You're gonna need a bigger boat. Welcome back to GoodFellows, a Hoover Institution broadcast examining social, economic, political, and geopolitical concerns. I'm Bill Whalen. I'm a Hoover Distinguished Policy Fellow. I'll be your moderator today, joined by a full complement of GoodFellows.
The historian, Niall Ferguson, the economist, John Cochrane, our presidential national security advisor, geo strategist, Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, Niall, John and H. R. are all Hoover's senior fellows. So gentlemen, this is a very abbreviated version of good fellows. This is a snack, if you will, to tide over our viewers until you're back in your full glory in mid July, and we're going to focus on one thing in our limited time today, and that is the good old summertime.
So let's start the show with an easy question for the three of you. What are your summertime priorities in terms of work, research, and writing? Niall, is it the Kissinger book? Yes, I Plow on with the hardest book I've written in my career, my magnum opus, Volume 2 of The Life of Kissinger, and I look forward to those relatively quiet summer days when there are not too many calls, emails, and episodes of GoodFellows to record. Ay ay ay H. R. McMaster, you got a book coming out.
Are you getting ready for your book tour, or what are you prepping for this summer? We have an international seminar, which is fantastic here. We bring together mid level officials from like minded countries around the world and have a one week plus fantastic program at Hoover. And then I'll be recording the audiobook, so I'll get a jumpstart on getting tired of hearing my own voice. And and then of course, I'll be trying to write a little bit on the side.
I'd like to write an essay about about the fallacy of deescalation or escalation control or war management. So that's the project I have in mind for June, July. Great idea. And de escalation, I think, is a word that should be deleted from the American political lexicon. And good luck with the audiobook. People don't realize how awful it is to be in a tiny little sound studio, listening to your own prose, and spotting the mistakes that you missed when you corrected the proof. Who wrote that?
Who wrote that run on sentence? Yeah. I feel your pain, HR. I feel your pain. I remember doing the show when Niall was doing that for the book Doom and he was not of good cheer on those days. But John, in addition to Grumpy Economist blogging, what are you up to this summer? Oh boy, a full plate, which is going to be made harder by summer activities. I just signed a contract to deliver with co authors a book on the Euro in July 1st. Gotta get done.
I have a long running book project to put all the grumpy economists in one place. That's going to be hard. Plus ongoing smaller projects on, on, finally getting physical theory, the price level to work better. And if I have any time, I wanted to put some time into learning how to use AI this summer. My buddies who are doing it are reporting very interesting results. Gotta learn that new technology. So there's some of the many plans. John, is this the best of the four seasons? Yes. Why?
Early summer is my favorite season. And of course, now that I live in California, all the seasons are wonderful. But early summer the outdoors and the light, especially. H. R.? Yeah it's one of my favorites. I love the fall too, though. But hey, it's all, it's always nice in California. A lot of powder boarding. opportunities. Niall? Oh, spring is the best season.
The awful thing about summer is this sense that it's finite and we used to have a competition, it's a very Scottish kind of competition, to see who would be the first person in the summer to say the following words. The Knights of Fear drawing in, and if you can get that in before anybody else in our family, you win. But that's the sense I always get in summer, at any moment somebody is going to say the Knights of Fear drawing in, whereas with spring, you have summer still to come.
I'm almost, I'm worried that spring might soon be over, it's so warm in London right now. All right, Niall, tell me one thing that the Ferguson clan is doing this summer. One thing, very fun. One thing, very cool. One thing, very different. We've been spending a lot of time in the UK this academic year. And so our summer will be an American one. And Thomas Campbell are excited about this because they have missed certain aspects of their American life.
So there'll be a Montana segment and then an East coast segment. So we'll have stakes in Montana followed by the best striped bass that the Eastern Seaboard has to offer an all American summer, that's what I've promised them. And H. R., your family gathers, what, to watch you paddleboard? What is your family up to this summer? Hey we have six, we, we're blessed with six grandkids, and so it's just so darn fun.
And they're all bursting out with, their personalities and and it's just, and they're at a, at an age now where you can throw the ball and they're doing t ball and soccer. And what we're, my, my wife and I like to have like our grandkid camp in the summer and have them over as much as possible. John, is this your first summer, John, with a grandkid? Yes. So we're, we have a one year old grandchild now with us.
So a lot of the summer will consist of admiring the granddaughter visits from our grown children and my many outdoor crazy outdoor activities. Okay, John, last 4th of July, you and I got to see Niall Ferguson work a grill and what a sight that was. You could. You can see the man was truly Americanized. The man knows his meat. What, John, what's your favorite summertime food? I love a good grill. I love a good fresh homemade pasta by Beth. I'll take that any time of the year. Fresh fruits.
There's nothing like a really good peach. The last thing that's really seasonal in the U. S. is really good peaches. HR, what's your favorite summertime libation? Oh, summertime libation, gosh, I like a, a nice pinot noir any time of year. So I think that, that might be it. That might be it. But I will say my favorite summertime food now is my son in law's barbecue. One of the great things about Sons in Law is I've now outsourced all of my duties to, to to them.
