The Cosmopolicast

Hey, it’s us! John will be in London for a while now, so you can look forward to receiving the Elephant Cage every weekday without further interruption. Show notes: Popular protests continue against Foreign Agents’ law Rallies continue in Tbilisi against the Foreign Agents law, as citizens of all generations gathered again on April 21 in Tbilisi, again blocking Rustaveli avenue. Many demonstrators...

For those of you who listen through a podcast player, here’s the edited, one-hour version of our conversation with Judith Levy about the failure of the Oslo Accords and the relationship between that and the present catastrophe. Make time to listen to it: You’ll find it worthwhile. If you’d like to listen to the unedited version—and watch it, too—here’s all three hours. I had to cut lots and lots o...

Show notes: Vows of revenge mark a funeral for Iranian commanders killed in an Israeli airstrike in Damascus : “Our brave men will punish the Zionist regime,” General Hossein Salami, the commander in chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, told the crowd attending the funeral in Tehran. “We warn that no act by any enemy against our holy system will go unanswered and the art of the Iran...

Prime Minister Oxley runs through the options for dissuading Iran from targeting dissidents on British soil. Secretary of State Berlinski is worried no one has an Iran policy. The PM realizes he’ll need to lead the Free World in devising a comprehensive plan to deal with Iran’s nuclear program, which will require him to call upon Defense Minister Oxley for a briefing. (The DefMin was in an urgent...

Fridays are the day we talk about happy and beautiful things, and what could be happier or more beautiful than our golden, wine-and-poetry soaked youth at Oxford and Cambridge? I wrote a short story some time after I went down from Oxford. (You “go up” and “go down” from Oxford, and you pray that you’re never “sent down,” because that is very, very bad.) The story is a love letter to Oxford, its b...

It’s a beautiful day in Europe . Jake Sullivan visits Ukraine and tells them the aid is coming. The EU is meeting in Brussels and going “ on a war footing .” The Elephants are relieved by these faintly encouraging signs. The German economy is in a world of hurt . Let’s be careful what we wish for, folks: The Elephants look at Germany and wonder if we should be excited about German rearmament. Leak...

Hey, has anyone else had this problem? I received this message from a subscriber: [T]he podcast episodes are no longer appearing in the subscriber podcast feed. Last week episodes for Monday-Thursday appeared and I listened to them but disappeared from the full list of episodes in the podcast app feed for all episodes. Please let me know if you’ve had this problem, too. It will help me figure out...

Show notes: * One year after Ohrid agreement, there is little commitment from Kosovo and Serbia to its implementation. EU High Representative Josep Borrell called the lack of progress in implementing obligations “regrettable.” To date, only the declaration on missing persons, the Joint Monitoring Committee, and the draft on the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities in Kosovo. * Putin wants w...

Sorry folks, it’s Monday. We have to think about this again. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

We decided that every Friday, we’re going to talk about things that don’t involve any of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. From now on, we’re dedicating Fridays to the cosmopolitan part of the globalist. We’ll talk about great cities, great books, the world’s best gardens, Roman history, our favorite languages, travel by train, cooking, the best music by which to drive through the American sout...

Show notes Background : Why I don’t trust news organs I usually find reliable to report the news from Israel and Gaza accurately: * What COGAT says: The image above came from a video; here’s the full footage: COGAT didn’t provide a translation, and I don’t speak Arabic. So I put the video through an AI program for translation and subtitles, which resulted in gibberish: My best guess, from the cont...

Okay, so we changed the name. The new name was Thomas Gregg’s suggestion, and we love it. I can’t tell whether I forgot to speak slowly, or if I made a mistake in the editing that sped up the recording. I don’t know what I could have done, if so. It’s not bad—but I’m not speaking slowly. I’ll work at that more. Trump is “unhinged” but we love him, say Kremlin mouthpieces , by Julia Davis Peace tal...

Here it is: The long-awaited report . This annual report of worldwide threats to the national security of the United States responds to Section 617 of the FY21 Intelligence Authorization Act (Pub. L. No. 116-260). This report reflects the collective insights of the Intelligence Community (IC), which is committed every day to providing the nuanced, independent, and unvarnished intelligence that pol...

