North Korea's Kim Jong-un has bid for a diplomatic gold medal at the Winter Olympics in South Korea.

The main segment of today's podcast is about the possible consequences for the two Koreas

and the exchange of nuclear threats between Kim Jong-un and President Trump.

First, we'll touch base with Steve Kahl.

He's dean of the Columbia Journalism School staff writer for the New Yorker.

His 25 years of reporting have made him a leading authority on America's longest war,

the conflict in Afghanistan.

He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, Ghost Wars, and he's on tour

with the sequel. I asked him what's one question he anticipated, but that nobody has asked.

Well, I think why did the Obama administration struggle with this war so badly is really at the heart of a good

part of the narrative?

And it's a complicated subject, I think an important one, because it's part of the

Obama administration's legacy that hasn't really received as much attention as it might.

You know, the president's foreign policy

record, you know, includes achievements like the Iran nuclear accord and the reversal of

decades of policy toward Cuba, but it also includes this mess in Afghanistan and also, you know,

in Syria. And I think the story of how this Nobel Peace Prize

winning president inherited a war, escalated a war, and then left a muddle behind is important.

It doesn't, you know, blot out the legacy of Barack Obama as president.

But the story of how it happened is a cautionary lesson, I think, for future presidents

and one that still informs our struggle in Afghanistan today.

You say he inherited the war, but he also inherited the mess, did he not?

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