Welcome back to Potsy the World. I'm Tommy Vitor and I'm alone recording this intro

because we have a very special show this week. On Monday night, Ben and I spent about

an hour talking with former president Barack Obama about some of the foreign policy topics

in his new book, A Promised Land. It was a great conversation for a lot of reasons. The

first and foremost, he's the former president of the United States and it's a really smart

guy and fun to talk to. But also, I don't even think we said the name Donald Trump, which

was just such a nice feeling. I somehow resisted the temptation to just reminisce about Iowa

and instead we geeked out on a bunch of foreign policy stuff. So, you know, we got into stuff

like his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan and his very candid account of the tensions

that developed between President Obama, the White House, and the senior Pentagon leadership

during that time. We talked about Russia's changing leadership and whether Vladimir Putin

was always really pulling the strings or whether Dmitry Medvedev had more autonomy

than he was often given credit for. We got into his efforts to close Gitmo and we talked

about drones and we talked about the politics of terrorism and whether he felt like that

constrained him. And then for all you, you know, super foreign policy geeks out there,

we talked about a brilliant playwright and Czech politician in Basav Havl, who appeared

several times in the book and, you know, he offers warnings about expectations and the

rising forces of nationalism and the changing autocrat. And, you know, it's just interesting

to hear him really reflect on, you know, Havl and the people who inspired President

Obama, you know, when he was younger and deciding to get into politics. And then I think you'll

all love Ben and President Obama digging into the Cairo speech, the process and that constant

balance of when a president should put forward a big vision versus, you know, trying to

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