Hold Your Fire! is my favorite podcast for substantive insight on conflict and peacebuilding. I find the variety of topics nicely curated and sufficiently diverse to provide one with a good basis of understanding of key conflict dynamics taking place across the globe. The insight offered by Crisis Group analysts is concise, nuanced, balanced, and digestible. My only wish is that they offered more episodes, but perfection takes time, and there are always the Crisis Group’s sister podcasts, The Horn and others.

I have loved this podcast from the beginning, and the experts and the discussion are always enlightening. I feel like I’ve learned so much from it, particularly about regions of the world I didn’t know much about before. However, this year, it feels like every other episode is about Russia/Ukraine. Yes, it is an incredibly important conflict, but it isn’t the only one. It feels like many current ongoing crises and conflicts around the world are being overlooked due to the podcast relating everything back to this essentially European conflict. Even when they do cover other parts of the world, it’s always somehow brought back to a discussion of Russia. I wish they would just release a second podcast for all Russia/Ukraine-related analysis and reserve this one for a variety of updates and analysis of all conflicts around the world. I love this podcast, but have been frustrated by this lately.

Extremely insightful analysis and discussion — including of complex legal and policy issues, but in an accessible way for the wider public. Stephen Pomper is particularly outstanding. Bravo!