From Hamas to Hezbollah to the Houtis & beyond — with Bret Stephens

Vaccination Nation: Is our Post Corona future unfolding now in Israel?: So far more than 70 percent of Israelis, ages 16 and older, have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and many of them two jabs. How has Israel done this? Well, Israel’s prime minister negotiated with Pfizer to obtain millions of vaccine doses early. Israel paid a premium for this upfront supply, but also agreed to provide the company with indispensable clinical data, made possible by Israel’s digital health infrastructure. Now the prime minister has set a goal of getting Israel’s economy completely re-opened by the Spring. To explain what may be heading our way, we have Yonatan Adiri returning to our podcast. Yonatan is the founder and CEO of Tel Aviv digital health startup Healthy.IO. He was also a top technology and diplomatic advisor to then-President Shimon Peres. Has Israel become the world’s Post-Corona laboratory? What can we expect over here from what Israelis are learning over there? by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

51 min listen

Derek Thompson of The Atlantic on the Post-Corona workforce: On the first episode of Post Corona, Dan Senor invites The Atlantic's Derek Thompson to discuss the future of the American labor market. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

58 min listen

Is New York Over? Part 3 - Crime and the City: Dan speaks with president of the Manhattan Institute, Reihan Salam, and deputy director of legal policy at the Manhattan Institute, Rafael Manguel, about the role crime will play in slowing, or even halting, the City’s Post-Corona recovery. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

68 min listen

Zoom University: Is Covid The Ultimate Higher Education Disruptor?: When we think about industries that immediately got hardest hit during the pandemic, the images that come to mind include restaurants, travel, theater, sports and - higher education. In the US alone, higher education is almost a three-quarter-of-a-trillion dollar sector. To help us understand what the disruption and the coming transformation might look like, we sit down with my friend Daniel Pianko. Dan has a long venture investing career in the higher education and training sectors. Dan himself is a disrupter. He is co-founder and managing director of the investment funds University Ventures and Achieve Partners. Is the college economic model offering being turned upside down right now? Or due to Covid, is the trend accelerating even faster than Professor Christenson every imagined? And if so, what comes next? by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

52 min listen

Is New York Over? Part 1 - The Subway: Dan invites Reihan Salam and Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute to discuss the hotly debated question: "Is New York over?" On this episode of Post Corona, Dan and his guests explore how subways play a role in the city's future. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

56 min listen

When IS Post Corona, anyway? Part 1 - Vaccination Nation: How will we know when we actually arrive at the Post-Corona phase? Well, THE milestone along the way will be getting entire populations vaccinated. One country may show us the way - Israel, which is on track to vaccinate its entire population by the end of March. To understand how did Israel become... Vaccination Nation, we welcome Yonatan Adiri, who is the Founder and CEO of Healthy.IO, a fast-growing digital health start-up, headquartered in Tel Aviv. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

63 min listen

A New Crime Wave? - With Jason Riley: According to The New York Times: “The United States experienced its biggest one-year increase on record in homicides in 2020, according to new figures released by the FBI, with some cities hitting record highs.” And as for 2021, while we don’t yet have complete data, it so far appears that this homicide surge has continued well into this year as well. So, tragically, this isn’t going away soon. Much of the press coverage has focused on the connection between this crime surge and the pandemic. But did this crime wave begin well before the arrival of the Covid-19? Back in January, we dedicated an entire episode to this topic with Reihan Salam and Rafael Manguel of the Manhattan Institute. The title of that episode was “Is New York Over? Crime and the City” (01/22/21; Episode #8). Given the new crime statistics just released, we wanted to revisit this problem. It’s especially timely given the emergence of Eric Adams. Adams has been outspoken about by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

80 min listen

John Dickerson on The Presidency Post Corona: Will a new American president lead us to a post-Corona return to normal? Or has the American presidency become an impossible job? It is, according to 60 Minutes correspondent John Dickerson, “The Hardest Job In The World”. Has the American presidency finally met its match in a global pandemic? by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

60 min listen

Is New York Over? Part 2 - Broadway: Dan speaks with John Podhoretz, Editor-in-Chief of Commentary Magazine, to discuss the hotly debated question: "Is New York over?" On this episode of Post Corona, Dan asks John to help us understand the short history of Broadway’s economic boom and where it goes from here. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

