This year, podcasts became the essential space where complexity found its voice — not just reflecting our world, but helping us understand the forces remaking it.
As we close out 2025, the conversations that matter most are the ones that help us navigate complexity — without pretending to have all the answers.
This year, our podcasts have explored the forces reshaping our world — from the ghost of conservatism past to the drones rewriting the rules of warfare, from the quiet dismantling of democratic institutions to the algorithms redefining our humanity.
Podcasts have emerged as the essential space for the kind of deep, sustained inquiry that journalism demands. In an era of information overload and instant judgment, long-form conversation offers something increasingly rare: the opportunity to think alongside others, to explore nuance, and to grapple with questions that resist easy resolution.
The 10 episodes we’ve selected — the first five this week, five more the next — represent the ideas that cut deepest, that revealed not just the headlines of 2025 but the underlying currents impacting our collective future.
Next week, we’ll examine housing, governance, immigration, and the psychology of despotism — the structural forces determining how we live and who holds power.
But first, these five podcasts that helped us make sense of the year.
The Ghost in the Machine: How William F. Buckley Birthed Today’s Extreme Right
How the aristocrat’s blueprint for populist conservatism became today’s reality. Listen
Hijacking America: The Silent Coalition Behind Democracy’s Decline
A covert alliance of wealth, faith, and fear is quietly dismantling American democracy — one lie, one spectacle, and one grievance at a time. Listen
Small Drones, Big Consequences: The Future of Asymmetric Warfare
$500 drones destroyed $100M Russian bombers. This attack changes everything about modern warfare and exposes America’s most critical vulnerabilities. Listen
How America Lost Control of Its Own Future
Today’s America can’t handle what’s coming — not just from Trump but from mass automation, currency wars, China, resource battles. We need radically new politics. Listen
Algorithms and Empathy: The Human Cost of Innovation
Is technology helping us thrive or tearing us apart? Explore how rethinking innovation could lead to a more connected and human future. Listen
