2023

At Foreign Policy, our columnists and staff are focused on helping our readers to understand the people, events, and forces shaping our world, whether it’s the Israel-Hamas war, the rise of AI technology, the reshaping of global alliances, or climate change and the green energy transition.

But it’s not all work and no play around here. When we’re off the clock, we also like to kick back and enjoy some quality entertainment—an enlightening politics podcast, a thrilling historical drama, or even a fun reality TV show. And we figured that if you’re reading Foreign Policy, you’ve probably got some similar tastes to us foreign-policy geeks—so we asked FP columnists and staff to share the TV shows, movies, and podcasts they particularly enjoyed this year. Here are their recommendations.

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Transatlantic (TV show)

Available on Netflix

Transatlantic is loosely based on the real story of Albert Hirschman, a noted German American economist who, along with the intrepid American journalist Varian Fry, helped organize a clandestine, and extraordinarily risky, effort to smuggle mostly Jewish intellectuals, dissidents, and artists out of Vichy-controlled Marseille in 1940.

The series, which was inspired by the novel The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer, is a fictionalized and somewhat romanticized account of this effort. Among other matters, it features a romance between Hirschman and an incredibly courageous, well-to-do American woman, Mary Jayne Gold, who is one of Hirschman’s principal financial supporters. That romance, which the series plays up, was probably apocryphal. Nevertheless, it is one that will have World War II buffs simply glued to the screen.

—Sumit Ganguly, FP columnist

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Generation Jihad (podcast)

Available on all podcast platforms

Generation Jihad, Bill Roggio’s podcast spinoff from his well-established Long War Journal blog, provides informative, real-time blowback wisdom on the ongoing global war against jihadism. Since launching in March 2020 with a brutal analysis of the Trump administration’s agreement with the Taliban to withdraw from Afghanistan, Generation Jihad—which, like Long War Journal, is supported by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies—has cast a gimlet eye on the threat of Islamist extremism.

From al-Shabab to al Qaeda, from West Africa to Southeast Asia, former U.S. Army soldier Roggio—along with colleagues and guests who have included retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who served briefly as former U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security advisor—examines the implications of policies, military operations, and minutiae that may not warrant mention in mainstream media reporting, such as jail breaks and leadership squabbles, but that add context for understanding and demystifying the overarching conflict of our time. Since Oct. 7, the podcast’s focus has been on the Israel-Hamas war.

Roggio brings gruff charm to deadly serious stuff. For more about him, listen to his guest turn on The Boardwalk podcast, where three former U.S. military intelligence guys discuss all things related to the war in Afghanistan.

—Lynne O’Donnell, FP columnist

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Suits (TV show)

Available on Netflix, Prime Video, and Peacock

My wife and I recently found ourselves in a TV-watching holding pattern. While we wait for Shrinking, The Bear, and Only Murders in the Building to return, we could not find a show that stuck. These being dark times, we wanted something light.

Somehow, we landed on Suits, a decidedly flimsy legal dramedy about the fictitious New York City law firm Pearson Hardman. There has got to be better television out there than this show, but oddly, my wife and I are drawn to it. Admittedly, there is not much of a discernible foreign-policy aspect to it—or at least in the first eight episodes of the first season, which is as far as we’ve gotten—other than the fact that it was filmed in Toronto and the former Meghan Markle, now Duchess of Sussex, is one of the show’s lead actors. Despite the fact that I have a British side of the family, I pay no attention to the travails of the royals, but as far as Meghan goes, she is fine in the show.

Being from the New York metropolitan area, it bums me out when Toronto is used as the stand-in for New York City, and within 30 seconds of seeing the first exterior shot of the very first episode, I grumpily sighed and said, “That is not ‘the City’; that is totally Toronto.” The producers barely tried to hide the telltale signs that they were filming in the Great White North, such as the wrong color taxis and trolley tracks.

Still, I can’t wait to find out what happens next inside Pearson Hardman.

—Steven A. Cook, FP columnist

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The Rest Is Politics (podcast)

Available on all podcast platforms

Often, with podcasts, it is easy to explain why you like them—usually, it is because they are instructive. You learn from them. But with The Rest Is Politics, it is less clear.

