Snatching Mega-Yachts and Blacklisting Banks: Do Sanctions Actually Work?
American Presidents have been addicted to international sanctions for much of the modern era, as a way to influence the behavior of other countries. Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Syria – all have been subj...
10 Dec 202434min
Defund or Unleash: What does effective policing look like?
In recent years, several high-profile abuses of power have fractured public trust in police and created a false tension between police accountability and public safety. But somewhere between a blanket...
3 Dec 202440min
The FBI’s Love Affair with Hollywood
The FBI has had a cozy relationship with Hollywood since the days of the Bureau’s first director, J. Edgar Hoover, working behind the scenes with filmmakers to burnish its image. We explore how the co...
26 Nov 202439min
What is “National Security” Anyway?
Declaring something a matter of “national security” is a great way to get people to take it seriously — and Congress to fund it. After all, what matters more than keeping the United States and its cit...
19 Nov 202435min
The Alt-Right Was Once Just on the Fringes. Here’s How it Went Mainstream.
After instigating violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, the alt-right movement seemed to crumble — but journalist Elle Reeve, who’s been talking with them for years, says that doesn’t mean t...
12 Nov 202445min
How Women Became Central to the Central Intelligence Agency (REBROADCAST)
When the CIA got started in 1947 it recruited women for one type of job: typing and filing. Very few women were out in the field gathering intelligence and recruiting foreign agents. But once they fin...
5 Nov 202445min
In One Michigan County There’s a Republican Fighting to Restore Faith in Elections
Justin Roebuck, a county clerk in the swing state of Michigan, has a license plate that says ‘’I voted.” Roebuck first began volunteering as an election worker at age 16. Now, he oversees the election...
29 Okt 202440min
The Mass Shooting that Everyone Saw Coming
One year ago, Maine experienced the worst mass shooting in its history. It turned out many people and institutions had known for months before that the shooter, Robert Card, was in a mental health cri...
22 Okt 202447min
