In the final episode of The Nuclear Threshold, A’ndre speaks with Alexandra Bell, President & CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and one of the leading U.S. diplomats behind recent efforts to strengthen arms contro...

In the second installment of The Nuclear Threshold mini-series, we turn from missile defense to the human side of nuclear risk — the people, protocols, and split-second judgments that determine whether nuclear weapons are ever used. Wh...

The Nuclear Threshold is a three-part Burn Bag mini-series exploring how deterrence, defense, and diplomacy shape nuclear risk in the 21st century. Across three conversations with leading experts, we examine why technological ...

As the fragile Gaza ceasefire wavers amid renewed airstrikes and mutual accusations of violations, President Donald Trump insists that “nothing will jeopardize” the truce his administration brokered with Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey. Yet the violen...

RE-RELEASE: This episode was originally released in February 2025.In this episode, Dr. Anthony Fauci joins A'ndre for an in-depth conversation about his decades-long career in public health and his experiences lead...

The Pentagon is one of the hardest customers in the world to win over. For startups, the barriers are steep: complex rules, unfamiliar offices, and a culture that doesn’t work like Silicon Valley. But the stakes couldn’t be higher—cracking the ...

In this episode of The Burn Bag, political violence expert Dr. Robert Pape joins us to unpack the alarming rise of political violence in America following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and ...

In this episode, A’ndre Gonawela sits down with John McLaughlin, former Acting Director and Deputy Director of the CIA and now Professor of Practice at Johns Hopkins SAIS. Drawing on over three decades in intelligence leadership and his ...

Former U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns joins The Burn Bag to unpack the fragile U.S.–China tariff truce, the state of ongoing trade negotiations, and how Beijing is recalibrating its diplomacy in response to President Trump’s return. Dr...

Jim Hake, founder of Spirit of America, joins The Burn Bag to discuss why civilians matter in modern national security—and how his organization is filling gaps government can’t. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned national security in...

Former NSC official Lt. Col. (Ret.) Alexander Vindman joins The Burn Bag to break down the fallout from the Trump–Putin summit in Alaska, the Monday meeting between Trump, Zelenskyy, and European leaders at the White House, and the dangerous tr...

The war in Ukraine didn’t start in 2022—it started in Crimea in 2014. In this episode, we sit down with University of Michigan professor and anthropologist Dr. Greta Uehling to explore the story of the Crimean Tatars, Ukraine’s Indigenous peopl...

In this episode of The Burn Bag, A’ndre sits down with retired CIA analyst Gina Bennett, who famously authored the first classified warning about Osama bin Laden in 1993. A key voice in the fight against al-Qaeda — and featured ...

Dr. Kurt Campbell, former Deputy Secretary of State and an architect of the U.S. “Pivot to Asia,” joins the Burn Bag to unpack the strategic crossroads the United States faces in the Indo-Pacific. In a wide-ranging conversation, Campbell discus...

In this episode, we’re joined by Shubhi Mishra, founder and CEO of Raft, to talk about what it takes to become a new defense prime. Shubhi challenges the dominance of legacy primes and makes the case for smaller, faster-moving companie...

On this episode of The Burn Bag, we unpack the U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites—marking a sharp escalation in the Israel-Iran conflict and raising fears of a wider regional war. National security expert Javed Ali joins us to tra...

In this episode, A’ndre speaks with retired four-star General Stanley McChrystal, former commander of Joint Special Operations Command and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Widely recognized for revolut...

In this episode, A’ndre speaks with his old boss Dr. Paul Staniland, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a leading authority on political violence and South Asian security, for an in-depth conversation on the recent ...

In this episode, A’ndre speaks with Mark Linscott, former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative and one of Washington’s most experienced trade negotiators, for an in-depth discussion on the logic and implications of President Trump’s "reciprocal"...

In this episode, A’ndre speaks with Dr. Yousef Munayyer, Senior Fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, about recent U.S. policy developments affecting pro-Palestinian activism, including efforts by the Trump administration to deport foreign s...

This week, A’ndre is joined by former National Security Advisor Ambassador John Bolton for a wide-ranging conversation on the return of Donald Trump to the White House — and how the second term is stacking up against the first.Dra...

This week on the podcast, A’ndre is joined by renowned national security attorney Mark Zaid to unpack the rapidly unfolding scandal now known as Signalgate — a controversy sparked when a The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg wa...

In this episode, A’ndre Gonawela sits down with historian and University of Utah professor Peter Roady to explore how the definition of national security has evolved over the 20th and 21st centuries. They examine how U.S. presidents have shaped...

In this episode, A’ndre Gonawela sits down with Dr. Jaime Yassif, Vice President of Global Biological Policy and Programs at NTI | bio, to explore the evolving landscape of biosecurity and pandemic preparedness. They discuss key lessons from CO...

NOTE: This episode was recorded several hours before the announcement that President Trump was pausing all U.S. military aid to Ukraine.In this episode, A’ndre Gonawela sits down with Ambassador Steven Pifer, former U.S. Ambassa...