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Tampa Bay Rays CEO Ken Babby joins Adam Goodman on 13th and Park for a wide-ranging conversation on what it takes to build a winning organization on a limited budget, why culture and chemistry are the Rays' real secret sauce, and what it felt like to celebrate a postseason series win over the New York Yankees in a champagne-soaked clubhouse just one year after acquiring the team. Babby traces his unconventional path from intern at the Washington Post to minor league owner of the Akron Rubber Ducks and Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, and explains how 15 years of testing ideas in the minor leagues became the blueprint he brought to Tampa Bay.

Babby offers a candid look inside the Rays' baseball operations culture, crediting president Eric Neander and manager Kevin Cash, the longest-tenured manager-front-office duo in the game, with building a clubhouse where players choose to have dinner together on the road and play dominoes on the plane. He makes the case that Kevin Cash's unflappable calm is as important to the team's success as any analytics model, and reflects on what watching trade deadline decisions from the back of the room taught him about how elite organizations actually work.

The conversation turns to the Rays' long-awaited Forever Home, a new ballpark in Tampa that will be built adjacent to Steinbrenner Field. Babby describes a facility designed to feel like an open-air ballpark while delivering the climate-controlled comfort Florida demands, and calls it unlike anything currently in North America. He also walks through the remarkable off-field partnership with the Yankees, including the moment New York publicly backed the Tampa ballpark project and gave the Rays the home clubhouse at Steinbrenner Field for an entire season rather than displace their division rival.

The episode closes with a close look at the technology reshaping baseball, from the ABS challenge system to the replay review that overturned a would-be Anthony Volpe home run in Game 3 of the ALDS, a call Babby says exemplifies commissioner Rob Manfred's commitment to always getting the outcome right. Babby draws a through line from his early days checking box scores in the Washington Post to running one of the most creative franchises in the sport, and makes clear that for the Rays, the best is still ahead.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:33 Beating the Yankees
3:56 The Washington Post Years
6:21 Minor League Lessons
8:54 Players and the Clubhouse
11:08 The Rays' Secret Sauce
13:45 Small Ball and Team Chemistry
16:09 The New Tampa Ballpark
19:51 Technology and the ABS System
22:27 The Game 3 Replay Call
24:27 The Yankees Partnership
27:42 Rooting for the Rays

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Gladden Pappin, co-founder of American Affairs and newly joined Ballard Partners, sits down with Adam Goodman on 13th and Park to trace the intellectual and personal journey that brought him from Little Rock, Arkansas, to the center of Washington's policy debates. A sixth-generation descendant of the Osage Nation and Harvard graduate, Pappin draws a straight line from his grandfather Bob Gladden's restless work ethic and globe-trotting ambition, to early exposure to high-level politics through the Clinton White House, to the conviction that American political thought needed a serious reset.

Pappin and his co-founder Julius Krein launched American Affairs in 2017 at the Harvard Club of New York, deliberately placing it beside Foreign Affairs on the shelf and inviting contributors who actually understood industrial policy, supply chains, energy dominance, and the competitive threat from China. Long before those topics reached the mainstream, the journal was making the case that deindustrialization had hollowed out American towns and that the political consensus of the 1990s had cost the country real power. Pappin describes how Senator Marco Rubio's office became an early home for those ideas, and how proposals that once filled the journal's pages now sit in the offices of the current administration.

The conversation turns to J.D. Vance, whom Pappin first engaged in a critical review of Hillbilly Elegy in 2016, and who reached back out in January 2019 to begin a serious policy dialogue. Pappin offers a rare inside look at how Vance approaches ideas, describing a leader who actively seeks out dissenting voices, drills down on each subject area, and refuses to surround himself only with people who already agree with him. That portrait of intellectual curiosity, Pappin argues, is what distinguishes Vance as a strategic thinker.

Pappin closes with a sweeping assessment of Europe, NATO, and the Trump doctrine's emphasis on economics as a parallel pillar to security and sovereignty. Having led a research center in Hungary and now heading Ballard Partners' Central and Western European practice, he argues that the foundation of European security rests on individual nations and the willingness of their people to invest in their own countries, and that the new American approach of anchoring alliances in clear economic value propositions is both a correction to overreach and a more honest path to lasting partnership.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:12 Welcome to Ballard Partners
1:34 Arkansas Roots and Grandfather Bob Gladden
2:41 The Clinton White House and Early Politics
3:30 Launching American Affairs at the Harvard Club
5:14 The Ideas Behind the Trump Doctrine
7:59 Marco Rubio and the China Competition
9:39 Reviewing J.D. Vance's Book in 2016
11:28 Vance Reaches Out in 2019
12:31 How Vance Approaches Ideas and Leadership
14:33 Europe, NATO, and the New Transatlantic Relationship
16:09 Individual Nations as Europe's Foundation
17:51 Economics as the Core of the Trump Foreign Policy Doctrine
20:18 What Living Abroad Taught Him About America
21:05 Notre Dame, South Bend, and American Life
21:48 Closing Thoughts on American Affairs and Big Ideas

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Mykhailo Bno-Airian, Vice President of Global Affairs at MHP, joins Adam Goodman at Ballard Studios in Washington DC for a conversation about one of the most overlooked dimensions of the war in Ukraine: its economy. A former diplomat, energy executive, and governor of the Kyiv region, Bno-Airian brings a uniquely layered perspective to the question of how a country keeps itself working, and working at a world-class level, while under sustained military assault. MHP, founded by Yuriy Kosyuk, operates across roughly 350,000 hectares, employs more than 30,000 people, and has grown into the number one poultry producer in Europe, exporting to more than 70 countries.

Bno-Airian describes the daily rhythm of life in Ukraine with striking plainness: bombings through the night, families emerging from shelters in the morning and walking their children to school. He argues that the true front line of the war is not only military but entrepreneurial, with Ukrainian business owners rebuilding destroyed facilities the very next day and refusing to stop. MHP's continued operations in rural communities, he explains, are critical not just to food exports but to preserving the tax base, social infrastructure, and human presence in areas that would otherwise empty out.

The conversation turns to global strategy, with Bno-Airian pressing the case that Ukraine is being discussed without Ukrainians at the table. He recounts MHP becoming the first Ukrainian agricultural company to join the World Economic Forum at Davos, his meeting with the WTO Director General on eliminating non-tariff barriers to agricultural trade, and his argument to decision makers in both Washington and Brussels that Ukraine should be seen as an opportunity, not a competitor. He draws a direct parallel to U.S. support for Israel and South Korea, suggesting a similar industrial partnership model could define the postwar relationship between the United States and Ukraine.

Adam Goodman closes by framing the episode's core theme: that beneath every geopolitical calculation is a human story, and that a Ukrainian family's hopes for safety, prosperity, and freedom look a great deal like those of any American family.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:05 How Ukraine Keeps Going
2:33 Fighting on Every Front
3:16 What MHP Does and Who Built It
4:43 Why Continued Operations Matter
6:01 The Entrepreneurial Spirit in Wartime
7:02 Ukraine's Voice at Davos and the WEF
8:52 The Strategy Washington Is Missing
10:36 WTO and Non-Tariff Trade Barriers
12:17 The Case for U.S.-Ukraine Economic Partnership
14:12 A Documentary About Ukrainian Resilience
15:25 Closing Thoughts

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Craig Wagoner, President and CEO of Community Health System, joins Adam Goodman on 13th and Park for an in-depth conversation about one of California's most consequential but least-known health systems. Serving more than 4 million residents across 15,000 square miles of the Central Valley, Community Health System operates five hospitals, nearly 12,000 employees, and the only Level 1 trauma center and burn center between Los Angeles and Sacramento. Wagoner explains what it truly means to be a safety net provider, accepting every patient regardless of ability to pay, and why that mission comes at a steep financial cost: the system loses roughly $600 on every government-insured patient, a burden that has pushed the organization into the red despite running one of the leanest cost structures of any hospital system in California.

