After a gunman stormed Donald Trump’s dinner with the press, questions are being revived about the president’s security. Germany’s top general explains the country’s new defence strategy. And listeners respond to our Weekend Intelligence episode on the passport bros who go abroad to find “a good woman”.

Guests and host:

• John Prideaux, host of “Checks and Balance” and US editor
• Tom Nuttall, Berlin bureau chief
• Carla Subirana, reporter
• Rosie Blau, co-host of “The Intelligence”
• Jason Palmer, co-hosts of “The intelligence”

Topics covered:

• Donald Trump, assassination attempt, White House dinner, Cole Tomas Allen
• Carsten Breuer, Bundeswehr, NATO, Ukraine
• Passport bros, tradwife, misogyny

Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—Subscribe to Economist Podcasts+

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Just one generation after they gained independence, people in the Baltic States are watching the threat from the Kremlin creep closer and closer. In Lithuania, the government is preparing the population to resist an invasion.

On “The Weekend Intelligence” Katie Bryant travels to Vilnius to ask how facing up to threat is changing the nation.

Topics covered:

Lithuania

Civil defence

Disinformation

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Music by bluedot Sessions and Epidemic Sound.

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We go deep inside the Chernobyl nuclear-power plant and the surrounding exclusion zone, recounting the history of the accident on April 26 1986, and speaking with plant workers who were on shift that day. A pre-eminent Chernobyl historian discusses the lessons learned and yet to be learned from the disaster. And we consider the science still being done at Chernobyl.

In 2024 “The Weekend Intelligence” went to Ukraine to consider the aftermath of the Russian invasion and occupation of Chernobyl, and then of the Zaporizhia nuclear-power plant. What we found was an industry that had no expectation that could even happen, and nothing of a plan when it did. Listen here.

Guests and host:

• Serhii Plokhy, historian, Harvard University
• Olena Pareniuk, radiobiologist, Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants
• Jim Smith, environmental scientist, University of Portsmouth
• Jason Palmer, co-host of “The Intelligence”

Topics covered:

• Chernobyl nuclear-power plant, history
• nuclear safety, nuclear-energy policy
• radiation exposure, radiobiology, radioecology

Get a world of insights by subscribing to Economist Podcasts+. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.