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For decades, the US economy has been deeply intertwined with war-making — from Cold War-era aerospace and nuclear weapons to today’s AI-driven military technologies. But this wasn’t always seen as inevitable.

In the 1970s and ’80s, organizers built unlikely coalitions across the peace, labor, civil rights, and faith movements to challenge military spending and push for an economy that served people instead of perpetual war. Their work helped popularize the idea of economic conversion: redirecting public resources away from weapons production and toward jobs that meet human needs.

In this episode, we revisit that history — and ask what it can teach us now. As communities organize against new defense-tech projects and local governments continue to subsidize weapons manufacturers, activists are once again grappling with how to confront the war economy — and what a more just, peaceful alternative could look like.

This is the final episode of our season, MIC Drop, reporting on how the military-industrial complex shapes local economies — and how communities are organizing in response.

Guests: 

Dr. David Cortright, former Executive Director of SANE; Larry Frank, former Development Director for Jobs with Peace LA; Nathan Kim, Graduate Research Associate at DAIR

Additional Resources:

Cortright v. Resor Reenactment and details about the Waging Peace event at George Washington University

UCLA: Memory Work Los Angeles project on Jobs with Peace

Recording of the 1982 Central Park Rally 

Brown University Costs of War Project

Around the world, dockworkers have refused to unload ships tied to Israel’s military supply chain. In Italy, Morocco, India, and Sweden, those refusals have sparked national strikes and port shutdowns. But in the United States — where 70% of Israel’s weapons originate — things look very different.

This episode dives into the complicated reality facing American activists trying to “block the boat”: a divided labor movement, powerful unions with clashing politics, and a military-industrial complex that shields its most sensitive logistics behind military bases and Air Force cargo planes.

We meet East Coast organizers struggling to reach conservative longshore workers, West Coast veterans who once helped stop South African apartheid cargo, and the researchers studying how social-movement unionism succeeds — and fails.

What power do workers really have to stop the flow of war? And what happens when activists push that power to its limits?

Guests: 

Tova Fry, organizer and activist with Port Workers & Communities for Palestine
Katy Fox-Hodess, Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield
Rafeef Ziadah, Senior Lecturer at Kings College
Lara Kiswani, Executive Director of the Arab Resource & Organizing Center
Clarence Thomas, retired dock worker at ILWU Local 10
Charmaine Chua, Acting Associate Professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley

Additional Resources: 

Community picket lines and social movement unionism on the US docks, 2014–2021: Organizing lessons from the Block the Boat campaign for Palestine, Katy Fox-Hodess and Rafeef Ziadah, Critical Sociology

Reds or Rackets? The Making of Radical and Conservative Unions on the Waterfront, Howard Kimeldorf

This Union Is Famous for Opposing South African Apartheid. Now It’s Standing With Gaza., Sarah Lazare, The Nation

Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area, Peter Cole

In this episode, we head to the picket line to hear from the workers who build America’s bombs and jets — those struggling to afford rent, groceries, and daycare while assembling weapons worth more than their annual salaries. Reporter Sophie Hurwitz takes us inside a city reckoning with its identity: Can St. Louis really become the “Silicon Valley of defense” when the jobs it’s banking on are shrinking? What happens when an economy built on war no longer guarantees stability? And what does labor power look like in an industry whose products help shape conflicts worldwide?

While some in town are fighting to keep defense dollars flowing, others want St. Louis to imagine a different future. This is the story of a strike, a city, and a century-long relationship with the military-industrial complex now reaching its breaking point.

Guests: 

Sophie Hurwitz, Reporting Fellow, Inkstick Media; Breanna Donnell, Rick Perdue, Mason, and other Boeing Machinists; Stephen Quackenbush, Professor and Director of Defense and Strategic Studies, University of Missouri; Maxi Glamour, 3rd Ward Committeeperson, St. Louis

Additional Resources: 

“How One Dissenter Left Boeing,” Sophie Hurwitz, Inkstick Media 

“The Year Arms Contractors Stopped Supporting Pride,” Sophie Hurwitz, Inkstick Media

When the USS Bonhomme Richard went up in flames in 2020, the Navy said there was “nothing toxic in the smoke.” Residents knew better. It was just the latest chapter in a long story of damage left unresolved — one that began when the waterfront was seized for the war effort and continued through decades of rezoning fights, health crises, and a ballot-box battle that pitted neighbors against the city’s most powerful industry.

In this episode, Things That Go Boom travels to San Diego to ask: what does it mean to live — and keep fighting — in the shadow of the military’s hometown? Featuring voices from across the neighborhood, we trace how a community beneath the bridge built its own language of survival.

GUESTS: Dr. Alberto López Pulido, Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of San Diego; Brent Beltrán, Publisher, Calaca Press; community activist; Ramón “Mr. Ray” Fino, Vietnam veteran, lifelong Barrio Logan resident; Angel Garcia, Commander, VFW Post Don Diego 7420

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Environmental Health Coalition: Barrio Logan Community Plan

Chicano Park Museum: Logan Heights Archival Project

Intersectional Health Project San Diego: Barrio Logan

“Fallout From Trump’s EPA Cuts Includes Long-Sought Barrio Logan Park,” Philip Salata, inewsource

We reached out to Lockheed Martin for comment before publication, and asked questions about the company's stance on Sanchez's legislative goals. The company responded with this statement: “We value our state and national elected officials and the support provided to the Marietta site and the C-130, an aircraft that has created economic growth and provided humanitarian and critical assistance around the globe. We also enjoy a strong partnership with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers as the largest employer of union-represented workers in Cobb County.”

GUEST: Gabriel Sanchez, Georgia State Representative

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Jonathan Chang and Meghna Chakrabarti, “'The last supper': How a 1993 Pentagon dinner reshaped the defense industry,” WBUR’s On Point

Taylor Barnes, “Meet the democratic socialist winning in a Lockheed town,” Inkstick Media

Michelle Baruchman, “Only socialist in legislature beat expectations,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution (paywall)

As the fight over zoning unfolds, it exposes a deeper question about democracy in the age of data: when private companies control the tools of public safety, who’s really watching whom? From Scottsdale city hall to the Arizona statehouse, and from real-time crime centers to school surveillance systems, this episode traces how a battle over apartments reveals the hidden architecture of America’s growing surveillance state — and the quiet ways local democracy is being rewritten in its shadows.

GUESTS: Bob Littlefield, Former Scottsdale City Council member; president of Taxpayers Against Awful Apartment Zoning Exemptions (TAAZE); Barry Friedman, Professor of Law at New York University; Susan Wood, Scottsdale resident and community activist; Betty Janik, Former Scottsdale City Council member; Detective Julie Smith, Peoria Police Department; Representative Alexander Kolodin, Arizona State Representative (R–District 3)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: 

The Policing Project, NYU

Atlas of Surveillance, Electronic Frontier Foundation

This episode is about more than one company or one contract. It’s about what happens when state and local leaders subsidize secrecy, and when media systems — hollowed out by layoffs, ownership conflicts, and techno-fetishism — stop asking questions. From shady job tallies in Ohio to corporate influence on Capitol Hill to military ribbon cuttings reported without context, we examine how the war machine hides in plain sight. And we follow the reporters and local watchdogs still trying to uncover the truth.

GUESTS: Taylor Barnes, Inkstick Media; Mary Vavrus, University of Minnesota

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Legal Moves, New Lobbyist Point to Northrop Grumman’s Influence in Utah, Taylor Barnes, Inkstick Media

Utah Refuses to Share Details of Nuclear Weapons Plant Subsidy, Taylor Barnes, Inkstick Media

This season on Things That Go Boom, we trace the reach of the military-industrial complex: how decisions in Washington fuel a trillion-dollar industry, how that industry shapes our cities and neighborhoods, and how people on the ground are responding.

GUESTS: Joseph Howley, Associate Professor of Classics, Columbia University; Diala Shamas, Attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights; Chris Mathias, Author, “To Catch A Fascist” (forthcoming);  Ben Lorber, Senior Research Analyst, Political Research Associates

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: 

Anti-Palestinian at the Core: The Origins and Growing Dangers of US Antiterrorism Law, Center for Constitutional Rights 

A Letter From Palestinian Activist Mahmoud Khalil, ACLU

Lizzie Dearden, British journalist specializing in the modern technology that offers criminals and terrorists new ways to operate; Frank Grosspietsch, Canadian expert and international consultant in all things ghost gun; Manny Maung, Burmese journalist and human rights expert; "Rebel Lion," Burmese rebel fighter resisting the military junta; and Brendan Baker, reading the English translation of Rebel Lion's Burmese

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Rebel Lion's Facebook profile.

Rap Against Junta, the Burmese resistance hip-hop collective making music denouncing the military junta.

Lizzie Dearden's latest book, Plotters, about the terrorist plots you've never heard of because the perpetrators were caught in time.

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where historians say Civil War casualties were highest, attracts many reenactors. They carry their muskets, pull on their blue britches, and revel in the past. But today that hobby has taken on new meaning — survivalists on the left and right and even some pundits have suggested a second US Civil War isn’t quite so unlikely as it might seem. So, we thought we’d head out to learn a little bit more about why some folks like to play war… and what they think about the prospect of another.

GUESTS: Pete Bedrossian, Civil War reenactor; Mike Peets, Civil War reenactor; Levi Rifenburgh, Civil War reenactor, high school student; Mary Babcock, Bannerman Island; Rebecca DuBois, Bannerman Island, archivist; Peggy Bedrossian, Former reenactor, Pete's wife; Kyle Windahl, Regalia maker, historian; Jocelyn Windahl, Occasional Reenactor, High school STEM teacher, Kyle's wife; Matt Atkinson, Civil War reenactor; Sherry/Cheri Stultz, Gettysburg Family Restaurant; Mark Russell, Civil War reenactor

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Civil War Re-Enactors Have Their Own POG-Level Slang, Blake Stilwell, We Are The Mighty

How Gettysburg Became a Refuge for Conservatives Battered by Trump-Era Strife, Virginia Heffernan, Politico

When Mike left the FBI, it was after reporting deficiencies in the bureau’s counterterrorism operations in the wake of 9/11. And today he and his colleagues are taking on the FBI in the halls of Congress and in court.

On this episode, Mike tells us how FBI leaders exploited America’s fear of terrorism after 9/11 to break free of regulations imposed on them in the wake of Hoover-era civil rights abuses. And how today, the FBI can’t even count the number of domestic terrorism cases it handles.

And that’s before the Trump administration’s purge.

GUEST: Mike German, Fellow, Brennan Center for Justice

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within, Mike German and Beth Zasloff, New Press

Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy, Mike German, New Press

Justice Department Must Reveal the Real Scope of Domestic Terrorism, Mike German and Faiza Patel, Brennan Center for Justice.

What does these paramilitaries’ return to public life mean for the rest of us? 

And how did our broken pardon system get us here?  

—

GIVEAWAY NEWS! Drawn and Quarterly has agreed to collab with us and give one US-, UK-, or Canada-based member of our Boom Squad a free copy of “Are you willing to die for the cause.”  

To enter: Subscribe to Inkstick on Substack (https://inkstick.substack.com/). You'll get a welcome email from us saying you're on the list. Reply to our welcome email with the word "BOOK” so we know to enter you in the draw.

If you’re already a subscriber you can still join by replying to any of Inkstick’s Substack emails with the word BOOK. You can also follow us on Instagram @inkstickmedia and @goboompod for two extra entries. We’ll draw names at random and let the winner know by the time our next episode hits. Offer is only valid for people with UK, US and Canadian mailing addresses. 

GUESTS: Former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, founder, Dunn’s Democracy Defenders; Walter Olson, Cato Institute; Graham Dodds, Concordia University 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: 

How Do Donald Trump’s Pardons Compare With Other Us Presidents? Hanna Duggal and Marium Ali, Al Jazeera  

Donald Trump Is Firing Out Presidential Pardons and Warnings of Retribution. What Happens Next? Adam Quinn, The Conversation

As it turned out, that assumption was wrong. 

It was then that Amy realized this militia movement she encountered was worthy of study all on its own. And at the time, most academics weren't studying it, partly because they believed all these guys were the same. They're not.

Today Amy is one of the foremost experts on these groups. In this episode, she tells us the things we’re still getting wrong about the US militia movement. And explains how, by ignoring the movement’s complexities, we might have missed our window for change.

GUEST: Dr. Amy Cooter, Director of Research, Academic Development, and Innovation (RADI), Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

"As Trump Touts Plans for Immigrant Roundup, Militias Are Standing Back, but Standing By," Amy Cooter, The Conversation.

Nostalgia, Nationalism, and the US Militia Movement, Amy Cooter, Routledge.

"The Sheriffs, Hardliners, and Militias Preparing for Trump’s Return," Tyler Hicks, Inkstick Media.

This season on Things That Go Boom, we’re starting in Canada, because four years after Jan. 6, the US is as divided as ever. And we wondered if it might be headed for an October Crisis of its own.

It doesn’t take a lot of people to create a lot of fear. But what does it mean for a place to devolve into the grip of that fear, and how do we escape it?

GUESTS

Jean Foster, retired schoolteacher; Elizabeth Morgan, philanthropist and organic farmer; Chris Oliveros, graphic novelist, “Are You Willing To Die For The Cause”; Alexandre Turgeon, historian, Laval University; Peter Graefe, political scientist, McGill University

RESOURCES

You can buy “Are You Willing to Die for the Cause?” by Chris Oliveros here: https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/are-you-willing-to-die-for-the-cause/

To protect the country from all enemies… foreign and domestic. 

But what does a domestic enemy look like?

And how can they be stopped? 

Four years after January 6th,  we're turning our eyes on the US to ask, “in our divided times, how do we we stop political violence at home… before it starts… and without losing what makes us, us, along the way.” 

Part of our series of monologues in partnership with The War Horse. 

Additional Resources

Care Packages a Powerful Symbol of the Military-Civilian Divide, Andrew McCormick, The War Horse, 2020 

Then his phone lines started dinging, with signal after signal — and he couldn’t figure out why none were a match. 

This monologue is the second in our series with The War Horse. 

Additional Resources

We Were at DefCon 2 — One Step From Nuclear War — and I Was Checking My Work, Ed Meagher, The War Horse, 2024 

In this first entry: When paratrooper Bill Glose came home from the Gulf War after leading his platoon, silence was his fortress. That all changed when a friend suggested he start writing poetry. 

The story is part of a new partnership with the news site The War Horse. The site publishes real stories from veterans that look war in the eye, rough edges and all. If you haven't heard of them, be sure to check them out. And tune in all month for more monologues. 

Additional Resources 

Silence Was My Father’s Fortress. I Shared It for a Time Until Poetry Set Me Free, Bill Glose, The War Horse, 2024

In this episode, three remarkable activists, organizers, and academics share their perspectives on where we are in the process, what the obstacles are, and what gives them hope for the future.

Listen and subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or wherever you get your podcasts to receive a new episode every two weeks.

GUESTS: 

Janene Yazzie, Director of Policy and Advocacy for NDN Collective; Lyric Thompson, Founder and CEO of the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative; Margo Okazawa-Rey, Professor Emerita San Francisco State University

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

NDN Collective

Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative

International Women’s Network Against Militarism

Poverty Draft by Al Scorch

We are the Ones by Sweet Honey in the Rock

Special thanks to The Gender Security Project

But what she meant when she asked that question? It’s been lost in a sea of nuances around feminism and feminist foreign policy. Leading to misunderstandings like so many we’ve seen this season on Things That Go Boom. 

Misunderstandings like the sense among some that feminism is just about turning things around and subjugating men. Or that a man could never be a feminist, let alone carry out a feminist foreign policy.

On this episode of Things That Go Boom, where are the women, really?

And where do we go from here?

GUESTS: Cynthia Enloe, Clark University

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: 

Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, Cynthia Enloe

Twelve Feminist Lessons of War, Cynthia Enloe

The Invisible Frontline: How the Fight for Women’s Rights Changes in Times of War, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

The international community doesn’t have a great track record of timely intervention to stop atrocities. But one-sided military intervention can also be a recipe for disaster. 

In this episode, we hear from activists in Rwanda and Afghanistan about how their work protects the vulnerable and what they wish international feminists would do differently. And we hear from an expert on international hierarchies about how feminist foreign policy fits into the long history of attempts to end genocide — and who intervention has historically served.

GUESTS: Mary Balikungeri, Director and Founder of Rwanda Women’s Network; Dr. Toni Haastrup, Chair in Global Politics at the University of Manchester; Salma, activist with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

The Rwanda Women’s Network

The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

Statement of Intent on Feminist Informed Policies Abroad and at Home, The African Feminist Collective on Feminist Informed Policies

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, UN

Background on the Responsibility to Protect, UN

Women Peace and Security Agenda (UN Resolution 1325), UN

On May 19, 2024 there was an attempted coup in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the government there alleges that American citizens were involved in the plot. (DRC army says it stopped attempted coup involving US citizens, Reuters) The incident appears to be largely separate from the conflict on DRC’s eastern border that we discuss in this episode and the US has denied any involvement in the attempted coup. 

But what if we had… another option? Not just to reverse course on climate change, but to set the course for a better future.

Carol Cohn and Claire Duncanson think we do.

GUESTS: Carol Cohn, University of Massachusetts, Boston; Claire Duncanson, University of Edinburgh

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals, Carol Cohn

Feminist Roadmap for Sustainable Peace and Planet

The Past, Present, and Future(s) of Feminist Foreign Policy, Columba Achilleos-Sarll, Jennifer Thomson, Toni Haastrup, Karoline Färber, Carol Cohn, Paul Kirby

Maybe when it becomes a stand-in for national values and belief systems. Or maybe when it becomes a clever wedge to divide societies.

Today, Polish abortion activists are on the cusp of a huge change. After 30 years of some of the strictest abortion laws in the country, it looks like some liberalization could be on the way.

But it wasn’t easy to get here. And a new trove of documents suggests that Kremlin meddling may have been part of the reason why.

