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On this episode of American Prestige, Danny welcomes back Jonathan Hunt, assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College and a fellow of the Nuclear Security Program at Yale University, to talk about his book The Nuclear Club, which follows the efforts of a select few world powers to maintain exclusive access to nuclear weapons. This second part of the discussion picks up in the mid-1950s after Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech, non-proliferation movement leaders like Irish foreign minister Frank Aiken, the flexible response policy and other changes to America’s nuclear posture under the Kennedy Administration, the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, proliferation optimists vs pessimists, and more through the late 1960s.
Note: The views expressed here are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the views, policies, or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense or its components, to include the Department of the Navy or the U.S. Naval War College.


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Four years ago, Daniel Bessner spoke with the legendary engineer, producer, and musician who died on May 7, 2024.


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On this episode of American Prestige, Danny and Derek welcome to the podcast Khalid Medani—associate professor of political science, director of the Institute of Islamic Studies, and chair of the African Studies Program at McGill University—for a deep dive into the conflict that has engulfed Sudan since last Spring. They delve into its roots going back to the 1989 coup, break down the makeup of the primary combatants (the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces), how these groups are able to continue recruiting and maintain support networks, the conflict’s catastrophic humanitarian crisis and regional effects, foreign mercenaries and whether it has become a proxy war, efforts of local civil leaders to quell the fighting, and what things might look like moving forward.
As Khalid noted, two places to which he recommends you donate are the Sudanese Doctors Union or the Sudan Solidarity Collective.
Some of Khalid’s recent work:
“The Struggle for Sudan” from Middle East Report’s Spring 2024 issue is a primer on Sudan.Middle East Research and Information Project’s Spring 2024 issue has multiple contributors, including Khalid, writing about the conflict.His book Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and Africa, which is free via Open Access.“Opinion: The brutal conflict in Sudan is not a civil war. It’s a war on civilians” from The Globe and Mail.


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On this week's episode of Tech Won't Save Us, Paris Marx is joined by Ed Niedermeyer to discuss Tesla's stagnation as an electric vehicle manufacturer and what that could mean for its future as competitors cut into their market share. 
Ed Niedermeyer is the author of Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors, and is the co-host of the Autonocast, a podcast on the future of transportation.


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Lots of pro-Palestine encampments on college campuses have been attacked by local police, but UCLA was different: a pro-Israel mob attacked the encampment on April 30. The attack continued for three hours before police stepped in, and they didn’t arrest any of the attackers. The next night, the police themselves attacked and shut down the encampment. UCLA Professor and Chair in Jewish History, David Myers has our report.
Also on this episode: There’s no doubt that Israeli women and girls were raped during the Hamas attack on Oct. 7; but there is little evidence to support Israel’s charge that rape was a “premeditated, systematic” strategy by Hamas—offered as a justification for Israel's destruction of Gaza and killing of 35,000 civilians. At the same time, evidence is growing of sexual abuse of Palestinian women held in detention by Israel. Azadeh Moaveni reports on the findings of her reporting for the London Review of Books.


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On this episode of American Prestige, we welcome back to the pod, Alex Thurston, associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Cincinnati and non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, to discuss the situations in Niger and Chad now that the two nations have respectively kicked out most US troops.
We discuss the State Department’s underwhelming treatment of some African heads of state, how this dynamic differs when working with a military junta, what specifically precipitated the US withdrawals from Niger and Chad, AFRICOM’s security-focused framing, how Russia’s role in the region factors into things, and more.


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