Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters
Global Dispatches
300 episodes
The longest running independent international affairs podcast features in-depth interviews with policymakers, journalists and experts around the world who discuss global news, international relations, global development and key trends driving world affairs.
More about the show
Named by The Guardian as "a podcast to make you smarter," Global Dispatches is a podcast for people who crave a deeper understanding of international news.
Episodes page 2 of 6
-
Inside the (Flawed) Push at the Security Council to Reopen Hormuz | To Save Us From Hell
The Security Council is weighing yet another U.S.-backed resolution on the Strait of Hormuz that is probably doomed from the start. In this first segment of To Save Us From Hell, Anjali and Mark explain the flawed…
-
Introducing: "Houston At Large" -- A New Podcast About How America's Fourth Largest City Impacts the World
*]:pointer-events-auto R6Vx5W_threadScrollVars scroll-mb-[calc(var(--scroll-root-safe-area-inset-bottom,0px)+var(--thread-response-height))] scroll-mt-(--header-height)" dir="auto"…
-
A Brilliant New Book Tells The Extraordinary Story Of Ordinary Syrians In The Civil War
Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Ordinary People Forging a Revolution by Anand Gopal takes readers to the Syrian city of Manbij before, during, and after the civil war. Against all odds, the people of Manbij evicted…
-
The High Stakes of a Major UN Meeting on Nuclear Weapons
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is the most important and impactful global agreement on nuclear weapons. 191 counties have joined the NPT since it entered into force in 1970, with just a few notable exceptions,…
-
Let the Race for UN Secretary General Begin!
On Tuesday and Wednesday this week, the four candidates for UN Secretary-General made their case at the UN General Assembly. Across twelve hours spanning two days, they took questions from UN member states and civil…
-
How the Iran War Is Already Fueling a Global Food Crisis
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is causing a surge in food prices around the world — particularly in places already in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. And it's about to get worse. This is the planting season…
-
Can International Institutions Survive Democratic Backsliding? Live from Lewis & Clark College
Today's episode was recorded live at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, for the annual Lewis & Clark International Affairs Symposium. The theme of this year's symposium was Crumbling Pillars: The Age of…
-
How China Views the Iran War
As I am recording this on Friday, April 10, JD Vance is en route to Islamabad, Pakistan, for negotiations over a ceasefire announced on April 7. This ceasefire is shaky at best. It is clear that there was never a…
-
From Detection to Decision-Making: Understanding Pandemic Risk | Before the Outbreak, Episode 2
Pandemic Risk Assessment is an emerging scientific toolkit designed to assess how pandemic risk is evolving over time. Rather than predicting the next outbreak, it integrates evidence across scientific disciplines to…
-
How Existing Disease Surveillance Networks Can Catch New Outbreaks | Before the Outbreak, Episode 2
Many of our best surveillance tools today that were originally built to target specific diseases like polio and malaria have become critical infrastructure for outbreak response and early warning across a wide range of…
-
Introducing: "Before the Outbreak" — A Three-Part Series on Disease Surveillance and Pandemic Preparedness
Robust disease surveillance systems are the foundation of strong public health systems and are essential to preventing, detecting, and responding to health threats before they escalate. Commitments to and investments…
-
How To Prevent Weapons of Mass Destruction in a Changing Geopolitical and Military Landscape | Global Catastrophic Risks
Today's episode is produced in partnership with the Global Challenges Foundation. The foundation is dedicated to raising awareness of global catastrophic risks and strengthening global governance to address them. The…
-
The Case Against Rodrigo Duterte at the International Criminal Court
One year ago, in 2025, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was extradited to The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity and murder for orchestrating a campaign of extrajudicial killings against people…
-
Is Cuba Next?
For the first time in nearly 70 years, it looks like there may be major political changes afoot in Cuba — driven by the United States. The Trump administration has been ratcheting up pressure on the island, including…
-
The Iran War Ignites a Global Humanitarian Emergency
Earlier last last week, he United Nations reported that around 300,000 Lebanese had been displaced since Israel opened a new front in southern Lebanon amid this widening regional conflict. Yesterday, that figure surged…
-
How to Prevent Catastrophic Climate Change | Global Catastrophic Risks
Today's episode is produced in partnership with the Global Challenges Foundation. The Foundation is dedicated to raising awareness of global catastrophic risks and strengthening global governance to address them.…
-
The War in Iran Comes to the UN | To Save Us From Hell
We cover a lot of ground in this week's episode of To Save Us From Hell! There are two new entrants to the race to succeed António Guterres as the next UN Secretary-General; Cindy McCain announced she is stepping down…
-
How Does The Iran War End?
