Best Sven A Schmidt Podcasts (2025)

1
Edward Luce, "Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet" (Simon and Schuster, 2025) 43:25

4h ago43:25

43:25

Zbigniew Brzezinski was a key architect of the Soviet Union’s demise, which ended the Cold War. A child of Warsaw—the heart of central Europe’s bloodlands—Brzezinski turned his fierce resentment at his homeland’s razing by Nazi Germany and the Red Army into a lifelong quest for liberty. Born the year that Joseph Stalin consolidated power, and dying…

1
Rita Kiki Edozie and Moses Khisa, "Africa's New Global Politics: Regionalism in International Relations" (Lynne Rienner, 2022) 1:55:57

15h ago1:55:57

1:55:57

The African Union's threat to lead African states' mass withdrawal from the International Criminal Court in 2008 marked just one of many encounters that demonstrate African leaders' growing confidence and activism in international relations. Rita Kiki Edozie and Moses Khisa explore the myriad ways in which the continent’s diplomatic engagement and …

1
Alan McPherson, "Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet's Terror State to Justice" (UNC Press, 2019) 1:08:42

1d ago1:08:42

1:08:42

On September 21, 1976, a car bomb exploded in Washington DC, killing a former Chilean diplomat named Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt. The assassination was a cruel and brazen attempt by the Chilean government to silence a critic of the Pinochet regime. And it proved to be a major strategic error––Pinochet himself used the …

1
Jonathan Fisher and Nina Wilén, "African Peacekeeping" (Cambridge UP, 2022) 53:56

1d ago53:56

53:56

In African Peacekeeping (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Dr. Jonathan Fisher and Dr. Nina Wilén explore the story of Africa's contemporary history and politics through the lens of peacekeeping. This concise and accessible book, based on over a decade of research across ten countries, focuses not on peacekeeping in Africa but, rather, peacekeepin…

1
Megan Brown, "The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community" (Harvard UP, 2022) 1:04:55

1d ago1:04:55

1:04:55

In The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022), Dr. Megan Brown details the surprising story of how Algeria joined and then left the postwar European Economic Community and what its past inclusion means for extracontinental membership in today’s European Union. On their face, the mid-1950s …

1
Grace C. Huang, "Chiang Kai-Shek's Politics of Shame: Leadership, Legacy, and National Identity in China" (Harvard UP, 2021) 47:09

1d ago47:09

47:09

Once a powerful figure who reversed the disintegration of China and steered the country to Allied victory in World War II, Chiang Kai-shek fled into exile following his 1949 defeat in the Chinese civil war. As attention pivoted to Mao Zedong’s communist experiment, Chiang was relegated to the dustbin of history. In Chiang Kai-shek’s Politics of Sha…

1
60: Filename suffixes in Swift package prefixes 42:47

5d ago42:47

42:47

Join us as we talk about Swift packages names, explain some new details of the Swift Package Index' build system, and discuss an interesting paper about leveraging a compiler to find privacy bugs. And, as usual, we highlight our package picks. Apologies for the background white noise at the start of the episode on Dave's microphone. It clears up ab…

1
Zack Cooper, "Tides of Fortune: The Rise and Decline of Great Militaries" (Yale UP, 2025) 40:18

5d ago40:18

40:18

An ambitious look at how the twentieth century's great powers devised their military strategies and what their implications mean for military competition between the United States and China. How will the United States and China evolve militarily in the years ahead? Many experts believe the answer to this question is largely unknowable. But Zack Coo…

1
Giles Tremlett, "The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War" (Bloomsbury, 2021) 53:27

7d ago53:27

53:27

When civil war broke out in Spain in 1936, tens of thousands of young men and women from across the world flocked there to fight against the Nationalist uprising. Though their history has been told before, Giles Tremlett’s The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War (Bloomsbury, 2021) draws upon previously unavailable mat…

1
Dan Reiter, "Untied Hands: How States Avoid the Wrong Wars" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 43:57

8d ago43:57

43:57

How do states advance their national security interests? Conventional wisdom holds that states must court the risk of catastrophic war by “tying their hands” to credibly protect their interests. Dan Reiter overturns this perspective with the compelling argument that states craft flexible foreign policies to avoid unwanted wars. Through a comprehens…

