Eric Weinstein

And I think you think it's more difficult.

And I will have to say that you probably know far more about these two cultures than I do.

You know, and this gets into, I think it's very unfortunate that certain civilizations in the boundary land between what is clearly Western Europe and Russia, but it has always been the case to me that Ukraine, people in the East of Ukraine, people in the West of Ukraine barely see themselves as members of the same country.

The way the Western crust of Turkey looks to Anatolia

and says there be dragons, even though it's their country.

So there's a great deal of intra-country alienation, where Chernofsky looks to the Donbass and says, wow, that's some freaky stuff.

Particularly with Lvov, which I think of as being a Polish city, even though it's in Ukraine.

Look, Eastern Europe is complicated.

have to think not in terms of boy it's really sad that riga can't simply be part of the west my feeling is is that if we were in grouping russia we would be getting a better deal for latvia than saying okay latvia you're with us and then antagonizing russia but this is above my pay grade this is just

my caring about each of these places individually and caring about different places within you know just to tell a tiny little anecdote i got my great aunt in kiev to take me to umain where my family was from and she said you want to see the park where your grandfather used to walk with i said sure you know and it was like versailles it was it was some park on a scale you couldn't even believe called sofivka nobody in the west has ever heard of this place

That's ridiculous.

This should be a famous site throughout the world.

And I don't know how that happened.

So what I think we need to do is to recognize that we have an exaggerated blindness when it comes to Eastern Europe.

And a lot more of us should try to speak a regional language.

And a lot more of us should care just the way the Brits used to have their Foreign Service be very well informed about

all four far-flung provinces where they could see the world because they had an empire to take care of.

I think the U.S.

should be honest that it's had an empire, and it should care a great deal more to speak the local languages, to care about the traditions, to understand the difference between orthodoxy and other forms of Christianity, et cetera, et cetera.

Your tiny little island was like this superpower.