Watch the video of this conversation on YouTube.

Read Andrew Schrank’s article “Can Industrial Policy Still Do Big Things?” in Issues in Science and Technology

Transcript coming soon to our website

Stephen is an award-winning foreign correspondent who spent more than 20 years reporting around the world with the New York Times, and has written multiple books on the history of U.S. intervention abroad, including “All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror,” which explored the history and unintended consequences of the CIA-backed 1953 coup in Iran.

Sebnem Kalemli Ozcan is a professor of economics at Brown and the director of the Global Linkages Lab, a collaborative research hub dedicated to deepening our understanding of globalization. Starting in July, she'll also be serving as the director of the Watson School’s Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance.

John Friedman is Vascellaro Family Dean of the Watson School, and Briger Family Distinguished Professor of Economics and International and Public Affairs

Watch this episode of Trending Globally on YouTube.

As a result, our federal court system is shaping U.S. public policy more than at any time in recent history, and federal judges are making decisions on many of the most pressing policy issues facing society today.

So, what does this new legal landscape mean for American politics, and what does it mean for America’s judicial branch?

To help make sense of this change (and to put it in historical context), Dan Richards spoke with Judge William Smith, former Chief Judge for the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island. Judge Smith was appointed by George W. Bush in 2002 and retired in 2025; he is also a Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs at the Watson School, where he currently leads a study group on the role of the courts in U.S. public policy.

But why?

Often, large-scale conflicts and wars are explained in material or political terms: humans engaging in conflict over land, resources, or ideologies.

But as Rose McDermott, the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor of International Relations, sees it, these explanations fail to fully account for war’s existence and persistence throughout the long history of our species.

To do that, McDermott argues that we need to take more seriously the ways that human psychology — shaped by our evolution as a species — predisposes some of us to violence.

On this episode, Dan Richards spoke with Rose McDermott about how millennia of human evolution have wired our brains — particularly male brains — for war; what this means for modern society; and how we might think about building structures and institutions to help chart a new, more peaceful path for humanity.

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, appeared helpless to mount a vigorous opposition to Trump’s policies, or even to energize their own base. 

But this fall, those dynamics began to shift. 

Congressional Republicans have stood up to Trump on some key issues, including most notably the release of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. And Congressional Democrats galvanized supporters around this fall’s government shutdown fight over the future of ACA health insurance subsidies.

On this episode, two experts on Congressional politics spoke with Dan Richards about the shifting role of Congress in U.S. politics, as President Trump enters his “lame duck” phase and America gears up for a midterm election in less than 12 months. They also discuss Congress’s consistently low approval rating among Americans, and explore what (if anything) could be done to make Congress work better under the Trump administration and beyond. 

Guests on this episode: 

• Eric Patashnik is a political scientist and director of the Watson School’s Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy. 
• Congresswoman Kathy Manning represented North Carolina’s sixth district from 2020 to 2024 and is currently a senior fellow in international and public affairs at the Watson School. 

But, according to Watson Senior Fellow and Director of the Watson School’s China Initiative Lyle Goldstein, perhaps more noticeable was what was left out of this meeting; almost all of the pressing security issues that exist between the two countries, including the one Goldstein sees as the “most dangerous of all”– the U.S. relationship with Taiwan.

On this episode, host Dan Richards speaks with Goldstein about the state of U.S.-China relations over Taiwan, why he believes this issue represents one of the world’s greatest risks to human safety, and why now is the moment to reconsider the U.S. foreign policy consensus on this geopolitical flashpoint.

Learn more about the Watson School’s China Initiative

Read Lyle’s multi-part series on the past, present, and future of US-China relations

Since returning to office, President Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, rolled back numerous environmental and climate regulations, issued executive orders to pause renewable energy projects, and worked with Congress to dismantle key parts of the IRA.

On this episode, Dan Richards speaks with two experts on climate politics at the Watson School: Jeff Colgan, professor of political science and director of Watson’s Climate Solutions Lab, and Chris Rea, assistant professor of sociology and expert on climate and environmental governance about the new landscape of climate politics. They discuss the state of the climate movement and green transition in America and around the world, where the climate movement goes from here, and what it all means for our politics and our planet.

Learn more about the Watson School’s Climate Solutions Lab.

Read Jeff Colgan's recent article in International Organization on contemporary climate politics

Since then, a number of other democracies around the world have followed India on this path — including, by many measures, the United States.

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with two experts on Indian politics and society about Modi’s rise in India: its causes and effects, how it compares to other instances of democratic erosion around the world, and what it can teach us about democracy’s weaknesses and strengths.

Guests on this episode:

1. Poulami Roychowdhury is an associate professor of sociology and international and public affairs at the Watson School of International and Public Affairs.
2. Patrick Heller is a professor of sociology and international and public affairs and director of the Watson School’s Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia.

Read Roychowdhury’s and Heller’s recent work exploring democracy and democratic erosion in India.

More specifically, she studies how to help people in low-income countries build their “human capital” — a phrase social scientists use to describe things like getting more formal education, more professional training, or improving your health.

As she tells Dan Richards on this episode of Trending Globally, part of the answer is well-understood.

“We have to build the schools, we have to build the clinics, we have to get the roads, get the infrastructure in place so that people can access these things,” Steinberg explains.

However, decades of development policy has made clear that access alone doesn’t solve the problem, and supplying communities with such resources doesn’t necessarily mean people will use them.

Why not?

That’s what Steinberg studies.

On this episode, Richards talks with Steinberg about her research, which seeks to better understand what she calls the “demand-side” of development policy: What makes people actually use the services that are available to them, and how to remove the barriers that stand in their way. They also discuss how development policy has evolved over the last few decades and how, with the dismantling of USAID, it may be poised to change once again.

His focus is on the illicit global economy. 

He’s written about everything from piracy in colonial America to the smuggling of technology during the Industrial Revolution, to clandestine migration and illegal drug trafficking today. 

His newest book, “The Illicit Global Economy: Everything You Need to Know,” is both a concise primer on this massive topic and a compelling argument for why you can’t understand our global economy today without understanding how it operates on both sides of the law. 

On this episode of “Trending Globally,” he talks with Dan Richards about how the illicit global economy works, the surprising nuances within it, and how it intersects with some of the most pressing issues in our politics today. 

Learn more about and purchase “The Illicit Global Economy: Everything You Need to Know.”

However, the simplicity of the definition belies the difficulty of doing it effectively – especially in the world of international security and relations. As Pauly explains to Dan Richards on this episode of “Trending Globally”:

“The history of coercive bargaining, coercive diplomacy is really a litany of mostly failures.”  

This is a problem not only for countries seeking to coerce others, whether it’s through tariffs, sanctions, or threats of military action. It’s also a problem because when coercion fails, countries usually find themselves one step closer to war. 

Why do so many attempts at coercive diplomacy fail, and why do some succeed? The answer may surprise you. 

Learn more about and purchase “The Art of Coercion”

Read Pauly’s July article in MIT’s International Security 

These have become some of the most fraught and pressing questions in our current moment. But of course, they’re also timeless questions — ones that are as old as the United States itself. 

In May, Watson political economist Mark Blyth explored these questions with literary scholar Kevin McLaughlin and historian Karin Wulf on the Rhodes Center Podcast, another podcast from the Watson School. In addition to having thought deeply on just these types of issues, Kevin and Karin are also the co-chairs of “Brown 2026,” an initiative marking the 250th anniversary of the U.S. and exploring the past and future role of universities in a democratic society. 

Their conversation has only become more salient since it was originally recorded, which is why we’re sharing it with Trending Globally listeners today. 

Guests on this episode:

• Kevin McLaughlin is a literary scholar and director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study at Brown. 
• Karin Wulf is a historian and director and librarian of the John Carter Brown Library.

Learn more about Brown 2026. 

Transcript coming soon to our website. 

On this episode, Dan Richards spoke with two experts from the Watson School about the bill: How it will shape American society, what its passage says about the Republican Party, and the role it might play in the 2026 midterms and beyond. 

Guests on this episode: 

• Eric Patashnik is a professor of public policy and political science and author, most recently, of “Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age.”
• Margaret Weir is a political scientist, professor of international and public affairs and political science, and co-editor, most recently, of the 2021 book “Who Gets What? The New Politics of Insecurity.” 

Why did President Trump make the dissolution  of USAID a priority? And what will it mean for the people and places around the world that have relied on foreign aid from the U.S.?

To answer these questions, Dan Richards spoke with Jennifer Hadden, a political scientist and associate professor at the Watson School, as well as co-author, with Sarah Sunn Bush, of the new book “Crowded Out: The Competitive Landscape of Contemporary International NGOs.”

On this episode, they discuss the fate of USAID in the context of the broader international aid ecosystem. Specifically, they explore the evolving roles of international non-governmental organizations (INGO’s) in the foreign landscape, which have long worked with government agencies like USAID to deliver aid and assistance around the world. 

To many, it was surprising that USAID became such a target of the Trump administration. But as Hadden makes clear, Trump’s moves are part of a larger shift in the world of foreign aid — one with truly global implications. 

Learn more about and purchase “Crowded Out The Competitive Landscape of Contemporary International NGOs.”

Mark and Dan discuss the competing theories for what causes inflation, the merits of each, and how they explain (or fail to explain) the inflation we saw post-pandemic. They also explore why inflation harms some parts of society more than others, and how to make sure that, the next time inflation rears its head, we fight it in a way that’s more effective and more fair.  

Learn more about and purchase “Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers”

But unlike the U.S., Mexico doesn’t have tens of thousands of licensed firearms dealers. 

It has two. 

So how do so many guns make their way into Mexico? And how do these guns shape Mexican society? 

These are two of the questions Ieva Jusionyte explores in her new book “Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence across the Border.” Jusionyte is an anthropologist at the Watson Institute and spent much of the last few years following people whose lives are shaped by guns in Mexico. Guns, which, by and large, come from the United States. 

On this episode, which was originally broadcast in May 2024, Jusionyte discusses the impact of American firearms on Mexican society and the role they play in spreading violence and trauma on both sides of the border. 

Learn more about and purchase "Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence across the Border."

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with three journalists and media thinkers who work in a part of the world where press freedom is, at times, a matter of life and death. Chernoh Bah is a Sierra Leonean journalist, historian and postdoctoral research fellow at the Watson Institute. Sadibou Marong is a journalist and Sub-Saharan Africa bureau chief for Reporters Without Borders, based in Sénégal. Zubaida Ismail is a freelance journalist and Ghana's correspondent for Reporters Without Borders.

They discuss the state of press freedom in countries across Africa, what the struggle for independent journalism in countries in Africa can teach the rest of the world, and the broader relationship between independent media and democratic health. 

These guests, along with many others, gathered at the Watson Institute this Spring as part of the Media and Democracy Conference hosted by Watson’s Africa Initiative. You can watch more conversations and presentations from the conference here. 

To help make sense of all that’s happened (and a lot has happened), Dan Richards spoke with political scientist and Interim Director of the Watson Institute, Wendy Schiller.

They discussed how Trump’s approach to governing has changed since his first term, and how the country, so far, has reacted to those changes. They also explore what’s been missing from mainstream coverage of this moment in U.S. politics, and the evolving relationship between national politics and institutions of higher education. 

As Marc explains, this wasn’t an intentional project but the result of overlapping, competing impulses within the progressive movement and a cultural shift with progressivism in the 20th century, whose effects took decades to fully materialize. 

In charting this transformation and its effects, Dunkelman explains why today, even when in power, progressives seem unable to achieve their own goals, from increasing housing supply to upgrading infrastructure to decarbonizing our energy grid. He also explains how this shift has shaped our electoral politics and what progressives can do to help get progressivism (and America) working again. 

Learn more about and purchase “Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress―and How to Bring It Back.”

Some of these promised changes are thrilling. Just as many, it seems, are terrifying. 

So, how should we think about the impact AI will have on us all, especially when it comes to the most fundamental questions of humanity's shared future? According to Watson Institute Senior Fellow Malika Saada Saar, to make sure AI serves us all, we can’t be too scared of it. In fact, it’s all of our responsibility to use it and understand it. 

“It's important that all of us be able to have curiosity about the technology and to be able to interact with it. Because if the fourth industrial revolution becomes technology that's only utilized by the few, it's very dangerous,” Saar told Dan Richards on this episode of “Trending Globally.” 