GUESTS: Rebecca Gomperts, abortion activist/medical doctor; Hanna Muehlenhoff, University of Amsterdam; Wiktoria Szymczak, abortion doula; Klementyna Suchanow, organizer, Polish Women’s Strike; Anna Gielewska, Editor in Chief of V Square

BACKGROUND: Lucy Hall, University of Amsterdam; Tom Meinderts, University of Amsterdam; Bethany Van Kampen Saravia, Ipas Partners for Reproductive Justice

A spokesperson for Poland’s Law and Justice party, which formerly led the country’s government, replied to our questions with a statement excerpted below:

“The Constitution of Poland defends the right to life and Poland's position concerning abortion is based on the Polish Constitution which was adopted in 1997. Polish law allows for abortion in cases where the pregnancy is a result of a criminal act or when the woman's life or health is in danger.

The Law and Justice government followed established procedures when employing staff and will not comment on individual appointments.”

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Anti-Abortion International Under the Tutelage of the Kremlin: We Are Disclosing the Emails of the Group in Which Ordo Iuris Operates, Klementyna Suchanow for Onet (Machine translation from Polish by Google at the link; we are not responsible for errors)

A Dying Baby, a Trump Tweet: Inside Network Setting Global Right-Wing Agenda, Sian Norris for Open Democracy

Conservatives AKA Russia: How a Polish Left Wing Activist Spins Conspiracy Theories, Zuzanna Dąbrowska for Do Rzeczy (republished by Ordo Iuris)

Tip of the Iceberg: Religious Extremist Funders against Human Rights for Sexuality & Reproductive Health in Europe, European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights

On this episode, we travel to Mexico to talk with, and march alongside, some of the women fighting for change.

GUESTS: Daniela Garcia Philipson, Ph.D. Candidate, Monash University; Martha Delgado Peralta, Former Undersecretary for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights at the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Andrea Samaniego Sánchez, UNAM; Marcela, Activist; Lidia Florencio, Activist

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Internacional Feminista

Mexico’s Feminist Foreign Policy, Martha Delgado

Feminist Foreign Policy Index: A Qualitative Evaluation of Feminist Commitments, International Center for Research on Women

But this country’s history isn’t quite so peaceful as it might seem.

So, can a peace-loving nation with a war-loving legacy keep the peace… when someone starts a war in its backyard?

And how does feminist foreign policy really play out when defense is center stage?

GUESTS:

Dr. Patrik Höglund, historian and maritime archaeologist; Dr. Brian Palmer, Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor, Uppsala University; Dr. Annick Wibben, Professor of Gender, Peace & Security at the Swedish Defence University; Margot Wallström, former Foreign Minister of Sweden

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, New World Encyclopedia

The Vasa Museum

Vrak - Museum of Wrecks

Speech by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock at the Conference on Shaping Feminist Foreign Policy, Federal Foreign Office of Germany

Handbook on Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Policy, Government of Sweden

Sweden ends weapons deal with Saudi Arabia, Associated Press

But to even begin to understand what it is and where it’s going, we had to start in the place where it failed.

We’re calling this season, “The F Word.” And on this episode and the next, we take a deep look at the chasm that caused Sweden’s feminist foreign policy to break in two.

And we ask: If this thing can’t succeed in Sweden, can it succeed at all?

GUESTS:

Dr. Brian Palmer, Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor, Uppsala University; Dr. Elin Bjarnegård, Professor, Uppsala University; Margot Wallström, former Foreign Minister of Sweden

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Antigone's Diary becomes a mural when youth in the suburb of Husby tell about their lives, Stockholm University

Handbook on Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Policy, Government of Sweden

Sweden’s New Government Abandons Feminist Foreign Policy, Human Rights Watch

Jantelagen: Why Swedes won’t talk about wealth, BBC

Special thanks to all of our guests, including our anonymous panel participants and Dr. Brian Palmer who went above and beyond to help our team understand and connect with folks in and around Stockholm.

But that word is really just the best way folks have come up with to describe this thing that some people think could begin to break up the boys club that dictates how we wage war, and peace.

So, can it survive? That’s what we set out to find out on this season of Things That Go Boom.

Earlier this year, the FBI added Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev to their Most Wanted hacker list for his alleged role in a number of ransomware attacks against U.S. targets. In a rare interview shortly after the FBI announcement, he talked about being added to the list and what he plans to do as an encore.

GUESTS:

Lauren Kahn, Senior Research Analyst at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology; Dr. Eleni Manis, Research Director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project; Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Hicks Discusses Replicator Initiative, US Department of Defense

Ground Rules for the Age of AI Warfare, Foreign Affairs

Madison Square Garden Uses Facial Recognition to Ban Its Owner’s Enemies, The New York Times

Nuclear Test Sites Are Too Damn Busy, Arms Control Wonk

The Reason We’re All Still Here, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis

But experts tell us no matter who wins, one thing is likely to stay the same: Poland's hardline approach to refugees from its eastern border with Belarus.

So today, we head to that border, where scientists are studying the impact of rising militarization and anti-refugee activity on the region. It's not always easy — because the Polish border guard isn't always keen to hand out the answers these scientists would love to add to their analysis. But Eliot Higgins, the founder of investigative website Bellingcat, says civilians have an edge these days when states won’t answer our questions. We have an unprecedented amount of information at our fingertips — and we're using it to challenge our governments around the world in all kinds of ways.

A NOTE: We’re heartbroken by the sudden Hamas attack on Israelis and by the Israeli airstrikes and devastation in Gaza. Donate to Doctors Without Borders as it continues to offer impartial medical care to those most impacted by war.

GUESTS: Katarzyna Nowak, University of Warsaw; Michał Żmihorski, Mammal Research Institute; Maciej Kisilowski, Central European University; Eliot Higgins, Bellingcat

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Threats to Conservation From National Security Interests, Katarzyna Nowak, Dinah Bear, Anwesha Dutta, Myles Traphagen, Michał Żmihorski, and Bogdan Jaroszewicz, Conservation Biology

Recognizing Opposition Movements is Riskier Than It Seems, John Reid Wilcox, Inkstick Media

Monitoring the Environmental Consequences of the War in Ukraine, Jon Letman, Inkstick Media

Can National Reconciliation Defeat Populism? Maciej Kisilowski, Anna Wojciuk. Project Syndicate.

Thanks to Sławomir Makaruk for additional field production.

GUESTS:

Dr. Joan Donovan, Assistant Professor, Boston University College of Communication, Division of Emerging Media Studies

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Harvard Misinformation Expert Joan Donovan Forced to Leave by Kennedy School Dean, Sources Say, The Harvard Crimson

Here Are 4 Key Points From the Facebook Whistleblower’s Testimony on Capitol Hill, National Public Radio

Factsheet 4: Types of Misinformation and Disinformation, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Social Media Misinformation and the Prevention of Political Instability and Mass Atrocities, The Stimson Center

These data centers don’t employ a lot of people, and each one can hoover up the resources of a small town. So what happens when our need for more, better, faster cyber capability collides with our need for land, water, and power?

GUESTS:

Dr. Anne Pasek, Canada Research Chair in Media, Culture and the Environment, Trent University, Canada; Todd Murren, General Manager, Bluebird Network Data Centers; Kelly Gallaher, activist, A Better Mount Pleasant, WI; Mike Gitter, Water Utility Director, Racine, WI

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

The Cloud’s Heavy Toll on Natural Resources, Marketplace Tech

A New Front in the Water Wars:  Your Internet Use, The Washington Post

It’s Not Easy Going Green, Reveal

Data Center Site Selection:  Why Midwestern US Is So Attractive to Hyperscalers, Data Center Knowledge

Presentation on Microsoft’s Data Center Plan for Mount Pleasant, WI, Microsoft.

The Risk of AI Power Grids, Radiolab

The Pros and Cons of Underground Data Centers, Data Center Knowledge

GUESTS:

Mazin Riyadh, student at the University of Mosul; Dr. Patricia Vargas, Fellow for the Information Society Project and Fellow for the Internet Society; Zuha Siddiqui, Journalist

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Internet Shutdowns During Exams, Access Now

Political Factors that Enable an Internet Kill Switch in Democratic and Non-Democratic Regimes, Yale Information Society Project

Pakistan’s 4-day internet shutdown was the final straw for its tech workers, Rest of World

This week on Things That Go Boom, we exit the human world entirely to see what we can learn.

Special thanks this week to Christina Stella for pinch-hitting for our engineer, Robin Wise!

GUESTS: Ashkaan Fahimipour, Florida Atlantic University; Jimmy Liao, The University of Florida

ADDITIONAL READING:

Wild Animals Suppress the Spread of Socially Transmitted Misinformation, Ashkaan K. Fahimipour, Michael A. Gil, Maria Rosa Celis, and Andrew M. Hein, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Navigating Turbulent Waters, Jimmy Liao, This I Believe

It’s a story we hear a lot these days: AI is having an impact on everything in our lives, and it’s killing creators’ livelihoods.

What we don’t hear, though, is what that story has to do with the people seeking asylum in the United States every day.

