Episodes

  • 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

    Transcript coming soon to our website

  • We’ve got a lot of exciting new Trending Globally episodes coming up in the next few weeks and months, but this week we’re sharing an episode of another podcast from the Watson Institute: Mark and Carrie. 

    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. 

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  • February 24, 2024, marks two years since the beginning of the War in Ukraine. 

    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

  • In the United States, inequality along the lines of race in education is such a persistent issue that it often fails to make headlines. COVID-19 brought it back to the front of the nation’s consciousness as evidence mounted that nonwhite students were experiencing roughly twice as much learning loss as their white counterparts. 

    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

  • Backlash is hardly a new political force — since America’s founding, change has often been driven by citizens mobilizing in opposition to policies, programs, or social movements. 

    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

  • Trending Globally will be back with all new episodes soon, but in the meantime we’re rereleasing some of our favorite episodes from 2023. We hope you enjoy – and have a great start to 2024!

    ***

    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. 

  • “Trending Globally” will be back with all new episodes soon, but in the meantime, we’re rereleasing a few of our favorite episodes from 2023. We hope you enjoy — and have a great start to 2024!

    ***

    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 

  • This December marks four years since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China. On this episode of Trending Globally, Dan Richards speaks with two experts from the Pandemic Center at Brown University’s School of Public Health about the ways our society’s approach to public health has changed since 2019. 

    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 HealthWilmot 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

  • On this episode, political economist and Watson professor Mark Blyth talks with Nobel Prize-winning economist Sir Angus Deaton about his new book, “Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality.” 

    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.
  • How do our individual experiences shape our political views? What role do our own stories and memories play in how we think about the world around us? How can we use our memories — even our most painful ones — to help build a more peaceful politics? 

    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

  • Last year, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. Considered by many to be the biggest climate and energy bill ever passed, the IRA included roughly $370 billion to help shift the U.S. to cleaner forms of power. And it was just one of three laws passed by the administration that will play into the United States’ move away from fossil fuels. 

    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

  • In 1982, Mumia Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer. An ex-Black Panther, he had no prior criminal record. Amnesty International investigated his case and found in many ways that it "failed to meet minimum international standards.” He’s been incarcerated for more than 40 years.

    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 LibraryChristopher West – Curator of the Black Diaspora, Brown UniversityNicole Gonzalez Van Cleve – Associate Professor of Sociology, Brown University
  • One day in the year 2000, in the midst of the Second Congo War, Honoria* fled her home in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and never returned. After 16 years in a refugee camp in Uganda, she relocated to Philadelphia, where she became one of the roughly 80,000 refugees who entered the U.S. that year. 

    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.

  • Imagine if, when you were in middle school, an Ivy League professor came to your school and told you that you were going to be part of an experiment. You were going to get to decide how the money in your school was spent. 

    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 summer, military forces in the West African country of Niger pushed the country’s president, Mohamed Bazoum, out of power.

    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

  • On August 23, at least 5 GOP hopefuls for the party’s presidential nomination will take to the stage in Milwaukee for their first primary debate. In other words, the 2024 election is about to get real.

    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

  • In the last year, programs like ChatGPT, Dall-E and Bard have shown the world just how powerful artificial intelligence can be. AI programs can write hit pop songs, pass the bar exam and even appear to develop meaningful relationships with humans. 

    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

  • In May, Nigerian political veteran Bola Tinubu was sworn in as president of the country. The outcome was predictable, but that doesn’t mean there were no surprises in this year’s election. The biggest, perhaps, was the national rise of progressive politician Peter Obi. Obi galvanized young people around issues of government accountability, transparency, and generational change. In the process, he came closer to winning the presidency than any third-party candidate has in Nigeria’s modern history.

    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

  • On May 14, 2023, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan faced the most challenging test of his political career from a multi-party coalition led by social democrat and reformer Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. The diverse coalition Kılıçdaroğlu represents, known as the Table of Six, is united by one cause: removing Erdogan from power and ending the country’s authoritarian turn. 

    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 UniversityDeniz Sert, professor of political science at Ozyegin University.

    Learn more about other podcasts from the Watson Institute

  • This Spring, visiting professor at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs’ China Initiative Lyle Goldstein made his first trip to China in five years. He met with military strategists, government officials and scholars to try to better understand China-Russia relations in the wake of the war in Ukraine. 

    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