Dan Snow's History Hit - The Atomic Bomb & Civil War Cigars: Greatest 'What Ifs' from History

Episode Date: May 4, 2024

We think of history as a neat chain of predictable events; but what if the truth is far wilder than that? Today, we're talking about the pivotal forces of randomness and chance, and how tiny moments can change the course of our human story.Dan is joined by Brian Klaas, associate professor in global politics at University College London and author of 'Fluke: Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters'. Brian unpicks our traditional telling of history, and explains how our world really works.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Anisha Deva.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW - sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. You know I love talking about leaders on this podcast, and battles, and elections, and movements, and speeches, and uprisings. The people and the events that have shaped us. But today I'm going to take a very different approach. I'm going to do something unusual. I'm going to look at the moments of blind luck. Total coincidence.

Some of them, as you'll hear, gigantic in scale. Others, well, literally microscopic, seemingly insignificant. All of them have changed the course of life on this planet. And all of which prompt us to ask the question, what if they hadn't happened? I'm going to be joined by Brian Class. He's an Associate Professor of Global Politics at University College London. He's a writer for The Atlantic. He's author of the book Fluke, Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters. And he's a great friend of this podcast. He's been on several times before. He's picked out some of his favourite what-if moments, and trust me, they are titanic. I always think when you look out at the world, it all seems so permanent, so inevitable.

Of course the United States of America stretches from sea to shining sea. Of course the Austro-Hungarian Empire doesn't exist anymore, that would be ridiculous. Obviously it's entirely natural that we build the great towers of concrete and steel and glass in the middle of a desert in the Gulf. It's entirely natural that a king sits on a gilded throne in the British Parliament. But actually none of those things are natural or inevitable. Everything is a result of luck and blind chance and opportunism. And it's fun to look back in history and ask what if something different had happened? Because it opens your mind to the fact the present is absolutely not preordained. It is not a natural consequence of things that have gone before.

It is a random outcome alongside a billion other alternatives narrowly avoided. And this matters because if our world isn't somehow inevitable, then the range of outcomes in the future suddenly explode in front of us. Despite the bad news, I always assume the world will plod along and there'll be a steady increase in living standards and there'll be scientific breakthroughs and there'll be hopefully a bit more international cooperation in the future. But in fact, the future could be one of Mad Max-style dystopia.

It could be one of nuclear annihilation. It could be one of climate breakdown. Throughout history, the course of human affairs has done handbrake turns. We've spun off speeding along in very very unexpected and different directions so to help us think about some of those moments some of those handbrake turns here is brian class enjoy t-minus 10 atomic bomb dropped on hiroshima god save the king no blackwhite unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again.

And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Brian, good to have you back on the podcast, buddy. Thanks for having me on the show. We're going to be a little bit naughty here, right? But it is important to think about cancel factual history, what if, because it makes us realize that the present is not inevitable. It can seem like it is, and it's certainly not immutable, right? So things, events really matter. Yeah, I mean, this is where historians have an endless debate about sort of the order and disorder of history, this sort of order and chaos, right? So everything can change in an instant on

the tiniest detail, and that can reshape our history literally forever, as I'm sure we'll discuss with a variety of examples. But also, you know, there are patterns, there are structures to history. And so when we look at the present, what we're looking at is this sort of tug of war between those fluke moments where everything changed, and then sort of the paths of trajectories and trends, and our lives, our existence is basically forged between those two extremes. You and I have chatted about this,

but the absolutely astonishing example is not some of the famous ones about Lincoln being shot and Hitler narrowly not getting run over by a car, which we might come to those. But I guess you've pointed out there's the most extraordinary one that basically underpins the whole of life on earth as it exists at the moment.

Tell us about that. Yeah, so I think this is one that we don't think about because it's so bewildering. So according to the best science that we have today, there was a period in the distant reaches of the past, tens of millions of years ago, where this little part of interstellar space known as the Oort Cloud, which is beyond the solar system, it's up to three and a half light years away, it's really far away from the planet, had this oscillation, this little disturbance in it. And this disturbance flung this rock out of the Oort cloud towards the earth. And it hit 66 million years ago.

