On February 25th, Vladislav Davidzon burned his Russian passport on live TV to protest Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. War makes us do extreme things, Davidzon says, in this episode of “What Is X?” It sharpens national identities, intensifies feelings and social relations, and upends daily life. It makes civilization-upholding taboos fall away. Davidzon is a Russian-Ukrainian writer, editor and policy expert who has spent the past fourteen years writing on Eastern Europe and reporting from numerous conflict zones, including—most recently—the war in Ukraine (from which he helped his family flee in March). Together with Justin, Vlad discusses the art and philosophy of war, the nature of martial virtue, the ambitions and lapses in the post-Cold War political order, and whether war can ever be eradicated from the human condition. They also cover: the movement to cancel Pushkin, whether we’re now seeing a return to nineteenth-century modes of being and what happens when hipsters head to the front.