The Delve

Two years before she won the Democratic nomination for New York's 13th Congressional District, Darializa Avila Chevalier stood at a chained door inside Columbia University's Hamilton Hall, singing as police moved in. Chalin traces the full escalation — from the first encampment to the overnight occupation to the arrests — and asks who actually paid the price for that night. Then: her record, her p...

While Putin and Xi shake hands for the cameras, a classified FSB document reveals what's really happening behind the "no limits" partnership — espionage, stolen military tech, and a territorial grudge over the Russian Far East that goes back to 1860. Chalin breaks down why Russia's most powerful ally might also be its most dangerous rival, plus a fresh Five Eyes warning on Chinese espionage and a...

An all-Filipino crew of 23 had been stranded at anchor in the Persian Gulf for more than a month. There was one way out. Through the Strait of Hormuz — through mines, through Iranian gunboats, through a waterway Iran had declared its hunting ground. They voted four times. The answer was no. On the fifth vote, the dominos fell. This is the story of 23 sailors caught in the middle of a war they had...

Welcome to Season 10 of The Delve. A new sound. A new format. And stories that put you inside the moment rather than just briefing you on it. We're starting where the news won't — with four names almost nobody remembers. Armando Alejandre Jr. Carlos Costa. Mario de la Peña. Pablo Morales. Four unarmed American civilians shot out of the sky over international waters by the Cuban Air Force on Februa...

Season 9 took The Delve to 75 countries. Season 10 takes it somewhere else entirely. New sound design. New format. Cinematic, story-driven episodes that will make you feel like you're inside the story — not just hearing about it. Brothers to the Rescue. The Strait of Hormuz. No Limits. Puerto Rico. These are the stories Season 10 is built on. We'll see you very soon.

As a junior at Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh, Chalin took an African Liberation Movements class at the University of Pittsburgh. It changed how he saw the world. This week, a conference called the World Decolonization Forum opens in Istanbul — organized by a Turkish think tank, partnered with Al Jazeera and a Chinese government-adjacent university, held in the former capital of the Ottoman...

When Pope Leo XIV — the first American pope in history — entered a public dispute with the White House over the war in the Middle East, Chalin was surprised. When JD Vance, a Catholic convert, started citing Catholic just war doctrine to justify a war the head of the Catholic Church says doesn't qualify, he was floored. Then he found an article. Turns out popes have been going toe to toe with the...

Two French soldiers killed in Lebanon by Hezbollah sends Chalin down a rabbit hole. France has had troops in Lebanon since 1978. In those 48 years, Hezbollah went from a nascent militia to the most powerful non-state armed group in the Middle East. France was there for all of it. This is the story of a country that designed Lebanon, embedded its language and laws into its DNA, and then watched fro...

Chalin talks with former Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor and Forward Party Chairwoman Kerry Healey about what it actually looks like to govern from inside a broken system — and why she finally walked away from the Republican Party on January 7th. They dig into how primaries have been engineered to reward extremism, why 50,000 elected offices in America are sitting completely empty, and what the...

“Freedom Cities” are being sold as a way to unlock innovation: fewer rules, faster building, and a clean-slate approach to growth. But what is a Freedom City—really—and who would it answer to? In this episode, Chalin is joined by Rick McGahey, economist at The New School and former Clinton-era Assistant Secretary of Labor, to break down the Freedom Cities idea and the paradox at the center of it:...

This week, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube negligent for deliberately designing their platforms to addict children. The verdict didn't come out of nowhere — the science has been building for over a decade. Chalin talks with Dr. Jean Twenge, psychologist and author of iGen , about what the data has been saying since 2012, why the law protecting kids online was written in 1998 before socia...

What does it mean to “own” something in 2026? More and more, we buy devices—and then discover we’re renting access to them: app stores that take a cut of everything, software locks that block repairs, and platforms that decide what you’re allowed to install, use, or fix. In this episode, Chalin is joined by Cory Doctorow —science fiction writer, journalist, and one of the sharpest critics of conce...