Saar is a human rights lawyer who, before coming to Watson, served as the Global Head of Human Rights for YouTube. On this episode, Dan Richards spoke with her about how human rights law intersects with big tech and about the risks and opportunities AI poses for the future of human rights.

Transcript coming soon to our website

In 2023, it was one in 13. 

In other words, a smaller percentage of Americans are moving today than they have at any time in our history. As Yoni Appelbaum, historian and deputy executive editor at The Atlantic makes clear in his book, “Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity,” this change has played a devastating role in many of the most pressing issues Americans face, from income inequality to economic mobility to political polarization.

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with Appelbaum about why Americans stopped moving, why that’s a problem for all of us, and what we can do to revive this key component of growth and opportunity in the U.S.

Learn more about and purchase “Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity”

So, what does this election tell us about Europe’s largest economy? And as the Trump administration continues to upend U.S.-European relations, and the war in Ukraine challenges Europe’s own sense of security and stability, what will this new governing coalition mean for an international order that, for the first time in decades, has the U.S. and Europe on seemingly divergent paths? 

On this episode, Dan Richards spoke with Watson political scientist and Europe expert Nick Ziegler to help make sense of this election and to place it in the broader context of European politics and global security.

Tyler is an expert on international security and Chinese foreign policy, and his new book “Bureaucracies at War: The Institutional Origins of Miscalculation,” explores how leaders (in China and beyond) make decisions about when and how to engage in military conflict. Are there open channels of communication between a country’s leaders and security advisors? Are there forums for debate and disagreement? And what can be done to actually help leaders make better decisions?

In one sense, the questions the book explores are timeless. But Jost’s book feels especially timely at this moment, as tensions continue to rise between the U.S. and China, and the world adjusts once again to an American president unmoored by traditional norms and institutions.

The stakes of military conflict today have never been higher, and the need for clear, accurate analysis of the costs and benefits of military actions is more important than ever. And as Jost explains in this episode: there are lessons from history for how to help leaders make better decisions when it comes to national security. Let’s just hope those in power are willing to learn them. 

• Learn more about and purchase “Bureaucracies at War: The Institutional Origins of Miscalculation" 
• Transcript coming soon to our website
• Questions? Send us an email at trendingglobally@brown.edu

For most of its existence, there wasn’t a single statue of a Black American in this hall. But that changed in 2022 when a statue of Mary McCleod Bethune was delivered to the Hall from Florida.

Bethune, who was born in 1875 and died in 1955, might not be the first name you would have guessed to break this racial barrier. But as Noliwe Rooks, chair of Africana Studies at Brown University, shows in her new book “A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit: The Vision of Mary McLeod Bethune,” her achievements as an educator and civil rights leader were profound, her life story is an inspiration, and her place in the statuary hall is well-deserved. 

The book — which has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award — is part biography, part memoir and part analysis of a period in American history that’s often overlooked in the story of racial progress. 

If you’ve never heard of Bethune, this book is for you. And if you think you know the story of Mary McCleod Bethune, this book will probably show you a side of her you haven’t seen before. 

Learn more about and purchase “A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit: The Vision of Mary McLeod Bethune”

However, it wasn’t all speeches and ceremonies on Monday — Trump also signed dozens of executive orders, affecting U.S. policies on a range of issues, including climate change, public health, immigration and transgender rights. And while his administration is only days old, last week, we also saw the beginning of confirmation hearings in Congress for his cabinet nominations. 

On this episode, Dan Richards spoke with political scientist Wendy Schiller about what these early moves in Trump-world can tell us about what’s to come in a second Trump administration and how Trump will operate in a country that seems more open to his brand of politics now than it was in 2016.

Guests on this episode:

• Wendy Schiller is a political scientist and director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy at the Watson Institute. She is also the interim director of the Watson Institute. 

So does that mean that when it comes to a “green transition,” the hardest part is behind us? With wind and solar now cheaper than fossil fuel, can simply let “the market” take care of the rest? 

According to Brett Christophers, a professor at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University and author of the new book “The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet”: absolutely not.

On this episode (originally broadcast on the Rhodes Center Podcast) political economist and Rhodes Center director Mark Blyth talks with Brett about why cheap renewable energy production won’t lead to renewables dominating the energy market. In doing so, they also put the entire energy economy under a microscope and challenge the notion that the private sector will ever be able to lead us through a green transition.

Learn more about and purchase “The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet”

Watch Brett’s October 2024 talk at the Rhodes Center

Subscribe to the Rhodes Center Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts

“I am not especially bullish on the future of American democracy. I think it has deteriorated quite a bit in recent years, and I suspect we will see continued deterioration in the years to come,” Blair explained to Dan Richards on this episode of Trending Globally. 

However, while this erosion is concerning, it might not mean exactly what you think it does. 

“If what we're expecting is tanks rolling down the streets at least anytime in the immediate future, I think that's very unlikely...the end can just be a worse democracy,” said Blair.

On this episode, Blair talks with Dan about the  nuanced, complex reality of democratic erosion in the U.S. and around the world: what causes it, how to measure it, what it looks like in our politics, and how we might stop it. 

Learn more about the Democratic Erosion Consortium

“If we lose Thwaites, there's great concern that we will lose the entirety or big portions of the West Antarctic ice sheet and that those glaciers combined contain enough ice to raise global sea levels 10 feet or more,” Rush told Dan Richards on this episode of Trending Globally. 

Rush recounts her voyage aboard the Palmer and how it reshaped her understanding of our changing climate and planet in her 2023 book, “The Quickening: Antarctica, Motherhood and Cultivating Hope in a Warming World.” However, as the title suggests, the book is also about another, more personal journey: Rush’s decision to have a child. 

The resulting book is part adventure travelogue, part mediation on the meaning of motherhood, and part climate change manifesto. It also offers some much-needed wisdom on how to envision a future when it feels like the world is falling apart.

Learn more about and purchase “The Quickening”

Learn more about “The Conceivable Future”

It also seems clear that a key part of the Democratic Party’s message — that another Trump term would threaten democracy and push the nation toward authoritarianism — didn’t resonate with voters like they hoped it would. 

However, as Financial Times U.S. National Editor and Watson Institute Senior Fellow Edward Luce explains on this episode of “Trending Globally,” that doesn’t mean it’s not true. 

“There's this sort of surpassing irony of what happened last Tuesday is that it was a free and fair election. Democracy worked to elect a person who rejects the democratic system unless he wins,” Luce told host Dan Richards.

Luce is the author of several books, including “The Retreat of Western Liberalism,” which was published in 2017. He is an indispensable voice when it comes to understanding Trump and the MAGA movement as a phenomenon that is both uniquely American and part of decades-long trend in global politics. 

This is something Luce also explores with Watson Institute students in his study group, “The Revenge of Geopolitics.” On this episode, Luce spoke with Richards about what another Trump term could mean for American democracy, geopolitical stability, and the future of liberal democratic values around the world.

Learn more about and purchase “The Retreat of Western Liberalism” by Ed Luce

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

Republicans appear very likely to regain control of the Senate, while control of the House of Representatives is up for grabs. To make sense of this crucial battleground within the 2024 election, Dan Richards spoke with Olivia Beavers, a congressional reporter for Politico who focuses on House Republicans and the GOP leadership. 

They discuss why so many House races are so close this year, how control of Congress will affect the next presidential administration and the role House Republicans would play if Trump decides to contest the results of this November’s election. 

Watch Olivia Beavers’ talk at the Watson Institute’s Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy

However, it turns out that the real story behind those shortages is more complicated, and has less to do with the pandemic than with transformations to our economy that have been taking place over decades. 

On this episode (originally broadcast on the Rhodes Center Podcast), political economist Mark Blyth talks with Peter Goodman, a New York Times' global economic correspondent and author of the book, “How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain,” about why these shocks really occurred, and what they can tell us about the fragility of our global economy today. They also explore what these supply shortages looked like from inside individual companies, and why, unless we make some major changes to our economy, we’re at risk of running out of everything again. 

Subscribe to the Rhode Center Podcast, hosted by political economist Mark Blyth

Watch Peter Goodmans’ talk at the Watson Institute

So, with just about four weeks to go before election day, Dan Richards spoke with two experts about the key factors shaping this race. They discuss why neither Biden’s winning coalition in 2020 nor Trump’s coalition in 2016 seem likely to re-form and what this all means for American politics beyond November 5. 

Guests on this episode: 

• Wendy Schiller is a political science professor and director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy. She is also the interim director of the Watson Institute. 
• Katherine Tate is a professor of political science at Brown University and an expert on public opinion and Black politics in the U.S. 

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

Learn more about Watson’s Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy

So, on this episode, Dan Richards spoke with someone uniquely suited to help make sense of the race as it enters the homestretch. Isaac Dovere is a senior reporter for CNN based in Washington covering Democratic politics. He’s also a senior fellow at the Watson Institute and teaches a class on political journalism. Prior to working at CNN, he was a staff writer at The Atlantic, and before that, he served as Politico’s chief Washington correspondent. 

Beyond being one of America’s most insightful political reporters, he’s also a deep thinker when it comes to how political news works in America—how it’s made, how it’s consumed, and it in turn shapes our politics. 

Dan and Isaac discuss how this election has been covered in the press, how political journalism has changed since Trump first ran for president, and why everyone would benefit from being a little more critical of the news they consume (and maybe, sometimes, taking a break from the news altogether). 

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

But as Corey Brettschneider explains in his new book “The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It,” these concerns are hardly unprecedented in our history. And the ways our country has navigated authoritarian presidents before has a lot to teach us about many of the legal and political issues defining our current moment. 

In the book, Brettschneider looks at examples from the 18th century through the 20th century of presidents who challenged key features of American democracy and how the country recovered from these moments of crisis.

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with Brettschneider about what these lessons history can teach us, why our Constitution is so vulnerable to authoritarian Presidents, and why, despite these threats, we’ve been able to defend against them — so far.

Learn more about and purchase "The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It"

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts 

What he found there is helping to reframe the role that the Catholic Church — and its then-leader, Pope Pius XII — played in World War II.  

Pius XII’s legacy is heavily debated. Some want him to be made a saint. Others call him ‘“Hitler’s Pope,” blaming him for aiding the Nazi regime and, ultimately, facilitating the Holocaust. 

What David Kertzer found is a much more complicated story. 

On this episode of “Trending Globally,” originally broadcast in the summer of 2022, the story of “a pope at war” and what it can teach us about the need for moral leadership in times of crisis. 

Learn more about and purchase David Kertzer’s 2022 book “The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini and Hitler"

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts 

Around the same time as that anniversary this past spring, there was another momentous event in the country: South Africans went to the polls in May, and for the first time in 30 years, the African National Congress — the political party of Nelson Mandela — lost its parliamentary majority. 

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with three experts on South African politics about this pivotal moment in the country: what it can tell us about South Africa’s politics since the fall of apartheid, and what it might mean for the country’s future. 

Guests on this episode: 

• Wilmot James, a senior advisor at Brown University’s Pandemic Center. Prior to coming to Brown, Wilmot was a member of South Africa’s parliament. Before that, he managed multiple special projects for Mandela's office and was a co-editor of his presidential speeches.
• Redi Tlhabi is an award-winning South African journalist, producer and author. She hosted the acclaimed “Redi Tlhabi Show” for many years in South Africa, and regularly comments on the country’s politics for international media. 
• Stanley Greenberg is an American political strategist and pollster who assisted in Nelson Mandela’s presidential campaign in 1994 and has written extensively on politics and race relations in South Africa. 

Listen to part one of this two-part special, exploring the history of the fall of apartheid

Learn more about Brown University’s Pandemic Center

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts 

On this episode, we take a closer look at two of them: this summer’s elections in the United Kingdom and France. 

In the U.K., the center-left Labour Party won in a landslide in July, ending 14 years of Conservative Party rule. In France, an alliance of left-leaning parties banded together to defeat the right-wing National Rally Party, led by Marine Le Pen.  

But as political economist and Watson Professor Mark Blyth explains, neither was as resounding a victory for the center-left as the topline results suggest. Furthermore, if these new governments fail to address the social and economic distress so many people in their countries are experiencing, the far-right may not be sidelined for long. 

Mark Blyth is the director of the Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance at the Watson Institute. He’s also host of the Rhodes Center Podcast, another podcast from the Watson Institute. On this episode, he spoke with Dan Richards about what these two elections can tell us about the political fault lines running through European politics today and what they can also tell us about right-wing populism in the U.S. ahead of our own election in November. 