59 min listen

When IS Post Corona, anyway? Part 2 - Turning the Corner: How will we know when we actually arrive at the Post-Corona phase? This is the second part of a two part conversation on this question, the first of which was when we looked at Israel (Vaccination Nation). Today, we’ll talk about the US -- when we will arrive at post-corona and what is standing in our way? To help us understand what is happening in the US, we welcome Scott Gottlieb, who served as the 23rd commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Gottlieb is currently on the boards of Pfizer and Illumina and a special partner with the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

56 min listen

Billy Beane on the future of sports: Billy Beane, Executive Vice President of the Oakland Athletics, joins Dan to discuss the future of sports. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

75 min listen

The New Deal - Iran & its nuclear program, with Mark Dubowitz: What is happening right now in Vienna with the negotiations over the future of Iran’s nuclear program? What was the significance of Putin’s recent trip to Iran? What is the nature of China’s relationship with Iran, and what can it tell us about Beijing’s grand strategy? And if Iran continues to build its nuclear program, what is Israel’s Plan B? These are some of the questions we explore with Mark Dubowitz, who is the CEO of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, DC. We sat down with while we’re in Israel. Mark has advised the Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and testified more than twenty times before the U.S. Congress and foreign legislatures. A former venture capitalist and technology executive, Mark has a master’s degree in international public policy from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced Internatio by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

53 min listen

A Post-Delta World — with Dr. Sid Mukherjee: Is the pandemic fight winnable or are we going to keep chasing these variants forever? And What does this mean for our lives and our economy? As we were all gearing up for a roaring return to normalcy, the Delta variant has tempered enthusiasm. Before Delta, we fought a virus and thought we may have won by developing a vaccine...quickly (THANK YOU Operation Warp Speed, and thank you to the ecosystem of life science start-ups and large pharma companies, and to the years and years of massive investment in the sciences that made all of this possible). But three dominant variants later, it looks like we're not fighting a virus as much as we are fighting the fundamental rules of evolution. From Alpha to Beta to Gamma to Delta, the virus is becoming more contagious (while its effects are also less severe for the vaccinated). What should this tell us? What does this trajectory look like? To help us understand the new ambiguity we’re in, we chec by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

65 min listen

Is China Turning Crisis Into Opportunity? With Josh Rogin: China is in the midst of a global vaccination campaign. According to published reports, China’s Government is supplying 10 times as many doses to other countries as it is to citizens in its own country. China’s vaccination campaign is currently engaging 45 countries spread across multiple continents around the world. Why? What is China getting in return? And should the US also be engaged in vaccine diplomacy? This is just one of many ways in which the Pandemic has upended geopolitics as we know it. To better understand how China seeks to transform a global crisis that originated in China into a foreign policy tool, we sit down with Josh Rogin of the Washington Post. He’s one of the sharpest analysts on China policy and on US policy towards China. Having written about China for years and traveled Asia extensively, Josh is the author of the new book: “Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, XI, and the Battle for the 21st Century”. The Pan by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

60 min listen

Adam Grant on the future of work: Adam Grant, a professor of organizational psychology at Wharton, joins Dan to discuss the future of work. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

42 min listen

The Covid Presidency with Maggie Haberman: What was the impact of Covid19 on the political landscape? What will it mean for elected leaders who governed during this past year? Today we sit down with someone who knows something about covering a president during a pandemic that consumed his presidency. For the entirety of the Trump administration, Maggie Haberman was a White House correspondent for The New York Times. She joined The Times in 2015, and soon found herself covering Donald Trump’s unlikely campaign. She’s part of a team at the Times that won a Pulitzer. We talk to Maggie today about where journalism goes after the pandemic. What the Trump administration got wrong and what it got right during covid, and where that leaves others political figures - including Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo and Ron DeSantis. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

58 min listen

China’s Great Wall of Steel? - with Matt Pottinger: China’s borders have been sealed for well over a year now. And those borders will be closed for the foreseeable future. That, obviously, is a result of the pandemic; but, is there a larger grand strategy at play? For decades now, China’s coupling with western economies has been the dominant theme of the global economic landscape - beginning with China’s 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization. But that’s been changing. Fast forward to a speech by President Xi Jinping to mark the hundred year anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. He spoke before a massive crowd in Tiananmen Square: "The Chinese people", Xi said “will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or enslave us. Anyone who tries to do so shall be battered and bloodied colliding with a great wall of steel forged by more than 1.4 billion Chinese people using flesh and blood.” On July 2, Chinese regulators announced an investigation into DiDi Global, a ri by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