In this episode, we’ll show you how their lives can be forever changed by similar large language models to the ones used to copy Greg’s art.

GUESTS: Greg Rutkowski, visual artist; Ariel Koren, founder and CEO, Respond Crisis Translation; Uma Mirkhail, Afghan languages team lead, Respond Crisis Translation; Andrew Deck, reporter, Rest of World

THANKS ALSO TO: Leila Lorenzo, policy director, Respond Crisis Translation

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

AI Translation Is Jeopardizing Afghan Asylum Claims, Andrew Deck, Rest of World

Seeking Asylum at the u.s.-Mexico Border? You’d Better Speak English or Spanish, Andrew Deck, Rest of World

Learn about Respond Crisis Translation here.

See more of Greg Rutkowski’s art here.

We talk to researchers, policy experts, a top UN official, and a hacker about how a nuclear cyber attack might go down. And what we can do to stop it.

GUESTS:

Matt Korda, Senior Research Fellow, Nuclear Information Project; Allison Pytlak, Program Lead of the Cyber Program at the Stimson Center; Page Stoutland, Consultant at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Maddie Stone, Security Researcher at Google Project Zero; Izumi Nakamitsu, Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs at the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Flying Under The Radar: A Missile Accident In South Asia, Federation of American Scientists

Addressing Cyber-Nuclear Security Threats, Nuclear Threat Initiative

Glitch disrupts Air Force nuke communications, NBC News

A 'Worst Nightmare' Cyberattack: The Untold Story Of The SolarWinds Hack, NPR

Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons - Preparatory Committee for the Eleventh Review Conference, UNODA

The Failsafe Review, Nuclear Threat Initiative

But all of that traffic flows through a series of cables at the bottom of the ocean. And lately, we’ve been worrying a lot about it up on dry land: Asking what happens when something — or someone — cuts those cables. Should we really be so worried?

This is a story about volcanoes and sharks, entrepreneurs and politicians. It’s also about none of those things. Welcome back to Things That Go Boom.

GUESTS: Nicole Starosielski, New York University; Marian Kupu, Broadcom Broadcasting; Ryan Wopschall, ICPC; Darren Griffiths, Optic Marine; Camino Kavanagh, King’s College London

ADDITIONAL READING:

Inside the Subsea Cable Firm Secretly Helping America Take on China, Joe Brock, Reuters

The Undersea Network, Nicole Starosielski, Duke University Press

Wading Murky Waters: Subsea Communications and Responsible State Behavior, Camino Kavanaugh, United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research

Decoupling is Already Happening Under The Sea, Elisabeth Braw, Foreign Policy

But how much do you really know about the internet? Or the threats that wait to greet you there? And how much of that story is wrong?

This season on Things That Go Boom, we dig into nuclear hacking, bug hunting, cable cutting… and for some reason, a whole lot of stories about fish, in “Troubleshooting.”

9 new cyber-stories about this vast digital world, what it means for how we fight wars, and how we make sense of it all here at home.

How did Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich end up in prison in Russia, and what happens now?

On March 29, Russian authorities arrested Evan and accused him of spying on Russia on behalf of the US government. He remains in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison today.

Evan is the first American reporter to be charged with espionage in Russia since the Cold War. The charge, which The Journal vehemently denies, can carry a sentence of up to 20 years.

In this report by Project Brazen producer Neha Wadekar, you’ll hear from people close to Evan — his friends, newsroom colleagues, even his former soccer coach — about his shocking arrest, the efforts to bring him home, and how he became the journalist he is today.

Enjoy, and we’ll see you back here soon!

But here’s what we didn’t get into before: The legacy of that violence here — in our own communities.

Today, much of the nationwide push to preserve and highlight southeast Asian heritage is being led by a younger generation, raised in America by refugees. They’re opening restaurants, taking over family businesses… and embracing their own definition of true southeast Asian food.

In Philadelphia, we ask: How much can a weekend market — and its long road to protection — tell us about America’s relationship with its refugees?

GUESTS: Aleena Inthaly, Legacies of War; Catzie Vilayphonh, Laos In The House; Saijai Sabayjit, Saijai Thai

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

The Originals, Legacies of War

Thip Khao Talk, Legacies of War

Our Story, The Southeast Asian Market at FDR Park

As climate change, the COVID pandemic, and conflict in “breadbasket” regions like Ukraine continue to disrupt agriculture, it may be time for forgotten crops to make a comeback. On this episode, Chef Pierre Thiam explains how one of these ancient grains might just save the world.

GUEST: Pierre Thiam, Chef, author, & entrepreneur

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Where to find some fonio: Yolélé

How to cook fonio: The Fonio Cookbook by Pierre Thiam

Will the world’s breadbaskets become less reliable?, McKinsey (charts and maps!)

Looking at other grains (millet and fonio)  to help feed the world, Foreign Policy

Explore stats on crop and livestock production around the world, The UN Food and Agriculture Organization

Now, as he settles into the Presidential Palace once again – he has big plans for strengthening Brazil’s democracy and positioning the country as a diplomatic powerhouse.

Those plans will depend on reaching people through their stomachs.

GUESTS: Cassia Bechara, International Relations Committee Spokesperson, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra/Landless Workers’ Movement; Michael Fox, Independent Journalist; Fabio de Sa e Silva, Assistant Professor of International Studies and Wick Cary Professor of Brazilian Studies, University of Oklahoma; Fabiane Ziolla Menezes, Business and Technology Journalist, Brazilian Report

Thank you to Larissa Packer, Rafael Soares Gonzales, and James MacDonald.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

“Lurching From Food Crisis to Food Crisis,” GRAIN

“The Rise of Congress Will Have Consequences for Brazil’s Victor,” Lucas de Aragão, Americas Quarterly

Check out the Brazilian Report’s newsletters here.

But what will it take to clean up the mess left behind? And can anti-nuclear activists repeat the party trick?

GUESTS: Treasa Dunworth Associate Professor of Law, University of Auckland; Matthew Breay Bolton, Professor of Political Science, Pace University; Sera Koulabdara, Executive Director, Legacies of War; Alex van Roy, Chief Operations Officer, FSD

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

How War Changes Land: Soil Fertility, Unexploded Bombs, and the Underdevelopment of Cambodia, Erin Lin, American Journal of Political Science

Political Minefields: The Struggle Against Automatic Killing, Matthew Breay Bolton, Bloomsbury Academic

Humanitarian Disarmament: An Historical Inquiry, Treasa Dunworth, Cambridge University Press

Legacies Library: Resources on the Secret War in Laos

And the story of how the man got there? That can tell us a lot about Xi Jinping’s past, present, and future.

China’s seen incredible growth over the last 50 years — and with that, major changes in the country’s diet and agriculture. With 1.4 billion people to feed and a party narrative to upkeep, President Xi Jinping is pushing the country to invest in its own food security.

During a time when tension between the US and China are rising, we look at how Great Power Competition is unfolding in America’s cornfields.

GUESTS: Sue-Lin Wong, The Economist; Wendong Zhang, Cornell University; Arthur Kroeber, Gavekal Dragonomics

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

The Prince, The Economist

How Has China Maintained Domestic Food Stability Amid Global Food Crises?, World Economic Forum

China’s Interests in US Agriculture: Augmenting Food Security through Investment Abroad, US-China Economic and Security Review Commission

If President Biden reconfigures foreign policy to focus more on threats at home, will that leave us unprepared to defend US interests abroad? Or should we rethink which battles we’re willing to fight?

GUESTS: Oriana Skylar Mastro, Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Michael Mazarr, Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation.

ADDITIONAL READING:

The Taiwan Temptation, Foreign Affairs.

Time for a New Approach to Defense Strategy, War on the Rocks.

Biden Backs Taiwan, but Some Call for a Clearer Warning to China, New York Times.

** This episode was originally published on September 13, 2021.

If Biden begins to shift some money away from defense, or even just, away from some of the big weapons systems a lot of defense towns are tasked to build, does that mean a whole lot of middle-class jobs might get cut?

What if there’s a better option? One that fits more closely with Biden’s plans for the middle class?

GUESTS: Natalie Click, PhD student at Arizona State University; Taylor Barnes, Journalist; Miriam Pemberton, Institute for Policy Studies

ADDITIONAL READING:

From Arms to Renewables: How Workers in This Southern Military Industrial Hub Are Converting the Economy, Taylor Barnes, Southerly Magazine.

‘Honk for Humane Jobs’: NC Activists Challenge Subsidies for Weapons Maker, Taylor Barnes, Facing South.

Let’s Turn Our Military Resources To Building a Post-COVID Industrial Base for All Americans, Miriam Pemberton, Newsweek.

Study Says Domestic, Not Military Spending, Fuels Job Growth, Brown University.

How Much More Expensive Can the F-35 Actually Get? Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics.

** This episode was originally published on August 30, 2021.

In this episode, we talk about childcare, spouse employment, frequent moves, and food stamps with folks who have wrestled with all of these issues firsthand. And we ask the experts, are the new policies to address these problems going to be enough?

Statement, Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman, Department of Defense spokesperson:

“We understand the extraordinary pressures military families face and we have made progress, but we know that there is more work to be done. We will continue to listen, learn, and lead on issues we know are critical to stability and the unique challenges of military life.”