Subscribe to the Rhodes Center Podcast, hosted by Mark Blyth

Around the same time as that anniversary, there was another momentous event in the country: South Africans went to the polls in May, and for the first time in 30 years, the African National Congress — the political party of Nelson Mandela — lost its parliamentary majority. 

These two events — the anniversary of Mandela’s election and the unprecedented defeat of his party today — bring up important questions about South Africa’s politics since the fall of apartheid and where the country will go from here. 

This will be the first in a two-part special looking at South Africa 30 years after the end of apartheid. Wilmot James, a senior advisor at Brown University’s Pandemic Center, will be our guide for these two episodes. Prior to coming to Brown, Wilmot was a member of South Africa’s Parliament, and before that he managed multiple special projects for President Mandela's office, and was a co-editor of his presidential speeches.

To start this episode, we’ll hear some of Wilmot’s story and how his life intersected with the rise and fall of apartheid in his home country. 

Learn more about Brown University’s Pandemic Center

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts  

Many predicted that India’s prime minister Nerandra Modi and his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would dominate the election, grow their ranks in Parliament, and further impose their Hindu-nationalist ideology on the country. 

However, that wasn’t what happened. Modi was reelected, but his party lost over 60 seats in the lower house of Parliament. The BJP will have to govern as part of a multi-party coalition, and most likely moderate their Hindu-nationalist aspirations.

On this episode, you’ll hear from Ashutosh Varshney, a political scientist at Brown University and director of the Watson Institute’s Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia, about this historic election: what led to its surprising outcome, what it means for the Hindu-nationalist movement embodied by Prime Minister Nerandra Modi, and what it might tell us about the struggle for democracy occurring in countries around the world.  

*Trending Globally will be taking a brief summer hiatus, but we’ll be back in July with all-new episodes*

Learn more about the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at the Watson Institute

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

Host Megan Hall spoke with Brandon del Pozo, an assistant professor of medicine and health services at Brown (and a former police officer), about the relationship between America’s overdose crisis, law enforcement’s drug policies, and the growing interest in safe injection sites around the country. They discuss how safe injection sites in New York City have affected the overdose crisis there and what lessons Rhode Island can learn as the state plans to open its first safe injection site later this year. 

Listen to more from Humans in Public Health

While it’s nothing new for the Supreme Court to weigh in on contentious issues in society, as our guest on this episode sees it, something profound has shifted within the Court over the last few years. The decisions they hand down are not only increasingly transformative, they’re also lining up more and more clearly with our partisan politics. And no matter your politics, that should be a problem. 

Kate Shaw is a constitutional law scholar and professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and a 2001 graduate of Brown University. She is also the co-host of the podcast “Strict Scrutiny,” which explores the Supreme Court — the cases, the people and the culture surrounding it. 

On this episode, Dan Richards spoke with her about how the Supreme Court fits in our politics today, how that role has changed over time, and what Kate thinks its role in our society today should be.

Subscribe to Trending Globally wherever you listen to podcasts. 

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But unlike the U.S., Mexico doesn’t have tens of thousands of licensed firearms dealers. 

It has two. 

So how do so many guns make their way into Mexico? And how do these guns shape Mexican society? 

These are two of the questions Ieva Jusionyte explores in her new book “Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence across the Border.” Jusionyte is an anthropologist at the Watson Institute and spent much of the last few years following people whose lives are shaped by guns in Mexico. Guns, which, by and large, come from the United States. 

On this episode, Jusionyte discusses the impact of American firearms on Mexican society and the role they play in spreading violence and trauma on both sides of the border. 

Learn more about and purchase "Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence across the Border"

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

Photo credit: Tony Rinaldo

It’s one of the boldest experiments in the U.S. of an approach to addressing the drug overdose crisis known as “harm reduction,” which is focused less on forcing people to stop using drugs and instead on helping people use them more safely. 

It might sound counterintuitive that such an approach could help stem our country’s drug overdose epidemic, which killed over 112,000 Americans in 2023. But as our two guests on this episode explain, overdose prevention centers — along with many other “harm reduction” interventions — work. Studies have shown that they not only help reduce drug-related deaths, they also help people recover from drug addiction more broadly. 

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with two public health leaders in Rhode Island about this new overdose prevention center — how it will work, why it matters, and what it says about the future of addressing America’s drug overdose crisis. 

Guests on this episode:

• Colleen Daley Ndoye, executive director of Project Weber/RENEW, the organization that will be overseeing Rhode Island’s overdose prevention center
• Brandon Marshall, chair of epidemiology at Brown University. 

Learn more about Project Weber/RENEW

Learn more about the People, Places, and Health Collective at Brown University’s School of Public Health

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

It worked. The Sandinistas led a coalition that took over the government in July 1979, in what became known as the Sandinista Revolution. 

However, within a few years, the Sandinistas faced a violent backlash, which pushed the country into a state of unrest that lasted for almost a decade. 

This period of violence, from roughly 1982-1988, was known as the Contra War. To many Americans, it’s often associated with the Cold War and Ronald Reagan. It’s been described as a proxy battle between the Soviet-supported Sandinistas on one side, and the U.S.-supported counter-revolutionaries, or Contras, on the other. 

But in this episode, we’ll go beyond that Cold War framing of the conflict, to uncover a fuller explanation of why the Sandinista Revolution was successful in Nicaragua in 1979, why it was replaced by a liberal democratic government in 1990, and why that democracy has since fallen apart. 

Mateo Jarquín is a historian and author of The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History.” Through interviews with former Sandinistas and archival research conducted across Latin America, Mateo tells the story of this momentous decade in Latin American politics from the perspective of those who lived it. In doing so, he challenges our understanding of the Cold War’s impact on Latin America, from the 1980s straight through to the present. 

In the second half of the episode, we’ll talk with Watson Senior Fellow Steven Kinzer about Nicaragua’s repressive political regime today, and a surprising act of resistance whose full effects are yet to be seen. 

Learn about and purchase “The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History”

Listen to episode 1 of “Revolution Revisited” a limited series on the history of the Sandinista Revolution, from Trending Globally

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

According to New York Times senior writer David Leonhardt, this is just one example of the stagnation defining so many aspects of America’s society and economy today. From life expectancy to education outcomes to rates of income inequality, by so many measures, American society simply isn’t improving for as many Americans as rapidly as it once did. By some measures, it’s not improving at all.

In other words: the American dream is increasingly out of reach. 

Leonhardt’s newest book, “Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream,” explores the data and the history behind this dimming of the American dream. This spring, he came to the Watson Institute to discuss the book with Jeff Colgan, director of the Watson Institute’s Climate Solutions Lab. In this episode of Trending Globally, Colgan talks with Leonhardt about the cultural and political shifts that have contributed to this change, and about what needs to be done to make widespread prosperity attainable in the decades to come. 

Learn more about and purchase “Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream”

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On this episode, Dan Richards talks with political scientist Juliet Hooker about how these movements are just the most recent evolution of two of the most powerful forces in American politics — what she describes as “Black grief” and “white grievance.” 

Hooker’s new book, “Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss,” explores how these two forces have related to each other throughout American history, what they can teach us about how to build a better democracy, and what they tell us about how feelings of loss shape not only our psyches but our politics.

Learn more about and purchase “Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss”

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

Learn more about “Humans in Public Health,” a podcast from the Brown University School of Public Health

The show is hosted by political economist Mark Blyth and political scientist Carrie Nordlund. On each episode, they discuss, debate and, occasionally, make fun of the biggest headlines of the day. The conversations are always thought-provoking and informative, and while the topics are sometimes somber, the show is not. 

On this episode, they discuss some of the factors shaping the 2024 U.S. elections, the state of the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and what’s next for the U.K.’s Labour Party. They also ponder: is Mark too old for VR headsets? 

Listen to more of Mark and Carrie and subscribe. 

Learn about all of the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

In the war’s first year, Russia’s assault on Ukraine shook the West, while Ukraine's defense of the territory captivated the world. 

While no less deadly or consequential, the war's second year has looked very different. The war has become a stalemate on the battlefield, altering the politics in Kyiv, the Kremlin, and among their respective allies. Neither country’s leaders appear to be looking for a way out of the war anytime soon, and the prospect of peace in Ukraine seems as far away as it’s been at any point in the last two years. 

On this episode, Dan Richards discusses the state of the War in Ukraine with Lyle Goldstein, a Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and director of Asia Engagement at Defense Priorities. They explore the shifting definitions of “victory” in both Kyiv and the Kremlin over the past 12 months, what an end to this conflict might look like, and what it would take to bring both country’s leaders to the negotiating table. 

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

Yet, as our guest on this episode explains, if history is any guide, more attention to the issue doesn’t necessarily mean better outcomes for nonwhite and poor students. There’s a long history of well-financed, elite (largely white) institutions investing time and money to try and address inequality in American education with little to show for it. Even more unsettling, these efforts often make the problem worse. 

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with Noliwe Rooks, chair of Africana Studies at Brown University, and the author of an award-winning book, “Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education.” They discuss the surprising history of some of America’s most influential school reform efforts, and the deeper historical patterns and racist structures that keep our education system broken for so many American children. 

Learn more about and purchase “Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education.”

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

But recently, as our guest on this episode explains, backlash movements have come to dominate our politics in unprecedented ways. He argues that to build a more stable and healthy politics, we need to better understand how these forces work. 

Why do certain policies, movements, or individual politicians incite powerful backlash movements while others don't? And why — whether we’re talking about immigration, healthcare, reproductive rights, or countless other issues — has backlash come to dominate so many different policy realms? 

On this episode, Dan Richards explores these questions with Eric Patashnik, a political scientist at the Watson Institute, and author of the book “Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age.” In the book, Patashnik provides a theory of political backlash — what causes it, why it’s diffused through our politics over the last few decades, and how policymakers and politicians can learn to remain effective in a political moment dominated by backlash and countermobilization.   

Learn more about and purchase “Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age”

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

***

The beginning of 2023 saw a disturbing milestone: the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the ‘Doomsday Clock’ forward to 90 seconds to midnight – the closest it’s been to ‘Doomsday’ since the clock was established in 1947. 

But what would it take for a nuclear weapon to actually be used in the world today? And if one was used, how would the rest of the world respond? 

In this episode (originally released in February 2023), the second in our limited series on the theory, policies, and practice of conflict escalation, you’ll hear from two experts rethinking how nuclear threats are understood and modeled. 

Rose McDermott is a professor of International Affairs at the Watson Institute, and Reid Pauly is an assistant professor of Nuclear Security and Policy at Watson. Their paper “Decision-making Under Pressure: The Mechanisms and Psychology of Nuclear Brinkmanship” is the lead article in the current issue of International Security. In it, they reframe one of the most fundamental theories for understanding nuclear risks: nuclear “brinkmanship.” They highlight why conventional models of brinkmanship fail to fully explain how a nuclear crisis might unfold and explore what interventions are needed to prevent one from starting. 

Read Rose and Reid’s paper, “Decision-making Under Pressure: The Mechanisms and Psychology of Nuclear Brinkmanship.”

Listen to the first episode in our limited series, “Escalation,” with Lyle Goldstein. 

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

***

In 2007, Watson Professor John Eason moved with his family from Chicago to Forest City, Arkansas. At the time Eason was getting his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, and he moved to Forest City to learn about America’s mass incarceration crisis from a perspective that’s often overlooked: that of the towns where America’s prisons are located. 

What effect do prisons have in these often underserved rural communities? And what role do these communities play in what scholars and activists often call the “prison industrial complex”? 

What he found was a story that defied easy explanation. 

“After a week in Forest City…everything I had thought I'd known about why we build prisons was completely changed,” Eason described.  

His book about Forest City, “Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation,” explores the town’s politics, history, and culture to offer a nuanced picture of how prisons affect the communities that house them. In doing so, he unsettles many of the notions Americans have about the relationship between race, class and mass incarceration. 

On this episode of “Trending Globally” (originally broadcast in January 2022), Eason explains what brought him to Forest City, what he found once he got there, and how it changed his view of the prison-industrial complex. Whether you see prisons as a necessary part of society or an institution in need of abolition, John’s work provides essential context for envisioning a more humane and just way forward for America’s carceral system. 

Learn more about and purchase “Big House on the Prairie”

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts 

They discuss how we should be thinking about COVID-19 in our daily lives, the unexpected ways international conflicts have changed conversations around pandemic preparedness, and what the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 can teach us about how societies learn from disasters.

