For Spotlight, FRANCE 24 François Picard is pleased to welcome Anne Applebaum, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of Autocracy, Inc. According to Applebaum, the upheaval in American diplomacy and foreign policy transcends any one administration. She describes a full-fledged transformation in the way the United States exerts power, pivoting away from leadership of a democratic alliance and toward a transactional, mafia-style politics that fuses ideology, private economic interests, personal relationships and geopolitical leverage.

The consequences are already extending beyond Washington. Canada, for example, has begun taking a far more proactive approach to strengthening its economic and political ties with the EU, India and China, as Carney actively seeks to reduce the country’s dependence on its once-cozy, decades-long relationship with the United States.

That shift is not limited to the American continent either. European governments are now being forced to confront a far less predictable and increasingly adversarial ally. At the same time, far-right movements abroad are finding new opportunities for political alignment as the United States embraces a harder-line, populist and increasingly autocratic style of politics at home and abroad. The resulting uncertainty is pushing countries around the world to quietly explore alternative economic and security relationships that leave them less dependent on an increasingly combative and impulsive American partner.

What makes Applebaum’s argument particularly striking is that she presents these developments as both a revolution and the beginnings of a counter-revolution. Trump’s political model has imitators, she argues, but it is also provoking fierce resistance. As confidence in American reliability declines, governments are beginning to hedge their bets for the long term, diversify their partnerships and imagine a world in which Washington is no longer automatically at the centre of the geopolitical universe.

This may not be the “America First” that US President Donald Trump envisioned. In Applebaum’s telling, we are no longer navigating only the uncharted waters of what America itself might be becoming, both at home and on the world stage. We may also be witnessing the emergence of a new world order in which the United States occupies a diminished role, brought about, paradoxically, by a fiercely isolationist policy intended to reassert American dominance.

In seeking to make the world bend once again to American power and self-described exceptionalism, the United States may instead be accelerating the world’s search for ways to live without it.

In this edition, FRANCE 24’s François Picard speaks to investigative journalist Emanuel Maiberg, Co-founder of 404 Media. As we embark on AI's uncharted waters, Maiberg has made a most unexpected discovery: the mass acquisition, dismemberment and scanning of rare books for use as training data. His investigation reveals a globalised and deliberately opaque supply chain in which books purchased through anonymous marketplaces arrive at large-scale scanning facilities, where their bindings are removed so that pages can be processed at great speed.

Maiberg’s analysis reaches far beyond the striking dystopian image of books being destroyed. What happens when knowledge changes form, changing ownership and accessibility? A book can circulate between readers, libraries and generations. Once destroyed and absorbed into a proprietary AI system, however, its contents survive virtually, encoded within a model whose outputs and rules of access are controlled by a private company. The paradox is striking: an industry seeking to ingest ever more human knowledge may simultaneously erase the very sources of that knowledge.

Maiberg does not to portray this process as a diabolical campaign to rid society of books. His more unsettling interpretation is that the destruction is driven by something more mundane: indifference. In the race to build increasingly capable AI systems, books become inputs to be optimized, and their destruction becomes an acceptable operational cost. That logic, he argues, belongs to a broader concentration of informational power already visible in search engines and social media. And now AI is taking it to a whole new level.

The investigation raises a larger question in the world of culture and academia: as more of the world's accumulated knowledge is mediated through AI systems, who controls the infrastructure through which that knowledge can be accessed?

François Picard is pleased to welcome Andrew Weissmann, Author, Professor at NYU School of Law, and former General Counsel of the FBI. He argues that as political deception and deliberate falsehoods become normalized, and politically useful, it erodes any trust we have in our government and our institutions. Drawing on his book, "Liar’s Kingdom", Weissmann questions why political leaders are above the law in the United States, while ordinary citizens risk serious legal consequences for making intentionally false statements.

For Weissmann, repeated political deception can foment mistrust in the system, operating alongside an expansion of executive power precisely when traditional checks and balances are under strain. Looking comparatively at Brazil, Britain, France and Germany, he asks whether democracies can impose meaningful consequences for intentional political lies without sacrificing freedom of expression. Ultimately, we find ourselves facing a veritable constitutional crisis: when does protecting political speech at all costs threaten democracy and leave democratic institutions vulnerable to the whims of autocratic rulers who dismiss the rule of law?

