Putting existential risk on the agenda
What are the biggest threats to the future of human existence on the planet? Not nuclear war or climate change as some might think, but man-made pathogens and thinking machines, the Australian philoso...
3 Sep 202023min
Investigating ‘the doubts’ about the US presidential election
Rumours about the US presidential election abound: is voting by mail secure, can Donald Trump postpone it, will the United States Postal Service be able to deliver ballots in time. Gideon Rachman sort...
27 Aug 202026min
What China makes of ‘new cold war’ with US
Gideon Rachman discusses how America’s tech war on China has affected Beijing’s long-held plan to assert its economic and military strength on the global stage with Steve Tsang, director of the China ...
20 Aug 202021min
The future of Lebanon
The Lebanese have survived civil war, decades of rolling blackouts and even managed the influx of 1.5m Syrian refugees, about a quarter of the country's population. But the explosion in Beirut's port ...
13 Aug 202017min
Turkey’s assertive foreign policy
Gideon Rachman talks to academic and writer Sinan Ulgen about Turkey’s foreign policy under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, focusing on the controversial decision to turn Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia museu...
6 Aug 202019min
US economist William Spriggs on scars of the pandemic
Many countries agreed that the best way to stem the pandemic was to shut down movement, but the US took a different path than its peers in handling the economic fallout. Instead of being kept on payro...
30 Juli 202021min
Is US global leadership still possible?
Donald Trump’s “America First” policy represented a marked shift in how the US engaged with its allies. Now Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden is focusing his campaign in part on restoring US...
24 Juli 202021min
Fabulists and the limits of deception
Gideon Rachman talks to FT journalist Michael Peel about the use of false and misleading narratives by world leaders in democracies and dictatorships alike, and how the pandemic may have exposed the l...
16 Juli 202020min
