Over the past few months, I’ve often found myself overwhelmed by the pace and nature of global events. Each day seems to bring something that overturns long-held assumptions—norms I had internalised growing up in the 1980s and 1990s. It’s been disorienting. At times, it feels as if we’ve entered a new nihilistic and transactional world.

It was in this frame of mind that I stumbled upon Prof. Steven Smith’s Open Yale Course on Political Philosophy. The series offered not just a masterful survey of Western political thought, from Socrates to Tocqueville and his contemporaries, but also a welcome opportunity to step back from the churn of headlines and reflect on the enduring debates they echo.

How are economic globalisation and the resurgence of populism and nationalism reshaping the relationship between the individual, the community, and the state? How did earlier thinkers grapple with these tensions, and how are today’s societies addressing them? What does justice mean in our time? Does it inevitably imply a march towards progressivism? How should liberalism engage with patriotism? And to what extent is contemporary nationalism a reaction to the perceived failures of liberal cosmopolitanism?

With these questions in mind, I reached out to Prof. Smith, who graciously agreed to discuss them, along with his views on the current trajectory of American politics.

As always, I hope you enjoy the conversation. Please like, share, and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work I do, feel free to reach out to me on manoj@takshashila.org.in.

If you are interested in Prof. Smith’s recent works, do check out his books:

• Modernity and Its Discontents – Making and Unmaking the Bourgeois from Machiavelli to Bellow

• Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes

About: The Great Power Show is a bi-weekly podcast featuring candid conversations and thought-provoking interviews with leading scholars, thinkers and practitioners on the geopolitical and geo-economic changes shaping our world.

India’s global profile is rising. By the end of this decade, India will be the world’s third-largest economy. Diplomatically, it is also far more active as a member of key multilateral groupings. Arguably, India’s foreign policy today plays a bigger role in domestic politics than at any time since the Nehru years.

All of this is changing how Indians think about world affairs, leading to an increasing number of young people studying International Relations. In fact, over the past 25 years, there’s been a visible expansion of Indian universities offering IR courses. The discipline itself evolved from the margins of political science to the heart of it.

For decades, IR theory has remained anchored in Western experiences and epistemologies. But does that lens still suffice? Or is there a need to think through new, perhaps more rooted, ways of conceptualising power, order, and change?

In this episode, I speak with Atul Mishra, Associate Professor of International Relations at Shiv Nadar University, in India. Atul is a refreshingly original voice in the world of International Relations. His perspective is incisive, anchored in rigorous theory, yet deeply informed by empirical realities.

Our conversation begins by tracing his personal and intellectual journey before turning to bigger questions: What is theory for? Who is it serving? And does IR theory need to become fragmented accounting for culture and civilisation experiences? In other words, is there a need for an Indic IR or an IR with Chinese characteristics? From there, we take stock of the global order and the state of the idea of liberal democracy. Are the ideas of liberalism passé amid the rising tide of authoritarianism and under the weight of present-day realpolitik?

As always, I hope you enjoy the conversation. Please like, share, and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work I do, feel free to reach out to me.

• - Atul’s Substack IR Wire

  - Atul’s Lecture on What is a liberal democracy?

• About: The Great Power Show is a bi-weekly podcast featuring candid conversations and thought-provoking interviews with leading scholars, thinkers and practitioners on the geopolitical and geo-economic changes shaping our world.

In China, political discourse is ample, yet often elusive. News reports and policy documents are dense with slogans and repetition. Despite this, the system also often speaks through silence. And that silence fuels questions.

What should one look for when trying to understand China’s political language? Can anything be understood from the stodgy language of Party-state media. Can the omission of a phrase from a communiqué be mere coincidence or does it have deeper meaning? This isn’t just about decoding propaganda; it’s about understanding how contestation, consensus, and control take shape in a system that rarely shows its hand.

In this episode of The Great Power Show, I speak to Katja Drinhausen, who heads the Chinese Politics & Society research program at the Mercator Institute of China Studies or MERICS in Germany. Katja is one of the most astute observers of the politics of the Communist Party of China.

I ask her to help us navigate Chinese politispeak, and its implications for China and the world. We also deliberate the concept of ideology. Is it really making a comeback in China? Or is ideology less a driver of policy and more a reflection of it? As Xi Jinping revives the language of struggle, what are we really witnessing?

And finally, we look outward, at how China tells its story to the world. From wolf warrior diplomacy to the push to “tell China’s story well,” we examine the institutions and impulses that shape Beijing’s external messaging. What’s the story China wants the world to believe? And is anyone buying it?

About: The Great Power Show is a bi-weekly podcast featuring candid conversations and thought-provoking interviews with leading scholars, thinkers and practitioners on the geopolitical and geo-economic changes shaping our world.