LEAD · GEOPOLITICS

Two of the three main exit polls now put the blocs level at 51 seats. With a fifth of the vote counted, the coalition leads and Ra’am sits 589 votes below the threshold.

ABOUT 6 MINUTES

WHAT HAPPENED

Israelis voted in record numbers on Tuesday, and by morning the exit polls and the early count told different stories. Turnout reached 77.7% when polls closed at 10 p.m., with 5,695,682 votes cast, the highest since 1999 and 7.1 points above 2022. ^[1]

The first exit polls put the change bloc led by the former military chief Gadi Eisenkot ahead, with 52 or 53 seats against 50 for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc. Updated polls after midnight erased that lead. Kan 11 and Channel 13 now put both blocs at 51 seats, with 18 for the Arab parties; Channel 12 puts Netanyahu’s bloc ahead, 52 to 49. A government needs 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. In all three, Likud is the largest party with 27 seats, ahead of Eisenkot’s Yashar! with 21 or 22. ^[1][5]

The official count points the other way, for now. With about a fifth of the vote counted at 3:54 a.m. Israel time, Likud had 23.4%, Yashar! 15.7% and Beyahad, the alliance of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, 8.5%. Turned into seats, that gives Netanyahu’s coalition 63, the change bloc 49 and the Joint List 8. ^[4][3] Ra’am, the party of Mansour Abbas, stood at 3.20%, 589 votes short of the 3.25% threshold. Early counts are not a sample of the whole vote, and soldiers’ and other double-envelope ballots are counted last, into Thursday. ^[5] Official results are due on Nov. 4. ^[6]

WHY IT MATTERS

Both leaders claimed the night. Speaking when the first polls favored him, Eisenkot told supporters: “We made history! The public has voted for change.” He called on Netanyahu to retire, said another election would be a mistake and added: “Netanyahu is a caretaker prime minister.” ^[7] The result showed a “complete lack of confidence in Netanyahu and the October 7 government,” he said. ^[8] Netanyahu answered that “Likud is the largest party in Israel” and that the right has a “decisive majority among the Zionist public.” He called the Arab parties “anti-Zionist” and ruled out working with them. ^[9]

That is where the numbers stop adding up. In the updated polls, the opposition and the Arab parties hold 68 or 69 seats together, but both main candidates have ruled out governing with Arab parties. ^[1][10] Outside support for a minority government is still possible, Newsweek noted. Avigdor Liberman, whose Yisrael Beytenu sits in the change bloc, did not repeat his pledge to rule out relying on Arab parties, and Naama Lazimi of the Democrats said the bloc should “sit with Ra’am.” ^[2]

The day also brought an accusation. Police arrested three Ra’am officials and seized NIS 24,000, about $7,900, including envelopes marked “a gift from the Islamic movement.” Netanyahu said: “They’re trying to steal the election.” Abbas replied that “Netanyahu is lying and inciting.” Dean Livne, acting director general of the Central Elections Committee, called it a “localized case,” and the committee said there were “no indications of systematic tampering.” Yashar! said Likud was “laying the groundwork to challenge the results.” ^[11]

A stalemate has a default. Netanyahu stays in office as caretaker until a new government is sworn in, and if no one can form one, Israel holds another election. ^[12] That is why a deadlock could favor him, The Straits Times noted. ^[13]

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

Once official results are published, President Isaac Herzog consults every party in the new Knesset and must give one member the mandate within seven days, by Nov. 11. The Knesset is sworn in on Nov. 10. The nominee then has up to 42 days, including an extension, to form a government. ^[12][6] If the count moves a list across the threshold, about four seats change hands, enough to change who Herzog asks first. ^[5]

BEST MOVES

WHAT TO WATCH

IN BRIEF

TURKEY · ENERGY

Turkey wants to produce 1 million barrels of oil equivalent a day, Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar told the Turkey Energy Summit, against about 300,000 now and 550,000 to 600,000 planned by 2028. He said new acquisitions or partnerships abroad, in Africa and Lebanon, could come by year-end, on top of the state oil company TPAO’s deals in Libya, Pakistan and Somalia and a stake in Kirkuk. European buyers are offering to buy Turkish gas, he said. ^[14]

He also said fuel loading at the Akkuyu nuclear plant is targeted within weeks, that talks on new plants continue with Russia, South Korea and China, and that a “big project” with Italy’s Eni is coming. The National Energy 2040 Plan is due next week. ^[15][16]

The move: If you sell oilfield services or equipment, contact TPAO’s foreign partners now. The year-end deals will set the next round of tenders.

