Frontlines and Backrooms

Frontlines & Backrooms is a documentary-style podcast about the world’s most complex conflicts — told with context, precision, and humanity. Hosted by journalist Vladimir Bobetić, the series blends lived experience, deep research, and unfiltered conversations with historians, activists, diplomats, and eyewitnesses. From conflict zones to corridors of power around the world — this is a space for nuance in a world drowning in noise. No shouting. No spin. No propaganda. Just conversations that matter.

Frontlines and Backrooms is a news podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 64 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts Frontlines and Backrooms, a news show with 64 episodes published.

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  Episode #3

  Alex Wellerstein | Who Controls the Bomb?

  Sep 23, 20261h 11mS3

  A president can order a nuclear strike. Controlling what happens next is another matter. Nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein joins Vladimir Bobetic to talk about what Truman really knew before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how military planners shape presidential choices, and why a smaller nuclear bomb offers no guarantee of control. We also talk about NUKEMAP, his tool for showing what a nuclear explosion would do to places we know. Wellerstein is an associate professor at Stevens Institute of Technology and the author of The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age. Get the book: HarperCollins | Amazon Try NUKEMAP: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

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  Episode #2

  Elke Schwarz | War on AI Autopilot

  Sep 17, 20261h 6mS3

  AI is already helping militaries identify targets, rank them and act at machine speed. Professor Elke Schwarz explains why the “human in the loop” may be little more than a fig leaf when operators have only seconds to approve a system’s recommendation. We discuss Palantir’s Maven, Claude, targeting in Iran and Gaza, private technology companies inside the kill chain, autonomous weapons and the danger of AI agents entering nuclear command. Elke Schwarz is Professor of Political Theory at Queen Mary University of London and author of Death Machines: The Ethics of Violent Technologies . If you're tired of noise, outrage and five-minute opinions, subscribe to Frontlines & Backrooms. Every week, we sit down with the people who have spent decades researching, negotiating, and shaping the worldwe live in.

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  Episode #1

  Ankit Panda | Managed Armageddon

  Sep 11, 20261h 4mS3

  The world is entering a nuclear era with more players, fewer restraints, and a dangerous new confidence that escalation can be controlled. In the opening episode of Season 3, Vladimir Bobetic speaks with Ankit Panda, Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon. Can nuclear war begin by mistake? Does the nuclear taboo truly exist if nuclear states plan for nuclear war all the time? Why do US planners still believe such a war can be won, and why might North Korea pose a more immediate danger than countries with much larger arsenals? The conversation also examines China’s nuclear expansion, the collapse of arms control, possible proliferation among US allies, and the risk that autonomous AI systems could become catalysts for a nuclear crisis.

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  Episode #25

  Dina Matar | Western Media as a Propaganda Tool for Israel

  Jul 22, 20261h 2mS2

  Recorded in December 2025, this conversation remains painfully current. Dina Matar, Professor of Political Communication and Arab Media at SOAS University of London, speaks about the role Western media has played in shaping how Gaza is understood: the erasure of Palestinian history, the reduction of victims to statistics, the use of “both sides” language in a deeply unequal conflict, and the silencing of Palestinian journalists and voices. She describes this as epistemic violence — violence against who is allowed to produce knowledge, whose testimony is trusted, and whose suffering is recognized as human. If you’re tired of noise, outrage and five-minute opinions, subscribe to Frontlines & Backrooms. Every week, we sit down with the people who have spent decades researching, negotiating and shaping the world we live in.

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  Episode #23

  Jeremy Shapiro | Europe Can No Longer Count on America

  Jul 5, 20261h 2mS2

  Just days before the 2026 NATO Summit in Ankara, Dr. Jeremy Shapiro joins Frontlines & Backrooms to discuss the future of the transatlantic alliance. As Washington shifts its strategic focus toward the Indo-Pacific and questions over burden-sharing grow louder, Europe is being forced to confront a difficult reality: can it continue to rely on the United States as its ultimate security guarantor? We discuss NATO, European rearmament, America's strategic priorities, Russia, deterrence, and whether the alliance is adapting to a new geopolitical reality—or approaching one of the most consequential moments in its history.

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