Jeremi Suri

speaker

329 appearances 3 recordings 2 series first heard Jan 2023 last heard 7 Sep

Jeremi Suri’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.

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American History Hit · America's Worst President · 7 Sep 2026 podcast

I mean, in a certain way, it's absurd, isn't it?

I agree, Don, and I was just thinking about your comments about James Buchanan, your fellow Pennsylvanian.

I think for him, and for Andrew Johnson, the equivalent to struggling to understand AI for them was slavery was so embedded in the world they knew, even though Buchanan wasn't a slave holder,

that it was hard for them to imagine a world without slavery, even though the world was going in that direction.

The United States, Brazil, Cuba were the only countries really that still had slaves.

And the world was moving and changing, but they couldn't adjust to that, just as I think our grandpas who are presidents today can't adjust to a world of artificial intelligence.

I think that's right.

I think this is a longstanding problem.

And I think one of the issues we confront today, and maybe this is the equivalent of having lived with slavery so long, we live with the United States being the wealthiest country with the default currency for the world, able to spend money anytime we want to spend money.

We've lived with that so long, we can't imagine a situation where that's not the case.

But we all know, those who study economics and history, that this is a unique thing and it won't last forever.

And that's hard for presidents to articulate to Americans.

We take for granted our position in the world.

And that often leads us to do things that undermines our position in the world without recognizing we're doing that.

Well, I think the obvious answer is John F. Kennedy.

Oh, okay.

And I think the reason, it's not that John F. Kennedy didn't do some important things and not that he might not have done even more important things, but he's always rated in the top 10 in these polls that I'm a part of and some of that you cited.

but actually he wasn't president very long and he didn't actually do very much.

And in fact, some of the things he did were really bad, such as the Bay of Pigs invasion, for example, right?

And the beginnings of the Vietnam War, really, in terms of early combat or at least covert activities and things of that sort.

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