THE GULF · SECURITY

Saudi air defenses intercepted two ballistic missiles fired toward Riyadh on Tuesday. Debris damaged a building, a construction site and a vehicle, with no injuries. Three more missiles aimed at the Eastern Province were also intercepted. ^[17][18][19]

The Houthis said they hit the Ras Tanura refinery. Saudi Arabia has not confirmed it, and a fire near the terminal was reported contained. ^[21][19] The attacks came a day after envoys of the Mecca defense pact met Iran’s leaders in Tehran. ^[20]

The move: If you have staff in Riyadh or the Eastern Province, check that each office has a named shelter point and that emergency contact lists are current.

HEALTH

Congo has confirmed 10,060 Ebola cases and 4,887 deaths across eight provinces, a fatality rate of 48.6%. The outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo strain. ^[22][23]

It has crossed borders. Kenya has reported nine cases and two deaths, and Nigeria one imported case. Uganda and France have no active cases. ^[23][24]

The move: If staff travel to Congo, Kenya or Nigeria, brief them on symptoms before they go and confirm that your travel-health cover includes medical evacuation.

SPECIAL · DEFENSE

A neutron weapon kills mainly by radiation and a high-altitude burst can black out electronics across millions of square miles, with no mushroom cloud overhead.

Graphic: The Other Post. Data: Glasstone & Dolan (1977); HDIAC/DTIC (2016) citing U.S. Army Textbook of Military Medicine; LLNL; EPRI (2019); APS News (2022); FEMA/HHS (2022); RERF; NASA.

Most leaders carry one picture of nuclear use: a flash, a fireball, a flattened city. That picture comes from Aug. 6, 1945. Two Cold War ideas break it. One is the enhanced-radiation weapon, better known as the neutron bomb, which shifts the harm from blast toward radiation. The other is a burst far above the atmosphere that destroys nothing on the ground directly but sends an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) across a region the size of a continent. Both were tested in the 1960s or later. Neither has been used in war.

The question is live again. On Jan. 27, 2026, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set its Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest in its history ^[25]. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in June 2025 that “a new nuclear arms race” was emerging as all nine nuclear-armed states modernize, with about 12,241 warheads worldwide in January 2025 ^[26]. In April 2024 Russia vetoed a U.S.-Japanese Security Council draft reaffirming the ban on nuclear weapons in orbit; the vote was 13 to one with China abstaining ^[27]. Russia’s envoy called the draft “a cynical ploy” and, with China, proposed an amendment banning weapons “of any kind” in space, which failed ^[27]. This piece stays with public, high-level sources and describes effects, not engineering.

Nine states hold those weapons. SIPRI’s June 2026 yearbook puts the total at 12,187 in January 2026, down from 12,241 a year earlier: about 5,420 for Russia, 5,042 for the United States, 620 for China, 370 for France, 225 for Britain, 190 for India, 170 for Pakistan, 90 for Israel and 60 for North Korea, figures the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) also publishes ^[28][29]. Israel neither confirms nor denies having nuclear weapons, a policy known in Hebrew as amimut, and has never joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ^[30][31]. SIPRI assigns its 90 warheads to aircraft, Jericho ballistic missiles and, less certainly, submarine-launched cruise missiles ^[28]. Claims of more advanced designs, from Mordechai Vanunu’s 1986 disclosures to the Sunday Times and Seymour Hersh’s 1991 book The Samson Option, which said U.S. designers judged Israel capable of a neutron bomb, remain unverified; FAS researchers consider single-stage boosted fission warheads more likely ^[30]. A 1979 flash seen by a U.S. Vela satellite remains unresolved ^[30]. We found no public source documenting an Israeli neutron-weapon deployment or an EMP doctrine.

The Weapon Sold as Sparing the City

The neutron bomb was the idea of Samuel Cohen, a physicist who first proposed it in 1958, according to a 2016 review by the Homeland Defense and Security Information Analysis Center (HDIAC), part of the U.S. Defense Technical Information Center ^[32]. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which designed the U.S. versions, says the weapon “provided a relatively high fraction of the prompt weapon output in the form of neutrons” and was meant to stop massed armored forces in Europe, since crews inside tanks are shielded from blast far better than from radiation ^[33].

