This is a rebroadcast of one of my earliest podcasts (apologies for the rough audio) because I think the content is more important than ever. Namely, the historical context of US-Iran relations pre- and post-1979 revolution has largely been ignored in conversations and debates surrounding Operation Epic Fury. As readers of my newsletter know, I truly believe that chronology and context are critical for understanding global events and why they unfold the way they do. This episode is my attempt to (re)introduce some chronology and context into our understanding of the conflict with Iran.

In its own way, it’s an interesting artifact in itself. When I first aired this episode, it was at the tail end of the first Trump administration. Six years have passed since then that saw a global pandemic, the exit and return of Donald Trump to the Presidency, and, of course, Operation Midnight Hammer. Incredibly, the basic dynamics of the US-Iranian relationship have remained largely unchanged as breakdown throughout this episode.

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Mark Hall returns to the podcast to discuss the reemergence of Christian nationalism as a topic of interest to the Washington media.

Mark and I review some of his work on White House-appointed advisory boards related to religious liberty and how that ties in to (or doesn’t) the conversation on Christian nationalism. We then pivot to breaking down a recent survey by PRRI that seems to have contributed to renewed concerns about Christian nationalism’ prevalence in conservative politics. We find that much of the pearl clutching seems to stem from a misreading of the data, or rather, reading the data through preestablished lenses, despite there being no meaningful change in terms of actual numbers of Christian nationalists in America.

In the course of the discussion, we also uncover a key data point in the survey that undermines a significant driver of the alarmism that often accompanies reporting on Christian nationalism.

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It’s a panel discussion on the podcast today as Dr. Scott Waller, Dr. Matt Van Hook and Dustin Steeve rejoin the podcast to unpack the arguable normal first year of Trump 2.0 despite the consequential vibes. Bottom line, despite movement on key campaign promises with measurable results, Waller notes that the Trump administration’s first year is something of a “normal” presidency, and Van Hook makes the point that what makes it feel consequential is that the Biden administration was just so poor in its execution that “normal” presidential behavior makes it seem extreme. Steeve underscores that point by unpacking the extent of the Biden administration’s dereliction of duty on immigration, in particular.

With the midterm election cycle taking shape and voters registering some displeasure with the economy and the handling of immigration, my guests all agree that the Trump administration has leaned into doing the hard work of governing, even if it means short term pain in the approval ratings, a posture for which we give the Trump administration high marks, even as we wait to see how a lot of these efforts play out.

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You’d think that with all the power moves Trump is making on the international stage (Greenland, Venezuela, Iran, etc.) the publication of the administration’s National Security Strategy in December of 2025 would’ve been the source of much public attention. Unfortunately, mainstream media largely overlooked the document with much of the analysis relegated to the foreign policy community.

That’s all set up for introducing my guest who offered a very intriguing and original take on the NSS: it’s a true strategic document in that it’s primarily focused on first principles and philosophical arguments. In other words, it’s a work of political philosophy as opposed to a work of bureaucratic prioritization.

More intriguing, my guest isn’t some career foreign policy type or academic who spends his days buried in the particulars of global politics and international security concerns. 

My guest today is Ron Dodson, the founder and CEO of Dallas North Capital Partners, a Texas-based hedge fund, and something of a polymath.

My burning question for Ron is “How did a hedge fund manager in Dallas see something in the NSS that the broader foreign policy community missed?” 

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US Air Force Academy professor Dr. Kerry Chávez is back on the show to pick up where we left off in our last conversation: the ethical considerations, quandaries and pitfalls surrounding drones, AI, and other emerging tech in their military applications.

While a lot of attention has been focused on armed drone use in war zones, there’s a whole realm of military application that drones and emerging autonomous vehicles that may be less visible to the public eye and cadres of armchair generals on X: medivac, ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance), C2 (command and control), and other many other “back end” elements of military logistics. 

While these non-kinetic applications for emerging technology may appear at first blush to be ethically and morally neutral. However, when considering things like the field performance (and limitations) of these vehicles, the potential for bias in data being fed into them, and the still nascent norms, legal, and regulatory components governing their use by states (nonstate actors are a whole other consideration) Kerry suggests that there’s more of the ethical and moral here than meets the eye. 

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We’re back for 2026 and another season of the Tim Talks Politics Podcast. 

2025’s end of year project, The Kirk Effects, was wonderful and worthwhile, but it did draw my attention away from the international sphere before taking that holiday break. Now, as we enter 2026, the world is in flux in a way few thought possible just last month. Before we dive into conversations on Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, etc. (don’t worry, they’re in the pipeline), I want to start the year off with a conversation on Central Asia and Kazakhstan’s ascension to the Abraham Accords.

To discuss this critical region and the potentially huge impacts of the Abraham Accords on that region, Joseph Epstein returns to the podcast to give us a dime tour of the region and to flesh out the possibilities surrounding Kazakhstan joining the Accords. 

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A short message wishing you all a "Merry Christmas" as I take a slightly earlier intended Christmas break.

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They say politics is downstream from culture, but what is culture downstream from? My guest today would say culture is downstream from worldview - one’s governing assumptions of morality and ultimate reality. And that’s why she’s on the podcast today.

My guest is writer, actress, and comedian Zena Dell Lowe. Our conversation covers a wide array of topics related to culture and the ideas, people and moments that shape it. This is a longer conversation that tackles the idea of a “Kirk effect” from a very different angle by considering Kirk’s broader cultural impact beyond faith and politics. 

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In this episode of The Kirk Effect, Dr. Wilsey and I explore the broader historical and cultural context of Kirk’s work. Dr. Wilsey explains that in many respects, Kirk’s evident Christian faith and rhetoric is not an anomaly in American public life. In fact, it’s something of a throw back to a not so distant past when the intersection of faith and politics in America produced a rich cultural exchange that has generally benefited American culture.

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In this episode of The Kirk Effect, Representative David Eastman of the Alaska state legislature and I discuss his experience of attending the memorial service for Charlie Kirk. The memorial service lasted for over five hours, was attended by hundreds of thousands, and raised a lot of questions about the interaction of American Christianity with politics.

As a Christian who serves in an elected office, Rep. Eastman has some great insight on how to live and work at that intersection of faith and politics, and provides some helpful ways of thinking about how these two core elements of American life interact.

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What did Charlie Kirk see in America’s youth that drove him on to college campuses to discuss, debate, and advocate for conservative ideas in a largely hostile environment? Kirk wasn’t shy about why he so purposefully engaged young people: They were the future. But this wasn’t necessarily a manipulative political project. For Kirk and many others working with America’s young people, it was a mission of mercy...

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