Guest on today’s episode: 

• Jennifer Nuzzo is an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University’s School of Public Health
• Wilmot James is an internationally recognized leader in the fields of global health, international security, and a Senior Advisor to the Pandemic Center. 

Watch Jennifer Nuzzo’s TED talk about how to prepare for future pandemics

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

You may not know Angus Deaton by name, but you probably know a phrase he helped to make famous: “deaths of despair.” In 2015, Deaton and his wife and research partner Anne Case published a paper that revealed something startling: an increase in mortality rates among white middle-aged men and women in the 2000s and 2010s in the United States. 

Deaton and Case attributed this to a confluence of factors, including economic stagnation, social isolation and the opioid crisis. In explaining this topic, they did something economists usually avoid doing: They told a sweeping but still complex and nuanced story about American society and economy in the 21st century.

In this conversation, Mark and Angus Deaton discuss Deaton’s new book, as well as its relationship to his work on deaths of despair. They also explore why the field of economics ignored the issue of inequality for so long, and why in the last decade that’s started to change. 

• This episode was originally broadcast on the Rhodes Center Podcast, another podcast from the Watson Institute. If you want to hear a longer version of this conversation, you can find it by subscribing to the Rhodes Center Podcast or by visiting their website. 
• Learn more about and purchase “Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality.”
• Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts.

These are complicated questions, and not of the variety we often ask on this show. But historian Omer Bartov thinks that trying to answer them is essential to finding political solutions to our most vexing problems. And in his new book “Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis,” Bartov powerfully makes the case.  

On this episode of Trending Globally, Dan Richards talks with Bartov about the book — which weaves together personal stories, historical analyses and a moral critique of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians — and how individual stories and personal memories are inextricably linked to the politics we create. 

Although this podcast was scheduled before the current Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the interview took place in the wake of the events of October 7 and therefore those events are a big part of the conversation. But as this conversation hopefully makes clear, Bartov’s book and analysis are even more important and relevant in our current moment.

Learn more about an purchase “Genocide, the Holocuast, and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis”

Reading recommendations from Omer Bartov:

• “Gate of the Sun” and “Children of the Ghetto” by Elias Khoury
• “Khirbet Khizeh” by S. Yizhar
• “Facing the Forests” A. B. Yehoshua
• “Return to Haifa” by  Ghassan Kanafanl

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

The impact of these policies, however, will go far beyond our climate. Indeed, they form the core of “Bidenomics,” and they’re going to reshape our economy and our politics for decades to come. They will do so in ways we can predict, and in ways we can’t. 

On this episode, Dan Richards speaks with two experts on the politics of climate change about this unprecedented collection of legislation and how it will transform our economy, change our planet and possibly realign our politics. 

Guests on this episode:

• Jeff Colgan is a political scientist, and ​​director of the Climate Solutions Lab at the Watson Institute. 
• Robinson Meyer is a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times and the founding executive editor of Heatmap, a new media company focused on climate change. 

Hear from Robinson Meyer and many others about all things climate change at Heatmap News

Get 50% off your first year subscription to Heatmap using the code BROWN50 

Read Jeff Colgan’s October 2023 Op-Ed in the New York Times

Watch Robinson’s talk in October at the Watson Institute’s Climate Solutions Lab

Learn more about the Climate Solutions Lab

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

Over those decades, Abu-Jamal has become a leader of the anti-death penalty movement and an influential critic of mass incarceration. He’s written multiple books, and appeared on countless radio programs and documentaries — all while serving what is now a life sentence. 

This fall, scholars and activists met at Brown to mark a new chapter in Abu-Jamal’s story. The John Hay Library at Brown University, in partnership with Brown’s Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, and the Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, acquired Abu-Jamal’s writings — 97 boxes — and opened them to the public. 

On this episode: Dan Richards talks with two Brown archivists about this new collection, and what it’s like preserving the work of one of the most famous incarcerated people in America. Dan also speaks with a scholar at Brown who is working to collect the histories of incarcerated people about the importance of filling this gap in our nation's historical record. 

Watch the opening remarks of the "Voices of Mass Incarceration" symposium’ 

Read more about the collection of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s archives

Learn about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

Guests on this episode:

• Amanda Strauss – Associate University Librarian for Special Collections and Director of the John Hay Library
• Christopher West – Curator of the Black Diaspora, Brown University
• Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve – Associate Professor of Sociology, Brown University

Honoria’s family was one of the dozens that Blair Sackett, a sociologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Watson Institute, followed as they navigated life in the U.S. Sackett, whose work focuses on the experience of refugees in the U.S. and abroad, wanted to understand why some refugees thrived in the U.S. while others faltered. 

The result of Sackett’s research is a new book, co-authored with sociologist Annette  Lareau, called “We Thought It Would Be Heaven: Refugees in an Unequal America.” On this episode, Dan Richards talks with Sackett about the book, and about the under-explored factors that play a surprisingly large role in the wellbeing and success of refugees in the U.S. 

Learn more about and purchase “We Thought It Would be Heaven”

Learn more about the Watson Institute's other podcasts

*All names of displaced persons in this episode, and in "We Thought It Would Be Heaven," are pseudonyms.

What would you want to spend it on? How would you convince your classmates that your idea was best? Furthermore, would you even believe what this professor was telling you? 

Jonathan Collins is a professor of political science at the Watson Institute, and has recently been turning this hypothetical into a reality for students in the Providence area. He's been helping to design and evaluate what are known as participatory budgeting projects, and they're not just for students. In towns and cities around the world, everyday people are being let into the budgeting process of their communities. The effects have been profound, both on the local budgets, and on communities that have long felt marginalized and disempowered. 

"There's just something magical that can happen when there's skin in [the] game…the moment that you give them an opportunity to feel that they are a part of the stakes? I think the possibilities are endless," explained Collins. 

On this episode Dan Richards talks with Jonathan about participatory budgeting — where it came from, what it looks like on the ground, and how it might help strengthen our democracy, one community at a time. 

Learn more about the Watson Institute's other podcasts

Learn more about participatory budgeting in Rhode Island

Learned about PAVED, Browns democratic innovation research initiative

Photo credit: Nick Dentamaro

This was not the first coup in Niger’s history, or in the recent history of the Sahel region of Africa. In the last few years there have been coups in multiple countries in the region, including Burkina Faso and Mali. 

But this one has put the West especially on edge. 

Why?

Listening to U.S. officials or much of the reporting on the topic, you’d think this coup has huge ramifications for the fight against Islamist militant groups in West Africa, and for the U.S. and Russia’s race to gain influence across Africa. 

But as Stephanie Savell, an expert on U.S.-Niger relations and a co-director of the Costs of War Project at the Watson Institute, explains, those framings of the coup largely miss what’s really going on in the region. And worse still — they might actually make it more difficult to bring peace and stability to this part of the world. 

Read more from Stephanie Savell on the coup in Niger

Learn more about the Costs of War project

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

In this episode, Dan Richards talks with Wendy Schiller, professor of political science at Brown University and director of the Watson Institute’s Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy, about where the race stands now, and what to expect in the coming months. They discuss why efforts to unseat Trump as the Republican frontrunner seem destined to backfire, and what it means for our country that a historically high percentage of American voters want neither Trump nor Biden to be president in 2024. 

In the second half of the show, Dan speaks with Othniel Harris, program manager of the Taubman Center, about a disturbing trend in U.S. politics that could have major implications for 2024 and beyond: the rash of restrictive voting laws passed in recent years in swing states around the country. 

Learn more about the Taubman Center research project “Democracy’s Price Tag”

Learn more about other podcasts from the Watson Institute

This apparent revolution in AI tech has provoked widespread awe, amazement — and for some, terror. 

But as Brown Professor of Data Science and Computer Science Suresh Venkatasubramanian explains on this episode of Trending Globally, artificial intelligence has been with us for a while, and a serious, nuanced conversation about its role in our society is long overdue. 

Suresh Venkatasubramanian is the Deputy Director of Brown’s Data Science Institute. This past year, he served in the Biden Administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he helped craft the administration’s blueprint for an “AI Bill Rights.” 

In this episode of Trending Globally, Dan Richards talks with Suresh about what an AI Bill of Rights should look like and how to build a future where artificial intelligence isn’t just safe and effective, but actively contributes to social justice. 

Read the blueprint for the AI Bill of Rights

Learn more about Brown’s Data Science Institute

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

What to make of Obi’s unexpected performance in this year’s election? And what does it mean for the future of Nigeria, a country of some 220 million people that, by many estimates, will surpass the US as the world’s third most populous country in the coming decades? 

Daniel Jordan Smith is the director of the Watson Institute’s Africa Initiative, and as he explains, there’s one realm where many of the issues Obi ran on come to a head, and that can teach us a lot about the country’s future: its infrastructure. 

Smith’s newest book, “Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria” explores why Africa’s most populous, economically powerful country fails so many of its citizens when it comes to providing basic services like water and electricity. He also explores the creative ways that citizens work around these shortcomings and how the government still makes itself, as Smith puts it, “present in its absence.”

Learn more about and purchase “Every Household Its Own Government”

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

The challengers were optimistic, given the multiple crises facing Turkey that Erdogan has struggled to manage: rampant inflation, mass migration of refugees from the Syrian Civil War, and last February’s devastating earthquake.  

Despite these challenges, Erdogan did better than many expected and pushed the election to a runoff, which is set to be held on May 28. 

At stake, according to Kılıçdaroğlu and his supporters, is nothing less than democracy itself in Turkey. 

On this episode, Dan Richards and Center for Middle East Studies postdoctoral scholar Fulya Pinar speak with experts on the ground in Turkey about the stakes of this election and why the race is so incredibly close. They also explore how anti-immigrant politics is driving many Turkish voters in a way it never before has, with ramifications that will extend far beyond this election. 

Learn more about Fulya Pinar’s research on the experience of undocumented immigrants in Turkey 

Guests on this episode: 

• Mert Moral, assistant professor of political science at Sabanci University.
• Ali Fisunoglu, assistant professor of political science at St. Luis University
• Deniz Sert, professor of political science at Ozyegin University.

Learn more about other podcasts from the Watson Institute

He left more concerned about another part of the world just 100 miles off the coast of China—Taiwan. 

As he described the current tension between China, Taiwan, and the U.S. to Dan Richards on this episode of Trending Globally, “This case, in my view, is extremely dangerous. I would argue that [it’s] the most dangerous flashpoint in the world, by a good margin.”

On this episode – our third in our “Escalation” series – you’ll hear from Goldstein about why Taiwan has become a global flashpoint. It’s not the first time a potential crisis in Taiwan has caused alarm, but as he explains, this time is different – it’s much more dangerous. 

Listen to the other two episodes on our “Escalation” series here and here.

Learn more about Watson’s China Initiative 

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts 

Is there anything we can do to secure ourselves – as individuals, and as a society – from these attacks? Is there any way to get ahead of the problem, given the dizzying speed of change in our digital technology? 

According to our two guests on this episode of Trending Globally, to answer these questions, you need to ask some much deeper questions about the role of technology in society and the relationship between governments, businesses, and individuals. 

Congressman Jim Langevin represented Rhode Island in the House of Representatives from 2001 until 2023. Chris Inglis served as cyber director for the Biden Administration from 2021 until this past February and as deputy director of the NSA from 2006 until 2014. In this episode, you’ll hear from Chris and Jim about the future of cybersecurity, and why it’s so much more than just a technological problem. 

This spring, Jim Langevin is leading a study group at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs on the issue of cybersecurity. He recently brought Chris Inglis to campus to discuss their work together, including helping to create the Biden Administration’s National Cyber Strategy, which was released in March of this year. 

• Read a summary of the Biden Administration’s National Cyber Strategy
• Learn more about the Cyber Solarium Commission 
• Learn more about other podcasts from the Watson Institute

But despite its ubiquity, most of us can’t seem to agree what, exactly, we mean by the term. 

Which is why in this episode we’re going to take a closer look at the history of the concept. Jacob Soll is a professor of philosophy, history and accounting at the University of Southern California, and author of the book “Free Market: The History of an Idea.” 

On this episode, guest host Mark Blyth talks with Jacob about how the concept has evolved over the centuries (millennia, in fact) into the lightning rod of economic debate that it is today. But Jacob’s fascinating origin story doesn’t just correct the historical record – it also reframes how we should think about modern economies today. 

