Michael Mandelbaum has written a fascinating book examining the role of major political leaders in shaping our recent history, for better or for worse. He is a highly regarded author with an insightful understanding of the factors that have shaped conflict and progress over the past century. Some of the titans featured in this podcast based on his book operated within democratic settings and left democracy stronger than they had found it, while others, tyrants with diseased minds, tended towa...

Wendy Broadgate is a distinguished scientist who has worked in Earth system science and the science-policy interface for two decades. She is therefore singularly well-qualified to address the question of the dangers we face because of inadequate action to set our climate system within safe and just boundaries. Public support for more robust action to put the Earth on a more sustainable path is broad-based; what is lacking is political will and a better understanding of our collective intergen...

Anthony Annett is an economist who spent two decades at the International Monetary Fund, including as speechwriter to the Managing Director. In an insightful podcast based on his book Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy he argues that we need to take a fresh look at the policies, priorities, and institutions that underpin our current economic system. These are no longer working for the common good. Inequality is corroding the foundations of our societies and beg...

As the most recent Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization Soumya Swaminathan was on the forefront of the international response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of her distinguished background in policymaking spanning more than 30 years of experience bringing science and evidence into the formulation of effective actions to address fundamental issues of public health, Dr Swaminathan brings a wealth of insights into a conversation about the lessons learned from the pandemic and how ...

Daniel Perell currently serves as a co-chair of the Steering Group of the Coalition for the UN We Need, an umbrella group of civil society organizations that are collaborating to modernize the UN system, to better adapt it to the needs of the 21st century. He is thus extremely well-qualified to share insights into the forthcoming UN Summit of the Future and the extent to which it might become a catalyst for future transformational innovations, desperately needed in a world increasingly...

As co-president of the Club of Rome Sandrine Dixson-Declève is singularly well-qualified to speak to the major challenges we confront today and on which, in the search for solutions, we need much stronger levels of international cooperation. Widening income disparities have started to undermine social and political stability, the needs of the extremely poor are not being met, and we are failing to stem the worst consequences of climate change. There is no shortage of solutions, from better...

Sundeep Waslekar is a distinguished social scientist who has thought a great deal about the causes and the instruments of war and the risks they pose to the future of humankind. He is the recent author of A World Without War, a book published by HarperCollins in which he argues that while the risks of nuclear holocaust have perhaps never been higher, we can reverse course and not commit collective suicide. We need to abandon narrow-minded nationalisms and develop dual loyalties to our nation...

Arunabha Ghosh, an internationally recognized public policy expert, author and columnist is the founder-CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), one of Asia's top climate think-tanks. In numerous reports, articles and speeches, Dr. Ghosh has convincingly argued that confronting the challenges of climate change will require better policies at the national level and massive levels of cooperation between government and businesses and between nation states across international...

Rebecca Shoot, Executive Director of Citizens for Global Solutions, a US-based organization closely aligned with the ideals of the world federalist movement, is an international lawyer and democracy and governance practitioner with extensive experience supporting human rights, democratic processes, and the rule of law on five continents. In a wide ranging interview, she discusses our climate emergency, the need to give the United Nations a greater role in advancing disarmament, the role of...

Andrew Strauss, Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Dayton School of Law, and a graduate of Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs discusses why setting up a global parliament, perhaps initially by a core group of 20-30 countries, would significantly strengthen the democratic legitimacy of the system that underpins our mechanisms of international cooperation. It could be a powerful antidote to the world-wide spread of ethno-nationalist-authoritarianism...

Michael Mandelbaum, a distinguished author with seminal contributions to a better understanding of some of the world´s most intractable problems, discusses why we are failing in our efforts to protect the planet from the calamities of climate change and what to do about it. He also analyzes our unsettled global security situation and the risks for an acceleration of nuclear proliferation and the implications of this for world peace. He comments on the role that the United Nations can play in...

Steven Phelps is an American physicist, philosopher and translator holding a Ph.D. in Physics, with a specialization in cosmology, from Princeton University. For over a decade he held a research position in the Physics Department at Technion University in Israel and published original research on the masses of nearby galaxies. He is thus singularly well qualified to explain why science and religion are deeply interconnected aspects of a single reality and how can a better understanding of...