GUESTS*:

Rae Ellen Holberg, military spouse and mother of four; Shannon Razsadin, president and executive director of MFAN; Sarah Streyder, executive director of Secure Families Initiative; Nils Olsen, company commander in the US Army; Brandon Archuleta, senior fellow at the Center of New American Security

*The views of all guests are their own, and do not reflect the policies or positions of the US Army, United States Department of Defense or the United States Government.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Food Insecurity Among US Veterans and Military Families, Center for Strategic & International Studies

Food Insecurity, Military Family Advisory Network

Allowance for the Most At-risk Military Families Begins To Take Shape, Military Times

Taking Care of Our Service Members and Families, Department of Defense

Who Signs Up to Fight? Makeup of U.S. Recruits Shows Glaring Disparity, New York Times

We get real about "kimchi diplomacy.” And we talk about the alternating slog and beauty of cooking as a way to connect to our own bodies — and support others — when times are hard.

GUESTS: Samin Nosrat, writer, cook, and teacher

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Before Croissants, There Was Kubaneh, a Jewish Yemeni Delight, Tejal Rao, The New York Times Magazine

What's an Aleppo Pepper?, Layla Eplett, Scientific American

The Experiment Presents SPAM, Julia Longoria and team, WNYC & The Atlantic

Today, Hanford is one of the world’s most contaminated sites, and the cleanup will take generations. As more ceded lands have been encroached on by agriculture and development, the Hanford land is home to an ugly irony: Untouchable by outsiders — but unsafe for members of the Yakama Nation to fully practice their traditions. Now, while they fight for the most rigorous cleanup possible, they’re also finding other ways to keep those traditions alive.

Flash back to 1989, on the other side of the world lies another steppe near Semey (once Semipalatinsk), Kazakhstan. A land that’s survived famine, collectivization, and hundreds of nuclear tests. When an underground test goes wrong, Kazakhs band together with the world and say it’s time to stop nuclear testing for good.

—

In addition to responding to questions we had about the Hanford site, the Department of Energy provided the following statement: “The Department is committed to continuing to work with the Yakama Nation on progressing toward our common goal of site cleanup,” it says in part. “DOE progress at Hanford is leading to a cleaner environment and additional protections for the Columbia River. This year alone Hanford … completed a protective enclosure around another former plutonium production reactor along the Columbia River and treated over 2 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater.”

GUESTS: Robert Franklin, Associate Director of the Hanford History Project; Marlene Jones, Marylee Jones, and Patsy Whitefoot, Yakama Nation members; Kali Robson, Trina Sherwood, and McClure Tosch, Yakama Nation's Environmental Restoration/Waste Management Program; Togzhan Kassenova, Senior Fellow at the Center for Policy Research, SUNY-Albany; Sarah Cameron, University of Maryland

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up The Bomb, Togzhan Kassenova

Nuclear waste ravaged their land. The Yakama Nation is on a quest to rescue it, Hallie Golden, The Guardian

How Native Land Became a Target for Nuclear Waste, Sanjana Manjeshwar, Inkstick Media

Hanford Site Cleanup Costs Continue to Rise, but Opportunities Exist to Save Tens of Billions of Dollars, GAO

But what we eat touches every aspect our society — from security to culture, labor, economy, climate and more. It’s also a potent lightning rod for online conspiracies and disinformation.

GUESTS: Katie (pseudonym); Nina Jankowicz, Centre for Information Resilience; Domini Mellott, Secret Harvest; Vidya Mani, University of Virginia

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Russia Smuggling Ukraninan Grain To Help Pay For Putin’s War, Michael Biesecker, Sarah El Deeb, and Beatrice Dupuy, The Associated Press

Food Supply and Covid-19: Breaking the Chain, Vidya Mani

Russian Disinformation in Africa: What’s sticking and what’s not, Mary Blankenship and Aloysius Uche Ordu, Brookings

Food Should Be Treated As National Security, Ehud Eiran, Michaela Elias and Aron M. Troen, Foreign Policy

Maybe it was a beef patty from your favorite bodega or chocolate chip cookies baked by your mom. For better or worse, food is one of the first things in our lives that makes us feel… safe.

But lately, between supply chain issues, empty shelves, wild conspiracy theories, and a potential nuclear attack on the breadbasket of the world… things haven’t felt so safe.

So this season, Things That Go Boom is going deep on food and conflict.

State dinners, MREs.

Supply chains, turf wars.

Food as diplomacy, hunger as a weapon.

Things That Go Boom Season 7 is coming up on October 31 — so get ready for a food fight.

GUESTS: Justin Ling, freelance journalist; Beaska Niillas, parliamentary leader in the Sámi Parliament in Norway and alternate member of the Saami Council

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

“The Costs of Choosing Wind Power,” Sunna Svendsen, Inkstick Media
”Norway Surges Oil, Gas Profit. Now It’s Urged To Help,” Mark Lewis ft. Monika Scislowska, Associated Press
”Arctic Military Infrastructure: The Olavsvern case,” Wenche Irén Sterkeby and Vidar Hole, The Arctic Institute

But all this new competition in the region — it puts Arctic peoples at the center of a tricky geopolitical tango. We speak to two leaders in Greenlandic governance about how the country is managing that dance.

Reporting by Katie Toth.

GUESTS: Willie Hensley, author; educator; former Alaska State Senator; Marisol Maddox, Senior Arctic Analyst, Wilson Center; Mia Bennett, Assistant Professor, University of Washington; Pele Broberg, Member of Parliament for Greenland; chair, Partii Naleraq; Aaja Chemnitz Larsen, Member of Parliament for Denmark; chair, Conference of Arctic Parliamentarians; Col (Ret.) Pierre LeBlanc, Canadian Armed Forces

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

“How a Failed Social Experiment in Denmark Separated Inuit Children From Their Families,” Tara John, CNN

“What Rights To Land Have Alaska Natives?: The Primary Question,” Willie Hensley, Alaskool

“Could the Arctic Be a Wedge Between China and Russia?” Jeremy Greenwood and Shuxian Luo, War on the Rocks

“Let’s (Not) Make A Deal: Geopolitics and Greenland,” Jon Rahbek-Clemmensen, War on the Rocks

“American Imperialists Have Always Dreamed of Greenland,” Paul Musgrave, Foreign Policy

Manning an educational Indigenous fish camp an ice road away from Yellowknife, Canada, they slice and dice fish out of Great Slave Lake and chop wood to keep people warm in the subzero spring temperatures. It’s cold — and they like it this way.

Cold in the North means connectivity, as people zip around on ice roads and snowmobiles. It makes for soft, marketable furs for trappers and cozy nights at home. And as the temperature warms, those things are at risk.

For decades, leaders of Arctic countries like Russia, Norway and the USA could set aside their differences and find common ground on environmental issues in the region. The Arctic was treated less like a zone of competition, and more like a tool to build diplomatic rapport. But Russia's war in Ukraine has totally upended that dynamic — and shattered the trust of the West. So — in a region where Russia controls half of the Arctic shoreline — how do we fight climate change now?

Reporting by Katie Toth.

GUESTS: Randy Baillargeon, Land-Based Co-ordinator and Community Mentor, Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning; Noel Cockney, Regional Programmer and Safety Co-ordinator, Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning; Dalee Sambo Dorough, International Chair, Inuit Circumpolar Council; Andrea Pitzer, Author, Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World; Mia Bennett, Assistant Professor, University of Washington

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

"How Putin’s War Is Sinking Climate Science,” Andrea Pitzer, Nautilus

"How War in Ukraine Is Changing the Arctic,” The Economist

This week, we talk to Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) about how Congress can take back its power in foreign affairs – and finally get some things done. We discuss his efforts to stop the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, the animating power of a passionate public, and why he’s optimistic about the future of congressional power in American foreign policy.

GUEST: Congressman Ro Khanna, represents California’s 17th Congressional District

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

War Powers Resolution of 1973, Nixon Library

Trump Vetoes Measure to Force End to U.S. Involvement in Yemen War, Mark Landler and Peter Baker, The New York Times

Saudi warplanes carpet-bomb Yemen with US help. This must end, Berine Sanders and Ro Khanna, The Guardian

Dignity in a Digital Age, Ro Khanna, Simon & Schuster

You could spend hours reading about past covert affairs without understanding how the executive branch manages missions or the classified intel around them — and, it’s not just you. Congress is tasked with overseeing those efforts, and even it has a hard time breaking through the layers of bureaucracy meant to keep our secrets safe.

But when the war drum starts beating, where does it leave lawmakers tasked with checking and balancing? Two skeletons in the CIA’s closet might help give us some answers.

