Jake Sullivan and Jon Finer have had as sharp a career pivot since former President Joe Biden left office as Biden himself.

As national security advisers, they helped set the US’ course through an administration beset by international crises, from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine to the start of the global AI arms race, their decisions shaping the fate of countless lives around the world.

Now, they host a podcast together.

It’s been a learning curve. The show, The Long Game, is produced with Vox and debuted last fall. On Semafor’s Mixed Signals podcast, Sullivan said he’s had to adjust to sounding “like an actual human being as opposed to a talking points machine.”

But being on the outside has also forced the two men to reconsider the why of the US’ foreign policy, in a way that could resonate with listeners unconcerned with the intricacies of semiconductor sanctions or energy markets.

“The discipline of having to explain to people why something matters to a broad general audience makes you have to sharpen your thinking about what are American interests, what are the stakes,” Sullivan said. In Washington, “you didn’t have to stop and say, ‘How do I explain this? How do I contextualize this?’”

That gap — between the true DC wonks and the people who “aren’t marinating in this stuff all day,” as Finer put it — is crucial to understanding President Donald Trump’s way of thinking about foreign relations post-2024.

“He’s been able to come in and say, ‘Well, why are things working this way? Why does the United States do these sorts of things in the world?’” Finer said. “And [Trump] can drive a truck through the gap that we and others have left between what we consider to be just fundamentally important and the appreciation of that by many of the American people.”

Sullivan and Finer also gave us their review of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Taiwan gaffe (or was it?), explained how they avoid accidentally revealing classified information while speaking with guests, and told us what makes them nervous about today’s news ecosystem. You can listen to the full interview on Mixed Signals from Semafor Media wherever you get your podcasts.

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• Derek Thompson, co-author of Abundance, podcaster, and contributing writer at The Atlantic, explained why he believes everything is becoming television, whether democracy can withstand that transformation, and his pivot to independent media.
• …and Former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki joined Mixed Signals to talk about her journey from the White House briefing room to hosting a primetime show on MS NOW, and her thoughts on the current administration’s press strategy.