Month: February 2025

Is America’s place in the world at a crossroads? The New York Times’ Michael D. Shear returns to unpack the first two weeks of Trump's second term and the domestic and international response to an emboldened executive branch wielding unprecedented power.

Ravi and Michael first review the administration’s high-stakes opening moves, from sweeping tariffs to an immigration crackdown, and discuss how a GOP-controlled Congress could enable some of Trump’s most aggressive policies yet. They also examine the Biden administration’s final days and the evolving dynamic between Trump and Obama.

Finally, they turn to the international fallout: Mexico has already deployed troops, Canada is preparing economic retaliation, and China is purported to be weighing its response to an economic showdown, all while Europe braces for its own clash with Washington. Is this a strategic reindustrialization effort or a political gamble with global consequences? With world leaders recalibrating their approach to a more focused and forceful Trump, Ravi and Michael discuss whether we’ve entered a new era of uncertainty.

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Notes from this episode are available on Substack: https://thelostdebate.substack.com/

Lost Debate is available on the following platforms: 

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Did you know that Joseph Stalin could sing with perfect pitch? Or that he was so scared of his wife that he would hide from her in the bathroom? Did you know that Peter the Great liked to surround himself with naked dwarfs? Did you know that Catherine the Great—long smeared as a nymphomaniac—was actually a lovelorn monogamist? Or that King Herod’s genitals once exploded with maggots?

Most historians bore you with dry accounts of battles and treaties, and it’s hard to remember any of it. But not Simon Sebag Montefiore, who writes 900 pages that you cannot put down.

Sebag is one of the most important historians alive today. His many books, like Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, The Romanovs, and Catherine the Great & Potemkin are essential to understanding power, politics, revolution, dictatorships, and above all, human nature.

While most of Sebag’s books are biographies of people, Jerusalem is a biography of a city—a city, as he writes, that is “the house of the one God, the capital of two peoples, the temple of three religions, and the only city to exist twice in heaven and on earth.” The book takes you through Jerusalem’s 3,000-year history, from King David to Bibi Netanyahu. It is a must-read. It has sold more than a million copies, and it has just been reissued in paperback.

With the ceasefire deal underway in Israel and with Trump a few weeks into his second presidency, we could not think of a better person to talk to than Simon about this moment and how to understand it. 

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