In this edition, FRANCE 24’s François Picard talks to Nick Rees-Roberts, Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University about Celine Dion. For Roberts, Dion’s extraordinary return to Paris reveals something larger than the enduring popularity of a global pop star. Her appeal lies in an unusual ability to bridge categories that contemporary celebrity and pop culture often keep separate: generations, languages, cultural hierarchies and even the apparent opposition between authenticity and carefully constructed stardom.

Dion’s longevity matters. Audiences have watched her evolve from a young Québécois Eurovision winner into a global superstar whose songs have become part of mass cultural memory. Yet Roberts argues that her continued relevance cannot be explained by the music alone. Her public persona – funny, eccentric and “unfiltered” – creates an impression of authenticity even as her appearances are embedded within highly sophisticated systems of fashion, branding and celebrity performance. The paradox is central to her appeal: audiences can recognize the machinery of stardom while still experiencing the person behind it as genuine.

Her Paris residency intensifies that dynamic. It transforms the traditional concert tour into a destination experience in which the audience travels to the star, combining fandom with tourism, fashion and the contemporary “experience economy”. At the same time, Dion’s return following her illness activates one of popular culture’s most powerful narratives: the comeback. Her performance at the 2024 Paris Olympics, her association with the Eiffel Tower and now her residency allow Paris itself to become part of that story.

Roberts also identifies a significant shift in Dion’s cultural status. Once dismissed by some critics through associations with sentimentality and kitsch, she has been progressively re-evaluated, with fashion playing an important role in transforming her from commercially successful singer into a figure of broader cultural legitimacy. What emerges is a particularly contemporary form of stardom: commercial yet intimate, meticulously constructed yet authentic, nostalgic yet capable of attracting new generations.

Perhaps most importantly, Dion’s success demonstrates the social power of popular culture. From destination concerts to thousands of people singing together at karaoke, fandom offers something beyond consumption: participation, belonging and collective memory. In Roberts’s analysis, the phenomenon surrounding Celine Dion is ultimately about why, in an increasingly mediated culture, people still want to gather together and feel part of something larger than themselves.

François Picard is pleased to welcome Eoghan Gilmartin, an award-winning investigative journalist and part of The Guardian team whose investigation examined links between IPCC authors and Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, including Saudi Aramco. Their findings take us to the intersection of climate science, political and economic interests, and institutional credibility, and into the politically consequential terrain of climate mitigation: how societies decide to respond to climate change.

The investigation identified 20 authors whose affiliations raised what Gilmartin describes as significant conflict-of-interest concerns, including 11 with links to Saudi Aramco or Saudi state institutions. This raises a broader question about the production of authoritative climate knowledge: what happens when researchers helping to assess the pathways for mitigating climate change also have ties to actors with substantial economic interests in the choices being assessed?

For Gilmartin, the deeper issue is one of transparency and institutional legitimacy, rather than evidence of illegality or scientific misconduct. The IPCC derives much of its authority from its reputation for independence. Even perceived conflicts of interest can therefore become consequential when researchers assess technologies and pathways that intersect with the economic interests of their employers or funders.

That tension becomes particularly significant in the debate over carbon capture and carbon dioxide removal. Gilmartin argues that the central dispute is not whether these technologies have a role in climate mitigation, but how large that role should be. His analysis places this debate within a broader struggle over the pace and character of decarbonisation: whether carbon-management technologies complement rapid reductions in fossil-fuel use, or risk becoming a rationale for postponing them.

The investigation therefore points to a larger question of climate governance: who helps define the technological pathways presented as viable, necessary or desirable. And how can institutions safeguard scientific credibility when those pathways carry enormous geopolitical and economic consequences?

François Picard welcomes Scott Anderson, journalist, war correspondent and best-selling author of "King of Kings: The Fall of the Shah and the Revolution That Forged Modern Iran". For Anderson, there is a striking parallel between 1979 and 2026: Washington's persistent misreading of Iran, and the consequences that follow.

“Over the years, the CIA and the Pentagon have war-gamed out war scenarios with Iran twelve or thirteen times,” Anderson explains. “And in every scenario, the first thing the Iranian government does is seize or close the Strait of Hormuz. That was a given. So how did that not occur to the Trump administration in starting this war?”

