The Realignment: Expanded Q&A Answers, the Legacy of Afghanistan + Are Sanctions on Russia Working?
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Welcome Back to The Realignment
Thanks for checking out The Realignment’s Substack newsletter.
If you’re new, hit subscribe to get future issues in your inbox every *Friday*.
Hope everyone had a good week. On my end, Aaron Visser’s back from working at camp this summer, so if you notice the quality of my questions/research improve, you know who to thank. Aaron returning also gives me the opportunity to focus more on big-picture aspects of the show, especially as we near the end of summer. Comment below if you have any thoughts on topics/issues we should focus our attention on.
As the Trump FBI case continues to evolve, I’m thankful that Saagar and I decided to hold the topic for our discussion episode until next week. No matter how the story ends, a lot of folks really miscalculated by dropping “takes” on the FBI, Trump, and everything in between before more information was available. As a person who primarily interviews and has just gotten into punditry with our discussion episodes, the worst part about being a talking head is the reflexive need to comment on *everything* without any deep information or perspective.
Aside from my interviews on Afghanistan and Russia sanctions, Saagar and I released another edition of our subscriber-only Q&A.
Subscribers to our Supercast have the ability to submit questions to our AMA section. Saagar and I answer the questions on air. Reminder, you can subscribe to our Supercast here if you’d like to submit your own questions.
This week, we answered two questions that I’d like to quickly follow-up on, especially if non-subscribers did not see them:
Advice for 17-18 Year Olds
Question: What advice would you give to 17 and 18 year olds, who will be entering adulthood in 2023-2024? What do you think is the biggest danger to them, hidden or open, that they will face, in young adulthood?
Answer: The #1 piece of advice I would give to a senior in high school is to recognize that the world-views and assumptions of your seniors were shaped under conditions that no longer exist. Act accordingly.
That isn’t to say that received wisdom and advice are necessarily wrong, just that so many of our mental models for thinking about our lives, personal or otherwise, should be revisited.
It would be just as much of a mistake to become overly contrarian and assume that *everything* one hears from elders, “the establishment,” “the MSM,” and other unfashionable sources is wrong. One of the criticisms of any of our shows that annoys me the most is “This sounds just like CNN. I came here for something else.” This should go without saying, but sometimes CNN is right. One should strive to be able to call balls and strikes from a position of intellectual honesty.My #2 piece of advice is to internalize the fact that you truly have access to more information/knowledge than anyone in history, across countless formats that fit your personal learning style. For example, I’ve got a more than decent case of undiagnosed ADHD. Reading takes a lot of concentration and focus. Discovering audiobooks was a game changer. Listening to multiple audiobooks while I work out, go for a morning walk, and do busywork/household chores, I’m able to listen/read three to four books a week when combined with around 50-100 pages a day of hardcopy reading.
Maybe you like podcasts or YouTube lectures better? Pick whatever’s best for you. I didn’t get serious about self-directed learning until way after high school/college, where my academic performance really wasn’t up to snuff. Still, the difference the past few years has made is incredible. The longer I do this, the more I realize that most people (even experts/talking heads) really don’t do the reading. Doing so at an early age is a 10x opportunity.
To sum up, I would recommend that a 17-18 year old set a goal of one paper book (50 pages a day) and one audio book (1 hour of listening at 1.5x speed) a week. Even if you only hit 50% of that goal, you’ll still graduate college (or whatever you choose do do instead) at 22 having read/listened to more than 200 books. I guarantee you’ll be more than equipped given that rate.
Good news that fits into the theme of access to information: even if you can’t afford an Audible account to listen to an audiobook a week (though the service has lots of great free/included books on it separate from the credits), your local library likely has a free catalog of books.
How to Ask Good Questions
Question: Marshall, following you on the Realignment and Counterbalance, I admire and never cease to be impressed by your question asking. I am guilty of giving a fist pump every time the guest says something along the line of “that’s a great question”, “I’ve never thought of it like that”, or “I am really glad you asked that”, etc. Thus, my question for you is: what is your process for conjuring up questions? I imagine that a lot of it has to do with your skill of active listening, but can you share or provide any tricks or tips that have helped you become a better interviewer/host?
Answer: I took a little too long to answer this question on the Q&A yesterday, so I’d like to provide a more succinct response:
Don’t just actively listen to your guest. Make sure you’re actually interested in speaking with them. Even in the case of the more boring/unengaged guests, I always remind myself that it’s *crazy* that the internet lets me get paid to ask people questions about important topics. So no matter what, it’s easy to be engaged. The next step is to turn that active interest into follow up questions. The biggest flaw of most interviewers (professional or otherwise) is that they write out a list of questions and just go down the sheet in order.
I once interviewed Jason Calacanis of the All-In Podcast, and he said that the ideal interviewer is able to conduct an hour-long conversation without any notes because they’re so engaged and able to build on what has been said so far. I’m not there yet, but that’s a good goal to set.
This Week’s Subscriber-Only Episode
If you’d like to get access to Saagar and my full Q&A episode and submit your own questions at our AMA page, subscribe to our paid Supercast below:
This Week’s Free Episodes
274 | Franek Sokolowski & Wiktor Babinski: How Sanctions Are Crippling Russia
(AUDIO)
Link to their paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4167193
273 | Elliot Ackerman: Reckoning with America's End in Afghanistan
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Love the show and interesting guests. Can you guys bring on Dr McWhorter or Loury to discuss a conservatives view on race relations in America?
Also, I'd love to see a discussion w you two and Dr J Peterson on the current climate particularly on the intersection of religion and poltiics?
Almost every strength they listed for Europe, can easily be reversed in Russias. Who shares borders with multiple countries, two of which have the largest populations, that dwarfs Europe? India is buying and reselling Russian oil to us as if it’s some sick joke. The ruble is stronger now than before the war. Everything is worst in the west since we “took action”, ya shit sucks in Russia, but this is BS how bad our supply chain is. Which will only get worse very soon.
China and Russia have a plan for a future with less western influence and we were completely blindsided because our leaders were not prepared. The Global economy as we knew it before covid, is dead. We’ve got the noose, now it's time to hang ourselves, as the prophecy foretold.