Escalation
by Lawfare & Goat Rodeo
The War in Ukraine has already claimed tens of thousands of lives and left entire cities in ruins. It’s a human tragedy on an unimaginable scale. But beyond the death toll and destruction, the conflict represents something even larger: a flashpoint in the ongoing battle between democracy and authoritarianism, sovereignty and imperialism. Escalation is a gripping narrative podcast that delves deep into the complex and often fraught history of the relationship between the United States and Ukraine. Co-produced by Goat Rodeo and Lawfare, this eight-episode series unravels the decades of diplomacy, political scandals, and high-stakes decision-making that shaped this alliance, now tested by the largest land war in Europe since World War II. This is the feed for Lawfare Presents. A home for limited run series and specials from Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. Produced by Goat Rodeo. www.goatrodeodc.com Lawfare www.law
Episodes
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Escalation Ep 7: Boiling The Frog
In the season finale of Escalation, Anastasiia Lapatina and Yulia Tymoshenko recount Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022. The western world is shocked, and US President Joe Biden and the US Congress attempt to send weapons to Ukraine to fight back. But fundamentally…
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BONUS: Conversation with John Mearsheimer
In this bonus episode of Escalation, hear our conversation with Professor John Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer is a historian and foreign policy expert at The University of Chicago, and he has some controversial opinions on the relationship between The United States, Ukraine, Russia and NATO. Our...
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Escalation Finale Preview: Making 'Escalation'
In this bonus episode of 'Escalation,' we give you a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the show, featuring a conversation with our reporting and production team of Anastasiia Lapatina, Tyler McBrien, Benjamin Wittes and Max Johnston
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BONUS: Music from Ukrainian Cultural Forces
In this bonus episode of Escalation, you'll hear more music from the Ukrainian Cultural Forces. The Cultural Forces are a group of Ukrainian artists and veterans who travel the world as emissaries from the Ukrainian army. In September 2024, they were in Washington, DC, where our production team...
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Escalation Ep 6: Nothing Else Matters
In 2019, the relationship between The United States and Ukraine faces one of its biggest tests during a phone call between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The resulting scandal makes Ukraine a toxic issue for some lawmakers in the US Congress, where Ukrainian veterans are still trying to...
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BONUS: Conversation with Evelyn Farkas
In this bonus episode of Escalation, you'll hear our conversation with Evelyn Farkas, who is the Executive Director for The McCain Institute, and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia in the Obama Administration. Farkas describes the US government's...
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Escalation Ep 5: Resets
When Ukraine’s Russia-backed president refuses to sign a deal with the European Union, millions of Ukrainians take to the streets to force him out. Then the West watches as Russia invades Crimea and parts of Eastern Ukraine.
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BONUS: Conversation with Mary Sarotte
In this bonus episode of Escalation, we're bringing you an extended cut of our conversation with Mary Sarotte, a NATO Historian and International Relations Expert at John Hopkins University. Mary tells us about NATO's history and origins, it's strange relationship with Russia, and Ukraine's murky...
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Escalation Ep 4: The Worst of Both Worlds
A dirty presidential campaign in Ukraine culminates in an attempted assassination and ‘The Orange Revolution,’ where Ukrainians stop The Kremlin’s attempts to rig the election. Years later at a NATO summit in 2008, The United States and European allies concoct a high-risk plan to protect Ukraine...
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BONUS: Conversation with Daria Kaleniuk
In this bonus episode of Escalation, we're bringing you a conversation with Daria Kaleniuk, a Ukrainian anti-corruption expert and activist. Daria tells us about Ukraine's history with corruption, the roots in the Soviet system, and the country's efforts to fight it. Stay tuned each week for the...
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Escalation Ep 3: Us vs. Them
By the late 90’s, Russia is reverting back to its corrupt, authoritarian ways and Ukraine begins to slide backward with it. In Ukraine, that corruption will lead to a gruesome murder and cover-up. While in Russia, that corruption will destroy any hopes for an emerging democracy. But after 9/11…
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BONUS: Extended Conversation with Mariana Budjeryn
In this bonus episode of Escalation, we're bringing you an extended conversation with Mariana Budjeryn, a Historian and Senior Research Associate at Harvard and an expert on Ukraine's denuclearization. Stay tuned each week for the next chapter of Escalation.
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Escalation Ep 2: No Guarantees
Newly-independent Ukraine has inherited thousands of nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union. So The United States, Russia and Ukraine craft a high-stakes deal to disarm Ukraine in exchange for national security protection. But has Washington held up their end of the bargain? Or has Ukraine...
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BONUS: Extended Conversation with Fiona Hill
In this bonus episode of Escalation, we're bringing you an extended conversation with Russia expert and diplomat Fiona Hill. Stay tuned each week for the next chapter of Escalation.
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Escalation Ep 1: Chicken Kyiv
The world watches The Cold War end and The Soviet Union break apart. And after centuries of Russian rule, Ukrainians may soon have their independence back. But in Washington, there’s fear that that independence could actually make the world more dangerous. About Escalation: In this new narrative...
