Alternate Shots with Richard Haass and John Ellis
Alternate Shots with Richard Haass and John Ellis
Podcast Description
The idea of the podcast is this: We talk about “three things” that are interesting, important or both. The third thing will be about something from the world of sports.Richard is a veteran diplomat (he served in the Carter, Reagan, G.H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush administrations). He was president of the Council on Foreign Relations for two decades (he’s now president emeritus). He’s a Senior Counselor at Center|View Partners, a prominent New York City-based investment banking firm. He also distributes a weekly newsletter — Home and Away — on Friday mornings. Home and Away addresses matters domestic and foreign. John is the founder and editor of News Items, a daily newsletter that covers global politics, financial news, advanced technologies and science. He has been in and around the news business for virtually all of his adult life, working for NBC News (as a political analyst), The Boston Globe (as a columnist), CNBC, Fox News, and Newscorp. In 2016, he launched News Items as a morning brief for executives and editors at Fox and Newscorp. In 2018, News Items became The Wall Street Journal CEO Council's morning newsletter. He restarted News Items as an independent newsletter in August of 2019.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
Explores themes such as geopolitical strategies, political analyses, and sports commentary. Episodes dive into topics like presidential summit preparations, the Russia-Ukraine conflict implications, voting trends in American politics, and sports events such as the Ryder Cup.

The idea of the podcast is this: We talk about “three things” that are interesting, important or both. The third thing will be about something from the world of sports.
Richard is a veteran diplomat (he served in the Carter, Reagan, G.H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush administrations). He was president of the Council on Foreign Relations for two decades (he’s now president emeritus). He’s a Senior Counselor at Center|View Partners, a prominent New York City-based investment banking firm. He also distributes a weekly newsletter — Home and Away — on Friday mornings. Home and Away addresses matters domestic and foreign.
John is the founder and editor of News Items, a daily newsletter that covers global politics, financial news, advanced technologies and science. He has been in and around the news business for virtually all of his adult life, working for NBC News (as a political analyst), The Boston Globe (as a columnist), CNBC, Fox News, and Newscorp. In 2016, he launched News Items as a morning brief for executives and editors at Fox and Newscorp. In 2018, News Items became The Wall Street Journal CEO Council’s morning newsletter. He restarted News Items as an independent newsletter in August of 2019.
This week on Alternate Shots, John Ellis and Richard Haass look ahead to the Trump-Xi summit and ask whether, in this instance, an uneventful meeting would be preferable to a consequential one. Haass worries not about failure, but about the wrong kind of success: a commercial deal purchased at the expense of Taiwan, American allies, or U.S. leverage on Russia and Iran. From there, they turn to AI, where the United States and China dominate the field but lack the trust, process, and perhaps urgency required to build meaningful guardrails. They also assess the Houthis’ expanding role in the Red Sea, the widening maritime crisis, Saudi Arabia’s diminishing options, and America’s munitions shortfall, which points to a deeper conceptual failure in U.S. defense planning. Finally: press access, a possible blue wave, the Giants, and the Jets.
Hosted by John Ellis and Richard Haass

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