Daniel Immerwahr on American Empire - Past, Present, and Future

Daniel Immerwahr is a historian, scholar, professor, and author whose work explores U. S. and global history, with a particular focus on the ways the past continues to shape the present. He currently teaches U. S. and global history at Northwestern University’s Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences. Immerwahr is also the author of the nonfiction historical book Thinking Small, which won the Merle Curti Award, and How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, published in 2019 and named a national bestseller, one of the New York Times critics' top books of the year, and the winner of the Robert H. Ferrell Prize. In addition to his books and academic work, Immerwahr is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and his writing has also appeared in publications including The Atlantic and The New York Times. Immerwahr’s teaching and writing examine American history within a broader global context, drawing upon history to explore questions of politics, power, and the forces shaping the United States today. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Granger knows if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility, you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation. Too much inventory, costs climb. Too little, production slows. Granger's $2 billion in on-hand inventory helps you get what you need, when you need it, so you can help keep budgets balanced and lines moving. Call 1-800-GRanger, click Granger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  911, what's your emergency? Please help us. They're everywhere. We think they're murder hornets.

• 0:43Speaker 03

  911 Nashville returns.

• 0:45Speaker 04

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 0:47Alec Baldwin?

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 0:48Speaker 03

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 0:51Alec Baldwin?

  All sins swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 0:54Speaker 04

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

• 0:55Alec Baldwin?

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 0:58Speaker 03

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything, because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:36Speaker 06

  Are you struggling with symptoms of chronic hives with no known external triggers? Living with chronic spontaneous urticaria, or CSU, can be frustrating, especially when symptoms last months or even years. CSU is a long-term condition that often requires ongoing treatment. Rapsodo, remabrutinib, is an oral prescription treatment that's taken twice daily with or without food for adults with CSU who continue to have symptoms not controlled with antihistamines. It should not be used for any other forms of hives. Rapsodo may cause bleeding and risk may increase if also taking a blood thinner. So tell your doctor right away if you have any signs or symptoms. Also discuss immunizations, as you should not receive live or live attenuated vaccines with Rapsodo. Side effects include

• 2:19Speaker 06

  nasal congestion, sore throat, runny nose, bleeding, headache, nausea, and abdominal pain. When antihistamines alone aren't enough, it may be time to ask your doctor about Rapsodo. To learn more, visit rapsodo.com or call 87 Rapsodo. That's 877-427-7436.

• 2:37Speaker 07

  Whether you're buying, renting, or selling, Zillow can help make your someday today to help find a home that fits where you are in life, or that apartment that's a little closer to where you want to be. Zillow has the right information, tools, and support to help turn your future home into a reality, because someday starts today. Visit zillow.com/today to get started.

• 3:05Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today is a historian, scholar, professor, and author who has studied world history for his entire career with an eye on how the present directly correlates to the past. Daniel Immervar is the author of Thinking Small and How to Hide an Empire, a national bestseller, and one of the New York Times Critics' top books of the year 2019. Immervar is also a contributing writer to publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. He is currently a U.S. and global history professor at Northwestern

• 3:46Alec Baldwin?

  University. With such an extensive resume of research, fellowships, literary accomplishments, and honors, I was curious if teaching was always Immerwahr's goal.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  No, teaching history was not always the goal. I wanted to be a jazz musician.

• 4:02Alec Baldwin?

  And you failed miserably at that.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  I failed miserably. Life is cruel.

• 4:06Alec Baldwin?

  Well, what instrument did you play?

• 4:07Speaker 04

  Piano, terribly.

• 4:09Alec Baldwin?

  Really?

• 4:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:10Alec Baldwin?

  What happened? No, seriously, what happened?

• 4:11Speaker 04

  Two things happened, a positive and a negative thing. One is, the negative thing is this. I was in high school and I was gigging with this trombone player, and we were like really connecting. And I was like, wow, this is amazing. We just have all the same musical instincts. And he was in his 40s. And I was like, wow, this is, like, what a great thing about jazz. You can just meet someone, and then suddenly you're soulmates. And he came up to me after and he said, that was great. And I was like, yeah, it was great, wasn't it? And then he said, and I'm 17 at the time, can you get me a gig? And I was like, oh, this is my future. This is rough. And then I went to college and I took history classes, and they rocked. So that was it.

• 4:45Alec Baldwin?

  Was teaching history the goal? It wasn't?

• 4:47Speaker 04

  No.

• 4:47Alec Baldwin?

  Throughout your academic career, I should say.

• 4:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, and you know, I just, I was in history classes, and I thought, this is amazing. Like, I feel like, like, my world is just assembling itself in my head. Like, I'm understanding things. And that felt really exciting, and then I wanted to do that.

• 5:01Alec Baldwin?

  You got your doctorate in 2011 at the University of California, Berkeley, studying under the intellectual historian David Hollinger. Tell me about your work with him. What did Hollinger signify to you in your career, your academic career?

• 5:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, he was, he's retired now. He's an intellectual historian.

• 5:20Alec Baldwin?

  What does that mean?

• 5:21Speaker 04

  He's a historian of thinkers and ideas. And we didn't really study the same topics, but, you know, the nice thing about a mentor is that you inherit their, or you can inherit their impulses and their instincts. So I find, we still talk all the time, and I find that, like, the same things that he's impatient with are the things I'm impatient with. And, you know, the same things that make me, you know, just like certain, like, turns in the field, like, why is everyone doing this? They should be doing that, that kind of thing.

• 5:48Alec Baldwin?

  What are people doing in the field that irks you?

• 5:50Speaker 04

  Okay, so here's the thing. I'm in history, and part of what historians do is that they rummage through all the, like, dusty archives and find documents no one's ever found before. And there's a way in which they can get addicted to that process. And they can be like, my value comes from, I found a document that was hard to find. And my view on that is like, yeah, sometimes that's cool, and I do that, too. But that's not who we are. And to say that, like, we define ourselves by, like, the kind of Indiana Jones aspects of our jobs, which is fairly mild, is to kind of miss that what we are is thinkers, and not to value, like, I made an unexpected connection. I saw something differently than someone else saw it. It just turns it into, like, Secretary of Labor.

• 6:33Alec Baldwin?

