New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast

Chandran Nair explores the global stakes of U.S.-China rivalry and argues that China may have a clearer vision for the future world order.

We live at a moment when everything we thought we could rely on to understand our world seems to be becoming unglued and when crisis after crisis is said to represent “existential” risk to the peace and prosperity—wherever you live. Whether it's “uncharted waters” or the “break up of global order” or “the end of the American century,” at the least we are entering a period of change and chaos unlike anything that most of us have ex...

Marco Annunziata unpacks the risks and rewards of President Trump’s bold attempt to reshape the U.S. and global economies.

President Trump has launched an unprecedented trade war, a radical overhaul of regulation, and a significant reshaping of U.S. fiscal policy. His purpose? To rewire global trade patterns and supply chains, recreate American manufacturing capacity, and change the essential structure of the U.S. and world economies. Can he succeed? How would success be measured? What are the risks it will fail --- and what would failure look like? How might all of this affect your job, yo...

Bryan Doerries uses ancient texts to confront today’s challenges, showing how timeless art can heal, provoke, and connect us across time.

Great art is timeless because it provides insights into our souls, into how we think and why we do what we do. That's as true of Shakespeare's sonnets as it is of Michelangelo's frescoes, as it is of the Greek tragedies. 

But what if those classics could be repurposed to shed light on the specific challenges facing us today? Would it be possible to understand the impact of racial discrimination, political corruption, war or flawed rel...

Francisco “Pacho” von Hildebrand of Gaia Amazonas believes the Amazon can still be saved—if Indigenous communities are empowered to protect it

In 2019, Carlos Nobre, a leading Brazilian scientist, published an open letter entitled "Amazon tipping point: Last chance for action.” If that article were published today, it might have to be titled, “No more chances” because the past five years have seen record-breaking drought throughout the region as well as record-breaking forest fires. 

Indeed, from a distance it looks like large parts of the rainforest are now tipping towards grasslands, with potentially devastating consequences for regional and global ra...

Tom O’Donnell, former key player in Democratic Party, explores the growing confrontation between the President and the Congress.

Normally, that's a simple question with a simple answer: of course, the Congress matters; after all, its powers are enthroned in the American Constitution. However, as the Trump presidency unfolds, nothing is simple anymore. President Trump obviously has an expansive view of presidential power and is clearly intent on exercising it at the expense of the Congress and of the courts. 

So does Congress matter, is becoming a huge question, potentially the stuff of constitutional crisis.

Tom...

Dr. Kris Olson discusses how innovative, human-centered design is transforming global healthcare.

Healthcare is intensely personal. Even when national statistics show improvement—which has been the case for most countries over recent decades—what matters is whether my baby in rural Uganda is having trouble breathing or whether my aging father in New York who went into the hospital with a broken hip will now die from the MERS he contracted there or whether why my wife in Buenos Aries can access the drugs she needs to survive cancer. 

In our hi-tech age, it seems like much of wh...

Filmmakers Charlotte Eagar and William Stirling explore how theater heals and transforms.

Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “The play’s the thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king,” when the troubled Prince stages a play to catch a murderer. The underlying point of the play-in-the-play is that drama is an incredibly powerful force for storytelling and much else.

Fast forward to the 21st century for an amazing example of that Shakespearean wisdom. Two incredibly creative British filmmakers created something called The Trojan Women Project to use drama to help refugees from wars in the Middle East and...

Journalist and author Michela Wrong unpacks the stakes of Congo’s latest crisis—and why it matters beyond the region.

With its unlimited natural resources and huge agricultural potential capacity, the Democratic Republic of Congo should be a paradise—but unfortunately, it’s not. Instead, it’s been wracked by war, bad government, corruption, tribal and ethnic enmities, neighbors who are serially tempted to intervene, and Great Powers who seem to think that it's time for a second age of colonialism.  

Recently, well-armed militias, accompanied by the Rwandan military, have seized key provinces in the country's mineral-rich east. They'r...

Journalist Francesca Borri and activist Gershon Baskin examine the human reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the possibility of peace.

The brutal Hamas attacks on October 7th, 2023 kickstarted a new cycle of widespread death and destruction that continues today. Countless lives lost, shattered, or irrevocably altered. Of course, mostly Palestinian, but also Israeli. Even Donald Trump is right about some things, as when he says, "It's impossible to imagine how life can go on under such circumstances."

Indeed, it's easier to imagine how roads or houses or markets can be rebuilt than how people, Palestinians as well...

Ana Palacio and Vygaudas Usackas discuss what needs to be done to put Europe on a better track.

Donald Trump doesn’t like the European Union and he’s not afraid to tell people. “The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States.” “The EU treats us very, very unfairly, very badly,” "They put tariffs on things that we want to do … We have some very big complaints with the EU.” His answer, of course, is tariffs, “taking back” American companies, and ignoring Europe as he reaches out directly to Moscow without bothering to consult America’s allies.