In it, two British political animals, Alastair Campbell from the Labour Party and Rory Stewart from the Conservative Party, sit down and blabber on for half an hour about things happening in Westminster and the wider world. They hop from one subject to the next. They do not go deep; sometimes they even get it wrong.

Why, then, is this podcast so irresistible?

Because it is a pleasant conversation between two people from opposite parties (or formerly from those parties—both men were kicked out for not toeing the official line), which is rare nowadays. Because they both hate Brexit as well as the political class currently in power and its behavior, but they have not lost their belief in politics. Both the extroverted Campbell and the more stoic Stewart, a former minister, are political romantics. They have ideas, and they like to discuss them. They do this with enthusiasm, moderation, and a good sense of humor. Sometimes they agree; sometimes they don’t. But guess what? It doesn’t matter, just as in the good old days. The secret of The Rest Is Politics, I guess, is that it keeps alive the hope that one day things will be better.

—Caroline de Gruyter, FP columnist

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Revolutions (podcast) and History That Doesn’t Suck (podcast)

Available on all podcast platforms

One of the problems I run into most frequently in Washington’s foreign-policy community is recency bias—or, to put it less charitably, an obliviousness to any history that falls outside the narrow post-World War II experiences of U.S. policymakers. That’s why Washington is currently having a debate about great-power competition that is shaped almost entirely by Cold War analogies. But even if technology or norms have changed, we can learn a lot from the struggles of the past and how leaders and citizens handled both domestic and foreign-policy dilemmas.

Thus, I’m recommending two of my favorite history podcasts: Revolutions by Mike Duncan, which takes an in-depth look at historical struggles for greater (or lesser!) political, economic, or social changes in the Euro-Atlantic world, and History That Doesn’t Suck by Greg Jackson, a survey of U.S. history. Both are great listens with fascinating stories that give context for some of the big historical moments that shaped the modern world. The next time you want to make a historical analogy, why not take a listen to one of these podcasts and draw from the Spanish-American War, the Haitian Revolution, or the life and times of the French revolutionary and journalist Gracchus Babeuf?

—Emma Ashford, FP columnist

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Was tun, Herr General? (podcast)

Available on all podcast platforms

My entertainment recommendation has to be the podcast Was tun, Herr General? (“What to do, General?) Yes, it’s a German offering, and yes, it’s in German. It features two episodes each week, always with retired Lt. Gen. Erhard Bühler of the Bundeswehr as the guest. In every episode, host Tim Deisinger asks Bühler to summarize the latest from Russia’s war in Ukraine and related developments, asks him a few questions about it, and then asks Bühler questions from listeners. It’s an extremely simple concept—and highly educational. Bühler is extremely knowledgeable, of course, but he’s also very good at explaining all manner of military activities.

Thanks to Bühler and Deisinger, I always feel up to date and well informed about the war—and a well-informed citizenry is the only basis on which Western countries can make wise decisions about how to support Ukraine. Every country needs a podcast like this—especially the United States.

—Elisabeth Braw, FP columnist

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About a Boy: The Story of Vladimir Putin (podcast)

Available on all podcast platforms

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine left many in the world perplexed. Even though Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, no one expected him to launch a full-scale invasion. Since February 2022, many governments and scholars have been struggling to understand how Putin actually thinks and how far to go in support for Ukraine.

Julia Ioffe’s About a Boy opens a window into Putin’s childhood and the circumstances that built his character. He was born into a country that was grieving the loss of 27 million of its people in World War II and the deprivation the Soviets had to live through in the aftermath. He hails from a generation that grew up in the dvor, or courtyards, of cramped urban housing in the Soviet Union, where along with others he jostled for space and learned the ropes of life in an unforgiving climate. Ioffe brilliantly draws on the experiences of her father, who also grew up in a dvor, to translate Putin the boy and the values he carried with him as he grew up and became the most powerful man in Russia. 