• This episode first appeared on another podcast from Watson, the Rhodes Center Podcast, which is hosted by the inimitable Mark Blyth. You can listen to the full version of this conversation by subscribing to the Rhodes Center Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. 
• Learn more about and purchase “Free Market: The History of an Idea”
• Watch Jacob’s talk on YouTube 

In this episode, political scientists Wendy Schiller and Kaitlin Sidorsky – authors of the new book "Inequality Across State Lines" - explain how the government fails to protect victims of domestic violence in the U.S. Specifically, they explore how different states have approached (or ignored) the issue and what these test cases can teach us about how to address the crisis going forward.  

In looking at the policy failures around domestic violence, as well as possible solutions to the crisis, they also make clear: this issue affects us all, whether we know it or not. 

Kaitlin Sidorsky is an associate professor of political science at Coastal Carolina University. Wendy Schiller is a professor of political science and Director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy at Watson. 

Learn more about and purchase their book Inequality Across State Lines: How Policymakers Have Failed Domestic Violence Victims in the United States

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts.  

This puts it in a long line of federal climate legislation, according to climate policy experts Leah Stokes and Jeff Colgan. 

As Jeff told Dan Richards in this episode of “Trending Globally,” “Lots of the progress that we make on climate change is best done when the word climate is never mentioned at all.” 

Jeff is a political scientist and director of the Climate Solutions Lab at Watson. Leah is an associate professor of environmental politics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and she helped craft the climate-related provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act. To understand the relationship between the science and politics of climate change in the U.S., you couldn’t ask for two better guests. 

As they explain, the bill’s name is just one example of how this legislation was shaped as much by the politics of a closely divided Senate as it was by the science of climate change and decarbonization. 

In this episode, Jeff and Leah talk with Dan Richards about the contents of the bill, what it took to get it passed and how it will contribute to the global effort to fight climate change.

Listen to Leah Stokes’ podcast “A Matter of Degrees”.

Explore the Climate Solutions Lab “Climate Opportunity Map”.

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts.

But in this episode, we explore a place that achieves remarkable results on these and other measures without having the high income levels typically associated with states that have broad-based social welfare programs. 

Dan Richards talks with Patrick Heller, professor of sociology and international and public affairs at Watson, about the surprising story of the Indian state of Kerala. Despite being a relatively low-income part of the world, Kerala has managed to foster social welfare programs in a way few countries in the world can match. And it does so while maintaining widespread participation in what Heller describes as “India’s noisy democracy.”

So how does Kerala do it, and what lessons can the rest of the world learn from its example? Listen to find out. 

Read Patrick Heller and Olle Törnquist’s recent article on Kerala. 

Learn more about Watson’s other podcasts. 

In the first half of the episode, Mack Scott, a visiting professor at Brown’s Center for Slavery and Justice, talks with Dan Richards about the complex relationship between Rhode Island’s Narragansett Nation and the state’s Black communities in the 18th and 19th centuries. It’s a vivid example of how America’s history of anti-Black racism is deeply intertwined with the history of America’s indigenous communities. 

In the second half, Watson Senior Fellow Geri Augusto talks about a project she’s working on to uncover, preserve, and transmit the history of one of the Civil Rights movement’s most important and unique organizations – the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Geri is working with scholars and activists to bring this history to life and to find new, more inclusive ways to help people share their stories on their own terms. 

• Explore the SNCC Legacy Project, and the SNCC Digital Gateway.  
• Learn more about the theory and practice of Critical Oral History. 
• Read Mack Scott's recent article in the Providence Journal. 
• Photo by Danny Lyon. Learn more about the image. 
• Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

But what would it take for a nuclear weapon to actually be used in the world today? And if one was used, how would the rest of the world respond? 

In this episode, the second in our limited series on the theory, policies, and practice of conflict escalation, you’ll hear from two experts rethinking how nuclear threats are understood and modeled. 

Rose McDermott is a professor of International Affairs at the Watson Institute, and Reid Pauly is an assistant professor of Nuclear Security and Policy at Watson. Their paper “Decision-making Under Pressure: The Mechanisms and Psychology of Nuclear Brinkmanship” is the lead article in the current issue of International Security. In it, they reframe one of the most fundamental theories for understanding nuclear risks: nuclear “brinkmanship.” They highlight why conventional models of brinkmanship fail to fully explain how a nuclear crisis might unfold and explore what interventions are needed to prevent one from starting. 

• Read Rose and Reid’s paper, “Decision-making Under Pressure: The Mechanisms and Psychology of Nuclear Brinkmanship.”
• Read their article in "Foreign Affairs"
• Listen to the first episode in our limited series, “Escalation,” with Lyle Goldstein. 
• Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

What effect do prisons have in these often underserved rural communities? And what role do these communities play in what scholars and activists often call the “prison industrial complex”? 

What he found was a story that defied easy explanation. 

“After a week in Forest City…everything I had thought I'd known about why we build prisons was completely changed,” Eason described.  

His book about Forest City, Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation, explores the town’s politics, history, and culture to offer a nuanced picture of how prisons affect the communities that house them. In doing so, he unsettles many of the notions Americans have about the relationship between race, class, and mass incarceration. 

On this episode of Trending Globally, Eason explains what brought him to Forest City, what he found once he got there, and how it changed his view of the prison-industrial complex. Whether you see prisons as a necessary part of society or an institution in need of abolition, John’s work provides essential context for envisioning a more humane and just way forward for America’s carceral system. 

Learn more about and purchase Big House on the Prairie

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

Should the US and NATO support Ukraine at all costs? Or should they push Ukraine and Russia towards a negotiated settlement? What would such a settlement even look like? 

Meanwhile, new conflicts around the world continue to emerge, each with their own seemingly impossible questions. 

This is why we’re launching ‘Escalation,’ a new limited series from Trending Globally. Over the next few months, you’ll hear from experts about the history, philosophy, and even psychology of conflict escalation, and what can be done to reduce global conflicts going forward. 

Our first episode in the series features Lyle Goldstein, a visiting Professor at the Watson Institute and Director of Asia Engagement at the think-tank Defense Priorities. He’s an expert on the effects of great power conflict, and the theories that explain them. 

Professor Goldstein has been following the war in Ukraine closely through both Western and Russian media. He recently published a paper with Watson’s Costs of War Project looking at how, while there are no obvious paths out of this war, there are at least paths we should know to avoid. Host Dan Richards and Professor Goldstein explore the poor assumptions and misunderstandings that drive many ideas in this conflict, as well as what a better path forward might look like. 

Learn more about Professor Goldstein’s recent paper with the Costs of War Project. 

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts.

The show is hosted by political economist and Rhodes Center Director Mark Blyth, and political scientist Carrie Nordlund. On each episode they discuss, debate, add context to, and, occasionally, make fun of the biggest headlines of the day. The conversations are always thought-provoking and informative, and while the topics are often somber, the show is not. 

On this episode they discuss the geopolitics of the World Cup, the future of the Republican Party, and how FTX’s complicated crypto-scandal fits into the long lineage of financial fraud. They also briefly play with Mark’s dog. 

Listen to more of Mark and Carrie and subscribe. 

Learn about all of the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

On Lula's agenda: rebuild Brazil’s social safety net, restore the country’s democratic institutions, and advocate for the country's most marginalized citizens -- oh, and save the Amazon rainforest. He'll have to do all of that while navigating a divided government, polarized public, and aggressive far-right opposition.

On this episode of Trending Globally Dan Richards explores this historic moment in Brazil with James Green, a historian and professor of Latin American history at the Watson Institute, and the host of the podcast Brazil Unfiltered. 

They discuss how Lula came to win, and what his victory means for Brazil and the world. They also look at why, contrary to what so many people predicted and feared, Brazil’s election went relatively smoothly. Because, as James makes clear: it easily could have not. 

Learn more about James Green’s podcast Brazil Unfiltered.

Find transcripts and more information about all our episodes on our website.

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

On this episode of Trending Globally we’re stepping aside from midterm election analysis (there’s plenty of that to go around) — instead, you’ll hear from an expert on state-level government about the surprising, underappreciated power of US states to change people’s lives. 

And a warning: whatever your political beliefs, this conversation might actually make you feel optimistic about American government. 

Ambassador Suzi LeVine '93 is a Senior Fellow of International and Public Affairs at the Watson Institute, and this Fall she’s leading a study group called ‘The Power of the States’. In it, she’s helping students to see the tremendous potential of US state governments to change lives, and the unrecognized potential everyday citizens have to make their voice heard at the state level. 

• Learn more about Ambassador LeVine’s work and her Watson Institute Study Group. 
• Learn more about this episode and all our other episodes on our website. 
• Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 
• A final note: This fall marks Trending Globally’s fifth year at the Watson Institute, and this is the show’s 200th episode. To learn more about our favorite past episodes and stay up to date on ways we’ll celebrate in the coming weeks, follow  the Watson Institute on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. And thank you all for listening! 

It was the culmination of a protest movement known as the ‘Aragalaya’ which had been growing for months amidst Sri Lanka’s economic crisis and its leaders’ corrupt, inept response. For the next few days, surreal images were broadcast around the world of Sri Lankan citizens of all stripes milling throughout the Palace, picnicking on its lawns, and swimming in its pool. 

But almost as surprising as the images was how quickly, within weeks, the country seemed to revert to the status quo. 

Or did it? 

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, an expert on Sri Lankan politics and founder of the Center for Policy Alternatives in Sri Lanka. He explains where the crisis came from, what led to the surreal protests this summer, and where the Aragalaya goes from here. 

• Watch Dr. Saravanamuttu’s talk at the Watson Institute’s Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia. 
• Learn more about the Center for Policy Alternatives. 
• Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

In the first part of the show, Dan Richards talks with Dr. Pablo Rodriguez about how the growing Hispanic and Latinx population in the U.S. is changing the country’s electoral politics. Dr. Rodriguez is a medical doctor, public health advocate, and political commentator based in Rhode Island, and he’s observed and analyzed this transformation first-hand. They discuss the wide-ranging effects of this demographic change, and why its political implications are so hard to predict. 

In the second half Dan talks with Susan Eckstein, a professor of sociology at Boston University and author of Cuban Privilege: The Making of Immigrant Inequality in America. Her book tells the story of Cuban-American immigration policy since World War II, and the geographic, economic, and geopolitical quirks of history that created it. In telling this singular story, Eckstein casts a new light on all U.S. immigration policy.

Questions? Comments? Ideas for topics or guests? Email us at: trendingglobally@brown.edu.

Learn more about Watson’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. 

Learn more about and purchase Cuban Privilege: The Making of immigrant Inequality in America.

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

Find transcripts and more information about all our episodes on our website.

On September 13, 2022, a young Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini was detained by the country’s ‘morality police’ for improperly wearing her hijab. 

Three days later, she was dead. Authorities claimed it was the result of a heart attack, but images of her in the hospital – bruised and bloodied – suggested otherwise. 

Those images, along with the government’s cover-up surrounding the details of her death, have sparked a protest movement in Iran unlike any the country has seen. 

On this bonus episode of Trending Globally, Dan Richards spoke  with anthropologist and Director of the Center for Middle East Studies  Nadje Al-Ali about these protests, and about the unique role gender has come to play in them. 

These protests are, and always have been, about much more than hijabs, as Nadje explains. They’re part of a much longer story of political resistance in the Middle East. Many of us, especially in the West, would do well to understand that story.

Questions? Comments? Ideas for topics or guests? Email us at: trendingglobally@brown.edu.

• Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 
• Listen to Shervin Hajipour's song 'Baraye'.

In Italy’s last general election, in 2018, the Brothers of Italy received roughly 4% of the vote. This year, they received around 26% – more than any other party in the country.  

Between 2018 and 2022, Meloni and her party rallied voters over common far-right concerns like immigration, the influence of international elites, and the rise of a supposed “LGBTQ Lobby.”

Along with ideological concerns, Meloni and her party have employed a consistent mood that’s familiar across our politics: anger. 

Today, it can seem like cultivating anger is a key to political success. But how effective is it as a political strategy? And how, exactly, is it deployed? 

These are questions that Watson Professor and Political Economist Mark Blyth, Rhodes Center Postdoctoral Fellow Nicolò Fraccaroli, and Brown University undergraduate Nadav Druker '23 are uniquely suited to answer. Using data from over 18,000 Italian Facebook posts over the last decade, they’ve analyzed the presence of political anger in the rollercoaster of contemporary Italian politics. They then devised a new and fascinating way to measure this anger, and in the process are helping shed light on how the emotion is used, and the effect it can have. 

