Wouldn't it be nice to have a world where important policy decisions were decided based on evidence and data rather than narratives and turf battles? Dan Spokojny thought so too, and that's why he's the founder of fp21, a think tank dedicated to changing the processes and institutions of US foreign policy.

Along with Jon Bateman, a senior fellow in the technology and international affairs program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in this episode we talk about some of the failings of contemporary foreign policy decision making processes and what can be done to fix them, including:

• How to bring more rigor to making policy decisions
• Why the current system loves a good storyteller
• What sort of training future foreign policy makers should be getting - but aren't

Outro music: Good Bayesian by Baba Brinkman, MC Lars and Mega Ran https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV6Wc_f1Cgo&t=195s

I HAVE CHINATALK NEWSLETTER WHICH YOU SHOULD ALL SIGN UP TO READ!

I even bought a new url for you: chinatalk.media

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices