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Angry Planet

430 episodes - English - Latest episode: 15 days ago - ★★★★ - 576 ratings

Conversations about conflict on an angry planet. Created, produced, and hosted by Matthew Gault and Jason Fields


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Episodes

The Rise of South Korea

February 13, 2023 18:45 - 1 hour - 48.7 MB

All three Angry Planet guys are on the show today. Kevin went to South Korea in September and he’s here to tell us all about it. “A shrimp stuck between two whales.” Shopping for a frigate in a glossy catalog Why America doesn’t remember the Korean War The Don Draper connection “MASH was about Vietnam.” A nuclear penninsula? No one knows what’s going in in North Korea. Angry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a w...

The Complexities of China's Liberal Nationalism

January 30, 2023 14:00 - 37 minutes - 29.9 MB

Only Nixon can go to China. The now-forgotten aphorism once represented so much in American politics. After Nixon met with Mao, relations between the Communist country and America thawed. Trade opened up and, the popular notion went, with economic benefits would come a lessening of authoritarianism in China and the eventual end of Communism. Here in 2023 the idea that economic modernization and prosperity would lead to a flourishing of democracy in China seems quaint. What happened? And do ...

What a War Game Tells Us About Taiwan

January 23, 2023 14:00 - 41 minutes - 33 MB

It’s only human to play games. Some might argue it’s in the DNA. Games are part of how we learn, and can be the best way to teach or solve a problem. But some games are more serious than others.  A game recently played at a Washington think tank is about as serious as it gets. It looked at what might happen if China attacked Taiwan, and the results weren’t pretty for anyone. Joining us today to discuss what they found in playing the game is Mark Cancian. He is a retired marine corps colone...

The Long Weird History of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle

January 16, 2023 14:00 - 36 minutes - 29 MB

The Bradley Fighting Vehicle is on its way to Ukraine. Fifty of them, to be precise. This armored personnel carrier on tracks is not a tank. Don’t call it a tank. Once maligned as a boondoggle that represented everything wrong with Pentagon weapon’s programs, the Bradley is now a much desired piece of armor. With us today to suss this all out is Sebastian Roblin. Roblin is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in NBC, Forbes, and—of course—War Is Boring. Angry Planet has a Substac...

Israel's New Coalition from Hell

January 09, 2023 14:00 - 35 minutes - 28.3 MB

Benjamin Netanyahu is back and he's brought a right-wing coalition like nothing Israel has seen. Dan Perry knows the game and all the players and and he joins Angry Planet to talk about what might be the end of democracy in the Jewish State and what it means for the Palestinians and relations with the U.S. Angry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict. https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribe You can...

The Wagner Group Gives Putin Implausible Deniability

December 19, 2022 14:00 - 36 minutes - 28.9 MB

The shine has come off Russia’s regular armed forces. We’ve all seen the pictures in Ukraine of burned out vehicles and crashed drones, everything already starting to rust. Casualties for the Russian military are estimated to be over 100,000.  But the Russian Army isn’t the only force in Ukraine fighting on Moscow’s behalf. The Wagner Group is there, too, and we know far less about them and what they’re doing. To help us get a better view, we’re joined by Jason Blazakis. He’s Director of t...

The Precarious Nature of Being Jewish

December 12, 2022 15:36 - 53 minutes - 42.8 MB

Or: Why Jason has a Velcro mezuzah. An episode about Kanye West and violent family histories. Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict. https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribe You can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplane...

Talking Russia with the CIA's Former Eurasian Bureau Chief

December 05, 2022 14:00 - 42 minutes - 33.9 MB

We’ve talked a lot on this program about electronic intelligence—the amazing stuff you can do with satellites, user generated content and sophisticated software. Nice. But we’ve left out all the men and women who still do work on the ground, all over the world. Paul Kolbe is here to remind us about human intelligence and the role it plays. Kolbe is a CIA veteran, having worked in the directorate of operations for 25 years before moving on to private industry. He’s currently director of th...

The History of 'Putin's Wars'

November 25, 2022 18:27 - 1 hour - 48.5 MB

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reign has been defined by constant conflict. From Chechnya to Ukraine and many other wars in between, Putin’s Russia has constantly been pushing at its borders and sending troops abroad. How have those wars shaped Russia and the world? And what does it all have to do with Ukraine? That’s the subject of the new book Putin’s Wars. Its author is here with us today. Its friend of the show: Mark Galeotti. Galeotti is a public policy fellow at the Wilson Center ...

ICYMI: A Timothy Snyder Double Feature

November 17, 2022 14:00 - 59 minutes - 47.6 MB

We’re running our Thanksgiving break episode a week early. We’ll be back next week to talk with Mark Galeotti about Russia, Kherson, and the missiles that just hit Poland. This week, we’re going far back into our past. It’s a Timothy Snyder double feature. Both of these episodes are from our “War College” days and feature the famous historian at two different points in his journey to the cable news pundit we feel (well, I feel) weirdly ambivalent towards today. The first is from 2015, and ...

The Pentagon's Scary New Nuclear Plan

November 11, 2022 21:08 - 41 minutes - 33 MB

Today it’s all about the bomb. Nuclear weapons are back in a big way and everything about the Cold War suddenly feels very fresh. Nukes are strange things. They’ve only been used twice and the language and knowledge around them can often feel arcane, almost religious. There’s all these little rituals in nuclear space.  We’re gonna talk about one of those rituals today—the Nuclear Posture Review. Once in every U.S. presidential administration, the nuclear curtain is withdrawn and we get a gl...

Likewar and the Weird National Security Implications of Musk's Twitter Takeover

November 04, 2022 13:50 - 45 minutes - 36.5 MB

I’m sorry, we have to talk about Elon Musk one more time. Or, as Jason said. “Twitter: Now With More Musk!” But seriously. This episode is about more than Musk. It’s about how conflict has gotten … weird. We start with a conversation about a new podcast about the weird future of war. Then we asked one question about Musk and things spiraled out of control. Has conflict gotten …weirder? Have the lines gotten blurrier? Why are cartoon Shiba Inu dogs yelling at Russian officials online? Why i...

Why We Have to Care About Elon Musk

October 27, 2022 13:21 - 28 minutes - 22.9 MB

Today we’re talking about Elon Musk — not because we want to, but because we have to. As we all know, the man is rich. I don’t mean merely wealthy, I mean he could pay off a good portion of the national deficit. He’s also not shy, to the point where he likes to tell entire countries what to do. They may not do it, but they’re forced to react. Bloomberg’s Iain Marlow, who covers diplomacy, has written a great piece about what Musk is up to now. Musk Tweets Complicate US Diplomacy From Ukra...

The Second American Civil War Is (Not) Coming

October 20, 2022 13:00 - 43 minutes - 34.8 MB

Alt Weeklies are an important part of America’s media landscape. It’s local reporting from people with a different point of view and different goals. If you’re mad at mainstream narratives you could do worse than picking up, say, the Inlander out of the Pacific Northwest. If you want to know what’s really going on there, how worried you should be about budding extremist movements, and what role politicians are playing in our current various crises, it’s a good place to start. With us today ...

Drinking With the Russians Who Fled to Georgia

October 13, 2022 13:43 - 32 minutes - 26.4 MB

In an attempt to shore up its rapidly crumbling position in Ukraine, Moscow has partially mobilized the people. In response, many of those people are fleeing. But where can they go? Russia has spent the last 100 years bullying, invading, and killing its immediate neighbors. Places like Georgia are seeing a huge influx of Russian military aged males. How do the Georgians feel about this? It’s complicated. With us today to talk about this is James Jackson. Jackson is a freelance journalist in...

Iran's Cycle of Protest and Suppression

October 06, 2022 13:00 - 43 minutes - 35 MB

There’s unrest in Iran right now. People have taken to the streets, the internet has been restricted for “security reasons” authorities say, and there’s been clashes with police. This all started after a young woman, Mahsa Amini, was arrested by Iranian moral police. She died while in custody. Her death and the circumstances around it kicked off the current protests, but the unrest is part of a long continuum of uprising and suppression in Iran that’s as old as the Islamic Revolution of 1979...

