This conversation was originally broadcast live on Twitter and YouTube this past Sunday evening at 6:00pm EST, 5/4/25.
I am Gaius. Germanicus is here. We’re in Londinium speaking live to the 21st century from the 1st century A.D., which is really cool.
We've got our problems. You've got yours. But we can gap two thousand years and talk about yours. You have to read about ours in the history books.
Now, Germanicus has other thoughts about living in the 1st century, but right now, this viewpoint we have, it's like Einstein micro-lensing, where we're hitting a star and being propelled two thousand years from now.
It's harder for us to see next year than it is to see 2025. And I bring up 2025 because Americans (those who remember) are noting the 50th anniversary since the retreat from Saigon. The reason I mention that is because Germanicus and I watched this happen when we were much younger men.
And the question, the open question for the evening—Germanicus has thoughts on this—is Ukraine headed the way of Vietnam?
Nobody remembers. Nobody talks about it.
There's a big feature in Science magazine about the effects of Agent Orange.
Well, gee. There are other things to say. That was certainly a tragedy. Asking: is it an eco-apocalypse? Is it an ecocide? In other words, how are we going to indict the Johnson and Nixon administration for vouchsafing Agent Orange?
That's the only question Science is asking, but there are many thoughts about how you maintain an empire. We'll touch on some of them.
We're going to begin, however, not in Vietnam in 1975.
No. We're going to begin instead in 2025 with Vladimir Putin, who answered a question through Reuters that is significant, especially because we observe it from the point of view of having once had a magnificent emperor in Augustus.
“I always think about it,” Putin, 72, said when asked if he thought about the succession in a film by state television about Putin's quarter of a century as Russia's paramount leader entitled Russia, Kremlin, Putin, 25 years.
It's going to be a challenge for Russia. There will be violence, guaranteed, because when you move from an autocracy or a monarchy (fill in the blank), there's violence to clean out, like a filter. Who's strong and who's not?
Two questions. Will we not remember Ukraine in 50 years, the way we don't remember Vietnam? And succession—the violence that we anticipate in Russia, is that a built-in formula, or can it be avoided?
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