So you can probably imagine which one I'm going for now. This is the rock that wiped out the dinosaurs. But the thing that really is extraordinary about this is we all sort of think about this cataclysm that was unleashed by this rock hitting the planet. The more research that is being done on this, the more and more improbable it is that it was so destructive. So it hit off of the Yucatan Peninsula, and it hit this kind of rock that only 13% of the earth is covered in. And that's a very destructive place for an asteroid to hit this 13%. But within that 13%, there's only a very small amount of rock

that has gypsum deposits in it. And if the rock from space, if this asteroid hits this place, that's got this 13% of rock, and it also has these extremely rich gypsum deposits, it will spring up this enormous cloud of toxic gas. And so when people think about what wiped out the dinosaurs, I think they often have an image where it's just about the impact. And in fact, what happened was the impact unleashes this brief period of extremely hot temperatures. I mean, the estimates are up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit, so about the same temperature you broil a chicken at. And it killed a lot of stuff in that short period of heat. But what really wiped out most of life on the planet, and especially the dinosaurs, was this toxic gas and the sort of subsequent particulate matter that was flung into the atmosphere of this really, really rare type.

And this means that if the rock had hit a second later, it would have hit a totally different part of the planet, and it probably would not have killed the dinosaurs. And the reason that's important for us is because this moment is when the dinosaurs collapse and mammals rise. And so everything that we talk about in human history, every episode you've ever covered on this podcast is contingent. It's predicated on this space rock being flung from the Oort cloud and hitting the exact worst part of the planet to kill everything that was alive at the time,

except for things that could dig and things that could swim. And basically most of the animal life on the planet either could do one of those two things. It could dig or swim and avoid the cataclysm. So it is, to my mind, one of the greatest flukes of all time that we can thank all of our existences for. I love that. That was great, Brian. Now let's come down to the examples of counterfactual history that people would be more aware of, like the cigar that changed the course of the Civil War. That's one of my favorites. I mean, there's so many you could have chosen, right? You know, my favourite that long-time listeners will know, but I get very upset about, is Henry V, Henry Plantagenet. If he'd washed his goddamn hands

during that siege and had not contracted dysentery and died, if he had minded where he took his drinking water from, England and France would be one happy conjoined country, stretching from Carlisle to Nice. Can You imagine how joyful that would be. But anyway, that's my little niche take. The American War of Independence got loads of what-ifs. That's brutal. But the Civil War is full of them, right? Yeah. I mean, my favorite one is, and this is where the best counterfactuals in history are, sort of greatest flukes that I like to focus on, are the ones where it's layer upon layer upon layer of what-ifs, right? Where all these things had to stack in

just the right way for the outcome that we had to occur. And also that it was consequential. That's another aspect of counterfactual history that's important is that we can see clearly that if this tiny detail had not happened, then the world would be profoundly different. So the one that I fixated on and researched extensively and wrote about in Fluke is the story before the Battle of Antietam, which is known as the bloodiest day in American history. And this is a battle that happens on September 17th, 1862. And to set the scene a little bit, this is basically when the war has gone really badly for the Union or the Northern Army. This is the sort of army that Lincoln is in charge of and so on against the Confederates, the rebels. And the Confederates under the command of Robert E. Lee

are winning a series of battles. In fact, in late August of 1862, they've just won this extremely big battle at the Second Bull Run in Virginia, where they've had twice as many casualties inflicted on the Northern troops than the Southern troops. So Lee is basically emboldened to launch what's called the Maryland Campaign. And he decides to go into Union territory, right? He's sort of taking the fight out of the Confederacy into what is, you know, on Lincoln's doorstep, basically. And at this moment, the army of Robert E. Lee is moving northward. But you know, these days, there's no GPS, there's no satellites, you don't really know where the armies are going. And so they're running blind, and you're dependent on cavalry. But as the Union army is moving on

September 13, 1862, they take a break. And this man who would otherwise be completely forgotten by history named Corporal Barton W. Mitchell, who's in the 27th Indiana Regiment, decides to take a rest. And so he sort of lowers himself to the ground next to this sort of fence row sometime between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. on the 13th of September. And as he's resting, this little glint of an envelope catches his eye. And he looks over at it and he opens it up. And inside there are three cigars. And around the three cigars is a single sheet of paper. And so he does what you and I would do. He unrolls the sheet of paper and he looks at it. And on the top it says, and I'm quoting verbatim,