Politics nearly killed it before deployment. Press reports in June 1977 drew a sharply negative reaction in Europe, the State Department’s Office of the Historian records, and President Jimmy Carter’s handling of the issue frustrated European leaders ^[34]. On April 7, 1978, Carter deferred production while modernizing the delivery systems, “leaving open the option of installing the enhanced radiation elements” ^[35]. President Ronald Reagan approved production in 1981 but kept the warheads in storage in the United States ^[34].

Two U.S. designs reached the stockpile in 1981, according to Livermore: the W79 artillery shell and the W70 Mod 3 for the Lance missile ^[33]. Opponents argued that a weapon marketed as limited would lower the threshold for nuclear use ^[33]. Congress ordered the enhanced-radiation capability removed from the W79 in 1985, and all U.S. battlefield nuclear weapons were withdrawn after President George H.W. Bush’s address of Sept. 27, 1991 ^[33]. The last W79 was dismantled at the Pantex plant in Texas in 2003, the Arms Control Association reported ^[36]. Others tested too. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev told visiting U.S. senators in 1978 that the Soviet Union had tested such a device “years ago,” France tested one in 1980 and China tested one in 1988 but did not deploy it, HDIAC reports ^[32]. All of these states have, “to all external appearances, dismantled or mothballed their arsenals,” the review concludes ^[32].

What Changes, and What Doesn’t

A standard nuclear explosion releases roughly 50% of its energy as blast, 35% as heat and 15% as nuclear radiation, per the U.S. government’s reference work, Glasstone and Dolan’s The Effects of Nuclear Weapons ^[37]. HDIAC, citing the U.S. Army’s Textbook of Military Medicine, puts an enhanced-radiation weapon at about 30% blast, 20% heat and 50% prompt radiation ^[32]. The lethal range of that prompt radiation, it says, matches a fission weapon with 10 times the overall yield ^[32].

Three practical differences follow from those figures, all drawn from the same public sources:

Who is harmed and how. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only about 15% of the injured had radiation injuries alone; blast and burns did most of the harm ^[32]. A neutron weapon reverses that balance near the target ^[32].

What still stands. The “kills people, spares buildings” slogan overstates it. The blast share falls but does not vanish, so heavy damage remains near ground zero; the claimed gain is a smaller radius of destruction for a given radiation reach ^[32][37].

What lingers. Neutrons make soil and metal near ground zero radioactive for a time, HDIAC notes, while hydrogen-rich materials such as water and some plastics stop neutrons best ^[32].

The Flash Over the Pacific

On July 9, 1962, the U.S. Starfish Prime test detonated a 1.4-megaton device about 400 kilometers above Johnston Island in the Pacific ^[38]. In Hawaii, about 1,445 kilometers away, streetlights failed and a microwave telephone link on Kauai was damaged ^[38]. Glasstone and Dolan record the “failure of 30 strings” of streetlights ^[37]; a 1989 Sandia National Laboratories paper later questioned how much of that was due to the pulse ^[39]. The larger loss was in orbit. The burst seeded an artificial radiation belt that damaged or shortened the lives of several satellites, including the first commercial communications satellite, Telstar 1, NASA records ^[40].

The Soviet Union’s Test 184, on Oct. 22, 1962, gave clearer evidence on land. A 300-kiloton burst about 290 kilometers above Kazakhstan induced currents of about 2,500 amps in an overhead line, started a fire at the Karaganda power plant and shut down a roughly 1,000-kilometer buried cable between Aqmola and Almaty, according to a 2014 review of the test record ^[41]. The 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty ended such tests, and the 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans placing nuclear weapons in orbit ^[42][43].

Three Pulses, Three Kinds of Damage

The pulse arrives in three parts, as described by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the U.S. utility-funded research body ^[44]:

E1 lasts nanoseconds. It couples into electronics and short cables and can disrupt or damage digital protective relays, communications and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems that run grids, pipelines and water plants ^[44].

E2 resembles a nearby lightning strike. EPRI expects no transmission impacts from it on its own ^[44].

E3 lasts seconds to minutes. Like a severe solar storm, it drives quasi-direct currents through long power lines, which can saturate large transformers and cause regional voltage collapse ^[44].

Reach is the point. EPRI calculates that a burst 200 kilometers up exposes a circular area of about 3 million square miles ^[44]. No blast, heat or radiation would be felt on the ground ^[45].

