What is Nation-Building?
And why is it a bad word? How could Thailand kill 40 million chickens without a state? Former Foreign Service Officer Keith Mines, now with the U.S. Institute of Peace, explains all of this and why ...
12 Feb 202050min
Foreign Service Test? Quiz Show? You Decide.
Laura's Foreign Service Test, finally. Did she pass? Did she live? Were the questions fair? Were the examiners fair? Pete and Dave Rabadan are tough. Was Laura tough enough?
6 Feb 202040min
Pedro Pan and the Guerrillas
Pete sends Phil Chicola to guerrilla country to investigate the deaths of American linguist missionaries, and both Pete and Phil are accused of negotiating with the FARC. All of this concurrent with t...
28 Jan 202032min
Who Lost China?
It is the 1950s. Senator Joseph McCarthy and his henchman Roy Cohn target and humiliate our diplomats for accurately reporting an eventual Mao victory in China. Jack Service and his family are at the ...
23 Jan 202030min
Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar
Shari Villarosa, Chargé in Myanmar, helps us understand why the leader of Myanmar, Aung Sun Suu Kyi, who was once awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, did not stop the genocide of the resident minority grou...
15 Jan 202035min
Sidebar - Parsing Iran Brinksmanship
Pete quickly parses recent events in Iran for Laura. (Please note that we recorded this the day before the Ukrainian jet went down). As international news gets weirder and weirder, Pete and Laura wi...
14 Jan 202014min
Perils of the Press, in Mexico-US Relations
Why is public diplomacy especially important in Mexico? Mi casa es su casa, or put another way, we have 35 million US citizens of Mexican heritage, a 2000 mile border, 1 million people going in both ...
8 Jan 202025min
War and Peace in Trade
How do trade agreements affect regular people? Tony Wayne, former Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs and US Ambassador to Mexico, breaks down both the recent US-Mexico-Can...
1 Jan 202032min