63 min listen

Delta Politics - with Mike Murphy: The Pandemic has either caused a crack-up in our politics or accelerated the crack-up that was well under way. And just when it looked like things were stabilizing, the politics of Covid have evolved along with the Delta variant. Ground zero for how this is playing out right now is California. California is home to approximately 40 million people and the 5th largest economy in the world. It’s about to have an election on whether to re-call its incumbent governor, Gavin Newsom. How California voters have experienced government regulations — from lockdowns, mask mandates, school closings, and not to mention double-standards — shapes the political environment there. Is this a harbinger of what’s to come to our national politics? To help us understand what’s going on in California is the strategist who masterminded the last successful recall election. Mike Murphy was the chief strategist for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election in 2003, which was a re-call by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

55 min listen

Bret Stephens on Geopolitics Post Corona: It seems like analysts of foreign affairs and super power politics are always worrying that “the world is a mess”. But has the international order - to the extent it existed in recent years - become even more disorderly due to the pandemic? What effect has covid had on Great Power politics? As a new president assembles his national security team and develops a grand strategy, I thought it would be good to sit down with Bret Stephens of the New York Times to take a quick tour around the world and talk about China, Russia, Europe and the Middle East. What’s changed - and changing - as a result of the pandemic? What does it mean for America’s foreign policy? by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

59 min listen

Dan Senor’s New Podcast - Call Me Back: Welcome to our new podcast, “Call Me Back”, where we try to zoom out from minute-to-minute news and look back to how we got here, what we can learn from earlier decades and where we might be going in these roaring and raging 2020s. In each episode, I’ll call a friend who is deeply immersed in some of the most transformative issues of our time. Broadly speaking, I want to focus this podcast on this decade we're in, the 2020s, because it strikes me that we’ll look back at the 2020s as one of the most consequential decades in modern history - from inflation and unprecedented fiscal and monetary policies, the technological transformation driven by AI, blockchain, and life sciences, to the rise of China and Cold War II, to declining American engagement in the Middle East and parts of Central Asia - all against the backdrop of culture wars, public safety breakdowns, and, of course, a public health crack-up as we come out of the pandemic. This pod by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

2 min listen

Blackstone’s Jonathan Pollack on Real-Estate Post Corona: Many have been surprised that areas of the real estate market are booming, Post Corona. So what do we know about the pandemic’s impact on an exodus from some cities, and the growth of other cities? One of the ways that I have learned on this limited series podcast is from our top flight guests, but also from our listeners. A business practitioner - an operator or investor - will hear one of our experts on the pod and get a hold of me with an alternative analysis; it’s like I get to crowdsource ideas from our listeners. Well today, we’re bringing one of those subscribers on the show. Jonathan Pollack is a Senior Managing Director at the Blackstone Group and Blackshone’s Global Head of the Real Estate Debt Strategies group. Blackstone is one of the largest owners of real estate in the world. Jon, who is based in New York, manages a large team, overseeing Blackstone’s real estate debt investment strategy. He’s also a member of by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

50 min listen

Is The Problem In Israel Rooted in 1967 or 1948?: When I was in Israel a few weeks ago, a number of the Israelis I interviewed marveled at how quickly things had gone back to normal in Israel, Post-Corona. One of those guests, Yonatan Sagiv - the novelist - told me that we’ll know we’re back to normal when Israelis have to resume dealing with their pre-pandemic problems. Well, over these past 10 days, one conflict lit right back up in a tragic way - Israel’s off-again, on-again war with Hamas. So that’s what we’re going to discuss in this episode. Now, I know that this is not the kind of topic we typically cover on this podcast. But it’s an issue I care a lot about, and so I want to use this conversation to try to shed some light to what is a very heated issue. There’s a ton of noise over here in the West about what just happened between Gaza and Israel - plenty of hot takes, with very little discussion about the history and context. There’s nobody better to help us unpack what just by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

68 min listen

Will We Do Better Next Time?: Is there any good news? Are there any lessons from the crisis that should give us some optimism about how we contend with future pandemics? That’s what we try to untangle today with science journalist Jim Meigs. Jim helps us think about the promise of public-private partnerships that gave birth to Operation Warp Speed, as well as the new critical infrastructure we are building for vaccine manufacturing and hopefully distribution, and how we discern the public health news we get from political leaders, public health authorities and the media to inform our decisions during a crisis. We also discuss what we’ve learned about cultures at large institutions - government agencies and companies - and how they can make better decisions in a future crisis like this. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