The Report the U.N. Didn't Want You to See

September 26, 2022 13:00 - 33 minutes - 26.5 MB

The vast majority of Chinese people come from a single ethnic group—the Han. So what’s life like for the millions of people who aren’t Han? Tough, it’s fair to say. Ask any Tibetan. But one group has been singled out for particular persecution, the Uyghurs. There are about 12 million Uyghurs, they mostly live in a province called Xinjiang and mostly Muslim. And the Chinese appear to be trying to wipe out at least their culture. Many countries have condemned the Chinese for this, but the Un...

How Ukraine Routed the Russian Military

September 19, 2022 13:00 - 31 minutes - 25.6 MB

What seemed unthinkable a year ago has come to pass. Ukraine has started its counter offensive and in a shockingly short amount of time has pushed Russia out of much of its territory. The Russian military appears to be collapsing with a rapidity that is shocking pretty much everyone. Well, maybe not everyone. People who’ve been paying attention to the minutiae of the war aren’t as surprised as the rest of us. That’s kind of been a pattern in coverage and punditry of Russia’s invasion. One ...

A Classical View of the Afghan Collapse

September 07, 2022 15:53 - 32 minutes - 25.9 MB

This will be the last episode we do on Afghanistan for a bit. We wanted to give the final word to a U.S. Marine who served there. We’re now a year out from the fall of Kabul and what looks like the end of America’s uniformed involvement in Afghanistan. There are as many as 70,000 Afghans who helped the United States during the war who are still looking to get out. Elliot Ackerman, who served in the region as a Marine and as a CIA operative, was trying to help as the last flights were takin...

Steve Inskeep Is Back From Afghanistan

August 31, 2022 16:09 - 39 minutes - 31.8 MB

It’s been a year since the U.S. left Afghanistan in disarray. We’ve spoken to a number of people who have been to Afghanistan over the years on this show. That includes journalists who walked into Kabul with the Taliban the first time, in 1996, soldiers who fought in Afghanistan throughout the war, and more recently, a man who was supposed to be fighting corruption but found it to be worse than a losing battle. Today, NPR’s Steve Inskeep joins us. He recently visited Afghanistan and spent s...

When Soldiers Tell the Pentagon That It's Wrong

August 25, 2022 15:24 - 34 minutes - 27.9 MB

Dissent. It’s a word people don’t like to hear, especially coming from the military. But it’s also a vitally important component of any vibrant democracy. Dissent, especially informed dissent, can pull us back from the brink and help us make better choices. We are one year out from the end of America’s direct involvement in Afghanistan and, after two decades of war, it’s time to start listening to the dissenters. That’s what the new book Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America’...

When War Became a Crime

August 12, 2022 14:49 - 31 minutes - 25.4 MB

To say there are widespread reports of abuses by Russian troops in Ukraine is to undersell it. There have been hundreds and hundreds of cases claiming rape, torture, and murder. Last week, a video of the torture and execution of a Ukrainian soldier at the hands of Russian soldiers shocked the world. We call these things war crimes and crimes against humanity. But that’s a relatively new concept. Today we’re going to talk about the Nuremberg Trials, which took some vague ideals and put them ...

Who Is Viktor Bout?

August 05, 2022 19:42 - 34 minutes - 27.7 MB

WNBA star Britney Griner is imprisoned in Russia and, apparently, the U.S. is making Russia an incredible offer to get her out. Last week Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that America had “put a substantial proposal on the table.” That proposal? The return to Russia of convicted international arms dealer Viktor Bout. This so-called Merchant of Death’s story is an amazing one. It even inspired a 2005 Nicolas Cage movie, some six years before Bout’s arrest.  With us today to talk about...

Ukraine's Alamo: The Siege of Azovstal

July 29, 2022 13:54 - 29 minutes - 23.7 MB

Imagine being trapped below ground for weeks, surrounded by soldiers, bombs dropping just a few feet above your head. Food is scarce, rats are everywhere. Is survival possible? And what would it even look like? A trip back home, or to a Russian prison? That was the situation during the siege of the Azovstal Steel Plant in Mariupol, Ukraine.  Michael Schwirtz of the New York Times has put together a comprehensive look at the siege, which is being called Ukraine’s Alamo and he’s joining us ...

