Jimmy Carr: America’s Foreign Policy - Strategic, Selfish, or Devastating? History EXPLAINED

1. 0:00 – 0:35

   Productivity anxiety and never feeling like you’ve done enough

   1. JCJimmy Carr0:00

      You know, I, I never think I work hard enough.

   2. DJDavid McIntosh Jr0:03

      300 gigs a year almost. [laughs]

   3. JCJimmy Carr0:04

      Yeah, but the gig- the gigs are quite... They're very easy for me. It's like, it's what could you do? What could you do? What, what else are you aiming at? What else could you be doing? You know, I've got a movie out, and that's great, but, uh, should I be doing ano- should I be halfway through writing the next one? Should I be, you know, do something else?

   4. DJDavid McIntosh Jr0:21

      That's crazy, man.

   5. JCJimmy Carr0:22

      I don't know if it is. I think it's like, it's, it's the what are you capable of? And, uh, I don't know. It's, it's good. Maybe that's the fire that kind of-

   6. DJDavid McIntosh Jr0:31

      Pr-

   7. JCJimmy Carr0:31

      ... that keeps me going

   8. DJDavid McIntosh Jr0:32

      ... productivity dysmorphia, really.

2. 0:35 – 1:06

   ‘Life dysmorphia’: why people feel worse in objectively better times

   1. JCJimmy Carr0:35

      Well, I think... I mean, I've talked about this before. I think we all have life dysmorphia. I talked about this. I mean, I suppose it's maybe clearest in America, but it's objectively the best country in the world and subjectively the worst. You know, you sort of go, "It's..." People think they're having a terrible time, and actually, um, you know, Steven Pinker's writing on, uh, Enlightenment Now, we've never lived in a better time. By any metric, it's better than it was 20 years ago. But it's very difficult to see that, especially as the world falls apart, and the world is falling apart.

3. 1:06 – 1:36

   End of Pax Americana: from bipolar stability to a multipolar era

   1. JCJimmy Carr1:06

      You know? Pax Americana is over. The, the second-order consequence... I don't know how interested your viewers are in history, but we'll do it. Okay. So depending on where you draw the line, '89 or '91, there was a, there was a bipolar world, right? For the longest time, a bipolar world. It was, it was America versus Russia and the Soviet Union, and they were at loggerheads, and they had different spheres of influence, right? And Berlin Wall collapses, Soviets disappears, crumbles, and there's a unipolar world that we've enjoyed, and since

4. 1:36 – 2:38

   Shrinking U.S. naval power and the security costs of retrenchment

   1. JCJimmy Carr1:36

      1945, really, we, we have enjoyed, in the West, Pax Americana, like Pax Romana or Pax Britannia, the idea that the Americans took care of everything. The Monroe Doctrine and the, the idea that you went... The whole world is trading. That wasn't to make America money. America's uniquely blessed. It's got enough money. They, they wanted their sphere of influence. They wanted their political system every- they wanted trade and commerce everywhere. And the second-order consequence of the Soviet Union collapsing and the Berlin Wall was the US Navy got smaller and smaller and smaller, and things started to pop off. Whether it's Somali pirates. That would- never would've happened in, in the '80s. Couldn't have happened. Too many naval US ships protecting trade. The, the, the idea that you can have all of this unrest around the world and America doesn't intervene. It used to intervene. The world's policeman. That's what it used to do. It doesn't... It's lost its... It's got smaller. It's got more inward-looking. You know,

5. 2:38 – 3:10

   Nuclear weapons: ending WWII or starting the Cold War?

   1. JCJimmy Carr2:38

      some would argue that that's a good thing, and now we have a multipolar world. Well, a multipo-polar world is much less secure. You know, if you think about the... I don't know. I think about this a lot, like, uh, the dropping of the bombs in Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Were they the last two explosions of World War II or the first two explosions of the Cold War? Have nuclear weapons been used twice, or have they been used every day since 1945 and they've prevented another all-out war?

   2. DJDavid McIntosh Jr3:09

      Oh, wow.

6. 3:10 – 3:47

   Proxy wars as the outlet for nuclear-era conflict

   1. JCJimmy Carr3:10

      Very interesting, like, what happens when countries get nuclear weapons. America got the bomb, right? Ended World War II within months. Russia got the bomb. We had Vietnam within a year. No, sorry. We had Korea. Russia got the bomb. We had Korea. China got the bomb. We had Vietnam. So these proxy wars come up where they're fighting, but they're not really fighting. There's kind of a, th-there's kind of a... I don't know. It isn't all-out war, but it's horrific, and then there's so much of that going on at the moment. It's just-

7. 3:47 – 4:53

   Trump as a symptom vs a cause of historical change

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr3:47

      What do you think of Trump?

   2. JCJimmy Carr3:48

      Very interesting. I mean, it's-

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr3:50

      Do you know him? Are you friends?

   4. JCJimmy Carr3:51

      No, no, no. I've never met him. Um, never met him. I mean, he's very... It's a weird thing where I just... I think too many people do this thing, um, where... So again, I, I'm sort of, kind of repeating myself. I think this came up last night. There's too much debate and not enough deliberation, and debate is about winning against the other person, and a lot of that is, um, you just call someone names. You just call everyone alt-right or terrible, and you say they're the worst, and, you know, the people on the far, far right and far left. The, the, the Overton window is certainly bigger. You know, what you can and can't talk about in politics is wider than it's ever been. And I think the idea of going, "You have to sit down. You have to talk to people," there's... I think the thing about Trump, for me, is, is he, the interesting question, contingent or convergent? Okay. Is the world changing because of him, or is the world changing because we're in a very interesting point in history? And I would put it to you that the world is changing because we're in a very interesting point in history.

8. 4:53 – 5:40

   Where his historical curiosity comes from: ethics across time and space

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr4:53

      Where does that interest stem from, Jimmy? You're clearly well-educated on it. You must do a lot of reading and research. Must be an avid historian.

   2. JCJimmy Carr4:59

      Uh, no, not re- I mean, I'm, I'm very interested in, in the world that we live in, and, uh, I don't know. I mean, I, I've always found it kind of fascinating when you sort of look around because, you know, what, what we, um... I, I sort of, I like, uh... There's a guy called, um, Derek Parfit, uh, he's a philosopher. Um, and he sort of talks about temporally and spatially owing other people something. So owing future generations something. What are we gonna leave for them? What world are we gonna leave for them? And also people around the world. Everyone's of equal value, but we don't act as if they are.

9. 5:40 – 5:47

   Legacy, punctured by comedy

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr5:40

      What do you think you're leaving for the world, Jimmy?

   2. JCJimmy Carr5:43

      Uh, hmm, hmm, some dick jokes.

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr5:46

      [laughs]

Episode duration: 5:47