Wagoner details the specific pressures facing the system, from chronic physician shortages in a community where there are roughly 2,000 residents per primary care doctor, to the structural mismatch between Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement rates and the real cost of delivering care. He shares the system's goal of being back in the black by 2029, and outlines the strategies driving that turnaround, including a nurse navigator diabetes pilot program that has already produced a 33% reduction in emergency visits and measurable improvements in patient blood sugar levels. He makes the case that Community Health System, with its overwhelming concentration of Medicaid and Medicare patients, is a natural proving ground for population health models that could be scaled nationally.

The conversation turns to Wagoner's personal journey through 35 years in healthcare across 22 hospitals and six states, and what drew him to the Central Valley's mission-driven culture. He describes a workforce where some employees have been with the organization for over 50 years, a staff he says has hearts bigger than any place he has ever worked. He closes with a call for a fundamental realignment of incentives across the entire healthcare system, bringing pharmaceutical companies, payers, providers, and labor to the same table to design something better, arguing that at 18% of GDP, the current path simply is not sustainable.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:22 Welcome to 13th and Park
1:40 What Is Community Health System?
2:32 Financial Pressures of Safety Net Care
3:14 Serving 4 Million Across 15,000 Square Miles
4:27 Lowest Cost Provider in California
6:14 Physician Training and Shortages
7:36 Top Medicaid Rankings: Pride and Warning
8:51 Operating in the Red
9:38 Diabetes Pilot Program Success
10:46 What Flexibility Is Needed from Government
11:55 CMS, Cost Savings, and Access
13:09 Expanding to COPD, Cardiac, and GLP-1s
13:48 The Ultimate Test Model for Medicaid
14:43 35 Years in Healthcare
15:47 From Montana to the Central Valley
17:38 The 12,000-Person Mission
19:23 Right Care, Right Time, Right Place
20:45 Optimism for a Better System
21:32 Closing Thoughts

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Leslie Norwalk, former Acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President George W. Bush, joins Adam Goodman on 13th and Park for a candid inside look at how American healthcare is actually governed, regulated, and paid for. Drawing on her legal background, six years at CMS, and four years in the White House, Norwalk explains why the interplay between government regulators and private industry is not a conflict of interest but a necessity, and why refusing to listen to industry often produces bad law with unintended consequences for the very patients those laws are meant to protect.

Norwalk takes the conversation back to one of the most consequential policy achievements of the Bush era: the creation of Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit that now covers 57 million beneficiaries. She recalls the skepticism inside and outside government about whether insurers and pharmacy benefit managers would even participate, the frantic phone calls she made to convince them to join, and how the program ultimately came in at roughly half its projected cost, partly because of a structural decision to let PBMs negotiate freely without Medicare interference. She also breaks down the infamous donut hole, the coverage gap that was hated by beneficiaries but was the price of keeping the program's price tag under the $400 billion ceiling Congress had set.

The conversation moves to bigger questions about the future of the system: why Medicare was built to pay for sick care rather than prevention, why administration after administration fails to bend the cost curve, and where artificial intelligence could make a genuine difference, specifically in pattern recognition in radiology and pathology, AI-guided robotic surgery, and digesting the overwhelming volume of clinical trial data that no physician or coverage writer can realistically track on their own. Norwalk draws a parallel between the federal response to Hurricane Katrina and the COVID-19 pandemic, explaining how the creative workarounds CMS improvised during the flooding in New Orleans became a direct template for how the agency responded when hospitals went dark during the pandemic.

