Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

Throughout modern history, there were major wars that were triggered by fits of inattention or inadvertence. In retrospect, these moments can seem obvious – sometimes even linear. Walter Russuell Mead is observing some of these fits of inattention right now. Walter believes there is some kind of collective denial about these trends. He calls it “geopolitical climate denialism.” That’s what we disc...

Each national political party should be thinking about their Plan B for the 2024 presidential election. Mike Murphy returns to the podcast to discuss each party's predicament and where they can go from here. Murphy has worked on a number of presidential campaigns and run 26 gubernatorial and US Senate races across the country. He was a top strategist for John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Arn...

One week ago, Israel’s parliament passed the first pillar of its judicial reform package. This, despite 30 weeks of massive protests against the reforms. Calling these mass protests understates it. Hundreds of thousands of people turning out each week, culminating last week in a historic protest march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. We have received a lot of questions and comments from listeners to th...

Dr. Christine Rosen is skeptical of all the techno-optimism around the coming era of artificial intelligence. In this episode, she responds to our recent guest, Tyler Cowen (episode # 120). Christine Rosen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on American history, culture, technology and feminism. Concurrently she is a columnist for Commentary magazine and one...

Is the US on the cusp of reaching a new deal with Iran? Or has a deal already been hatched that nobody is talking about? To help us understand what is going on, Rich Goldberg returns to the podcast. Rich is a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. From 2019-2020, he served as a Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction for the White House National Security C...

Does Putin’s hold on power now look stronger or weaker? What can we learn about where the Russia-Ukraine war is heading? And what is actually happening with the Ukraine counter-offensive? Fred Kagan is the Director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also working closely with the Russia team at the Institute for the Study of War. Fred is a former professor o...

Last weekend, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, launched a rebellion, coup or putsch against Moscow. It's still hard to discern what it was. As of now, It seems Prigozhin has halted the Wagner operation. The situation is fluid, and we aren’t going to leap to conclusions on this podcast. But our guest today, Richard Fontaine, told me he is skeptical that these events so f...

In this special re-published episode, we revisit a captivating conversation that resonated deeply with our audience, offering new listeners an opportunity to delve into the insights shared by Niall Ferguson. In this decade we may finally experience a true crack-up in higher education. There have been comparable periods on American college campuses in the past (in the 1960s and 1980s, for example)....

These days there are lots of conversations about the re-shaping of the workforce as a result of the pandemic. Bruce Feiler is just out with a new book – THE SEARCH: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World – based on years of research on this topic. He is the author of seven New York Times bestsellers. His book WALKING THE BIBLE describes his 10,000-mile journey retracing the Five Books of M...

Bret Stephens, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times, returns for a conversation immediately following his address at the University of Chicago’s Class Day, where there was an organized — and ultimately unsuccessful — effort against his speech. We discuss his address, the effort against him and lessons learned. Bret also recently returned from a mission to rescue 111 Ethiopian Je...

Today’s guest is surprisingly upbeat about the world. A big factor in his optimism is the revolution in artificial intelligence that we’re about to live through. Tyler Cowen is an economics professor at George Mason University and he’s the faculty director of the Mercatus Center. He is the coauthor – with Alex Tabarock – of the economics blog Marginal Revolution (the #1 economics blog in the world...

Upon graduation from the US Military Academy in 1984, HR McMaster served as a commissioned officer in the US Army for thirty-four years. He retired as a lieutenant general in June 2018. From 2014 to 2017, General McMaster designed the future army as the director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center and the deputy commanding general, futures, of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRA...

In this episode, we go deep on the current phase (the invisible primary) of the 2024 presidential primaries with Mike Murphy, who has worked on a number of presidential campaigns, as well as run 26 gubernatorial and US Senate races across the country. Murphy was a top strategist for John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. He’s co-h...

Items discussed in this episode "Impossible Takes Longer": https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/impossible-takes-longer-daniel-gordis/1141759170   "Netanyahu: The Figures Who Formed Him, and the Duties of Jewish Leadership": https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/israel-zionism/2021/12/netanyahu-the-figures-who-formed-him-and-the-duties-of-jewish-leadership/   "Israel From The Inside": https://danielg...

Over the past 16 weeks, Israel has experienced one of the biggest protest movements since its founding. On the surface, these protests were about proposed judicial reforms. But was something deeper going on -- for both sides of this debate? On a recent trip to Israel, Dan sat down with Dr. Micah Goodman to better understand the forces shaping this debate. Micah, who has been on our podcast before,...

Today we sit down in Israel with Mark Dubowitz, who is the CEO of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), at a time that Saudi Arabia is reopening its embassy in Tehran, and Iran's relations appear to be flourishing with Beijing, Moscow and much of the Sunni Arab Middle East. Six months ago, Iran was under enormous pressure. What happened? In his role as CEO of FDD, a nonpartisan thin...

"Brokenism", by Alana Newhouse - https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/brokenism-alana-newhouse “The Vanishing”, by Jacob Savage - https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-vanishing  

Yaakov Katz – Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Post and a former advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett – returns to our podcast. Earlier, Yaakov Katz served as The Jerusalem Post’s military reporter and defense analyst. He is the author of "Shadow Strike: Inside Israel's Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power" and co-author of two books: "Weapon Wizards - How Israel Became a...

In this special episode we play a conversation that Dan recently had on the Commentary Magazine podcast on the current crisis, how Israel got here and where it goes from here. Be sure to subscribe to Commentary Magazine and its podcast: https://www.commentary.org/

Is the US Government trying to re-engage and bring down the temperature with China? Why right now? And what about the resurgent findings on the possible lab leaked accident (on the origin of the pandemic)? Where does this fit into the de-escalation dynamic? Josh Rogin is a long-time foreign affairs journalist, currently a columnist for The Washington Post. He’s also a Political Analyst for CNN. He...

Twenty years ago this past week, on March 19, 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, marking the second time the U.S. fought a war in Iraq in just over a decade. What is the legacy for U.S. foreign policy, for the Middle East, and for domestic public opinion on America's role in the world? Journalist Eli Lake traveled to Iraq six times since the invasion 20 years ago. He is contributing editor to C...

China just announced that it had brokered a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran to restore diplomatic relations, for the first time since they were officially severed in 2016. But this news begs more questions than it answers. To help us understand what it means for Washington, Jerusalem, Beijing, Tehran, and Riyadh, Rich Goldberg joins the podcast. Rich is a senior advisor at the Foundation for De...

Eric Cohen is the CEO of Tikvah. He was the founder and remains editor-at-large of the New Atlantis, and he serves as the publisher of Mosaic. Eric has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Commentary, He is the author of In the Shadow of Progress: Being Human in the Age of Technology. He previously worked for the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics. Eric's work can be fo...

On the topic of geopolitics, international flashpoints and the state of the war, a surprisingly optimistic Richard Fontaine returns to our podcast. Richard is the CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a bi-partisan foriegn policy think tank in Washington, DC. Prior to CNAS, he was foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain and worked at the State Department, the National Securit...

Historian Niall Ferguson returns to the podcast to look at how the current Cold War could turn hot. Niall has taught at Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and New York University. He’s authored 17 books. He’s currently at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University where he is the MIllbank Family Senior Fellow, and Managing Director of Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm. Order N...