  Now, when you mention rummaging through dusty archives, we've been speaking to some friends of mine who are authors, whose career spans from perhaps even the late 70s till now as authors of both fiction and nonfiction. How much of your research, how much of it is online now, and you still got to go get that piece of paper in your hand?

• 6:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, so that's changing a lot. So it used to be the case that if you wanted to know anything about anything unpublished, you had to go to repositories. And now a lot of stuff is digitized.

• 7:04Alec Baldwin?

  But some you can't get online, right?

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right. And archivists are very retentive. Like, they want you to come to the archive. And sometimes there's, like, something will happen where, like, okay, this is an example just from the other day. I was talking to a historian, and he's like, look, we all are interested in this event that happens in the 18th century. And I was like, yes, we are. We're very interested in that event. And he's like, so, we all are using the same source. And I was like, yes, these, like, three letters that were sent in the 18th century, we're all using those. And he's like, yeah, how did we get those? And I was like, I presume it was through an appropriate chain of custody? He's like, no, here's what happened. They're in an archive in Britain, and when Britain thought it was getting, about to get bombed, or it was getting bombed, they, like, photocopied, you know, using, like, 1940s technology, they, like, you know.

• 7:49Alec Baldwin?

  Dispersed.

• 7:49Speaker 04

  Well, they, no, they reproduced everything. They, like, put it all on microfilm.

• 7:53Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, really?

• 7:53Speaker 04

  And, like, very hastily, because they're like, we could be bombed tomorrow, and we don't want to lose all these documents. And so we have that. We have the, like, harried photocopy. And he's like, you know, if you look at that, that's how we all got it. And then we digitize that. He's like, but it's out of order, and there's, like, other weird aspects of it. He's like, are we sure that they photocopied everything? I'm not. So he's, like, going to Britain to, like, just check.

• 8:14Alec Baldwin?

  And did he?

• 8:15Speaker 04

  He hasn't gone yet. No, but like, I'm on, I'm on tetterhooks. Like, if he goes, it's huge, right? It's great.

• 8:19Alec Baldwin?

  You were at Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought. What did you, what did you ponder there?

• 8:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, we pondered everything. Just everything under the sun, everything under the sun.

• 8:28Alec Baldwin?

  Everything being thought about, yeah, yeah.

• 8:30Speaker 04

  It was wild. So one of the things that they made me do, allowed me to do, when I was postdoc there, is they were like, you get to help choose the next postdocs. And I was like, cool, that'll be fine. We had more than 600 applications, because who doesn't do global thought? Everyone in the country applied.

• 8:46Alec Baldwin?

  Describe when you were working with Hollinger on your doctorate at Berkeley. What was the, what was the thesis of your doctorate?

• 8:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it was a fairly obscure topic. I was interested in the kinds of foreign aid that the United States was offering in the 1950s and the 1960s. And I got really interested in, like, one form of foreign aid that was based on grassroots development and fighting poverty by community building that the United States pushed in the Philippines and India. And so I wrote about that.

• 9:18Alec Baldwin?

  And what do you mean by grassroots development? What was that grassroots development like in that period, those two decades?

• 9:24Speaker 04

  So, I mean, the idea was, like, how do you help people be less poor? It's like a deep question, right? And so the prevailing thought had been, well, people are poor because they don't have, you know, the big, high-tech, like, flashy stuff. So, like, why don't we just go build a bunch of hydroelectric dams? And those are going to provide electricity, and those will power industry, and, like, voila, you'll have prosperity.

• 9:46Alec Baldwin?

  It'll kickstart that development.

• 9:47Speaker 04

  Exactly right, yeah. And they use terms like that, jumpstart. And then the people that I was studying had a different thought. They were like, well, first of all, like, most villagers don't really have instincts about dams, like, they're not hoping for dams. And often, their villages are going to get displaced by the dam, as all the reservoir backs up. And they might have their own sense of what would help. So what we should actually do is, like, go into these villages and talk to them and see what they want. And then, like, it'll be their ideas that are in charge, and that's how we're going to.

• 10:18Alec Baldwin?

  What did they want?

• 10:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, so that's the really interesting question because it turns out that like a village is not just like a normal unit, like it's not like a consensus. And so what often happened is they would go like some like, someone who knew very little about the place would just like walk into a village and be like, is there anyone here I should be talking to? And they'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they like, send him over to the village headman and they'll be like, what do you want? You know, and they'd ask the village headman, what do you want? He's like, I want like a well right on my property. I think that would be good for everyone. So, and then you'd like get other people who were like, no, that's terrible. In fact, we want like an end to like debt and we would like to own property, you know? So you get these like really serious arguments that would come out.

• 10:56Alec Baldwin?

  You know, I went to college in GW for three years and I studied political science and I concentrated on the American presidency. And essentially, what I got from my studies of history and economics and things like that before I shuffled off to acting school, was the idea that the United States, to use collegiate wrestling terms, we have our boot heel on the neck of our enemies, perceived enemies around the world.

• 11:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:22Alec Baldwin?

  And in, and what I've noticed about people who are even more normal conservatives and Republicans, not like what you have today, they would say, well, listen, our enemies don't want to just escape from this. They want a full reversal where they have their boot heel on our neck. We don't let them up because of what they will do to us. We can't let them up, we can't.

• 11:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:42Alec Baldwin?

  And I'm wondering, do you agree with that? That's what guides some of them? Okay.

• 11:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, not at all. No, but let's get into it, right?

• 11:47Alec Baldwin?

  Go.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  So, look, Thomas Jefferson had this line about slavery, because he was always like complaining about slavery, but then like he, he had slaves and some of those were his own children. And you're like, well, how seriously was he like, objecting to slavery? And he said, it's like holding a wolf by the ear. He's like, you can't let go. You can't let go, it's too dangerous. So like, I'm in it now, you know, and I don't really know what else to do. So, okay, is that a good map of like the relationship between the United States and other countries? I don't think so at all. So, it is true that the United States has outsized power and it's got the world's most formidable military and it kind of lords over other countries. And it is true that that pisses other countries off. I don't think at all, it's the case that if like, the United States just like backed

• 12:32Speaker 04

  off a little bit, it suddenly would be facing vengeful invasions from all over.

• 12:37Alec Baldwin?

  Or you don't, you don't believe that the Chinese want the United States to topple?

• 12:41Speaker 04

  Oh, that's a little different.

• 12:44Alec Baldwin?