How Bad Would It Be? The Record Is Split

The U.S. EMP Commission, set up by Congress, reported in 2004 and 2008 and warned that a long loss of power would hit water, food, fuel, finance and telecommunications at once ^[45]. Its chairman, William Graham, and chief of staff, Peter Vincent Pry, wrote to the House Homeland Security Committee in October 2017 that a grid shutdown could lead “to the death within a year of up to 90 percent of all Americans” ^[46]. A 2019 peer-reviewed review in Energy, Sustainability and Society found “no published model disclosing how these numbers were arrived at” and noted that Graham’s own earlier testimony gave no death estimate ^[45].

The engineering is disputed too. EPRI’s 2019 study for about 60 utilities found that widespread damage to large transformers is unlikely and that recovery could resemble past large blackouts if E1 protection is in place ^[44]. Former commission staff replied that EPRI used an E3 field of about 41% of the commission’s recommended threat level and that commission tests had seen relay upsets at 3 to 5 kilovolts ^[47]. The nearest real-world analog is natural: a solar storm on March 13, 1989 collapsed the Hydro-Québec grid, leaving 6 million people without power for nine hours ^[45].

What Lingers for Years

How long a nuclear burst stays dangerous depends first on its height. A burst whose fireball does not touch the ground leaves “minimal or negligible” local fallout, U.S. federal planning guidance says; Hiroshima and Nagasaki were air bursts “without significant local fallout” ^[48]. A 1962 Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission survey concluded that “very few individuals, if any,” in either city received significant residual radiation from external sources ^[49]. A burst at or near the surface pulls soil into the cloud, and local fallout “will probably be high” ^[48].

Most fallout fades fast. For every sevenfold increase in time, the dose rate falls tenfold ^[37], and fallout gives off more than 80% of its energy in the first day ^[50]. Iodine-131, with an eight-day half-life, concentrates in the thyroid when swallowed, including through milk ^[37]. The decades-long legacy is strontium-90, which can lodge in bone, and cesium-137, with half-lives of about 29 and 30 years. Ten years on, they make up 36% and 46% of fallout’s remaining activity ^[37][50].

The 1954 Bravo shot, fired about 7 feet above a reef at Bikini Atoll, contaminated more than 7,000 square miles ^[37]. Bikini was declared safe in 1968 and its returning residents were moved out again in 1978 ^[51]. In 1998 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) advised against permanent resettlement “under the present radiological conditions,” mainly because of cesium in local food ^[51]. At Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, site of about 460 Soviet tests, the IAEA found “little or no residual radioactivity” across most of the area but localized contamination where surface tests were held or underground tests vented ^[52].

A neutron weapon’s distinct residue, radioactivity induced in soil, is short-lived: manganese-56 (half-life 2.6 hours) can be the greater hazard in the first hours and sodium-24 (15 hours) outlasts it ^[37]. A high-altitude burst’s residues, like an air burst’s, settle as slow worldwide fallout rather than local fallout ^[37]. Its lasting trace was in orbit, where some Starfish electrons persisted for five years ^[40].

The longest effects are in people. Among survivors, the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) found that excess leukemia appeared about two years after exposure and peaked at six to eight years; through 2000, 46% of leukemia deaths among those with doses of at least 0.005 gray were attributable to radiation ^[53]. Excess solid cancers began about 10 years after exposure and raise risk for life: 848, or 10.7%, of the 7,851 cancers diagnosed from 1958 to 1998 among survivors with doses above 0.005 gray ^[54][55].

What This Means for Leaders

The shared lesson of both weapons is dependence, not doom. Data centers, payment networks, hospitals and ports all assume grid power and working electronics. Governments have begun to write that into rules. U.S. Executive Order 13865 of March 26, 2019 directs federal agencies to identify critical systems at risk from EMP, improve warning and set resilience standards ^[56]. The EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act, applying since Jan. 17, 2025, requires banks, insurers and their critical tech suppliers to test business-continuity and recovery plans for severe disruptions ^[57]. EPRI’s own guidance to utilities centers on protecting relays and control systems against E1 ^[44].

The move: Ask your operations team how long each site runs without grid power and phones, and what it would take to double that.

PROFILE

The head of the World Jewish Congress helped put Netanyahu on the road to power in 1996. Five days before Israelis voted, he called him “a dictator” and said he would pick Gadi Eisenkot.

