the stories are independent forces now why do people believe one story and not another That's History there is no material materialistic law people will always believe this no history is full of accidents how did Christianity become the most successful uh religion in the world we can't explain it so why why this story about Jesus of Nazareth and not you know the Roman Empire in the third Century uh CE uh was a bit like I don't know California today like so many sects and subjects and gurus and religions like everybody has their own thing yeah and you have you know thousands of different stories competing why did Christianity come up on top as a historian I don't have a kind of clear answer you can read the sauces and you see how it it happens oh this happened and then this happened and then Constantine adopted it and then this and then this but why I don't think anybody has an as an answer to that if you rewind the movie of history and press play and you rewind and play spre press play a hundred times I think Christianity will take over the Roman Empire in the world maybe twice out of a hundred times it was such an unlikely thing to happen and it's the same with Islam it's the same I don't know it's the Communist takeover of Russia in 1914 if you told people that in three years Landing in the Bolsheviks will gain power in the sourest Empire they would think you're utterly crazy you know Lenin had a few thousand supporters in 1914 in an Empire of close to 200 million people it sounded ludicrous now we know the chain of events the first world war the February Revolution and so forth that led to the Communist takeover but it was such an unlikely event and it happened and a little steps along the way the little options you have along the way because you know Stalin versus Trotsky you could have the rubber Frost poem there's always and history tanks you know there is a Highway and there is a kind of sideway and history takes the sideways many many times and is perhaps tempting to tell some of that history through charismatic leaders and maybe it's an open question how much power charismatic leaders have to affect the trajectory of History you've met quite a lot of charismatic leaders lately I mean what's your view on that I find it a compelling notion I'm a sucker for a great speech and a vision so I I have a sense that there's an importance for a leader to catalyze the viral spread of a story as so like I think we need leaders to be just great storytellers um that kind of sharpen up the story to make sure it infiltrates everybody's brain effectively but uh it could also be that the local interactions between humans is even more important it's just we don't have a good way to sort of summarize it and describe that we like to talk about you know Steve Jobs as Central to the development of the computer maybe Bill Gates you you you tell it's the stories of individuals like this because it's just easier to tell a sexy story that way maybe it's an interplay because you have the kind of structural forces that I know you look you look at the geography of the planet and you look at shipping technology in late in the late 15th century in Europe and the Mediterranean and it's almost inevitable that pretty quickly somebody will discover uh America somebody from the old world will go to the New World uh so this was not the kind of this didn't if it wasn't Columbus then it would have been a five years later somebody else but the key thing about history is that these small differences make a huge huge difference you know if if it wasn't Columbus if it was five years later somebody from England then maybe all of Latin America today would be speaking English and not spanish if it was somebody from the Ottoman Empire it's completely different world history if you have and you know the Ottoman Empire at that time was also shaping up to be a major Maritime Empire if you have America Rich being reached by Muslim Navigators before Christian Navigators from Europe you have a completely different world history it's the same as the computer given them economic incentives and the Science and Technology of the time then the the rise of the personal computer was probably inevitable sometime in the late 20th century but the where and when is crucial the fact that it was California in the 1970s and not say I don't know Japan in the 1980s of China in the 1990s this made a huge huge difference so you have this interplay between the structural forces which are beyond the control of any single charismatic leader but then the the small changes they can have a big effect and I think for instance about the war in Ukraine there was a moment now it's now it's a struggle between nations but there was a moment when the decision was taken in the mind of a single individual of Vladimir Putin and he could have decided otherwise and the the the world would look completely different and another leader zelinski could have decided to leave Kiev in the early days there's a lot of decisions to kind of Ripple yeah