The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table

Phillips O’Brien is Professor of Strategic Studies at St Andrews. He is the author of The Strategists, How the War Was Won and The Second Most Powerful Man in the World. He has written for The Atlantic, The Spectator and Foreign Affairs.

Substack: https://substack.com/@UCpFYfImma_1URlxsC0t9CPQ
X: https://x.com/PhillipsPOBrien?lang=en

Professor O’Brien joins Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand for a conversation about the end of American global dominance and what it means for the future of the United States.They discuss America's military capabilities, the war with Iran, nuclear proliferation, Ukraine, China and Taiwan, and whether American alliances can be restored.

01:15 Is the American Age Over?

03:49 America's Military Strength and the Iran War

10:29 The Bipartisan Roots of American Decline

16:31 Ukraine, Russia and Nuclear Escalation

19:10 America's Economic Strengths and Weaknesses

25:09 Iran's Nuclear Program and the Limits of American Power

45:04 China, Taiwan and the Future of American Alliances

55:12 Iran, Nuclear Deterrence and America's Future

"I just don't feel like the podcast is a vehicle for me to shine, or even lightly glow."

Dan Naturman's resignation email, read on air in the episode where he comes back - which only happened because Periel booked two different Daniels for the same day and neither one showed up.

0:00 Dan does the intro, and Noam's two-screen Asus laptop demo.
5:18 The calendar debacle: Daniel Mendelsohn, Daniel Levy, then nobody
13:06 Dan quit by email: "a vehicle for me to shine, or even lightly glow"
21:30 Periel's Abraham Accords: cruises, MSC and Dan Tries Things
28:48 Comics Unleashed, the Letterman theory and why Dan's jokes aren't "real"
41:00 The new club's 2 a.m. litter summonses, and Noam concedes on congestion pricing
47:30 Raise the minimum wage, lose the fifth day; $25 covers vs. $50
58:59 Movie-ticket pricing, five rooms, "give good, get good" and Yohay at the Beacon

Why did Dan quit, and what would make him stay? Did congestion pricing fail, or is an 11% drop in traffic just invisible from the driver's seat? What actually happened at the Comedy Cellar when wages went up 25%? And why does the Cellar charge $25 when the clubs around it charge $50? Noam and Dan agree on one thing: the Cellar is the cheapest game in town, and Noam isn't going to fix it.

Also: Daniel Mendelsohn's Odyssey, the Asus Zenbook Duo, Comics Unleashed and Byron Allen, the Norm Macdonald documentary, Marc Maron, Gary Gulman, Chris Turner, Philip Roth and The Sopranos' Big Pussy, the new club's 2 a.m. litter summonses, the two-item minimum, Arizona iced tea's 99 cents, and Yohay Sponder at the Beacon.

Dan Naturman performs at the Comedy Cellar whenever he's not on a cruise ship. Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen airs weeknights on CBS.

With Twitter's @1basemoney, Matthew Mežinskis. Is there room for pro-Ukrainian people to disagree???

0:00 Matthew Mezinskis: Latvia, Bitcoin and Darryl Cooper's "accident"
10:16 "Are these evil people?" Diagnosing Carlson, Cooper, Horton and Dave Smith
23:12 Scott Horton in 2020, and "not one inch"
34:36 Can Ukraine roll Russia back? The map, the no-fly zone and the nuke question
45:33 Trump's diesel deal with Putin: disgraceful or triage?
51:22 Witkoff, "Dim Philby," the four oblasts and the fortress belt
58:30 The Axios report, Kuwait's drones and whether Trump is compromised
01:14:48 Larisa Horton, the Oxford Union, Macklemore vs. Kraft and Russia's outhouses

"What we're seeing now is that sunlight grows bacteria much quicker than the lack of sunlight did."

Noam Dworman, lifelong free-speech absolutist, admits the Darryl Cooper era has shaken his faith in what free speech produces - prompted by a Latvian-American Bitcoin analyst who thinks Tucker Carlson, Dave Smith and Scott Horton are the exact people Eastern Europe learned to fear.