The “trad wife” aesthetic is everywhere: immaculate kitchens, from-scratch meals, and a kind of calm that feels like an antidote to a chaotic world. But what happens when a performance starts to look like a blueprint? In this episode, Chalin is joined by Bridget Todd —host of There Are No Girls on the Internet —to break down how the trad wife trend spreads, what it’s really selling, and why it res...

In Part 2 of our conversation with Dr. Kevin Carnahan , we go from TikTok theology to the deep end of the biblical pool. Chalin and Kevin dig into some of the big, nerdy questions that fuel both faith and conspiracy theories: Is “Elohim” really a plural word—“gods” or “the powerful ones”—and what does that mean for how we read the Old Testament? Was YHWH originally one god among many in a divine c...

What happens when a professor of religion wades into TikTok and starts saying, “Jesus is disappointed. Do better”? In Part 1 of this two-episode series, Chalin sits down with Dr. Kevin Carnahan —Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Central Methodist University and co-editor emeritus of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics —to talk about what he does all day: untangling bad theology, h...

Is science “just another opinion”? In a world of confidence-soaked hot takes, conspiracies, and “do your own research” culture, it can start to feel that way. In this episode of The Delve , Chalin sits down with physicist and TikTok science creator Dr. Blitz to unpack what science actually is — and what it isn’t. They dig into why real science builds on doubt, not certainty; how to tell the differ...

Iran has lived through revolutions, crackdowns, and the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising — but the story isn’t over. In this episode, Chalin talks with human rights activist Zolal Habibi about life inside a system built on fear, why the recent protests changed the regime’s calculations, and how the internet became a weapon and a lifeline. They trace the arc from the 1953 coup to today’s theocracy,...

In the wake of the U.S. mission that removed Nicolás Maduro from power and sent him to stand trial abroad, millions of Venezuelans have poured into the streets in celebration while much of the Western left has erupted in outrage over oil, sovereignty, and process. Meanwhile, some estimates suggest 8–9 million Venezuelans have already been driven from their homes in one of the largest displacement...

Season 9 of The Delve is here. This season, host Chalin Askew goes after the people and systems that quietly — and not so quietly — run our lives. From science and faith to freedom, work, masculinity, and the rise of the tech lords, each Friday we take one big question and pull it apart with people who actually know what they’re talking about. If you’ve ever looked around and thought, “Is this rea...

In this December Revamp, Chalin revisits his conversation with Andrew Yang about why American politics keeps rewarding the loudest extremes—and how we can redesign the system itself. They dig into democracy reforms like ranked-choice voting, open primaries, and independent redistricting, and explore how these changes could dial down polarization by giving more power to exhausted-but-engaged voters...

Across the United States, school districts and public libraries are under pressure to quietly remove books about race, gender, and LGBTQ+ lives. Behind every “book challenge” is a real person forced to decide whether to cave to censorship or fight back. In this revamped episode, Chalin speaks with Brooky Parks, a librarian who was disciplined and sidelined simply for putting inclusive books on the...

What if the economy wasn’t measured by how much we produce, but by how well we actually live? In this episode, Chalin sits down with economist and Ecological Economics lecturer Michael Mezzatesta to rethink capitalism from the ground up. They unpack why traditional growth-at-all-costs economics is colliding with climate limits, explore ideas like a well-being economy and degrowth , and ask whether...

Drones have quietly moved from the margins of U.S. foreign policy to the center of modern warfare. From covert strikes in Yemen and Pakistan to “drug boat” operations in the Caribbean and drone-dominated battlefields in Ukraine, the promise of “precision” has collided with the reality of civilian death, legal grey zones, and almost no public accountability. In this Delve Revamp, Chalin sits down w...

As debates in Washington heat up over the fate of Afghan refugees in the United States, Afghanistan has once again slipped into the news cycle as a political talking point—rather than a human reality. In this revamp of one of our most powerful conversations, Chalin Askew speaks with Dr. Nadia Hashimi—pediatrician, novelist, activist, and Afghan-American—to slow things down and look beyond the head...

Human trafficking remains one of the most complex and urgent human rights issues of our time. In this episode of The Delve, Chalin speaks with Dina Haynes, Executive Director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School, to explore the realities of combating trafficking on a global scale. As renewed attention on abuse and power dominates the headlines, Din...