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Trailer: Escalation
When Russia invades Ukraine in February 2022, the Western world is shocked. But to Ukrainians, the invasion has been centuries in the making. So how did we end up here? And have American efforts to avoid escalation in Ukraine & Russia created something deadly in its wake? COMING FEB 24TH In this...
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The Aftermath S2E5 - With Liberty and Justice for Some
The fate of Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 prisoners are intertwined. The prisoners' biggest hope for freedom is if Donald Trump wins the 2024 election, takes office and makes the federal cases go away. But the people who stormed the Capitol committed straightforward crimes that were easier to...
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The Aftermath S2E4 - The Hidden Insurrection
It’s December 2020. Donald Trump continues to deny that he has lost the election. He and his inner circle are working feverishly to try to overturn it while Trump is getting more and more irate. Then, on Dec. 21, he meets a man named Jeffrey Clark. Suddenly, the full might of the Justice…
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The Aftermath S2E3 - #StormtheCapitol
Social media was key to Jan. 6. End to end. It was key to gathering the crowd that stormed the Capitol. It was key to generating the sentiment that led people to drop their lives to come to Washington willing to commit crimes. It was key to sending them home when the deed was done. Of course…
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The Aftermath S2E2 - Lawyers for the Coup
In December 2020, The President and his advisors are still fighting to overturn the results of November’s presidential election. Then, in the middle of the month, a lawyer in Wisconsin sends a memo to the president’s legal team. This memo marks the beginning of a scheme that works its way through...
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The Aftermath S2E1 - The Grossly Impudent Lie
It’s been three years since the insurrection of January 6th. There have been congressional investigations, prosecutions, and legal reforms, and it’s looking like 2024 will be the year that Donald Trump and his inner circle finally confront the criminal justice system. But is that enough to…
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The Aftermath- Episode 6: Going Dark
The season finale delves into what was going on behind the scenes in the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation in the months between its first public hearing to its second, almost a year later. To many, the Jan. 6 committee’s public silence seemed to indicate that it simply wasn’t doing anything. The...
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The Aftermath- Episode 5: Who Tells Your Story?
In this fifth episode of The Aftermath, we explore another aspect of Congress’s response to Jan. 6: efforts to create an investigative body to find out what had happened. Proposals for a national commission began the day after the attack and continued to gain traction with support from both...
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The Aftermath- Episode 4: A Bipartisan Interlude
This episode of The Aftermath recalls the brief period where Democrats and Republicans worked together to respond to Jan. 6—and actually made a lot of progress. How?
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The Aftermath- Episode 3: Congress Responds
In the days after the January 6th insurrection, for Raskin and his colleagues, it wasn’t entirely clear that the insurrection was over. And for at least a brief moment, there seemed to be some kind of consensus. The moment turned out to be brief indeed, at least with respect to accountability for...
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The Aftermath - Ep 2: Scattered to the Four Winds
In the wake of January 6, there were immediate calls for en masse arrests of all individuals on the Capitol compound, and demands that every one of them be hauled into court to stand trial. But our justice system does not work that way. The bedrock of our legal system is the due process of law.…
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The Aftermath - Episode 1: Day Zero, Ground Zero
The Aftermath is not a podcast about the insurrection itself, or about how we got there. It’s a podcast about what happened next – how our democracy is attempting to right itself in the face of an existential threat. Who is being criminally prosecuted, and who isn’t. How is Congress taking...
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Lawfare Presents: ALLIES Ep. 7
Mahnaz was a member of a Female Tactical Platoon in the Afghan Military. She was one of tens of thousands of Afghans who came to the United States during the withdrawal from Afghanistan. In our final episode, you’ll learn about the bureaucratic mess they’re still going through to get resettled.…
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Lawfare Presents: ALLIES Ep. 6
20 years of war and broken bureaucracy culminate during the US withdrawal at the Kabul airport. Thousands of Afghans rush to the tarmac where American forces sort through the crowds. Veterans, advocates and politicians try to get their allies out while the Taliban rapidly takes control of...
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Lawfare Presents: ALLIES Ep. 5
We return to Fred—an Afghan combat interpreter who served with American soldiers for more than 13 years. After years of denials, an ad hoc team of lawyers and veterans tried to push his Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) application through federal bureaucracy. Then, we describe how a new president…
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Lawfare Presents: ALLIES Ep. 4
Matt Zeller deployed to Afghanistan in 2008, where an Afghan interpreter saved his life. Matt spent years trying to get him resettled in the United States and saw the problems with the SIV program firsthand. Together, they started lobbying to fix it in Washington, DC.
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Lawfare Presents: ALLIES Ep. 3
Fred took a job as an Afghan interpreter in 2004. He ended up serving side-by-side with American soldiers for more than 13 years. But when the Taliban started targeting him after a mission, Fred started looking for a way out. The SIV program was supposed to help.
