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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Ax Files, with your host David Axelrod.

So as 2021 comes to an end, we're taking a little break and sharing a couple of our favorite podcasts of the year.

This episode recorded in June is with one of the world's most inspiring and interesting leaders, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand.

And as I thank all of you loyal listeners and wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, I also want to thank my intrepid team, without whom there would be no Ax Files.

Yes, folks, it takes a village to create this podcast and no small part due to the technical and other deficiencies of your host.

A big shout out to executive producer, Alison Siegel, engineer Jeff Fox, producer Hannah McDonald, and our crack research team led by Miriam Annanberg.

And also to our great collaborators at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and at CNN Audio. I'm truly blessed to work with all of you.

Here's my conversation with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy it. And I wish you a happy, healthy New Year.

And I'm really happy to be with you today. We're speaking from halfway across the world, but we share this small planet and a lot of urgent challenges. And I wonder if you want to just, if you could just start by talking about those and what the change in leadership in the United States might mean to to your thinking on meeting those challenges.

And I'm also, obviously, can I say, I'm curious, I'm very excited to be with you today. And you'll see that I'm obviously the other side of the world, I'm an Auckland presently, even though I'm throwing you a little bit with my backdrop being a beautiful illustration of 1970 star architecture.

And I sit just, just a couple of, a couple of levels from the top that you can see there on, on any given day. And it's a seat that I feel very, very privileged to hold, particularly during these, these trouble times.

You know, I have many, many people who frequently choose to point out to me that in the past four years, New Zealand that indeed the world has had some extraordinary experiences. It actually tracks back to a biosecurity incursion was our first, we had a horrific terrorist attack, an eruption of a volcano in New Zealand called Fakare White Island.

And of course, the global pandemic, we're all experiencing it present. But one of the things that we were discussing, David, before we began this session today was despite all of that New Zealand is still a nation that is, that is very, very focused on what's happening globally in the international political environment.

And I would say that's a little bit cultural. We're a small nation, we consider ourselves to be in a particular place in the peaking water is a nation of five million people.

We like to think that we punch above our weight, but we never, we assume nothing and we, we, we, we don't act above our station is probably what I would, what I would say, but we always act on principle and we always act on values.

But it does matter to us what's happening in global politics, because we inherently know how much that can affect us.

Part, I think some of that's born out by our history. As I've said, we're a trading nation, but we've also been a nation that in the past has been gravely and disproportionately affected by global events.

We lost a significant number of our people during the during the Great Wars.

We're a nation that during the 1980s took a very strong stance, for instance, on the issue of nuclear testing, because that nuclear testing was occurring in our backyard.

We are very clear that regardless of size, that the way we position ourselves is important and we call on others regardless of size to act in the same way.

The change of leadership in the United States for us undeniably has created a change in tone.

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