Episódios
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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"
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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"
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Transcript coming soon to our website
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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
Transcript coming soon to our website
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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
Transcript coming soon to our website
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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
Transcript coming soon to our website
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
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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
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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”
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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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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
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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
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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
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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!
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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.
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“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!
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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”
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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
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