Ross Douthat confronts Peter Thiel with the possibility that he is the anti-Christ. Zohran Mamdani shows a model for politics that the media fears. The Democrats' Project 2029 is a farce that shows leaders of the party don't actually want to win. Fascist public policy is here, and it's class war. According to Gallup, even most Americans think US hegemony sucks. The Pentagon's Elbridge Colby just halted missile shipments to Ukraine so that the US can more readily fight a war against China that it...
Jul 04, 2025•54 min•Ep. 248
Free cross-over episode with the Bang-Bang Podcast. In this finale to our Andor series, Van and Lyle are joined by returning guest Paul Adlerstein and—making his first appearance on the pod—Matt Duss, former foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders and current executive vice president at the Center for International Policy. The conversation spans the closing arc of Andor Season 2 and Rogue One , treating them as one long meditation on revolutionary grief, sacrifice, and strategy. We refl...
Jun 29, 2025•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 247
Van Jackson, Julia Gledhill, and Matt Duss confronting all things fascism at home and war with Iran abroad: Tucker Carlson roasting Ted Cruz over Israel and Iran is a bit too enjoyable…and says a lot about the fissures within the MAGA movement. America is already in Israel’s war with Iran. The promise and limits of the “No Kings” protests across the country. Why Democrats need a peace agenda. And why JD Vance loves his imperial president. Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un...
Jun 21, 2025•44 min•Ep. 246
The Trump administration's troop deployments to California are in defense of surging ICE raids against farm workers and immigrant communities across the state--a straightforward project of white supremacy meant to discipline the entire American labor force. But Antonio De Loera--communications director for the legendary United Farm Workers (UFW) union--also sees this as a larger war on American identity, America's claim to global primacy, and even America's humanity. Van and Antonio talk about h...
Jun 13, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 245
Inside Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb—a tactically brilliant drone operation against Russian bombers...but does it change anything? Why Palantir is a civil liberties nightmare. The bureaucracy of a white supremacist foreign policy—inside Rubio’s restructuring of the State Department. Elon Musk and the fractures in the oligarch coalition. And South Korea’s Bernie Sanders—the global (gendered) context of Lee Jae-myung’s stunning victory. Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-dip...
Jun 06, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 244
Dr. Van Jackson was invited to speak at the first Security of Micronesia Group, hosted by the Pacific Center for Island Security in Guam. I debuted a number of new arguments here, covering how to think about China’s desire for “strategic space” in the Pacific and its surplus labor problem compared with US declining hegemony and Washington’s desire for exclusionary control of the Pacific. I also try to explain why the Micronesian region’s “sovereignty deficit” imperils its neighboring regions of ...
May 31, 2025•49 min•Ep. 243
Free full-episode cross-over with the Bang-Bang Podcast. Van (minus Lyle) is joined by historian David Austin Walsh to explore episodes 10-12 of Andor’s first-season finale. Their conversation focuses on Andor’s embrace of revolution and the surprising political realism of the show’s portrayal of labor exploitation and social uprisings. Van and David also discuss liberalism’s failure to inspire meaningful change in the real world—why has no electoral politician in our lifetime ever roused our so...
May 24, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 242
Why is the US unlikely to have a manufacturing revival, and who would benefit if it did? What happens to the rest of the world when the US tries to reshore manufacturing? What makes national security and labor power antagonistic to each other? What problems does worker-to-worker organizing solve? Why has organized labor been in decline since 1979? What's the relationship between social movements like Black Lives Matter and labor militancy? And what is the prospect that Shawn Fain's idea of a gen...
May 16, 2025•47 min•Ep. 241
Katrina vanden Heuvel--editorial director and publisher of The Nation magazine--joins Dr. Van Jackson to talk about: Europe's far right; the failure of centrist parties in the UK, France, and Germany; the trouble with European rearmament; Trump's and MAGA's effects on European politics; and the struggle of Europe's fractured left-wing political movements. Katrina's report with Robert Borosage, "Report From Europe: The Center Does Not Hold": https://www.thenation.com/article/world/european-union-...
May 11, 2025•46 min•Ep. 240
Covering the latest in the India-Pakistan military conflict and its nuclear risk; the US tentative ceasefire with the Houthis marks another lost war; why China's tech breakthroughs make arms-racing self-defeating for the US; the shape of a post-American Asia beginning to emerge; what a fascist budget looks like; why Stephen Miller is like that; the Trump administration is trying to export its "war on woke" to Stockholm, and it's failing; and more! Watch The Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: http...