Biden in Jerusalem

July 22, 2022 17:07 - 34 minutes - 27.3 MB

I think we can all assume why Joe Biden visited Saudi Arabia recently. In fact, we just did a show on why the world can’t quit Saudi oil. But it’s interesting to pull apart the other part of his journey — to Israel and, very briefly, the Palestinian Authority. Joining us to do just that is independent journalist Noga Tarnopolsky. She’s written for everyone from the New York Times to the LA Times, as well as many other international outlets. So, why visit Israel and why now? Was he just in...

ICYMI: The Origins of Russia's War in Ukraine

July 15, 2022 19:40 - 56 minutes - 45.3 MB

We’re digging into the archives one more time to bring you two episodes from the early days of the show. They’re all about Russia and Ukraine. I chose these two because I think they give a unique view of the origins of the war and reflect how much our thinking on Russia has changed since its “official” invasion in February of 2022. We’ll be back next week with a brand new episode. Stay safe until then. Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our an...

ICYMI: The Roots of Political Violence

July 08, 2022 20:45 - 27 minutes - 21.9 MB

This one is a blast from the past. Jason is on Vacation and Matthew is going in for a minor surgery so we're resurrecting some old episodes. Here's what we said five years ago when this first aired: "Antifa and white nationalists clash in the streets. Students on college campuses patrol the sidewalks armed with bats. A man in Portland stabbed several people on a bus and another in Virginia opened fire on Republican legislators on a baseball field. This week on War College, Joe Young – colle...

The Hooligans Fighting for Ukraine

July 01, 2022 16:51 - 43 minutes - 34.5 MB

If you’re a fan of this show, you’ve probably seen and read a lot of things about the war in Ukraine. But you’ve never seen anything quite like the new Popular Front documentary Frontline Hooligan. Today’s guest is the creator of that documentary. He’s been on the show many times. You know him. Jake Hanrahan. He’s an independent journalist and the host of Popular Front, a podcast that focuses on the niche details of modern warfare and under-reported conflict. Today we’re gonna talk about F...

On the Frontlines of Ukraine and a Roe Reaction in Real Time

June 27, 2022 20:11 - 45 minutes - 36.3 MB

The war in Ukraine grinds on. As the West’s attention wanes, Ukrainians fight for their lives and freedom. They need more of everything. Weapons, ammunition, supplies, people. Today we have various stories from the war, as told by returning guest Danny Gold. Gold is a writer and producer who focuses on crime and conflict. He’s also a reluctant podcaster who co-hosts the excellent Underworld Podcast. Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry...

Proud Boys, January 6, and When a U-Haul Is a Clown Car

June 17, 2022 19:23 - 53 minutes - 43.1 MB

The January 6th committee has gone public with its hearings and once again the Proud Boys are in the news. Charges against 5 members of the group, including its leader, Enrique Tarrio have been superseded. Now, we’re talking about straight up sedition. So, it’s time to look again at what this group — and related groups — did on January 6, and just how dangerous they really are. We’ll also talk about accelerationism, what it is and what accelerationists want. Joining us are two people who a...

The Dream of the Kurds Is Alive and in Danger

June 10, 2022 16:49 - 48 minutes - 38.8 MB

With America’s retreat from Afghanistan still fresh, it’s popular for politicians and pundits to bemoan America’s inability to fight and win a war. That line ignores an important bit of recent history we’ve memory-holed—the war against he Islamic State. America didn’t fight that war alone, however. Far from it. An international coalition of trained soldiers and volunteer troops recognized a horrifying threat and came together to defeat it. As terrifying as the Islamic State is, the successf...

We All Believe Conspiracy Theories

May 26, 2022 19:59 - 39 minutes - 31.3 MB

Conspiracy Theories are part of the foundation of the United States. Our first strong third party, the Anti-Masonic party, had its roots in the belief in a conspiracy theory. Years later the John Birch society shaped American politics. Things feel different now. Lies are doing something to the United States that no foreign enemy has been able to achieve: Shredding it. The bizarre QAnon, imaginary purple elephant and, far more dangerous, the big lie of a stolen election. It’s time to tal...

When the Battlefield Is the Home Front

May 19, 2022 19:16 - 34 minutes - 27.7 MB

Right now, Russia is learning a lesson as old as combat, morale is at the center of any fighting force. How does it change things when you can pick up your cell phone and call your mom to share your experiences, or even complain about your commander? How do you build a band of brothers when home is just a phone call away? Colonel John Spencer asked himself these questions and wrote a book about it called Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connections in Modern War. Spencer i...

SPONSORED: The Mega-Tank of the Future

May 18, 2022 16:00 - 39 minutes - 31.8 MB

Today’s episode is brought to you by Auroch Digital, makers of many fine video games including the one we’re here to talk about today: Ogre. For almost fifty years, it has terrorized our future. The Ogre. A massive AI-controlled tank hell bent on the destruction of the human race. Ogre. That’s both the name of the game and the name of the game’s strongest unit. First published in 1977, Ogre became a phenomenon in the wargame scene. It was asymmetric, deceptively simple, and has endured for ...

Checking In With The White House's New Disinformation Czar

May 06, 2022 17:44 - 51 minutes - 41.4 MB

Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict. https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribe You can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcol...

Will There Be a Nuclear War?

April 28, 2022 19:45 - 41 minutes - 32.9 MB

When it comes to U.S.-Russia relations, everything old is new again. Russia and the West are separating. Fast. For those of us who were alive in the 1980s, it all feels bracingly familiar. That includes, especially, nuclear saber rattling. Putin, the Duman, and Russian TV feel like they’ve gone out of their way to remind the rest of the world: hey, we’ve got nukes. But how likely is the possibility of nuclear war, really? And what are Russia’s nuclear capabilities exactly? Here to help us ...

"America Is an Idealist Power in a Reapolitik World"

April 15, 2022 16:50 - 39 minutes - 31.8 MB

Over the past month, we’ve discussed a lot of specifics regarding the War in Ukraine. We’ve gone over the role of tanks, talked about Putin’s motives, and discussed War Crimes. What we haven’t done, really, is look at the big picture. What does this war mean, not just for Ukraine, but for Europe and America. What is the future of NATO? Increasingly, it feels like we’re on the precipice of something … new and, perhaps, frightening. With us today to talk through all this is Charles A. Kupch...

Bucha, Chechnya, and Russian War Crimes

April 09, 2022 16:18 - 49 minutes - 39.8 MB

Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine are being revealed as its military is pushed back. In the Kyiv suburbs, evidence of summary executions, torture and rape are being revealed. All countries are guilty of crimes during war, but Russia deserves special mention for its actions in the last hundred years. At the end of World War II and the occupation of Germany after, at least 2 million German women were raped by Russian soldiers, along with other atrocities on the most brutal front in the war. In...

You're Wrong. Tanks Aren't Done Yet

April 01, 2022 17:13 - 30 minutes - 24.5 MB

The tank is an iconic weapon of modern war, but the truth is that it’s more than a century old. When we think of tanks we think of the battles of World War II. The Tiger and the Sherman squaring off, the relentless push of the Soviet T-34s into Eastern Europe. Or maybe you think of beige ones driving through the deserts of Iraq, keeping its crew snug and safe. But how safe are you? In Ukraine, Russia is losing many tanks. It’s hard to know how many exactly, and what is wartime propaganda. ...

Russia and the West's Love/Hate History

March 25, 2022 19:27 - 32 minutes - 25.8 MB

Relations between Russia and the western world are complicated. In the grand scheme of things, America is but a recent addition to a long simmering rivalry that runs back a thousand years. Putin and Ukraine? Well, that’s just the latest dust up in a very long history. So let’s talk about it. Here with us today to suss all this out is Michael Hirsh. Hirsh is a senior correspondent at Foreign Policy and the author of the excellent piece there, Putin’s Thousand-Year War. Angry Planet has a s...

Eastern Europe's Fascist Salad

March 19, 2022 16:03 - 47 minutes - 37.7 MB

According to Vladimir Putin, he’s on a quest to de-Nazify Ukraine. But what about the Nazis in his own backyard? Hell, what about the Nazis all over Central and Eastern Europe. Right now, the Azov Regiment in Ukraine is dominating the conversation. Pictures of the ultra nationalist group are circulating online and being used to justify Russia’s invasion. But they aren’t the only fascists in the area. Far from it. But it’s complicated and Azov is part of a broad tapestry of Fascist movements...