Show notes: * India joins the elite list of nations with test of Agni-V MIRV tech * Mission Divyastra: What Agni-5 missile with MIRV tech can do * Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan: self-reliant India * Why “poverty first, moon next” is an absurd argument * IAEA: Iran is “not entirely transparent” on its atomic program * West concerned over Iranian nuclear bomb in IAEA meeting * Too close for comfort: C...

We have a name! This podcast will from now on be called ‘Round the Globe with John and Claire. We like it because it’s simple and it says what it’s about. From now on you’ll receive ‘Round the Globe with John and Claire every weekday. It’s a bonus, not a substitute for any of the other things we do. We’d love it if you subscribed: What’s your verdict so far? How can we improve it? The show notes a...

Today’s discussion: * Vladislav Davidzon joins us to give us the expert view on Transnistria. The situation sounds more minatory than John and I initially thought: There may be a purpose to the provocation that goes beyond, “distracting NATO.” * Welcome, Sweden! * Boo, Germany! What’s wrong with you? * The Sudan catastrophe is apocalyptic, no one has the bandwidth to deal with it, and now Russia,...

We still have no name. I’m getting worried about this. Sorry, Scott! Not only did I blank on your last name—it came back to me, at least!—we just didn’t love the name you suggested. We’re looking for something that clearly explains what it is and why you should listen to it in about two catchy and clever words. (I like the name “GLOBAL EYES,” for example, because it tells you what it is and it’s a...

My father didn’t understand what a “Cosmoberjoxlicast” was, and who can blame him? Pop, it’s short for the Cosmopolitan Globalist Claire Berlinski and John Oxley podcast, but just a placeholder until we think of something perfect, catchy, and memorable. A month of the Cosmopolitan Globalist on the house to the reader who comes up with a name that makes both of us immediately say, “Yes! That’s perf...

The title is just for now. Until we think of a better one. Give it a try. It’s only twenty minutes. It’s an experiment. We’re thinking that if you like this—or if you can imagine liking it, if we make it better in some (achievable and realistic) way—we’ll do it daily. We figured we could both spare about twenty minutes every day to talk about the global news stories that stand out most to us. So t...

While you’re at it, read every word of this analysis for RUSI : It is obvious that if Ukraine loses support from the West, Putin may well achieve his goal of destroying Ukrainians as a people and erasing the largest country from the map of Europe. Despite the obvious tragedy of this situation for Ukraine, the consequences of its defeat for the West and especially for the US as the leader of the fr...

Vladislav Davidzon has for almost a decade been one of the most acute observers of the Ukrainian–Jewish relationship and of the place of Ukrainian Jewry within a developing political nation. His stylish reportage has been invaluable for understanding the dynamics of the Jewish Ukraine in a historical moment. This volume will surely enter the canon as an important document for anyone who wishes to...

Claire—I think you’ll find this was an especially interesting conversation. I’ve included a transcript for those of you who don’t like listening to podcasts, but I particularly recommend listening to this one. CB : This is the Cosmopolitan Globalist and I’m Claire Berlinski, the host, and Vladislav Davidzon is my dear friend, neighbor as well, who is now Ukrainian. He is married to a Ukrainian wom...

Please join me in lavishly thanking our reader Michael Greenspan for donating his time today to helping me edit this podcast. I’m so grateful for the favor, and you will be too when you listen without hearing Vladislav and me ask each other repeatedly, “Are you still there? Still there?” To follow along, I recommend looking at the Ukraine Livemap , which is an invaluable resource for visualizing t...

“ … unfortunately we show that the AI control problem is not solvable and the best we can hope for is safer AI , but ultimately not 100 percent safe AI, which is not a sufficient level of safety in the domain of existential risk as it pertains to humanity.” — Roman Yampolsky Roman Yampolskiy is a computer scientist and professor at the Speed School of Engineering at the University of Louisville wh...

Like yesterday’s essay by Tecumseh Court — Year Zero —this Cosmopolicast with Vladislav Davidzon considers the war in Ukraine in the context of the Iraq war. For those of you who don’t like podcasts, I’ve provided an (imperfect) transcript below. Claire : Hi, it’s Claire with the Cosmopolitan Globalist, and this is the Cosmopolicast. We have Vladislav Davidzon with us again. Welcome, Vladislav. Ca...