President elect Donald Trump will nominate Nikki Haley to be his Ambassador to the United Nations. She is a rising star in Republican politics and currently serves as the governor of South Carolina. She was sharp critic of Trump during the primaries, yet he has picked her to represent him at the United Nations.

On the line with me to discuss Nikki Haley, her political background, her personal story, and her place in South Carolina and national politics is Andy Shain, the Columbia bureau chief of the Post and Courier newspaper in South Carolina. We have an in-depth conversation about the woman who will next lead the United States Mission to the UN and we discuss how some experiences she had as governor may suggest how she takes on her next role.

One other political wrinkle that we did not discuss, but is on the minds of people who follow national politics is that there may be a senate seat in South Carolina opening up in 2019, and if so, political watchers speculate that she may vie for that position. The thinking goes, this could be a good platform for which to run for president in 2024. Now this is a long way off, but it’s what the chattering class is chattering about.

If you have 20 minutes and want to learn what makes the next US Ambassador to the United Nations tick, have a listen.

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As Americans headed to the polls on election day, diplomats from around the world headed to Marrakech, Morocco for the first big global climate summit since the Paris Agreement last year. This was to be an important inflection point in the global effort to combat climate change. Just a week earlier the Paris Agreement officially entered into force after the requisite number of countries ratified it and this meeting in Marrakech would to fill in some key details and add some technical guidance to enable the implementation of the agreement.

And then, Donald Trump was elected.

During the campaign he pledged to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and defund UN programs to combat climate change. So, I was interested to learn the implications of the election on the ongoing negotiations in Morocco.

This episode is in two parts. First, I speak with Elliot Diringer of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. Elliot discusses the ways domestic politics here in the USA may affect climate negotiations and also recounts the history of American leadership (or lack thereof) in international climate diplomacy.

Next, I speak with Hugh Sealy, a diplomat from Grenada who is a lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States. I caught up with Hugh in Marrakech about a week after the election, and as you’ll see he does not report that much has changed. He does, though, discuss the importance of American leadership and also offers some interesting insights into the role that small countries like his can play in these big negotiations.

If you have 20 minutes and want to understand the implications of Trump’s election to global climate diplomacy and the Paris Agreement, have a listen.

Donald Trump will become president and commander-in-chief in January. This is obviously a surprising outcome and likely upsetting to many listeners of this podcast. But I promise to you that I will dedicate myself and dedicate this podcast to helping you make sense of foreign policy and world affairs in the age of Trump.

WFP logistics team carrying bags of food through the flooded grounds of Somalia

How the international community saves lives in conflict prone countries or insecure places is becoming increasingly relevant and important to global affairs. With more people displaced around the world than at any time since World War Two there is an urgent need for humanitarian agencies to deliver more and more aid to more and more complex environment. This is not just in Africa, but in the middle east and beyond.

On the line to discuss the nuts and bolts of one of these relief operations is Laurent Bukera, who runs the World Food Program’s operations in Somalia. We have a pretty fascinating conversation about how a humanitarian agency like the World Food Program operates in profoundly difficult environments beset by insecurity and terrorism.

Laurent walks me through some of WFP’s operations in Somalia–that is how they deliver aid and some of the challenges of working in that country. These challenges includes not only threats from terror groups like Al Shebaab, but more broadly extremely low levels of infrastructure development. To deal with some of these obstacles the WFP is rolling out some new technological innovations, which we discuss toward the end of this episode.

If you have 20 minutes and want to learn how a humanitarian agency delivers aid to people, even when faced by the threat of terror and violence, have a listen.

We are days from the US election, so I thought to myself: let’s have a US focused episode that explains US culture and American politics and why Trump is facing such an uphill battle by talking about….hot sauce.

Now, it’s been widely reported that this is Hillary Clinton’s favorite condiment. (Full disclosure: I too love everything spicy.) But it is also true that more Americans like spicy food than at any time in the history of this country.

On the line with me to discuss the political and cultural implications of Americans’ growing appetite for spicy cuisine is Denver Nicks, author of the new book: Hot Sauce Nation: America’s Burning Obsession. We discuss how spicy peppers became integrated into the mainstream of the American cuisine largely through public policy decisions that be traced to a profoundly important date in 20th century American history. The results on election day may be one more indication that spicy peppers and American elections are far more intertwined than we may think.

If you have 20 minutes and what to learn what the Siracha-flavored beef jerky that’s sold at the check out line in Home Depot has to do with the the John F. Kennedy administration, the civil rights movement and US national politics, have a listen.