The World Unpacked

The Iran War marks the second time in two months that Donald Trump decapitated a country without real legal justification.  But is this any different from the many times that past U.S. presidents—and other great powers—have violated international law?

Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed almost a week ago — so who’s running the country? Will Iranians seek change in the streets, despite the brutal crackdown they faced in January? Could Kurdish militias march on Tehran under U.S. and Israeli air cover? Should Westerners trust exiled oppositionists like former crown prince Reza Pahlavi? Karim Sadjadpour is one of the few people who can answer these questions. On this special episode of The World Unpacked, Karim and host Jon Bateman go inside Tehran’s power structure as the Islamic Republic faces one of the greatest crises in its 47-year history.

Just weeks after ousting Venezuela’s leader, Donald Trump is now courting crises on two other continents.  Trump’s quest to own Greenland continues to roil Europe, while the Middle East braces for war as a U.S. armada barrels toward Iran.

In this episode of The World Unpacked, Sarah tells host Jon Bateman why systemic corruption looks nothing like how we picture it, how anti-corruption advocates are co-opted as enablers, and what to say if someone asks you for a bribe. There’s a gnawing feeling in America and the West that a self-serving elite has corrupted society’s rules in its favor. The Epstein files have finally pulled back the curtain on hidden ways that powerful people network together to advance their own interests and evade accountability.

The same populist forces that brought Donald Trump to office could also enable a politician from the progressive left to succeed him. How would a president in the vein of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Zohran Mamdani change U.S. foreign policy and the world? 

Americans have been deeply dissatisfied with the economy for many years, even as standard metrics continue to show strength and prosperity. This gap between popular and elite thinking has helped populism surge and sparked intense debates about whether old economic assumptions—and policies—need wholesale revision.Find the episode transcript and streaming audio, and get the show direct to your inbox, hereFollow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman   

The Paveway bomb, invented by Texas Instruments in the 1970s, was the first truly precise munition.  It revolutionized America’s air campaign in Vietnam and allowed whole new kinds of “limited” U.S. wars in Libya, Iraq, Serbia, and beyond.But Paveway’s true legacy was psychological: it seduced generations of U.S. leaders into believing that tactical precision creates strategic victories with few costs.Jeff Stern, an intrepid chronicler of modern conflict, tells this story in his new book The Warhead: The Quest to Build the Perfect Weapon in the Age of Modern Warfare.  He joins Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked to explore the past, present, and future of precision warfare. 

You’ve probably heard of “lab-grown meat,” the sci-fi-sounding idea of 100% real meat made without animals. Yet few people understand how close this vision is to becoming reality—and how much it could change the world.  A healthier, more efficient meat source could soon rewire global supply chains and help catalyze a new bioeconomy.Find the episode transcript and streaming audio, and get the show direct to your inbox, here: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/the-global-race-to-reinvent-meat?Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman  

Drones are no longer the future of war. They’re now a defining weapon in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and beyond—altering the course of conflicts and reshuffling the balance of military power. The pace of change has caught many by surprise, with state and non-state groups racing to mass-produce, diversify, and protect their rapidly evolving drone arsenals.Find the episode transcript and streaming audio, and get the show direct to your inbox, here: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/every-war-is-now-a-drone-war?Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman  

The Trump administration apparently seeks regime change in Venezuela and may soon attack the country. But American leaders have so far refused to openly state their intentions, stifling public debate on the momentous choice ahead.In an urgent conversation you won’t hear elsewhere, the last U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela makes a forthright case for ousting President Nicolás Maduro—with American force, if necessary.Ambassador James Story joins The World Unpacked to argue that Venezuela isn’t Iraq or Afghanistan. Host Jon Bateman asks him tough questions about post-war security, regional blowback, and whether the U.S. has a vital interest in Venezuela.Find the episode transcript and streaming audio, and get the show direct to your inbox, here: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/testing-the-case-for-regime-change-in-venezuela?Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman  

The new U.S. National Security Strategy is the clearest and boldest statement of President Donald Trump’s global vision. It reveals U.S. plans to dominate Latin America, transform politics in Europe, and seize commercial opportunities in Asia. Leaders around the world are closely studying this document.Find the episode transcript and streaming audio, and get the show direct to your inbox, here: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/decoding-trumps-foreign-policy-blueprint?Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman  

The AI boom is the biggest investment mania in decades, channeling trillions of dollars into data center infrastructure.  If investors bet right, they may usher in technological breakthroughs that produce vast wealth.  If they’re wrong, they could crash the U.S. stock market, trigger a recession, and spread financial contagion globally.Ed Zitron was among the first to call AI a bubble.  His unsparing deep dives into AI finances are must-reads, even for his critics.  In a spirited back-and-forth on The World Unpacked, Ed and host Jon Bateman debate Wall Street’s “unhealthy relationship” with Nvidia, if China has its own AI bubble, and whether ChatGPT should give tax advice.Find the episode transcript and streaming audio, and get the show direct to your inbox, here: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/ais-biggest-skeptic-sees-a-bubble? Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman   

 We’re living through an era of information disruption.  Novel technologies like AI and social media are unleashing pent-up social and political energies—releasing floods of new information and triggering intense battles for narrative control.While most analysts focus on small pieces of this puzzle, Alicia Wanless is a pioneering “information ecologist” who seeks to map the entire system. Her new book is The Information Animal: Humans, Technology, and The Competition for Reality.In a lively new episode of The World Unpacked, Alicia and host Jon Bateman discuss what 2025 has in common with 1625, how novels spark civil wars, and why our frantic efforts to tame information often do more harm than good. Find the episode transcript and streaming audio, and get the show direct to your inbox, here: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/why-information-refuses-to-be-controlled?Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman  

