Madam Ambassador Busts a Move
What do the number 8 dictator, a democratic leader with a wartime past, and an African civil war all have in common? Amb. Tracey Jacobson. By what methods, both time-tested and totally on-the-fly, did...
24 Sep 40min
Democracy, Economy, Revolution?
Kyrgyzstan: A charred White House (they have one, too), riots and pogroms, plus a problematic human rights award. Why doesn't the need for diplomacy ever stop? Our very own Amb. Dan Rosenblum saw it a...
17 Sep 1h
Energy is Life (and Death?)
Multiple choice: Energy is (1) how we heat our homes, (2) a tool of malign influence, (3) an instrument of statecraft? And what about all those increasingly necessary critical minerals? Amb. Geoffrey ...
10 Sep 52min
Deep in the Hermit Kingdom
Former Assistant Secretary of State Susan Thornton joins us with tales of negotiations to disarm North Korea's nuclear arsenal – What could go wrong? Could anything go right? After chairs have been th...
3 Sep 50min
Last Officer at Abbey Gate (Encore)
In our third of three episodes honoring the lives impacted by the US departure from Afghanistan in 2021, we repost one of our most moving episodes. Consular officer Alan Eaton helped scores of Afghans...
27 Aug 35min
Civil Servant Dons Body Armor
In the second of our short series on Afghanistan five years after the US exit, Ken Handelman, former senior civil servant in the Department of Defense, reflects on the beauty, the weirdness and the tr...
20 Aug 38min
Bill Burns on Public Service (Encore)
Bill Burns says it best: "This is exactly the moment when you need to attract the best in our society to lives in public service, whether it's in the State Department, the US military or elsewhere. I ...
13 Aug 31min
High School Reunion in Kabul
How did Soviet-era bureaucratic stamps and a personal relationship between highly placed Afghan frenemies impact the outcome of US involvement in Afghanistan? Amb. John Bass shares the part of the sto...
6 Aug 42min