Ronald Lauder addressing the World Jewish Congress in Berlin, September 2014. Photo: Michael Thaidigsmann, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; cropped and toned; the toned image is shared under the same license (license)

Five days before Israel’s election, Ronald Lauder went public against Benjamin Netanyahu. “I’ve been silent for 20 years, 30 years,” he told Haaretz in an interview at his Manhattan home, published Oct. 22 ^[58][59]. “If Bibi is elected, Israel stands to lose badly,” he said, calling the prime minister “a dictator — a one-person show” ^[59]. He added: “If Ben Gvir and Smotrich’s parties play any role in government in the future, Israel is doomed.” ^[59] He said he would not vote because he is “so disgusted with the system” but would pick Gadi Eisenkot, whom he has never met, if he had to choose ^[59]. “Israel has lost not only Europe and other places, but diaspora [Jews],” he said. “Yes, they still are loyal to Israel, but they don’t feel Israel’s protecting them.” ^[59] Haaretz had received no response from Netanyahu by publication ^[59]. Israelis voted on Oct. 27; official results are due by Nov. 4 ^[60].

Lauder, born in New York on Feb. 26, 1944, is the younger son of Estée and Joseph Lauder, who founded the cosmetics company that bears the family name ^[61][62]. He served Ronald Reagan at the Pentagon and as U.S. ambassador to Austria in 1986 and 1987, and lost the 1989 Republican primary for New York mayor to Rudy Giuliani ^[61][62]. In 1987 he set up the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, which says it runs or supports more than 50 programs, mostly Jewish schools, camps and community centers, in 13 countries of Central and Eastern Europe ^[62]. The foundation also co-founded the Pillar Foundation, which funds security for Jewish communal institutions in Europe ^[63]. He co-founded Central European Media Enterprises, a television group in the region, opened the Neue Galerie in New York for early 20th-century German and Austrian art in 2001 and has led the World Jewish Congress since June 2007 ^[61][64].

The ties to Netanyahu go back to the 1980s, when Netanyahu was Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations ^[59]. Lauder says he helped connect him with Arthur Finkelstein, the Republican strategist who had run Lauder’s own mayoral race ^[59][65]. Finkelstein’s line that “Peres will divide Jerusalem” framed the 1996 race, which Netanyahu won by about one percentage point after trailing Shimon Peres by 30 points, JTA wrote in 2018, adding that “without Lauder’s support, it’s possible Netanyahu never would have been prime minister at all” ^[66]. JTA described Lauder as reportedly a major donor to that run ^[66]. In 1999, though, he told a Jewish leadership search committee that he had not given money to Netanyahu’s campaign; a joint inquiry by the New York Jewish Week and Haaretz described possible indirect support, including flights for Finkelstein on Lauder’s plane ^[65].

In 1998 Netanyahu, by then prime minister, enlisted Lauder to carry messages to Syria’s Hafez al-Assad ^[61][66]. No deal was reached. In 2009 Lauder said Netanyahu “never agreed to withdraw” to the 1967 lines “and never authorized me to make any such offer” ^[67]. Now he says Netanyahu had agreed to leave the Golan Heights and then backed away. “He chose politics over peace,” Lauder said. “He betrayed me.” ^[59] Netanyahu has previously denied agreeing to give up the Golan ^[59][68].

The break came in stages. In 2011 Channel 10, in which Lauder then held a stake, aired an investigation into how the Netanyahu family’s trips abroad were paid for, and Lauder declined to press the station to drop it, JTA reported ^[66]; Haaretz reported that the relationship deteriorated after it ran ^[69]. Of the channel’s effect, Lauder now says: “It destroyed it.” ^[59] He exited Channel 10 in December 2013 ^[70]. Israeli police questioned him in 2016 in the gifts inquiry, and prosecutors listed him among 333 witnesses in the 2019 indictment ^[69][71]. By then Sheldon Adelson, whose free daily Israel Hayom backed Netanyahu, had become Netanyahu’s new benefactor, JTA wrote ^[66]. In 2018 he criticized the nation-state law in a New York Times op-ed ^[72]. In July 2023 he wrote that Israel faced “imminent existential danger,” naming Iran and Hezbollah as well as division over the judicial overhaul, and urged Netanyahu, Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz to form a unity government ^[73]. In August 2025, after Smotrich called to “bury the idea of a Palestinian state,” Lauder said he and Ben Gvir “have repeatedly made statements that massively damage Israel as well as the security of the Jewish people” ^[74].