1
Sarah E. K. Smith, "Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America" (UBC Press, 2025) 34:00

9d ago34:00

34:00

hat is the relationship between culture and trade? In Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America Sarah E. K. Smith, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University and the Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Art, Culture and Global Relations, examines the history of cultural relatio…

1
Sasha D. Pack, "The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border" (Stanford UP, 2019) 1:00:54

10d ago1:00:54

1:00:54

In his new book, The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border(Stanford, 2019), Sasha D. Pack considers the Strait of Gibraltar as an untamed in-between space—from “shatter zone” to borderland. Far from the centers of authority of contending empires, the North African and Southern Iberian coast was a place…

1
Michael Vorenberg, "Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War" (Random House, 2023) 1:34:56

13d ago1:34:56

1:34:56

More than a century and a half after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, historians are still searching for exactly when the U.S. Civil War ended. Was it ten weeks afterward, in Galveston, where a federal commander proclaimed Juneteenth the end of slavery? Or perhaps in August of 1866, when President Andrew Johnson simply declared “the i…

1
Julian Jackson, "De Gaulle" (Harvard UP, 2018) 1:11:02

16d ago1:11:02

1:11:02

Charles de Gaulle is one of the greatest figures of twentieth century history. If Sir Winston Churchill was (in the words of Harold Macmillan) the "greatest Englishman In history", then Charles de Gaulle was without a doubt, the greatest Frenchman since Napoleon Bonaparte. Why so? In the early summer of 1940, when France was overrun by German troop…

1
Agathe Demarais, "Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests" (Columbia UP, 2022) 1:06:28

17d ago1:06:28

1:06:28

Sanctions have become the go-to foreign policy tool for the United States. Coercive economic measures such as trade tariffs, financial penalties, and export controls affect large numbers of companies and states across the globe. Some of these penalties target nonstate actors, such as Colombian drug cartels and Islamist terror groups; others apply t…

1
Luke A. Nichter, "The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election Of 1968" (Yale UP, 2024) 1:02:55

20d ago1:02:55

1:02:55

A sitting Democratic president who chooses not to run for re-election, a vice president running out of the president’s shadow, and a Republican nominee trying to make a political comeback amidst accusations of collusion – welcome to the 2024 1968 presidential election. What we think we know about the election has been challenged, however, by a new …

1
Ketian Zhang, "China's Gambit: The Calculus of Coercion" (Cambridge UP, 2023) 1:11:57

21d ago1:11:57

1:11:57

Emerging from an award-winning article in International Security, China's Gambit examines when, why, and how China attempts to coerce states over perceived threats to its national security. Since 1990, China has used coercion for territorial disputes and issues related to Taiwan and Tibet, yet China is curiously selective in the timing, target, and…

1
Frank L. Jones, "Sam Nunn: Statesman of the Nuclear Age" (UP Kansas, 2020) 1:03:46

22d ago1:03:46

1:03:46

In a 2012 opinion piece bemoaning the state of the US Senate, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank cited a “leading theory: There are no giants in the chamber today.” Among the respected members who once walked the Senate floor, admired for their expertise and with a stature that went beyond party, Milbank counted Sam Nunn (D-GA). Nunn served in …

1
Sean McMeekin, "Stalin's War: A New History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2021) 1:15:10

22d ago1:15:10

1:15:10

World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia—and he was certainly dead before it ended. His armies did not fight in multiple theaters, his empire did not span the Eurasian continent, and he did not …

1
How ClioVis is Transforming Education and Historical Research 22:14

23d ago22:14

22:14

Today I’m speaking with Marcus Golding, historian and Director of Educational Operations at ClioVis. ClioVis is an incredible software and learning tool that allows educators and studies to create digital timelines, network visualizations, and interactive presentations. Founded by UT Austin history professor Erika Bsumek, ClioVis is made for profes…

1
Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman, "Hitler's American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany's March to Global War" (Basic Books, 2021) 46:17

