The Rachman Review

By Financial Times

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What's The Rachman Review about?

Gideon Rachman, the Financial Times chief foreign affairs columnist talks to the decision-makers and thinkers who are shaping world affairs.

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Britain's legacy of empire

04.15.2021

Gideon talks to Sathnam Sanghera about his book Empireland and the legacy of racism and nostalgia that Britain has yet to come to terms with. Warning: This episode contains references to racist language. Clips: Sky News; Conservative party See acast.com/privacy ...

The Rachman Review episodes:

04.15.2021 Britain's legacy of empire Gideon talks to Sathnam Sanghera about his book Empireland and the legacy of racism and nostalgia that Britain has yet to come to terms with. Warning: This episode contains references to racist language. Clips: Sky News; Conservative party See acast.com/privacy ...
04.08.2021 Are the US and China entering a Cold War? The US president has promised that, after four years of retreat from the global stage, “America is back”. Over the past few years, China has continued to expand its economic and political influence and matched its growing clout on the ...
04.01.2021 Britain shifts its military focus The UK’s defence forces are slimming down and harnessing the power of AI and satellites to meet the emerging threats of the 21st century. Helen Warrell, the FT’s defence and security editor, talks to General Sir Patrick Sanders, head of ...
03.25.2021 Europe's Mr Normal Ben Hall, the FT’s Europe editor, talks to Dutch historian Luuk van Middelaar about Mark Rutte’s re-election as prime minister of the Netherlands and his country’s changing role within the EU. Clips: Bloomberg, Reuters See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out ...
03.18.2021 Spying in the digital age Helen Warrell, the FT’s defence and security editor, talks to cybersecurity expert Dmitri Alperovitch about the SolarWinds and Microsoft hacks. How extensive was the damage inflicted and how should the west respond to such attacks? Clips: CBS, CNN, NBC See ...
03.11.2021 Could this year mark a turning point for climate? Britain is hosting this year’s UN climate summit, COP26, in Glasgow. Pilita Clark discusses what these summits have achieved over the past three decades and what needs to be done to make the talks a success. Her guest is Richard ...
03.04.2021 Italy’s make or break moment Ben Hall, the FT’s Europe editor, discusses Italy as former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi takes on the premiership. How Draghi decides to spend up to €200bn in grants and loans from the EU recovery fund will be crucial, ...
02.25.2021 Michael Mann on the politics of global warming Pilita Clark talks to Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State university, and one of the world’s best-known climate scientists. They discuss the evolution of the climate change debate, from the war on science to denialism, doomism ...
02.18.2021 The world in review In a special retrospective episode, Gideon Rachman looks at some of his favourite podcast conversations that illuminate the state of geopolitics today, asking whether the pandemic has permanently changed the world. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
02.11.2021 Britain’s post-Brexit role as ‘global broker’ Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s diplomatic skills will be tested as host of both the G7 and UN COP26 climate change summit this year. Gideon talks to Robin Niblett, director of the Chatham House think-tank and economist Linda Yueh, currently a ...
02.04.2021 Navalny’s crusade against the Kremlin Gideon talks to journalists Arkady Ostrovsky and Max Seddon in Moscow about why Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny decided to return home after he was poisoned and what his political movement can achieve if its leader is in jail. Max ...
01.28.2021 António Guterres on the United Nations in a fractured world The pandemic, climate change and peacekeeping are all priorities for the UN in 2021, but these challenges require multilateral solutions at a time when the world's superpowers are drifting further apart. Gideon Rachman talks to António Guterres, secretary-general of the ...
01.21.2021 Germany after Merkel Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union has chosen Armin Laschet to replace Angela Merkel as party leader ahead of September’s federal elections, paving the way for the end of the Merkel era. Gideon discusses what a post-Merkel Germany will look like ...
01.14.2021 America’s political meltdown After the storming of the Capitol, can America recover its democratic values? Gideon discusses what the recent lawlessness means for the US and its place in the world with Anne-Marie Slaughter, head of New America, a think-tank. See acast.com/privacy for ...
01.07.2021 David Miliband on the global leadership vacuum The former British foreign secretary championed the UK to remain in the EU. As head of the International Rescue Committee, David Miliband has seen the consequence of a lack of global leadership in helping the world’s vulnerable populations. In this ...
12.17.2020 The best and worst of 2020 Gideon talks to Roula Khalaf, FT editor, and Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator, about the extraordinary events of 2020 - from Covid-19 to the US election and unexpected signs of reconciliation between Israel and Arab Gulf states. See acast.com/privacy for ...
12.10.2020 EU at a turning point EU leaders are facing showdowns on several fronts this week, with the UK over Brexit, and with Hungary and Poland over the rule of law. Gideon discusses what’s at stake with Professor Catherine De Vries of Bocconi University in Italy. ...
12.03.2020 Thai students call for change Gideon talks to Thai opposition leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit and John Reed, the FT’s Bangkok bureau chief, about the student protests that have challenged Thailand’s traditional power structures by demanding constitutional change. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
11.26.2020 Ethiopia’s struggle with ethnic nationalism A country that enjoyed decades of economc growth and stability now risks being torn apart by ethnic divisions. Gideon discusses what’s behind the outbreak of violence with Gabriel Negatu, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, and David ...
11.19.2020 Macron's world Gideon discusses the international ambitions, and problems, of the French president with Sylvie Kauffmann, editorial director of Le Monde. Are Emmanuel Macron’s views on European integration and strategic independence winning out? Clips: Reuters See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
11.12.2020 Biden’s global goals Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, served as US ambassador to Nato during the Obama years. He joins Gideon Rachman to talk about how Joe Biden may seek to rebuild the US’s broken alliances and project ...
