China's disastrous first president

Hegemonic suicide and medieval peasant brain

Seva Gunitsky is author of Aftershocks: Great Powers and Domestic Reforms in the Twentieth Century. He studies Russian and late Soviet politics, international relations, and hegemonic transitions and their global effects as associate professor and George Ignatieff Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto, and writes the excellent newsletter Hegemon [https://hegemon.substack.com/]. We chatted on March 24, 2026. The New York Times top headline that day was: “Trump Says U.S. Is Negotiating End to War, but Iranians Push Back [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/world/middleeast/iran-war-trump.html].” Our discussion included these topics (the links are to relevant articles by Seva): * Hegemonic suicide [https://hegemon.substack.com/p/2025-hegemonic-suicide-and-other]: The U.S.S.R. and the current American crisis. * The fatal misunderstanding in Trump, Stephen Miller and gang’s tough guy reading of Thucydides’ aphorism “The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must [https://hegemon.substack.com/p/the-strong-will-suffer-what-they].” * The return of Medieval Peasant Brain [https://hegemon.substack.com/p/how-to-monetize-the-rise-of-medieval?] and antisemitism. * Personalist leadership [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/personalist-global-order] in Russia, China, and the U.S. * Why Putin and Xi might not like their wished-for multipolar world [https://hegemon.substack.com/p/you-got-your-multipolar-world-now]. * The Three Gulf Wars of American hegemony [https://hegemon.substack.com/p/the-three-gulf-wars-of-american-hegemony]: Stages of U.S. decline in the wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, and against Iran in 2026. * “The Epstein Files and Russiagate are the same thing [https://hegemon.substack.com/p/the-epstein-files-and-russiagate].” * What outsiders see that Americans miss about how much worse things can get. The Rhyming Chaos podcast is produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova, and edited by Cadre Scripts [https://cadrescripts.com/]. The theme music is Paper Boy, composed and performed on the guzheng by Wu Fei [https://wufeimusic.substack.com/]. Our closing music is Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, arranged and performed by Wu Fei. Our cover art is by Li Yunfei [https://www.cpgill.art/]. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, and if you want to support what we’re doing, take out a paid subscription at rhymingchaos.com [https://www.rhymingchaos.com/]. Get full access to Rhyming Chaos at www.rhymingchaos.com/subscribe [https://www.rhymingchaos.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

"That devil has to follow you everywhere"—activism in Singapore

Singapore is a business-friendly, illiberal democracy, or what some political scientists call a “competitive authoritarian regime,” or a “façade electoral” system. So there’s much in that island nation for Americans to learn about their own future. Kirsten Han is a great guide: She runs We, The Citizens [https://www.wethecitizens.net/], a newsletter covering Singapore from a rights-based perspective, and is the managing editor of Mekong Review [https://mekongreview.com/], an Asia-focused literary journal. She is also a key member of the Transformative Justice Collective [https://transformativejusticecollective.org/], which works towards the end of the death penalty and Singapore’s war on drugs. In this conversation, we discuss: * Singapore’s political landscape * The illusion of democracy, media control, and freedom of expression * Activism and civil society in Singapore * The LGBTQ community and social change * Public perceptions of the death penalty * Cultural context of drug policies, sex work vs. drugs * The loneliness of activism * How activists are targeted in Singapore The Rhyming Chaos podcast is produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova, and edited by Cadre Scripts [https://cadrescripts.com/]. The theme music is Paper Boy, composed and performed on the guzheng by Wu Fei [https://wufeimusic.substack.com/]. Our closing music is Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, arranged and performed by Wu Fei. Our cover art is by Li Yunfei [https://www.cpgill.art/]. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, and if you want to support what we’re doing, take out a paid subscription at rhymingchaos.com [https://www.rhymingchaos.com/]. Get full access to Rhyming Chaos at www.rhymingchaos.com/subscribe [https://www.rhymingchaos.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

China's disastrous first president

Yuán Shìkǎi 袁世凯 was post-imperial China’s first president. He led China’s first exploration of democracy down a dead end, and his presidency was “disastrous,” says historian James Carter in an essay [https://thechinaproject.com/2020/12/09/the-legacy-of-yuan-shikai-chinas-disastrous-first-president/] that inspired this podcast. Jay is a historian and author of This Week in China’s History [https://www.sinicapodcast.com/s/this-week-in-chinas-history], and a number of books on China’s history [https://www.jayjamescarter.com/books]. Jay is also Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. In this episode, we discuss: * The Rise of Yuan Shikai * Yuan’s presidency and early governance * Political turmoil and assassination * Yuan as emperor * The aftermath of Yuan’s rule * The Warlord Era and personal loyalties * Yuan’s American advisor, Frank Johnson Goodnow * Astroturfing, democratic façades * Challenges in American higher education today The Rhyming Chaos podcast is produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova, and edited by Cadre Scripts [https://cadrescripts.com/]. The theme music is Paper Boy, composed and performed on the guzheng by Wu Fei [https://wufeimusic.substack.com/]. Our closing music is Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, arranged and performed by Wu Fei. Our cover art is by Li Yunfei [https://www.cpgill.art/]. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, and if you want to support what we’re doing, take out a paid subscription at rhymingchaos.com [https://www.rhymingchaos.com/]. Get full access to Rhyming Chaos at www.rhymingchaos.com/subscribe [https://www.rhymingchaos.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The end of a Mongolian-language newspaper