1M ago46:17

46:17

A riveting account of the five most crucial days in twentieth-century diplomatic history: from Pearl Harbor to Hitler's declaration of war on the United States. By early December 1941, war had changed much of the world beyond recognition. Nazi Germany occupied most of the European continent, while in Asia, the Second Sino-Japanese War had turned Ch…

1
59: At least mine was related to Swift 34:01

1M ago34:01

34:01

Join us for more package ecosystem talk, covering the new Swift Ecosystem Steering group, extracting reusable packages from the CodeEdit codebase, and how Rust error messages have evolved over the years. Of course, we also have plenty of package picks for you all. News Announcing the Ecosystem Steering Group Ecosystem Steering Group CodeEdit: Intro…

1
Paul Tucker, "Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order" (Princeton UP, 2024) 47:48

1M ago47:48

47:48

How to sustain an international system of cooperation in the midst of geopolitical struggle? Can the international economic and legal system survive today’s fractured geopolitics? Democracies are facing a drawn-out contest with authoritarian states that is entangling much of public policy with global security issues. In Global Discord: Values and P…

1
Sam Dalrymple, "Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia" (HarperCollins UK, 2025) 1:03:00

1M ago1:03:00

1:03:00

As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait – were bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known officially as the ‘Indian Empire’, or more simply as the Raj. It was the British Empire’s crown jewel, a vast dominion stretching from t…

1
Sven Saaler, Kudō Akira, and Tajima Nobuo eds., "Mutual Perceptions and Images in Japanese-German Relations, 1860-2010" (Brill, 2017) 1:08:05

1M ago1:08:05

1:08:05

Mutual Perceptions and Images in Japanese-German Relations, 1860-2010 (Brill, 2017) examines the mutual images formed between Japan and Germany from the mid-nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, and the influence of these images on the development of bilateral relations. Unlike earlier research on Japanese-German relations, which focused on the sim…

1
Jack Snyder, "Human Rights for Pragmatists: Social Power in Modern Times" (Princeton UP, 2024) 46:03

1M ago46:03

46:03

Human rights are among our most pressing issues today. But rights promoters have reached an impasse in their effort to achieve rights for all. Human Rights for Pragmatists (Princeton University Press, 2022) explains why: activists prioritize universal legal and moral norms, backed by the public shaming of violators, but in fact, rights prevail only…

1
Ross A. Kennedy, "The United States and the Origins of World War II in Europe" (Taylor & Francis, 2025) 1:23:00

2M ago1:23:00

1:23:00

The United States and the Origins of World War II in Europe (Taylor & Francis, 2025), spans 1914–1939 to provide a concise interpretation of the role the United States played in the origins of the Second World War. It synthesizes recent scholarship about interwar international politics while also presenting an original interpretation of the sources…

1
Yaroslav Hrytsak, "Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation" (PublicAffairs, 2024) 1:18:37

2M ago1:18:37

1:18:37

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the world witnessed the “creative, freewheeling, darkly humorous, and deeply resilient society” that is contemporary Ukraine. In this timely and original history, a bestseller in Ukraine, the historian Yaroslav Hrytsak tells the sweeping story of his nation through a meticulous examination of the major events, c…

1
Stephan Kieninger, "The Diplomacy of Détente: Cooperative Security Policies from Helmut Schmidt to George Shultz" (Routledge, 2018) 45:32

2M ago45:32

45:32

The Diplomacy of Détente: Cooperative Security Policies from Helmut Schmidt to George Shultz (Routledge, 2020) investigates the underlying reasons for the longevity of détente and its impact on East–West relations. The volume examines the relevance of trade across the Iron Curtain as a means to facilitate mutual trust, as well as the emergence of n…

1
James D. Brown, "Cracking the Crab: Russian Espionage Against Japan, from Peter the Great to Richard Sorge" (Hurst, 2025) 29:18

2M ago29:18

29:18

Richard Sorge is one of history’s most famous spies. This hard-drinking, womanising, motorcycle-crashing Soviet officer penetrated the German embassy in Tokyo during the 1930s and gathered intelligence credited with changing the course of the Second World War. It is an intriguing tale; but Sorge’s spy ring was just one chapter in a much longer hist…

