All Episodes
Departures with Robert Amsterdam — 100 episodes
Africa's unique ideological history and its impact on unity
How race and identity became sacred taboos
A discussion on religious freedom with Robert Destro
Identities, Rivalries, and Schisms in the modern Middle East
Why Sanctions Often Backfire
Our relationship with the past is in big trouble
The ignominious track record of Africa's foreign saviors
Reconsidering the Western Response to China's Global Rise
Kant, Borges, Heisenberg and the Nature of Observation and Knowledge
How the Ukraine war has altered the direction of globalization
A pivotal election brings uncertainty to Japan
Fears, miscalculations, and mistakes which led to the war in Ukraine
The great rebalancing of the West
How the Congolese view their relationship to the global big tech supply chain
Russia's burning ambition for global power
The beginning of the end of the old Ottoman world order
Ukraine and its challenges to the international system
When nothing is important, everything is at risk
A Bold New Era for Japan
The devastating human toll of Russia's war in Ukraine
Vienna and the birth of the knowledge economy
How the Ukrainian Left Views the War
The Future of Taiwan's Silicon Shield
Understanding the Ukraine War through the Lens of Greek Tragedy
You can't understand the Soviet system without understanding the daily lives of its people
The enduring legacy of the Great Arab Revolt
When China gave up on its peaceful rise
The more a Canadian academic learned about China, the less the West wanted to hear
How a decade of street protests changed the world
The US is trying to get the Cold War band back together
The Economic Aims of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine
An assassination, a coup, and thwarted independence in Congo, 1960
What does the post-neoliberal world order look like?
Crisis at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
A dispatch from Israel
What We Know 50 Years after the Yom Kippur War
The weaponization of memory and nostalgia in Russia
The fragile ties that bind Eastern Europe
The legal wasteland of UN sanctions
The fallacy of empires
Inside the mind of George F. Kennan
Is China challenging the world order or contributing to its stability?
MAGA Stands for 'Make Attorneys Get Attorneys'
Russia's fragile but important presence in Africa
The brazen deceptions of wartime collaborators
A toolkit for defeating dictatorships
Zelensky: From TV president to real president
The evolving history of the Holocaust
The legal cases that birthed the civil rights movement
The Murderous Ideology of Franco's Spain
Surviving Putin
Italy's indulgent nostalgia for Mussolini
Nobody wants a war fought over the South China Sea
Manipulating Information and faking democracy
Playing in the grey in the shadow economy
Inside the Kremlin Groupthink that led Russia into a disastrous war
Drinking, sex, and journalism on the cusp of WWII
Endgame for Vladimir Putin?
There is nothing inevitable about the war in Ukraine
China's ambitious future in Central Asia
In China's political history, numbers don't always add up
Mafias matter, especially with state formation
Departures LIVE on Russia, Ukraine, and the future of the rules-based order
How supply chain logistics are inseparable from daily life in Central Africa
Not a "Red Wave," but a Ripple
Critical minerals and conflict in the DRC
Xi's the one
How we misunderstood China before Xi
The reactive sequence of authoritarian regimes
US domestic instability is undermining its global influence
Colonialism does not define Africa
Successions in the wake of Mao and Stalin
Why democracies must prepare for political violence
Why authoritarians prefer to be surrounded by incompetence
Tyranny and autocracy are on a winning streak
Historical memory on trial
The founding mythology of global economic governance
Zimbabwe's Democracy Deficit
Thugs for hire: How China enlists nonstate actors to do the dirty work
Cyber warfare and the risk of regulatory failure
Modern Central Asia: empires, revolutions, and the remaking of societies
The economic underpinnings of global disorder
From Syria to Ukraine, the era of decivilization
From the frontlines of Kyiv, Dispatch #2
Congo's invisible war
Four days that changed the course of World War II
The past is a foreign country
So little time, so many kinds of wars to wage
Oil, gas, and coal as the lifeblood of the Russian polity
Summiting Everest for climate change
Irregular warfare is becoming the new regular
The rise of the Beijing consensus
We aren't ready for the weaponization of space
What Uganda shows us about modern authoritarianism
Preparing for the geopolitical conflicts of tomorrow
Trust, Credibility, and COP26
One spy's burden of accountability
That feeling when we are between world orders
Punctuated equilibrium: how the 1490-1530 period changed the world
Despite British colonialism, Nigeria is a success story