Norwalk closes with a clear-eyed take on the profit question in healthcare: margin is not the enemy, because without margin there is no access and no services. The real challenge is finding the sweet spot where reimbursement is high enough to sustain innovation and access but calibrated against the full value a treatment delivers, not just its sticker price. It is a conversation about power, perspective, and the enormous distance between how American healthcare is designed and how it is actually experienced by the people it is meant to serve.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:37 Leslie's Background and CMS Role
3:20 Government vs. Private Sector
8:30 Building Medicare Part D
11:43 Can Healthcare Actually Be Fixed?
13:36 Prevention vs. Treatment
15:47 AI in Healthcare and CMS
18:03 Hurricane Katrina and COVID Lessons
21:03 One Reform After the Midterms
23:45 Profit, Margin, and the Sweet Spot
26:14 The Human Cost of Public Service
27:00 Closing Thoughts
40:34 The Donut Hole Explained

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Yvette Kapinga Ngandu, the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Ambassador to the United States, joins Adam Goodman on 13th and Park for a sweeping conversation about one of the most strategically consequential relationships in American foreign policy. Ambassador Ngandu opens with context most Americans do not have: the DRC is roughly a quarter the size of the United States, home to 120 million people, and sits at the geographic center of the African continent. She traces the two countries' shared history back to the Manhattan Project, when uranium sourced from the Belgian Congo helped produce the atomic bombs that ended World War II, and brings that thread forward to the present day, where the DRC holds approximately 20 of the 60 critical minerals the United States has identified as essential to its defense, electronics, and energy sectors.

The conversation turns to the US-DRC Strategic Partnership signed by Presidents Trump and Tshisekedi, which Ambassador Ngandu describes as a decisive shift away from aid dependence and toward a genuine economic partnership built around American investment, supply chain security, and human capital development. She emphasizes that the goal is not simply to extract minerals, but to build local capacity, create sustainable development, and give Congolese citizens a reason to build their futures at home rather than seek opportunity elsewhere.

Ambassador Ngandu addresses the ongoing conflict with Rwanda directly, calling the December 2025 Washington Agreement a paradigm shift that finally named Rwanda as a direct actor in the DRC's instability rather than treating it as a neutral observer. She describes more than 7 million deaths in eastern Congo since 1996, a figure that dwarfs the internationally recognized toll of the Rwandan genocide, and shares the moment early in her humanitarian career when a UN envoy's description of the DRC as the world capital of rape moved her to demand action at the African Union level. She calls on the United States to express its resolve more forcefully and to follow through on the framework both governments have already committed to.

The episode closes on a more optimistic note, with Ambassador Ngandu reflecting on the DRC's surprising run at the FIFA World Cup and the role of figures like Dikembe Mutombo in building genuine affection between the two countries. She describes a nationwide tour of American cities, from Florida to California to Chicago, making the case directly to investors that the Strategic Partnership belongs to both nations, not just their capitals.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:12 What Americans Should Know About the DRC
2:44 The Manhattan Project and Congo's Role
4:54 US-DRC Strategic Partnership
7:44 DRC's Role in African Stability
9:40 China, the US, and the Race for Resources
10:55 Human Capital and Stopping Migration
11:41 The War with Rwanda: History and Human Cost
15:22 Can President Trump Help Broker Peace?
16:51 A Personal Story from the Conflict
19:02 National Security and the Window of Opportunity
21:23 The DRC at the FIFA World Cup
23:40 Closing Reflections

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Amaryllis Fox Kennedy joins Adam Goodman on 13th and Park for a rare and wide-ranging conversation that moves from the trauma of losing a childhood friend on Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, to recruiting algorithms at Georgetown, to running covert operations for the CIA in her early twenties. Her journey from a nomadic childhood, shaped by her father Hodson's work as a world economist and her mother's career as an actress, to the corridors of the intelligence community is as unlikely as it is logical. She draws a direct line between the loss she experienced at age 8 and the hunger to understand, and ultimately prevent, the kind of violence that took her friend Lauren.

Fox Kennedy offers a clear-eyed account of what it takes to operate undercover, the isolation, the faith, the discipline of truly listening to adversaries rather than simply targeting them. She reflects on a formative 1999 interview with Aung San Suu Kyi, conducted before she ever considered working for the CIA, which crystallized her belief that free expression is the most powerful force on earth, more durable than any military apparatus or surveillance state.