Lauder told Haaretz he has sold his Tel Aviv apartment and given his Be’er Sheva home to the Jewish National Fund. “I have no intention of going back to Israel. Zero,” he said, while adding: “I am still a Zionist today, I still love Israel.” ^[58][59]

The move: Watch whether Netanyahu or Likud answers Lauder’s account of the Syria talks, and whether Lauder makes public the 1998 document he says exists in only two copies, both in his hands.

GADGET

Apple on Tuesday announced a 14-inch MacBook Pro with its new M6 chip, with a 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU that it says draws graphics up to 30% faster than the M5. Battery life is rated at up to 24 hours. Memory starts at 16GB and goes up to 32GB, and it adds Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. ^[75]

It starts at $1,999. Orders open today in 35 countries and regions, and deliveries begin on Nov. 6. ^[75]

The move: Before you replace a team’s laptops, check how long the current ones last on a travel day. If they make it, the upgrade can wait.

TURKEY · ENERGY

Kimberly Guilfoyle resigned as U.S. ambassador to Greece on Oct. 13 after the White House asked her to, amid reports of misconduct that she denies. ^[77][78] Intelligence Online wrote that her exit comes as Washington pushes two energy deals in southeastern Europe and is likely to play in favor of her counterpart in Ankara, Tom Barrack. ^[76]

The two routes are rivals. One is the Vertical Corridor, which carries U.S. liquefied natural gas from Greek terminals north through Bulgaria and Romania toward Ukraine; a Greek venture has a 20-year deal with Venture Global for 1 million tonnes a year from 2030. The other is a revived overland pipeline from Qatar to Turkey. To Vima reported that the two ambassadors had backed opposing sides, and that a Reuters investigation on Oct. 9 examined Barrack’s ties to a company seeking a stake in an Iraq–Syria pipeline. ^[79][80]

What the reports leave out: the deadline. The EU’s ban on Russian gas imports from 2027 is what opened this market. Greece’s gas exports in September were 169% higher than a year earlier, mostly flowing north. ^[79] Turkey is pitching too: Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said on Tuesday that European buyers are offering to buy Turkish gas. ^[81] Barrack has called for “two energy corridors” that “help each other,” but no official plan to bring Turkey into the Vertical Corridor exists. ^[80]

The move: If you buy gas or power in southeastern Europe, ask your supplier which route its gas will take after 2027, and get a price for each.

LISTEN

The Daily (The New York Times) · Tue., Oct. 27 · 47 min

Janet Reitman of The New York Times Magazine follows the 10 people arrested over what the federal government called a planned attack on the Prairieland immigration detention facility in Texas on July 4, 2025. They were prosecuted as terrorists and convicted. ^[82] The episode asks who now counts as a terrorist in America, a question that matters to any organization whose staff protest.

Listen to the episode →

LISTEN

The Koerner Office (Chris Koerner) · Tue., Oct. 27 · 47 min

Bob, who calls himself “not a tech guy,” sells chatbots and voice assistants that answer calls and book appointments for local businesses. In about a year it has grown to $25,000 to $30,000 a month. He explains how he wins clients with free 30-day trials and prices on the value of the calls he saves. ^[83] A practical look at what AI looks like below the boardroom.

Listen to the episode →

READ

Sarah Perry · Mariner Books · Oct. 6, 2026 · 207 pages

The novelist and her husband moved in to care for her father-in-law in the last days of his life, and she records what dying actually involves: the paperwork, the nurses, the small routines that carry on. The New York Times reviewer called the book remarkable, The Week reports. ^[84][85] Worth reading for anyone who will one day care for a parent, which is most of us.

See it on Amazon →

READ

Aldo Schiavone, trans. Patrick Baker · Princeton University Press · Oct. 27, 2026 · 232 pages

The Italian historian retells Cleopatra’s life through seven moments, from her meeting with Julius Caesar to Actium, and argues she was a strategist trying to shift power from Rome to the East, not the seductress of legend. Kirkus calls it “an able correction to some longstanding myths.” ^[86][87] A short study of a ruler who bet everything on one alliance.

See it on Amazon →

Every pick links to the original. Our note says why it is worth your time; the work is theirs.

SOURCES: FRONT PAGE 1–24 · THE OTHER PAGE 25–81 · YET ANOTHER PAGE 82–87 (ACCESSED OCT. 28, 2026)

Map data: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), Natural Earth (public domain) · Map: The Other Post

The Other Post: The Daily Briefing for the Conscientious Leader, through an Istanbul lens is independent analysis for decision-makers. Nothing here is investment, legal or medical advice. Issue No. 14 · © 2026 The Other Post