The Take

Distills without oversimplifying, excellent choice of diverse interviewees who provide key facts/context (often missing from western media coverage), while also giving the listener a sense of what the overall situation feels like for the human beings in the middle of it. Most international affairs podcasts draw on a small stable of pedigreed think-tank or academic “experts” from US or U.K. who have little experiential knowledge or stake in what they’re talking about. The Take does something much more difficult and valuable, by finding people to interview who have both expertise and on the ground knowledge and an actual humans perspective on the situation. The understanding this gives the listener is qualitatively richer than what one can get from listening to people whose expertise is only academic or business/political-elite oriented.

Superlative and often wrenching coverage of global issues. Their reports on the war in Gaza offer intimate and often heartbreaking accounts of the increasingly desperate lives of Palestinians. Absolutely first-rate.

I’m an independent and found this extremely biased towards the left. Disappointing.

Propublica just broke this story of their investigation: Trump is using his media company to allow rich donors to buy a piece of Trump and reap the benefits in the form of government contracts and tax breaks if he gets elected again. The investigative reporting connects the new “Trump TV” to a streaming technology company in Melania’s home country (Slovenia) and to a rich Republican donor who had made millions off his relationship with Trump already.