The Burn Bag Podcast

In this episode of The Burn Bag , A’ndre welcomes former U.S. Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leon Panetta for a wide-ranging conversation on the Iran War, the lessons of America’s post-9/11 conflicts, and the future of U.S. foreign policy. Panetta offers a blunt assessment of the Trump administration’s handling of the Iran War, arguing that Washington lacks a clear strategy or endgame. He d...

In this episode of The Burn Bag, A’ndre welcomes former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman for a wide-ranging conversation on President Trump’s approach to diplomacy, the ongoing Iran War, the recent Trump–Xi Jinping summit, and the art of negotiating with America’s adversaries. Sherman, who led the U.S. negotiations that secured the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), assesses Trump’s negot...

Former U.S. National Security Advisor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton returns to The Burn Bag for a wide-ranging assessment of President Trump’s foreign policy nearly two years into his second term. Amb. Bolton discusses the Iran War seven months in, the state of the Iranian regime, the Strait of Hormuz, and whether the Trump administration has a clear end state for the confl...

Drones have gone from a specialized tool of warfare to an indispensable feature of the modern battlefield. From Ukraine and Russia deploying millions of drones to Iran using inexpensive Shahed systems against far more sophisticated adversaries, cheap and disposable weapons are changing the economics of war. A’ndre sits down with Dr. Sarah Kreps, Professor of Government at Cornell University and a...

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull joins The Burn Bag for a candid conversation about Donald Trump, China, AUKUS, Taiwan, and the future of America’s alliances. Having dealt directly with both President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Turnbull offers a rare perspective on how U.S. leadership is viewed from abroad. He explains why he believes allies can no longer assum...

What would American foreign policy look like if the progressive left were in charge? A’ndre is joined by Matt Duss, Executive Vice President at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, to examine the left’s growing challenge to the Democratic Party’s foreign policy establishment. Matt traces Democratic foreign policy from the post-9/11 era th...

Twenty-five years after 9/11, what did America’s War on Terror actually accomplish? Peter Bergen, one of the country’s leading experts on terrorism and national security, joins The Burn Bag to take stock of a quarter-century of American war and counterterrorism. Bergen produced the first televised interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997 and is the author or editor of ten books, including his newest...

Immigration is often framed as a domestic political fight — about borders, jobs, identity, and security. But America’s immigration choices also shape how the world understands U.S. power, credibility, and values. In this episode of The Burn Bag , A’ndre Gonawela sits down with Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, President and CEO of Global Refuge, to examine immigration as a foreign-policy and national-secur...

In this episode of The Burn Bag , Gal Beckerman joins us to explore what it means to be a dissident in an age of conformity, fear, and authoritarian drift. Drawing on themes from his new book, How to Be a Dissident , Beckerman reflects on the people who refuse to betray their conscience — from historic rebels and moral witnesses to ordinary individuals forced to decide whether silence is still an...

In this episode, The Burn Bag speaks with Dr. Gary Slutkin, a physician, epidemiologist, former World Health Organization official, and founder of Cure Violence Global, about a provocative idea: what if violence is not simply a problem of crime, morality, or politics, but a contagious epidemic? Drawing on his decades of work fighting tuberculosis, cholera, AIDS, and community violence, Dr. Slutkin...

In this episode of The Burn Bag Podcast, A’ndre Gonawela sits down with Zhengyu Huang — former President of the Committee of 100 and author of Rethinking China — to examine the assumptions driving U.S. policy toward China. The conversation covers U.S.-China competition across trade, technology, national security, and Taiwan, while examining where current policy debates may benefit from what Zhengy...

For decades, wars targeted oil fields, pipelines, ports, and power grids. But in March 2026, that logic appeared to change when Iranian strikes reportedly targeted commercial cloud infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, damaging data center facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and disrupting digital services used by millions. What happens when data centers become wartime targets? How vu...

As geopolitical tensions spill into the Indian Ocean, smaller states in South Asia are finding themselves on the frontlines of crises they did not choose. From the sinking of an Iranian vessel off Sri Lanka’s coast to mounting pressure from major powers and a region-wide scramble for energy, countries like Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Bangladesh, and Nepal are navigating an increasingly complex strate...

