Transcription
Today, we are joined by Kenneth Rogoff, who is a chess grandmaster, and somehow that's actually one of the least impressive things about you. You don't see that very often.
"Well, I don't know, but thank you."
Ken is also a professor of economics at Harvard, the former IMF chief economist, and an expert in financial crisis, as well as a book author. So, your book, we have it right here, "Our Dollar, Your Problem." It's talking about the decline of the US dollar, and not in terms of its actual value, although I know you touch upon that, but rather the decline in its global influence as the world's reserve currency and all of the benefits that come around that.
"Yeah. Well, I mean, a lot of the book is about the rise."
"Yeah. And how we beat one competitor after another and how the rest of the world lives with that. The title 'Our Dollar, Your Problem' comes from 19—the 1971, when Nixon was president. Frankly, even most professional economists don't know this, but you used to be able to trade dollars for gold if you were a country."
"You'd have to go back a lot longer. Like, if you went back and had a 1925 note, it actually said 'Payable in gold.' It actually set it on it."
"But oh well, that wasn't true. But for countries, it—and we were the center of the system. We offered to trade it for gold. The other countries had to peg to the dollar. They had to fix their exchange rates. And Nixon, at one point, just said, 'No, I'm not going to do it anymore.' And they were furious because they were holding gazillions of dollars in Treasury bills. They don't actually hold physical dollars. I said, like, 'What are we going to do?' And Nixon sent his Treasury Secretary over there, X—John Connelly, and he said, 'Well, it's our dollar, but your problem.' And what spoke to me about it was the arrogance of it, which I never liked. I—I'm very proud to be an American. I think we're the greatest country in the world, all that. But I don't like that sort of attitude. But also, it's ironic because, actually, it was the biggest screw-up, you know, since maybe recently that we've ever had."
"I actually want to ask you about that. And honestly, maybe we talk about it over a game of chess?"
"Let's go. Go for it."
"No clock."
"When—when's the last time you played a game of chess?"
"I—I—I last played chess. So, we're talking computers, people, anything in 1980, except for one exhibition game in 2012. Blitz game against Magnus. That's it."
"Wait, how young were you when you became a grandmaster?"
"Uh, 22, I guess."
"Wow."
"I mean, which, back then, was young. Very young. I mean, it was different. I think I think I had a higher rating than anyone else, you know, my age in the world, which didn't mean I was going to be better than them."
"But I do have kind of maybe a silly question for what we're talking about earlier. So, the 1970s, President Nixon deps the US dollar from the gold standard. Bretton Woods collapses. You said it was one of the worst policies. It kind of worked well for America, though. How did we get away with that? It's crazy. What gave the US dollar its value if it was no longer pegged to something tangible?"
"Good question. But it worked out really well eventually."
"Okay."
"But terrible in the 1970s. We didn't grow. We had inflation. There was all sorts of volatility. Europe split away from the dollar."
"Uh, it was actually a low point in the dominance of the dollar after World War II. I want to mention this is sort of random, but I was living abroad and when I know how people feel about Trump, I mean, don't have to say—I don't want to get into that, but I felt that way about the way many of my students feel about Trump. That's how I felt about—"
"That's how I felt about Nixon."
"Absolutely. I did. I didn't want to come home when he became president. I said, like, 'Okay, I'm going to stay in Europe.' And but then I had my parents and everything."
"And uh, uh, you know, his, uh, uh, yeah, his going off the gold standard, it, you know, probably we had to do it eventually."
"But he didn't—"
"We didn't—"
"Wait, why did you have to do it eventually?"
"We had to do it eventually because we were not prepared to live within the constraints that it implies. If the dollar is as good as gold, you can't just keep printing them and printing them and printing them and saying it's good as gold."
"And when we say 'it's good as gold,' is it because it's supposed to be the trust in the US economy or in the US as a whole today, or even back then?"
"No, no. Back then, they could trade it for gold. So, there was a little bit of 'Don't do it. We won't tell you if we have enough gold.' I think for a little while it was fragile, but it didn't have to end that. No, what eventually happened today that's uh a very new invention is that, uh, um, boy, I don't—I don't know if I should be doing this, but I am addicted. It's like I'm staring. I mean, maybe I should be staring at you, but I'm staring at the position and I just, you know, can't get it out of my head, you know. So, but I'm trying, trying to go back to, uh, to economics. Eventually, we realized that there was a way to try to make the dollar more trustworthy by having an independent central bank."