The conversation moves into the present as Fox Kennedy describes building Mission AI, the largest interagency artificial intelligence program across the intelligence community, designed to shift analysts from prompted tasks to unprompted warning. She lays out both the promise and the genuine peril of recursive self-improvement in AI systems, the quantum computing race with China, and why she believes the current administration is uniquely positioned to set the long-term trajectory for how these technologies serve, or surveil, the American people.

She speaks candidly about the personal cost of that work, stepping back from senior roles at OMB and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence after going weeks without seeing her children awake, and about the private conversations she witnessed between RFK Jr. and the president that deepened her respect for both. Her closing message is simple and tactical: understanding what drives your adversaries is not a weakness, it is the only path to winning.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:36 Welcome to 13th and Park
1:40 Growing Up, Pan Am 103, and Lauren
3:48 9/11, Danny Pearl, and Joining the CIA
5:08 The Algorithm That Got Her Recruited
6:19 Life as a Covert Officer Overseas
7:58 Aung San Suu Kyi and the Power of Free Speech
10:50 Common Ground and the RFK Jr. Campaign
12:00 Restoring Trust in Institutions
13:36 AI: The Turning Point for Freedom
18:50 Quantum Computing and the China Race
20:30 Advice for Tech Innovators and Government
21:52 Balancing Family and Public Service
23:43 The Kennedy Family and What Drives Her
28:02 Closing Thoughts on Listening and Leadership

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Tom Greenwood, CEO of Helios Towers, joins Adam Goodman on 13th and Park for a wide-ranging conversation on Africa's digital transformation and the critical role cell tower infrastructure plays in connecting hundreds of millions of people to the global economy. Greenwood, the fourth employee of a company that now operates more than 15,000 towers across eight African countries and Oman, traces Helios Towers' origins to the post-financial-crisis moment when the company's founders, including Chuck Green, who had previously built Crown Castle in the US, saw an unparalleled opportunity to bring the tower-sharing business model to a continent on the verge of explosive growth.

Greenwood breaks down the infrastructure gap that existed across Africa when Helios Towers launched around 2009 and 2010, and how the company has since helped drive connectivity from 2G through to early 5G deployment. He explains why Africa, though roughly five to eight years behind the rest of the world technologically, represents one of the clearest growth opportunities anywhere on earth: a population set to double over the next 30 to 40 years, a massive gap between broadband availability and actual internet usage, and a post-COVID behavioral shift that has dramatically accelerated data consumption across the continent.

The conversation turns to geopolitics and investment strategy as Greenwood addresses China's decades-long head start in African infrastructure investment and makes a direct case for why American capital and diplomatic engagement need to be far more coordinated and present on the continent. He draws a parallel between modern connectivity infrastructure and the soft diplomacy once practiced through Voice of America and the BBC World Service, arguing that Africa's scale and trajectory make engagement not just a commercial opportunity but a national security imperative. Greenwood also shares a personal story from Tanzania, where a newly connected village allowed one of his employees to video call her newborn baby with a grandmother who had never had cellular access before, illustrating the human stakes behind every tower Helios builds.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:35 Soccer, Tottenham, and QPR
2:02 How Helios Towers Started
4:26 Africa's Young Population and Digital Gap
6:50 Cell Towers as Critical Infrastructure
8:07 Inside a Cell Tower
10:24 The DRC: 3,000 Towers and Growing
13:11 Connectivity Changing Lives
13:53 China, America, and the Race for Africa
17:01 Soft Power and Diplomacy
18:50 Building in New Communities
20:41 Purpose Behind the Work
21:38 Closing

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Former Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich joins Adam Goodman on 13th and Park for a raw and wide-ranging conversation tied to his forthcoming memoir, Framed, F*cked, and Freed. Blagojevich walks through the early morning of December 9, 2008, when a 24-member FBI SWAT team and a hostage negotiator arrived at his Chicago home to arrest a sitting governor, and he makes the case that what was done to him was a politically motivated abuse of prosecutorial power that later served as a blueprint for cases brought against Donald Trump.