GUESTS: Lana Ponting, MKULTRA Survivor; Julie Tanny, MKULTRA Survivor; Oona Hathaway, Yale University; Sam Worthington, InterAction

ADDITIONAL READING:

Secrecy’s End, Oona Hathaway, Minnesota Law Review

Covert Action, Congressional Inaction, Stephen R. Weissman, Foreign Affairs

Brainwashed: The echoes of MKULTRA, Canadian Broadcasting Association

In Vaccines We Trust? The Effect of The CIA’s Vaccine Ruse on Immunization In Pakistan, Monica Martinez-​Bravo and Andreas Stegmann, Journal of the European Economic Association

GUESTS: Maj. Mike Lyons (USA, ret.), Fellow at the Truman National Security Project; Theresa Hitchens, Senior Space Reporter at Breaking Defense; Katherine Kuzminski, Senior Fellow and Director, Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security; Dr. Laura Grego, Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy

Special thanks to Dr. Robert Farley.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

What's With All the U.S. Space-Related Agencies?, US Department of Defense.

Space Threat Assessment: 2021, Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Politics of Space Security, James Clay Moltz, Stanford University Press.

Biden’s 2023 defense budget adds billions for U.S. Space Force, Sandra Erwin, Space News.

It’s a trend Congress has passively greenlit for years. But every deal comes with risk.

US weapons have a history of ending up in the wrong hands. Or disappearing entirely. Other times, the “right” hands use weapons to perpetuate devastating civilian harm.

On this episode of Things That Go Boom, we dive into the complex world of arms transfers to ask, “Where does Congress fit into scrutinizing US deals?”

The short answer is…it generally doesn’t. That is, unless it wants to.

GUESTS: Lauren Woods, Center for International Policy; Jodi Vittori, Georgetown University

ADDITIONAL READING:

Human Rights, Civilian Harm, and Arms Sales: A Primer on US Law and Policy, Center for Civilians in Conflict.

The Hidden Costs of US Security Cooperation, Lauren Woods, Responsible Statecraft.

Sending Weapons To Ukraine Could Have Unintended Consequences, Jordan Cohen, Inkstick.

Mitigating Patronage and Personal Enrichment in US Arms Sales, Jodi Vittori, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

But they don’t always work that way.

Economic sanctions are really hard to do right. They have to be precisely gamed out, or they can backfire in any number of ways. They're often hard to get rid of. And, more often than not, they hurt real people.

But the US likes sanctions. Congress likes sanctions.

On this episode of Things That Go Boom, what does all of this mean for some of our oldest sanctions? And some of our newest?

GUESTS: Jason Bartlett, Center for a New American Security; Ricardo Herrero, Cuba Study Group; Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Artist and Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair of Fine Arts, Vanderbilt University; Inna Melnykovska, Central European University; Paul Carroll, Charity & Security Network; Konrad Körding, University of Pennsylvania; Elnaz Alikarami, McGill University; and Nosratullah Mohammadi, University of Geneva (formerly Zanjan, Iran)

ADDITIONAL READING:

Can Sanctions Stop Russia?, Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic.

The Russian Sanctions Regime and the Risk of Catastrophic Success, Erik Sand and Suzanne Freeman, War on the Rocks.

The Impact of Western Sanctions on Russia and How They Can Be Made Even More Effective, Anders Åslund and Maria Snegovaya, Atlantic Council.

Boxing Cuba In Benefits No One, Christopher Sabatini and Lauren Cornwall, Foreign Policy.

Special thanks to Maria Snegovaya.

On this special bonus episode of Things That Go Boom, he argues that we can’t understand Russia’s full-scale invasion — or the man behind it — without examining the country’s imperialist history. It’s a story President Vladimir Putin is leaning on today.

Things That Go Boom will be back with our regularly-scheduled programming on March 21.

GUESTS: Terrell Jermaine Starr, Journalist, and Nonresident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council

DONATE TO:

World Central Kitchen

Kyiv Independent

Voices of Children

Direct Relief

ADDITIONAL READING:

Why Progressives Should Help Defend Ukraine, Terrell Jermaine Starr, Foreign Policy.

Ambassador Michael McFaul on Ukraine-Russia Relations, Black Diplomats.

The Putin Doctrine, Angela Stent, Foreign Affairs.

GUESTS: Dr. Jorge Castañeda, former Foreign Minister of Mexico and Global Distinguished Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University; Cristina Rodríguez, Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at Yale Law School; Theresa Cardinal Brown, Managing Director, Immigration and Cross-Border Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center; Juan Pablo Barrios, asylum seeker from Venezuela (interpretation by Gustavo Martínez).

RESOURCES FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS:

American Immigration Council: Asylum Resources

Asylee Eligibility for Resettlement Assistance Guide, CLINIC

Getting Asylum, Protection in The United States, Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Stanford Law School, 2017

Para Obtener Asilo, Protección en los Estados Unidos, Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Stanford Law School, 2017

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

The President and Immigration Law, Adam B. Cox and Cristina M. Rodríguez

Ex Mex: From Migrants to Immigrants, Jorge G. Castañeda

This Week in Immigration, The Bipartisan Policy Center, Theresa Cardinal Brown

Lake Maracaibo: an oil development sacrifice zone dying from neglect, Mongabay

Special thanks to Professor Jennifer M. Chacón.

GUESTS: Kevin Butterfield, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon; Kori Schake, American Enterprise Institute; Laura Ellyn Smith, University of Oxford; Jeremi Suri, University of Texas at Austin

ADDITIONAL READING:

The Presidency Is Too Big to Succeed, Jeremi Suri, The Atlantic.

The Runaway Presidency, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Atlantic.

Adults in a Room IV, Inkstick Media.

But over the past few decades, our lawmakers’ hold on that responsibility seems to have slipped… into the hands of the president. It’s an outcome the Framers worried might come to pass. And its story goes all the way back to George Washington.

From Afghanistan to arms sales, Congress is losing its grip on our foreign policy. Why is that? And, as we make our way toward the midterms, what can be done to reassert Congress’ authority as a coequal branch of the government?

For decades the Marshall Islands has been fighting for the US to fully recognize the devastating health and environmental impacts from all those nuclear tests, without much success.

But skip forward to a recent congressional hearing and something seemed to shift — something that starts with C and ends with A, and rhymes with ‘pivot to Asia.’

GUESTS: Rhea Moss-Christian, chairwoman of the Marshall Islands National Nuclear Commission

ADDITIONAL READING:

How the US Betrayed the Marshall Islands, Kindling the Next Nuclear Disaster, Susanne Rust, Los Angeles Times.

‘They Did Not Realize We Are Human Beings.’ Dan Diamond, Politico.

(With reporting from Calvin Ryerse.)

Now he’s a US Senator.

And Bernie Sanders has pretty much spent his entire career in Washington questioning whether government decisions really serve working people … or, the 1%.

On this episode of Things That Go Boom, we sit down with Sanders’ Foreign Policy Advisor Matt Duss, because we wanted to know, from the perspective of someone whose boss has been thinking about these ideas for such a long time...

Is Biden’s foreign policy for the middle class anything more than a slogan?

GUESTS: Matt Duss, Foreign Policy Advisor, Senator Bernie Sanders

ADDITIONAL READING:

Who Is Matt Duss, and Can He Take On Washington’s ‘Blob’?, David Klion, The Nation

But his life could have wound up very different. As the grandson of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar — the leader of Islamist rebel group Hezb-i-Islami — he was once taught to hate the West and everything it stood for.

So how did he turn toward peace instead of war? And, as the Taliban take control of Afghanistan, what can his story tell us about the country’s future?

GUESTS: Obaidullah Baheer, Lecturer at the American University of Afghanistan

ADDITIONAL READING:

My Family Fought Alongside the Taliban. Now, I’m Afraid for My Friends, Obaidullah Baheer, The Economist.

What To Make Of the Taliban’s ‘Exclusive’ Caretaker Government, Obaidullah Baheer, Al Jazeera.

Bin Laden: The Road To 9-11, Tam Hussein, Channel 4.

If President Biden reconfigures foreign policy to focus more on threats at home, will that leave us unprepared to defend US interests abroad? Or should we rethink which battles we’re willing to fight?

GUESTS: Oriana Skylar Mastro, Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; Michael Mazarr, Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation.

ADDITIONAL READING:

The Taiwan Temptation, Foreign Affairs.

Time for a New Approach to Defense Strategy, War on the Rocks.

Biden Backs Taiwan, but Some Call for a Clearer Warning to China, New York Times.

If Biden begins to shift some money away from defense, or even just, away from some of the big weapons systems a lot of defense towns are tasked to build, does that mean a whole lot of middle class jobs might get cut?

What if there’s a better option? One that fits more closely with Biden's plans for the middle class?

GUESTS: Natalie Click, PhD student at Arizona State University; Taylor Barnes, Journalist; Miriam Pemberton, Institute for Policy Studies

ADDITIONAL READING:

From Arms to Renewables: How Workers in This Southern Military Industrial Hub Are Converting the Economy, Taylor Barnes, Southerly Magazine.

‘Honk for Humane Jobs’: NC Activists Challenge Subsidies for Weapons Maker, Taylor Barnes, Facing South.

Let’s Turn Our Military Resources To Building a Post-COVID Industrial Base for All Americans, Miriam Pemberton, Newsweek.

Study Says Domestic, Not Military Spending, Fuels Job Growth, Brown University.

How Much More Expensive Can the F-35 Actually Get? Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics.

