Each week Andrew Parasiliti, president of the award-winning news site Al-Monitor, and Amberin Zaman, Al-Monitor’s Senior Correspondent, interview newsmakers, journalists and thought leaders from the US and Middle East about the latest news and trends in the region.

Andrew has been writing about, and traveling in, the Middle East for over three decades, meeting and interviewing the region’s top political and civil society leaders. Since obtaining his PH.D from Johns Hopkins University, he has held appointments at Harvard University, the RAND Corporation, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and as foreign policy adviser to US Senator Chuck Hagel. Andrew writes Al-Monitor’s must read Takeaway and Week in Review columns, and is an adjunct political scientist at RAND and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Amberin travels the region for Al-Monitor, specializing in breaking news and analysis in Turkey, Iraq and Syria and writes the daily Briefly Turkey newsletter. Prior to Al-Monitor, she covered Turkey, the Kurds and conflicts in the region for The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph, The Los Angeles Times and the Voice of America, and was The Economist's Turkey correspondent between 1999 and 2016.