Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

Updated: 28 Jul 2025 • 1070 episodes
www.globaldispatches.org

The longest running independent international affairs podcast features in-depth interviews with policymakers, journalists and experts around the world who discuss global news, international relations, global development and key trends driving world affairs. Named by The Guardian as "a podcast to make you smarter," Global Dispatches is a podcast for people who crave a deeper understanding of international news.

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A groundbreaking new study published in the British medical journal The Lancet Global Health finds that unilateral economic sanctions—most of which are imposed by the United States—lead to approximately 564,000 excess deaths worldwide each year. Up to half of these deaths are children. While sanctions are often touted

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I caught up with Comfort Ero at the Aspen Security Forum last week. She is the President of the International Crisis Group, and in that role, she brings a truly global perspective on the drivers of conflict worldwide. Earlier in the forum, she participated in a panel on international aid—timely, given the massive scali

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My guest today, Thordis Gylfadottir, served as Iceland's foreign minister until 2024. We spoke last week at the Aspen Security Forum, where she delivered a forceful case for the necessity of continued military and diplomatic support for Ukraine. However, that view—once broadly shared across Europe and the Atlantic—is n

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Trump’s pick for UN Ambassador, Mike Waltz, faced questions from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week. You may recall he previously served as National Security Advisor before being sidelined by Trump after “Signalgate.” But Waltz was never officially fired — he was banished to the United Nations instead. Fo

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A furious backlash against gender equality, women’s rights, and LGBTQ rights is sweeping the globe. In a new report for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, my guest today, Saskia Brechenmacher, shows that this backlash is not just a temporary reaction to recent progressive reforms but a key front in a large

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The farmer-herder conflict in Nigeria is a long-running and deadly struggle over land and resources, primarily between nomadic herders—mostly from the Fulani ethnic group—and settled farming communities. Driven by factors such as desertification, population growth, and shrinking grazing land, herders increasingly move

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