Deep Background with Noah Feldman

Emile Simpson, a military expert and veteran of the war in Afghanistan, discusses the end of the war in Afghanistan and the Taliban’s recent takeover. Simpson outlines the strategic failures that contributed to the current situation and comments on the United States’s responsibility to evacuate allied Afghans. 

Simpson is a former British Army officer who completed three tours in southern Afghanistan. He’s the author of the book, War From the Ground Up: Twenty-First Century Combat as Politics.

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Nikole Hannah-Jones is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, a staff writer for the New York Times, a MacArthur Genius, and the creator of The 1619 Project. In this conversation, Noah and Hannah-Jones dive deep into the myth of journalistic and historical objectivity. They also discuss the intense political and social criticism of The 1619 Project. 

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Chris Jackson, publisher and editor-in-chief of Random House’s One World imprint, discusses the new literary movement he’s building with writers like Bryan Stevenson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ibram X. Kendi. Jackson explains the power and perils of challenging the dominant narrative. 

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Introducing our new, subscriber-exclusive bonus content, “Noah Riffs.” Every other week, we’re releasing bonus episodes where Noah dives deep into a topic from the news. This summer on Noah Riffs, Noah analyzes Supreme Court rulings. In this first episode, Noah explains the implications of the SCOTUS case that could effectively overturn Roe v. Wade. 

These episodes will be available via PushNik, our new subscription program on Apple Podcasts. To listen to these bonus episodes, visit our show page in Apple Podcasts and start your free trial. 

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Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the blockchain Ethereum, argues that cryptocurrency’s scarcest resource is legitimacy. Ethereum is the second-largest blockchain ecosystem, making Buterin one of the most influential individuals in the cryptocurrency world. Buterin and Noah delve deep into the nature of legitimacy, social contracts, and what they mean for the reliability of cryptocurrency and the blockchain. 

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We’re excited to share with you the new season of Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast that re-examines something from the past and asks whether we got it right the first time. We’ve got to warn you, the new season is completely unbound. Malcolm Gladwell is finally out of the house, and taking you into the streets, and even under the sea. All in the name of continuing his journey through the overlooked and misunderstood. He plays chicken with cars. An Oscar winner helps him remake fairy tale history. He dives into your dirty laundry. I haven’t quite decided who he riles up most. College elitists? Nine year old girls? You’ll have to hear it for yourself to find out. 

Find the new season of Revisionist History at http://podcasts.pushkin.fm/rhdeepbackground.

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Randi Weingarten, President of the the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers union in the country, weighs in on the power of teachers’ unions in the complicated decisions of school reopening and teaching critical race theory. Weingarten also explains the decline of public and private union power and why teachers’ unions are exceptions.

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On this Deep Background mini-series about global power, Francis Fukuyama weighs in on the decay of liberal democracy and the rise of China as a global superpower. 

Fukayama is a renowned political scientist, political economist and author of many books, including The End of History and the Last Man and Political Order and Political Decay. He is currently a Senior Fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute and Mosbacher Director of Standord’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. 

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At Pushkin, we think of Juneteenth as an opportunity to reflect on the past and think about the future: How do we build a more just and equitable society? We strive to make podcasts that help answer that question, and in honor of Juneteenth, we’re highlighting two of them. In this episode, you'll hear previews of our new shows Be Antiracist and A Slight Change of Plans. We hope these episodes inspire thinking and conversation around issues of race in your own lives.

You can listen to more episodes at www.pushkin.fm/show/ 

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On this Deep Background mini-series about global power, Fareed Zakaria explains the foreign policy challenges facing the Biden administration and what it will mean for the US to decline in foreign policy influence. Fareed also weighs in the future of China’s role in global power and if we’re headed for a bipolar world order. 

Fareed is the host of CNN's “Fareed Zakaria GPS” and author of a weekly column for The Washington Post. He has been a columnist for Newsweek, editor of Newsweek International, and an editor at large of Time. His most recent book, Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, outlines the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic will have long-lasting effects on policy, economics, and technology. 

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