...

2024 Prize winner María Teresa Ronderos advocates for honest, smart journalism to fight misinformation and uphold democracy in the digital age.

Winston Churchill is alleged to have written that "A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny.” Thus, it should be no surprise that at a time when clear majorities of people in most democracies don’t trust their governments or their politicians, they also don’t trust their media or the journalists that produce it. Literally, you can’t have one without the other—and...

Aziz Huq and Scott Miller discuss the unprecedented pace and impact of Trump’s first five weeks in office

Donald Trump has been president for five weeks now. In light of the blizzard of executive orders, funding and hiring cuts, endless nominations and appointments, and above all the nonstop controversial policy declarations on every imaginable topic (and some of which literally are unimaginable), it seems like months or even years.

It's already clear that President Trump intends to change, not only how Washington and the United States work, but how the whole world works.

No pr...

Andreas Schleicher, OECD Education and Skills Director, shares insights from the Survey of Adult Skills, revealing its good, bad, and ugly.

We live in an increasingly complex technology-driven world. How we learn, how we create, how we make and grow things, how we interact with each other is being transformed by new technologies that themselves are rapidly evolving. In a perfect world, this technological transformation would lift all boats, make people smarter, healthier, more prosperous, maybe even wiser and more human. 

This, obviously, is not that perfect world—in part because the unpleasant fact is that too man...

Fernando Trujillo discusses his work to protect the Amazon’s freshwater basin during unprecedented drought and dangerously low river levels.

What happens in the Amazon is of planetary consequence. Its rainforests influence weather and rainfall around the world. Its rivers account for 1/4 of the available fresh water on earth. Its drainage basin is more than twice as large as that of the Congo River in Africa, which is the world's second-biggest. It harbors an estimated 10% of the planet's known lifeforms.

Our guest this week on New Thinking for a New World is Fernando Trujillo, Colombian marine biologist, 2024 Tä...

Photojournalist Fabio Bucciarelli shares what compels him to keep documenting the world’s most dangerous conflicts.

We live in a violent and complicated world. Wars, big and small, on every continent; mass migrations, often targeted for abuse by criminals as well as by governments who don't want the migrants; spreading cartel violence; increasingly disastrous consequences of climate change; pandemics and epidemics.  

So much for the Age of Aquarius and the End of History!

If there is any good news in this litany of man's inhumanity to man, it's that most of us have not yet been...

Listen as the 2024 prize winners discuss their leadership journeys, lessons from failure, and future challenges.

When leaders fail, democracy fails—and too many leaders in too many places are failing. That’s exactly why the Tällberg Foundation has sought out and honored great global leaders over the past decade. Leaders who are innovative, courageous, dynamic, with global worldviews, and whose leadership is rooted in universal values.

The three winners of the 2024 Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize recently came together at a seminar on leadership at the Collegio Cairoli, University of Pavia in Italy. Kristian Olson (medical innova...

Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, a leading expert on global terrorism, warns of a rising terrorist threat and the urgent need for a coordinated global response.

The start of 2025 is burdened with no shortage of things to worry about. The war in Ukraine; conflicts throughout the Middle East; tensions around Taiwan; the Los Angeles inferno; the possibility of Chinese and Russian financial or economic collapse. And, of course, the biggest known unknown that preoccupies the whole world: what will Donald Trump actually do when he's president after all of the noise he’s made on his way to the White House?  

Scott Miller on Trump’s return: decoding the voters and the power behind the presidency

When Donald Trump becomes the 49th President of the United States, the whole world will be watching, with people holding their breath in expectation of almost Biblical levels of chaos and confusion. Ironically, it seems that his return to power may be seen as less dramatic by many Americans: after all, he made his way back to the White House by somewhat unexpectedly (at least at the time) winning the Republican primaries, gaining complete control of the Republican Party, and then winning a majority of...

Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, shares how his team uses open-source investigations to uncover the truth.

We live in a world where facts are everywhere, recorded and shared ubiquitously. That ought to make this an era where arguments, journalism, and politics are routinely rooted in fact; unfortunately, it is more a world where too many people insist not only their own opinions, but on their own “facts.”

The problem is technology running amok, a bit like the broom in Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice (or the perhaps more familiar versions starring Mickey Mouse or Nicolas Cage). Wouldn’t it be a...

The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the planet, and Tero Mustonen shares his firsthand insights.

That the Arctic is warming is not exactly breaking news on a planet where almost everywhere is warming. But it is critical news that the Arctic is warming almost four times faster than the rest of the globe since the polar regions are essentially the planet’s air conditioners. Last year's Arctic Report Card documented that 2023 was the Arctic's hottest summer in centuries, with all the attendant consequences: massive wildfires, late June Greenland ice sheet melt, sea surface temperatures 7ºC above nor...