Things are obviously moving very fast in the Middle East. When I caught up with my guest today, Dalia Dassa Kaye, the war was in its second day. Bombings in Iran and throughout the region continued at a rapid clip, and…
-
Anthropic vs. the Pentagon: The High-Stakes Fight Over Military AI—and Autonomous Weapons
Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a high-stakes meeting with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and, according to several news reports, delivered an ultimatum: either Anthropic drops the safety guardrails…
-
Ethiopia Is Sliding Fast Toward Major War
Ethiopia is on the brink of a war that could turn into a major regional conflagration. Over the past several weeks, military forces have been moving into position across the region in a conflict that would pit the…
-
Board of Peace v United Nations | US To Attack Iran? - To Save Us From Hell
It was an odd juxtaposition: Trump's inaugural Board of Peace gathered in Washington, D.C. as the U.S. appeared to be readying for war with Iran. In this week's To Save Us From Hell episode, Mark and Anjali discuss why…
-
Why Has the United States Deployed Gunboats to Haiti?
On February 3, the United States deployed a warship and Coast Guard vessels off the coast of Haiti, near Port-au-Prince. The move came amid political wrangling within Haiti's Transitional Presidential Council, as some…
-
The Last Nuclear Arms Control Agreement Between the US and Russia Just Expired. What's Next?
The New START treaty, signed by the United States and Russia in 2010, limited both countries to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads, placed restrictions on how those weapons could be deployed, and included strong…
-
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez Is Rewriting the Political Playbook
Donald Trump doesn't much like Pedro Sánchez — and the Spanish prime minister is perfectly fine with that. Unlike other European leaders who reflexively genuflect to the American president, Pedro Sánchez stands apart…
-
The Secretary General Race Heats Up — And the Epstein Files Hit the UN | To Save Us From Hell
For the first time in history, multiple countries have jointly nominated a candidate for UN Secretary General. Earlier this week, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico endorsed Michelle Bachelet—a former president of Chile, former…
-
What Americans Really Think About Foreign Policy
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has been tracking American views on foreign policy since the end of the Vietnam War. Last week, it released its 2025 survey—and the results point to a widening partisan divide on…
-
Civil War Has Returned to South Sudan
For the past year and a half, South Sudan has been on the brink of a new civil war. A 2018 peace deal that ended the last civil war has been faltering, while the war across the border in Sudan has threatened to spill…
-
One Year On: What Have Trump's HIV/AIDS Cuts Cost The World?
One year ago, the United States was winning the global fight against HIV/AIDS. Thanks largely to American leadership, infections and deaths from HIV/AIDS have dropped precipitously over the past 20 years, ever since…
-
The Stories that Will Drive the UN Agenda in 2026 | To Save Us From Hell
Can Donald Trump's new Board of Peace really compete with the Security Council? Will we even be discussing it a week or two from now, or will Trump and other world leaders simply move on? And what's with the Board's…
-
Why a U.S. Strike Against Iran May Backfire
Protests sweeping Iran are unlike anything the regime has faced since coming to power in 1979. What began as demonstrations by shopkeepers in Tehran over the sharply devalued Iranian rial quickly morphed into…
-
The Curious Case of America's Christmas Day Missile Strikes in Nigeria
On Christmas Day, the United States launched a series of missile strikes in Nigeria, ostensibly against jihadist groups. In the weeks prior, Donald Trump had been claiming that Christians in Nigeria were being…
-
The View from Denmark as Trump Threatens Greenland | Søren Lippert
Danes are reeling from the aggressive nature of Donald Trump's designs on Greenland — but there is little they can do to stop the United States from acquiring the territory, whether by force or coercion. This is an odd…
-
How China is Responding to the "Donroe Doctrine"
I'm joined by one of my favorite fellow podcasters and Substackers, Kaiser Kuo, host of the long-running Sinica Podcast, for a wide-ranging conversation on China, Venezuela, and America's shifting role in the world. We…
-
Is This an Existential Moment for the United Nations? | To Save Us From Hell
The Security Council convened an emergency meeting on Monday in response to American military operations in Venezuela that captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife— forcing dozens of countries to publicly respond to one of…
-
The U.S. Just Toppled Nicolás Maduro. Here Are the Major Risks
In a stunning U.S. military operation carried out in the early hours of Saturday, January 3rd, American forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. As of Saturday afternoon Eastern Time, the two…
