America and Beyond with Paul Starobin

Even as Donald J. Trump keeps his tight grip on the Republican Party, conservative ranks are rife with sharpening tensions on both domestic and foreign-policy matters. I discuss this subject with Matthew Continetti, columnist for The Wall Street Journal and author of The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism (Basic Books, 2022). Conservative thinkers and political figures have different answers to festering questions such as how aggressively American should assert its role in the world, whether America’s ties to Israel should be scaled back, what steps should be taken to regulate Artificial Intelligence, and how to accommodate the populist insurgency that gave rise to Trump. The 2028 Republican Party nomination contest, Continetti says, looms as a battle over the future of the post-Trump conservative movement. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Our conversation focuses on a groundbreaking article by Dan Storyev recently published in The Nation: “Millions of Ukrainian Men Are Fleeing a Cruel Conscription System.” Storyev was on the ground in Odesa to report firsthand for this piece, drawing on encounters with Ukrainian men in flight from the officers of the Ukrainian state agency, known as TCR, in charge of mobilizing fighting-age men for the war in Ukraine against Russia’s invading army. It’s an important story, yet one, as he told me, that few outlets in the Western press want to publish. And as we note, Russia also is experiencing great difficulties in conscripting men for this war. Storyev is a Russian-American writer and the co-author, with Maria Kuznetsova, of the forthcoming book How to Survive Authoritarianism: A Russian’s Phrasebook for Everyday Life in America (W.W. Norton), to be published in September. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin, at 73 years old, is still very much alive, yet the “After Putin” conversation is an active one inside and outside of Russia. What could come next and how to think about that question? My guest is Julian G. Waller, a political scientist at George Washington University and author of a recent Foreign Affairs article “After Putin: Russia’s Coming Succession Crisis.” In our discussion, Waller anchors the “After Putin” question in historical context, as to how succession played out after Stalin’s death in the 1953. And we talk about how the current political environment in Moscow, shaped by Putin’s protracted war in Ukraine, is informing the “After Putin” discussion. Could a revolutionary scenario play out? How bodily safe is Putin? Waller is author of Autocrats Can't Always Get What They Want: State Institutions and Autonomy under Authoritarianism (University of Michigan Press, 2024). Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The September, 2022 attack on the Nord Stream pipelines transporting Russian gas to Germany was perhaps the greatest single act of sabotage in modern history. In The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions that Shook the World (Henry Holt, 2026), Bojan Pancevski makes a compelling case that the culprit was an intrepid team of Ukrainian intelligence agents, military personnel and civilian divers. In our conversation, he explains how he came to this conclusion. And we touch on the wider issue of what Pancevski calls the “Cossack spirit,” at the heart of the determination of courageous and resourceful Ukrainians to resist, by all means available, Moscow’s efforts to subdue Ukraine. Pancevski is the chief European political correspondent of The Wall Street Journal and has considerable experience covering Ukraine. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I discuss with the author his book American Elegy: Reflections on 250 Years of the Dis-United States of America (Ig Publishing, 2026). Simon is the founding editor of The Pittsburgh Review of Books. The book is a lively and lyrical medley of short “flash” essays, as he calls them, and our conversation ranges from his notes on “General Tso’s Chicken” as a sticky American fusion classic to his thoughts on Jane Jacob’s early 1960’s exploration of what makes for a vibrant urban milieu. As Simon tells me, there is much in the American experience—in the American song, it can be said—to celebrate notwithstanding all of the discordant notes. Veteran journalist Paul Starobin is a former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week and a former contributing editor of The Atlantic. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. His latest book, Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia (Columbia Global Reports) will be published in January. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.