On this episode, Dan Richards talked with Mark, Nicolò, and Nadav about Italy's elections, how the results fit into their research on political anger, and what it can teach us about politics in Italy and around the world. 

• Questions? Comments? Ideas for topics or guests? Email us at: trendingglobally@brown.edu
• Read Mark, Nicolo, and Nadav’s paper
• Listen to the Rhodes Center Podcast
• Listen to Mark and Carrie
• Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

Yet despite their growing numbers in America, and their unique relationship to the United States, there’s much we don’t know about their specific needs as refugees. 

On this episode of Trending Globally, you’ll hear from one man who fled Kabul with his family about their journey from Afghanistan and resettlement in Rhode Island. You’ll also hear from researchers at Watson’s Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies and Rhode Island’s Refugee Dream Center, who are working together to learn how these refugees can be better supported after such a traumatic evacuation and rapid resettlement in a new country. 

In the process of this research, these experts are also learning firsthand what needs to be done to make humanitarian evacuations safer and more humane. Because sadly, whether we’re talking about Myanmar, Ukraine, or countless other places in crisis, there will be many more emergencies requiring humanitarian evacuations in the future, resulting in refugees who must make new lives for themselves in communities around the world. 

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies. 

Learn more about the Refugee Dream Center. 

Meet Omar, Adam, and Alexandria and learn more about their work on Wednesday 9/21 at the Watson Institute. 

Read a recent article by Brown University on the research collaboration

One final note: This is Sarah Baldwin’s last episode as host of Trending Globally. We’re sad to see her go, but the show won’t be going anywhere. Dan Richards (who you’ve heard before, including on our last episode with Andrew Schrank) will be filling in as our host, and we’ll also be having guest hosts in the coming months. We’re excited for what’s come, and so grateful for everything Sarah brought to the show. Thank you, Sarah! 

Yet despite these signs of a growing labor movement, the percentage of Americans belonging to unions is still substantially smaller than it was during the peak of organized labor participation in the 20th century. 

So how should one think about the state of organized labor today? On the eve of Labor Day weekend, maybe it’s also worth revisiting why we should care about the state of organized labor in the first place. 

On this episode of Trending Globally, you’ll hear from Andrew Schrank, professor of sociology and international and public affairs at Watson and an expert on organized labor, about the past, present, and future of the labor movement in America. Because, as he explains, it’s more than just workers’ wages on the line: our country's prosperity and stability might depend on giving workers a greater voice in the future of our economy.  

Read Andrew Schrank’s 2019 article ‘Rebuilding Labor Power in the Postindustrial United States’

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

What he found there is helping to reframe the role that the Catholic Church – and its then leader, Pope Pius XII – played in World War II.  

Pius XII’s legacy is heavily debated. Some people want him to be made a saint. Others call him ‘Hitler’s Pope,’ blaming him for aiding the Nazi regime and ultimately, facilitating the Holocaust. 

What David found is a much more complicated story. 

He’s put together his research into a gripping new book, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler. It’s a page-turner of a book, filled with larger-than-life characters, set at a moment in European history when the stakes couldn’t be higher. It’s also completely true. 

On this episode of Trending Globally: David Kertzer discusses Pope Pius XII and World War II, and what this story can teach us about the need for moral leadership in times of crisis. 

Learn more about and purchase The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts 

The decision set off shockwaves across the country, and brought up questions not only about reproductive rights, but about the relationship between the Supreme Court and US politics at large. 

Dobbs vs. Jackson was only one of several wide-ranging, polarizing decisions of this Supreme Court term. On this episode of Trending Globally, Wendy Schiller, professor of political science and the director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy at Watson, helps explain this term’s monumental decisions, and ground them in American politics and history. 

At a moment when the reach of the court seems to extend further than ever and its opinions fall on an increasingly divided nation, there’s never been a more important time to assess how our judicial system works – and how it doesn’t. 

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

This episode takes a closer look at how these wars have changed life in the United States – in cities, towns, and communities across the country. The first part of the episode focuses on a transformation that’s become all too visible in the past few years: the militarization of America’s police. The second part of the episode focuses on a less-visible phenomenon, but one that’s killed more servicepeople and veterans than all 20 years of combat combined. 

Guests on this episode:

Dr. Jessica Katzenstein 

Dr. Ben Suitt 

Learn more about the Costs of War Project

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

Since then, their role has only gotten bigger. And as our guest on this episode of Trending Globally explains: that’s a huge problem for democracies around the world. 

Frances Haugen worked as a product manager in Facebook’s Civic Integrity Department from 2019-2021. While there she saw firsthand how Facebook’s algorithms are designed to maximize user engagement at all costs, with disastrous effects.

In 2021 Frances anonymously leaked tens of thousands of internal documents to The Wall Street Journal, and became known as the ‘Facebook Whistleblower.’ Since then she’s testified before Congress, and helped start a global movement to better understand and regulate ‘Big Tech.’

On this episode of Trending Globally, political economist and Rhodes Center Director Mark Blyth talks with Frances about the problems tech giants like Facebook pose to our politics, and what we can do to fix them. 

This episode was originally broadcast on the Rhodes Center Podcast, another show from the Watson Institute. If you enjoy this interview, be sure to subscribe to the Rhodes Center Podcast for more just like it. 

Find transcripts and more information about all our episodes on our website. 

Learn more about the Watson Institutes other podcasts. 

Read the Wall Street Journal’s expose on Facebook.

Failing to provide new homes for refugees isn’t only bad for refugees, according to Watson economist Dany Bahar. It’s also a lost opportunity for the countries that could be accepting them. 

That’s because, as Dany explains on this episode of Trending Globally, immigration of all kinds provides profound economic benefits to host countries in a variety of ways. By looking at data from immigration patterns and refugee crises around the world, Dany and his colleagues are making the case that immigration is a consistent boon for countries, as long as host countries provide the right policies to help immigrants thrive.  

In the case of the United States, Dany believes that expanding immigration is more than just an economic opportunity  —  our ability to lead the world as an economic superpower may very well depend on it. 

Read Dany’s recent article on the topic at Foreign Affairs.

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts.  

But then, of course, Russia invaded Ukraine. The US is getting more involved by the day in this new conflict, and Americans are once again debating what role their military should play in the world. 

One central question hovering over this debate: as we try to support Ukraine and its people, can we avoid making the same mistakes we made when intervening in Afghanistan and Iraq? 

Watson Senior Fellow Richard Boucher thinks it’s possible. But first, we need to make sure we’re learning the right lessons. And doing that requires looking back even further in our history than Afghanistan. As Richard explains, understanding how the “Vietnam generation” ended up leading the charge into Afghanistan and Iraq has a lot to teach us about the lessons we should take from past conflicts, and why it can be so difficult to learn them the first time around. 

From 2006 until 2009, Richard Boucher served as the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, where he played a leading role in defining American strategy and diplomacy in Afghanistan. Before that he was the longest-serving Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs in American history. You can find more of his analysis and insights on his blog. 

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

His guest on this episode, Briahna Joy Gray, is a progressive writer and commentator, and former National Press Secretary for the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign. Glenn and Briahna discussed some of the Left’s most prized policy ambitions, including student debt relief, Medicare-for-all, and increasing taxes on America’s wealthiest citizens. 

Neither Glenn nor Briahna’s political views fall neatly into America’s two main political parties, so while they don’t see eye to eye on most of the issues, the resulting conversation strays from typical partisan talking points. Instead, you’ll hear two independent thinkers respectfully debating America’s biggest policy problems, sometimes taking positions that cut across the partisan grain. Hopefully it will help you see some of America’s most long-standing political dilemmas in a new light. 

Briahna is the host of the podcast ‘Bad Faith,’ and Glenn is the host of his own podcast, ‘The Glenn Show.’ Their conversation was edited down for this episode of Trending Globally, but you’ll be able to hear the full, unedited version on each of those podcasts soon. You can find them wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Find more conversations like this on Glenn Loury’s Substack. 

Sarah talks with Jeff Colgan, political scientist and director of the Climate Solutions Lab at Watson, about how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (and the resulting sanctions imposed upon  them) have altered the global fossil fuel market. They also discuss what Jeff sees as the two different ways this crisis could impact our fight against climate change: one that will leave you hopeful, while the other…less so. 

In the second half we highlight the work of Deborah Gordon, a senior fellow at Watson and an expert on both the policies and technologies that undergird the fossil fuel industry. In her book ‘No Standard Oil,’ Deborah corrects the flawed assumptions many of us have regarding the fossil fuel industry, and how these assumptions get in the way of finding a realistic way to fight the worst effects of global climate change. 

Learn more about and purchase Deborah Gordon’s book, No Standard Oil:

Managing Abundant Petroleum in a Warming World.

Learn more about and purchase Jeff Colgan’s book, Petro-Aggression: When Oil Causes War.

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

And there’s one phrase that’s become particularly attached to this tension: “critical race theory.” 

Those three words have catapulted from the depths of legal academia into the center of partisan politics. But as Danielle Holley-Walker, dean of Howard University Law School and American Council on Education Fellow at Brown University, explains on this episode of Trending Globally, what people today are describing as critical race theory has little to do with its original meaning. And misappropriation of the phrase isn’t just a careless mistake; its use (and misuse) is part of a calculated backlash against social movements that have gained momentum in recent years. 

On this episode, Sarah talks with Danielle about how the phrase has transformed from a complex legal concept into a conservative talking point, and what that transformation can tell us about race, education, and politics in America today. 

Read the New Yorker’s 2021 profile of Christopher Rufo. 

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

In the midst of all this, Watson Senior Fellow Chas Freeman thinks there’s one key concept we’d all benefit from getting reacquainted with: ‘spheres of influence.’ Chas Freeman is one of America’s leading experts on US-China relations, and a wide-ranging thinker on international affairs, diplomacy, and statecraft. 

On this episode Chas talks with Watson Director Ed Steinfeld about how thinking in terms of ‘spheres of influence’ could help us better understand the world. In fact, it goes beyond just understanding the world. Chas thinks that concept of ‘spheres of influence’ – with a little tweaking – could actually help global superpowers like the US and China navigate and de-escalate conflicts of the future. 

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

As her new book explains, a similar trajectory has been playing out in her birthplace in the North of England, and in her new home – the United States. 

The book, titled ‘There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century,’ combines a personal history with a global history, and in the process explains the social and economic forces that lead to anti-democratic movements.  

This episode was originally broadcast on the Rhodes Center Podcast, another show from the Watson Institute that’s hosted by political economist Mark Blyth. It was recorded in late February, so some references to the conflict in Ukraine may be a little out of date by the time you’re listening to this. But regardless of where this conflict stands as you hear this, Fiona’s analysis of what brought Russia, the UK, and the US to this troubling reality is as timely as ever.  

Watch a recording of the talk Fiona gave to students on our YouTube Channel.

Learn more about and purchase Fiona’s book. 

Recent analyses on the conflict in Ukraine from other experts at the Watson Institute. 

What can’t be forgotten is that just one year ago this horrific turn didn’t seem inevitable. On this episode, Dan Richards talks with two experts on the subject: one is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute, the other an activist in Nicaraguan politics who is currently living in exile. They explain how Nicaragua got to its current state of extreme repression, and what might be done to change it.  

This is also a story with a special connection to the Watson Institute, which hosted a conference in 2019 marking the 40th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution. Both of the guests on this episode were at that conference, as were multiple activists who are currently imprisoned in Nicaragua. 

For more context on this crisis you can listen to the Watson Institute’s limited podcast series Revolution Revisited, which told the story of the Sandinista Revolution from the people who lived it. 

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

Guests on this episode:

Stephen Kinzer: Watson Institute Senior fellow in international and public affairs, and author of Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua.

Luis Carrión: Political activist and democracy advocate, and former senior member of the Sandinista National Liberation Front.  

In May 2015 she combined these two passions. She moved to Nogales, AZ, to study emergency responders on the US-Mexico border. For two years she studied life along this border, and worked on it as an EMT herself. 

What she found became the subject of her book, ‘Threshold: Emergency Responders on the U.S.-Mexico Border.’ In it, she explores how the US-Mexico border – as a legal boundary, an idea, and a physical space – changes emergency response, and what these changes reveal about how borders affect people who live near them. 

Learn more about and purchase Ieva’s book. 

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

As a result, pundits, politicians, and casual observers of the news have all been asking the same questions: would President Putin actually invade Ukraine? And if so, what would that mean for the rest of the world? 