—Anchal Vohra, FP columnist

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The Heavy Water War (TV show)

Available on Prime Video

If you, like me, watched Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer this year, found yourself diving into World War II and nuclear weapons history, and are curious to watch a parallel story unfold, then The Heavy Water War will be just what you’re looking for. Originally broadcast in 2015, the six-part Norwegian miniseries (titled Kampen om tungtvannet in Norway and The Saboteurs in the United Kingdom) covers Nazi Germany’s nuclear weapons program during World War II and the subsequent heroic collaboration between Norwegian and British intelligence to thwart the Nazis’ plans.

Set against the backdrop of Nazi-occupied Norway in the 1940s, The Heavy Water War traces a number of storylines (with actors speaking Norwegian, German, and English) that converge with the Allied sabotage of Nazi efforts to produce heavy water (essentially, water with a heavier hydrogen isotope), a key ingredient in Germany’s efforts to develop an atom bomb. The show is riveting, international, and moving, shedding light on a piece of World War II history that I personally never learned in school.

—Rylie Munn, social media editor

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Saltburn (movie)

In theaters and available on Prime Video

If you’ve seen the black comedy Saltburn, you’re probably taken aback—revolted, even—by this recommendation. But hear me out.

The film follows the story of Oxford University student Oliver Quick (played by Barry Keoghan) and his friendship with a fellow student, the charming and wealthy Felix Catton (played by Jacob Elordi). Felix invites Oliver to his family’s estate for the summer, and hijinks ensue.

This is a movie about polite society turned upside-down, in which all of our traditions and expectations are contemptuously dismissed in favor of the pursuit of immediate material wealth. Social niceties permit certain heinous acts to be carried out and only lightly reprimanded. We will have decorum, after all. And, certainly, a man of Oxford carries himself in a fundamentally dignified way, yes?

Does any of this sound eerily like the world as we’ve experienced it over the last several years?

None of this is exactly a spoiler; it’s apparent early on that Keoghan’s Oliver is drawn to Elordi’s Felix in complicated ways, one of which is his immense wealth. “Saltburn” is the name of the Catton family’s English estate and also sounds a bit like the process your mind may undergo over the course of this film. What starts out as an opulent, richly colored fever dream through the infinite wealth of the English upper crust slowly devolves into something far darker than you could imagine. Sort of like the global events of 2023.

—Drew Gorman, deputy copy editor

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Red, White & Royal Blue (movie)

Available on Prime Video

“Don’t cause an international incident.” Simple instructions, no? It takes a lot to sever ties between two of the world’s closest allies: the United States and the United Kingdom. But in the world of Red, White & Royal Blue, based on the bestselling novel by Casey McQuiston, that last straw comes in the shape of America’s first son Alex Claremont-Diaz and Britain’s Prince Henry.

Enter an enemies-to-lovers saga that plays out on an international diplomatic stage. When a high-profile scuffle at Buckingham Palace pits the White House’s golden boy against London’s favored prince, the two countries force both men to fake a friendship to avoid the devolution of global cooperation. Between campaign fundraisers and charity benefits, Alex and Henry quickly forget the weight of their public images for the romantic feelings they share for each other. But is the world, and the countries’ tangled histories with LGBTQ+ rights, ready for what they have to say?

If only all foreign-relations squabbles could be solved with lake house retreats, polo games, and a kiss.

—Alexandra Sharp, newsletter writer

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Mother Country Radicals (podcast)

Available on all podcast platforms

Adulthood, I have learned, is effectively an endless stream of chores. But all that cooking, cleaning, and laundry folding becomes much more bearable when done to the tune of Beyoncé—or a good podcast. My favorite auditory distraction of the past year has been Mother Country Radicals, a 2022 docu-podcast from Crooked Media and Audacy that chronicles the rise, fall, and legacy of the Weather Underground, a leftist militant group that was active in the United States during the 1970s.

Mother Country Radicals is no ordinary history podcast. Hosted by Zayd Ayers Dohrn, the son of militants Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn—who famously declared war on the U.S. government—the show has a personal touch that affords it great nuance in examining the moral ambiguities of revolutionary violence. Ayers Dohrn was born underground while his parents were fugitives from the FBI. He harbors deep respect for his parents’ convictions but also enduring resentment for the ways their commitment to a larger political struggle led them to neglect the people around them, especially their children.

