We turn our attention to the narrow strait that divides China and Taiwan, which some analysts believe is the most likely flashpoint for another far-away conflict involving the US military.

If President Biden reconfigures foreign policy to focus more on threats at home, will that leave us unprepared to defend US interests abroad? Or should we rethink which battles we’re willing to fight?

GUESTS: Oriana Skylar Mastro, Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Michael Mazarr, Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation.

ADDITIONAL READING:

The Taiwan Temptation, Foreign Affairs.

Time for a New Approach to Defense Strategy, War on the Rocks.

Biden Backs Taiwan, but Some Call for a Clearer Warning to China, New York Times.

** This episode was originally published on September 13, 2021.

Conversations about downsizing America’s defense budget almost immediately stall out in a Catch-22: Reallocating those tax dollars to invest in domestic priorities would be devastating to the many small cities where a manufacturing plant, ICBM silo, or military base is the lifeblood of the local economy.

If Biden begins to shift some money away from defense, or even just, away from some of the big weapons systems a lot of defense towns are tasked to build, does that mean a whole lot of middle-class jobs might get cut?

What if there’s a better option? One that fits more closely with Biden’s plans for the middle class?

GUESTS: Natalie Click, PhD student at Arizona State University; Taylor Barnes, Journalist; Miriam Pemberton, Institute for Policy Studies

ADDITIONAL READING:

From Arms to Renewables: How Workers in This Southern Military Industrial Hub Are Converting the Economy, Taylor Barnes, Southerly Magazine.

‘Honk for Humane Jobs’: NC Activists Challenge Subsidies for Weapons Maker, Taylor Barnes, Facing South.

Let’s Turn Our Military Resources To Building a Post-COVID Industrial Base for All Americans, Miriam Pemberton, Newsweek.

Study Says Domestic, Not Military Spending, Fuels Job Growth, Brown University.

How Much More Expensive Can the F-35 Actually Get? Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics.

** This episode was originally published on August 30, 2021.

Many Americans once viewed the US military as a reliable road to a middle-class life. But, despite record-breaking military spending in recent years, new research shows that one-in-six military families don’t have consistent access to healthy food. So, how is it that service members and their families are finding basic necessities out of reach?

In this episode, we talk about childcare, spouse employment, frequent moves, and food stamps with folks who have wrestled with all of these issues firsthand. And we ask the experts, are the new policies to address these problems going to be enough?

Statement, Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman, Department of Defense spokesperson:

“We understand the extraordinary pressures military families face and we have made progress, but we know that there is more work to be done. We will continue to listen, learn, and lead on issues we know are critical to stability and the unique challenges of military life.”

GUESTS*:

Rae Ellen Holberg, military spouse and mother of four; Shannon Razsadin, president and executive director of MFAN; Sarah Streyder, executive director of Secure Families Initiative; Nils Olsen, company commander in the US Army; Brandon Archuleta, senior fellow at the Center of New American Security

*The views of all guests are their own, and do not reflect the policies or positions of the US Army, United States Department of Defense or the United States Government.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Food Insecurity Among US Veterans and Military Families, Center for Strategic & International Studies

Food Insecurity, Military Family Advisory Network

Allowance for the Most At-risk Military Families Begins To Take Shape, Military Times

Taking Care of Our Service Members and Families, Department of Defense

Who Signs Up to Fight? Makeup of U.S. Recruits Shows Glaring Disparity, New York Times

Samin Nosrat joins us to talk about cooking, conflict, and the global forces shaping the food on our plates. Have you ever tried Saigon cinnamon? How about Iranian saffron? Learn about the flavors and traditions we lose when war and international politics get in the way.

We get real about "kimchi diplomacy.” And we talk about the alternating slog and beauty of cooking as a way to connect to our own bodies — and support others — when times are hard.

GUESTS: Samin Nosrat, writer, cook, and teacher

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Before Croissants, There Was Kubaneh, a Jewish Yemeni Delight, Tejal Rao, The New York Times Magazine

What's an Aleppo Pepper?, Layla Eplett, Scientific American

The Experiment Presents SPAM, Julia Longoria and team, WNYC & The Atlantic

On the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, endangered plants bloom on the shrubsteppe. The Yakama Nation signed a treaty in 1855 to cede some of its lands to the US government. The treaty promised that the Yakama people could continue to use their traditional territory to hunt and fish. But in 1943, those promises were broken, as Hanford became a secretive site for nuclear plutonium production.

Today, Hanford is one of the world’s most contaminated sites, and the cleanup will take generations. As more ceded lands have been encroached on by agriculture and development, the Hanford land is home to an ugly irony: Untouchable by outsiders — but unsafe for members of the Yakama Nation to fully practice their traditions. Now, while they fight for the most rigorous cleanup possible, they’re also finding other ways to keep those traditions alive.

Flash back to 1989, on the other side of the world lies another steppe near Semey (once Semipalatinsk), Kazakhstan. A land that’s survived famine, collectivization, and hundreds of nuclear tests. When an underground test goes wrong, Kazakhs band together with the world and say it’s time to stop nuclear testing for good.

—

In addition to responding to questions we had about the Hanford site, the Department of Energy provided the following statement: “The Department is committed to continuing to work with the Yakama Nation on progressing toward our common goal of site cleanup,” it says in part. “DOE progress at Hanford is leading to a cleaner environment and additional protections for the Columbia River. This year alone Hanford … completed a protective enclosure around another former plutonium production reactor along the Columbia River and treated over 2 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater.”

GUESTS: Robert Franklin, Associate Director of the Hanford History Project; Marlene Jones, Marylee Jones, and Patsy Whitefoot, Yakama Nation members; Kali Robson, Trina Sherwood, and McClure Tosch, Yakama Nation's Environmental Restoration/Waste Management Program; Togzhan Kassenova, Senior Fellow at the Center for Policy Research, SUNY-Albany; Sarah Cameron, University of Maryland

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up The Bomb, Togzhan Kassenova

Nuclear waste ravaged their land. The Yakama Nation is on a quest to rescue it, Hallie Golden, The Guardian

How Native Land Became a Target for Nuclear Waste, Sanjana Manjeshwar, Inkstick Media

Hanford Site Cleanup Costs Continue to Rise, but Opportunities Exist to Save Tens of Billions of Dollars, GAO

When we’re not in a crisis, food doesn’t tend to make it into stump speeches or budget pressers. It’s easy to end up in front of the computer, scrolling social media, snacking on something produced a thousand miles away and not think twice about it.

But what we eat touches every aspect our society — from security to culture, labor, economy, climate and more. It’s also a potent lightning rod for online conspiracies and disinformation.

GUESTS: Katie (pseudonym); Nina Jankowicz, Centre for Information Resilience; Domini Mellott, Secret Harvest; Vidya Mani, University of Virginia

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Russia Smuggling Ukraninan Grain To Help Pay For Putin’s War, Michael Biesecker, Sarah El Deeb, and Beatrice Dupuy, The Associated Press

Food Supply and Covid-19: Breaking the Chain, Vidya Mani

Russian Disinformation in Africa: What’s sticking and what’s not, Mary Blankenship and Aloysius Uche Ordu, Brookings

Food Should Be Treated As National Security, Ehud Eiran, Michaela Elias and Aron M. Troen, Foreign Policy

Think back to when you were a kid, and school was out. What did you eat when you got home?

Maybe it was a beef patty from your favorite bodega or chocolate chip cookies baked by your mom. For better or worse, food is one of the first things in our lives that makes us feel… safe.

But lately, between supply chain issues, empty shelves, wild conspiracy theories, and a potential nuclear attack on the breadbasket of the world… things haven’t felt so safe.

So this season, Things That Go Boom is going deep on food and conflict.

State dinners, MREs.

Supply chains, turf wars.

Food as diplomacy, hunger as a weapon.

Things That Go Boom Season 7 is coming up on October 31 — so get ready for a food fight.

Putin’s war in Ukraine has European nations scrambling to cut off their supplies of Russian gas — both to further penalize Russia and to ensure the country can’t withhold its energy supplies as a blackmail tool. That transition has many European leaders turning to the Arctic for solutions like wind energy. But some Sámi activists in Arctic Europe say they’ve been backed into a corner after years of industrial development, and that what’s left of their traditional territory is not up for negotiation.

GUESTS: Justin Ling, freelance journalist; Beaska Niillas, parliamentary leader in the Sámi Parliament in Norway and alternate member of the Saami Council

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

“The Costs of Choosing Wind Power,” Sunna Svendsen, Inkstick Media

China’s business activity in the Arctic has been attracting a lot of eyeballs. Its state-sponsored construction companies have been securing contracts for important infrastructure, and the country sees the resources in the polar regions as key to its future stability. That interest has the United States, sometimes called the “reluctant Arctic state,” perking up its ears.

But all this new competition in the region — it puts Arctic peoples at the center of a tricky geopolitical tango. We speak to two leaders in Greenlandic governance about how the country is managing that dance.

Reporting by Katie Toth.

GUESTS: Willie Hensley, author; educator; former Alaska State Senator; Marisol Maddox, Senior Arctic Analyst, Wilson Center; Mia Bennett, Assistant Professor, University of Washington; Pele Broberg, Member of Parliament for Greenland; chair, Partii Naleraq; Aaja Chemnitz Larsen, Member of Parliament for Denmark; chair, Conference of Arctic Parliamentarians; Col (Ret.) Pierre LeBlanc, Canadian Armed Forces

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

“How a Failed Social Experiment in Denmark Separated Inuit Children From Their Families,” Tara John, CNN

“What Rights To Land Have Alaska Natives?: The Primary Question,” Willie Hensley, Alaskool

“Could the Arctic Be a Wedge Between China and Russia?” Jeremy Greenwood and Shuxian Luo, War on the Rocks

“Let’s (Not) Make A Deal: Geopolitics and Greenland,” Jon Rahbek-Clemmensen, War on the Rocks

“American Imperialists Have Always Dreamed of Greenland,” Paul Musgrave, Foreign Policy

Noel Cockney and Randy Baillargeon have seen what a warming North can do to their home.

Manning an educational Indigenous fish camp an ice road away from Yellowknife, Canada, they slice and dice fish out of Great Slave Lake and chop wood to keep people warm in the subzero spring temperatures. It’s cold — and they like it this way.

Cold in the North means connectivity, as people zip around on ice roads and snowmobiles. It makes for soft, marketable furs for trappers and cozy nights at home. And as the temperature warms, those things are at risk.

For decades, leaders of Arctic countries like Russia, Norway and the USA could set aside their differences and find common ground on environmental issues in the region. The Arctic was treated less like a zone of competition, and more like a tool to build diplomatic rapport. But Russia's war in Ukraine has totally upended that dynamic — and shattered the trust of the West. So — in a region where Russia controls half of the Arctic shoreline — how do we fight climate change now?

Reporting by Katie Toth.

GUESTS: Randy Baillargeon, Land-Based Co-ordinator and Community Mentor, Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning; Noel Cockney, Regional Programmer and Safety Co-ordinator, Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning; Dalee Sambo Dorough, International Chair, Inuit Circumpolar Council; Andrea Pitzer, Author, Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World; Mia Bennett, Assistant Professor, University of Washington

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

"How Putin’s War Is Sinking Climate Science,” Andrea Pitzer, Nautilus

"How War in Ukraine Is Changing the Arctic,” The Economist