x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

The Foreign Affairs Interview

Foreign Affairs Magazine

Foreign Affairs invites you to join its editor, Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, as he talks to influential thinkers and policymakers about the forces shaping the world. Whether the topic is the war in Ukraine, the United States’ competition with China, or the future of globalization, Foreign Affairs’ weekly podcast offers the kind of authoritative commentary and analysis that you can find in the magazine and on the website.

news politics

All Episodes

66:59

The Strength of Trump’s Foreign Policy

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/11/13

Robert O’Brien served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser from 2019 to 2021. O’Brien’s predecessors in that position left the administration to become some of the most vociferous critics of their former boss. O’Brien, in contrast, remained a staunch defender of Trump’s foreign policy through the Biden administration and into Trump’s second term. And perhaps as a result, he can help make some sense of the thinking behind Trump’s approach on key national security issues, drawing out the

en

56:45

Xi Jinping’s World of Treachery and Sacrifice

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/11/06

Last week’s meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping may have brought a respite in the trade war. But it hardly touched the more fundamental drivers of U.S.-Chinese rivalry, a rivalry that has come to shape more and more dimensions of geopolitics, the global economy, and beyond.Few have spent as much time observing and chronicling the interactions between Washington and Beijing as Orville Schell. Schell, one of America’s foremost China hands and the author of too many books on China to name, has

en

57:58

The Crack-Up of American Democracy

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/10/30

If one thing can be said to characterize the first months of Donald Trump’s second term, it is his expansive and often norm-breaking use of presidential power, both abroad and at home. There are the lethal strikes on boats alleged to be smuggling drugs; the range of tariffs he’s imposed; the way he’s gone after enemies, withheld funds, and restructured the federal workforce; the list could go on. Trump has disregarded constraint after constraint on the power of the executive, and many of the forces

en

64:50

America’s Two-State Delusion

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/10/23

With a cease-fire in place in Gaza after two years of war, Donald Trump has proclaimed the arrival of peace in the Middle East. At the moment, however, it’s not even clear if the cease-fire itself will hold, let alone whether there’s a viable path to a long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Few are more familiar with the elusiveness of peace in that conflict than Robert Malley. He has served as a senior Middle East official in American administrations going back to the 1990s. He has

en

58:15

Will the War in Gaza Really End?

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/10/15

The world has watched as a cease-fire has tentatively taken effect in Gaza. All the surviving Israeli hostages are home and many Palestinian prisoners and detainees have been released. Israeli forces have pulled back within Gaza, and much-needed humanitarian aid is rushing in. Phase One of Donald Trump’s 20-point plan seems to be working. But what happens next is more uncertain. At the time of this recording, conditions on the ground were still in flux, as the difficulty of Phase Two came into

en

53:13

The Reeducation of Russia’s Military

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/10/09

Ever since Russia started its war in Ukraine, assessments of its military power have vacillated wildly. First, Russian forces were supposed to overrun Ukraine and crush any resistance in a matter of days. Then, they were thought to be so weak that a Ukrainian counteroffensive or a new capability might cause them to collapse altogether. Now, with the war in its fourth year, and Donald Trump’s return to office bringing uncertainty about Western support, it has started to seem once again that time

en

48:00

Xi Jinping's Successor and the Future of China

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/10/02

When Xi Jinping took over the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, he began a new chapter in China’s history—one that would come to be defined above all by his grip on power. Xi overhauled not only the CCP but also China’s economy, military, and role in the world. Yet no matter how secure his power may be—and no matter his recent hot-mic musings about living to 150—what comes after Xi, and how it comes, is an increasingly central question in Chinese politics.As the political scientists Tyler Jost and

en

41:25

Poland’s View From the Frontline of Europe

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/09/25

In early September, around 20 Russian drones entered Poland’s airspace. NATO and Polish forces scrambled fighter jets to shoot them down, but not before several had traveled hundreds of miles into Polish territory. To Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, the incursion was not just a test of NATO’s resolve. It was a reminder of the precarious position of the alliance’s frontline states as the war in Ukraine grinds on for its third year, and as Donald Trump upends the basic bargain of the

en

54:53

Is America Ready for the Age of Cyber Warfare?

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/09/18

In 2024, the U.S. government discovered that Chinese hackers had penetrated a huge swath of the American telecommunications system—and remained there for years. That attack came to be known as Salt Typhoon. China has not only managed to steal the data and surveil the communications of hundreds of millions of Americans. It also embedded itself in the United States’ most important infrastructure, giving Beijing a crucial advantage in a conflict.Anne Neuberger was until recently the top cybersecurity

en

52:01

The World That Tariffs Will Make

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/09/11

Donald Trump has been railing against the global economic order from the start of his political career. But in his second term as president, he has turned that critique into blistering action. In just five months, the trade war that started with his April tariffs has completely reshaped the global economy—and struck at the very heart of the trade system that emerged after the end of the Cold War.To Michael Froman, the diagnosis is terminal. Froman, now the president of the Council on Foreign

en

32:41

Can Israel Save Itself?

