Welcome back to Potsay of the World. I'm Tommy Ditor. I'm Ben Rhodes. This is Potsay of the World Insomnia edition. We're both feeling our best today.

Yep, yep. I've had a day, man. Some early wakeups quite a day. It's also weird to talk to you about foreign policy when there's so much dysfunction happening in Washington.

Yeah, really upset with both sides. I'm just kidding. Well, I mean, you know, the intangible point is when the United States is a complete train wreck at home, like our capacity to conduct a competent foreign policy, which is already difficult is.

Like when you can't raise a debt ceiling, how are you going to navigate a multilateral giant stretch? You can't pay your bills. Yeah, we're nice if we could go to India and China and say, hey, look at this giant investment we just made in renewable energy. Yes, that's the initial before the Glasgow conference. It's intended to save the world from impending climate disaster.

But lots of big news in the world. We're going to talk about the German election results. Big hearings today in the Senate on Afghanistan. There was a wild report over the weekend about the Trump administrations plans to arrest maybe kill weak leaks founder Julian Assange super fucked up. Big foreign policy votes on the hill last week. Update on Burma.

Hacking for hire and then some fun ish, I guess anecdotes about Trump in foreign policy in a new book. Our guest today is your friend. My friend Jason resigning. Yes. Fantastic journalists. Great storyteller. Great storyteller.

Hilarious human being new podcast is out on Spotify 544 days. I will be binging on my drive home. So I listened to earlier versions and then we put Jason through a second hell of making him retract like 50 hours worth of stuff. That's awful. And it is so good.

Like in the sound is amazing. One of the hosts of through line through line podcast to the music. It's just like incredible. It's such a good show. And you know Jason, you know the story. We'll be anything.

I'm a repeat guest on that podcast.

And also been did you know the September is national voter registration month. I said, I've had PSA listener. I'm aware of that.

Voters of America is trying to raise 1.5 million dollars or no off yours fund that money goes to help organizations register voters in places that will make the difference in the next elections Arizona, Florida, North Carolina.

More Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin. Go to votes of America dot com slash donate to learn more. Ben, you're hitting the road soon to you're doing much events.

Yeah, I have been in let's see Wednesday. So today the day that pod drops at least I will be at the village well bookstore in Culver City.

Then on Thursday, I will be at Stanford hosted by our mic and fault.

Yeah. And then Monday, I will be with hosted by our former guru David Axerod at the University of Chicago.

Oh man, you're everywhere. Yeah. So will those, you know, will those unite here?

This is a nice time to visit Chicago. I agreed to teach at the University of Chicago for a week in January. Yeah. And that was the less of a not the time. That's not the right place.

Less of a smart move. But those kids were so scary smart. They got mad at me. I wouldn't give them like homework. Yeah, Stanford Chicago. It's some some smart kids. Yeah.

So hopefully, you know, people buy some books and have the conversation and buy the books. Subscribe to watch where you're merch. I'll see you shout something about soft power.

Yes, I'll put faces to the numbers of the world is out there. So I love it. Yeah, I love it. All right. So let's start with these German elections because it's a big deal. Yeah, Germans went to the polls on Sunday.

They're going to decide a lot of them voted by mail, but they're going to decide their country's political future after 16 years with Angela Merkel as chancellor.

There's not a new chancellor yet for reasons we'll explain. But here's what we do know, Ben. The center left social democratic party got the most votes with 25.7%.

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