"And that's where we stand today, where the central bank, we have the central bank that's—it's not in the Constitution. It's not like the Supreme Court. It's just a creature of Congress where we set it up. They gave it the power over printing money and separated it from the Treasury. So that that was not—UK, Britain didn't have that till 1997. Most countries didn't. It was a novelty. You make it independent because the government's always tempted to print money stuff, and so you pull it out."
"The dollar, you know, originally after World War II, the system was set up that put the dollar at the center."
"Had the European countries, Japan, Canada, but it didn't have a lot of the world. I mean, China was communist, Russia was communist, and they had their own crazy exchange rate systems. Everything was fixed, and they weren't using dollars. India was like that, and lots of the world. And gradually, as they started trading, as they started having financial systems, they needed—how do they trade with each other? How does Ethiopia trade with Sri Lanka?"
"Mhm. Well,"
"You know, there's a Sri Lankan currency, and there's an Ethiopian currency, but they don't even know what it is. I mean, a lot of people, if you show them a dollar bill anywhere in the world, they kind of know what it looks like."
"Mhm."
"Even if you show them, uh, a Canadian dollar, you're—you're from Canada."
"Yeah. Loonies and Tonies, don't forget."
"Show—show a Canadian. I grew up in Rochester, across the border, so I saw a lot of Canadian dollars, but I was—"
"I don't know, you know, if this is real. And they—they use dollars. And so, as China grew, and as Russia grew, especially China, China decided to center on the dollar. I don't want to get into technical details."
"Right."
"But they needed to hold dollars. Everybody was holding dollars. So we colonized the whole world with dollars. And what happened starting about 10 years ago was China, especially, said, 'This isn't working for us,' and started retreating."
"So you talk about how it's really hard for a global currency to go from one to another, and so far, it takes maybe one to two centuries. But it feels like, could this time also be different? From what you said, there's never been such a dominant currency before that's used so everywhere globally, basically."
"So, the concern for Americans is, we have milked this to the max."
"For sure."
"So, there are two ways we've milked it. Sort of a—a simple one is that we all pay lower interest rates than we—it may not—I—I'm not going to ask about your personal finances, but if you've ever borrowed money for a car, or you've ever borrowed money for business, or ever borrowed money for to buy an apartment, you paid a lower interest rate because you live in the States and can borrow in dollars."
"Not crazy lower, but I want to say half a percent. That's a big deal. It's especially for the government. Of $37—owes $37 trillion. So 1% a year is $370 billion in money. But there are other things that are pretty darn important. They're not as easy, exactly, to quantify, but you may be aware that whenever we're angry at somebody, we—at least, you know, now I guess we have more things. We used to put what we call financial sanctions."
"Y—"
"Which is, we won't let you use our banking system. We'll do stuff to you. And that's pretty painful because not only are people using the dollar, they're using our banking system, our financial system. We made it that way. We kind of controlled the rules of the game. It's almost like we set it up. We had so much power."
"Let's go back to me living in—I lived in Sarajevo, you know, when I was, uh, in Bosnia, a teen in, uh, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was in Spain, in the UK, but the most time was in Sarajevo. I was, you know, turning 18. My friends, my older brother were getting drafted. My older brother didn't end up going to war, but a lot of my chess friends that I played chess with all the time went to Vietnam. It ruined their life. Like, I didn't have any of my really good friends die in Vietnam, but I don't know how to say it gently, their brains died. I mean, they got addicted to heroin, which a lot of the troops did because you're so scared, so bored, and they were—they were just never the same again. So, we were sending troops, and we still send troops, but a lot of times we use sanctions now. Yeah. Nobody's talking about sending American troops into Ukraine, or we did send troops into Iraq, but not—and Afghanistan, but not like we used to. So, that's the dollar. And it's not just that we're first, it's that we're everything. So, as the rest of the world pulls back, Europe's working on it, China's working hard at it, and a lot of other countries don't like us, it reduces our ability to do that. And so, it's not that somebody's going to replace us, it's that we've colonized all these territories, and they're reclaiming it somewhat. And we are so dependent on it. I mentioned the really painful thing about military inter—but also interest rates. Uh, it—it will affect our interest rates in, in a time, I'm sure we'll come to it, where we're having trouble balancing our budget."
"Which is actually one of your main points in the book. How it's not so much that there's a better competitor right now, but we're sort of—"
"My move."
"—but we're sort of doing this to ourselves. And you talk a little bit about the very low interest rates. You talk about the debt. You talk about how—"
"The central bank might be a little too independent right now, or the Federal Reserve."
"Do you mind breaking down those three concepts and why those are so bad for the power of the dollar globally?"
"The thing which is definitely happening, it's fraying. China's pulling away. They're not as dollar-centric. They're reducing their dollar holdings, and the rest of Asia is going to do the same. And they're not just using it less, but developing their own financial structure. Not just ways of trading around Asia, but trading with Africa, trading with Latin America. Trading—not happening overnight, but it's happening. And the Europeans want to do the same thing. But what's also a vulnerability is that we have just partied down on the fact that everybody loves the dollar."
"We have—I think if you take all the mountains of debt that all the governments of the world have put out there, just take the advanced, major advanced countries, we are half of it. Us. And we are churning it out like crazy because we've got this idea, you know, 'No one will punish us for it.'"
"So, and our debt has gotten very high. And so, there's concern that we can run into problems with that someday. And I would say, particularly the fact that, um, sorry, my mind's wandering to chess. And I—I stopped thinking about—"
"No, you're good."
"—cha. No, you're good."
"Stop thinking about it."
"Um,"
"It happened to me for a second, too."
"I'm trying to talk about—I—I want to talk about my book."
"Um, there's—there's this, uh, concern that the, the high—when interest rates have gone up, I won't get—but that's something I predicted for and written about for a long time. Historically, you know, they go like that. They've gone up. And when you're the world's biggest debtor, it hurts. Our interest bill has exploded. It's now bigger than our defense budget and set to go up a lot more. And there's no urgent thing that happens, but eventually, and probably fairly quickly—over, quickly is not the word for it, but steadily, interest rates are going to go up because we keep piling up more debt, and your mortgage rate will go up, the car loans will go up, and at some point, that's going to be very hard to stand the heat. That—that's what happens to everybody. So, and then if, on top of that, the rest of the world doesn't want the dollar as much. I'm—I'm sorry to layer all these things on, and it's a layered topic. I think it's good that you—"
"Please repeat it to me because I'm just, you know, I'm so in the weeds. If, on top of that, the rest of the world's pulling away from us, that pushes up interest rates a little more. And you—I don't know what'll happen, but how much tolerance will the government have—Trump, or if Harris had won, Harris—for letting interest rates go up? And that's when things come to a head. And I'll finally say, you don't—you don't just have a crisis out of the blue. You tend to have a crisis when you're not really figuring things out and something bad happens, you get caught on your back foot."
"That hasn't happened yet."
"I mean, Jane, the pandemic, the financial crisis."
"So, your book, despite the title, is not actually alarmist. You're not saying that the dollar is disappearing right now, but just that the decline has started. We're at the start of the decline. If you're an average American reading your book, what do you do with this information?"
"Well, I think we're vulnerable. So, I think, you know, there's this period where the—the, we call it US exceptionalism, where, uh, um—"
"You can finish your point, then come to the chess. I see you. I see you looking already."
"Don't do this to me. Um, we—we think of US exceptional—you're really seeing what's wrong with me. Uh, US exceptionalism, were, uh, if you go back to 2000, uh, around late 1990s, Europe was the same size as the United States. It was equally important. Nobody imagined it would get left in the dust."
"Uh, if you go back to 1990, Japan was ahead of them. And by the way, the European stock market was worth the same as the United States stock market. Going back to 1990, I—I lived in Japan at that time. Their stock market was worth more than our stock market was worth. Their housing was worth more. And then just especially over the last 20 years, we have just left the world in the dust. So, there are lots of measures of this. I mean, some of it's great, but some of it's just, you know, people are just think we're that exceptional. And I think the process of sort of coming back to earth, which might involve other countries doing better, but what I—what I—I sort of see a period where, uh, the rest of the world's going to be catching up. So, you ask, what does it mean to us? I think you'll see it most dramatically when we have another crisis. I don't—I don't know what it's going to be. It's very hard. A pandemic."