-
How to Revive a Global Plastics Pollution Treaty | When Treaties Work
In 2022, countries agreed to negotiate an international treaty to end plastics pollution. They gave themselves a two-year deadline to finalize the treaty text — and needless to say, that deadline has not been met. The…
-
How to Prevent Ecological Collapse | Global Catastrophic Risks
Today's episode is produced in partnership with the Global Challenges Foundation. The Foundation is dedicated to raising awareness of global catastrophic risks and strengthening global governance to address them.…
-
To Save Us From Hell | Anjali Addresses the Security Council! Plus: Rafael Grossi Gets "The New Yorker" Profile Treatment
Your very own To Save Us From Hell co-host Anjali Dayal briefed the United Nations Security Council on Monday! She was paired with former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for a special meeting of the Council dedicated…
-
When Treaties Work | The Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court
In 1998, 120 countries came together to adopt the Rome Statute, creating what would become the International Criminal Court. Four years later, that treaty entered into force, and the ICC officially opened its doors as…
-
2025 Was a Year of Global Protests
2025 was a year of global protests. More than 70 countries across every region of the world experienced anti-government demonstrations. Some of these movements — such as those in Nepal and Madagascar — led to the…
-
Inside the Search for Syria's Missing Persons
Over the course of Syria's fourteen-year civil war, around one million people went missing, presumably killed. Among them was the father of my guest today, Maryam Kamalmaz. Maryam's father was an American…
-
The Security Council Goes To Syria | To Save Us From Hell
On December 4, the entire United Nations Security Council made an unprecedented trip to Syria. It is hard to overstate what a significant turning point this represents — both for the Security Council and the United…
-
What Happens When America Withdraws? | Live From The Halifax International Security Forum With Justin Ling
The Halifax International Security Forum always includes a sizable and bi-partisan group of United States Senators who were suddenly put on the spot: Did they think Ukraine should accept this ultimatum? By Saturday…
-
The Last of Syria's Political Prisoners are Still Languishing in Lebanese Jails
When Damascus was liberated in December of last year and Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow, thousands of the regime's political prisoners were released from jail. Around the region, Syrians who had fled the country began…
-
Live From Kabul — The World's First Capital Facing Total Water Collapse
Kabul is running out of water. If present trends continue, the capital of Afghanistan could run completely dry by 2030. There are several reasons for this. The first is climate change: there is less snowmelt to feed…
-
A Brilliant New Biography Tells the Story of the Cold War Era UN Secretary General U-Thant
U Thant was a Burmese diplomat and the third Secretary-General of the United Nations. He assumed the role following the death of Dag Hammarskjöld in a plane crash in the Congo in 1961, and soon became one of the most…
-
How the UN General Assembly Can Get Its Peace and Security Groove Back
My interview guest today, Axel Marschik, is a veteran Austrian diplomat who has thought extensively about how the General Assembly can play a more robust role in peace and security when the Security Council fails to do…
-
How Tanzania's Fraudulent Elections Sparked an Unusual Protest Movement
On October 29, Tanzania held national presidential elections — and lo and behold, incumbent President Samia Suluhu Hassan "won" with a staggering 98% of the vote. Everyone knew what was going on. The election was a…
-
When Treaties Work: The Biological Weapons Convention
2025 marks 50 years of the Biological Weapons Convention. Back in 1975, the treaty entered into force, and by banning biological weapons worldwide, it became the first global treaty to prohibit a particular weapon of…
-
A Genocidal Massacre is Underway in Sudan
About a year and a half ago, I published an episode of Global Dispatches titled "A Genocidal Massacre Is Looming in Darfur." At the time, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces had conquered nearly all of Darfur, in…
More in News
Up First from NPR
NPR
The Megyn Kelly Show
SiriusXM
The Bulwark Daily
The Bulwark
Pivot
New York Magazine
NPR News Now
NPR
The Tucker Carlson Show
Tucker Carlson Network
Serial
Serial Productions & The New York Times
The Dan Bongino Show
Cumulus Podcast Network | Dan Bongino
Still Counting
Crooked Media
IHIP News
Jennifer Welch & Angie Sullivan
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
Morning Wire
The Daily Wire
Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them. Explicit shows are for adult profiles only, and children’s profiles hear only children’s shows. More about this list.