Each week on FP Live, our flagship current affairs podcast and video show, host Ravi Agrawal explores key global issues with politicians, policymakers, and academics.
This year, European leaders joined the program to address Russia’s war in Ukraine, former foreign ministers from Iran and India took on the conflicts embroiling their nations, and human rights advocates and United Nations officials addressed humanitarian crises in Sudan and Gaza. FP Live also assessed U.S. President Donald Trump’s high-stakes meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Each week on FP Live, our flagship current affairs podcast and video show, host Ravi Agrawal explores key global issues with politicians, policymakers, and academics.
This year, European leaders joined the program to address Russia’s war in Ukraine, former foreign ministers from Iran and India took on the conflicts embroiling their nations, and human rights advocates and United Nations officials addressed humanitarian crises in Sudan and Gaza. FP Live also assessed U.S. President Donald Trump’s high-stakes meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
FP Live continued to tackle what Trump’s “America First” agenda really means, with important conversations analyzing the Trump administration’s policies on immigration, trade, and diplomacy. Economists took on the major debates of our time: the strength of the dollar, the impacts of globalization, the role of tariffs, and the longevity of artificial intelligence-driven growth. Throughout the year, Agrawal also hosted discussions about shifting party politics with a leading Democratic senator and a Republican influencer.
Here are five discussions worth watching (or rewatching). If you’re an FP Insider, you can read transcripts of them, too.
1. One-on-One With Europe’s Top Diplomat
Trump’s posture toward Russia’s war in Ukraine has evolved over the past year. On the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Agrawal asked Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, how Brussels reads the United States’ changing attitude on the conflict.
“We have been very clear on our own plan. What we are doing is pressuring Russia with sanctions,” Kallas said. “We are also helping Ukraine—militarily, financially, also politically—as much as we can. We are staying on that course. Anybody else who wants to join is welcome.”
As Washington upends many long-standing alliances and shifts its trade policies, Europe is “trying to have more friends around the world,” Kallas said. “I must say that considering the big picture and the behavior of the world’s superpowers, we are increasingly more popular.” Read the transcript.
2. On Gaza and Morality
The global north and global south have diverged sharply in their opinions of Israel’s war in Gaza. As just two examples, South Africa has called the conflict a genocide, while the United States considered the military campaign a justified response to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel.
One reason for this disconnect, according to Indian writer and public intellectual Pankaj Mishra, is “the color line.” Agrawal interviewed Mishra on his new book, The World After Gaza: A History, to understand the links between colonization, race, and modern conflict.
“The color line, the racial divide, has long been a reality,” Mishra said. “And in many ways, it has created the modern world that we live in. Its memory has not vanished for the many people who still see themselves as living in a world made by and for white men. And obviously, that is going to manifest itself in geopolitical relations and in the way we look at events like Gaza.” Read the transcript.
3. FP at the Munich Security Conference: Finland’s President Alexander Stubb
Earlier this year, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance stunned the foreign-policy community with a speech at the Munich Security Conference, where he questioned Europe’s democratic values and criticized its leaders’ commitment to free speech.
Agrawal asked Finnish President Alexander Stubb to respond: “The good thing with free speech is that you can have different views. For me, free speech means responsibility,” he said. “It means fact-checking. It means an open dialogue between different ideologies and identities. And if that is what Vice President J.D. Vance meant, it’s a good thing.”
Amid Europe’s increasingly tense relations with the United States, Finland’s perspective as a new NATO member is particularly interesting. At the time of this interview, the U.S. commitment to the alliance—and to Ukraine—was wavering. While Stubb applauded Trump for engaging with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he qualified that he does “not think you can have peace without Ukraine or Europe.” Read the transcript.
4. How Gen Z Thinks About Foreign Policy
Protestors in front of Tennessee’s Capitol in Nashville, Tennessee, on April 3, 2023.Photo by JOHN AMIS/AFP via Getty Images
Generation Z is coming of age at a difficult time. Zoomers, as they’re known, are aged between 13 and 28, and they have already lived through a global financial crisis, a historic pandemic, and several wars. Now, many of them confront an entry-level job market muddled by AI advances. Agrawal sat down with Kyla Scanlon, a 27-year-old author and commentator who has been dubbed the “economic advisor to Gen Z” to find out how this has changed their political views.
Scanlon reported a pervasive feeling of nihilism among young Americans today. “There’s this element of, ‘I don’t really believe in the future. I don’t think I have a financial future. I don’t believe I’m going to be able to retire,’” Scanlon said.
According to her, Trump has been able to tap into this attitude. “Not only is Trump promising to blow things up, but he’s also wildly entertaining and funny,” Scanlon said. Read the transcript.
5. Can Clean Energy Fix the Climate Crisis?
On FP Live, leading environmentalist Bill McKibben argued that advances in solar panels and batteries will make a real dent in reducing the impacts of climate change. “Ninety percent of new electric generation around the world last year came from sun and wind and batteries,” said McKibben, author of the recent Here Comes the Sun. “This isn’t ‘alternative’ anymore. It’s the most obvious way to proceed.”
However, McKibben emphasized that the United States has allowed for “voluntary self-surrender of global leadership.” In May, China installed enough new wind and solar capacity to generate more annual electricity than all of what Poland’s sources generate combined. Read the transcript.
