Ada Palmer

But if Machiavelli is right, patterns should emerge.

Players who build strong alliances, maintain credible threats, balance powers, and manage debts carefully should protect their homeland statistically more often than those who don't.

Not always, not with certainty, but measurably.

The flood still comes, but the dikes matter.

And if patterns emerge, experimental history then becomes a laboratory for learning what works.

Which kinds of dikes prove most effective?

Does early coalition building outperform late negotiation?

Do transparent commitments work better than strategic ambiguity?

The specific tactics of Renaissance cardinals won't apply to modern crises, but the principles might.

How to protect vulnerable positions between great powers when commitments under pressure hold or collapse?

What distinguishes successful from failed crisis management?

Palmer stumbled onto this through pedagogy, meteorologists developed it through necessity, historians, and political scientists might adopt it to learn how much we can actually govern within the half that fortune leaves us, and how to govern it well.

There's an image here.

It was published on January 25, 2026.

Images are included in the podcast episode description.