Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com The planet isn’t going to get any less angry. This week, Aram Shabanian comes on the show again to help us work through what the next Trump presidency may mean for America, Europe, and the rest of the world. Matthew’s hippie metaphor1931 or 1939?America’s allies know it’s all on them nowNorth Korea in UkraineWho gets a nuke first?Musk diplomacyA 50% chance of nuclear war is too highMinuteman III’s for saleDon’t turn...

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com WARNING: This episode contains nuance in the discussion of subjects usually left to screaming and violence! This week we get into a bunch of stuff around Israel that we normally avoid. Settlements. Blame versus responsibility. The definition of colonialism. The social media posts of IDF soldiers. It’s a calm, nuanced conversation with Shaiel Ben-Ephraim. No, really. Netanyahu as an obstacle to peaceWhy no one talks about...

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com How’s that sanctions regime working out for the U.S. and Russia? This week on the show, we have Stephanie Baker, a senior writer at Bloomberg, to try to answer the question. She just published Punishing Putin, a book all about it. What’s a Russian oligarch like in person?How America’s sanction regime against Russia worksThe nuclear warfare of it allDo Putin’s “red lines” mean anything?The complex nature of the world’s oil...

Do you ever feel you’re living in a world where all the good stuff happened to the previous generation? Does it seem like America’s best days are behind it? Were you born into an empire just as it began to collapse? Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com/ We’d like to tell you about King Arthur. The story of Arthur has been told hundreds of times in everything from song to story to movie. That makes it a pretty big deal when someone can tell the story of the...

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com/ Israel is at war-again. Adversaries include Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. But behind all three is one enemy at the center of this web of violence: Iran. Is this war the one where Israel and Iran finally confront each other directly? The missiles launched by the ayatollahs say yes, but what will the Jewish state do in return. This week we look at a fight that could bring a whole world into war, with Yaakov Katz as our...

The American civilian-military divide is stark. Only about 1 percent of the U.S. population has served in the military. We here at Angry Planet like to do what we can to bridge that divide and have found that the easiest way to do that … is just to talk to veterans and service members. That’s why you should listen to the podcast Tracer Burnout, a show where a pair of Army vets talk to other vets about their service. The guys at the center of it are Dan and Roger, two friends who both grew up...

This week on the show we’re honored to have Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nathan Thrall on the show. His 2023 book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama cuts to the heart of daily life in and around Jerusalem. In 2012, 5-year old Milad Salama was excited for a school field trip to a theme park. When his school bus hit a semi trailer, it upended the lives of everyone on the bus. What followed was a nightmare of bureaucracy that encapsulates what life is like for people living on the wrong side...

Hello and welcome to another conversation about conflict on an Angry Planet. Thanks for letting us kick up our heels this August, it was a rough one. We may not have been releasing, but we WERE recording. The first episode upon our return is with terrorism and vice presidency expert Aaron Mannes. Mannes is lecturer at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and was one of the first people to use big data sets to study terrorist group behavior. These days he’s really into vice...

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com/ Nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein stops by Angry Planet this week to tell us all about his new project Doomsday Machines. It’s a deep dive into the weird post-nuclear futures we’ve built in pop culture. How Warcraft orcs got ICBMsMatthew confuses Camus and SartreFood poisoning as practice for the radical acceptance of death and sufferingIs there any hope in The Road?Alex is hung up on the cannibalsThe video game...

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com/ Facing a friendly audience at an AI expo earlier this year, Palantir CEO Alex Karp let loose on a list of controversial topics. He talked about Israel, Gaza, and campus protests. “The peace activists are war activists,” Karp said. “We are the peace activists.” Palantir, Karp’s company, is promising a bold new way to wage war using AI, one it’s testing out in Ukraine. Karp’s comments hit on an old promise. For generations,...

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com/ Ronald Reagan carried a gun in his briefcase when he was president. According to Edmund Morris’ pseudo-historical memoir of Reagan, Dutch, Reagan got the gun in Iowa. “It is a fact … that RR did acquire a 1934 Walther PPK .380 pocket-sized police pistol early in his stay in Des Moines and kept it lovingly the rest of his life,” Morris wrote. “He even toted it in his briefcase as president.” Reagan was obsessed with the idea...

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com/ On July 1, 2024 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that American presidents have immunity for “official acts” committed while in office. In the dissent opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor raised an interesting hypothetical. “When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.” It’s the...

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com/ Influence campaigns, both subtle and unsubtle, are as old as statecraft. Agencies like the CIA, KGB, and Israel’s Mossad have all attempted to force friends and rivals to change. It doesn’t work as often as you’d think. Subversion campaigns are often so secretive that their effectiveness is hard to quantify. But Lennart Maschmeyer decided to try. Maschmeyer is on this episode of Angry Planet to tell us all about the limits...