"Is there anything people can do to prepare for it?"
"There's not a lot you can do to prepare for it. It's like a short answer. Uh, okay. You can think about—I—I would say the main thing to do is stay calm. No, no, it's true. I—I—it's—when you play chess and you make a blunder, the most important thing to do is just look at the position the way—not say, 'Ah, if I'd done something different, it would be, you know, if I just pulled my money out of the stock market last week, it would be better.' You just don't do that. You just kind of think calmly. And I think a thing that really good players are able to do."
"Everybody makes mistakes. Even Magnus makes blunders. I think he makes less than other humans."
"But he makes blunders. And just to step back, I'd say the same thing. By the way, when you lose, it's very easy to just lose your nerve. 'I'm no good and everything.' It's—and you—you—you have to stay calm. And I think that's the most important thing."
"But I would say, you know, there's a case for diversification. Some, uh, so that can mean real estate, uh, can mean holding crypto. You know, you asked—it can mean holding foreign assets."
"Do you hold any crypto?"
"I don't. Uh, and none at all. No, not at all. Because I write about regulating, and I have a sad story to tell about that, which is—"
"My amazing daughter, Juliana, who's, uh, about to turn 27 very, very shortly. Uh, when she was 12, I think, how do—Bitcoin? She figured out how to mine it. Remember back—no, but back in the day, I—I don't want to—"
"She is great, but back in the day, they—the problems were easy. Like, the whole way Bitcoin's designed is that the—and I—I'm not going to pretend like I understand it, and probably have friends who understand it better, but they make it so that the problems you have to solve get harder and harder."
"So, she actually reached having 25 Bitcoin, which would be $2.5 million. Yeah. I think Bitcoin hit 110K yesterday."
"Okay, that's then getting closer to $3 million."
"Yeah. And, uh, so it's 2012, I think, and maybe late 2012. And she says, 'Dad, I have 25 Bitcoin. Do you know what it is?' And I said, 'Yeah.' I mean, I did know what it was. And she said, 'Uh, I looked up what it was worth, which was $250. That was what the market price was.' And she said, you know, 'Somebody offered me an Amazon gift card for $700.'"
"No, no. Not like this."
"'What do you think?' And it was sort of, uh, so needless. I mean, I didn't tell her what to do, but I certainly didn't say not to do it. 'Don't do it. You know, it could be worth a fortune.' So, so I don't really have a—a right to comment on it as an investor beyond that. But I'm probably not alone in this. Uh, but I—I haven't bought it myself because I speak to policy makers sometimes, world leaders, and I can't be, you know, trading my book. Or at least that's what I thought before Trump, anyway. I don't know. Like, maybe I need to buy the memecoin and his way."
"Maybe I need to buy some of the meme coin, you know, before I talk to him."
"Okay. And I think it's your move. I'll let you think a little bit here, too."
"I mean, this is—I just played Bishop B2."
"Boy, this is really pathetic that I don't know that. No, no, no. You're talking about your book. You're deep in thoughts. I think it's impressive that you could do all of this still."
"I—I—I—"
"Okay, let me take a second to think about this position also, so I don't just completely blunder."
"Uh, we don't want that."
"Yeah, we can maybe both take a second to think of the game and then come back to it, cuz I don't know if I'm supposed to castle ever here."
"M—"
"I—I, uh, sometimes describe Trump as a coffee house player, like, which is not totally cutting him down. Coffee house players are much better than the average person thinks, but not as good as they think."
"Right. That's exactly that."
"No, I didn't have that. But they're—they tend to be very aggressive. That aggression works very well against a weak player, not very well against a strong player. But also, if you're not careful, they take moves back. And we're not going to do that. But, uh, I think Ben Johnson mentioned that to me when I was trying to work on that analogy. I'm not sure I should have done that, but—"
"I don't—I don't know. I'm really rethinking my queenside castling now. I think it was probably a mistake."
"I don't know."
"I think I know it was a mistake. And how—what am I going to do about it? When in doubt, attack. I guess we're going to have to go for something desperate."