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Lawfare Presents: ALLIES Ep. 2
In 2003 the US started another war with the military invasion of Iraq. There, soldiers, aid workers, diplomats and politicians saw the threat that local interpreters, translators and partners faced for their work. That’s when Congress created the SIV program for Iraqi interpreters and then...
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Lawfare Presents: ALLIES Ep. 1
In order to tell you this story, we need to start at the beginning. After 9/11, the CIA set their sights on al-Qaeda’s base in Afghanistan. When the military invaded that fall, people up and down the chain of command learned that, in order to fight this war, the US needed local partners to help.
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Lawfare Presents: ALLIES
From Lawfare and Goat Rodeo, this is ALLIES: A podcast about America’s eyes and ears during 20 years of war in Afghanistan.
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Trailer: The Aftermath
On January 6, 2021, a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump attacked the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. Their goal was to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, and they intended to do it by disrupting the joint session of Congress assembled to count electoral...
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Lawfare Presents: Chatter, a new podcast from Shane Harris and David Priess
A brand new podcast from Lawfare. Weekly long-form conversations with fascinating people at the creative edges of national security. Unscripted. Informal. Always fresh. Chatter guests roll with the punches to describe artistic endeavors related to national security and jump into cutting-edge...
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Lawfare Presents: After Trump, Obstruction and Pardons
The pardon power was designed to be a tool for correcting wrongs. Any system of justice applied to a whole nation is going to have failures. A pardon is there to correct miscarriages of justice—and injustice. It was always believed that if a president abused his pardon authority, it would be so...
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Lawfare Presents: After Trump, Enemy of the People
In this episode, we consider the problem of foreign interventions in American political campaigns—and what to do about it. And we’re also going to look at how Trump blocked and tackled the free press, especially when it reported on Trump’s foreign ties.
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Lawfare Presents: After Trump, Follow the Money
In our first episode, we explore some of President Trump’s most brazen transgressions—the conflicts of interest, the self-dealing and those elusive tax returns. In the run up to his inauguration, Trump created a sort of original sin when it came to his conflicts of interest, proclaiming that he…
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The Impeachment: Final Day
The Impeachment Trial concludes with a final vote on the Articles of Impeachment.
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The Impeachment: Day 12
The Impeachment Trial continues with Day 12. Senators are given time to make statements pertaining to their vote of impeachment happening the next day.
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The Impeachment: Day 11
The Impeachment Trial continues with closing arguments from House Managers and White House Counsel.
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the Impeachment: Day 10
It’s January 31, 2020. It’s the 10th day of the impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump. I’m Margaret Taylor, Senior Editor at Lawfare. Today, Senators listened to the arguments of the parties, and then voted 49-51 not to call new witnesses or subpoena new documents. Republican Senators...
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The Impeachment: Day 9
On the 9th day of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, Senators have a second day to ask questions through the Chief Justice to house managers and white house counsel. As Senators pass their questions on small cards in 5 min rounds, the question of the testimony of witnesses and...
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The Impeachment: Day 8
The Impeachment Trial continues, as questions from Senators are asked of House Managers and Counsel.
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The Impeachment: Day 7
It's January 28th, 2020. It’s the seventh day of the impeachment trial of president Donald J. Trump. The president's team of lawyers wrap up their arguments in defense of the president. Over the last two days of the trial, senators heard about 10 hours of presentations from White House Counsel…
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The Impeachment: Day 6
It’s January 27, 2020. On the sixth day of the impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump, the President’s team of lawyers resume their arguments in defense of the President. On Saturday, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his team began their presentation, spending two hours summarizing...
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The Impeachment: Day 5
This is Day 5 of the Impeachment. In this short session, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone opened the case for the president’s defense, laying out what the defense believed are the stakes of impeachment. He noted that the defense would focus on facts that, he asserts, the House Managers ignored…
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The Impeachment: Day 4
Today, the fourth day of the Impeachment, the house managers wrap up their case. They close their arguments on Trump’s first article of impeachment, and then turn to the second--obstruction of Congress. Today is their last chance to speak before the President’s counsel presents their case. The...
About this show
The War in Ukraine has already claimed tens of thousands of lives and left entire cities in ruins. It’s a human tragedy on an unimaginable scale. But beyond the death toll and destruction, the conflict represents something even larger: a flashpoint in the ongoing battle between democracy and authoritarianism, sovereignty and imperialism. Escalation is a gripping narrative podcast that delves deep into the complex and often fraught history of the relationship between the United States and Ukraine. Co-produced by Goat Rodeo and Lawfare, this eight-episode series unravels the decades of diplomacy, political scandals, and high-stakes decision-making that shaped this alliance, now tested by the largest land war in Europe since World War II. This is the feed for Lawfare Presents. A home for limited run series and specials from Lawfare and Goat Rodeo.
Produced by Goat Rodeo.
www.goatrodeodc.com
Lawfare
www.law
Hosted by
Lawfare & Goat Rodeo