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com/ We used to build things in America, things like fallout shelters. There’s a luxury hotel on the border between Virginia and West Virginia that’s been a favorite retreat of the D.C. elite for generations. After the fall of the atom bombs in World War II, Washington commissioned an addition to the hotel: a secret fallout shelter that would house Congress in the event of a nuclear war. Matt Farwell of The Hunt for Tom Clancy...

Sign up at angryplanetpod.com to get instant access to the full episode. A direct link to the episode on Substack. Back in 2020, Daniel Perry was driving for Uber to make ends meet. He ran a red light and dove his car into a crowd at a Black Lives Matter protest. Garret Foster was there to protect the crowd and he’d brought an AK-47 along to do it. Foster, an Air Force veteran, approached Perry’s car. Perry, an Army sergeant, pulled out a pistol and killed Foster from the car and drove...

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com/ No one is really sure how many nuclear weapons are out there. Every number you see is a best guess. Russia and the U.S. have the most, sitting at around 5,000 each. France has just under 200, China has about 500 (and is probably building more), and North Korea has around 50. The world’s nuclear powers love to keep the details of these weapons secret, but not too secret. It’s a complex game of signaling and secrets, one that...

Sign up at angryplanetpod.com to get instant access to the full episode. A direct link to the episode on Substack. American politics was bizarre in 2016. Alt-right figures dominated many news cycles and shared pictures of cartoon frogs online. A lot of those personalities, like Baked Alaska and Richard Spencer, flamed out and vanished from the scene. But there’s always money to be made and political power to be gained by playing to people’s base fears and a new brand of online far right...

International criminal organizations are more concerned about message security than the average citizen. The end-to-end encryption of WhatsApp or Signal is great, but drug traffickers are looking for a little extra. Enter services like Anom, EncroChat, Sky, and Phantom Secure— discrete messaging services that charged big bucks and promised criminals a chat experience free from the prying eyes of law enforcement. But the cops always find a way. And one of those services was actually purpose...

A lot goes into keeping a navy afloat. There’s ship husbanding, maintenance, and buckets of haze gray. The U.S. used to be good at this, but it hasn’t been on an active war-footing for a long time and the manufacturing base that created its massive navy has seen better days. So what happens if there’s a war and America doesn’t have enough welders, let alone drydocks, to build out its fleets? Gil Barndollar is a senior analyst at Defense Priorities and the co-author of a recent piece in...

Sign up at angryplanetpod.com to get instant access to the full episode. A direct link to the episode on Substack. The big picture in Europe doesn’t look good. Russia is moving to encircle key cities in Ukraine and is shaking its nuclear saber at the West. Ukraine’s nearest neighbors are, understandably, concerned about Moscow’s aggression and militarizing at an alarming rate. This summer, NATO will conduct Operation Steadfast Defender, a military exercise the Pentagon said is the largest...

Americans love shrimp. They love it so much they don’t think too hard about where it comes from—or the virtual slaves who are farming them. Joshua Farinella doesn’t have that luxury. A few years ago, Farinella took a job working for a shrimp production company in India. The money they were paying would set his family up for a long time to come, but what he saw when he landed in the country made him realize the cash wasn’t worth it. He chose to blow the whistle. On this episode of Angry...

Sign up at angryplanetpod.com to get instant access to the full episode. A direct link to the episode on Substack. In Russia there’s a revolving door between prisons and the frontlines. What began as a Wanger program is now official: the Kremlin will pardon nearly any crime if the convict agrees to serve on the front lines in Ukraine. After a six month stint at war, murderers and rapists are free to return to the scene of the crime. Some come home to kill again. On this episode of Angry...

Luke Paxton and Han Lee know a good cause when they see one. When Russia invades Ukraine in 2022, the American vets know what they need to do. Their time in Afghanistan has given them the skills to help fight a war and the moral clarity needed to know when a cause is just. But are they going to fight in Ukraine for the right reason? Do Ukrainians want them there? And does either matter when bombs are dropping all over the country? On this episode of Angry Planet, author Matt Gallagher returns...

The war between Israel and Hamas, which began on Oct. 7 when terrorists overran the Gaza frontier and killed more than 1,200 Israelis, is now more than six months old. More than 100 Israeli hostages are still being held in Gaza. Israel, in return, has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, with two thirds of that number likely to be civilians, including women and children. There are negotiations for a ceasefire going on—at least sporadically—but Dan Perry, former Associated Press bureau chief...