Four countries, two nuclear crises

Zack, Jenn, and Alex break down the week’s big nuclear news — the US-North Korea summit in Vietnam and the recent round of hostilities between India and Pakistan. They go over the nitty-gritty of Trump’s somewhat surprising failure to strike a deal with Kim Jong Un, explaining how the talks collapsed, and what it means for the future. Then they talk about why the conflict over Kashmir is flaring up, and just how worried you should be about a war between these two nuclear-armed states. Zack powers through a cold, Alex powers through a North Korea-related lack of sleep, and Jenn makes a fantastic pun on the phrase “peace out.” Here are two articles Alex wrote explaining what happened at the summit. For background, here’s where we were in 2017 and how the first North Korea summit changed everything. Alex’s exclusive on what the deal could have looked like. A full transcript of the summit press conference. Alex mentioned that National Security Adviser John Bolton’s position is very hawkish.  The India-Pakistan escalating tensions, summarized. Our Worldly episode about Kashmir. More on Jaish-e-Mohammed and Daniel Pearl. Zack mentioned the party dynamics in India — here’s a deeper dig into those. We took a clip from this video of a captured Indian pilot. The Pentagon statement that the acting defense secretary was only calling American officials. Zack talked about the role the US played in the 2001 India-Pakistan crisis.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices