Who Governs a “Freedom City”? with Rick McGahey

The Strait of Hormuz: 23 Sailors. 5 Votes. A Hail of Bullets.

An all-Filipino crew of 23 had been stranded at anchor in the Persian Gulf for more than a month. There was one way out. Through the Strait of Hormuz — through mines, through Iranian gunboats, through a waterway Iran had declared its hunting ground. They voted four times. The answer was no. On the fifth vote, the dominos fell. This is the story of 23 sailors caught in the middle of a war they had no part in — and the most important waterway in the world effectively closed while 20,000 seafarers waited, wondered, and prayed.

Brothers to the Rescue: Operation Scorpion

Welcome to Season 10 of The Delve. A new sound. A new format. And stories that put you inside the moment rather than just briefing you on it. We're starting where the news won't — with four names almost nobody remembers. Armando Alejandre Jr. Carlos Costa. Mario de la Peña. Pablo Morales. Four unarmed American civilians shot out of the sky over international waters by the Cuban Air Force on February 24th, 1996. Last week, Raúl Castro was indicted for their murders. This is the story of Brothers to the Rescue, Operation Scorpion, a spy who kissed his wife goodbye at 3am and turned up on Cuban television the next day — and thirty years of four families waiting for justice.

Season 10 is coming. And it sounds different.

Season 9 took The Delve to 75 countries. Season 10 takes it somewhere else entirely. New sound design. New format. Cinematic, story-driven episodes that will make you feel like you're inside the story — not just hearing about it. Brothers to the Rescue. The Strait of Hormuz. No Limits. Puerto Rico. These are the stories Season 10 is built on. We'll see you very soon.

[BRIEFING] That's Not a Decolonization Conference

As a junior at Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh, Chalin took an African Liberation Movements class at the University of Pittsburgh. It changed how he saw the world. This week, a conference called the World Decolonization Forum opens in Istanbul — organized by a Turkish think tank, partnered with Al Jazeera and a Chinese government-adjacent university, held in the former capital of the Ottoman Empire. Its agenda dedicates a roundtable exclusively to Palestine. The Uyghurs don't have one. The Kurds don't have one. The Rohingya don't have one. The Sahrawi — whose cause is being actively undermined by the conference's own funders — don't have one. The question this episode asks is simple: if decolonization is the cause, why are tens of millions of colonized people missing from the conversation?

[BRIEFING] The Pope vs. The President: A 1,500-Year Pattern

When Pope Leo XIV — the first American pope in history — entered a public dispute with the White House over the war in the Middle East, Chalin was surprised. When JD Vance, a Catholic convert, started citing Catholic just war doctrine to justify a war the head of the Catholic Church says doesn't qualify, he was floored. Then he found an article. Turns out popes have been going toe to toe with the most powerful leaders of their era for fifteen centuries. From Attila the Hun to Napoleon to Hitler — the pattern is remarkably consistent. And it doesn't tend to end well for the world leader.