1
58: People used to hand code assembly 47:31

2M ago47:31

47:31

Join us to talk about our five year anniversary of launching the Swift Package Index, adding Wasm and Android support to our compatibility testing matrix, WWDC 2025, and a rather lengthy (but interesting!) discussion of LLM-based coding tools. There's also a couple of package picks, as always! News Five years of the Swift Package Index Adding Wasm …

1
NATO, the Indo-Pacific, and the Future of Burden-Sharing: A Conversation with Brian Blankenship 45:31

2M ago45:31

45:31

Professor Brian Blankenship comes back to the New Books Network to talk about what his book, The Burden-Sharing Dilemma: Coercive Diplomacy in US Alliance Politics (Cornell University Press, 2023), might be able to tell us about the quickly changing nature of US military alliances across the globe. We discuss the implications of Europe's burgeoning…

1
Stephan Kieninger, "Dynamic Détente: The United States and Europe, 1964-1975" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) 43:11

2M ago43:11

43:11

This book examines the dynamic evolution of Western détente policies which sought to transform Europe and overcome its Cold War division through more communication and engagement. Kieninger challenges the traditional Cold War narrative that détente prolonged the division of Europe and precipitated America’s decline in the aftermath of the Vietnam W…

1
Jill Kastner and William C. Wohlforth, "A Measure Short of War: A Brief History of Great Power Subversion" (Oxford UP, 2025) 58:53

2M ago58:53

58:53

In 2016 the United States was stunned by evidence of Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election. But it shouldn’t have been. Subversion—domestic interference to undermine or manipulate a rival—is as old as statecraft itself. In A Measure Short of War: A Brief History of Great Power Subversion (Oxford UP, 2025) Jill Kastner and William C. Wo…

1
Geoffrey Wawro, "The Vietnam War: A Military History" (Basic Books, 2024) 1:08:52

2M ago1:08:52

1:08:52

The Vietnam War cast a shadow over the American psyche from the moment it began. In its time it sparked budget deficits, campus protests, and an erosion of US influence around the world. Long after the last helicopter evacuated Saigon, Americans have continued to battle over whether it was ever a winnable war. Based on thousands of pages of militar…

1
Vappala Balachandran, "India and China at Odds in the Asian Century: A Diplomatic and Strategic History" (Hurst, 2025) 41:34

2M ago41:34

41:34

China and India have had a tense relationship, disagreeing over territory, support for each other’s rivals, and even, at times, leadership of the “Global South.” But there were periods where things seemed a bit rosier. For about a decade, between 1988 and 1998, relations between India and China thawed—and prompted heady predictions of an Asian cent…

1
Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War" (Princeton UP, 2024) 1:02:26

2M ago1:02:26

1:02:26

When World War II ended, about one million people whom the Soviet Union claimed as its citizens were outside the borders of the USSR, mostly in the Western-occupied zones of Germany and Austria. These “displaced persons,” or DPs—Russians, prewar Soviet citizens, and people from West Ukraine and the Baltic states forcibly incorporated into the Sovie…

1
Talin Suciyan, "Armenians in Turkey after the Second World War: An Archival Reader of USSR Consular Documents" (I. B. Tauris & Company, 2025) 48:03

2M ago48:03

48:03

This reader brings to light newly discovered archival material compiled by the Soviet Consulate in Istanbul. The book reveals the lives and experience of Armenians in Turkey in the 1940s, with a particular focus on the process of emigration to Soviet Armenia. The accounts, translated for the first time into English, are comprised of Soviet official…

1
Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt, "The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy: Oil and Arab Nationalism in Iraq" (Stanford UP, 2021) 1:21:09

2M ago1:21:09

1:21:09

A new history of Middle East oil and the deep roots of American violence in Iraq. Iraq has been the site of some of the United States' longest and most sustained military campaigns since the Vietnam War. Yet the origins of US involvement in the country remain deeply obscured--cloaked behind platitudes about advancing democracy or vague notions of A…

1
Helen Thompson on Disorder and the Analysis of Contemporary Geopolitics 1:13:20

3M ago1:13:20

1:13:20

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University and co-host of the great podcast, These Times, about her approach to geopolitical analysis and the centrality of energy geopolitics in that approach. The pair start by talking about Thompson’s book, Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st C…