Blagojevich reflects on what sustained him through 2,896 days in federal prison, including a higher-security facility where he served alongside Crips, Bloods, Gangster Disciples, and Sinaloa Cartel members. He describes reaching for his wife's Bible on his first night behind bars, reading Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, and finding unexpected humanity and inspiration in the people around him, from a former Las Vegas heroin kingpin he calls Mr. B to a lovable bank robber named Sox who paused his robbery to help a trembling elderly woman.

The conversation also covers Blagojevich's complicated relationship with both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, his time on Celebrity Apprentice, and the extraordinary loyalty of his wife Patty, who defied 9-to-1 Vegas odds by standing by him throughout the entire ordeal and eventually lobbied President Trump directly to secure his release. Blagojevich draws a direct line between his father's experience in a Nazi prisoner of war camp and his own refusal to accept a plea deal for crimes he insists he never committed.

Looking ahead, Blagojevich weighs in on Governor Pritzker's handling of the Chicago Bears relocation threat, the state of American political division, and his current work on behalf of Republika Srpska in Bosnia, a cause he describes as part of a larger, perhaps divinely guided, chapter of his life.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:20 Chicago Bears and Pritzker's Failure
3:09 The Book: Framed, F*cked, and Freed
6:23 The Arrest: December 9, 2008
9:30 Fighting Back Against the Government
11:20 Patty Blagojevich: Defying All Odds
14:26 The Bible and Viktor Frankl in Prison
17:07 Life Inside: Mr. B, Sox, and the Rockers
21:45 A Prosecutor Who Became the Prosecuted
24:43 Celebrity Apprentice and Trump's Pardon
29:42 The State of American Politics Today
31:17 Work in Republika Srpska
32:42 Closing Reflections

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Dr. Tal Becker, Senior Fellow at the Hartman Institute and Counsel to Honigman LLP, joins Adam Goodman on 13th and Park for a wide-ranging conversation on Israel's security, its global image, and the profound philosophical questions underneath the headlines. One of the key architects of the Abraham Accords and Israel's representative before the International Court of Justice, Becker brings a rare combination of legal precision, diplomatic experience, and moral clarity to a conversation that is as personal as it is geopolitical.

Becker opens with a framing that cuts through much of the noise: Israel has made real progress in degrading the military capabilities of its enemies, but has struggled to undercut the appeal of the stories those enemies tell. He draws a sharp moral distinction between Iran's agenda to destroy Israel and Israel's determination not to be destroyed, arguing these are not equal stakes on a level playing field. On the genocide charges brought before the International Court of Justice, Becker explains why representing Israel in that forum was disorienting in a way unlike any other, and makes the case that the charge distorts a word whose integrity matters deeply to the Jewish people and to history.

The conversation moves into the rising tide of antisemitism in America and the evolving US-Israel relationship, with Becker offering a disciplined, unsentimental analysis of what drives it and what both countries can actually do about it. He also unpacks the divergence between Israeli and diaspora Jewish identity, rooted in two different lessons drawn from the Holocaust, and why that gap shapes so much of the current debate. Throughout, Becker returns to a theme of responsibility, both as a Jewish value and as a practical posture: instead of cataloguing what to worry about, asking what can actually be done.

Becker closes with a meditation on Judaism itself, describing it as the opposite of conspiracy thinking, an insistence on taking responsibility for the world despite circumstance. He draws on the character of Judah in Genesis, the animating logic of the Abraham Accords, and the skills he believes parents and grandparents should be cultivating in the next generation: the capacity to hold difference, listen across disagreement, and resist the pull of easy absolutes.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:41 Where Things Stand in Israel
2:54 What the World Gets Wrong
4:36 Israeli vs. Western Views on Power
7:29 What Does Victory Look Like?
11:22 Israel's Brand and Global Narrative
13:46 Defending Israel at The Hague
16:07 Antisemitism and the US-Israel Relationship
19:33 Talking to Young Americans About Israel
22:47 The Responsibility of Judaism
26:42 The Strength of Internal Criticism
27:39 Closing Thoughts

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