The series—which won the 2022 Shorty Award in the true crime and documentary category—is eminently binge-worthy. (I admit to canceling plans with friends to finish it.) Ayers Dohrn maintains remarkable objectivity in his telling of history without ever compromising emotional honesty, particularly when exploring fraught ethical questions about what productive solidarity looks like in a world of conflict and inequality. The Weather Underground may now be defunct, but the dilemmas its short history raises are timeless.

—Allison Meakem, associate editor 

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Drag Race Germany (TV show)

Available on MTV and Paramount+ in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and on WOW Presents Plus internationally

RuPaul’s Drag Race is an Emmy Award-winning reality TV show in which drag queens compete for the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar. Hosted by RuPaul, arguably the most famous drag queen in the world today, the original U.S. version of the show debuted in 2009 and is now entering its 16th season. Sometimes referred to as the “Olympics of drag” (though not to be confused with the Drag Olympics), the series is a staple of gay pop culture that has brought the underground art of drag performance to mainstream audiences around the world.

The show has spawned several spinoffs, including RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars and RuPaul’s Secret Celebrity Drag Race, as well as international versions in Australia/New Zealand (jointly billed as “Down Under”), Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and now Germany.

Drag Race Germany’s first season just came out in September, and it is an absolute blast to watch. Hosted by German drag performer and LGBTQ+ activist Barbie Breakout, actor and activist Gianni Jovanovic, and American fashion designer and model Dianne Brill, the show features 11 contestants from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland who battle it out in hilarious and frequently absurd challenges that test their skills in fashion and design, makeup artistry, acting, singing, dancing, comedy and improv, and, of course, lip-syncing. The winner receives the title of Germany’s Next Drag Superstar, along with 100,000 euros, a crown and scepter, and a one-year supply of Anastasia Beverly Hills cosmetics.

Along the way, viewers get to learn all kinds of fun and interesting tidbits about German culture and especially German LGBTQ+ culture. There’s also some politics thrown in: In episode four, the runway category is “Night of a Thousand Angies,” in which the queens have to present drag-exaggerated versions of famous looks worn by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The result is one of the funniest, most ridiculous runways the Drag Race franchise has ever had.

—Jennifer Williams, deputy editor

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90 Day Fiancé (TV show)

Available on Max, Hulu, Prime Video, and several other streaming platforms

90 Day Fiancé, a reality TV show about Americans finding love with foreigners, debuted on the cable channel TLC in 2014. The title refers to the length of a K-1 visa, the so-called fiancé visa, which allows Americans to bring their international partners into the United States to marry and obtain permanent residence. This year, the series found legions of new fans on the streaming service Max. And why wouldn’t it? What’s higher stakes than mixing love with the foibles of the U.S. immigration system?

As a former K-1 visa holder, I still recall the strangeness of the application process, which entailed showing up at the U.S. Consulate in Sydney on the one day when all the appointments had been made by Australians who happened to have fallen in love with Americans. As each of us shuffled to a bulletproof window to explain the contours of our long-distance relationships to a consular officer, it was impossible not to overhear gossipy details. One woman connected with her husband-to-be playing online poker; another, at a guitar collectors conference in Nashville.

The drama of 90 Day Fiancé—will they make it down the aisle, or even through the airport, without breaking up?—was nail-biting enough. But I think it has been exceeded by a spinoff, 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days. Instead of foreigners traveling to the United States, in this series Americans travel to meet their love interests abroad. A lot of predictable things happen to them, and I say this as someone who is now an American. A Midwesterner who finds himself in a remote Amazonian town boasts to his Brazilian girlfriend about the running water he can offer her back home. Americans are dismayed when there’s no air conditioning in a rural home in Kenya and by how small a Dutch apartment is. A woman from Connecticut drinks too much of the local liquor in Albania. Before a traditional Filipino pig roast, a Florida man thrusts an iPhone armed with Google Translate at an older relative of his paramour’s to explain why he won’t be eating the feast held in his honor. (He’s skeeved out by undercooked pork.)