it says, Confidential, Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia, September 9th, 1862. So that's a few days before he's discovered it. Special Orders 191. And it then proceeds to have something like 13 points of the moving orders, the marching orders, the Confederate Army. And it's really detailed. It's down to the level of like which axes should be moved and which groups should be chopping down wood and which parts of the army are going to go to which roads and so on. And then it's signed at the bottom, it says, by command of General Robert E. Lee, signed R.H. Chilton, who's a major figure in the Confederate Army. Now, the thing that's crazy about this is that you sort of look at this as a corporal, and immediately what you do is you try to go to your superiors to alert them to the presence of this potentially bombshell news that you've discovered, you know, the secret orders of the

entire adversary's army. So he takes it to a variety of people who sort of bring them up the chain of command. And eventually he ends up being directed to the tent of a man named General Alpheus S. Williams. And Williams is a major figure in the army, but he has, as all generals do in the Civil War, he's basically got a manservant, his sort of adjutant who comes around and says, you know, you can see the general now. And that guy's name is First Lieutenant Samuel E. Pittman. Now, this is important because one of the things that happens, and we all know this from counterfactual history of deceiving Hitler in World War II and so on, is that you need to be sure that this is a genuine order. You need to be sure that this seems to actually match

the sort of truth test. It needs to pass the truth test. And the reason that Pittman's really important here, and this is where the story goes off the walls and how improbable it is, is that Pittman takes one look at the signature and says, I'm 100% certain this is actually a signature, right? And the reason he knows this

is because before the war broke out, the person who wrote the orders in the Confederate Army, R.H. Chilton, had worked as a paymaster in Michigan. So he had to sign all these checks basically to pay people. And he would go to the Michigan State Bank where the account was held. And the man outside the tent, Samuel E. Pittman, worked as a teller at that bank. So for years, he would see R.H. Chilton signing checks, and he would look at the signature. So he had literally seen this thousands of times. And what this conspired to mean was that the only person in the Union Army who could have verified the signature was the person who got the paper

that had been wrapped around the three cigars and could immediately verify it was accurate. So he then sort of says, look, this is clearly a real thing. We found this goldmine of information. And so Alpheus Williams, the general, shoots off this memo to General McClellan, the commander of the Union Army, and says, quote, General, I enclose a special order of General Lee commanding rebel forces, which was found on a field where my corps is encamped. It is a document of interest and is no doubt genuine. And General McClellan is quoted later as saying, here is a document of interest and is no doubt genuine. And General McClellan is quoted later as saying, here is a paper with which if I cannot whip Bobby Lee, Robert E. Lee, I will be willing to go home. And so it's this incredible array of things that then conspires

to lead to the Battle of Antietam four days later. And as you say, it's importance piled upon importance piled upon importance because the Battle of Antietam proves to be a very, very important victory for the United States. Yeah, so this is where the consequential nature of this comes in. It really is consequential. It's not just that there's thousands and thousands of casualties, arguably the single bloodiest day in American history, but you also have the fact that the battle happens on September 17th, 1862. Five days later, Lincoln feels that the war has maybe turned a corner a bit, and he decides to issue the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. So this is the

order that eventually frees the slaves. So if the Battle of Antietam goes a different way, if these cigars aren't found, this is a possible thing that doesn't happen, or it ends up getting delayed. And that's substantial. But then on top of that, you have the international dimension where we get back to Britain, because Britain and France are sort of looking at this conflict from afar and are wondering what to do. And they have interests, right? Britain has interests in the southern production of cotton, because the plantations where the slaves are working is a major cash cow for the British economy and its supply of cotton. And there are discussions in the British government about the possibility of recognizing the Confederacy. In fact, two days before the

news of the battle reaches England, the prime minister at the time, Lord Palmerston, has told a Confederate envoy to England that the event that you so strongly desire, diplomatic recognition, that is, is, quote, very close at hand. So right before the battle is happening, there's discussions at the highest levels of the British government about recognizing the Confederacy. And you can imagine that if Antietam doesn't happen, if Britain recognizes the Confederacy, even if they don't get involved in the war, this is a major boost for the legitimacy of the war effort. All these things could have happened, right? And they didn't happen precisely because when the Union holds off the Confederacy and stops its momentum, all of the international

partners sort of say, well, maybe we shouldn't get involved because what happens if the union wins and we've now alienated this sort of, you know, rising star across the ocean. And it's also a huge part of the sort of war morale in the US. There's a quote from the New York Sunday Mercury paper at the time, one of the most popular papers, and they say, quote, at no time since the war commenced did the cause of the union look more dark and despairing than one week ago. But after Antietam, at no point since the first gun was fired have the hopes of the nation seemed in such a fair way of realization as they do today. You know, you have morale, you have international recognition being blocked for the Confederacy, you have the Emancipation Proclamation, and then also the 1862 midterm elections. We often forget that, you know,

