Digest 19: Sabotaging peace talks; Druckermiller’s tsunami warning; Robert Caro on semicolons
I’ve been travelling most of the past 10 days (largely ignoring news), but favourite highlights from documentaries and podcasts I managed to get to…
Best bits from Ken Burns’s Vietnam documentary, continued
I’ve now finished all 18 hours.
Here are standout (sobering) clips from episodes 7–10:
- In 1968, Nixon sabotaging peace talks between Lyndon Johnson’s government and both sides in Vietnam.
(Update: video has been blocked by YouTube. Backup link to it here.)
In what ways might U.S. presidential hopefuls try to create back-channels with Zelensky in the run up to the election?
- Corruption that stemmed from U.S. military aid:
- ‘Why are we here?’ Reflections on motivations of being on the ground:
- A political discussion between Kissinger and Nixon on keeping the war going another year or two, to help them get re-elected:
Can one imagine similar conversations being held in the Oval Office today?
Druckermiller on a forthcoming financial tsunami (4 mins):
(Stick with the terrible audio of the question asker for 50 seconds)
And this for 1 min on MBS:
I had not realised MBS is only 37.
David Sacks on the ‘stupid’ sequencing of the budget process (30 seconds):
Jared Kushner on Ukraine (4 mins):
Almost everything Jared says here makes sense to me.
I had never listened to anything of his until a few weeks ago, but going to him direct (versus forming an opinion via media spin), he, to me, talks a lot of sense.
Robert Caro on semicolons:
And from the documentary: he wrote The Power Broker and all his Lyndon Johnson books on a typewriter with two index fingers!
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