Thoughts on that Putin Interview

Not a poem!

I too tuned into Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin that was released a week ago. I think there’s enough commentating going on regarding the substance of the two men’s conversation by people more qualified than me. Instead, I’d like to throw out two questions that came to mind as I thought about the form their conversation took.

1. Is real-time translation technology about to cross a tipping point in terms of quality and ubiquity? Maybe I haven’t been watching enough translated conversations, but I found myself amazed that Tucker and Putin could have multiple back-and-forth exchanges in their respective languages with almost no delay. In fact, one of the defining features of the interview’s first half hour was Tucker’s somewhat desperate interruption of what can only be described as a Putin anti-soundbite—that is, his historical recounting of medieval and Tsarist Russia’s relationship with the territory now known as Ukraine. (The memes were great.) Watching the two joust a bit during the interview, any friction present was to be found in what they were saying and not at all in how they were able to say it to one another. To me, it seems like the day might soon arrive that I could travel to Japan or Morocco or Nepal, earbuds snugged comfortably in my ears, then speak English to a similarly-equipped person who speaks Japanese or Arabic or Nepali back to me, and we would understand each other instantly. What would this do for travel and tourism and for local cultures around the world? What would it do to the careers of high school Spanish teachers, or to global politics?

2. Speaking of Putin’s preamble, what present-day US politician could hold forth at similar length about any historical time period? I’m sure there are quite a few spread out across the national scene, but if I look around the pool of current presidential candidates, I don’t picture Donald Trump or Joe Biden recounting, say, the territorial histories of Alaska and Hawaii at length. On the other hand, RFK Jr. and Vivek Ramaswamy have proven themselves capable of speaking extemporaneously for several hours on various podcasts since last year. Granted, having a good memory for historical details and speaking fluidly off the cuff aren’t the only prerequisites for being president, but they’re a good place to start. And this is no praise of Putin, either—just a note that, again, I think that how he conversed with Tucker in that interview last week was just as much of a show of force as what he said.