In this episode of the Burn Bag Podcast, A'ndre Gonawela is joined by Mira Rapp-Hooper, a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director at National Security Council, to break down the structural forces reshaping the global order. Rapp-Hooper explains how the international system is undergoing a fundamental transition driv...

Who is Mojtaba Khamenei — Iran's new Supreme Leader? Who was the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? In this episode of the Burn Bag Podcast, A’ndre Gonawela is joined by Vali Nasr, the Majid Khadduri Professor of Middle East Studies and International Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS and one of the leading scholars of Iranian politics and Shia leadership structures. Nasr breaks down the power structure of t...

As the war between the United States, Israel, and Iran escalates following the February 28 strikes, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper joined A'ndre for a quick chat to assess how the conflict is unfolding and what may come next. Esper discusses how President Donald Trump and his national security team may be evaluating the campaign, the strategic objectives behind the strikes on Ira...

In this episode of The Burn Bag , A’ndre Gonawela sits down with former NSC Senior Director Javed Ali to unpack the rapidly escalating crisis between the United States, Israel, and Iran following the February 28 strikes that reportedly killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the ongoing exchanges of fire. They examine how Tehran is likely interpreting the strikes, why this moment differs...

Iran is at a critical juncture as it faces a wave of nationwide protests driven by economic strain, political frustration, and societal exhaustion. In this episode of The Burn Bag, A'ndre Gonawela is joined by Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, to explore the internal fractures within Iran's regime and the potential for change. As tensions between Washington and...

Syria is at a pivotal moment. After the fall of Bashar al-Assad, the country’s new leadership under President Ahmed al-Sharaa is working to reunify a fractured state — and the biggest test is unfolding in the northeast, where the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have operated autonomously for nearly a decade. In recent weeks, a fragile ceasefire and phased integration agreement has put S...

In this episode of The Burn Bag , A’ndre Gonawela is joined by Dr.  Iulia Joja , Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute, to examine Russia’s strategy in the Middle East in 2026 following major setbacks in Syria and Iran. The conversation breaks down how Moscow is adapting after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Iran’s military losses and internal unrest, and growing U.S. pressure acros...

In Part Two of this conversation on Venezuela, The Burn Bag turns to the present — and the shockwaves following U.S. strikes and the arrest of Nicolás Maduro. Host A’ndre Gonawela is joined again by Tony Frangie Mawad, a Venezuela-based journalist and political scientist, to examine how the United States’ intervention reshaped Venezuela’s political landscape overnight. The conversation explores ho...

In this episode of The Burn Bag , host A’ndre Gonawela is joined by Tony Frangie Mawad, a Venezuela-based journalist and political scientist, to unpack how Venezuela reached its current moment. Long before U.S. strikes and regime collapse, Venezuela’s trajectory was shaped by the rise of Hugo Chávez, the ideology of Chavismo , and the steady erosion of democratic institutions under both Chávez and...

In the final episode of The Nuclear Threshold , A’ndre speaks with Alexandra Bell , President & CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and one of the leading U.S. diplomats behind recent efforts to strengthen arms control and reduce nuclear risks. Building on the technical and command-and-control foundations laid by Laura Grego and Steve Fetter, this conversation shifts to the political...

In the second installment of The Nuclear Threshold mini-series, we turn from missile defense to the human side of nuclear risk — the people, protocols, and split-second judgments that determine whether nuclear weapons are ever used. While deterrence is often framed as a stable system, history tells a far messier story: false alarms, malfunctioning sensors, training tapes mistaken for real attacks,...

The Nuclear Threshold is a three-part Burn Bag mini-series exploring how deterrence, defense, and diplomacy shape nuclear risk in the 21st century. Across three conversations with leading experts, we examine why technological optimism often outpaces reality, how fragile human systems sustain deterrence, and whether diplomacy can still prevent catastrophe in an increasingly unstable world. In this...