One Decision is a weekly geopolitics interview show anchored by Sir Richard Dearlove, former chief of MI6, with co-host John Raine, former UK diplomat and IISS fellow. Guests include senior intelligence officials, foreign correspondents, heads of government, and authors. The channel has grown to more than 420,000 subscribers over the past year, and we are launching a website and newsletter this fall to build out the written side of the show.
You will receive byline credit for your work. Some pieces will run under your own name, some will be co-authored with the Managing Editor, and some will be written in the show's voice without a byline.
Reports to: Managing Editor
Commitment: Roughly 15 to 20 hours per week, contractor, monthly retainer
Location: Remote, anywhere, but must be reliably available Wednesdays and Fridays against NY working hours
Start: September 2026
Compensation: $4,000 to $5,500 per month depending on experience
What you will do
- Write two to three articles per week, typically 800 to 1,200 words, on topics linked to podcast episodes.
- Do the research and background work that supports those articles: fact checking, context, and sourcing.
- Contribute to preparatory research for podcast episodes, including summarizing relevant books and articles.
- Identify articles, interviews, and reporting from other publications and newsletters worth putting in front of our audience, and package the best of it for a weekly newsletter.
- Assist with writing and editing promotional and website materials, including episode summaries.
Note: Writing, researching, and thinking are the core tasks of this role. You will leave WordPress formatting, etc. to someone else.
A typical week
Episodes are recorded Monday and Tuesday and released Thursday. Related articles are developed, written, and edited between the recording session and the episode release, and publish Thursday or Friday. Newsletters are prepared Friday and Monday for release Tuesday. Preparatory research for upcoming episodes fits in among the other work.
What we need
- Demonstrated writing ability with published clips. Journalism, research organizations, policy publications, or a newsletter of your own all count.
- Real fluency in international affairs, security, and geopolitics. You should be able to read a transcript about Iranian proxy strategy or European defense procurement and know what matters in it without a briefing.
- Judgment about what is interesting to a smart non-specialist, and the discipline to cut what is not.
- Comfort writing in someone else's voice as well as your own.
- Speed and reliability. This is a weekly show with fixed deadlines.
- Comfort using AI tools as a drafting and research aid, alongside the judgment to know where they are unreliable and to verify everything that carries our name.
Helpful but not required
- Experience in podcast or broadcast production.
- SEO and headline writing for publisher sites.
- Newsletter writing.
- Original reporting experience and sources of your own in the national security or foreign policy world.
Tools
Google Workspace, Slack, Trello, WordPress, Beehiiv, transcript tooling, Claude.
How to apply
Email david@onedecision.com with a short note on why this show interests you, three writing samples, and a one-paragraph pitch for an article you would write from a recent One Decision episode. Please use "Staff Writer / Researcher" as the subject line. Shortlisted candidates will be paid for a single trial article.