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From the annexation of the Philippines in 1898, to looming confrontation with Iran today, On Point news analyst Jack Beatty on U.S. leadership, vested military interests, and unintended military entanglements.

Economic historian Emma Rothschild, the Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History at Harvard, lauded the efforts of young scholars to discover local solutions to mitigate the impacts of global climate change in the latest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.” The podcast is produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.

It remains one of the most tantalizing questions of John F. Kennedy's legacy: if he had survived his trip to Dallas in November 1963, would he have withdrawn U.S. military advisers from Vietnam? The possibility that Kennedy would have avoided the epic mistake of plunging the U.S. into a land war in Southeast Asia continues to stir debate among historians.  Professor Fredrik Logevall is interviewed.

The Cold War started earlier than we think — and maybe never ended at all. Historian Calder Walton says understanding the US-Soviet conflict prepares us for this era of tensions with Russia and China.

A Better Peace welcomes Nate Moir to discuss his book, Number One Realist: Bernard Fall and Vietnamese Revolutionary Warfare, which analyses Fall's life to understand what drove his thinking and understanding of the situation. He joins host John Nagl to explain how Fall was consistently ahead of the conventional wisdom.

While the Paris Agreement provides the framework for the nations of the world to slow the growth of CO2 emissions, additional policy and technological tools will have to be deployed to meet the challenge of climate change. That’s the perspective expressed by Daniel Bodansky, the Regents’ Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, during the latest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program,” a podcast produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.

In Episode 43 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast,  the hosts and their guests discuss success in counterinsurgency warfare—more broadly, whether great powers can suppress destabilizing insurgencies and reform corrupt or repressive governments into legitimate ones.

 Along with host Augusta Dell'Omo, Matthew Feldman walks us through the Center for the Analysis of the Radical Right's growing projects and collaborations and how he thinks about the particularly unique contribution of the organization to understanding the radical right. Bringing in his own experiences as an expert witness and public-facing academic, Matthew reveals why this particular brand of radical right extremism is so potent — and what we need to keep an eye on in the year ahead.

Guest Sabine Volk joins Right Rising to discuss PEGIDA — a German far-right organization with a distinctly pan-European agenda. Sabine breaks down how PEGIDA manages to continue organizing mass rallies amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically through the organization's use of historical memory and mobilization rituals.

George Shultz passed away on February 6, just two months after passing his 100th birthday. He was a momentous and fascinating national security figure who has quite a legacy within national defense, foreign policy and even management circles in the federal government. To talk about his legacy and what made him such a special senior government leader, David Priess sat down with Ambassador Nicholas Burns and Kori Schake. Nick Burns is a man of many titles, including professor at the Kennedy School at Harvard University, building on almost three decades of U.S. government service, including a role as the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2005 to 2008. Kori Schake is the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, coming after service in the National Security Council, the Department of Defense and the Department of State. They talked about about George Shultz, the positions he had, the influence he had on those around him and his influence on future administrations, both Republican and Democratic.