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In the last two presidential elections in the United States, one issue has entered our political debates in a way we haven’t seen in recent history: the health and future of American democracy itself. And as Rob Blair, a political scientist at the Watson Institute and co-founder of the Democratic Erosion Consortium, explains, this isn’t without reason.
“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
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In January of 2019, journalist Elizabeth Rush joined 56 scientists and crew people aboard an ice-breaking research vessel to study the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica. The glacier, which is about the size of the state of Florida, has been nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier” for the effect its disintegration would likely play in the rise of global sea levels.
“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”
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On November 5, Americans went to the polls and once again elected Donald Trump president of the United States. By this point, you probably know the broad strokes of his victory: He won every swing state and, unlike in 2016, the popular vote as well.
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
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On November 5, all eyes will be on the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump for the White House. But no matter who wins the presidency, there’s another close competition that will have a huge impact on U.S. politics: the fight for control of Congress. In fact, next year’s Congress will play a role in our politics even before the next president is sworn in; they’ll be responsible for certifying election results on January 6, 2025.
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
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Remember the supply chain problems of 2020 and 2021? The story we were told was that COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the world’s ability to make and transport goods, leaving us with shortages of everything from surgical masks to infant formula (not to mention seven dollar eggs).
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
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While no one knows how this November’s election is going to go in the U.S., there’s one thing most experts agree on: It’s likely going to be close. Very close. Poll after poll suggests that, especially in a few key states, support for the two candidates is evenly split in a way we haven’t seen in decades.
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
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Even for an election year, the last few months have seen a head-spinning amount of political news in the United States.
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
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Many Americans see a potential Trump victory in this year’s election as a threat to American democracy. Whether you share that concern or not, the rise of Donald Trump and the prospect of a second Trump term have brought up new and unsettling questions about presidential power and the fragility of our democratic institutions.
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
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In March 2020, the Vatican’s Apostolic Archives of Pope Pius XII — also known as the Vatican’s “secret archives” — were opened to scholars from around the world. Historian and Watson Professor David Kertzer was one of those scholars.
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
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This is the second part in our two-part series on South Africa’s politics 30 years after the election of Nelson Mandela, and with it, the end of apartheid.
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
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Over the course of 2024, roughly half of the world’s population will participate in national elections.
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
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This spring marked the thirtieth anniversary of the election of Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s president and the end of apartheid, the system of legalized racial segregation that had existed in South Africa for decades.
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
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On June 4, results came in from the largest democratic election in history. Over 640 million people voted in India’s election, which took place at over one million polling places across the country over the course of six weeks.
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
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For this week’s show, we’re sharing an episode of “Humans in Public Health,” a podcast from The Brown School of Public Health. It makes a great follow-up to our episode earlier this month about Rhode Island’s first-in-the-nation legally approved proposal for a safe injection site (also known as an overdose prevention center) and how such programs will hopefully fit into the fight against America’s overdose crisis.
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
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At the Watson Institute, the beginning of summer means commencement festivities, moving trucks, and bittersweet goodbyes. In American politics, the beginning of summer means something very different: the approach of the Supreme Court's summer recess and, with it, the handing down of the Court’s final decisions from this term. This year’s cases will have profound effects on the 2024 election, gun rights, reproductive rights, and more.
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.
Subscribe to Strict Scrutiny wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Mexico, like the United States, has a gun violence problem. It has one of the highest murder rates in the world, and most of those murders come from firearms. In 2019, for example, almost 70% of the country's 35,000 murders involved firearms.
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
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In February of this year, Providence became the first city in America to approve opening a state-sanctioned overdose prevention center. Sometimes known as safe injection sites, these are facilities where people can bring illegal drugs and consume them under the supervision of trained volunteers and health professionals.
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 centerBrandon 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
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In the 1970s in Nicaragua, left-wing rebels, calling themselves the Sandinista National Liberation Front, fought to overthrow their country’s dictator.
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
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Here’s a depressing fact: it takes longer to travel from Boston to Los Angeles today than it did 50 years ago. Getting to the airport, getting through the airport, the flight itself — just about every part of the process takes longer than it once did.
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”
Subscribe to “The Morning”, a newsletter from The New York Times
Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts
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The last decade has seen the growth of two political movements that appear diametrically opposed: the Black Lives Matter movement and the rise of Donald Trump. But as our guest on this episode explains, these two movements are linked, and can only be understood together.
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
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