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Jemma Shapiro, welcome to Chigonometry.

Thanks for having me. Hello and this is the show for you if you're bored of watching people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing about at trigonometry we don't pretend to be the experts we ask the experts.

Here at the world famous Angel Comedy Club,

our amazing expert guest this week

is Jeremy Shapiro, who is the research director

for the European Council on Foreign Relations

and a former senior official in the State Department under President Barack Obama and

here Clinton.

Jemishapiro, welcome to Trigonometry.

Thanks for coming on. Thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me. It's great to have you here. So before we get started with our

interview, which I'm sure will be lots about foreign affairs, which is something you're an expert in,

just tell us a little bit about how you got to be where you are today.'s been your journey yeah it's a long and

winding road you know I grew up in in Boston and Massachusetts in the US in a very

sort of normal suburb and I had a sort of staggeringly boring you know by the

standards of such things childhood I've always wanted to have a sort of childhood trauma

to overcome but I never managed to find one. My parents were great. They were always encouraging me. We were

neither too wealthy nor too poor, which is you know frustrating to create a

story but probably very good for one's childhood and

...