These are fair questions, of course. But Michael Kennedy, our guest on this week’s episode of Trending Globally, thinks this framing might actually obscure more than it illuminates.

Michael is a professor of sociology at the Watson Institute and an expert on social transformation in Eastern Europe in the post-Cold War era. He’s written and taught extensively on Ukraine, and on this episode he helps make sense of this crisis that defies easy explanation. 

Despite the complexity of the situation, there’s one thing Michael wants us all to see clearly right now: the stakes of this crisis – for the Ukraine, the US, and democracies around the world – couldn’t be higher.  

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

And that’s just for one trip, for one plane in the US military – the world’s largest institutional consumer of fossil fuel. 

“The size of that consumption is kind of hard to get your head around,” says Neta Crawford on this episode of Trending Globally. 

Neta Crawford is a professor of political science at Boston University and co-founder of the Costs of War project, which is housed at the Watson Institute. The project works to uncover the financial, human, political, and environmental costs of America’s post-9/11 wars. This year Trending Globally has teamed up with the Costs of War project to explore what they’ve found.

On this episode you’ll hear from Neta Crawford on her groundbreaking work calculating the size and scope of the US military’s carbon footprint. In the process of uncovering the extent of the military’s fuel consumption and carbon emissions, she also traces the long and complex relationship between national security, fossil fuels, and climate change. 

Learn more about Neta Crawford’s work. 

Learn more about the Costs of War Project.

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts.

On this episode, host Sarah Baldwin ‘87 and producer Dan Richards talked with experts at Watson and Brown about the attack. They asked scholars of political science and international affairs: what did the insurrection teach us about the state of American politics? How has it changed us? And, perhaps most important: what do we need to do to protect our institutions going forward?

Guests featured on this episode:

• Wendy Schiller, Professor of Political Science and Director of the A. Alfred Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy
• Juliet Hooker, Professor of Political Science at Brown University 
• Rose McDermott, Professor of International Relations at the Watson Institute
• Stephen Kinzer, Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs at the Watson Institute

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

Read what other experts at Watson had to say in the immediate aftermath of the insurrection. 

Keith Harper - who is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation - became a lead prosecutor for the plaintiff class, which grew to include hundreds of thousands of Native Americans. The case, known as Cobell v. Salazar, became one of the largest class action suits in US history. It awarded a total of $3.4 billion dollars to Native Americans across the country. 

But as Keith explained to Sarah on this week’s episode of Trending Globally: 

“It was an important milestone. But we should recognize, it was a mere measure of justice, and not full justice.”

Keith would go on to serve as the US Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council under President Obama starting in 2014. He was the first Native American ever to be appointed to an ambassadorship. 

This year he’s serving as a senior fellow at the Watson Institute, and on this episode we explore both the groundbreaking case Cobell v. Salazar and what Keith sees as the relationship between Native American rights, international law, and human rights more broadly. 

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

Too many Americans live in unstable housing, or go for stretches of time without any home at all. It’s one of our most embarrassing shortcomings as a country, and addressing it has proven to be one of our most vexing policy problems. 

This week we’re rereleasing one of our favorite episodes on the topic: part three of Less to Lean On, a series on housing in America that Trending Globally produced in collaboration with the media collective Signs of Providence.

This particular episode follows one woman as she tries to navigate the world of affordable housing in Rhode Island. Her story reveals the complex web of forces that keep so many Americans from finding stable housing, and why it’s disastrous not just for individuals, but for our society as a whole. 

If you like this episode, we recommend you go back and listen to the rest of the series, which covers housing, eviction, and homelessness from a variety of angles. 

Listen to Part 1

Listen to Part 2

Listen to Part 4

Learn more about Signs of Providence

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

What happens in the US Congress over the next few months should matter to everyone, not just the political hobbyists. With proposed government spending on everything from fighting climate change to supporting new industries in the US, the success or failure of President Biden’s legislative agenda will have a huge effect not just in America, but around the world. 

On this episode Sarah Baldwin ’87 and Dan Richards talk with two experts to get a sense of how President Biden’s agenda has been making its way through Congress, and how the process fits into the bigger picture of US electoral politics. 

Guests:

Carrie Nordlund is assistant dean for undergraduate programs at Brown University, and co-host, with Mark Blyth, of the (aptly titled) podcast, Mark and Carrie. 

Wendy Schiller is a professor of political science at Brown and director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy, which is housed at the Watson Institute. 

Learn more about the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy.  

Learn more about Watson’s other podcasts, including Mark and Carrie. 

Kakenya grew up in the Masai Mara, in a community where it was expected that women wouldn’t go to school beyond childhood. They’d be subject to early, arranged marriages, and worse. 

Yet, incredibly, Kakenya forged a different path. 

On this episode of Trending Globally, you’ll hear Kakenya’s story in her own words, and learn how it led her to develop a new model for girls' education in rural Kenya. It’s a model based on a premise that her life story also affirms: that the education of girls and the health of a community are deeply intertwined. 

Learn more about Kakenya’s Dream

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

In order to understand how we might better promote human rights around the world, we at Trending Globally wanted to take a step back and explore the very concept of ‘human rights.’ Sarah Baldwin ‘87 and Dan Richards spoke with two experts -- one a political scientist, and one a neuroscientist -- about where exactly this concept comes from, and where it might be going. 

Guests on this episode:

Nina Tannenwald, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Brown University

Tara White, Assistant Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown University

Read Tara White’s paper on ‘Dignity Neuroscience.’

Learn more about the Watson Institute's other podcasts on our website.

On this episode Sarah Baldwin ’87 talks with homeland security expert Juliette Kayyem about what these changes mean for humans: Where should we live? How should we live? How should we think about our place on this planet? 

Juliette Kayyem served under President Obama as an Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and is currently a senior lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she teaches crisis management and homeland security. Her upcoming book, The Devil Never Sleeps, reframes how to think about crisis management in an age of disasters, from the level of the individual up through the federal government. And if a conversation with an expert like this sounds too depressing, don’t worry: talking with Juliette is anything but. 

Learn more about Juliette’s upcoming book The Devil Never Sleeps: Managing Disasters in an Age of Catastrophes. 

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts.

What do these changes mean for the art world, and for arts’ relationship to the rest of the world?

On this episode, Trending Globally partnered with ‘Providence Curates’ to explore this question. Providence Curates is a nonprofit made up of artists, writers, and curators, dedicated to expanding and diversifying artistic communities in the region and to reimagining how art can enter the public realm. 

This conversation was put together for PVDFest Ideas 2021, an Arts and Ideas festival in Providence, Rhode Island. 

Guests on this week’s show: 

• Jonny Skye is a gallerist based in Providence, RI, and a board member of Providence Curates. 
• Spencer Evans is an artist, a professor of drawing at RISD, and a board member of Providence Curates. 
• Melaine Ferdinand King is a 4th-year doctoral candidate in Africana Studies at Brown University
• Judith Tolnick Champa is an artist, curator, and founder of Providence Curates and the Providence Biennale. 

‘Providence Curates: Cultivating a Transformative Experiment,’ is an offshoot of the Providence Biennale. You can learn more on their website, and contact them directly at providencebiennial@gmail.com. 

Special thanks to Stephanie Fortunato, Director, and Dr. Micah Salkind, Special Projects Manager of the City of Providence Department of Art, Culture + Tourism (ACT) PVDFest Ideas 2021, for making this collaboration possible. You can find a list of all of this year’s PVDFest Ideas events (both live and virtual) on their website.

On this episode Sarah Baldwin ’87 talks with Stephanie Savell, one of the project’s directors, about how the organization started and why its work is more necessary than ever. Dan Richards talks with David Vine about one of the most heartbreaking costs of these wars: the more than 38 million people who have been displaced from their homes in countries including Afghanistan and Iraq.

Learn more about the Costs of War Project. 

Learn more about and purchase David Vine’s book ​​The United States of War

A Global History of America's Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State.

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts.  

At Trending Globally, we’ve found ourselves asking the same questions over and over lately -- are the world’s rich countries simply not doing enough to help fragile states around the world? Or are they helping, but in the wrong way? 

On this episode guest host Dan Richards talks with Brian Atwood, a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute, about the unique challenges of providing aid to fragile states. Brian led the U.S. Agency for International Development - known as USAID - under President Clinton. He was also dean of the Humphrey School for Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota from 2002 until 2010. Brian explains what the international community is getting wrong when it comes to helping the world’s fragile states, and what we might change to make it right. 

You can get more information about this and every other Trending Globally episode, including transcripts, by visiting our website here. 

You can learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts here. 

Her knack for synthesizing data into plain-language advice made her a natural fit for her next role: as one of the unofficial guiding voices behind school reopening plans in America this past year.

The pandemic -- and Emily’s role in it -- have added special valence to her newest book, The Family Firm: A Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision Making in the Early School Years. Unlike her previous two books, this one is focused less on crunching data than on teaching readers how to make complex decisions when they don’t have all the data. As such, it’s probably her most universal book to date. 

On this episode Sarah ’87 talks with Emily about The Family Firm, her experience in the spotlight during recent debates over school reopening, and how to make decisions that you can feel good about no matter the outcome. 

You can purchase The Family Firm here. 

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

Ancient Sanskrit.

On this episode we’re sharing part of a new podcast from Watson. It’s called ‘Sensing the Sacred’ and it’s hosted by Finnian Gerety, a visiting assistant professor of religious studies and contemplative studies at Watson’s Center for Contemporary South Asia.

Finnian and Sarah talk about the motivation behind the show, which explores spirituality in South Asia from angles as diverse as the origins of yoga to the rise of Hindu nationalism. Finnian also shares some of his recent conversation with Audrey Truschke, where they talk about the role of Sanskrit in Hindu nationalist propaganda, and more broadly about how to contest the ‘fascist blueprint’ we see being enacted around the world today.

You can learn more about and subscribe to ‘Sensing the Sacred’ here.

You can buy Audrey’s book here.

You can learn more about Trending Globally by subscribing to our podcast newsletter here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

The Covid-19 pandemic made all too clear that educational success, mental health, and our environments are inextricably linked. And nowhere is this connection more apparent than in conversations around ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

On this episode, Sarah Baldwin ’87 talks with Jayanti Owens, assistant professor of sociology and international and public affairs at Watson, about how this highly common, often misunderstood condition is diagnosed and treated. Jayanti's 2020 paper, "Social Class, Diagnosis of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, and Child Well-Being" which we discuss, recently won the 2021 Outstanding Publication Award from the American Sociological Association's Section on Disability and Society. We’ll also look at what these issues can teach us about the complex relationship between kids’ mental health and their success in school -- a topic which, after this past school year, is sorely in need of a rethink.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

On this episode, we introduce you to the Brown students and alumni who made this podcast possible through their research, experience, and expertise. We explore why they became interested in housing in the first place, what they learned from making the podcast, and what issues they still wrestle with when it comes to the problem of housing in America.

Contributors to this podcast include students from Brown University and the media collective Signs of Providence. You can learn more about their organization here.

Listen to Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of Less to Lean On.

You can learn more about the Watson Institute's other podcasts here.

You can watch a video recording of their full conversation here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can watch the video of John and Mark's full conversation here.

You can subscribe to the Rhodes Center Podcast here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

On this episode Sarah Baldwin '87 talks with Rob Blair, a political scientist at Watson and founder of the Democratic Erosion Consortium. He’s been thinking about all these questions, and thankfully he has answers.

You can learn more about the Democratic Erosion Consortium here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn about and purchase 'Losing My Cool' here.

You can learn more about and purchase 'Self Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race' here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn more about the Watson Institute's other podcasts here.

The book, titled ‘Able to Be Otherwise,’ tells the story of Anna’s turbulent childhood, growing up with a mother who suffered from overlapping struggles with mental health, poverty, and addiction. On this episode Sarah talks with Anna about her at-times-unbelievable journey from the streets of Tijuana, to fire-ravaged forests of California, to the halls of Brown University. In telling this story, she also provides a powerful argument for how we might re-envision the role of public policy in an interconnected world.

You can learn more about -- and purchase -- ‘Able to Be Otherwise’ here or here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

On this episode Sarah talks with Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, associate professor of sociology at Brown, about why convicting police officers of crimes in the U.S. is so incredibly rare. Her 2016 book, “Crook County,” explores this question, and paints a picture of the overlapping forces that keep justice from being served when it’s directed at the police themselves.