On November 5, the Supreme Court heard the most globally consequential oral arguments in years as Trump’s trade war faces a final legal reckoning. The Court will either strike down most of Trump’s tariffs, undercutting him in trade talks, or else hand U.S. presidents previously unimagined new powers over the global economy.Peter Harrell is a top trade expert and lawyer fighting the tariffs on behalf of 207 members of Congress.  He joins host Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked to take stock of the ever-changing tariffs, peer into the Justices’ decision-making process, and predict the fallout for America and the world.Find the episode transcript and streaming audio, and get the show direct to your inbox, here: https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/trumps-dollar200-billion-tariff-showdown-at-the-supreme-court? Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman   

A House of Dynamite, a new Netflix film, may be the most realistic depiction of a nuclear crisis ever made. Screenwriter Noah Oppenheim partnered with Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker) to capture the intimate details of the U.S. national security state as a president (Idris Elba) and his advisors confront the riskiest 19 minutes in human history.Oppenheim, the former president of NBC News, joins Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked. They discuss Trump’s missile defense plans, the filmmaking process, and Hollywood’s surprising influence on nuclear policy—from Dr. Strangelove to Crimson Tide.Find the episode transcript, video episode, and get the show direct to your inbox, here.Follow Jon on X (https://x.com/JonKBateman) here.

MS-13 brought El Salvador to its knees and has spread to a dozen other nations, doing battle with presidents as much as rival gangs. Yet despite its infamy, MS-13 is poorly understood: It has little in common with the cartels, traffickers, or mafias that it’s often lumped in with.What is the violent logic behind MS-13, and why has it grown steadily more powerful during both crackdowns and truces? Has President Nayib Bukele’s unprecedented brutality finally turned the tide against MS-13 in El Salvador, and does he have a plan for what comes next? If it takes an autocrat to slay a gang, should countries trade one beast for another?Steven Dudley, author of the award-winning book MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang, joins Jon Bateman for a gripping new episode of The World Unpacked.Find the episode transcript, video episode, and get the show direct to your inbox, here.Follow Jon on X (https://x.com/JonKBateman) here.

The end of USAID was among the biggest early controversies of President Donald Trump’s second term. The world watched in horror as Elon Musk’s DOGE took a chainsaw to U.S. foreign assistance, placing millions of lives at risk with brutal across-the-board cuts.But few people realize how much has changed since then. Behind the scenes, aid money was largely restored—for now. And instead of making grandiose fraud accusations, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has begun embracing aid in public, laying out promising plans to address problems long recognized by technocrats.Rachel Bonnifield is a leading global health expert and proud member of the NGO ecosystem denounced by Trump officials—yet she admires much of their new strategy. She joins The World Unpacked to make a surprising case for many Trump reforms, while also warning of risks, including the potential for more disruptions in the coming months.Find the episode transcript, video episode, and get the show direct to your inbox, here.Follow Jon on X (https://x.com/JonKBateman) here.

Brazil’s Supreme Court has just convicted former president Jair Bolsonaro of attempting a coup to nullify his 2022 election loss. The country’s judicial system and Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a polarizing figure whom the co-conspirators had sought to assassinate, acted boldly, sentencing Bolsonaro to twenty-seven years in prison.Brazil is now the global leader in democratic accountability for “self-coups,” a once-rare phenomenon that has surged recently, even in places such as South Korea and the United States. That’s why the world is watching Brazil’s grand experiment—especially in Washington, where President Donald Trump has levied massive tariffs to punish what he calls a “witch hunt” against his former ally.Oliver Stuenkel, a prominent analyst of Brazilian politics, breaks down these events with Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked. Will Bolsonaro’s conviction restore democratic guardrails or further polarize the country? And what does it mean for the United States to intervene in the politics of a fellow democracy with unprecedented levels of economic coercion?Find the episode transcript, video episode, and get the show direct to your inbox, here.Follow Jon on X (https://x.com/JonKBateman) here. 

Nate Soares is one of the world’s leading AI “doomers” and co-author of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All—the New York Times Bestseller that everyone in tech is debating. In this debut episode of a revamped The World Unpacked, new host Jon Bateman talks to Nate about his provocative argument that superintelligent AI could destroy all humans in our lifetimes—and how the U.S., China, and other countries should band together to stop it.What is superintelligent AI and how soon will it emerge? Why are tech companies explicitly aiming to create something that the CEOs themselves—and respected independent experts—acknowledge is an existential threat? Is it feasible for the U.S., China, and other major players in the global AI race to agree to a worldwide freeze on the technology? And how did Nate come to these realizations—and mourn for what he sees as humanity’s possible lost future?Find the episode transcript, video episode, and get the show direct to your inbox, here.Follow Jon on X (https://x.com/JonKBateman) here. 

In this episode of The World Unpacked, host Isaac Kardon is joined by Alexander (Sasha) Gabuev, Director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin and one of the world’s leading experts on Russia-China relations. Together, they unpack the growing geopolitical competition in the Arctic—a region increasingly shaped by strategic cooperation between Russia and China, and generally neglected or misunderstood by U.S. policymakers.This conversation dives deep into the overlooked maritime theater connecting the U.S., Russia, and China. Kardon and Gabuev explore the security implications of a warming Arctic, the dynamics of great power rivalry, the potential limits of the China-Russia partnership, and what’s at stake for the U.S. and its allies.Article mentioned: https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/05/26/trump-greenland-arctic-russia-china-nato-strategy-geopolitics-security/