1
57: How many of the same packages can we pick? 45:57

3M ago45:57

45:57

Join us for another episode of Swift Package Indexing where we cover the status of Swift 6.1 compatibility and the latest "Ready for Swift 6" results, discuss xtool, and of course pick some packages to talk about! News Ready for Swift 6 xtool on the Swift forums xtool package The Next Chapter in Swift Build Technologies Packages Redline by Robb Böh…

1
Alan Strathern, "Converting Rulers: Global Patterns, 1450-1850" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 1:18:01

3M ago1:18:01

1:18:01

Why did so many rulers throughout history risk converting to a new religion brought by outsiders? In his award-winning Unearthly Powers (2019), Dr. Alan Strathern set out a theoretical framework for understanding the relation between religion and political authority based on a distinction between two kinds of religion - immanentism and transcendent…

1
Dennis Ross, "Statecraft 2.0: What America Needs to Survive in a Multipolar World" (Oxford UP, 2025) 52:54

3M ago52:54

52:54

In a multipolar world where America wields less relative power, the United States can no longer get away with poor statecraft. To understand how the US can approach future national security challenges, I spoke with Dennis Ross, a senior US diplomat and the counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East…

1
Lines of Control: India’s Foreign Policy and China 38:11

3M ago38:11

38:11

This podcast episode, hosted by Kikee Doma Bhutia from the University of Tartu, features journalist and analyst Aadil Brar discussing India's foreign policy amidst rising global tensions. The conversation focuses on India’s balancing act between the US, China, and its own strategic autonomy in a contested Indo-Pacific region. Key topics include Ind…

1
Stuart Ward, "Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain" (Cambridge UP, 2023) 1:12:16

3M ago1:12:16

1:12:16

How did Britain cease to be global? In Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Professor Stuart Ward tells the panoramic history of the end of Britain, tracing the ways in which Britishness has been imagined, experienced, disputed and ultimately discarded across the globe since the end of the Secon…

1
Charlie English, "The CIA Book Club: The Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War" (Random House, 2025) 45:32

3M ago45:32

45:32

For nearly five decades after the Second World War, the Iron Curtain divided Europe, forming the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. No physical combat would take place along this frontier: the risk of nuclear annihilation was too high for that. Instead, the war was fought psychologically. It was a battle for hearts, minds, and intell…

1
Jeremy Black, "British Politics and Foreign Policy, 1727-44" (Routledge, 2014) 34:17

3M ago34:17

34:17

Covering the period from the end of the Anglo-French alliance in 1731 to the declaration of war between the two powers in 1744, British Politics and Foreign Policy, 1727-44 (Routledge, 2014) charts a turbulent period in British politics that witnessed the last decade of the Walpole ministry, the attempt to replace it by a Patriot government, and th…

1
Subho Basu, "Intimation of Revolution: Global Sixties and the Making of Bangladesh" (Cambridge UP, 2023) 42:45

3M ago42:45

42:45

Intimation of Revolution: Global Sixties and the Making of Bangladesh (Cambridge UP, 2023) analyzes the growth of Bengali nationalism in East Pakistan during the 1950s and 60s, highlighting the interplay of global politics and local socio-economic changes. The book posits that the 1969 revolution and the 1971 liberation war were influenced by the "…

1
Jeremy Black, "Politics and Foreign Policy in the Age of George I, 1714-1727" (Routledge, 2016) 40:56

3M ago40:56

40:56

Through its focus on the relationship between foreign and domestic politics, Politics and Foreign Policy in the Age of George I, 1714-1727 (Routledge, 2016) provides a new perspective on the often fractious and tangled events of George I's reign (1714-27). This was a period of transition for Britain, as royal authority gave way to cabinet governmen…

1
Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, "The Battle of Manila: Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:00:22

4M ago1:00:22

1:00:22

In our conversation about The Battle of Manila (Oxford University Press, 2025), Nicholas Evan Sarantakes explains how U.S. forces under General Douglas MacArthur won a climactic battle in the Pacific during World War II, but at a terrible cost. In 1945 the United States and Japan fought the largest and most devastating land battle of their war in t…

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