Foreign and domestic policy in the United States seem to have melted down. The President’s major domestic policy initiative – repeal and replace Obamacare – has failed. Infighting inside the White House is especially open and vicious. Abroad, President Trump has upset almost all of America’s traditional allies, but has not reset relations with either China or Russia. He withdrew the United States from the Paris agreement and resisted appeals from 19 other G20 leaders to...

Digital technologies and platforms are connecting people across space and time in new and disruptive ways. Amazon is the world’s largest shopping platform. We buy books, clothes, shoes, and shortly groceries on the Amazon platform, and we do it with this powerful computer that we hold in our hand, our smartphone. We have access to more information, and goods and services, more quickly and more easily than we have ever had in human history. But there’s a dark side to all this digital...

The Middle East is now principally an exporter of conflict to the rest of the world. It has lost its strategic position in world oil markets as the US has become a global exporter of oil. The world is also moving rapidly to develop renewable energy. Although that will take decades, Crown Prince Mohammed of Saudi Arabia knows that Saudi Arabia can no longer depend on exporting oil to build its economic future. Politics in the region are no more promising. The Israel-Palestine conflict is...

President Trump continues to challenge his allies as well as his adversaries. He withdrew the United States from the Paris agreement and resisted appeals from 19 other G20 leaders to reconsider. The final communique was the 19 versus 1 on climate change. He talks again and again about renegotiating trade deals that are unfair to the United States and, at times, has threatened to walk away from them entirely. He responded to Assad’s use of chemical weapons with a missile strike and has...

American democracy is under siege, or so it seems. The president consistently attacks the legitimacy of the courts and the media -- two essential pillars of a well-functioning democracy. The White House no longer holds regular press conferences. Intelligence agencies have concluded Russia interfered in the U.S. election. Opinion is polarized and partisanship is intense. Could democracy in the United States collapse? Other democracies have. To help us answer this question, Janice spoke...

Politics across the developed world has been boiling over with anger and frustration. People are angry about the growing gap between the very rich and the poor. Inequality has been growing since the 1970s. Stagnant or dropping incomes for the bottom third along with exploding gains for the top 1% have sharpened the sense of unfairness. It is not only the top 1%, however, who have made huge gains relative to the bottom third. It is the top 20%, or the upper middle class, who have done...

We all sense that the international order that emerged at the end of the Cold War is fracturing. The United States is turning inwards, China is flexing its muscles in Asia, Britain is exiting, and Europe is preoccupied with rescuing its project of integration. But what comes next? There is no agreement on the shape of the future. Our guest on this episode tells us to pay attention to the new class war that has erupted. A transatlantic class war has broken out, he claims, between elites in...

We live in angry times. People are angry because they don’t share the prosperity and opportunities that other have. They’re cynical because they no longer believe political leaders as a class will keep their promises to fix it. They distrust authority because, after all, what have scientists and economists delivered to them? How has science made their lives better? The search for truth, so fundamental to science, has become a contest of opinions, where your opinion is as good as mine. My...

Terrorists, acting in the name of Daesh or the Islamic State, attacked Britain three times in three months, targeting young girls and civilians on bridges and markets. Prime Minister Theresa May, her voice laced with frustration told the British public that “Enough was enough” and promised to do more. But: What more can she do? British intelligence services are already overwhelmed by the number of suspects that they track and monitor, and would need to triple or quadruple the number of agents...

Driverless cars are coming. Google already has prototypes and other companies are in hot pursuit. Experts tell us that within a decade, driverless cars will be common in our cities and on our highways. How do you feel about driverless cars? Some of us look forward to giving up the wheel and relaxing while cars drive us more safely than we could ourselves. These sophisticated machines with a capacity to sense and learn will not make the common mistakes that almost all drivers make. Car...

Last week, we explored with Steven Sloman his revolutionary approach to thinking. Thinking, he tells us, is a social activity that we do with others, never alone. We are all part of a community of thinkers where we divide the work of thinking. When we build a home, for example, we need many different kinds if experts each of whom knows what they’re doing. On this episode, we’re going to explore the wide-ranging implications of being part of a community of thinkers and learners. Welcome to...

Fake news is the big story in Europe and the United States, and that’s left many voters incapable of knowing the difference between fact and fiction. But that’s not the whole story. Even when voters are given facts that contradict their beliefs, their confidence in their beliefs remains unshaken. And people are increasingly losing confidence in expert opinion. Democracy is based in the assumption that voters are knowledgeable, informed, and can make good decisions. Post-election surveys of...

