If you’re reading this, and you’re not in some sort of irradiated, post-apocalyptic hellscape… well, you can thank our host Jeffrey Lewis. He studies nukes—who has them, who wants them, and how to prevent them from going off—so that we’re less likely to die in a nuclear war. The thing is, lots of people have jobs like this. They’re not celebrities and they’re not even politicians. They’re the people looking for solutions to problems that most people haven’t thought about yet, doing research that most people won’t ever hear about, and, of course, writing papers that most people are never going to read. But collectively, they’re making it a little less likely that war will break out, bombs will fall, and we’ll all die horribly. Call them wonks, call them cranks, call them idealists…we call them the reason we’re all still here.

This prologue establishes what you’ll hear this season: the type of international, non-governmental diplomacy that aims to keep civilization alive. Sometimes solutions are found in unlikely places… like a suitcase shop in Tehran.

This episode features an unlikely friend of Dr. Lewis: Max Angerholzer, CEO of George and Barbara Bush Foundation.