Soyonbo Borjgin is from Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China, where he worked as a journalist at the state-owned, Mongolian-language Inner Mongolia Life Weekly in the last few years of its existence. He later moved to New York, where has peed in a bottle while delivering packages for Amazon and worked for VOA’s Mongolian language service before getting DOGEd. It’s a long way from home: His grandfather was an illiterate shepherd who kept 30 dogs and ate wolf hearts; his father became a professor at Inner Mongolia University, then a prisoner for protesting in the 1989 demonstrations. The Inner Mongolia Life Weekly went defunct after the Chinese government’s reversal [https://madeinchinajournal.com/2020/09/07/chinas-second-generation-ethnic-policies-are-already-here/] of long-standing policies of encouraging ethnic minority language learning, which resulted in the cancellation of classes taught in Tibetan, Uyghur, and Mongolian languages, shuttering of vernacular media, and removal of street signs. Soyonbo had to attend re-education classes, and his career as a journalist in China was over. He now writes a newsletter [https://soyonbo.substack.com/] on Mongolian issues and recently published a fascinating piece in Equator [https://www.equator.org/articles/the-xi-jinping-school-of-journalism] that describes his experiences being re-educated in Xi Jinping thought after the crackdown on Mongolian identity. In this conversation, we discuss: * Growing up in a Mongolian-speaking community in Hohhot * Working as a journalist at Inner Mongolia Life Weekly * Storytelling and navigating censorship * Scandal and corruption at state media * Changes in China’s ethnic policies and language rights and the 2020 campaign against Mongolian language and identity * Shaman curses and creative resistance against language suppression * End of the Inner Mongolia Life Weekly * Cultural identity and language among Mongolians abroad * “Re-education” and the ways authoritarianism affects daily life * Exile and cultural adaptation The Rhyming Chaos podcast is produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova, and edited by Cadre Scripts [https://cadrescripts.com/]. The theme music is Paper Boy, composed and performed on the guzheng by Wu Fei [https://wufeimusic.substack.com/]. Our closing music is Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, arranged and performed by Wu Fei. Our cover art is by Li Yunfei [https://www.cpgill.art/]. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, and if you want to support what we’re doing, take out a paid subscription at rhymingchaos.com [https://www.rhymingchaos.com/]. Get full access to Rhyming Chaos at www.rhymingchaos.com/subscribe [https://www.rhymingchaos.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The CIA plot to kill the Congolese prime minister

Stuart Reid is author of The Lumumba Plot, a rip-roaring read about the CIA plan to assassinate the newly independent Congo’s charismatic prime minister Patrice Lumumba in 1960. Stuart is a Senior Fellow for History and Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has written for many publications including The New York Times and Bloomberg Businessweek, and interviewed world leaders for Foreign Affairs, including former Congo president Joseph Kabila, African billionaire mobile phone entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim, and French far-right leader Marine Le Pen. In this podcast we discuss: * Congo’s independence, Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, Belgian military intervention, and the Katanga secession * The misreading of Lumumba’s Soviet outreach and Cold War paranoia * Eisenhower’s assassination order * The poison plot * The torture and assassination of Lumumba, and the destruction of his body * The return of Lumumba’s tooth to the Congo * Mobutu’s three decades of U.S.-supported rule and its legacy * The Congo today * A pattern of failed American-sponsored regime change * Blowing up boats in the Caribbean and the history of failed U.S. covert actions For more on the Congo, listen to our episode Mobutu: The dictator who wanted to make Zaire great again [https://www.rhymingchaos.com/p/mobutu-the-dictator-who-wanted-to], with scholar Pedro Monaville. The Rhyming Chaos podcast is produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova, and edited by Cadre Scripts [https://cadrescripts.com/]. The theme music is Paper Boy, composed and performed on the guzheng by Wu Fei [https://wufeimusic.substack.com/]. Our closing music is Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, arranged and performed by Wu Fei. Our cover art is by Li Yunfei [https://www.cpgill.art/]. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, and if you want to support what we’re doing, take out a paid subscription at rhymingchaos.com [https://www.rhymingchaos.com/]. Get full access to Rhyming Chaos at www.rhymingchaos.com/subscribe [https://www.rhymingchaos.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]