63 min listen

How Will History Judge 2020?: Dan sits down with Niall Ferguson, a historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, to discuss how history will remember 2020. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

52 min listen

"God and the Pandemic": News just out of the CDC has created fresh opportunities for normal, communal time together, indoors — just like we did pre-Corona. One of the rituals I have missed over the past year has been attending synagogue. But long before the Covid-19 pandemic, participation in organized religion - across all walks of religious life - was on the decline. Americans had become less engaged in religious institutions, whether it was regular attendance or membership and donations to their local congregation. Did the pandemic arrest these trends? Did virtual platforms provide new opportunities for religious and communal engagement? Joel Kotkin is a professor and bestselling author. He has been described by The New York Times as “America’s uber-geographer.” He has authored numerous books, including The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, and also The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us. He is also a regular contributor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. Joel recently au by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

51 min listen

From Baby Boom to Baby Bust - with Nicholas Eberstadt: China is poised to pass one of the great demographic inflection points” – that’s according to the Financial Times. The inflection point the FT is referring to is that of diapers for the elderly growing into a larger market than diapers for infants. China won’t be the first. As far back as a decade ago in Japan, adult diapers started outselling infant diapers. What does that tell us about demographics, not just in China, but about the developing world as a whole? We are in the midst of a larger global trend that has not received enough attention: crashing fertility rates and shrinking populations. According to forecasts by an international team of scientists published last year in The Lancet, the world population will peak at 9.2 billion around 2065, and then drop to 8.8 billion by the end of the century. That’s a stunning difference -- if you take into account that in the 20th century world population grew 600%, from one billion by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

61 min listen

Lessons for the 2020s - With Historian Niall Ferguson: The first of our two-part conversation with Naill Ferguson is on applied history’s lessons of the 1920s and the 1970s...for the 2020s. Niall is a historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and he previously taught at Harvard, NYU and Oxford. He’s the managing director of Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm. Niall is also the author of 17 books including “The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook” and “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe”. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

41 min listen

Naftali Bennett - Who Are You?: Naftali Bennett - Who Are You? Today we’re doing a special convention tied to the news. Politics in Israel is moving fast. It’s not necessarily about the Coronavirus, but it’s important in our geopolitics. As of today, Israel may be on the cusp of forming a new coalition government, composed of 7 parties from across the ideological spectrum - from Naftali Bennett’s Yamina Party and the New Hope party on the Right, through Yair Lapid’s party in the center, to the Labor and Meretz parties on the Left. And then there is the Arab Muslim party, Ra’am. Think about that - an Arab party is indispensable to a new Israeli government coming to power. So much for Israel being an “apartheid state”. And so much for the notion that politics in Israel has become so polarized that there’s not a strong political center. Then again, in the days ahead, this coalition may fall apart because it is dependent on a razor thin majority. It’s still too early to count out Prim by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

62 min listen

A conversation with Ambassador Ron Dermer: The security situation continues to deteriorate in Israel -- tragic developments, including right in the heart of Tel Aviv. We continue to monitor developments and stay in close touch with Israeli family and friends. While Israel is a major focus of today’s conversation, the security crisis is not. We focus on the political impasse in Israel, which may be connected to the security crisis. Today we sit down with Ambassador Ron Dermer, who served as Israel’s chief envoy to the United States from 2013 to 2021 – working closely with the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. During that time, he was widely regarded as one of the most consequential ambassadors from any country. Ambassador Dermer was one of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s closest advisers and played a key role in what led to the US relocation of our embassy to Jerusalem, U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, implementation of the maximum pressure campaign by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

66 min listen

IS THIS THE END OF C-19’s BEGINNING? - with Yale University’s Nicholas Christakis: In the middle of the pandemic, Dr. Nicholas Christakis released a sweeping book, called “Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live”. In it, he drew on scientific, medical, and sociological research, and assessed the transmission of the virus, responses worldwide, and prognosis for the pandemic’s end, including some bold predictions. The paperback edition is just out with some new material. by Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

69 min listen

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From Hamas to Hezbollah to the Houtis & beyond — with Bret Stephens

From Hamas to Hezbollah to the Houtis & beyond — with Bret Stephens

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