May 08, 2025•35 min•Ep. 239
Free preview cross-over with the Bang-Bang Podcast. Van and Lyle kick off their Andor series with Slate culture editor Jenny G. Zhang, diving into the show’s slow-burn opening arc where imperial bootlickers, jealous love interests, and rebels in the making collide on the Outer Rim. They discuss what makes Andor —a property of the Star Wars universe—feel different than its franchise kin, from its social realism to its psychological bite. If The Battle of Algiers looms large, so does Parable of th...
May 02, 2025•34 min•Ep. 238
What's wrong with trying to be a Washington insider these days? How different is nuclear thinking under Trump compared to previous Democratic and Republican presidencies? Is Trump's "golden dome" idea just a grift (yes)? What's the best way to raise public consciousness about the danger of nuclear weapons? And what role could film and pop culture play in building mass support for arms control and nuclear disarmament? Dr. Van Jackson sits down with Emma Claire Foley--an anti-nuclear expert--to di...
Apr 25, 2025•54 min•Ep. 237
Free preview cross-over with the Bang-Bang Podcast. Long before the Patriot Act, long before “See Something, Say Something,” long before 9/11—there was The Siege . Released in 1998, this Bruce Willis–Denzel Washington vehicle depicts a post–terror attack New York placed under martial law. The city is bombed, neighborhoods are surveilled, and Arab and Muslim men are rounded up en masse, held indefinitely in cages under the Brooklyn Bridge. And yet, in perhaps the most jarring twist of all, the wh...
Apr 24, 2025•30 min•Ep. 236
In this episode, Dr. Van Jackson appears as a guest on A Public Affair, a radio show with a live call-in segment. The conversation ended up being deliciously wide-ranging, including: Why the oligarchs who back Trump want an economic recession; What tariffs are good for, and how Trump’s tariffs impact both global trade and domestic labor; What separates Biden’s economic nationalism from Trump’s “zombie economic nationalism,” and why both are bad but Trump’s is much worse; The value of the #TakeDo...
Apr 20, 2025•53 min•Ep. 235
The tech billionaires who are part of the Trump-MAGA coalition have repeatedly boosted the same collection of books that they think explain international relations. Dr. Van Jackson--a professor of international relations--explains why these books are not only bad books, but also books with a pessimistic, zero-sum, ethnonationalist, and militarist outlook on the world. Watch The Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newslett...
Apr 17, 2025•30 min•Ep. 234
Live on location from Wellington Harbor (outdoors)! How did tariffs in the 1930s lead to World War II in Asia? How big of a deal is the China-Japan-South Korea coordinated response to Trump's tariffs? Why are tariffs part of economic nationalism, and why is economic nationalism a gift to to the far right? Why has China become the primary scapegoat of Trump's global tariff project? And what's Singapore's prime minister got to say about the way the world is changing? Dr. Van Jackson explores the m...
Apr 12, 2025•27 min•Ep. 233
Why did the US lose manufacturing jobs? What's the problem with Donald Trump's global tariff plan? Why is housing unaffordable in the US? Why are most of us economically insecure? And why is wage work so precarious? Dr. Van Jackson explains everything that's wrong with capitalism today in three charts, and offers some simple solutions to the problem of class war. For the charts referenced in this episode, check out the YouTube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpOJU4qdS5c Watch The Un-Dip...
Apr 08, 2025•14 min•Ep. 232
Dr. Van Jackson appeared in a guest lecture at the Catholic University of America with Prof. Andrew Yeo. They talk about progressivism and the restraint movement, Dr. Jackson's working-class origins, what's wrong with Washington, what to make of the Biden administration’s “foreign policy for the middle class,” and what progressives really think about Donald Trump's foreign policy. Watch Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic...
Apr 02, 2025•52 min•Ep. 231
How the national security clown show leaking war plan secrets to a journalist also led US officials to confess to war crimes. Why Europe's independence is leading to European militarism and the rise of the far right. Taiwan's insecurity from a progressive perspective. The Pentagon was never doing anything about the climate crisis. And what it means that BYD is outperforming Tesla. Watch Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic...
Mar 28, 2025•49 min•Ep. 230
Why Bernie Sanders's "fight against oligarchy" townhalls have made him the most popular politician in America. Inside Pete Hegseth's war plan leak. JD Vance's hatred of Europe explained. And why Trump's designation of fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction is going to make a war with Mexico the Iraq invasion of the 2020s. Catch Un-Diplomatic on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ Disclaimer: The views ...