the elections keep happening. The Republicans, Lincoln's party doesn't lose because Antietam has happened. It's a major boost to his party's prospects. So you have this political aspect also flow from it. You know, I can't say with certainty that things would have turned out completely differently without the cigars. But, you know, it is very tempting to imagine that if the Confederate Army had blindsided the Union Army,

defeated them as they had been up until that point, I mean, the whole war could have turned out very differently, and the built-in structural advantages that the Union had might have been overcome for a time and changed the course of history forever. You listen to Dan Snow's history, we're asking what if. I do that all the time. More coming up. I'm Matt Lewis.

And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. just skipping forward a couple of generations obviously the chauffeur driving the archduke

franz ferdinand and his wife took a wrong turn stalled his car as he tried to reverse and drive a different direction stopping in front of the depressed, miserable assassin, Gavrilo Princip, who thought he'd missed his opportunity for the day. And there's the royal couple without police escort in an open top car, two meters away from him. And he takes the shot. That's an extraordinary and enormously consequential moment in our history. But tell me about another one that you've identified. I want to pick up just briefly on the World War I example you just said, because I think there is a fluke there that people are not aware of.

That is, before the story you just described of the car sputtering to a stop and Franz Ferdinand being assassinated, is there's another British connection. Because something like eight or nine months before Franz Ferdinand went to Sarajevo, he was at Welbeck Abbey and part of a hunting party. And one of the most extraordinary things I came across, where I don't know why this story is not more popular, because it also would have affected the course of World War I, is that there had just been this layer of fresh snow that had fallen on Welbeck Abbey. And the loader, the person charged with

loading the shotguns for the hunting party, slipped on the snow and the gun went off. And the bullet sailed just over Franz Ferdinand's shoulder and missed him by about a foot. And so you have this other moment where, you know, I can't say what would have happened, but I guarantee you World War I would have started differently if he had been shot and died there in a hunting accident as opposed to being assassinated. So, you know, history is just littered with these things. Even the ones that we know about, if you go back a little bit further, there's the fluke upon the fluke upon the fluke. And it's just extraordinary how these things play out. And there was the year in the 1920s when Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler were both hit as pedestrians by moving vehicles, both lucky to survive.

Yeah. That would have been a very different world. Go on, tell me about another one. The start of my book has this story because I think it's probably the most consequential vacation that's ever happened in terms of at least life and death. And it's popularized in a way that's actually inaccurate. So some of you may have seen the Oppenheimer film where there's this throwaway line where this figure, it's not really clear who he is in the movie, says, oh, I went and honeymooned in this location. This is historically inaccurate, and I'll explain why. Basically, the story begins in 1926. And in 1926, there's a man named Henry Stimson, who with his wife goes on this sort of grand tour of Asia. He's a diplomat, and he's sort of gallivanting around, and he ends up going to Kyoto in Japan. And from the records, we know that he arrived in October of 1926. He describes having a delicious dinner in the Miyako Hotel, tours the temples.

He's besotten with the sort of beauty of the city and the leaves changing in the autumn. I mean, Kyoto still is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. And he just gets a soft spot for it. He sort of falls in love with the city. Now, normally, this doesn't matter, right? Where somebody goes on vacation, it doesn't really change history. But this time it did. So 19 years later, Stimson ends up as America's Secretary of War, which is the chief civilian

in charge of the war effort. And in 1945, there is this moment where the US is getting very close to having the atomic bomb and there's tests that are happening and so on. And they get to the stage where they say, okay, we're about to be able to use this bomb. Where should we drop it? And so there's a group of people called the Target Committee. And the Target Committee, which is largely composed of generals and so on, sets up its sort of ranking of where they think the bomb should be used. And what's interesting is that the number one pick that was effectively

unquestioned by the group, they all agreed on it, was Kyoto. And the reason for this was partly that it was propaganda value as a former imperial capital, so it hurt Japanese morale, partly because other areas had been bombed so heavily that the impact of the bomb wouldn't have been as devastating. They wouldn't have known how destructive it was because already conventional weapons have been used to destroy the city. And also because there was this idea that you have war manufacturing that has been replaced and put into Kyoto. So there's strategic value as well. Now, Stimson gets this memo effectively.

