The Mishal Husain Show

For a brief moment in 2017, Anthony Scaramucci became a unit of time. His 11-day stint as White House communications director was so short-lived that it entered the political lexicon.

Almost a decade on, he has proven more durable than the joke. The Trump loyalist-turned-critic, Wall Street financier and podcast host remains a well-known figure in American political culture.

Scaramucci is still holding forth on the US president he once backed, as well as bets that have shaped his own career, including on crypto and Sam Bankman-Fried.

In this conversation with Mishal Husain, Scaramucci talks about his early life, his mistakes and his view of the political landscape ahead of the midterm elections.

Read this interview with Mishal’s notes on Bloomberg Weekend: www.bloomberg.com/latest/weekend-interview

03:00 - The midterms are “a longtime off”
06:58 - “I’m a loyalist”
08:35 - Who’s Trump’s successor?
08:55 - A president needs “name recognition”
11:41 - Meeting Trump for the first time
13:14 - Trump’s “phenomenal political instincts”
14:45 - Joining the Trump campaign
16:11 - “Donald Trump was talking to my Dad”
20:56 - Getting fired by Trump
24:16 - It was “humiliating”
25:56 - Meeting Sam Bankman-Fried
27:53 - “I made false assumptions”
31:18 - Bitcoin “I want to judge it over a five or 10 year period”
33:05 - Growing up on Long Island
35:17 - “The Mooch”
37:17 - The future of the Democrats
44:51 - History is a guide
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For more than 30 years, the Indian-born writer Amitav Ghosh has built a global following with novels that draw on deep historical research.
But his latest offering, Ghost-Eye, is more esoteric. The plot moves back and forth between India and the US, using past lives to explore the ties between the personal and the political.
The plot centers on a psychiatrist treating a 3-year-old who shocks her family by insisting she remembers a past life in a fishing community.
In this conversation with Mishal Husain, Ghosh explains why he’s finding it harder to write nowadays, how the memories of his childhood came flooding back during the Covid pandemic, why he sees capitalism as an obstacle to protecting the environment and thinks India has lost its way diplomatically.
Read this interview with Mishal’s notes on Bloomberg Weekend: www.bloomberg.com/latest/weekend-interview

03:37 - “She had a near-death experience”
05:37 - Reincarnated past lives
08:05 - “The world has lost all its wonder”
08:28 - Growing up in Kolkata
10:56 - Kolkata and New York are the “opposite ends of the telescope”
11:44 - “I really learned to think against the grain”
12:13 - Creating a “bubble of tranquility” to write
12:32 - Writing from “within the crisis”
14:45 - India has lost its way diplomatically
16:25 - Watching Zohran Mamdani grow up
19:12 - India and China
23:11 - Writing a story to be read in 100 years
27:31 - Writing books by hand
Contact The Mishal Husain Show [email protected]
Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’re now eight weeks on from the start of the US-Israel war with Iran, a conflict that’s been watched with increasing alarm by Wendy Sherman, architect of the 2015 nuclear deal between the US and Iran and a former deputy secretary of state.

Having spent years across the table from Iranian officials, she sees a far more volatile landscape today. In this conversation with Mishal Husain, she shares how her concerns go beyond the Middle East and explains how China and Russia are beneficiaries of the war.

Read this interview with Mishal’s notes on Bloomberg Weekend: www.bloomberg.com/latest/weekend-interview
03:13 - Iran’s “culture of resistance”
05:00 - “The regime now is more hardline”
05:33 - Iran won’t make concessions “easily”
09:38 - Control of the Strait of Hormuz
10:36 - “They have not bombed away all of Iran’s knowledge”
14:35 - Negotiating with Iran
17:13 - Negotiations aren’t about trust
23:47 - What might a US deal with Iran look like?
25:14 - Iran will want the US “out of the Middle East”
29:10 - China is “stronger”
32:50 Trump’s visit to China
41:19 - “I have found myself angrier”

Contact The Mishal Husain Show [email protected]

Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A new and radical take on Shakespeare’s Hamlet is out in US cinemas. The force behind it is actor, writer, producer and musician Riz Ahmed. He says the 400-year-old story has never felt more current.

Ahmed, Oscar-nominated for Sound of Metal and star of the Oscar-winning live-action short The Long Goodbye, has a new series on Prime Video called Bait. It’s a black comedy about an actor on the cusp of a life-changing role as James Bond.
In this conversation with Mishal Husain, Ahmed talks about creativity and politics, discusses his upcoming movie with Tom Cruise and how becoming a father affected his acting.

Read this interview with Mishal’s notes on Bloomberg Weekend: www.bloomberg.com/latest/weekend-interview

02:32 - Hamlet “never goes out of fashion"
03:39 - “The old order is falling apart”
05:00 - “Is it the world that’s gone crazy or is it me?”
07:50 - The dream of playing Hamlet
09:51 - To be, or not to be is “misunderstood”
13:40 - “It's authentic. I'm not acting”
17:00 - Bait “it’s a very personal show”
17:24 - Why Barbara Broccoli said yes to using Bond
21:43 - Looking for acceptance
22:34 - “Culture works in cycles”
25:04 - Acting was an extension of real life
28:20 - “I don’t like being pinned down”
28:42 - SNL UK
30:01 - Working with Tom Cruise
32:21 - “My weekends are really simple”
Contact The Mishal Husain Show [email protected]
Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After almost six weeks of war, how did Pakistan manage to get the US and Iran to talk?

Amid a still-fragile situation in the Middle East, that question sits at the heart of this conversation with Maleeha Lodhi. She has served as Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, as well as to the UK and United Nations.

For her, the Islamabad talks mark a moment of wider significance, as the middle powers demonstrate their capacity to influence geopolitics.

Read this interview with Mishal’s notes on Bloomberg Weekend: www.bloomberg.com/latest/weekend-interview

02:55 - Pakistan as a peacebroker
05:00 - Field Marshal Asim Munir and President Trump
07:49 - Pakistan and Iran
10:00 - Economic pain in Pakistan
13:40 - Israel and Lebanon
14:45 - “I'd like to be optimistic”
19:30 - US miscalculations
22:00 - “US dominance is fading”
23:00 Middle powers can “shape geopolitics”
23:53 - Is China a winner?
29:00 - Trump’s Board of Peace
29:50 - “Common ground can be found”
Contact The Mishal Husain Show [email protected]
Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.