Much of it is disastrous, and some of it is troubling. But Before the 90 Days also reveals a fascinating glimpse into how ordinary people in different countries live—and serves as a reminder that falling in love the world over requires an alchemy not yet bottled.

—Amelia Lester, executive editor

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Jubilee (TV show)

Available on Prime Video

Set in 1940s Bombay (now Mumbai), this series brings together old-timey Bollywood drama with the India-Pakistan partition and a subsequent Cold War propaganda battle over the subcontinent fought across Indian movie screens and radio waves in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). While that may seem like a lot to pack into 10 episodes, those various strands are woven together in an interesting manner by creator Vikramaditya Motwane (of Sacred Games fame) and are somewhat loosely based on true events, making for some fun Google rabbit holes for geopolitics and cinema nerds alike.

—Rishi Iyengar, staff writer

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Old Enough! (TV show)

Available on Netflix

This might be embarrassing to admit so publicly, but one of the shows that I’ve most enjoyed watching this year is Old Enough!, a Japanese reality show that follows young children as they bravely run simple errands on their own for the first time.

On Netflix, viewers can watch as the cherubic children, who are sometimes as young as 2 years old, tackle daunting challenges: remembering the route to the local supermarket, learning to ride a bus, or struggling to pick a heavy cabbage. Even when the children encounter hurdles—and, in some cases, burst into tears out of frustration—they courageously push on, conquering their fears and returning home to proud parents who were often even more anxious than the kids were.

Beyond the undeniable adorableness of the show, there’s something incredibly heartwarming about watching children learning to overcome obstacles and independently navigate the world. Old Enough! is remarkably easy to binge-watch, and I hope that it brings joy to others looking for a charming escape this holiday season.

—Christina Lu, staff writer

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Welcome to Wrexham (TV show)

Available on Hulu

I know this would get me exiled in most countries if I uttered these words out loud but: I’m not a big fan of soccer. Still, Welcome to Wrexham is the perfect wholesome escapist balm, whether you’re a sports fan or not. The docuseries follows two A-list actors, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, as they buy a fifth-tier soccer team in the Welsh city of Wrexham. Both the team and the town are down on their luck and hungry for wins and redemption.

It’s a compelling portrait of how sports can bring a community together, complete with delightful tangents about the town’s inhabitants, history, and culture. While the two actors are in effect producing the documentary about themselves, it doesn’t come across as self-serving—and as the first season picks up, they justifiably step to the side and let the town take center stage. You’ll find yourself binging the two seasons as you get sucked into rooting for the underdog Red Dragons—both the men’s and women’s teams—and learning firsthand why lower-tier European soccer league fandom can be so addicting. And as an early holiday gift, it’s already been renewed for a third season.

—Robbie Gramer, staff writer

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El Planeta (movie)

Available on Max, Hulu, Prime Video, and several other streaming platforms

How can one live with dignity in the aftermath of a financial crisis? That question lies at the heart of El Planeta, a striking 2021 black-and-white Spanish comedy by filmmaker Amalia Ulman. Perhaps with style, the film seems to answer—and an eye to the absurd. The mother and daughter at the heart of El Planeta, played by Ullman herself and her real-life mother, have both of those qualities: Unemployed and facing an impending eviction, they stroll through the depressed coastal city of Gijon, Spain, where the Argentine-born Ullman grew up, decked in fur coats and Dior. Outside the walls of their cramped apartment, they’re the model of old European grandeur. Inside, they lie in a shared bed cooing over memories of their dead cat.

Despite their unfortunate circumstances, the duo’s day-to-day cares are minor: They sip coffee, fumble at romance, and try on clothes for a wedding they’ll never attend. El Planeta is a film of facades—of white lies, public appearances, and, of course, good old-fashioned scamming. (How else would they keep up the pretense of a glamorous life?) Yet somehow, artifice isn’t chilling in Ullman’s film; its 82 minutes are held together and propelled by the warmth of a carefully rendered familial relationship, and the deep—and very real—anxiety of knowing financial ruin awaits.

—Chloe Hadavas, associate editor