UNLOCKED: Coping in the New Age of Nuclear Anxiety

March 17, 2022 21:11 - 1 hour - 53.7 MB

Russia is at war with Ukraine and Vladimir Putin is making vague nuclear threats. Both Russian and U.S. officials are, mostly, trying to dial things down. A Russian defense official said they don’t have their hands on the button and the Pentagon said it had canceled the test of a Minuteman missile. And yet … days later the U.S. head of Strategic Command said America needed to modernize its nuclear forces and reminded everyone that the test had been postponed and not canceled. If all this is...

What's Behind Putin's Nazi Bullshit

March 11, 2022 19:23 - 37 minutes - 29.9 MB

This episode was originally going to be called something like not everything is the Holocaust. We were going to talk about how the Nazi attempt to kill all of Europe’s Jews during World War II wasn’t much like being told to get a vaccine or wear a mask. But events have overtaken us. Mask mandates are falling and the war in Ukraine is all I can think about nowadays - I don’t know about you. When Vladimir Putin ordered his invasion, he claimed he was going to de-Nazify Ukraine’s government....

What the War Means for Russia

March 02, 2022 20:06 - 48 minutes - 38.6 MB

Returning guest and Russia expert Mark Galeotti comes on the show to give his perspective on the war in Ukraine. You can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russia's War in Ukraine Isn't Going to Plan

February 27, 2022 20:57 - 44 minutes - 35.3 MB

We talk about war a lot on this show. It’s kind of the foundation of what we do. But the war in Ukraine is different. Frankly, it’s scarier. It makes everyone think of World War II and World War III at the same time. So, let’s talk about it. Was there ever a chance to stop it, and what do we think will happen next? With us today is James Miller. He’s a foreign policy analyst and journalist who has spent extensive time in Ukraine. You can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google...

A Brief Apology and a Discussion of Sanctions

February 25, 2022 21:21 - 41 minutes - 32.9 MB

Once upon a time, an enemy would pull up to your gates with his army and surround your city so that nothing could get in or out. In a short time, you’d be eating the horses, maybe the rats and, if things got bad enough and you weren’t entirely suicidal, you’d open the gates. Sometimes that would work out OK. Sometimes not. Nowadays, countries wanting something from each other seem to have more options, but one that’s still around is the siege. We just call the sanctions.  To discuss sancti...

Russia and China Aren’t BFFs

February 18, 2022 18:48 - 28 minutes - 23.2 MB

It’s been a concern lurking in the minds of America’s leaders for a long time: what if Russia and China could successfully work together against the United States? A combined Russo-China empire is the stuff of science fiction, perhaps, but what’s the reality today? What goals do they share and how well can they work together?  And how does that cooperation affect the potential war in Ukraine? To help us understand this situation we have Andrew Radin, who is a political scientist at the RA...

The Weird Way Americans Talk About Ukraine As War Looms

February 14, 2022 20:06 - 38 minutes - 30.6 MB

Ukraine. Things are changing rapidly, but at this moment the Kremlin has the country surrounded. It’s conducting military drills in the Black Sea, marshaling troops in neighboring Belarus, and recalling mercenaries from Africa. Recently Putin even made a rape joke during a press conference to imply what he wanted from Ukraine. It doesn’t look good. But to hear Ben & Jerry's Ice cream tell it, this is all because of the imperial U.S.-led aggression in Eastern Europe. Why does it seem like so...

It's Later Than You think. The Doomsday Clock at 75

February 04, 2022 19:38 - 29 minutes - 23.5 MB

The Doomsday Clock is always ticking down. Between climate change, technological advances, new diseases, and the ever present threat of nuclear war … it often feels like we’re close to the end of civilization. How close? According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists … we’re 100 seconds to midnight. The closest we’ve ever been. But what, exactly, is the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and this bizarre clock they oversee? Why, when we imagine the end of the world, do we see a clock tic...

Putin, Ukraine, and Russia's Daddy Issues

January 28, 2022 17:50 - 47 minutes - 37.7 MB

Everyone has an opinion about Ukraine, but something I’ve noticed in Western media is that no one really seems to be asking Russians what they think of the situation. The reasons for that are extremely complicated. So let’s talk about them. Here to talk about Russia’s view of the Ukraine conflict, Putin’s motivations, and to do a little … psychoanalysis … is Peter Pomerantsev. Pomerantsev is a returning guest, his latest in Time Magazine is What the West Will Never Understand About Putin's ...

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