.020)

this politics of resentment that make it impossible for Germany to kind of participate in a European

Lex Fridman (52:44.560)

order.

Lex Fridman (52:46.480)

So people like historian Neil Ferguson, for example, make the case that if Britain stayed

Christopher Capozzola (52:53.560)

out of World War I, we would have avoided this whole mess and we would potentially even

Christopher Capozzola (52:58.920)

avoid World War II, this kind of counterfactual history. Do you think it's possible to make

Christopher Capozzola (53:06.560)

the case for that? That there was a moment, especially in that case, staying out of the

Christopher Capozzola (53:12.520)

war for Britain, that the escalation to a global war could have been avoided and one

Christopher Capozzola (53:17.520)

that ultimately ends in a deep global resentment. So where Germany is resentful not just of

Christopher Capozzola (53:24.480)

France or particular nations, but is resentful of the entire, I don't know how you define

Lex Fridman (53:30.400)

it, the West or something like this, the entire global world.

Lex Fridman (53:36.520)

I wish it were that easy. And I think it's useful to think in counterfactuals. What if?

Lex Fridman (53:49.200)

And if you believe, as historians do, in causation, if that one thing causes another, then you

Christopher Capozzola (53:57.260)

also have to believe in counterfactuals, right? That if something hadn't happened, then maybe

Christopher Capozzola (54:01.720)

that would have worked differently. But I think all the things that led to World War

Christopher Capozzola (54:09.720)

I are multi causal and nuanced. And this is what historians do. We make things more complicated.

Lex Fridman (54:16.640)

And so there was no one thing that could have turned the tide of history. Oh, if only Hitler

Christopher Capozzola (54:27.240)

had gotten into art school or if only Fidel Castro had gotten into the major leagues.

Christopher Capozzola (54:34.080)

Those are interesting thought experiments, but few events in history I think are that

Christopher Capozzola (54:38.000)

contingent.

Christopher Capozzola (54:39.000)

Well, Hitler is an example of somebody who is a charismatic leader that seems to have

Christopher Capozzola (54:45.600)

a really disproportionate amount of influence on the tide of history. So if you look at

Christopher Capozzola (54:55.760)

Stalin, you could imagine that many other people could have stepped into that role.

Lex Fridman (55:03.200)

And the same goes for many of the other presidents through, or even Mao. It seems that there's

Christopher Capozzola (55:09.760)

a singular nature to Hitler, that you could play the counterfactual, that if there was

Christopher Capozzola (55:15.440)

no Hitler, you may have not had World War II. He better than many leaders in history

Christopher Capozzola (55:22.680)

was able to channel the resentment of the populace into a very aggressive expansion

Christopher Capozzola (55:28.560)

of the military and I would say skillful deceit of the entire world in terms of his plans

Lex Fridman (55:36.600)

and was able to effectively start the war. So is it possible that, I mean, could Hitler

Christopher Capozzola (55:44.720)

have been stopped? Could we have avoided if he just got into art school? Or again, do

Lex Fridman (55:52.000)

you feel like there's a current of events that was unstoppable?

Christopher Capozzola (55:55.680)

I mean, part of what you're talking about is Hitler the individual as a sort of charismatic

Christopher Capozzola (56:01.120)

leader who's able to mobilize the nation. And part of it is Hitlerism, his own sort

Christopher Capozzola (56:08.240)

of individual ability to play, for example, play off his subordinates against one another

Christopher Capozzola (56:14.920)

to set up a system of that nature that in some ways escalates violence, including the

Christopher Capozzola (56:21.640)

violence that leads to the Holocaust. And some of it is also Hitlerism as a leader cult.

Lex Fridman (56:28.640)

And we see this in many other sort of things where a political movement surrounds one particular

Christopher Capozzola (56:35.040)

individual who may or may not be replaceable. So yes, the World War II we got would have

Christopher Capozzola (56:42.840)

been completely different if a different sort of faction had risen to power in Germany.

Lex Fridman (56:51.360)

But Europe, you know, Depression era Europe was so unstable and democracies collapsed

Christopher Capozzola (56:56.720)

throughout Western Europe over the course of the 1930s, you know, whether they had charismatic

Christopher Capozzola (57:01.520)

totalitarian leaders or not.

Christopher Capozzola (57:04.560)

Have you actually read one book I just recently finished? I'd love to get your opinion from

Christopher Capozzola (57:11.640)

a historian perspective. There's a book called Blitzed Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman

Christopher Capozzola (57:16.840)

Mohler. It makes a case that drugs played a very large role, meth essentially, played

Christopher Capozzola (57:25.360)

a very large role in World War II. There's a lot of criticism of this book, saying that

Christopher Capozzola (57:32.760)

it's kind of to what you're saying, it takes this one little variable and makes it like

Christopher Capozzola (57:38.600)

this explains everything. So everything about Hitler, everything about the blitzkrieg, everything

Christopher Capozzola (57:44.840)

about the military, the way the strategy, the decisions could be explained through drugs,

Christopher Capozzola (57:50.720)

or at least implies that kind of thing. And the interesting thing about this book because

Christopher Capozzola (57:56.120)

Hitler and Nazi Germany is one of the most sort of written about periods of human history.

Lex Fridman (58:02.000)

And this was not drugs were almost entirely not written about in this context. So here

Christopher Capozzola (58:07.760)

come along this semi historian because I don't think he's even a historian. He's a lot of

Christopher Capozzola (58:13.880)

his work is fiction. Hopefully I'm saying that correctly. So he tells a really that's

Christopher Capozzola (58:19.600)

one of the criticisms he tells a very compelling story that drugs were at the center of this

Christopher Capozzola (58:27.120)

period and also of the man of Hitler. What are your sort of feelings and thoughts about

Christopher Capozzola (58:35.680)

if you've gotten a chance to read this book, but I'm sure there's books like it that tell

Christopher Capozzola (58:39.960)

an interesting perspective singular perspective on a war. Yeah, I mean, I have read it and

Christopher Capozzola (58:45.600)

I also had this sort of eye opening experience that a lot of historians did and they're like,

Lex Fridman (58:51.200)

why didn't, why didn't we think about this? And I think whether he's, the author Oller

Christopher Capozzola (58:58.720)

is sort of not a trained academic historian, but the joy of history is like, you don't

Christopher Capozzola (59:03.440)

have to be one to write good history. And I don't think anyone sort of criticizes him

Christopher Capozzola (59:08.480)

for, for that. Um, I like the book as a, as a window into the third Reich. You know, of

Christopher Capozzola (59:15.720)

course drugs don't explain all of it, but it helps us see, um, you know, uh, it see

Christopher Capozzola (59:22.560)

helps us see the people who supported Hitler, um, uh, the ways in which, um, you know, uh,

Christopher Capozzola (59:29.320)

it was that mind altering and performance altering drugs were used to kind of keep soldiers

Christopher Capozzola (59:34.920)

on the battlefield. Um, the ways in which, um, you know, I think that we take, we don't

Christopher Capozzola (59:41.680)

fully understand the extent to which the third Reich is held together with like duct tape,

Christopher Capozzola (59:46.680)

um, from, um, you know, from a pretty early phase by like 1940 or 41 even, you know, it's

Christopher Capozzola (59:53.500)

all smoke and mirrors. And I think that wartime propaganda, both Germans trying to say, you

Christopher Capozzola (59:59.920)

know, we're winning everything and America trying to mobilize, uh, and the other allies,