Podcast

CNN’s chief international correspondent has seen the worst of humanity. But she’s also experienced amazing acts of kindness under some of the most difficult circumstances. And she’s learned a lot about what drives countries into war in the first place.

Listen on Audible | Apple Podcasts | Transcript

Listen on Audible

Known as MBS, the 37-year-old de facto Saudi ruler has ambitious plans to modernize society. But he has also been accused of brutal human rights violations, including ordering the operation that led to the medieval-style death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Should America still be his friend? And with the US now much less dependent on Saudi oil, does it really need to?

Listen on Audible

Cybercriminals and states like China and Russia are targeting the computer networks of everything from America’s hospitals to the water coming out of the kitchen tap. Jen Easterly, the director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), breaks down the biggest cyber threats and what the government, companies, and the rest of us need to do about them.

Listen on Audible

It started in 2016 when a small group of American diplomats and spies in Havana, Cuba said they heard a piercing sound and became debilitatingly ill. Seven years later, more than a thousand Americans all over the globe now say they’ve also gotten sick. Despite several scientific studies and numerous government investigations, the debate around what’s making people sick still hasn’t been fully resolved. Could the job these foreign service and intelligence officers do — trying to keep America safe — in outposts like Cuba and Russia and China be so stressful that it causes serious neurological symptoms? And is Havana Syndrome still a national security threat — since it’s taking out some of the best and brightest Americans in the foreign service and intelligence?

Listen on Audible | Transcript

Tucked away deep inside the intelligence agency’s headquarters in Langley, VA is a museum most of us will never see. It chronicles the organization’s history—including some of its most important missions and greatest failures. The public isn’t allowed in, but in this episode you get a peek inside.

Listen on Audible | Transcript

A media frenzy erupted when a Chinese spy balloon crossed the skies above the United States, but that was hardly the first UFO to violate American airspace. U.S. warplanes have shot down multiple UFOs this year and the government has reported over 150 more mysterious sightings in recent years that it can’t explain. Pilots and former Pentagon officials say it’s time for the U.S. government to study the issue seriously and tell the public what it knows. But the Pentagon’s bizarre history of stifling — and stoking —  UFO panic makes it hard to know how out-there the truth will turn out to be.

Listen on Audible | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Transcript

The celebrated American general takes you on a world tour of hotspots, sizes up the threats posed by China and Russia, assesses the risk of a military coup in the U.S., discusses a future where AI-powered machines are doing most of the war-fighting, and explains why he thinks the most apt metaphor for the challenges facing America in the current global landscape is…a very tricky circus act

Listen on Audible | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Transcript

When a newly-hired intern at the International Criminal Court was arrested and revealed to be a Russian spy, it begged the question: what was he up to? Now that Vladimir Putin has a warrant from this court for his arrest, it’s not hard to imagine the spy was planning to tell Moscow about evidence that is accumulating in the case against Russia for its atrocities in Ukraine. Turns out the evidence is abundant — and this may be the conflict that finally makes it hard to get away with war crimes.

Listen on Audible | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Transcript