  Okay, tell me how.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  I think the Chinese, it's, I think what the Chinese want is to be in the position that the United States is in, not because they're like, they want revenge on the United States particularly, but they're like, oh, the United States directs global affairs, we would very much like to do that. We'd like that to be our job. And they've been auditioning for that job. So, one thing that you often hear from defenders of the status quo, is they're like, okay, yeah, it's unfair that the United States lords over other countries in this way, and it's not really democratic, we admit that, but it's us or China. And would you prefer this to be China doing it? Because, you know, if so, enjoy like that.

• 13:17Alec Baldwin?

  Which is worse?

• 13:18Speaker 04

  I'm not sure that's true. So, like, that, that view, that view suggests you're like, there's only, there's, someone's got to be in charge. There's got to be one country that is ultimately the global cop. And if we don't do it, then we're abdicating. Some, I don't know, I'm not sure I do believe that. I mean, that's, it's an empirical question. If the United States backs down, is that, does that empty the throne and someone steps up? Or does that actually just create a more multilateral, fairer world order? Which is, so there was a big speech by the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, at Davos recently, and, and that's what he said. He was like, look, we just used to, we're used to going along with the United States and, you know, we kind of had to like, hold our noses a little bit when we did it, but

• 14:02Speaker 04

  whatever, that's how, that's how power works. He's like, but we can't follow the United States anymore because like, they're not leading anywhere and it's a total, total chaos. He's like, so this is, this might be good. This might be good, because finally we can have a world order that's not dominated by a single power.

• 14:15Alec Baldwin?

  When I ask that question of other people who are writers and historians and political figures that I've known, I'll say, do you think you foresee a time when that could change? When the United States isn't calling all the shots in the sake of human rights and safety and us not spending down all this money? That we could share that power? And my friend was great, he goes, he goes, yes, I envision that. He said, just not now. He said, just not now.

• 14:40Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 14:41Alec Baldwin?

  A lot of things would have to change in the world for that to be feasible and that would be doable.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  I mean, my sense is that, what you just said at the end, you were like, well, you know, actually there's a lot of cost to this. Then let's, well, let's call this arrangement US hegemony or Pax Americana, or whatever you want to call it. It's costly. And that's, that's true. And Trump has kind of been pointing that out for decades. Trump, like, the first thing Trump ever published in the 1980s was he's like, why are we giving so much like, military protection to Japan and Saudi Arabia? They're free riders on us and then they use it to like undercut our companies. This is not good for us.

• 15:15Alec Baldwin?

  Why do we?

• 15:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, it's, it's a really interesting, I mean, so the idea is that the United States like, in some ways it's kind of magnanimous, it gives foreign aid, it gives, you know, military protection if you want to regard that as a, as a benefit to other countries. But the idea is that it pays off. Is that it's so beneficial and profitable to be in charge of, because you can sort of tilt things your way and if, if you have a power that's like acting up in a way that's difficult for you, you can, you know, make that very difficult for them. So the thought has been that hegemony has paid for the United States. It's been worth it. And Trump's thought is, I'm not sure that it is. And so he'll say things like, one of the most amazing things that Trump said was, when he was campaigning in 2016, is he said, if they want us to police the world, they should pay us for it. Why are we doing this for free?

• 16:01Speaker 04

  And I was like, every past president is like rotating in their graves right now because they're like, are you kidding? We got so much out of this, you know? And like empirically, Trump could be right about that. Like, I don't, you know, it's hard to know the balance seat, but that, that thought that like, this is kind of draining on the United States, that's not crazy.

• 16:19Alec Baldwin?

  Well, certainly, certainly not all of it, meaning, you know, I've always thought the United States was a country where, unlike what a lot of the common perception is, overall American people are very hardworking. They get up in the morning, they got tough jobs to go do, very competitive jobs, they make money. You, you have this huge pool of money to skim the cream off the top, which is the federal income tax pool. You've got trillions of dollars at your disposal and what we do is we have people work really, really hard, they're on that hamster wheel, they earn the money, we skim the top of, we go in and buy all the bombs and planes and submarines and missiles and all the shit we need to kill people. And we go around the world telling everybody what to do. And that's to our advantage.

• 17:00Alec Baldwin?

  That's what makes the country work, is that we, we're in charge, basically. I just wonder in your mind, how much longer can this go on this way financially?

• 17:08Speaker 04

  I mean, I don't know that much longer. And not just because the burdens are so heavy to bear, I mean, I think there's a lot of ways we could redistribute them within the United States and, you know, more people could be doing significantly better than they are. But, you know, we kind of built this whole system after World War II, around the United States, at a time when the United States was producing more industrial goods than the rest of the world combined. It had more airplanes than the rest of the world combined, it had more oil reserves than the rest of the world combined. Like, the United States was the majority of the industrial economy itself, not just the largest producer. And so then you had this system that like had one power at the center of it, and then its currency, the dollar is the global reserve currency, like, and you know, it's, it's

• 17:53Speaker 04

  language, English is the language that everyone has to learn how to speak. And that kind of made sense, but a lot of that's less true. The United States is no longer anywhere near economically central, it's not the richest country, it doesn't even have the largest military, it's got the most powerful one. But like, so, in some ways like the world has been getting to be a much more equal place and we still have a kind of creaky system that is designed around a much more unequal world. So, yeah, I'm not sure how long it's going to maintain. And, and Trump is so interesting in this regard. I kind of had assumed that like, the challenges would come from outside, right? That there would be other, like, you know, either China or Russia would, you know, want to step up and, and take the role, or that other countries, you know, would be very resentful and they would kind of lift off the burdens. I didn't expect a call was going to be coming from the inside.

• 18:38Speaker 04

  So what we are seeing is the destruction of US hegemony from within the United States by the President of the United States.

• 18:45Alec Baldwin?

  What's the component of that that concerns you the most?

• 18:47Speaker 04

  So, one is the way he's doing it, right? It's weird because I'm, I'm actually no fan of US hegemony either. I object from a left-wing perspective, he objects from a right-wing perspective. But for him, he's also shrugged off all of the responsibilities of it too. So like, there was a reason that past presidents didn't just bomb Iran. They wanted to, but they were like, well, if we do that, that's going to be really tricky for our allies and then my, you know, if we, if the Iranian state collapses, that's a refugee crisis in the Middle East and we have all these other interests because we're playing chess and we're looking at all the pieces.