And I can just watch them grill and then enjoy the result. Niall, do you still barbecue in the UK? And I'm curious to what you'll be doing on the 4th of July, because you do have an election that day in the UK. Do people celebrate the 4th of July in the UK or would have to go to the American embassy to celebrate the red, white, and blue? Or is it just something we don't talk about?
You certainly won't have any celebrations on this 4th of July we'll all be bracing ourselves for a Labour government for the first time since 2010 when Gordon Brown was the last Labour Prime Minister. July 4th happens amongst Americans, there's always American celebrations in London, but you won't be surprised to hear that it's not regarded as a, day of celebration by the Brits.
After all, it was a fairly major failure of imperial governance that led to the success of the rebellion by the so called patriots. Now, I can't say any of that. I'm an American. And in fact, it's going to be slightly odd. to be in the UK on July 4th after last year's All American celebration. This is the sort of curious ambivalence of the transatlantic life. I love both these countries. I'm a citizen of both these countries. I I glory in all of their qualities.
I won't hear either of them run down, as is Too often the case these days, so I'll quietly celebrate July 4th as an American and probably commiserate with my fellow conservatives as a Brit. Niall, summertime reading you'd like to recommend? Short stories. I've been encouraging my son Thomas to delve into some of the great short story writers because I remember as a boy always finding that somehow summer lent itself to the sprint rather than the marathon. read.
And there are some absolutely wonderful short story writers that people at the age of 12 can discover. Conan Doyle, you can read the Sherlock Holmes stories for the first time to give just one example. Yes, this is the time to dust down Chekhov short stories, much underrated, fantastically high quality. And I could go on, but I'll stop there. John. If you want fiction I have to recommend a duo monstrous beauty and plus one by this author.
I've just discovered Elizabeth Fama, just fantastic young adult fiction, very literary young adult fiction, and very readable by adults with some subtle libertarian themes in there. Nonfiction topping my list right now is Glenn Lowry's autobiography the most interesting life of any economist I know. H.R? So I, I mentioned on the last show, I mentioned Rick Atkinson's great work trilogy on, on World War II.
And I've rewarded myself for getting this darn book done by reading the first volume of his history of the revolution. And so long the themes of of July 4th, I, the British are coming as the first volume. It's exceptionally, like everything that Atkinson does, it's exceptionally well written. He moves from the tactical to the strategic level and and he moves, between London and Philadelphia and Massachusetts and all the great battles. It's Fanta it's fantastic.
But I thought they said the red coats are coming because at that point they were all British . I know. It's, may not be the most accurate title, but it's a great, it's a, it's part of the liberation trilogy. The liberation shows from World War II. And and this is called the Revolution Trilogy. And and the first volumes of British are coming. It's fantastic.
I have my eye on Hampton size, a book, the wide sea, which chronicles a captain Cook's last voyage in the Pacific ocean, but Niall, I live in great fear that it's going to end up into an angry rant against colonial imperialism. That would be par for the course these days. It's it's almost required at any British museum, no matter what the contents of the museum, that there be an abject apology for the wickedness of of the imperial age.
And we've written out of the national script that rather a lot of good things were done. And my good friend at Oxford, Nigel Biggar, has just fired a ferocious tirade at one of the Scottish museums where, as he points out, no mention is made of the efforts that were made by Britain. to end the slave trade and end slavery in the 19th century.
And this is a kind of extraordinary myopic reading of history that I think it vexes me more and more to see these slanted and skewed accounts of history, particularly as I see them being presented to the public and to school children in museums. It's wrong. And just to emphasize, they not only ended the slave trade, they forced ending of slavery on countries that wanted to keep it very desperately. Now it is possible to watch television and learn a few things.
Is there anything the three of you would like to recommend in terms of streaming content? Let me throw three at you. Two are on Apple TV right now. There is the mini series Franklin with Michael Douglas. Once you get past the idea of him going into Gordon Gekko mode, it's a single look at Benjamin Franklin's life in Paris. Also there's a series on Apple TV called The Big Cigar, which is about Hollywood producers trying to get the Black Panther, Huey Newton, to Cuba.
It's just, it's a good look at California in the 60s and 70s. I'm a sucker for those. And then the other I'd recommend, it's on Amazon Prime right now. It's a TV adaptation of the book A Gentleman in Moscow. I haven't turned on a TV in six months, so I can't help you. You've just exposed that the Goodfellows have more or less walked away from television and are now, of an evening.
It's it's, what I would rather do is read one of Trollope's novels just to get you into the spirit of my extreme old age. Television? Who the hell reads it? Yeah, I spend my evenings trying to catch up on the day's 120 emails and stay awake while I'm doing it. HR, I'm out here on a limb as the lone vidiot on the show. Can you help me or am I just a lost cause? I don't know. It's so funny. Whenever I watch TV, I just, my mind is turned off.
So I almost immediately forget whatever the heck I watched, but I do like it. I'll tell you what, I've enjoyed a lot of these concepts of streaming shows and they mostly have about 90 minutes of content and then they spread it out over show after show. We get to the point already. Okay, point taken.