"Um, what do you think the real inflation rate currently at right now?"
"It's different for different people. So, uh, I was talking to my son who's in fintech. He—he thought I earned more money when I was his age. I mean, not even close. And by the way,"
"I mean, I was an academic and earned that much as an academic. I actually earned more as a teenager playing chess."
"Oh, no."
"Because chess players aren't really balling either, so that's saying a lot."
"Yeah. Well, okay. You know, so you can take that into account when you meet academics."
"But, um, I said, 'Look, you know, if you took my salary, uh, and controlled for inflation, it was still way lower than yours.' And he said, 'Yeah, but how much was a house? You could buy a house. Like the interest rates were lower. You could buy a house.'"
"And so I think for, uh—"
"It's still your move. It's still your turn. Sorry."
"I'm letting you finish the point this time."
"You're doing great."
"I—it's like a therapy session. I mean—"
"Yeah. No, for me, too. I—I really didn't like my last move, but we're going to roll with the punches. Okay."
"Well, that's—that's very kind of you. Uh, you're the first, you know, best player. I—I mean, I've talked to, um, Jennifer, some—"
"Jennifer Shahadi."
"Jennifer Shahadi. Yeah. I was, I was, uh, kind of supportive of her earlier in her career, and that she's been very nice to me. And Judith, I talked to, but Judith, I'm sort of embarrassed to ask stupid questions, ask questions."
"You can ask stupid questions to me. Go for it."
"No, Jude—Judith, I ask. So, yeah. Um—"
"What was—what was—were the chess questions you were thinking of?"
"Oh, I just—it's changed. I mean, uh, people play positions now that Bobby Fischer would have given a draw, and Magnus wins these positions where Bobby Fischer would have given a draw. The understanding of, you know, just major piece endings. So, they're things like, uh, I saw Magnus win some game with rook and bishop against knight and bishop. I wouldn't—I wouldn't even know that was a thing."
"Yeah."
"I mean, that's something so simple, you know. I mean, evidently, it's really hard to defend. I mean, it's not just that he's like a genius. It's just like computers came. One thing I learned, took away from chess and so many years passing, was there are these positions. I thought everything I thought I knew, um, you know, I thought I'd studied them, maybe I'd studied them with really strong players, and the evaluation's changing and changing. Uh, I, you know, so it can range from super simple positions where, okay, you know, Bobby Fischer was sort of famous. He was the top player in my day. I mean, maybe—"
"In there for one of the—I'm going to play one move. He's maybe in there for the greatest player of all time."
"Yeah."
"But, uh, he's, uh, uh, you know, he didn't know everything about rook endings and some of these things, and it's just evolved. And then there are these openings where just changing—it's sort of a—when DeepMind came along, you know, it brought back the romantic style, which everybody thought, 'You have to guard your material. You have to count pieces. You can't—you can't do anything.' And then it plays this swashbuckling style. Do you think it's Paul Morphy, or, you know, Adolf Anderssen, you know, from the 1800s? Somehow they had it figured out. And, okay, you know, that changed. It changed how Magnus played and humans played. The thing which just blows my mind is, you probably know some of the first books were chess books, right? I mean, the—the printing press came along, and I think it's one of the very early—"
"I actually didn't know that. One of the first books ever. One of the first few books is a chess book."
"Wow. I read chess. That's what I mean. I'm saying this authoritatively, maybe it was the 2000th book printed, but there was an early—there was an early chess spread around and homogenized the game and and stuff."
"And of course, you know, they had this opening that I guess nowadays is referred to as the Italian opening. We knew that in my day. We thought it was like a joke. I mean, so passive, didn't seem to lead to anything. And then I tune into Magnus' games or Hikaru Nakamura's games, Hikaru, sorry, Nakamura's games."
"That's what they're playing. And somehow the computer and all this evolution came back to 1500."
"Right. It's—it's—it's, you know, and I learned a lot from that as an economist because you're always thinking, 'We know everything,' and bored, you know, seeing some little twist, and you just should know. You just have to have humility, you know, that the—that things, uh, constitute—I'm sorry to do this to you, but I'm still doing it."
"I know my position is in really big trouble here. I—I'm not going to let you take the queen that easily. You're going to have to fight for it."
