The Supreme Court has issued a preliminary decision on Trump’s travel ban–and this decision could have a profound impact on refugees around the world.

The court upheld key portions of the travel ban pending a final ruling by the court in October. This includes a 120 day ban on all refugees coming to the United States from everywhere in the world — though with some exceptions.

On the line with me to talk through the Supreme Court ruling, including its implications for US refugee resettlement policy is Rachel Landry a Policy and Advocacy Officer for Global Protection and Resettlement with the International Rescue Committee, which is one of the largest refugee resettlement agencies in the United States. (Like me, Rachel is also a Humanity in Action Senior Fellow).

Rachel discusses the ways in which this ruling could impact how the United States takes in refugees from around the world. She also discusses the US refugee resettlement process more broadly; that is, how it works, it’s history and background.

I promise that after listening to this conversation you will learn a lot about US refugee policy and why it matters.

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Pop Quiz: how many people are in the world right now?

The answer is 7.6 billion.

That data point and much more are contained in a just-released report called “World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision,” published by the UN. The report contains all sorts of facts and figures that are both interesting on its own, but also extremely consequential to understanding the future of our species in the most literal sense.

On the line with me to talk through some of the demographic trends of the world’s population, is John Wilmoth, Director of the Population Division at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. We discuss the trajectory of the world’s population including where the big population centers of the future will be. We also have a fascinating conversation about the relationship between contraception, child survival and population growth; and why from a policy perspective one of the more useful things you can know is the age distribution of a population — and here, Europe and Africa represent two extremes that we discuss at length.

If you have 30 minutes and want to learn some of the key demographic trends that will be shaping the planet in the near future, then have a listen.

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Saudi Arabia and its close allies in the region moved against Qatar, cutting off sea and air travel and moving to isolate their fellow sunni Gulf country.

Enter: the next big crisis in the Middle East.

Like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional group of erstwhile allies that coordinate security policies against Iran and other common threats. But tensions have been brewing for many years between Qatar and other countries on the Arabian Peninsula and these tensions have apparently come to a head in the wake of Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia.

Qatar is home to both Al Jazeera and the region’s largest US military airbase — which is currently the strategic nerve center of the US air campaign against ISIS. This fact did not apparently stop President Trump for issuing statements in support of Saudi allegations that Qatar is a nemesis that supports terrorist groups.

On the line with me to unpack this situation and explain the roots of these regional rivalries is Marc Lynch, a professor at George Washington University.

Marc is the author of The New Arab Wars, Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East. He is and someone I have long relied on to help me make sense of tangled middle eastern politics. You can–and should follow him on Twitter at @AbuAardvark.

If you have 20 minutes and want to learn about why this spat between Qatar and its neighbors is so profoundly consequential to global politics, then have a listen.

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Donald Trump has pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement

In the wake of this decision, I wanted to get a sense of the consequences to both the climate change goals embedded in the Paris Agreement and also to the wider diplomacy and geopolitics that surrounds global climate change.

Today, I bring you two perspectives on these very timely questions. First, I speak with Paula Caballero of the World Resources Institute who does a good job explaining the kinds of global implications of this decision. Then, I speak with Pete Ogden of the United Nations Foundation. We discuss the linkages between federal and sub-national domestic politics, like the actions of mayors and governors, to this decision.

If you have 30 minutes and want a deeper understanding of the implications of the US decision to walk out of the world’s most important climate change agreement, have a listen.

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Bonus episodes for premium subscribers include:

#1: International Relations Theory, explained.

#2: A Brief History of Nuclear Non-proliferation

#3: A Brief History of NATO

#4: The Syrian Civil War, explained.

#5: Meet the Kim family of North Korea.

#6: Better Know Vladimir Putin

#7: The Six Day War, Explained. (Coming soon!)

#9: “Sustainable Development,” explained (Coming soon!)