Any summertime movies you'd like to recommend and I could define summertime movies in two ways one A blockbuster movie that came out in the summer that you found particularly compelling or a movie that has a summertime background to it So for example, I would point you to the movie jaws, which is about life on a massachusetts beach which today's generation by the way would not stand for because I think You have to wait about an hour 20 minutes into
the movie to see the damn shark Today's day and age your kid would want the shark to come out leaving at you in 3d in a minute and 20 seconds Niall? It's a very bad idea to watch the film Jaws if you plan to go swimming in the sea as I do. Yes. Because no matter how often you tell yourself that the probability of being eaten by a great white shark off the coast of the northeast of the United States is quite small it's in your mind.
And you can't swim, you swim a bit faster, but you don't stay in the water nearly as long, nor do you go as deep as you would. I advise Anybody against watching Jaws, particularly at this time of year, maybe in winter when you're not going swimming, it might be a good idea. But John, wouldn't the Jaws theme be great to play when you're swimming laps in the pool? I thought about Jaws. I actually have seen a shark while windsurfing in the Pacific Ocean. There's one there.
I saw a shark go by and let me tell you, there has never been greater incentive to not fall while on a windsurfer. Watching that fin go by. I thought about this. Again, the problem with our movie recommendations is we show our deep knowledge of 1970s culture. I thought of Jaws, I thought of Endless Summer, the classic Capiche movie, but I decided my identity for 30 years now has been dad.
So I'm going to nominate National Lampoon's Vacation as a light summer movie before the era where all summer movies were superhero action movies. I identify with Chevy Chase trying to get everyone to Wally World. Sorry folks, park's closed. The moose out front should have told you. HR, have you ever done the station wagon trip with the kids? Oh, yeah, we did. We did the minivan trip, with the kids. But, we oftentimes went to battlefields. This is in our in charge.
I'm denied battlefields, ship museums, airplane museums, all the things I want to go to no death. I was once moving some furniture for between our daughter's houses. And I stopped with the moving van at a At Manassas battlefield and our daughter sent out an Instagram picture with hashtag predictable next to the, you all with us, with the the Manassas battlefield behind us. But yeah, I guess for, for summer movies, why not go with Chevy Chase? How about European vacation?
You got to enjoy some good slap dancing in Germany with Chevy Chase. Okay. So I want to record here, if Niall moves back to California, we're going to chip in and get him one of those big 1970s station wagons with the wood paneling on the side. Oh yeah. I always craved one of those. The first time I came to North America, which must've been in the early 1970s, I was astonished by the size of the vehicles, and particularly by the fact that they were made of wood. That I had not expected.
It was a while before I realized it wasn't actually wood, and I'll never understand why the fake wood appeared on the side of those enormous American vehicles, but we certainly did not have them in Glasgow, I can tell you that. HR, then we have to get him a real woody wagon from the 1960s and get him on a paddleboard too, right?
The paddleboarding I've made progress in that particular art, and it is a wonderful form of exercise and a lot less likely to cause you a broken rib than surfing, which I'm now unquestionably way too old for. Yes. Maybe that'll be the GoodFellows Olympics one day. The three of you will go up to Tahoe and you'll we'll have some some windsurfing competition. I'm up for that. That sounds like a great idea.
Paddleboarding is a difficult thing and one should never be filmed on one's first excursion, as the Liberal Democrat leader discovered this very day when he attempted to paddleboard on a lake somewhere in England and came spectacularly to grief. That's the great thing about British politics. There's a sitcom element to it that is largely lacking from American politics. And you really realize after a while that the British public regards politics as a branch of comedy.
There's also the very clever ad the Bush campaign put out in 2004 where they showed John Kerry windsurfing. And they just very cleverly showed him windsurfing in one direction, then the other direction, and then said, where does John Kerry stand? Final question, gentlemen, simply branded him an elitist because it's not exactly a proletarian activity. Wind surfing is a show. Yours is a sitcom. Ours is a reality show. All right, gentlemen, final question. Fill in the blank.
It will be a great summer. If I HR get to spend a lot of time with our grandchildren. John? Yes spend time with the family finish the book on time, and I'm heading off to fly the National Glider Competition up and down the Sierra, so I want to win the National Glider Competition. All right, Niall? Get a majority of my children on a sailboat. And take them sailing, that, that's my main objective, and it's got to be a majority.
I know it won't be all fine, as long as we get a majority, I'll be happy. Okay, and for me the answer would be that I am running a mock summer camp for my four grandnephews ages five to seven, I'm not sure if I'm going to last a week with them, so maybe you'll see me on the next GoodFellows, maybe I'll be in a hospital in South Carolina, stay tuned. Why don't we change it to Oldfellows as a name? It's only a matter of time. Okay, guys, great conversation.
Enjoy the summer and we will see you back here soon. On behalf of my colleagues, Niall Ferguson, H. R. McMaster, John Cochrane, all of us here at the Hoover Institution, we hope you enjoyed this abbreviated show and we'll be back again with a fuller episode of GoodFellows in mid July. Until then, take care. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this show and are interested in watching more content featuring H. R. McMaster, watch Battlegrounds, also available at hoover. org.