Chris Dalby explains what the Mexican cartels want and how they are getting it.

Politics in Mexico has long been a blood sport: not only “winner takes all,” but also incredibly violent. Last month’s national elections—when the country's first female president won with a record number of votes and by a record margin of victory—demonstrated both trends. President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum’s Morena party (founded and still controlled by outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador) won huge national and state legislative victories. But the electoral campaign was punctuated by more than 100 political assassinations, as well as widespread...

Fernando Trujillo discusses his work to protect the Amazon’s freshwater basin during unprecedented drought and dangerously low river levels.

What happens in the Amazon is of planetary consequence. Its rainforests influence weather and rainfall around the world. Its rivers account for 1/4 of the available fresh water on earth. Its drainage basin is more than twice as large as that of the Congo River in Africa, which is the world's second-biggest. It harbors an estimated 10% of the planet's known lifeforms.

Our guest this week on New Thinking for a New World is Fernando Trujillo, Colombian marine biologist, 2024 Tä...

María Teresa Ronderos champions honest, smart journalism as essential to combating misinformation and strengthening democracy in the digital age.

Winston Churchill is alleged to have written that "A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny.” Thus, it should be no surprise that at a time when clear majorities of people in most democracies don’t trust their governments or their politicians, they also don’t trust their media or the journalists that produce it. Literally, you can’t have one without the other—and today m...

Join Dr. Kristian Olson as he discusses how innovative, human-centered design is transforming global healthcare.

Healthcare is intensely personal. Even when national statistics show improvement—which has been the case for most countries over recent decades—what matters is whether my baby in rural Uganda is having trouble breathing or whether my aging father in New York who went into the hospital with a broken hip will now die from the MERS he contracted there or whether why my wife in Buenos Aries can access the drugs she needs to survive cancer. 

In our hi-tech age, it seems...

Zubaida Bai discusses how bold systemic change can make gender equality achievable

In 2015 the nations of the world—with much fanfare—agreed to achieve gender equality by 2030 as one of the U.N.’s “Sustainable Development Goals.” With the approach of the 10-year anniversary of that declaration, it’s obvious to even the UN statisticians that there is no possibility the goal will be realized. Indeed, if you want to be depressed (or, perhaps, angered) Google “gender inequality” and you will learn that the World Economic Forum has run the numbers and decided that “gender parity is 131 years away.”

Nonethe...

Dr. Olayinka Omigbodun addresses Africa’s urgent youth mental health crisis amid economic and social challenges.

It is trite, but true that youth are our future. Unfortunately, what is also true is that in most countries the mental health of young people has been declining over the past two decades, a decline that seems to have accelerated during and after COVID. Globally, one in seven 10 to 19-year-olds reportedly experience mental disorders. In turn, depression, anxiety, and behavioral issues are among the leading causes of illness, disability, and even suicide among adolescents. 

What’s true globally is even more...

Francesca Borri discusses the future of Palestine amid escalating conflict and the potential for lasting change.

Over the last several years Palestinians felt abandoned and ignored by Arabs, Americans, and Europeans. The people in Gaza and the West Bank seemed to have become almost invisible to everyone except themselves and the Israelis with whom they engaged in a low-intensity, but deadly conflict.

The attacks on October 7th and the continuing brutal Israeli response changed that, perhaps forever. Now it's hard to imagine ever returning to the status quo ante as unpleasant and unstable as that was. But...

Sasha Chanoff, founder of RefugePoint, explains some of his ideas that could change the future for migrants everywhere.

Two hundred and fifty years ago the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote, "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn." He obviously wasn't talking about the tragedy of modern mass migration, but he could have been. Today thousands, indeed, millions of people are being driven from their homes by war, natural disasters, climate change, pestilence, poverty, or sometimes just a search for better opportunities. What could be more human? And what could be more inhuman than overcrowded camps, drownings, forced returns...

Scott Miller offers insights into how the candidates aim to sway undecided voters and boost turnout in a nation where many still don't vote.

Once again, Americans are getting ready for a presidential election that is widely described as the most important in their lifetimes. That may or may not be true, but two things are certain: the two candidates, former President Trump and current Vice President Harris, are about as different as different could be, and many Americans wish they had other choices.

But they don’t; either Trump or Harris will be elected in November. Wi...

Hossein Mousavian discusses Iran's new president and explores potential new directions for the country's future.

During the summer, Iranians elected a new president: Masoud Pezeshkian, a cardiac surgeon, who is considered to be a political reformer. His victory surprised at least many foreign observers who are skeptical about all things Iranian, not the least that anyone could win an election against so-called hardliners. But Pezeshkian did exactly that.