GUESTS: Lacey Hopper, rucking aficionado; Timur Nersesov, US Army Reserve Officer; Loren DeJonge Schulman, Center for a New American Security.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Who signs up to fight? Dave Philipps and Tim Arango, The New York Times.

Biden’s Foreign Policy Starts at Home, Peter Nicholas, The Atlantic.

// This episode comes at a chaotic and frightening time in Afghanistan, as Taliban fighters pour into the capital and US troops rush to evacuate allies. The following organizations are just a few providing aid to those in Afghanistan who need help:

Doctors Without Borders

International Rescue Committee

No One Left Behind

GUESTS: Samuel Chu, Hong Kong Democracy Council; Nina Luo, Writer and Organizer; Adrian De Leon, University of Southern California; Rui Zhong, Wilson Center

ADDITIONAL READING:

The American Victims of Washington’s Anti-China Hysteria, Nina Luo, The New Republic.

Why Is China Coming After Americans Like Me in the US? Samuel Chu, The New York Times.

GUESTS: Ethan Lee, Stanford University (Student); Ali Wyne, Eurasia Group; Scott Rozelle, Stanford University; Peter Lorentzen, University of San Francisco.

ADDITIONAL READING:

The World China Wants, Rana Mitter, Foreign Affairs.

Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise, Scott Rozelle, University of Chicago Press.

Foreign Policy Lessons From Brown v. Board of Education, Ali Wyne, Inkstick Media.

'Mulan' and China's Approach To Soft Power Through Hollywood, Ethan Lee, Inkstick Media.

GUESTS: Metra Mehran, Institute of Diplomacy at Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kabul; James Traub, Foreign Policy

ADDITIONAL READING:

Biden’s ‘Foreign Policy for the Middle Class’ Is a Revolution, James Traub, Foreign Policy.

The People We’re Leaving Behind in Afghanistan, Steve Coll, The New Yorker.

US Troops Are Packing Up, Ready or Not, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Najim Rahim and Fatima Faizi, New York Times.

GUESTS: Emily VanDerWerff, Vox; Anne Helen Petersen, Culture Study; Mari Faines, Physicians for Social Responsibility; Lori Latrice Martin, Louisiana State University

ADDITIONAL READING:

What TV Says About Race and Money, Salamishah Tillet, New York Times

10 Episodes That Show How Cheers Stayed Great for 11 Seasons, Emily VanDerWerff, AV Club

America’s Hollow Middle Class, Anne Helen Petersen, Vox

America in Denial: How Race-Fair Policies Reinforce Racial Inequality in America, Lori Latrice Martin, SUNY Press

GUESTS: Nahal Toosi, Politico

ADDITIONAL READING:

We're All 'Omnipolicy' Experts Now, Nahal Toosi.

Biden’s ‘Foreign Policy for the Middle Class’ Is a Revolution, James Traub.

7 Ways to Track if Biden’s Omnipolicy Works, Nahal Toosi.

And last year, the US deployed a new one.

But, what exactly are these things? Do we need them? And what does the deployment of a new generation of them reveal about the US’s nuclear posture?

On this episode of Things That Go Boom, we talk about low-yield nuclear weapons -- or what we’ve affectionately termed, “baby nukes.”

GUESTS: Matt Korda, Federation of American Scientists; Rose Gottemoeller, Stanford University

ADDITIONAL READING:

The Littlest Boy, Adam Rawnsley and David Brown.

Nuclear Notebook: United States Nuclear Weapons, 2021, Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda.

After the Apocalypse: US Nuclear Policy, Heather Williams, Vipin Narang, Beatrice Finh, and Togzhan Kassenova.

But when they take a turn to the dark side, conspiracy theories can be as dangerous as any other threat we face.

On this episode of Things That Go Boom, we talk about how the internet has fueled a rise in that dark side, and how it caught the US government by surprise.

GUESTS: Elizabeth Neumann, Former Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention at the Department of Homeland Security; Oumou Ly, Fellow, Berkman Klein Center, Harvard Law School

ADDITIONAL READING:

Leaving Trump in Office Now Will Just Encourage White Nationalists, Kathleen Belew and Elizabeth Neumann.

When Disinformation Becomes a Political Strategy, Who Holds the Line?, Oumou Ly.

QAnon Believers Are Obsessed With Hillary Clinton. She Has Thoughts., Michelle Goldberg.

We speak with Lee about the greatest terror threat inside the United States today, white nationalism, as well as a more general trend toward political radicalization. We also revisit her lonely vote in the wake of 9/11, when Lee was the only lawmaker in both chambers to take a stand against granting broad war powers to the president in response to the attack.

Twenty years later, those powers have been stretched to cover drone strikes and military interventions across the globe. But with President Joe Biden in the White House, Lee seems closer than ever to getting that authorization repealed.

GUEST: Rep. Barbara Lee, of California’s 13th congressional district, is a member of the Democratic Party. Besides her efforts to reign in presidential war powers, she’s advocated to end poverty and fight HIV.

ADDITIONAL READING:

60 Words And A War Without End, BuzzFeed

White Supremacist Domestic Terror Threat Looms Large In US, The Guardian

Lone Wolves Connected Online: A History Of Modern White Supremacy, NYT

GUESTS: Mieke Eoyang, Senior Vice President for the National Security Program and Chairperson of the Cyber Enforcement Initiative, Third Way; Juliet Okafor, Founder and CEO, Revolution Cyber

ADDITIONAL READING:

Cybercrime vs. Cyberwar: Paradigms for Addressing Malicious Cyber Activity, Journal of National Security Law and Policy.

To Catch a Hacker.

A Moment of Reckoning: The Need for a Strong and Global Cybersecurity Response, Microsoft.

Experts believe stories like Darlene’s are just a precursor to a massive migratory trend that could have millions of Americans on the move before mid-century, as wildfires rage and floodwaters rise. And the consequences could be far-reaching— affecting our economy, our social fabric and even our foreign policy priorities.

On this episode, we examine how ‘climigration’ could play out here at home, and how climate change can become a threat multiplier.

GUESTS: Jesse Keenan, associate professor of real estate at the Tulane School of Architecture specializing in climate change adaptation: Francesco Femia, co-founder of the Center for Climate and Security, and the Council on Strategic Risks; Darlene Turner, library skills teacher; Jonathan Foret, executive director of the South Louisiana Wetlands Discovery Center.

ADDITIONAL READING:

The Great Climate Migration, ProPublica.

‘We’re Moving to Higher Ground’: America’s Era of Climate Mass Migration is Here, The Guardian.

How Russia Wins the Climate Crisis, NYT.

The announcement made sense to us, since tensions between the US and Iran seem to have reached a new boiling point in the wake of President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal.

Jake, you might remember, led the backchannel negotiations that ultimately brought us the deal.

And, in this episode, which originally aired in 2019, Jake takes us back to the moment when those negotiations began.

GUESTS: Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor-designate; Wendy Sherman, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs; Ernest Moniz, former Secretary of Energy

ADDITIONAL READING:

The Inexorable Rise of Jake Sullivan, Politico.

Iran’s Rouhani Says ‘No Doubt’ Biden Will Rejoin Nuclear Deal, Lift Sanctions, Washington Post.

Today, the US is sitting on the precipice of another great moment of potential change. One in which it’s not hard to imagine Eisenhower standing up before us and making the same case he did almost 70 years ago.

So on today’s episode, we sit down with someone in a position to help us realize the perhaps forgotten potential of Eisenhower’s “Chance for Peace.” Someone who's given a lot of thought to the cost of violence, both at home and abroad. Senator Chris Murphy.

GUESTS: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT)

ADDITIONAL READING:

Principles for a Progressive Foreign Policy; Chris Murphy, Brian Schatz, and Martin Heinrich.

Rethinking the Battlefield; Chris Murphy.

How to Make a Progressive Foreign Policy Actually Work; Chris Murphy.

If Things That Go Boom is something that you’ve come to rely on over the course of the past two years, please go to inkstickmedia.com/donate and make a donation today.

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In 1958, a movie about a man-eating, bloodcurdling mass from outer space introduced the world to "The Blob." But in recent years, that term has taken on a whole new meaning among foreign policy professionals in Washington. What exactly defines this Blob can be as amorphous as the movie monster, so we reached out to three people to explain who exactly belongs in this group. The term, we learned, describes a perspective that transcends party lines and has remained relatively unchallenged for decades. In this episode, we'll explore the moment that all changed, and the Blob came face-to-face with... the anti-Blob.

GUESTS: Ben Armbruster, Managing Editor of ResponsibleStatecraft.org at The Quincy Institute; Emma Ashford, Senior Fellow at the New American Engagement Initiative in the Scowcroft Center of the Atlantic Council; Van Jackson, professor of International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Build a Better Blob, Emma Ashford

The Blob Strikes Back, and Misses, Patrick Porter.

More, Less, or Different?, Jake Sullivan.

Policy Roundtable: The Future of Progressive Foreign Policy, Van Jackson.

GUESTS: Arash Javanbakht, MD; Bunmi Akinnusotu, Host of What in the World?; You guys!

ADDITIONAL READING:

Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals, Carol Cohn.