We can sort of imagine the scene of this guy realizing that what his generals later called his, quote, pet city is about to be obliterated by the most destructive weapon that mankind has ever produced. And he sort of springs to action. And there's these descriptions, these memos where Stimson ends up basically harassing President Truman into two meetings about this issue and convincing him to take Kyoto off the targeting list. And eventually Truman relents. He basically says he gives in to Stimson because Stim 1945 is dropped on Hiroshima instead. And you sort of have this question of would there have been, you know, 100,000 people dying in Kyoto, the obliteration of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, etc. And the loss of life there, the tragic loss of life there instead of Hiroshima. But then there's also this extra level where the second bomb, which ended up in Nagasaki, was supposed to go to a place called Kokura. And when the bomber

got close, there was unforecasted cloud cover that produced this sort of lack of visibility, and they don't want to drop the bomb if they're going to miss. So eventually, as they're sort of running low on fuel, they decide to go to the secondary target, which is Nagasaki. And so the Japanese still refer to inadvertently escaping from disaster, unknowingly escaping disaster as Kokura's luck, because it was later clear that the city unknowingly escaped being the second destination of the atomic bomb. So you have the extraordinary feature of history that hundreds of thousands of people died in two cities rather than two different cities because of a 19-year-old vacation and a passing cloud. It's crazy, isn't it?

You think of those people of color that were freed in the Emancipation Proclamation. You think of those people that died or escaped. I mean, it's just mind-blowing. Is it too soon to say what are some of the great what-ifs of our lifetime? What are some of your other favourite ones? I mean, great charismatic leaders narrowly escaping death on the battlefield has got to be up there. I mean, Genghis Khan, just as he was unifying the Mongol tribes, he was terribly wounded in the neck in one of the final battles that the loss of Genghis, I think, would have taken subsequent history on a very different course. After all, we now know that something like, is it one in 13 human beings descended from Genghis Khan? It's like, apart from anything else, the demographic effect is extraordinary. Obviously, the fall of the Roman Republic, lots of little what-ifs there. What are some of your other favorites?

Yeah, there's a couple. I mean, I'll give you one from biological history, which again, is the origin of humanity, and then one from more modern politics. So in this sort of history of species, my colleague at University College London, Nick Lane, has documented this, and there's very strong evidence that he's correct about this, that at one point, and only one point in history, did a bacterium and a prokaryote bump into each other, with the bacterium ending up inside and producing the mitochondria. And this is the origin of all complex life on Earth. And as far as we know, this has happened once and never again.

So everything that's alive is derived from that one contingent moment. So that is, to me, the greatest fluke of all time, because if it hadn't happened, we might not have any complex life on Earth. I love this conversation, Brian. I'm like coming up with the old school ones going, oh, if it hadn't been foggy in the East River

and Washington wouldn't have escaped from Long Island. And you're just like, yeah, buddy, hang on a second. Hold my beer. Okay, so give me the other blazing one that you got there. The more recent one, and this is speculative, I'll admit, but I think it is one that's important to think about how our world is so swayed by these tiny things. There's this extremely important evening in 2011

in the United States where this ritual called the White House Correspondents Dinner happens. This evening is going to be remembered in history for a variety of reasons. But basically what happens is the president stands up and sort of roasts a variety of people and gets made fun of and tells jokes and so on. You know, sometimes makes fun of their opponents, sometimes makes fun of themselves. Anyway, on this evening, it's extraordinary for two reasons. The first is that Obama has decided to take on Donald Trump, who at this point is sort of a reality TV star who's starting to make waves in the Republican Party because he is claiming falsely that Obama was born in Kenya,

right? And that his birth certificate is fake. So he's got all these reasons why he's sort of become part of this political spotlight. And Obama decides to make fun of him. He basically tells this joke, which presumably one joke writer has come up with, where he says, I don't envy you, Donald, because unlike me, you have to make the hard decisions that will keep you up at night, such as who to fire from the next round of the Celebrity Apprentice. This is such big decisions that I couldn't possibly deal with as president. And everyone erupts into laughter and looks at Trump. And he's sort of, you know, this classic Trump glowering face. He's very clearly upset at being the butt of a joke. Now, there are some around him who have speculated that he decided that night to show his revenge by running for

