Waging and winning a nuclear war have been called “thinking about the unthinkable” but that’s exactly what Edward Kaplan and I discussed in our interview about his recent book, The End of Victory: Prevailing in the Thermonuclear Age (Cornell UP, 2022).
The current Dean of the School of Strategic Landpower at the US Army War College, Kaplan recounts the costs ... Show More
Yesterday
Democracy and Freedom: The Role of Philanthropy and Education
This week, we feature an episode with Dr. Alvaro Salas-Castro, President and CEO of the Reynolds Foundation, and Founder and Chairman of the Democracy Lab Foundation, which fosters civic innovation. We discuss the current state of the freedom and democracy movement, how philanthr ... Show More
44m 50s
Nov 21
Emily Callaci, "Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor" (Seal Press, 2025)
Across the globe in the 1970s, a network of feminists distilled their struggles into a single demand: Wages for Housework! Today, it remains a provocative idea, and an unfulfilled promise.
In Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise (Penguin/Seal Press ... Show More
46m 7s
Nov 21
Killian Clarke, "Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Why do some revolutions fail and succumb to counterrevolutions, whereas others go on to establish durable rule?
Marshalling original data on counterrevolutions worldwide since 1900 and new evidence from the reversal of Egypt's 2011 revolution, in Return of Tyranny: Why Counterre ... Show More
1h 5m
Jan 2025
Season 4, Episode 4: Annie Jacobsen, Nuclear War: A Scenario
Send us a textJoin Professor Jeffrey Sachs and award-winning journalist Annie Jacobsen as they discuss Jacobsen’s chilling and rigorous depiction of nuclear war in her groundbreaking book, Nuclear War: A Scenario. With meticulous research and interviews with military and politica ... Show More
52m 18s
Nov 2023
40 Years Of Sounding The Alarm On Nuclear Winter
<p>This week holds anniversaries for two important milestones in nuclear warfare. On November 1, 1952, the United States detonated a massive hydrogen bomb in the Marshall Islands. The new weapon vaporized a whole island, leaving behind a mile-wide crater. That bomb was around 700 ... Show More
18m 19s
Jun 2024
M. Girard Dorsey, "Holding Their Breath: How the Allies Confronted the Threat of Chemical Warfare in World War II" (Cornell UP, 2023)
In Holding Their Breath: How the Allies Confronted the Threat of Chemical Warfare in World War II (Cornell UP, 2023), M. Girard Dorsey uncovers just how close Britain, the United States, and Canada came to crossing the red line that restrained poison gas during World War II.
Unli ... Show More
57m 27s
Feb 2024
A life in the American century
<p>With the United States’ presidential election just a few months away, the stakes go far beyond domestic politics. The results will decide the future of American foreign policy, at least for the next four years. In the corridors of power in Washington, US policymakers will need ... Show More
37m 6s
Mar 2024
Fatal Neutrality: Lumumba, the CIA, and the Cold War
In 1960, the Congo gained independence from Belgium. Patrice Lumumba was elected prime minister and Joseph Kasavubu president. Within a year, Lumumba was deposed and assassinated. This week on Deconstructed, executive editor of Foreign Affairs and author Stuart Reid joins Ryan Gr ... Show More
46m 10s