"I'm gonna have to work for the queen. Okay. Well, I'll—"
"I knew queenside castling was a blunder as soon as I made it. I like, 'Why would I do that?'"
"Um, okay. There's probably stronger moves than that."
"I did have a question I actually wanted to ask earlier when I asked you about what can the typical American do about this? There's not really anything to do. So, what is your goal with this book? Who do you want to reach? What do you want them to do?"
"Well, I mean, uh, first and foremost, uh, first and certainly, I—I'm trying to reach, uh, a broader world about what to expect."
"Like, I can't control if the icebergs are melting. I can't control what the weather is going to be, but I have a vision of where, uh, of where things might be going. And so, you know, that's—that's something I'm hoping to re—world. I talk about, uh, we're entering a period where there might be inflation again. I mean, I'm telling you exactly how to deal with it, but expect it. I mean, know that it might be—"
"When you say 'a period where we might have inflation again,' what do you mean? Because don't we already have inflation?"
"Have high inflation."
"And what is high inflation?"
"So, you know, right now we have a little over 2%. We had a burst—"
"If you're in crypto. Just kidding. Just kidding. That's funny. Oh, that's funny. Um, uh, yeah, I mean, right, uh, right now we had a burst of it, but, uh, you know, it's not something fatal."
"Uh, but, uh, well, I think if we get another burst, it's going to be very destabilizing. So, I—I'm, of course, I'm talking to policy makers. Like, I think the US has decided everything's free. We can just pay for everything. Both sides. The Republicans think you can cut taxes as much as you want. The Democrats think you spend as much as you want."
"I certainly speak to that, but I'm not, you know, I—I mean, part of it is I'm, uh, telling about the history of how we got here. We live in this kind of crazy world and give you some—"
"We take it for granted, honestly."
"Oh, no. We definitely—it for granted. We definitely take it for granted."
"And, uh, you know, try, try to help people think about it. So—"
"Okay, I'm going for desperate things here."
"No, you have—you have to. You have to go for desperate things. And just to be sure, uh, uh, which way should I go? Um—"
"I'm probably cooked either way, but hey, I'm going to make it interesting."
"No, you're definitely making it interesting. So, I'm just going to be a little bit safe here."
"Okay. Can I ask you some of my fun questions now?"
"Sure."
"Okay. I'm gonna recycle one of the questions you asked Premier Jew. What keeps you up at night?"
"Many things. Uh, many things keep me up at night."
"Other than chess? Other than sleeping, looking up at the ceiling, picturing the people—"
"Other than sleeping, looking up at the ceiling. Uh, a lot of things keep me up at night. But, um, I worry a lot about the fact that the future is so uncertain with a—"
"I think of my kids."
"—everyone wants to get rich quick, which evidently you have made a head start. I'm not asking your—"
"Head start? Nothing crazy."
"—they want to get rich quick because just you don't know what the—what what—if we're going to have political, so sorry, social mobility in even the next year. We don't know if we're going to have social vulnerability. And you—you got a job as a lawyer. Uh, you got a job as a radiologist. You got a job as a professor. What's the future? And so trying to talk to young people about that, it's a very hard, cuz I don't know. I mean, we want to see ahead. I—I feel like it's not going to unfold as fast as the utopians, you know, say. And I worry that it's going to be very unstable, uh, as it unfolds. It's—is also something that I worry about. So—"
"Do you think the singularity is going to happen? And I would define it as when non-biological intelligence exceeds all of biological intelligence combined."
"I mean, I'm not a specialist on this."
"You're good."
"Yeah. I mean, how can it not happen, uh, in some sense? And the question is, how do we control it? How do we—"
"Relevant? I do. It's funny. I've been debating the positive side of that for a while. I actually did a debate in 2012 with Peter Thiel and Gary—"
"I'm still trying to challenge him to chess one day."
"He lives in Los Angeles. You should be able to hunt him down."
"Oh, I will. I'll—"
"I think he likes—I think he likes to play chess."
"You did succeed in complicating it some."
"Thank you. Check. And I'm asking you the hard questions, too."
"And you're asking me the hard questions just after you complicated things."
"Um, I'm not, uh, 100% sure you complicated them enough."
"I don't think I did either."