The Politics of Fear: How Fear Goes Tribal, Allowing Us To Be Manipulated, Arash Javanbakht.

When Mask-Wearing Rules in the 1918 Pandemic Faced Resistance, Becky Little.

As the 1918 Flu Emerged, Cover-Up and Denial Helped It Spread, Becky Little.

In the meantime, go vote!

GUESTS: Gigi Kwik Gronvall, Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Sherri Goodman, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security and a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center and the Center for Climate Security; Travis L. Adkins, lecturer of African and Security Studies at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University; Marissa Conway, Co-founder of the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Foreign Policy Begins at Home, Council on Foreign Relations.

At the Intersection of Domestic and Foreign Policy, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Is American Foreign Policy the Key to Economic Growth?, The Washington Post.

The Legacy of American Racism at Home and Abroad, Foreign Policy.

The Scientific Response to COVID-19 and Lessons for Security, Survival.

In this episode, we look at some of the vulnerabilities that come with an over-reliance on high-tech defense systems. Our guests are Peter Singer and August Cole — national security experts who have taken to writing futuristic techno-thrillers to sound a few alarms. Among their warnings: The opening battles of WWIII won’t happen on a battlefield, and they will probably be silent.

GUESTS: Peter Singer, strategist and senior fellow at New America; August Cole, non-resident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Burn-In, Forbes.

Ghost Fleet, The Diplomat.

China Uses AI To Enhance Totalitarian Control, The Atlantic.

With its bots, troll farms, and vested interest in certain election outcomes, Russia has become America’s public disinformation enemy. But experts say that the power of foreign actors to sow discord rests, first and foremost, right here at home, and the solution may be different than you think.

GUESTS: Mike Mazarr, Senior Political Scientist at RAND Corporation; Cindy Otis, Author, Former CIA Analyst, and disinformation investigations manager; Camille Stewart, Head of Security Policy for Google Play and Android; Russell Jeung, Professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University

ADDITIONAL READING:

True or False: A CIA Analyst's Guide to Spotting Fake News, Cindy Otis.

Vote and Die: Covering Voter Suppression during the Coronavirus Pandemic, Nieman Foundation.

Combating Disinformation and Foreign Interference in Democracies: Lessons From Europe, Margaret L. Taylor.

We trace China’s rise from the 1990s, when American pop music held a place alongside patriotic education, to its more recent political assertiveness-- not to mention its chokehold on civil rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. As China moves to assert itself on the world stage, is democracy losing?

GUESTS: Connie Mei Pickart, writer and educator; Yascha Mounk, associate professor at Johns Hopkins University and senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund

ADDITIONAL READING:

How the World Views American-Style Democracy, Eurasia Group Foundation.

Nationalism Ruined My Chinese Friendships, Connie Mei Pickart.

In Hong Kong, Defiance Gone Quiet, The New York Times.

In this episode, we look at the past and present of civil defense and nuclear arms control and ask what we can do — as individuals and as a nation — to prevent the existential threat of nuclear war.

GUESTS: Alex Wellerstein, professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology and historian of nuclear weapons; Alexandra Bell, Senior Policy Director at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation.

ADDITIONAL READING:

NUKEMAP.

Trump Will Withdraw From Open Skies Treaty, New York Times.

Time Running Out on the Last US-Russia Nuclear Arms Treaty, Defense News.

Will Donald Trump Resume Nuclear Testing?, The Economist.

In this episode, we look at a Russian businessman who takes on a new game, war in the shadows, and how we prepare for what we can't see.

GUESTS: Anastasia Gorshkova, Russian Journalist; Sean McFate, Georgetown, Author, Former Mercenary

ADDITIONAL READING:

Putin’s Kleptocracy, Karen Dawisha.

The Future is History, Masha Gessen.

The New Rules of War, Sean McFate.

We look back to see how China’s ascent snuck up on the US, and we ask if a zero-sum mentality is sleep-walking us to war.

GUESTS: Kishore Mahbubani, author and distinguished fellow, Asia Research Institute; Rachel Esplin Odell, International Security Fellow, Belfer Center.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Has China Won? Kishore Mahbubani.

The Folly of Trump’s Blame-Beijing Coronavirus Strategy, The New Yorker.

This season we ask, “What else are we missing?”

GUESTS: Alden Wicker, Sustainable Fashion Journalist; Kathleen Hicks, CSIS; John Blocher, Dave Ahern, Mia Herrington, and Larry Rubin, who shared their personal views with us at Defense One 2020.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Getting to Less, Foreign Affairs.

The Lessons of Y2K, 20 Years Later, Washington Post.

Nuclear Spending vs. Healthcare, ICAN.

How worried should we be? And, now that we know that President Trump is willing to take the most extreme option offered (ie: killing Iranian Gen. Soleimani with a drone) should we be even more concerned about his authority to launch nukes?

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Things That Go Boom is a production of PRX and Inkstick Media. This episode was produced by Ruth Morris and written by Laicie Heeley. Darien Schulman composed our music.

A special thanks to the Carnegie Corporation of New York for their support.

For more information, visit us at https://inkstickmedia.com/.

And Amb. William Burns has a unique perspective -- he's been down this road with Iran before, as one of the architects of the 2015 nuclear deal.

We ask Burns for a gut check on the current situation, from Iran's threats to ramp up uranium enrichment, to the fallout from President Trump's 'exchange of love letters' with North Korea. He also shares some of the lessons from "the most depressing brainstorming session" of his career.

William Burns served five presidents and retired as the State Department's No. 2 official. Today he’s the head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in Washington, DC. His book is “The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal.”

Within hours, Yegi and her husband, Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, found themselves in Iran’s notorious Evin prison. And interrogations quickly turned surreal. Jason’s captors seemed convinced his Kickstarter campaign to bring avocados to Iran was some kind of spycraft. So… it took some time before they came to realize that, one of the reasons they were arrested… and, one of the reasons that Jason would spend the next 544 days in prison…

Was the Iran deal.

In our final episode of the season, we look at collateral damage. Because when the US entered the Iran deal, and when President Trump pulled out, it kicked off a whole series of international events with consequences we’re still feeling today.

But you might also come across people like Alireza Jahromi, an entrepreneur with a chain of trendy burger joints. He says sanctions are like a tsunami— destructive. But if you know how to surf, you grab your board and paddle out. And he says Iran, metaphorically speaking, is a country of surfers.

On this episode, we ask if US policymakers may have underestimated Iranian resiliency and whether President Trump’s suffocating sanctions are likely to lead to new nuclear negotiations, or just reinforce a bitter feud.

On this episode of Things That Go Boom… we wade into the swamp. We focus on one of the loudest groups that weighed in on the Iran nuclear deal to get a better sense of how the system works. The story that emerges includes a Greek shipping magnate, a gold trader, an investigative reporter, and the world’s largest collections of Rembrandts.

The question at the center of it all: Is our foreign policy for sale?

Like any failed relationship… it’s not just one thing that led us all here. Years of misinformation, politics, greed, reality tv, and some real security interests on both sides brought us to this point.

This is the story of how the US and Iran broke up -- because you can’t truly understand the Iran deal without first understanding why the US and Iran have bad blood.

On this episode, we dig into how diplomacy gets done -- and, not the Hollywood-movie version. (Diplomacy, it turns out, isn’t as sexy as Bond.) This is the real-life version, where sleep-deprived people pore over thousands of pages of technical documents, sleep on couches and floors, and lose their cool more than once. There are even a few broken bones.

It’s not glamorous, it’s grueling. But when it works, it can stop a war.

So when McMaster left the White House to be replaced by the hawkish John Bolton, foreign policy experts saw the writing on the wall. The Iran nuclear deal was next on the chopping block.

In this episode, we track how advisors clashed right up to the moment Trump yanked the United States out of the deal. Some wanted to push for a better deal. Others seemed intent on pressuring Iran until it breaks. Was Trump right to walk away? Or, was there something else -- something more political -- motivating the president’s decision?

Ron says he sold a shelter a month when he started out in 2011. Now he sells about one a day — from a barebones hideout to a luxury model that doubles as a wine cellar. So, why are 60s-style underground fallout shelters no longer so, well, underground?

Nuclear expert Sharon Squassoni tells us the threat of nuclear war is as grave now as the darkest days of the Cold War. One reason for the heightened concern is President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran Nuclear Deal. But that decision also tells us a lot about how US foreign policy is shifting. Could the decision to withdraw render the US irrelevant? Did it make us safer? Or should we all be building fallout shelters in our backyards?

On this season of Things That Go Boom, we’ll take a look at the Iran deal -- but this isn’t an Iran deal explainer. This is a story about how America stays out of a nuclear war. And the answer is messier than you might think. The government does not have it all figured out. Even good deals can be flawed. And swampy dynamics in Washington have the potential to send us all down a dangerous path fast.

Turns out, there’s no easy answer.

Enter Things That Go Boom, a new podcast from PRI and Inkstick Media. Hosted by Laicie Heeley, Things That Go Boom digs deeper into US foreign policy and the ins, outs, and whathaveyous of what keeps us safe. Full episodes coming January 22, 2018!