11.04.2020 An American chasm Americans woke on November 4 to find that the result of their presidential election remained unclear. President Donald Trump’s statements about the integrity of the vote and his plan to dispute the final result at the Supreme Court signalled that ...
10.29.2020 Susan Glasser on the pandemic election The columnist has written about life in Trump’s Washington for The New Yorker magazine for almost four years. As voters head to the polls to elect the next US president, Gideon Rachman talks to Glasser about what to expect on ...
10.22.2020 Bringing history back to Burma Western nations have tended to regard the recent history of Myanmar, formerly Burma, as a struggle between democracy and dictatorship. But the country’s colonial past and climate change have also played a key role in its complex problems, Burmese historian ...
10.15.2020 Why humans wage wars Gideon Rachman talks to historian Margaret MacMillan about her study of warfare through the ages and why she fears that, while the manner in which we wage war has changed, our propensity to stumble into conflict remains the same. Clips: ...
10.08.2020 American entanglement in the Middle East Philip Gordon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is a long-time Washington insider who worked on Middle East policy for the Obama administration and is now an informal adviser to the Biden campaign. In this episode, Gideon ...
10.01.2020 China’s second world war obsession China’s authorities have started to celebrate the country’s role in the second world war after long regarding it as a subject best forgotten. Gideon talks to the historian Rana Mitter about what’s behind this revised outlook on such a tormented ...
09.24.2020 Mexico's populist president When Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also known as Amlo, took office in late 2018 he promised a fourth political transformation of the country. Gideon Rachman talks to Jude Webber, the FT’s Mexico and Central America correspondent, about how Amlo’s plans ...
09.17.2020 German diplomacy tested by multiple crises From the poisoning of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny and pressure to cancel the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia, to the refugee catastrophe in Greece and headaches over Brexit, Germany has no shortage of foreign policy crises to deal ...
09.10.2020 Netanyahu's diplomatic success Israel’s new deal to normalise diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates comes without any concessions on the Palestinian peace process. Gideon Rachman talks to Anshel Pfeffer, author of Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu, about whether ...
09.03.2020 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 philosopher Toby Ord tells Gideon Rachman. He talks ...
08.27.2020 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 sorts through what is fact and what is ...
08.20.2020 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 Institute of SOAS at London University. See acast.com/privacy ...
08.13.2020 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 in early August that killed scores of people, ...
08.06.2020 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 museum back into a mosque and the rationale behind Turkish military interventions ...
07.30.2020 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 payrolls through furlough schemes, ...
07.24.2020 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 leadership on the world stage through strategic alliances. ...
07.16.2020 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 limits of doing politics "according to the world ...
07.09.2020 Putin: a president trapped in power Now in power until 2036 after a recent constitutional change, Vladimir Putin is nevertheless facing a difficult future as the Russian economy stagnates and popular unrest grows. Gideon Rachman and Catherine Belton, author and former FT journalist, discuss how the ...
07.02.2020 Black Lives Matter goes international In recent weeks people across the world have joined Black Lives Matter protests in response to the police killing of George Floyd in the US. Some activists are uniting under country-specific banners calling for racial equality. Gideon Rachman hosts a ...
06.25.2020 Brazil: a country without a plan Brazil this week became the second country after the US to register more than 50,000 deaths from Covid-19. President Bolsonaro’s mis-handling of the pandemic has led to calls for his impeachment and even fears of a military coup. Gideon Rachman ...
06.18.2020 India’s twin crises: coronavirus and China India is facing two crises: coronavirus and China. Despite one of the toughest lockdowns in the world, the country has not been able to bring the pandemic under control. Hospitals in New Delhi are overwhelmed. Now a long-standing border dispute ...
06.11.2020 Is global oil dominance coming to an end? Will the current pandemic hasten the end of the oil era, and if so what impact will this have on the global economy and geopolitics? Gideon Rachman discusses the future of energy with former BP chief executive Lord Browne and ...
06.04.2020 George Floyd and the politics of protest The killing of George Floyd by Minnesota police officers sparked protests in cities across the United States and a government crackdown after nights of unrest. Gideon Rachman talks to Omar Wasow, a professor at Princeton University, about how narratives about ...
05.28.2020 A new diplomacy in the Pacific Rim Australia is in the crosshairs of China’s ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy after Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus outbreak. Gideon Rachman talks to Michael Fullilove, director of the Lowy Institute, about what the ...
05.21.2020 Merkel’s pandemic moment A German court’s challenge to the supremacy of EU law has brought Chancellor Angela Merkel back into the limelight after she had been regarded as a spent force. Gideon Rachman talks to Constanze Stelzenmüller of the Brookings Institution about Angela ...
05.14.2020 China comes out of lockdown China was once the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, but now the country is coming out of lockdown. Gideon Rachman talks to FT correspondents Yuan Yang and James Kynge about how quickly China can find a new normal. See acast.com/privacy ...
05.07.2020 Joseph Nye on presidential morality during the pandemic Gideon Rachman talks to American political scientist Joseph Nye about how the moral stances adopted by past US presidents boosted the country's soft power and why Donald Trump is squandering this legacy. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
04.30.2020 Coronavirus in Africa Gideon Rachman discusses how African countries are coping with the pandemic with Donald Kaberuka, a Rwandan economist and former president of the African Development Bank, who has been appointed by the African Union to be one of its four special ...
04.23.2020 Politics and perils of running the WHO Gro Harlem Brundtland, former WHO chief, talks to Gideon Rachman about how she handled the SARS pandemic, why the world was not prepared for coronavirus and the lessons we need to learn to avert another disaster. See acast.com/privacy for privacy ...

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