Mar 26, 2025•43 min•Ep. 229
Free preview cross-over with the Bang-Bang Podcast. In this episode, Van and Lyle are joined by writer Max Read to dissect The Sum of All Fears , the 2002 film adaptation of Tom Clancy’s novel. The film thrusts CIA analyst Jack Ryan, portrayed by Ben Affleck, into a high-stakes scenario where a nuclear bomb detonates in Baltimore, pushing the U.S. and Russia to the brink of war. The movie’s release shortly after 9/11 adds a layer of poignancy to its themes of terrorism and national insecurity. T...
Mar 21, 2025•28 min•Ep. 228
Grand strategy must be for war-crime dummies, because Jake Sullivan just got appointed the Kissinger chair at Harvard. Rahm Emmanuel should be exiled, not run for president. AUKUS may be doomed, but it doesn't also have to kill Australian Labour. How the Philippines is supporting the rules-based international order via domestic rivalry politics--the ICC has arrested Rodridgo Duterte with President Marcos's help. The coming American Great Depression--how Trump is killing the economy. Mahmoud Khal...
Mar 15, 2025•50 min•Ep. 227
What it means that No Other Land won the Oscar for best documentary. The wicked politics of Ukraine's peace problems. Why China in't mussed about Trump's tariffs. The tradeoff between Taiwan's security and chip manufacturing in the US. And the growing problem of working-class homeless in America: You drive UberEats because of America's permanent war economy. Watch Un-Diplomatic on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-dip...
Mar 07, 2025•54 min•Ep. 226
Explaining Europe's shift to strategic non-alignment. The false god of nuclear deterrence--why the nuclear triad is overrated. Making sense of the Pentagon's fake spending cuts. Privateer forces and American imperialism--the $25 billion Erik Prince proposal. Gen Z and Millennials can't afford a home. Expelling Canada from a Five-Eyes that nobody wants. Why great-power competition with China is still happening. Subscribe to Un-Diplomatic on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast S...
Mar 01, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 225
Free preview episode cross-over with the Bang-Bang Podcast. A madcap collage of American Berserk—that’s one way to describe David O. Russell’s Three Kings , and it’s exactly how Van, Lyle, and screenwriter Kevin Fox dive into it. This two-part episode (the second installment drops shortly) unpacks the film’s wild genre mash-up: comic book absurdities collide with nods to Star Wars and Apocalypse Now , all while a grim commentary on U.S. militarism and society simmers underneath. The group digs i...
Feb 22, 2025•48 min•Ep. 224
What Tupac predicted about the defense budget. Pete Hegseth unveils Trump's imperialist peace plan for Ukraine. The Monroe Doctrine means mercenary imperialism. Why the Democratic Party can't critique Trump's lies about being antiwar. In the Trump era, being anti-anti-China is worse than being a white nationalist. Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ Catch Un-Diplomatic on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/undiplomaticpodcast Disclaimer: The views expressed are t...
Feb 15, 2025•58 min•Ep. 223
Dr. Van Jackson gave a public lecture at the Havens Wright Center for Social Justice in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin on February 4, 2025. This episode is the full set of remarks plus Q&A from that lecture. About the lecture: The concept of the “national interest,” Van Jackson argues, has become an under-appreciated source of global insecurity. Not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with people having interests that must be preserved, promoted, or prot...
Feb 11, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 222
Why Palantir and the new Silicon Valley defense-industrial cartel is bad news for humanity. How to talk about USAID without starting World War III (w/ cameo from Senator Chris Murphy). ICE immigration raids are trying to perform terror. Foreign influence is the new cocaine--legal for white folks. And imagining what a restraint-based, antimilitarist foreign policy could look like in Asia if the Philippines could make a missiles-for-peace deal with China. Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter:...
Feb 07, 2025•35 min•Ep. 221
Why JD Vance's understanding of Christian patriotism fundamentally misunderstands christianity...on purpose. ANTIFA is not a terrorist organization, and we should all be antifascist. Why Burmese scholarships are not woke and DOGE has cut too far. And how to cut the Pentagon intelligently. Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com Read Julia's report (with William Hartung and Gabe Murphy) on cutting defense spending: https://www.stimson.org/2025/developing-efficient...
Jan 31, 2025•43 min•Ep. 220
The gang's back with another variety episode. Why Saudi Arabia throws so much money at Trump. Matt's trip to Israel amid ceasefire negotiations. The truth about DEI initiatives and the Pentagon. The best time for nuclear no first-use was 4 years ago; the second best time is now. What's Elon Musk doing with far right parties in Europe? And why is "the quad" both a joke and Steve Bannon's Asia fantasy? More Perfect Union: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su8NHZY-CyY&t=92s Subscribe to the Un-Di...
Jan 24, 2025•51 min•Ep. 219