Was Trump's diesel deal with Putin a betrayal of Ukraine, or triage in the Iran war? If nobody in the know predicted Putin's invasion, why does everyone now call it inevitable? Would Putin ever have used a nuke over a no-fly zone? Is Trump compromised, or just a man who likes dictators? Noam and Matthew Mezinskis disagree on most of it, but agree on this: there is no kompromat on Trump, and we'd know by now if there were.

Also: Tucker Carlson's Poland remarks, Steve Witkoff and "Dim Philby," the four oblasts and the fortress belt, the Axios report on Zelensky, the Kuwait drone attack, Scott Horton at the Oxford Union, Larisa Horton, Macklemore and Robert Kraft, Jeffrey Sachs to David Sacks, Russia's one-picket rule, Pussy Riot, Tulsi Gabbard's biolabs, Operation Spiderweb, and the WHO sanitation chart that ends the show.

Matthew Mezinskis is the creator of Porkopolis Economics, tracking Bitcoin against the world's fiat money supplies since 2018. Find him at porkopolis.io and @1basemoney.

"To say that Boris Johnson went there and forced the Ukrainians to fight on - that is complete bullshit."

Why did Zelensky ignore six requests from Trump to stop hitting Russian refineries, and does the Russian diesel deal that followed make sense while the Iran war has fuel at crisis prices? What was Steve Witkoff doing calling Putin a "great humanitarian" this week?
Did NATO expansion provoke the invasion, or is Putin just a man who can't stand being slighted? Is Russia Hitler's Germany, or is Munich an overused analogy. Is Trump is saving Zelensky from himself?

Also: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, Steve Witkoff, Henry Kissinger, Boris Johnson, Victoria Nuland, Paul Krugman, Samuel Charap, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Dave Smith, Candace Owens, Theo Von, Iran war, Strait of Hormuz, diesel prices, Donbas, Crimea, NATO.

Sergey Radchenko is the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the author of "To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power." He is writing a history of the Russia-Ukraine war, to be published when the war ends. Follow him on X: @DrRadchenko.

0:00 Dan's still out; Noam's 2017 Crimea clips: "sanctions till the end of time"
13:40 Sergey Radchenko on Trump's Russian diesel deal and the six requests Zelensky ignored
28:46 Witkoff calls Putin a "great humanitarian": what's the strategy?
36:20 Will Russia roll over Europe? Munich, Kissinger's last word, NATO's empty promise
44:15 Should a victim compromise? Donbas, security guarantees, did the West provoke Crimea
57:40 Why Putin invaded: humiliation, hubris, Obama's Atlantic interview, Afghanistan
1:08:36 The Istanbul talks, the Boris Johnson myth, and the verdict on Trump
1:24:49 Post-game: Dave Smith, the Absolut Pussy ad, Candace Owens, Theo Von

"They hated each other." That's Elliot Kaufman describing Israel's war cabinet, not its enemies.

Kaufman joins Noam Dworman on the rivalries, leaks and gambles behind Israel's war since October 7. Why did Netanyahu wait 20 days to invade Gaza? When was Biden saving Israel from itself, and when was he holding it back? And why did killing Nasrallah trigger a furious phone call from Washington? They also confront what both consider Israel's biggest mistake in Gaza: taking ground, leaving, and having to fight for it all over again.

Also: Gallant and Gantz, Jake Sullivan and Lloyd Austin, the Philadelphi Corridor, Rafah, the Qatar strike, Trump's "all I heard was yes," Mamdani's October 7 statement, and Iran under blockade.

Get the full story in Kaufman's new book, In the War Room: The Inside Story of Israel's Fight Against Hamas and the Iranian Axis, coauthored with Yonah Jeremy Bob.

0:00 Elliot Kaufman and the case for airing Israel's dirty laundry
6:44 Churchill's war room vs. Israel's: "they hated each other"
18:25 Mers-el-Kébir, Netanyahu's history test, and the 20-day wait to invade Gaza
30:06 Hostages, the Philadelphi Corridor, and the Saudi deal that wasn't
38:34 Rafah in days, not months, and was Biden really in decline?
48:46 The morning of October 7: Halevi's note and one aircraft
55:12 Killing Nasrallah without telling Washington, and how the Iran war began
65:29 Endgame: Petraeus, raid-and-leave, "all I heard was yes," and the story that leaves Hamas out