• 19:15Alec Baldwin?

  We're doing a lot of blowing up right now, yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, Trump's just like, I'm in a mood, I've got, I've got a huge military and I don't really care what happens. So, that's like the worst of all worlds.

• 19:23Alec Baldwin?

  Trump seems to function on that note, this is a very simplistic thing to say, I guess, but he functions on that note of like, you know, I'm going to do the things you guys dreamed of. You all wanted to bomb Iran, I'm going to bomb Iran. I'm more of a man than you are because I'm going to actually bomb them. I, I think to myself, my God, who's going to be asked to rebuild Gaza? Who's going to be asked to pay for it? Who's going to be asked to rebuild Iran? Who's going to pay for it? Certainly not this country, we don't have the money. I mean, are they going to come to us and ask us to, is the White House going to come and say, we really have to fork up some of the money?

• 19:54Speaker 04

  So, I mean, okay, that's a good contrast. So like, George W. Bush went to war in Iraq and that was, yeah, he didn't have to do that, it turns out, you know? And, and turned out to be a very destructive, very regrettable war. But he was committed to the parterie barn rule, which is you break it, you own it. And so after he invaded, he spent a lot of time like trying to mop up and like trying to like, get the country in some kind of shape. And there was a moment when he, we now know, he deeply wanted to bomb Iran, but he's like, oh, I got my hands full with Iraq. I can't do it. Whereas Trump is just like, I don't care. Like, I'll bomb it, declare victory and leave. Like, there's no mopping up. There's no sense of like, long-term responsibility for what happens.

• 20:36Alec Baldwin?

  I always wonder why, why we don't have like Mossad-like, I don't mean just exploding beepers and that kind of thing, but we don't have some high-tech, the most well-trained and the most advantaged people who are simply killing world, I'm not advocating this.

• 20:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I get it.

• 20:55Alec Baldwin?

  Who are simply killing world leaders, assassinating the world leaders we would prefer were not around or were not in power. Why aren't we just killing them and murdering individuals? Again, I'm not advocating that.

• 21:05Speaker 04

  No, I understand you're not advocating it.

• 21:07Alec Baldwin?

  As opposed to wars, and I thought to myself, well, you want to get Bechtel in there back in the old, you want Schultz and Weinberg and those guys and all their cronies going in and rebuilding things that we've blown up. Because where's the, if we shoot that guy in the hallway, where's the contract for American corporations to clean up the mess? We want the mess. We're going to make the mess. You don't agree with that?

• 21:27Speaker 04

  Yes and no. I mean, I would say something else too, which is that, I mean, the US military has offered that fantasy to presidents for a while. They're like, okay, you don't have to use divisions anymore. Like, you don't have to send in, you don't have to have boots on the ground. We're just going to put warheads on foreheads. Like, our precision is so good, we can just, we can just shoot your guy. Like, wherever he is, we'll just find him and like that.

• 21:47Alec Baldwin?

  That's my T-shirt for this summer, warheads on foreheads.

• 21:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, it's a, it's a unfortunate phrase within the military. It's a phrase that is, yeah. Yeah. And it turns out, and so like, that's what the military told George W. Bush. That's what they told Obama. Obama got really into the drone thing. That's certainly, I'm sure, what they've been telling Trump. And in some ways, it's true. Like, Israel did assassinate the Supreme Leader of Iran. Like, that happens. But it turns out that, A, that's a lot harder than we thought. And B, you can't really easily control a country just by like zapping the president over and over. Because, I mean, we'll see what happened in Iran. Like, has that been good for the United States? I mean, ultimately, what did it do? It did very little to degrade Iran's like military, as far as I can tell. But it took out the Supreme Leader. And now we have an even more pissed Iran that is like doubled down.

• 22:36Alec Baldwin?

  Historian, author and professor Daniel Imrevar. If you enjoy conversations with writers who change the way we see American history, check out my episode with journalist and author Isabel Wilkerson and William Darity.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  We're not on the same page about what happened in our country. And that is what I'm saying, why it's so important as we try to understand how we got to where we are now, is to understand what happened. You know, you can't fix what you can't see and you can't repair what you don't know. And, and that's why I think it's important for us to get on the same page about what happened. You can't make progress unless you know what's happened to get us where we are.

• 23:18Alec Baldwin?

  To hear more of my conversation with Isabel Wilkerson and William Darity, go to here's the thing.org. After the break, Imrevar shares what he really thinks about Trump's desire to annex Canada.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  911, what's your emergency?

• 23:44Speaker 03

  Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder hornets.

• 23:48Alec Baldwin?

  911 Nashville returns. There's a homicide detective down here.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 23:54Alec Baldwin?

  With emergencies of biblical proportions. Melon swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville. Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 24:10Speaker 06

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 24:41Speaker 07

  Whether you're buying, renting, or selling, Zillow can help make your someday today to help find a home that fits where you are in life or that apartment that's a little closer to where you want to be. Zillow has the right information, tools, and support to help turn your future home into a reality. Because someday starts today. Visit zillow.com/today to get started. Hola a todos, soy Jamie Lynn Sigler. Cuando me diagnosticaron tenía veintitantos años y todo mi mundo cambió por completo. Pero con el tiempo decidí que no iba a permitir que eso frenara mi vida. Quise tomar las riendas. Y después de hablar con mi médico sobre mis opciones,

• 25:25Speaker 07

  la elección para mí fue obvia. Boom, eso es KISSIMTA. Obtenga más información sobre KISSIMTA o fotumab en kissimta.com.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  Breathe in and reset with Lincoln Rejuvenate, an available multisensory feature in the 2027 Lincoln Navigator SUV. Experience the luxurious massage, visuals, and sense to help you relax in the driver's seat. It's your time for a reset. Visit lincoln.com to learn more. Lincoln Rejuvenate does not operate unless the vehicle is in park, when the vehicle is off, or if any doors open. Do not use the feature in a closed garage or in other enclosed areas. See owner's manual for important operating instructions. Lincoln and Navigator are trademarks of Ford or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

• 26:09Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. In 2019, Imrevar published his second book, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. In the book, Imrevar sheds a new light on the history of the United States from outside the country and pulls back the curtain on key moments from American history. I wanted to know more about what Imrevar meant by hiding an empire.