"But I'm, uh, but you definitely complicated them a lot. Not—"
"100% sure I can get away with this, but I—I think it works, but I could be wrong."
"Okay. Well, I mean, I only have one attempt here, which is this. Yeah. Well, I tried."
"No, I—I—I didn't follow everything. I'm sure I could have played more accurately, but, uh, did the best I could."
"What do you think the Chinese Communist Party does, right?"
"What do they do right? Um, they limit the amount of screen time that kids can have. I'm all for that."
"They don't allow TikTok the way it's allowed in our country in China, which is—"
"So, tells you something."
"I'm—I'm in favor of regulating social media."
"Okay. YouTube channel or your Twitch channel. But I mean, in particular, you know, we regulate newspapers and TV. You can't slander people because you reach millions or even tens of millions of people. Uh, yet you can reach tens of millions of people and slander people with sort of almost no consequences. And I—I don't like that. So, Elizabeth Warren's a very progressive senator. She's my neighbor in Massachusetts. I love her, and I strongly agree with maybe three out of every 10 things that she says, but this is one I like totally her. I think I think she has the right that we need a lot more."
"That's a good take, actually."
"I'm—I'm looking at the position. I seem to have recovered. I mean, you—I—I definitely didn't see everything, and I could have ended up just getting checkmated. Uh—"
"No, no, you—"
"And, and you—that was a very good Queen B2. That was that was a very good attempt. No, I'm really trying to give you hard questions to distract you while I think of this."
"You're doing a good job."
"Who was the least evil of the Axis powers?"
"Who is the least evil? Well, probably Italy because they were incompetent."
"No, I know. It's—it's an easy answer, but I just think it's such a weird—"
"What's funny? I mean, tell you what's funny is I've used this as an example of how little history the average Harvard student knows. And I've gone around asking people—"
"Who the least evil Axis party? Cuz that would be an easier question."
"Okay."
"—which side did Italy fight on? Or two? Yeah."
"And I think for a lot of people, that's sort of a, yeah, a multiple-choice question that's interesting."
"And it's a little bit tricky, like conquered, and I don't even all the details."
"Yeah. But that's—that's actually a very subtle question that you studied international relations and you know that. But, um, you know, a lot of people don't know much history. I mean, don't know how to say it kindly. So, my book, getting back to that, uh, it gives you a flavor. I—I think one of the things people don't understand is that we were lucky at times. Things went our way that didn't have to go our way. It got better than we could have imagined. So, I actually, at the end of the book, cite one of my favorite chess players, Ben Larsen. Ben Larsen."
"I remember. It's such a good quote. You should share."
"No. So, I was actually, uh, I was doing an interview with him. I wasn't interviewing. We were on Canadian TV. I played in the Canadian Open."
"You played in the Canadian Open? I totally played in the Canadian."
"That was one of my favorite tournaments growing up in Canada."
"So, I played in 1968. I finished second. I was 15. I finished second to Ben Larsen. And our last game was a televised game, national TV Canada."
"Wait, they used to do that."
"They did. They did."
"I—and I—because I know you did commentary when Fischer was playing a bit later. A bit later. I did. I was on PBS and, uh, that—I'll get back to that."
"Yeah."
"But some—the interviewer said to Larsen, and by the way, I made a draw with him, and I a little bit regret it because I probably had a winning position. I'd have to show it to a computer. Yeah."
"What a position where—"
"I—I'd have to play really badly to lose."
"Like this position, which I'm still really struggling to find anything to say."
"But I, you know, you're not going to be an improving young player if you make a draw."
"It would be better to lose and just, you know, learn, learn a lesson from it."
"And, uh, I didn't. And, uh, but anyway, we did this interview afterwards, and the person asked, 'Would you rather be, uh, lucky or good?' And he thought for a second and said, 'Well, both.' And I think what Americans don't realize is we're good. We're always telling us, you know, we're just the greatest. And we don't realize how lucky we've been."
"Yeah."
"Yeah. Um, there are a lot of good chess players. There chess players can be very wise. Oh, well, I don't know what I should do next, but I should probably, uh, change some stuff."
"This was really awesome. For anybody who does want to check out your book, where should they go?"
"Well, I mean, it's sold at a bookstore."
[Music]