From murderous Jim Crow–era Birmingham, Alabama, via the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, to the defeat of Soviet Communism, the past has had a powerful influence over the worldview of Dr. Condoleezza Rice, former national security advisor and secretary of state. She also comments on the life and career of the late Mikhail Gorbachev.

Sir Richard Dearlove was Chief of Operations of MI6 from 1996 to 1999, and its Chief - known as 'C' - from 1999 to 2004. He speaks of the effect of Kim Philby's treachery on the Service, Cold War victories against the KGB, James Bond and John Le Carré, and the rosy prospects for British Intelligence post-Brexit.

On the occasion of her unprecedented platinum jubilee, Queen Elizabeth’s biographer and star Daily Mail reporter Robert Hardman discusses her use of soft power in Britain’s unwritten constitution.

Ronald Reagan was famously known as the Great Communicator. But who helped the Great Communicator communicate? One of them was Hoover Institution Research Fellow Peter Robinson, who wrote Reagan's “Tear Down This Wall” speech — one of the most famous speeches of the twentieth century. If you have ever been asked to deliver a speech in public (or even if you haven’t), listen to a master of the genre Peter Robinson speak of the humor, honesty, and honing involved in writing over 150 speeches for a U.S. President. 

In his struggle against the FARC guerrilla movement and his efforts to transform Colombia economically, President Iván Duque has had advisors at his side who include Simon Bolivar and Winston Churchill.

In this episode of Secrets of Statecraft, actual historian Andrew Roberts talks to humorist and self-appointed “historian” Christopher Buckley about the faux pas and its celebrated and checkered past. This episode is brimming with witty repartee and hilarious anecdotes featuring several historically significant figures, and not one faux pas (that we know about ).

John O’Sullivan runs the Danube Institute in Budapest, Hungary. From this vantage point (Hungary shares a common border with Ukraine), he has special insights on the conflict across the border in Ukraine and on the use of statecraft to find a resolution to the conflict.