• 26:33Speaker 04

  Sure, yeah. It's, it's a book about the United States, but not just the states and not just the contiguous part. It turns out that the United States has always been a kind of amalgam of states and territories. And that since the 19th century, some of those territories have been overseas. And, you know, there are places that kind of like exist on the edge of a lot of people's consciousness. So like, oh yeah, Puerto Rico, I guess that's part of the United States. Like, what's up with Guam? The Philippines used to, you know, be the largest colony. It's had, you know, like tens of millions of people in it. And it was part of the United States. But, but in that way that was very hazy for people in like New York or Washington. And so the book is about how the United States has spread out and claimed lands, you know, all over the world.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  So colonies, military bases, outposts. And then how it is sort of told itself that, that those places don't really exist or you don't really have to think too hard about them. So it's, it's a, it's a country that has imagined itself as the opponent of empires. You know, the evil empire, the, you know, the Reich. Or, you know, like with Star Wars, we just like fight the Galactic Empire in our dreams. But actually, this is a country that's, that's had colonies, that, you know, has hundreds of military bases all over the world. So it's, it's an attempt to knit those back into US history.

• 27:49Alec Baldwin?

  When the average American listens on the news in recent years about things like annexing Canada, or whatever verb you want to use, and what's happened in Venezuela, where I read recently that they don't really have the type of oil we need down there. Talk about Cuba, talk about Greenland. For the average American, they, they realize that Trump himself is kind of nuts. And his, and many of his most intimate advisors may be nuts. But I'm assuming some of them are not as dumb as Trump. They, they have some information about something. When you're going to annex Canada, how do you do that? You pressure them to tap out?

• 28:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:28Alec Baldwin?

  They tap out and then they just decide to do your bidding? Or we're not going to attack Canada, correct?

• 28:34Speaker 04

  Well, okay, first of all, I don't think anything is going to happen with Canada. But the, no, but let's, let's, let's game it out. Like, like, how could you annex another country?

• 28:41Alec Baldwin?

  What do they mean, yeah?

• 28:42Speaker 04

  Right. Because there's a few moments in history where like, the leadership of a country has asked to be annexed. So that does happen sometimes.

• 28:50Alec Baldwin?

  What's an example of that?

• 28:51Speaker 04

  So the Dominican Republic in the late 19th century, the president asked the United States to colonize the Dominican Republic. Now, not everyone in the Dominican Republic wanted that. He was trying to kind of fend off some rivals.

• 29:03Alec Baldwin?

  Did it include Haiti as well?

• 29:04Speaker 04

  That would not have included Haiti, just the, although they share an island. So, you know, occasionally there are moments like that. But usually, countries like don't want to be taken over by another country, unsurprisingly, for reasons, who could possibly understand why? So how might that actually go down? Yeah, one, one thing is the, the tap out possibility that you mentioned. Like, you just make everything so economically difficult for them that it becomes easier to succumb than to resist. And the other is, you just send in the military or send in the 7th Fleet or whatever. Both of those would be really aggressive maneuvers. And it is nearly impossible for me to imagine that the United States would successfully annex Canada. Greenland is more possible.

• 29:47Speaker 04

  If Trump really put a lot of energy into it, he could do it.

• 29:50Alec Baldwin?

  We're going to get back to Greenland in a moment and Cuba. But in Venezuela, we did indeed come in there and take over. I know that they tuned up on a few drug boats. And then they went in there and, or, you know, basically. Running the show, or at least conceiving of how to run the show there. The earthquakes and things like that, just so bad at any time, but horrible right now to have those things there.

• 30:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I mean, it's actually worth talking a little bit about what happened in Venezuela because

• 30:20Alec Baldwin?

  Tell me, I want to hear your version.

• 30:21Speaker 04

  Trump talked big, he was like, we're in charge now, you know, and you were like, whoa, this is like a gangland takeover, like, what's going on? But what happened was, they came in, they got in some sort of gunfire, and, you know, at least 100 people die, we think. Trump kidnapped the president, Nicolao Maduro, and his wife, and that was it. Like, the vice president, Dulce Rodriguez, became the acting president, and weirdly, after saying like, how completely intolerable the president was of Venezuela, and how he had to go, Trump was like, yeah, but the vice president's fine, she'll do a great job. And so, it was this, it was an interesting moment, because I, I mean, interesting and horrifying in all kinds of ways, but like, a lot of people like me were like, there's

• 31:03Speaker 04

  no way this just ends with like, two people being like, like

• 31:08Alec Baldwin?

  Changing jobs.

• 31:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly, like a layoff. Like, I was like, this is gonna be the start of, you know, this is gonna be Trump's Iraq War. And I said that in print. And it thus far has not turned out to be. Now, it's really hard, if you're in Dulce Rodriguez's boots, because you have to now, like, please the United States, know what will happen if you don't, but then also stay in power. And historically, that's been really hard for leaders to do. So people who are under the US shadow, like, tend to have a high rate of coups and like, you know, bloody massacres, and just like, all the signs of intense political pressure, because it's really hard to like, please both constituencies at once, which is what she's trying to do now.

• 31:50Alec Baldwin?

  I wonder, the woman who you mentioned is the vice president, I have to believe that the United States, everything is worked out, I mean, it might not be worked out well, I'm not applauding this, but everything's worked out in a way where they get to this woman, they say, here's what's gonna happen.

• 32:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:04Alec Baldwin?

  It's not some surprise to her. Maduro gets carted off, he's in the United States now in prison, or where is he, in the Hague, or I don't know.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:12Alec Baldwin?

  But I don't know where he is, because again, that story dies, because more, the garbage barge comes in with fresh load of garbage the next day with Trump. Because a member of my friends said it online, he said, something happened, some event occurred, and my friend writes, bet you forgot about Venezuela already, haven't you?

• 32:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 32:28Alec Baldwin?

  And, you know, just to take, something about Epstein, maybe, or the attack on Iran. But, I feel like everything's worked out. I feel like they get this woman alone, and they go, listen, you want to die, you're gonna die too if you don't play ball with us, this is what's gonna happen, we're gonna take him and his wife, take him here, you're gonna become the president, here's Larry so-and-so from the CIA, he's gonna tell you everything we want you to do.

• 32:47Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 32:48Alec Baldwin?

  You're not gonna do anything without talking to Larry, or Larry's team. I mean, I'm making this up, I'm riffing this.