Europe is in the middle of an existential crisis. The United States is struggling to find out who it is under President Donald Trump. The Middle East is caught up in its recurring violence. In the midst of all of this, many are focused on Asia, which they see as a a political and economic salvation. But Michael Auslin disagrees. He is the author of the new book The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region. In last week's episode, Janice and...

Europe is mired in a crisis about its future. The United States is led by a president that is shaking up the system in unprecedented ways.  No end is in sight to the violence in the Middle East. In the midst of all this dysfunction, Asia has been the great hope. Led by a resurgent China, Asia would regain its rightful place in the global economy and in global politics. One out of every 3 people on the globe is either Chinese or Indian. The 21st century was supposed to be the Asian century. ...

The end of Europe is upon us.  A Europe of peace, prosperity and democracy is falling apart.  So says our guest today.  He warns Europe is increasingly undemocratic and economically stagnant. It’s threatened by extremists from the left and the right, and slowing heading to war.  How did we get here?  Great Britain’s decision to leave the European Union is the beginning of the end.  France is facing a run-off election with Marine Le Pen – a candidate who is profoundly against the European...

The Trump administration, elected on a wave of populism, has moved at a rapid fire pace to disrupt the global order. Most controversial has been its repeated attempts to ban entry into the United States by travellers from six countries in the Middle East – all Muslim – for 90 days and to stop accepting any additional refugees. It has appealed directly to both economic nationalism and identity politics, traditionally the core elements of populism. The United States is not alone in facing an...

The wave of populism that has swept through the United States and Europe has been a shock to many who did not foresee the impending disruption to doing politics as well. Perhaps it should not have been a surprise. Global financial crises, the Harvard economist Ken Rogoff tell us, run deep. Their effects last a decade and they can have seriously destabilizing social and political consequences. It is reasonable to understand the current wave of populism in the United States and Europe as a...

Corruption is routinely the focus of front page stories in mature democracies as well as in younger democracies. Astonishing stories come to light about bribery and payoffs in government and embezzlement and inappropriate enrichment in the private sector. The public is outraged, officials occasionally lose their jobs, committees are struck to investigate, reform measures are proposed, new laws are enacted, but soon after, the cycle begins all over again. Nothing much seems to...

The Islamic State is unique among militant Islamic movements in recent history. Born in the chaos that followed the American invasion of Iraq, its leaders moved to Syria and then stormed back, eradicated the border between Syria and Iraq, and declared the long-awaited caliphate, a khilafa, that had been absent from the Islamic world since 1922. The overwhelming majority of the Muslim world has rejected the khalifa and his interpretation of Islamic law. Many have declared the beliefs of...

World trade is declining. President Trump is questioning long-standing strategic alliances that have lasted for more than 60 years. Populist leaders are preparing for elections that will soon be held in France and Germany, hoping to build on the momentum created by Brexit and Trump. Everywhere, disruptive forces are gathering, shaking foundational assumptions, creating uncertainty... elevating anxiety for some, and excitement and promise for others. The arts in general, and architecture in...

Never in human history has there been such opportunity for freedom of expression, one of the core freedoms at the centre of our liberal democracy. If we have Internet access, any one of us can publish almost anything we like and potentially reach an audience of millions. Free speech, as author Timothy Garton-Ash tells us is his new book Free Speech, is essential to the discovery of self, truth, good governance, and diversity. Yet never has there been a time when “truth” has seemed to matter...

Insurgencies have been around for thousands of years, going back to at least Roman times. A look at history tells us that, far more often than not, insurgents have succeeded in wearing down a far stronger adversary. So what makes a counter-insurgency strategy successful? David Kilcullen is the latest in a long line of historians and strategists who have answered that question. He is the author of The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One and a more general book...

A wave of populism has swept through Britain and the United States, and is now sweeping through Europe. There are four critical elections in Europe this year. Will liberal democracy prevail in Europe? Will the centre hold? US President Donald Trump has told the world that from this day forward, it is "America First". People are worried about trade wars, protectionism, and the unravelling of the liberal international order that has been in place since the end of World War II. Jonathan...

The Trump administration enters the White House as two great powers – Russia and China – are flexing their muscles. Russia is still smarting from the humiliation of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and, under President Putin, is determined to reclaim its great power status. China is a rising power, determined to claim its rightful status in the world.  All this as the Trump administration signals an intent to bear less of the burden of the democratic world than it has in the past, and to...

Much of what we have taken for granted for the last half century is now in question as populist movements sweep through the United States and Europe. Worried liberals are struggling to explain the appeal of populism, protectionism, and ethnic nationalism. Liberal societies have faced these challenges before, most recently in the 1930’s, but never before have the United States and Britain, the apostles of liberal democracy, led the way. How can this have happened? One explanation is the...