QF Doha Debates teams up with Foreign Policy to shed light on secretive work of high-stakes negotiators in new podcast

New podcast puts listeners behind the scenes of such historic deals as the Iran nuclear talks

THE Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Deal, the Bring Back our Girls campaign. How did these deals get made Conflicts don’t just get resolved on their own. Most are settled through a gruelling process of give-and-take, usually behind closed doors. On the new podcast The Negotiators’, Foreign Policy (FP) is teaming up with Qatar Foundation’s Doha Debates to put listeners in the highstakes negotiation room.

Hosted by FP Deputy Editor Jenn Williams, formerly Senior Foreign Editor at Vox and co-host of the Worldly podcast, each episode will feature one mediator, diplomat, or troubleshooter describing one dramatic and historic negotiation.

Throughout the first series of The Negotiators’, listeners will hear about a nuclear standoff, a hostage crisis, a gang mediation and much more successes and failures that shaped people’s lives. The series begins with Tom Rivett-Carnac, one of the two key negotiators of the Paris Climate Agreement, who worked as the Senior Advisor to Christiana Figueres when she was Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Other highlights include conversations with Zannah Mustapha, the lawyer who brokered the release of 103 women captured by Nigeria’s militant

Islamist group Boko Haram, and Wendy Sherman, the State Department’s lead negotiator for the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Amjad Atallah, managing director of Doha Debates, said: “This podcast series pulls back the curtain on the often secretive work of high-stakes negotiators, where lives, human rights, and national interests are at stake. Amid the global surge in political vitriol and gridlock, now is the ideal time to learn from these solutions-focused problem solvers.”

Dan Ephron, executive editor for podcasts at Foreign Policy, said: “I covered conflicts for years and so I can say from experience you rarely get a detailed account of how they’re resolved. The stories these negotiators tell are among the most dramatic I’ve heard as a journalist.”