The News Items Podcast

Benn Steil, director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Battle of Bretton Woods, explores the global order’s growing strain. He examines China’s WTO integration, the first China shock, tariffs, and the realities of U.S.-China disentanglement. He also discusses dollar dominance, stablecoins, subsidized Chinese EVs and AI, and what it truly means to win the AI race.

Perry Boyle, a former Wall Street investor and co-founder of Kyiv-based MITS Capital, discusses Ukraine’s defense-tech revolution. He explores drones, robotics, AI, battlefield data, and the startups building tomorrow’s weapons. Boyle assesses Ukraine’s financial crisis, Europe’s response, NATO’s unpreparedness, and the stakes of a possible defeat. He also explains how investment could reshape Ukraine’s security ecosystem.

MIT political scientist Adam Berinsky joins John Ellis to examine why modern polling is harder to trust and what that means for politics. They discuss collapsing response rates, the limits of margin-of-error claims, online surveys, media incentives, and why “accuracy” can be a misleading way to rank pollsters. The conversation then turns to partisan media, negative advertising, voter turnout, political fragmentation, and the persistence of conspiracy theories. Berinsky explains why misinformation is so difficult to correct, who is most susceptible to political rumors, and why trusted messengers matter. Finally, they consider how artificial intelligence could reshape evidence, persuasion, and political decision-making.News-Items.comHosted by John EllisProduced by Dale Eisinger

Rebecca Patterson, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former Bridgewater strategist, breaks down joint U.S.-Japan currency moves and why U.S. yields worry policymakers. She explores prediction markets’ forecasting value and rising gambling-like behavior among younger users. She also discusses how open-source and cheaper AI models could change finance, jobs, and corporate costs in the near term.

Alan D. Thompson, AI researcher behind LifeArchitect.ai and The Memo, tracks LLM progress toward AGI and ASI. He talks about trillion-parameter scaling, US-China model parity and why enterprises might adopt Chinese models. They discuss the economics of massive data centers, early breakthroughs in healthcare and mental health, and how humanoid robots and scaling could reshape institutions and jobs.

Charles Stewart III, MIT political scientist who studies American elections and voting technology. He discusses the mechanics and vulnerabilities of vote counting. He explains why machine counts often beat hand counts. He explores why California certifies slowly, how 2020 was administered under strain, and the risks and pressures that close 2026 races could create.

Jonathan Swan, NYT investigative reporter with inside White House access, and Maggie Haberman, Pulitzer-winning NYT political reporter, discuss their book Regime Change. They talk about how fast, informal power works in the White House. Topics include Stephen Miller’s reach, last-minute tariff chaos, tech executives’ return, secret Iran planning, and who controls the president’s information flow.

John Ellis talks with Richard Rushfield, founder of The Ankler, about a Hollywood business model under stress. Rushfield traces the industry’s troubles back to the end of fin-syn rules, the rise of Netflix, and a wave of consolidation that has left studios bigger, safer, and more risk-averse. They discuss Disney’s parks-first future, Paramount’s high-stakes tie-up with Warner Bros. Discovery, Fox’s Roku bet, YouTube’s dominance, AI anxiety, China’s fading promise, and why horror still works while comedy has nearly disappeared. It’s a tour through Hollywood’s money, politics, technology, and creative exhaustion.News-Items.comThe AnklerHosted by John EllisProduced by Dale Eisinger

John Ellis talks with historian David Blackbourn, author of Germany in the World: A Global History, 1500-2000, about five centuries of German history viewed through a global lens. They discuss Germany before there was a German state; the role of merchants, soldiers, missionaries, commodities and culture; the rupture of 1914; the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust’s international machinery; and the country’s postwar rebuilding, division and reunification. The conversation then turns to the German model today: dependence on America, Russia and China, Merkel’s legacy, Ukraine, the AfD, Europe’s economic sclerosis, and whether Germany can still attract talent and reinvent itself.News-Items.comHosted by John EllisProduced by Dale Eisinger

Russ Howard, retired brigadier general, farmer, and founder of an ASU program on agriculture and national security. He discusses how wars reshape food and fertilizer markets, why water and supply chains are becoming security issues, the 2040 tabletop that maps looming regional risks, and practical limits of fixes like desalination and pipelines.