• 32:52Speaker 04

  No, yeah, that's right.

• 32:53Alec Baldwin?

  But I feel like the United States has everything always well, well plotted and produced before they step in there and get rid of Maduro. Do you agree, or no?

• 33:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:02Alec Baldwin?

  Or potentially it could be that way?

• 33:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think the military ballet was pretty choreographed, right? And that's not Trump, that's the armed forces, like, they, you know, they know how to do this stuff. Yeah, yeah. And, and then I think you're right, that I think that from the Trump administration's perspective, this was as clean as it could have been. And, again, the presidential fantasy is always that you're just gonna be able to like, you know, take out the leader, and then like, you know, everything else follows, like, everything else falls in line, and that rarely happens. That has worked in Venezuela, that has not worked in Iran. And, you really sense that like, the quicks, you know, again, we'll see what happens in Venezuela in the long term, and I'm not saying that this is good for the world or good for

• 33:45Speaker 04

  Venezuela, but from the Trump administration's perspective, it has been good for them. And I think their like, quick success there made it a lot easier to co-sign with Israel, the idea that they were gonna try the same thing in Iran.

• 33:57Alec Baldwin?

  Because I have such a cynical view, and a very hypercritical view of the US military, not the soldiers, by the way, but the military leadership and management, since the Pentagon Papers, since Ellsberg in my lifetime, I look at this and I say, you know, and I think to myself, I just come up with my very cynical takes on why, and I look at the, if the oil that we're gonna potentially get or not get through Venezuela, the takeover, isn't what we want, maybe that isn't the reason we're doing it, is the reason we're doing it to control some aspect of the Amazon River Basin?

• 34:35Alec Baldwin?

  And to start to undo the environmental successes there of, do they want more deforestation to reach precious minerals? And what is the word again for those minerals? If not precious

• 34:48Speaker 04

  Strategic minerals, rare earth minerals.

• 34:49Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, rare earth minerals. Is the United States in Venezuela so we can start to reshape the environmental heritage of South America?

• 34:58Speaker 04

  That is a level of complexity of scheme that I am not sure I can credit the current administration with.

• 35:04Alec Baldwin?

  No, I don't know.

• 35:05Speaker 04

  No, I mean, so

• 35:06Alec Baldwin?

  The CIA is forever, so maybe it's their idea, I don't know, I always pin it on them.

• 35:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, so, I think it's not quite true that like, there's like, certain kinds of oil, and Venezuela's oil doesn't work. It is, there are like, different grades, and then there are processing plants that can handle different grades, and I forget exactly how it works, but I think like, the plants in the very southernmost United States can deal with the lower grade, whatever, I'm gonna, I'm gonna botch it, but

• 35:30Alec Baldwin?

  It's gonna take some time before the oil becomes truly valuable to us, is what I was reading.

• 35:36Speaker 04

  Well, here's the thing I want to say about oil, so, you know, I do think that the United States, like every other country, you know, uses its power to advantage itself. Like, I'm not, I don't think that's a dark conspiracy, I think that's just like a normal thing that countries

• 35:47Alec Baldwin?

  Like everyone.

• 35:48Speaker 04

  Like everyone, yeah. And, the United States has often, its perceived needs have often circled around oil. And, one thing that I don't get, or that I think most people don't get, is that you're like, okay, tell me the fantasy, the United States is going to, and this is how Trump talks, he's like, we're gonna take their oil. And I'm like, but are you? Like, what's actually gonna happen? And what is actually gonna happen in most of these instances? There was a like, tribute of Venezuela, that it just had to like, send a certain number of oil tankers to the United States, like gratis. But the idea is, the oil keeps flowing, and the idea usually is like, well, we're gonna make them sell us their oil. And I was like, what do you think they were doing before?

• 36:32Speaker 04

  Venezuelan oil was already going to the United States, I mean, more of it was going to China, but like, like, Bush in Iraq is like, a really good example. Like, he's like, genuinely worried that Saddam Hussein controls too much of like, the world's oil supply, like, that's, and his father had been worried about that too. But what's the concern? Like, Saddam Hussein will sell oil to the United States. What's the point of having oil? It's so that you can sell it. And like, if one country won't sell it, other countries will, it's a global market, and there's like, a global price. So I sometimes wonder if both left-wing critics and people like Trump, who are like, doing this all about the oil, I'm like, I think you would just be okay just letting other countries sell you the oil, you would have less control, you would have to negotiate

• 37:16Speaker 04

  more with foreigners, but ultimately, all you've gotten with all your like, you know, weird alliance with Saudi Arabia, and your like, you know, intermittent bombings and invasions in the Middle East, all you've gotten is the right to buy a lot of oil at the global market price. And like, it just feels kind of useless to me.

• 37:36Alec Baldwin?

  Historian, author, and professor Daniel Imrovar. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend, and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Imrovar talks about the existential threat of climate change, and how war distracts us from dealing with it.

• 38:38Speaker 06

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 39:06Speaker 07

  Whether you're buying, renting, or selling, Zillow can help make your someday today to help find a home that fits where you are in life, or that apartment that's a little closer to where you want to be. Zillow has the right information, tools, and support to help turn your future home into a reality, because someday starts today. Visit zillow.com/today to get started. Hola a todos. Soy Jamie Lynn Sigler. Cuando me diagnosticaron tenía 20 tantos años y todo mi mundo cambió por completo. Pero con el tiempo decidí que no iba a permitir que eso frenara mi vida. Quise tomar las riendas y después de hablar con mi médico sobre mis opciones, la elección

• 39:51Speaker 07

  para mí fue obvia. Boom, eso es KISSIMTA. Obtenga más información sobre KISSIMTA o FOTUMA MAP en kissimta.com.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  Breathe in and reset with Lincoln Rejuvenate, an available multisensory feature in the 2027 Lincoln Navigator SUV. Experience the luxurious massage, visuals, and sense to help you relax in the driver's seat. It's your time for a reset. Visit lincoln.com to learn more. Lincoln Rejuvenate does not operate unless the vehicle is in park. When the vehicle is off, or if any doors open, do not use the feature in a closed garage or in other enclosed areas. See owner's manual for important operating instructions. Lincoln and Navigator are trademarks of Ford or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