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/09/04

It has been almost two years since Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel and the start of the war in Gaza. Those many months of combat have left Hamas severely weakened, with its leadership eviscerated and its military capabilities crippled. But as the war enters a new phase, with Israeli troops pushing into Gaza City, the central question of the war’s endgame remains unsettled. Israeli leaders have consistently refused to offer a clear vision for the war’s aftermath, for what happens on “the day

en

54:25

The Rise of the Economic Security State

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/08/28

For decades, the United States has used its position at the center of global financial, commercial, and technological networks to punish adversaries and pressure allies, exploiting what the political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman call “weaponized interdependence.” Lacking any alternatives, the rest of the world has had no choice but to rely on American payment systems, American technology, and American corporate might, even as Washington turned that reliance to its own strategic

en

43:56

Why Is America Going It Alone?

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/08/21

During his second term, Donald Trump has railed against the United States’ closest allies. He has imposed tariffs, threatened to upend security commitments, and openly challenged the borders of Canada, Panama, and Greenland.Historians often look to the past for insight about the present and future. But although alliances have collapsed for many reasons over past centuries, Margaret MacMillan argues in a recent essay for Foreign Affairs that Trump’s current behavior toward allies has little

en

35:12

Best of: Is the World Ready for the Population Bust?

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/08/14

In an episode released in January 2025, Senior Editor Kanishk Tharoor spoke with the political economist Nicholas Eberstadt about the global crash in fertility rates and the looming prospect of depopulation.Over the past century, the world’s population has exploded—surging from around one and a half billion people in 1900 to roughly eight billion today. But according to Eberstadt, that chapter of human history is over, and a new era, which he calls the age of depopulation, has begun. That subject

en

01:19:50

Best Of: What Drives Putin and Xi

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/08/07

In 2023, Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with the historians Stephen Kotkin and Orville Schell about what drives Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin and how they are (and are not) like Mao and Stalin. Xi and Putin loom over geopolitics in a way that few leaders have in decades. Not even Mao and Stalin drove global events the way Xi and Putin do today. Who they are, how they view the world, and what they want are some of the most important and pressing questions in foreign

en

01:08:30

The Uncertain Future of U.S. Relations With India

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/07/31

In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, the scholar and former U.S. official Ashley J. Tellis makes a provocative argument about India’s foreign policy. In a piece titled “India’s Great-Power Delusions,” Tellis argues that Indian policymakers have their priorities wrong. Instead of pushing for what they call “multipolarity” in the international system, Indian leaders should align more closely with the United States. Tellis insists that India will be able to fend off China, its far stronger rival in

en

39:10

Joseph Nye and the End of the American Century

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/07/24

For decades, Joseph Nye was one of the true giants of American foreign policy. His career, in government and in the academy, spanned epochs, and his body of work as a scholar of international relations remains unparalleled. Nye, who passed away at the age of 88 in May, served in the Carter and Clinton administrations and headed the Harvard Kennedy School for nearly two decades. But he may be best known for his contributions to the study of international relations. Nye coined the term “soft power”

en

01:04:28

The Coming Nuclear Hurricane

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/07/17

It wasn’t long ago that both heads of state and prominent policymakers could speak seriously about a world without nuclear weapons. But in the course of just a few years, nuclear concerns have come back in force. Arms control has broken down almost entirely. China has started a massive expansion of its arsenal, putting basic assumptions about deterrence in doubt. Vladimir Putin has threatened nuclear use in Ukraine—threats that were taken very seriously by American officials. And proliferation risks

en

01:04:13

Preparing for the World After Trump

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/07/10

For all its promise of disruption, Donald Trump’s first term as president transformed American foreign policy less than most critics feared and some supporters hoped. Alliances held up, the rules-based order largely endured, and American global leadership appeared resilient. When Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, he could proclaim “America is back” and proceed with a foreign policy that was in many ways quite traditional.But Trump’s second term has been different. In just a few months, he

en

53:46

What a Stronger Europe Means for America

The Foreign Affairs Interview ·

2025/07/03

For years, U.S. presidents have complained that European governments spend far too little on their militaries, leaving the United States to pick up a disproportionate share of the tab for the transatlantic alliance. But in the past few years, Europe’s defense spending has exploded.At the NATO summit last week, U.S. allies committed to spending five percent of GDP on defense. That’s far more than the two percent target U.S. policymakers long called for. It’s even more than the United States itself

en

118 results

Similar Podcasts

Expres Ráno

Expres FM

PBS News Hour - Full Show

PBS News

CD Voice

China Daily

Israel Today: Ongoing War Report

Noa Levi

Jeffrey Epstein: The Coverup Chronicles

Bobby Capucci