president and dismantling the Obama legacy. And, you know, what is striking about this is there is a vindictive character to Trump's first term, where sometimes he is doing things that have absolutely no political benefit. In fact, they're hurting him politically, but he continues to try to unravel aspects of Obama's legacy around healthcare and so on, even though they've become popular in the United States. And so there's speculation that this is the case. Now, what's also extraordinary, the second layer of this is that we now know that that evening, mere hours after he told this joke, Obama went back to the White House into the Situation Room and oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. And what's really amazing about

this is that all of this took time, right? You had to set up all these things. So Obama, I mean, just nerves of steel, gives the order to go and do this, goes and tells stand-up comedy insulting Donald Trump, and then comes back to the White House and watches as SEAL Team 6 kills Osama bin Laden. And he's gambling his entire presidency on this, right? Because in 2012, the re-election's around the corner. And at that point, he was trailing in the polls and looked like he might not get re-elected. So he rolls the dice with this incredible gamble. And he also may have unleashed the moment when Donald Trump decided to run for president. I think in our lifetime, it's like Rabin being assassinated feels like an important moment where a strong Israeli leader

felt like he was close to making peace with the Palestinians with a kind of two state solution. I think the Gore Bush election, right? I mean, that feels like a moment in terms of subsequent US history, war on terror, climate, in all sorts of ways. It feels like a moment where very, very small things change the outcome of an election. I agree with this completely. I think the history is littered with these. One point that I try to make in the book is that we're making these more likely, right? And what I mean by that is I think that we are creating a situation where there's so much interdependence and so little slack in social systems geopolitically that the smallest fluctuations can create catastrophic effects across borders in very short periods of time. Now, I have this line where I say, you know, who is the most consequential

person in 21st century history so far? My pick would be whoever got infected with coronavirus first. Because you have this moment where this one mutation and one virus creates a situation which I think is truly unprecedented in history, where virtually every person on the planet is affected for a very long time by this moment, right? We've had pandemics in the past, but they're often localized, or they don't spread so quickly and so on. So I think, you know, we created a world that's so hyper, you know, sort of connected and so interdependent that the tiniest flukes can have the most profound consequences. And of course, the Arab Spring is another one where a single man set himself on fire in Central Tunisia. I mean, you have the Syrian civil war comes from that you have

multiple regimes toppled, dictators falling, the entire Middle East on fire. And it's one vegetable vendor named Muhammad Bouzizi who lit himself on fire. So in the past, we almost always heard about the flukes from the statesmen, the generals, etc. In the 21st century, we can have history swayed by ordinary people to an extraordinary degree, which is something that I think is different for the first time. Well, in the coming presidential election, it's very easy to see an October surprise. It could be one TikTok video purporting to show, I don't know, street crime out of control or something to do with the border, undocumented migrants, or the other way, something to do with students, Palestine, who knows? You could see that swaying enough voters in those key, say,

four swing states and buy enough voters. That's low tens of thousands of voters. It is on a knife edge, this thing, and therefore the smallest little thing can change it. Absolutely. Absolutely. No, you're totally right. And I think this is something where for history lovers, this is endlessly fascinating because our world is not the world that had to exist. And I think that's something that we often just pretend is not true. I mean, history buffs have encountered this all the time, but I think ordinary people don't realize the shakiest foundations upon which our lives have played out. And on a personal level, one of the things I write about early on in the book, and everybody has these on an individual basis, is that I wrote the history story of a woman who has a mental

breakdown and kills her four young children in 1905 in rural Wisconsin, and then takes her own life, unfortunately. Tragic, tragic story. But this was my great-grandfather's first wife. And so he comes home, his whole family's wiped out, and he later remarries several years later to my great-grandmother. And that's why I exist, right? I mean, every joy in my life is derived from this tragic mass murder. And I think the more that I've talked to people, it's lovely to see how history and individual lives can be intertwined, where these historical changes that often people have, where there's a battle that happens or a displacement or whatever, they also divert individuals forever. And the

lineages that then play out from that, from these little horseshoe moments and nails and so on moments, they affect all of us. And all of our life stories are built upon these contingencies, both from history and from family members being diverted by the tiniest of details. You're totally right. We should all know how contingent and lucky and ridiculously unlikely the modern world is and all the human life is because that's true of our own lives.

My mom and dad, their eyes met across a crowded press conference in Montreal in the 1970s. And now I exist. I hug my children. They exist because of that one moment. It's a crazy story. Brian, thanks for coming on and helping us think in a much bigger way about these things. Really appreciate it.

What's your book called? It's called Fluke, Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters. Go and get it, everybody. Thank you very much, Brian. you