• 40:35Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. Daniel Immerwahr's studies on globalization are being rewritten almost on a daily basis. Donald Trump has threatened to annex Greenland and claims he would take Cuba at any time. Historically, Cuba has been the subject of conversations around annexing territories since the 1700s. I was curious what Daniel's thoughts were on the United States annexing new territories and why he thinks Cuba has not been made a part of the United States by now.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  There's been so many moments when that was a maybe. You know, at the start, Thomas Jefferson, when he imagined, he imagined that the United States would expand because it was much smaller then than it is now. And he was mainly interested in Cuba. Like, he wasn't, he wasn't imagining California. He was thinking about Cuba. And there's been a few moments when, I mean, it's, it's, it's right there. It's this like rich Caribbean territory. It's so close to the United States, 90 miles off of Florida. So there's been a lot of moments when presidents have either felt just like deeply vexed by Cuba or a desire to, to claim it. There was a, the United States in 1898 fought a war with Spain where it looked like the United States was going to claim Cuba, but anti-imperialists in the country did something

• 41:47Speaker 04

  really interesting, which is that they passed a law before the war in Congress. And they said, okay, I hear everyone's talking about, we have to have a war for liberation. We're going to liberate all these colonies from the Spanish Empire. The law is this war cannot end with you annexing Cuba. And so, so the United States ended up annexing Puerto Rico and the Philippines and Guam, and then like rolling.

• 42:09Alec Baldwin?

  I'll show you.

• 42:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, it's weird, but the one place that they couldn't take by law was Cuba.

• 42:14Alec Baldwin?

  I didn't know that.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  And what the United States did was they occupied Cuba and then they just got like such a compliant government that it was as if Cuba was.

• 42:23Alec Baldwin?

  Compliant government when? Batista?

• 42:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, Batista was the last, and that's, that's why there was a revolution. And then Cuba became like the biggest, you know, the largest thorn in the US side.

• 42:36Alec Baldwin?

  I've seen the Godfather part two.

• 42:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's a good depiction.

• 42:42Alec Baldwin?

  Right. The reason I mention that about Cuba is because I, I feel like where Russia is at right now as a country, when I try to measure just in an armchair way, just out of boredom, the differences between China and Russia, that China has a real economy. That's come on the back of some horrible policies and very anti-human rights policies, but China has a real economy and Russia doesn't really have a real economy. Russia's a mess. Russia brutalizes people. They can't get a job. They can't get enough food. It's an oligarchy. A lot of people have gotten rich off the privatization of a lot of things there. They can't win a war against Ukraine. They're not winning. And who knows who to believe in the, in the press. I feel like Russia's really on the ropes right now and they're a mess. And if the United States were going to take over Cuba, that might be the time. I don't think Russia's going to do a thing about it.

• 43:27Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh, no. I mean, I think that both Russia and China are in favor of these annexationist moves. Because right now, they were up until Trump, there had been a sort of global sense of rules, which is you can't just take over another country. And if you do that, we're all going to get very upset. And then like, maybe we'll use NATO to stop you and like, it'll, it'll be a thing. And Russia was like, well, we very much would like to take over another country and maybe we'll try to do that. And if you remember when Putin launched the war, what a sense of like, are we going to allow this to stand? Like, like, will, will this be allowed to happen? And, and I think what Trump has done a lot is degraded that norm.

• 44:12Speaker 04

  And I think from a Chinese perspective, they're like, great, great, because we also want to take Taiwan. So like, like in some ways.

• 44:20Alec Baldwin?

  You think we're going to take Taiwan?

• 44:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, China will.

• 44:22Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, China will.

• 44:23Speaker 04

  It's, I don't know. And it's actually, I think it's, I think it's way more, I think it's way trickier than you would imagine.

• 44:28Alec Baldwin?

  Sure.

• 44:29Speaker 04

  But yeah, in some ways, there's this kind of like Putin, Xi, Trump axis of like, maybe we didn't like the old rules and maybe we're all kind of a little emboldened by what everyone else in this axis does, because collectively we are pointing toward a world where we're allowed to take the territories that we would very much like to have.

• 44:48Alec Baldwin?

  I see Gaza, I see Ukraine. I say to myself, I watched the heat dome moving over the United States now, or whatever was in Europe. And I say to myself, does war cause climate change?

• 45:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:01Alec Baldwin?

  What contribution does war itself, the burning of all this material on and on and on, 24 hours a day, this stuff, just burning on and on with the plastics and so forth? You hear people talk about, we can't go back to our homes in the Palisades because of the contamination of the soil. There's toxins in the soil which may not be able to be remediated at all. It might cost some ungodly amount of money to take off a layer of soil and replace it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you think, well, God, what's going on over in the Russian-Ukraine war?

• 45:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:32Alec Baldwin?

  How, how many square miles, thousands of square miles have been toxified by those kinds of fires as well?

• 45:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, just for me, I don't know why this is the thing that always just sets my mind agog, but just thinking about the bottled water budget of the US military. Like, the US military does a lot of, I mean, the US military is one of the worst, like, environmental perpetrators.

• 45:56Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  Right? It's just because it's just flying stuff all over the planet. It's so large, so infrastructural and, and you know, just like half, not half, I'm totally exaggerating this, but like, you know, a not insignificant part of what they do is just like keeping people hydrated on various parts of the country just by flying like just pallet after pallet of like bottled water and plastic bottles like over to, to our brave soldiers. And you're just like, this, this is crazy. And, okay, so there's two things. One is war itself is really environmentally destructive, both the like logistical aspect, but then also the like.

• 46:26Alec Baldwin?

  War needs to be a war crime.

• 46:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then war just makes the other stuff impossible. I mean, I regard climate change as an existential threat. And I think like, the more distance we have from it, the more we're just going to look back and we're like, that was the main story. That was the headline. That should have been the headline every day. And you see it happen, like how just the like start of like, maybe we can work on this issue, even though it's way too late and like we can do something. All of that gets blown out of the water by these wars. And suddenly the countries that need to be cooperating aren't cooperating and there's other things going on. Yeah, you're right.

• 47:02Alec Baldwin?

  You have a new book you're working on. Is it finished yet or you're still working on your new book?

• 47:06Speaker 04

  Just finishing it up.

• 47:07Alec Baldwin?

  Okay. And what's the title of the book?

• 47:09Speaker 04

  This Too Shall Burn: America in the Age of Wood.

• 47:13Alec Baldwin?

  And what is the historical period of time that you call the age of wood? That's from when to when?