Fernando Iglesias is a member of Parliament in Argentina and the Director of the Campaign for a Latin American and Caribbean Criminal Court Against Transnational Organized Crime (COPLA). Pervasive organized crime in the region is a huge drag on social and economic development, has led to sky-high levels of violent crime, as the mafias that fuel drug trafficking, money laundering and bribery operate in many countries with impunity in a context of weak states and scant respect for the rule of...

Cedric Ryngaert is the Chairman of the Department of International and European Law at Utrecht University and the Editor-in-Chief of the Netherlands International Law Review. In this podcast he explores the role of an International Anti-Corruption Court (IACC) as a potentially powerful innovation to our global governance architecture.  The IACC would be an enforcement mechanism for laws which are already in existence, but which often are ignored by kleptocrats who control the judges, the...

Michael Penn, a professor of psychology and a trained clinical psychologist, explores the evolution of the concept of human rights over the past century and discusses why the unfoldment of a culture of respect for the dignity of the individual is essential to catalyse the creation of conditions in societies that will contribute to human development. Why should the primary role of government be linked to the creation of those conditions that will facilitate the development of people’s latent...

Kerstin Carlson is a professor of international law in Denmark at Roskilde University, as well as The American University of Paris. In this podcast she addresses a number of vital questions for the future of international criminal law. Can international criminal justice institutions remain broadly apolitical bodies? How does one reconcile a paradox at the center of the practice of international criminal law between the concepts of “progress” and “justice,” with the latter concept rooted on...

Professor Jeffrey Knopf, with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California and with the Center on International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University explains why we can no longer rely only on deterrence, the nuclear taboo, arms control agreements and good luck. He argues that we must examine the psychological and societal aspects of maintaining nuclear peace. This is essential in a world of deeply entrenched...

Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Susana Malcorra and Jody Williams have decades of combined experience in enriching the global debates on how to enhance the effectiveness of our mechanisms of international cooperation and innovate in ways that contribute to buttress our tottering global order. In this wide-ranging interview, before an audience of some 600 students and faculty at one of Spain´s leading universities, they discuss the aftermath of COVID, the meaning of human security, the climate...

In an insightful interview Daniel Deudney, a distinguished author and teacher, likens the possession of nuclear weapons to owning a house in which we have placed boxes of dynamite with short fuses and given someone the authority, under some circumstances, to blow up the house. Except that, in the nuclear age, with much better knowledge about the lethal environmental consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, not only do we destroy our home, but we make the grounds on which it is built...

In her book Hot, Hungry Planet: The Fight to Stop a Global Food Crisis in the Face of Climate Change, Lisa Palmer analyzed the challenges we face in global food security as they relate to climate change. Over the next decade we are likely to see continued population growth, an acceleration in global warming, the intensification of a water crisis, and an increase in the incidence of civil unrest associated with these trends. What are some of tools at our disposal to increase the resilience of...

Dr. Tad Daley has been thinking about some of the greatest challenges of our time and his first book, Apocalypse Never, was a trenchant analysis of how to rid the world of nuclear weapons and the accompanying mechanisms of international cooperation that would make that goal achievable within our lifetimes. Like Dante more than 700 years ago, he believes that we need to set aside centuries of violence and war as instruments of state policy. We need to move to a world in which the energies and...

Maria Joao Rodrigues, the current President of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies in Brussels, made the transition from Employment Minister in Portugal in the government of Antonio Guterres to the European Council and the European Parliament. For the past two decades she has taken part in some of the key debates within the European Union about the process of integration, from enlargement and deepening of the Union, to the development of strategies aimed at boosting the region’s...

Dr. Margarita Konaev is Deputy Director of Analysis and a Research Fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). She is interested in military applications of AI and Russian military innovation. She has written extensively on international security, armed conflict, non-state actors and urban warfare in the Middle East, Russia and Eurasia. In a broad-ranging interview with our host Augusto Lopez-Claros she explores the changing nature of warfare and what...