You can learn more about and purchase Crook County here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

Guests on today’s episode: Jori Breslawski, Jeff Colgan, Mark Blyth, and Patsy Lewis.

You can learn more about Watson’s Climate Solutions Lab here.

You can learn more about the Rhodes Center here.

You can learn more about the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

The email was sent from Yangon, the capital of Myanmar. The man who sent it was not exaggerating.

Myanmar is in the midst of violent unrest, which started when the country’s military staged a coup on February 1, 2021. Min (that's not his real name) has been part of the protests against the coup, and he’s been trying to get word out to the rest of the world about what’s happening in his country.

On this episode: a conversation with Min about life during military coup, and a message from Myanmar.

You can learn more about Watson's other podcasts here.

In this episode, we delve into Brown University's complicated relationship with the residential communities it touches. We explore the idea of housing not as a commodity but as a basic human right, and talk with people who are working to make that idea a reality. And we recommend ways that activists, politicians, and residents everywhere we can work toward equitably and affordably housing all Americans.

Contributors to this podcast include students from Brown University and the media collective Signs of Providence. You can learn more about their organization here.

Listen to Parts 1, 2, 3, and the series epilogue.

You can learn more about the Watson Institute's other podcasts here.

Susanna Loeb, director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown, has some ideas. At the top of the list? Tutoring. To help spread what she and her team call “high-impact” tutoring to a wider range of communities, they’ve created The National Student Support Accelerator, a one-stop resource for schools and teachers to develop effective, long-term tutoring infrastructure in schools. On this episode, Sarah talks with Susanna about the definition of “high impact tutoring,” how to make it scale, and why it’s exactly what America’s students need right now.

You can learn more about the National Student Support Accelerator here.

You can read more about the story of its creation here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

In studying the history of mass vaccination, Prerna has come to a troubling conclusion: skepticism (and at times, outright rejection) is an inescapable part of modern vaccination efforts. But by looking at successful vaccination programs of the past, Prerna also explains why this kind of skepticism exists, and what can be done to overcome it.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn more about and listen to the Watson Institute's other podcasts here.

There’s no better person to talk with about these issues than Ashutosh Varshney, Professor of International Studies at Watson and the Director of Watson’s Center for Contemporary South Asia. He has a way of explaining familiar politics in unfamiliar ways, and in the process making connections that usually go unnoticed. On this episode, he and Sarah do just that as they discuss democratic erosion in the US and India, and how both countries might change during a Biden Administration.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can subscribe to Dan McGowan’s newsletter from the Boston Globe, ‘Rhode Map,’ here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn more about Watson's Climate Solutions Lab here.

You can learn more about Watson's network of podcasts here.

You can learn more about and purchase 'Killer High' here.

You can see the Watson Institute’s panel discussion about the book here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

On this episode Sarah talks with anthropologist and Watson Professor Cathy Lutz about ‘The Costs of War,’ an interdisciplinary project she co-founded 10 years ago that aims to uncover the economic, political, and human costs of America’s foreign interventions since 9/11.

As we enter into a new presidency and approach a full two decades since the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, Sarah asks Cathy: what are the true costs of these military interventions, and is there hope that maybe they'll be addressed in a more permanent way?

You can learn more about Costs of War here.

You can join the Costs of War email list here.

And you can donate to Costs of War through Brown University here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

Photo Courtesy AP Images/Rahmatullah Nikzad

On this episode, Watson’s Director Ed Steinfeld talks about China’s lunar mission with Watson Faculty Fellow Jim Head. Jim is a Professor of Geological Sciences at Brown, and a leading expert on interplanetary exploration. They discuss the science and politics of China’s growing space program, and what it means for human space exploration in the 21st century. They also look at why this next generation of space travel will be nothing like the Cold War ‘space race,’ and a little bit about where exactly Elon Musk fits in, too.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can read Jori's article about how armed groups are responding to Covid in 'The Conversation' here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

On this episode, we follow one Rhode Island family's story in order to understand the psychological and economic costs of eviction, and we examine the state-level policies that make the experience so much more punishing than it has to be. We look at the long-term causes of housing insecurity, and explore what it would actually mean to make housing a human right.

Contributors to this podcast include students from Brown University and the media collective Signs of Providence. You can learn more about their organization here.

Listen to Parts 1, 2, 4, and the series epilogue.

You can learn more about the Watson Institute's other podcasts here.

On this episode Sarah looks for answers with the help of Watson Professor Rose McDermott. McDermott’s 2010 book ‘Presidential Leadership, Illness, and Decision Making,’ explores the history of health issues faced by US Presidents, and the effects they’ve had on the country and the world. As we prepare for the inauguration of a 78-year-old President amidst a global pandemic, there’s no better time to understand the complex relationship between a President’s health and health of the nation.

You can learn more about and purchase Rose McDermott's book here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn more about and purchase Erica's book here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

On this episode Sarah talks with Watson Professor Jeff Colgan and political science PhD candidate Fred Shaia about the newly created Climate Solutions Lab at Watson, and their recently published report “Presidential Climate Action on Day One: A Foreign Policy Guide for the Next U.S. President.” The report looks at the ways executive action in the US could be used to fight climate change, with or without cooperation from Congress. Some are ideas you might be familiar with. Others, not so much. All of them are worth considering.

You can read Jeff and Fred’s report here.

You can learn more about the Climate Solutions Lab here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn more about the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy here.

You can watch their entire conversation on YouTube here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

In August, David published a piece in The Atlantic based on his research, about the Vatican’s behavior in the face of rising German power during World War II. It was groundbreaking, beautifully written -- and utterly disturbing.

On this episode, Sarah talks with David about what he uncovered, and why it should be a lesson for us all.

You can read David’s article in The Atlantic here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

Adam’s team is looking for volunteers for this study, in Rhode Island and across the country. You can find out if you qualify and learn how to get involved by following the links below:

Trial for people currently infected with Covid-19.

Trial for people who are at high risk of infection.

Adam Levine is Director of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies at the Watson Institute, as well as Director of the Division of Global Emergency Medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

On this episode, Watson’s Director Ed Steinfeld talks with Michael about his book 'Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World.' The book will be, to many, a fresh perspective on Chinese history. But it's more than a history lesson; it’s also a powerful example of how national narratives develop, and how they are used for political ends.

You can learn more about and purchase 'Superpower Interrupted: A Chinese History of the World,' here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

In Part 2, we explore the role racism has played in this ongoing crisis, through policies and practices both unofficial and government sanctioned. We also look at how history is repeating itself today, as President Trump implies that white suburbs are facing an existential threat. But if the current inequalities are the result of deliberate actions, perhaps deliberate actions can also be used rectify them.

Listen to Parts 1, 3, 4, and the series epilogue.

Contributors to this podcast include students from Brown University and the media collective Signs of Providence. You can learn more about their organization here.

(Photo credit: Steve Ahlquist)

So in the midst of the pandemic they founded Farmlink, which to date has delivered over 10 million pounds of unsold produce to food banks across Southern California. And while their idea was born out of this current crisis, it has grown into something far bigger than emergency relief.

This episode is the third in our series on how Brown students are navigating the pandemic. Will and Aidan discuss how they came up with the idea for Farmlink, the underlying issues in our food system that have made Farmlink so impactful, and what it’s like learning to drive a semi-trailer.

You can learn more about Farmlink here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

Photo credit: Owen Dubeck

Rory Kennedy ‘91 is a celebrated documentary filmmaker; Randall Poster ‘83 is a film music supervisor, who has worked with filmmakers such as Wes Anderson and Martin Scorsese. Last year, they helped launch the John F. Kennedy Jr. Film Initiative, which is housed at Watson. Like John, they’re both Brown alums; John was Rory’s cousin, and Randy’s classmate. Through screenings, discussions, and workshops, this Initiative connects world-class documentarians with the Brown community, at a time when more and more students are looking to use narrative storytelling in their research and activism.

On this episode, Watson’s Director Ed Steinfeld talks with Rory and Randall about their careers in film, the motivation behind the Initiative, and the power documentaries have to affect social change.

You can sign up to for updates about the initiative here.

You can learn more about the full slate of programming here (Fall Event announcements will be added in the coming days).

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

On this episode Watson’s director Ed Steinfeld talks with CNBC’s Beijing Bureau Chief Eunice Yoon '95. Eunice has reported on some of the biggest stories in China’s recent past, from the Beijing Olympics in 2008 to the coronavirus today. They discuss what it’s like practicing journalism in a country not known for its openness to the press, covering coronavirus from the place where it all began, and why reporting on life in China is more important now than ever.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

Listen to Parts 2, 3, 4, and the series epilogue.

Contributors to this podcast include students from Brown University and the media collective Signs of Providence. You can learn more about their organization here.

(Photo credit: Steve Ahlquist)

You can visit 'Covid-Explained' here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can read a transcript of this episode here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

*Excerpt at the beginning of the episode from '1619,' the podcast companion to The 1619 Project. You can learn more about The 1619 Project here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

On this episode, the third in a series we're co-producing this semester with Watson’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Sarah talks with three medical experts who are on the front lines of this pandemic in some of Rhode Island’s hardest hit communities. It’s a conversation about community health, local politics, and social justice, and while it’s focused on Rhode Island, it speaks to struggles playing out around the world.

You can learn more about the Blackstone Valley Community Health Care here.

You can read a Spanish translation here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can read a transcript of this episode here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn more about CLACS here.

You can learn more about Epimonia here.

You can watch Mohamed’s talk at Watson here.

You can read a transcript of this episode here: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I3a8-AlWNGsaAeZwbxJg5XEvytmGfyJ9/view?usp=sharing]

This event is part of the John F. Kennedy Jr. Initiative for Documentary Film and Social Progress. You can learn more about the Initiative here.

You can watch a video of Ed and Randall's Trending Globally conversation here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

(Note: this interview was recorded in February of 2020.)

You can subscribe to James’s podcast ‘US-China Dialogue Podcast’ on your favorite listening app. You can also find all the episodes here.

You can read a transcript of this episode here.

On this episode Adam talks with Sarah about this partnership and the role high-quality training plays at all levels in stopping the spread of a pandemic. They also discuss what Adam’s learned from treating Ebola in active war zones, and why this likely won’t be the last pandemic we see.

You can learn more about Watson's Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies here.

You can learn more about Project HOPE here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

It's not a light conversation, but but Peter's wisdom, kindness, and clarity of purpose might actually leave you feeling a little more hopeful about this scary, uncertain time.

You can learn more about Maurer's recent talk at Watson here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

On this episode: how the coronavirus is affecting US politics, and how US politics are affecting the development of this public health crisis. Guest host Dan Richards talks with Wendy Schiller, Watson Faculty Fellow and Chair of the Political Science Department at Brown University. They discuss the wide-ranging affects of this crisis on American politics, from the Democratic Primaries to voting reform to how might it affect the concerns and considerations of voters going into the general election.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

We're excited to welcome as a special guest host for this series Dr. Pablo Rodriguez. Dr. Rodriguez is Chair of the Women & Infants Health Care Alliance, Associate Professor at the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown, and the former Medical Director of Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island. He’s also a radio host here in Rhode Island, and one of the most trusted voices covering politics and Latin-x issues in the state.

He spoke with two experts on the Caribbean who are based here at Brown: Patsy Lewis, Professor of International and Public Affairs and Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies; and Paget Henry, a sociologist and Professor at Brown.

You can learn more about Watson’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can see the Watson Institute’s recent panel discussion about the book here.

You can learn more about and purchase 'Killer High' here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn more about and purchase Omer's book here.

You can watch Omer discuss the book at the Watson Institute here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can read Chas’s paper ‘A World Dividing: The International Implications of the Sino-American Rift’ here.

You can learn more about Watson’s China Initiative here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

Guest host and producer Dan Richards talks with Sara Shneiderman, associate professor in anthropology and the School of Public Policy & Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, and Sahana Ghosh, postdoctoral fellow at the Watson Institute, about what they call the “weaponizing of citizenship" in India.

You can read more of their analysis in their recent op-ed for The Conversation here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

To see Alan Bersin's April presentation at Watson, follow this link: [https://watson.brown.edu/events/2019/alan-bersin-lines-and-flows-future-border-security-not-what-it-used-be]

You can read a transcript of this episode here: [https://watson.brown.edu/files/watson/imce/news/podcast/trending-globally/transcripts/E89_Alan%20Bersin_Rev_2.pdf]