• 47:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, so it starts with the earliest English colonization. So like Jamestown and even the stuff before Jamestown. And then it ends when the United States starts, stops using wood so predominantly, so about World War I.

• 47:32Alec Baldwin?

  And they switch to coal.

• 47:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, it's, it's, they switch to coal and to gas for, yeah, and oil for energy. But then also they switch away from wood for building. I mean, like, it used to be that everything was made out of wood.

• 47:44Alec Baldwin?

  But still is, isn't it?

• 47:46Speaker 04

  Not the way it used to be.

• 47:47Alec Baldwin?

  In this country, it's not in construction? I would have, everywhere I look, it's a wooden frame.

• 47:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you see, you have a lot of that. The wood is much more treated and then it's much more interspersed with other materials. It just used to be that like the whole city would be made out of wood.

• 47:59Alec Baldwin?

  Wow.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  And the thesis, which I know it's complicated, but I believe your listeners can follow me, is that as a result, all the cities were burning down all the time.

• 48:08Alec Baldwin?

  I didn't know that.

• 48:09Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm in Chicago. We're famous for our great fire. But like, you're in New York, you had another, you had a great fire in 1835. Like, every city had a great fire. Like, they all, there's, every tour guide has like some like, oh yeah, the time it all burned down as part of their spiel. And it's just kind of amazing.

• 48:25Alec Baldwin?

  Well, obviously, and you can help me with this, because my understanding from years ago was of course, the industry, the construction industry, particularly the home construction industry, because it's not like we make skyscrapers out of wood, they're made of steel or whatever.

• 48:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:38Alec Baldwin?

  And in the way that residential construction was predominantly wood, was, it was easier to correct your mistakes.

• 48:44Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:44Alec Baldwin?

  You know, if you, if you, if you cut the board the wrong way, you just threw it in that pile over there and cut another board.

• 48:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:49Alec Baldwin?

  Unlike how, unlike the labor and time intensive cutting of stone, for example.

• 48:53Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Wood is, wood is forgiving. It's easy. It was cheap. There's so many good reasons to use it, except.

• 48:59Alec Baldwin?

  You say it's going down.

• 49:01Speaker 04

  I mean, just in the sense of like, in the 19th century, everything was built out of wood.

• 49:04Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 49:05Speaker 04

  And in the 20th century, they're like, okay, we're going to use more brick, we're going to use stone, we're going to use concrete, that kind of stuff.

• 49:09Alec Baldwin?

  What made you decide you wanted to do a book about this?

• 49:13Speaker 04

  It's global warming. I mean, so if, one way that you could phrase this is you could say, we use fossil fuels for everything, not only as fuel, but they're precursors for plastic. So like, all this stuff around us is somehow from fossil fuels. And that's made everything incredibly cheap and awesome. Like, like our world is just subsidized in lovely ways by fossil fuel. But it's hard to say that out loud because you also have to think the other thing, but it's been incredibly environmentally destructive.

• 49:43Alec Baldwin?

  Horrible.

• 49:43Speaker 04

  And we're about to get walloped by it, right? So we have this weird dance that we've done with like the things that have. Guaranteed our prosperity are also like the form of our peril. And that relationship held in America and the United States between wood and fire. Like they, wood was their everything. Like this country was the Saudi Arabia of timber. They just had like more trees than anyone. They were just building everything out of wood. And they knew the problem with it was that everything was constantly catching on fire. And so it's like a couple of centuries of Americans thinking through the kind of problem that we're thinking through now.

• 50:19Alec Baldwin?

  What's the thing in public policy, among many, I've no doubt. What's one of the changes you would invoke in terms of public policy in the United States? What would you change if you were in office tomorrow?

• 50:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I think you've gathered that I am a climate change monomaniac. So it would be all the Green New Deal stuff, right? Like, we just need to like plunge, basically everything we're spending on military stuff, we need to plunge into energy transition and we need to have done it yesterday.

• 50:46Alec Baldwin?

  My thanks to historian, author, and professor Daniel Imrevar. This episode was recorded at Monk Music in East Hampton, New York. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeese, and Victoria DeMartin. Our engineer is Isaac Kaplan-Wulner. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.

• 51:29Speaker 07

  Okay, laundry stinks, literally. I mean, you could just keep buying new underwear. Not that I've ever done that. Or maybe sort your clothes into piles based on how re-wearable or filthy they are? Or just use Arm & Hammer Deep Clean. It's made for real life stinks and stains. So even if you don't do laundry the quote, "right way," Deep Clean will knock it out. I mean, it is from the number one liquid detergent brand that tackles more loads than any other. Come clean with Arm & Hammer Deep Clean. Number one claim based on total wash loads sold. This week on Game Recognized Game with Breonna Stewart and me, Miles Turner. We talk with two-time WNBA All-Star and current ESPN analyst, Janae Agumike,

• 52:13Speaker 07

  about tearing her Achilles tendon while playing in China and how a deep connection with her sister, Nekka, helped the recovery process. Nekka claims to have felt something while she was sleeping and that's why she was up when I called. And I was like, oh my gosh, Nekka, I'm hurt. And I think this is a problem. Listen to Game Recognized Game with Stewart and Miles on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 52:36Speaker 07

  What's that? My fresh detector. Uh, your what? There it is. What is it detecting? Fresh produce? Fresh meat? Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 52:50Speaker 07

  Apparently, we celebrate. At Food Lion, you can count on fresh food at fresher prices when your fresh detector is going off. Head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com. Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Uwanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisi DiGiulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 53:35Speaker 03

  Wise is the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the globe. If you've ever sent money internationally using a traditional bank, there's a good chance you've paid more than you realized. Hidden fees, exchange rate markups, and extra charges can quietly add up before your money even arrives. There's a better way. Try Wise. Wise uses the exchange rate you'd usually find on Google, helping you avoid the unwelcome surprises that often come with international transfers. Whether you're sending money to family overseas, spending while on your holiday abroad, or paying bills across borders, Wise makes moving money simple, transparent, and straightforward. Wise offers 24/7 customer service and runs over 7 million daily checks to spot and stop fraud.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  And most transfers happen in under 20 seconds, which means your money arrives in less time than you've been listening to me. Join millions, saving billions. Be smart. Get Wise. Visit wise.com or download the Wise app today. T's and C's apply.

• 54:35Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.