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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.globaldispatches.org Get a discounted subscription: https://www.globaldispatches.org/50PercentOffAnnual The former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and chair of the UN body that concluded Israel committed genocide in Gaza has won the Nobel Peace Prize. In the first segment, Anjali and Mark break down the implications of Navi Pillay’s Nobel Peace Prize — and why it was significant that the Nobel Committee chose to honor the South African ju…

President Trump delivered his annual address to the United Nations General Assembly, kicking off a week of speeches from presidents and prime ministers from over 100 countries. In this special crossover edition of To Save Us From Hell and Global Dispatches, I am joined by Anjali Dayal, my To Save Us From Hell co-host and a professor of international relations at Fordham University, and Harshani Dharmadasa, Senior Director at the UN Foundation and a veteran of the UN system. We kick off with an extended conversation about President Trump’s speech to the United Nations, including what it says about the future of U.S. foreign policy and American engagement with the United Nations. We then turn to a number of the key themes emerging from speeches, meetings, and events around New York this week. We wrap up with a discussion of António Guterres’s legacy at the United Nations and a speech he delivered that we all agreed encapsulates his 10-year tenure as UN Secretary-General. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.globaldispatches.org/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.globaldispatches.org Today’s episode is dedicated to all things UNGA81! We are just two weeks away from the largest diplomatic gathering of the year, as hundreds of presidents and prime ministers descend on the United Nations for the opening of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly. In this special episode, Anjali and Mark preview the speeches they are most…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.globaldispatches.org The United Nations is in the midst of selecting its next Secretary-General — and the race to succeed António Guterres just got more interesting. Last week, the Security Council held a straw poll to test the viability of the eight women and men vying to become Secretary-General in January. The results: we have a new frontrunner, though her apparent lead …

The race to become the next United Nations Secretary-General reached a pivotal moment on Thursday, when the Security Council held its first straw poll of the seven declared candidates. The results sharply narrowed the field: only four candidates now appear viable, with one clear frontrunner and three others close behind. In this special live episode of To Save Us From Hell, Anjali Dayal and I break down how the selection process works, examine the backgrounds of the four leading candidates, and analyze what the first poll reveals about who may ultimately become the next leader of the United Nations. This episode is freely available. But if you appreciate this kind of nerdy content that you can’t fine anywhere else, please become a paying subscriber. It’s the only way we can sustain To Save Us From Hell — the podcast with a cult following around United Nations! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.globaldispatches.org/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.globaldispatches.org To the world, Zohran Mamdani is the mayor of New York. To the UN, he is the mayor of its host city. So when he posted a video calling for the arrest and extradition of Benjamin Netanyahu to the International Criminal Court should he visit the UN General Assembly in September, it naturally generated some buzz around the UN. Of course, the New York mayor h…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.globaldispatches.org About ten days ago, a highly unusual scene unfolded at the United Nations: Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon and Vanessa Frazier, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, got into a public shouting match, with Danon telling Frazier, “You will be quiet now!” What began as a tense exchange over a UN report has s…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.globaldispatches.org Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett could become the first United Nations Secretary-General of Indigenous descent. Guyana’s ambassador to the United Nations was nominated as a Secretary-General candidate this week, bringing the grand total of candidates to six as we enter the final stretch of the campaign before the first Security Council straw polls. Anjali knows…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.globaldispatches.org There was a remarkable scene at the United Nations yesterday as the President of the General Assembly and former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock read out the results of a hotly contested race for a Security Council seat. For months, Portugal, Austria, and Germany had been duking it out behind the scenes at the General Assembly. These three EU a…

An Ebola outbreak is spiraling in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — and one of the clearest lessons from past outbreaks is that Ebola requires multilateralism: countries working together through existing institutions like the United Nations and the World Health Organization to contain the disease, support frontline health workers, share information, and prevent cross-border spread. But the Trump administration’s retreat from the global health architecture built for precisely this kind of emergency has made that task harder. In this episode of To Save Us From Hell, Mark Leon Goldberg and Anjali Dayal discuss how American attacks on the WHO and other key nodes of our global defenses against disease outbreaks have made this particular Ebola outbreak more difficult to contain than it ought to be. Later in the show, they discuss the newest entrant in the race for UN Secretary-General — and whether we can expect more candidates to throw their hats in the ring. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.globaldispatches.org/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.globaldispatches.org The Security Council is weighing yet another U.S.-backed resolution on the Strait of Hormuz that is probably doomed from the start. In this first segment, Anjali and Mark explain the flawed logic behind this latest effort to return the Strait to its status quo ante bellum. Then, Mark discusses what he learned covering the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treat…

On Tuesday and Wednesday this week, the four candidates for UN Secretary-General made their case at the UN General Assembly. Across twelve hours spanning two days, they took questions from UN member states and civil society groups eager to learn more about their priorities, proclivities, and leadership styles should they become the next UN Secretary-General on January 1, 2027. It was a marathon — and my To Save Us From Hell co-host Anjali Dayal and I watched it all! In today’s episode, we tell you what we learned. To kick things off, we explain how the process for selecting a UN Secretary-General works — and how these hearings fit into it. We then break down what we heard from each of the candidates: Michelle Bachelet, Rafael Grossi, Rebeca Grynspan, and Macky Sall, bringing you the key highlights and takeaways. Consider this your curtain-raiser for a year of public campaigning and backroom dealmaking that will result in the selection of the next UN Secretary-General in the coming months. This episode is free for all and can also be found later today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen. The selection of the next Secretary General is a major story in international diplomacy and I plan on covering it to the finish line — whenever that may be (but hopefully before January 1!) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.globaldispatches.org/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.globaldispatches.org The war in the Middle East has claimed its first UN casualties: three Indonesian peacekeepers in Lebanon were killed in under 24 hours. With Israel intent on occupying the same part of southern Lebanon that UN peacekeepers are meant to patrol, can the peacekeeping mission even continue? Meanwhile, in New York, a Secretary-General-led diplomatic effort t…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.globaldispatches.org One of the fundamental precepts of the United Nations Charter is that waging war against another UN member state is simply not permitted. It’s illegal. There are, however, some narrow exceptions — and here the United States is playing a game of legal legerdemain. In the first segment of our show, we break down the formal legal justification the Trump administration invoked at the United Nations to defend its bombing campaign against Iran. Does it hold up? And more importantly, how do other countries view this retroactive justification for America and Israel’s war of choice? We also discuss a potential UN diplomatic intervention in the Strait of Hormuz that is gaining some traction, modeled on one of the UN’s successes during the Russia-Ukraine war. After the fold, and for paying subscribers, we examine why the United States is standing virtually alone at the Commission on the Status of Women, casting lone “no” votes on a host of measures intended to promote gender equality. Finally, we discuss the newest entrant in the race to replace António Guterres as secretary-general, Virginia Gamba, and how her nomination may shake up the race. https://www.globaldispatches.org/40PercentOff

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.globaldispatches.org We cover a lot of ground in this week’s episode of To Save Us From Hell! There are two new entrants to the race to succeed António Guterres as the next UN Secretary-General; Cindy McCain announced she is stepping down as head of the World Food Programme, meaning there will soon be a vacancy at the top of one of the largest UN agencies—one typically led …