Podcast
The Delve
Hosted by The Delve · EN
Hosted by Chalin Askew, The Delve explores one major question at a time — through narrative reporting, historical context, and long-form conversations.
For listeners who want more than headlines, and the story behind them.
10episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
No Limits: Inside the Secret Cold War Between Russia and China
3w ago00:14:40Tap to summarizeWhile Putin and Xi shake hands for the cameras, a classified FSB document reveals what's really happening behind the "no limits" partnership — espionage, stolen military tech, and a territorial grudge over the Russian Far East that goes back to 1860. Chalin breaks down why Russia's most powerful ally might also be its most dangerous rival, plus a fresh Five Eyes warning on Chinese espionage and a few thoughts on Europe's continued Russian energy habit.
Transcribe →The Strait of Hormuz: 23 Sailors. 5 Votes. A Hail of Bullets.
4w ago00:10:40Tap to summarizeAn all-Filipino crew of 23 had been stranded at anchor in the Persian Gulf for more than a month. There was one way out. Through the Strait of Hormuz — through mines, through Iranian gunboats, through a waterway Iran had declared its hunting ground. They voted four times. The answer was no. On the fifth vote, the dominos fell. This is the story of 23 sailors caught in the middle of a war they had no part in — and the most important waterway in the world effectively closed while 20,000 seafarers waited, wondered, and prayed.
Transcribe →Brothers to the Rescue: Operation Scorpion
May 2900:15:09Tap to summarizeWelcome to Season 10 of The Delve. A new sound. A new format. And stories that put you inside the moment rather than just briefing you on it.We're starting where the news won't — with four names almost nobody remembers. Armando Alejandre Jr. Carlos Costa. Mario de la Peña. Pablo Morales. Four unarmed American civilians shot out of the sky over international waters by the Cuban Air Force on February 24th, 1996.Last week, Raúl Castro was indicted for their murders.This is the story of Brothers to the Rescue, Operation Scorpion, a spy who kissed his wife goodbye at 3am and turned up on Cuban television the next day — and thirty years of four families waiting for justice.
Transcribe →Season 10 is coming. And it sounds different.
May 2200:00:55Tap to summarizeSeason 9 took The Delve to 75 countries. Season 10 takes it somewhere else entirely. New sound design. New format. Cinematic, story-driven episodes that will make you feel like you're inside the story — not just hearing about it. Brothers to the Rescue. The Strait of Hormuz. No Limits. Puerto Rico. These are the stories Season 10 is built on. We'll see you very soon.
Transcribe →[BRIEFING] That's Not a Decolonization Conference
May 800:10:47Tap to summarizeAs a junior at Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh, Chalin took an African Liberation Movements class at the University of Pittsburgh. It changed how he saw the world. This week, a conference called the World Decolonization Forum opens in Istanbul — organized by a Turkish think tank, partnered with Al Jazeera and a Chinese government-adjacent university, held in the former capital of the Ottoman Empire. Its agenda dedicates a roundtable exclusively to Palestine. The Uyghurs don't have one. The Kurds don't have one. The Rohingya don't have one. The Sahrawi — whose cause is being actively undermined by the conference's own funders — don't have one. The question this episode asks is simple: if decolonization is the cause, why are tens of millions of colonized people missing from the conversation?
Transcribe →[BRIEFING] The Pope vs. The President: A 1,500-Year Pattern
May 100:14:28Tap to summarizeWhen Pope Leo XIV — the first American pope in history — entered a public dispute with the White House over the war in the Middle East, Chalin was surprised. When JD Vance, a Catholic convert, started citing Catholic just war doctrine to justify a war the head of the Catholic Church says doesn't qualify, he was floored. Then he found an article. Turns out popes have been going toe to toe with the most powerful leaders of their era for fifteen centuries. From Attila the Hun to Napoleon to Hitler — the pattern is remarkably consistent. And it doesn't tend to end well for the world leader.
Transcribe →[BRIEFING] Lebanon, Israel... and France?
Apr 2400:14:12Tap to summarizeTwo French soldiers killed in Lebanon by Hezbollah sends Chalin down a rabbit hole. France has had troops in Lebanon since 1978. In those 48 years, Hezbollah went from a nascent militia to the most powerful non-state armed group in the Middle East. France was there for all of it. This is the story of a country that designed Lebanon, embedded its language and laws into its DNA, and then watched from the sidelines as everyone else tore it apart. With Hezbollah at its weakest in 40 years, Lebanon's government declaring its military actions illegal, and Israel and Lebanon talking for the first time since 1983 — the window is open. The question isn't whether France should leave. The question is whether France has the will to finally show up.
Transcribe →Inside the Machine with Kerry Healey
Apr 1000:51:39Tap to summarizeChalin talks with former Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor and Forward Party Chairwoman Kerry Healey about what it actually looks like to govern from inside a broken system — and why she finally walked away from the Republican Party on January 7th. They dig into how primaries have been engineered to reward extremism, why 50,000 elected offices in America are sitting completely empty, and what the Forward Party is building to fill the gap. Plus: what John Adams understood about democracy in 1780 that we've somehow managed to forget.
Transcribe →Who Governs a “Freedom City”? with Rick McGahey
Apr 300:25:08Tap to summarize“Freedom Cities” are being sold as a way to unlock innovation: fewer rules, faster building, and a clean-slate approach to growth. But what is a Freedom City—really—and who would it answer to?In this episode, Chalin is joined by Rick McGahey, economist at The New School and former Clinton-era Assistant Secretary of Labor, to break down the Freedom Cities idea and the paradox at the center of it: cities are governed by states, so why is this being pushed at the federal level? Rick argues the answer is the point—Freedom City proponents want zones that can dodge not only state constraints, but also wide swaths of federal rules, from taxation to labor protections to environmental regulation. We also zoom out to the bigger story Rick explores in his work on inequality: metro areas generate the overwhelming share of U.S. GDP, yet both federal and state policy often treat cities with suspicion or hostility—making it harder for them to deliver the basics (schools, housing, transit, safety) that keep a city healthy. If “Freedom Cities” are built near thriving metros to siphon their economic gravity—while trying to opt out of the rules that protect the people living around them—what exactly are we building: a housing solution, an innovation lab… or a modern company town?
Transcribe →The Algorithm Trap with Dr. Jean Twenge
Mar 2700:30:06Tap to summarizeThis week, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube negligent for deliberately designing their platforms to addict children. The verdict didn't come out of nowhere — the science has been building for over a decade. Chalin talks with Dr. Jean Twenge, psychologist and author of iGen, about what the data has been saying since 2012, why the law protecting kids online was written in 1998 before social media existed, and what it means that the next version of this problem isn't an app — it's an AI that will date your teenager.
Transcribe →