Seth Schindler and Jessica DiCarlo set the stage for The Roundtable, a podcast exploring the histories and grounded realities of geopolitical rivalry from the Cold War to the present. Conversations focus on how competition affects places, people, and politics around the world to foster more nuanced and open debate on geopolitical rivalry. The Roundtable is part of the Second Cold War Observatory, a global collective of scholars committed to understanding how great power rivalry will influence societies, economies, and ecologies worldwide.