Did he win in spite of or with the support of Iran’s Supreme Leader and of the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guards? Can he cope with the profound challenges fa...

Dr. Christian Ntizimira delves into the social, psychological, cultural, and spiritual aspects shaping the final days of someone who is dying.

The Greek philosopher, Epicurus, wrote “The art of living well and dying well are one.” However, most of us spend our lives desperately trying to avoid even thinking about dying, never mind preparing for it.

An exception is Dr. Christian Ntizimira, a Rwandan surgeon, who founded the African Center for Research on End-of-Life Care. He has thought long and hard about the social, psychological, cultural, and spiritual factors, as well as the physiological ones, that shape the...

Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, explains how his team uses online open-source investigation to distinguish fact from fiction.

We live in a world where facts are everywhere, recorded and shared ubiquitously. That ought to make this an era where arguments, journalism, and politics are routinely rooted in fact; unfortunately, it is more a world where too many people insist not only their own opinions, but on their own “facts.”

The problem is technology running amok, a bit like the broom in Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice (or the perhaps more familiar versions starring Mickey Mouse or Nicolas Cage). W...

Leora Hadar and Naty Barak talk about the human impact and implications of all the fighting and destruction of the past 10 months.

Israel is at war, and not just with Hamas, Iran, the Houthis, and their fellow travelers. Israeli’s most dangerous war may be with itself.

That was certainly true before October 7th, and it’s still true. Back then the streets were full of protesters opposing Prime Minister Netanyahu, his government, and their policies; the country seemed split down the middle. That split has not disappeared: today more than three quarters of Israelis reportedly worry abou...

Allison Minor, a Middle East expert, explores how these tensions might escalate into a regional conflict and whether a broader war can be avoided.

The Middle East is a war zone with Gaza as ground zero. But barely a day goes by when there isn't also fighting in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Israel, the Red Sea, or elsewhere. The danger is that one of these battles could suddenly ignite a bigger conflict with global consequences.

Perhaps surprisingly, Yemen may be a prime candidate for that honor. For years the Iranian-backed Shia Houthis have been fighting, more...

Philip Zelikow explores potential global conflicts and the shifting dynamics between China, Russia, the U.S., and their allies.

War in Ukraine. Fighting in Gaza, and across the Middle East. Risky air naval incidents in the South China Sea. Worries about a potential Taiwan conflict. All of it wrapped in visibly growing tensions between China and Russia on the one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other.

So much for the end of history and a lasting peace dividend. Once more, rival geopolitical blocks are maneuvering for advantage, competing directly and through proxies...

Europe funds North African countries to dump refugees in the Sahara, raising serious human rights concerns.

It’s not exactly headline news that many countries are inventing all sorts of novel ways to seal their borders from migrants and refugees or, when those efforts fail, to force the uninvited and unwanted to leave. It is news, however, when Europe funds, supports, and encourages governments of countries like Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania literally to dump refugees in the Sahara as either punishment or powerful disincentive for trying to escape to Europe.

Of course, on paper the lucrative deals th...

Chris Dalby explains what the Mexican cartels want and how they are getting it.

Politics in Mexico has long been a blood sport: not only “winner takes all,” but also incredibly violent. Last month’s national elections—when the country's first female president won with a record number of votes and by a record margin of victory—demonstrated both trends. President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum’s Morena party (founded and still controlled by outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador) won huge national and state legislative victories. But the electoral campaign was punctuated by more than 100 political assassinations, as well as widespread...

Alice Barbe, a French political and social activist, shares her concerns and expectations for the second round and beyond.

Much to everyone’s surprise, France’s President Macron recently decided that—like much of the rest of the world—his country ought to have national elections this year. The outcome of the first of two rounds was devastating for his political project to govern from the center: Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally party won a bit more than 33% of the vote. A coalition of leftist parties, the New Popular Front, won 28%. And Macron's Centers party again came in third...

The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet. Tero Mustonen, recently back from the Arctic, offers a firsthand debrief.

That the Arctic is warming is not exactly breaking news on a planet where almost everywhere is warming. But it is critical news that the Arctic is warming almost four times faster than the rest of the globe since the polar regions are essentially the planet’s air conditioners. Last year's Arctic Report Card documented that 2023 was the Arctic's hottest summer in centuries, with all the attendant consequences: massive wildfires, late June Greenland ice sh...

Vishakha Desai unpacks India's recent election and its consequences.

Like everything else about India, its democracy is complicated. Recent parliamentary elections—more than 640 million people voted (roughly two-thirds of eligible voters)—produced a contradictory, confusing outcome. On the one hand, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP party won a plurality, giving him a historic third term. On the other hand, the BJP lost its majority and required coalition partners to maintain control. The political opposition, including much-maligned Rahul Gandhi and Congress, won a new life as a serious political force.

So, which is it? Did Modi, denigrated by some...