Now, nearly seven months into the US war with Iran, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has delivered a defiant address to the UN General Assembly, accusing the United States of “terrorism” a day after President Donald Trump threatened to “annihilate” the Islamic Republic if a deal could not be reached. Yet Pezeshkian also left the door open to diplomacy, insisting that Iran was ready for negotiations while refusing to accept “the language of force”. His message to Trump was unequivocal: “Yes they did hit us, but we did not bend the knee.”

But Anderson’s analysis goes well beyond an intelligence failure. He portrays history as profoundly contingent. The Islamic Republic was not the predetermined destination of the 1979 revolution: liberals, leftists, nationalists and religious forces competed over what would replace the monarchy, while Ayatollah Khomeini proved far more politically adept than many of his allies and adversaries had anticipated. The revolution, in Anderson’s telling, could have taken many different paths.

Nearly half a century later, however, the Islamic Republic no longer depends on a single revolutionary leader. It has become an entrenched political system, with institutions and constituencies invested in its survival. Anderson’s warning, then, is not that history simply repeats itself, but that the persistent misreading of Iran, its internal dynamics, sources of resilience and capacity for resistance, carries its own dangers. The outcome may be very different from 1979, but the consequences of getting Iran wrong could prove equally far-reaching.

FRANCE 24’s Gavin Lee speaks to Scandinavia Correspondent Trine Villeman for some analysis on how Sweden has voted in the 2026 election.

François Picard is pleased to welcome Washington Post national security reporter Adam Taylor. The Forbidden Stories consortium, involving France 24 and 25 other media outlets, has spent six months investigating the thousands of people abruptly deported from the United States to third countries, amid concerns over due process and their ability to challenge their removal. The investigation examines how the Trump administration has made deportation a major focus of both US immigration and foreign policy.

It raises fundamental questions about due process and non-refoulement: the principle that people should not be returned to places where they face persecution or torture - as deportees can be sent to countries with which they have no connection and, in some cases, where they may face persecution, torture or prolonged detention.

"The real impetus comes from Stephen Miller"

Taylor attributes the broader shift to Stephen Miller and a small group of allies within the Trump administration. His description is that officials have redirected parts of the State Department’s refugee-related machinery toward negotiating deportation arrangements with third countries that rely heavily on US humanitarian aid.

The State Department’s changing role

According to Adam Taylor, the investigation found that third-country deportation arrangements have become a major "diplomatic" priority for the State Department. A relatively small new office, described as the The Office of Remigration, is involved in this work, parts of the State Department’s refugee machinery have been redirected toward negotiating these arrangements.

"Flooding the zone”

Taylor describes the sheer volume of deportation arrangements and cases as making it difficult for journalists, lawyers, legislators and advocacy groups to scrutinize and challenge each development. Stephen Miller as a deterrent message, a test of legal protections, and part of a volume of cases that risks overwhelming scrutiny and desensitizing the public.

As Taylor explains, this goes far beyond an expansion of immigration enforcement. He points to an institutional transformation in which the machinery of American diplomacy itself has been dramatically redirected toward deportation whereby agreements with foreign governments become a central instrument of migration policy.

Taylor also identifies a less visible consequence: normalization through scale. As deportations multiply, he suggests, individual cases risk losing their ability to command public attention. The investigation therefore shifts the lens from isolated stories of removal to the diplomatic and bureaucratic infrastructure making those removals possible - revealing how immigration policy can reshape not only borders, but the priorities and purposes of the institutions charged with conducting American foreign policy.

The legal dimension Taylor emphasizes is especially timely: on September 18, 2026, the First Circuit upheld a ruling that the administration's third-country deportation policy was unlawful because migrants had not been given sufficient notice and opportunity to raise fear-based objections. The administration, meanwhile, insists that third-country removals are necessary for people subject to final removal orders who cannot be returned to their countries of origin.

The Trump administration will most likely fight the ruling, so it may end up going back to the Supreme Court. While the High Court has not yet issued a final ruling on the policy's ultimate legality they have already intervened twice to allow third-country deportations to continue while litigation continues.