Trending Globally: Politics and Policy

In May, an outbreak of the Ebola virus was officially declared in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Aid groups are warning that it could become the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history.

On this episode, Dan Richards spoke with two experts about why this outbreak is uniquely concerning, what the global health community needs to do to respond effectively, and how U.S. international aid policy under the Trump Administration has affected the trajectory of this public health crisis.

Guests on this episode:

On this episode: as part of the Watson School’s programming for Brown University’s Commencement and Reunion Weekend, Dean John Friedman spoke with MS NOW’s Chris Hayes ‘01 about how social media and the attention economy have reshaped American politics, how politicians should react to these seismic changes in political media, and what this means for the 2026 mid-term elections and beyond.

Chris Hayes is a journalist and the Emmy Award-winning anchor of “All In with Chris Hayes,” which airs weekdays at 8:00 p.m. on MS NOW. He is the anchor of the MS NOW Original podcast “Why Is This Ha...

The war in Iran is entering its third month, and according to the War in Iran Energy Cost Tracker — a new project from the Watson School's Climate Solutions Lab — the war has already cost Americans over 40 billion extra dollars in gas and diesel. But as Jeff Colgan, professor of political science at the Watson School and director of Watson’s Climate Solutions Lab, explains, when it comes to the effects of this war, the rising price of fuel is just the tip of the iceberg.

On this episode, Watson School dean and economist John Friedman talks with Jeff a...

How do borders — both the physical barriers and the political realities — shape our society?

These questions have long driven the work of Ieva Jusionyte, an anthropologist at the Watson School and director of Watson’s Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies.

In the last nine months, Ieva won both a MacArthur Genius grant and a Guggenheim fellowship for her path-breaking work exploring how political borders shape individuals and communities. On this episode, Dan Richards talks with Ieva about her research, how it feels to have her work receive so much recognition, and what we can al...

Lithium is an essential ingredient of most modern electronics. It helps to power our phones, our laptops, and increasingly EVs and other key parts of the green transition.

As Thea Riofrancos, a political scientist and author of the new book “Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism,” explains, the story of lithium — how it's mined, how it’s refined, and how it makes its way around the world — isn’t just a business story. It's a story of geopolitics and power.

On this episode (originally published on the Rhodes Center Podcast, another podcast from the Watson School), Wat...

From a once-in-a-century global pandemic, to wars in Europe and the Middle East, to the unchecked rise of AI and social media technologies, we are living in an age of threats against humanity that are profound, fast-moving, and interconnected.

On this episode, produced in collaboration with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dan Richards talks with two experts from very different fields about the interdisciplinary nature of “security studies”, how the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed experts to think about international security in new ways, and where they see some of the biggest threats to humanity today.

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with Andrew Schrank, a professor of sociology and international and public affairs at the Watson School, about the legacy of President Biden’s industrial policy — what it achieved, what it failed to achieve, and its continued effect on America’s economy and society. They also explore how President Trump's efforts to shape American industry compare to President Biden’s, and how both administrations have challenged long-standing notions about the role that government should play in our economy.

Watch the video of this conversation on YouTube.

Read Andrew Schrank’...

On this episode, Dan Richards spoke with Watson School Senior Fellow Stephen Kinzer about the history of U.S. foreign intervention and how it can help us to understand today’s conflict in Iran.

Stephen is an award-winning foreign correspondent who spent more than 20 years reporting around the world with the New York Times, and has written multiple books on the history of U.S. intervention abroad, including “All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror,” which explored the history and unintended consequences of the CIA-backed 1953 coup in Iran.

On this episode, Watson School Dean and economist John Friedman talks with economist Sebnem Kalemli Ozcan about how U.S. economic policy in the last year has changed the American economy, how those changes have rippled throughout the global economic and financial system, and what it means for America’s place in a rapidly evolving international order.

Sebnem Kalemli Ozcan is a professor of economics at Brown and the director of the Global Linkages Lab, a collaborative research hub dedicated to deepening our understanding of globalization. Starting in July, she'll also be serving as the director of th...

President Trump has issued more executive orders in the first year of his second term than he did in all four years of his first. These orders — which have directed government action on issues ranging from immigration to tariffs to the funding of federal agencies — have been met with hundreds of lawsuits filed in federal court.

As a result, our federal court system is shaping U.S. public policy more than at any time in recent history, and federal judges are making decisions on many of the most pressing policy issues facing society today.

So, what...

Violent, organized conflict is a near constant in human history.

But why?

Often, large-scale conflicts and wars are explained in material or political terms: humans engaging in conflict over land, resources, or ideologies.

But as Rose McDermott, the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor of International Relations, sees it, these explanations fail to fully account for war’s existence and persistence throughout the long history of our species.

To do that, McDermott argues that we need to take more seriously the ways that human psychology — shaped by our evolution as a spec...

When President Trump took office in January, Congress seemed poised to play a supporting role in the story of Trump’s second term. Republicans largely fell in line to support President Trump’s cabinet nominees and much of his broader agenda; it’s been reported that Trump himself has joked that he’s both the President and Speaker of the House. 

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, appeared helpless to mount a vigorous opposition to Trump’s policies, or even to energize their own base. 

But this fall, those dynamics began to shift. 

Congressional Republicans have stood up to T...

In October, President Trump and President Xi Jinping met for the first time in Trump’s new presidential term. The meeting ended with commitments from both countries designed to lower trade tensions —– something many observers greeted with relief.

But, according to Watson Senior Fellow and Director of the Watson School’s China Initiative Lyle Goldstein, perhaps more noticeable was what was left out of this meeting; almost all of the pressing security issues that exist between the two countries, including the one Goldstein sees as the “most dangerous of all”– the U.S. relationship with Taiwan.

On this epis...

In August 2022 — just over three years ago — the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law. It represented the largest federal investment in renewable energy and climate action in U.S. history. The bill was a historic victory for the climate movement — and, as it turns out, its high-water mark in the United States for the foreseeable future.

Since returning to office, President Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, rolled back numerous environmental and climate regulations, issued executive orders to pause renewable energy projects, and worked with Congress to dismantle key parts of the IR...

In 2014, Narendra Modi became India’s Prime Minister, marking the beginning of what many experts and international watchgroups identify as a period of democratic erosion in the country.

Since then, a number of other democracies around the world have followed India on this path — including, by many measures, the United States.

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with two experts on Indian politics and society about Modi’s rise in India: its causes and effects, how it compares to other instances of democratic erosion around the world, and what it can teach us about democracy’s weakne...

Bryce Steinberg is a development economist, which means she studies how lower-income countries grow into more prosperous ones.

More specifically, she studies how to help people in low-income countries build their “human capital” — a phrase social scientists use to describe things like getting more formal education, more professional training, or improving your health.

As she tells Dan Richards on this episode of Trending Globally, part of the answer is well-understood.

“We have to build the schools, we have to build the clinics, we have to get the roads, get the infrastructure in place so that...

Watson School political scientist Peter Andreas has spent decades studying the global economy — but not the one you read about in the business section, or are taught in Econ 101. 

His focus is on the illicit global economy. 

He’s written about everything from piracy in colonial America to the smuggling of technology during the Industrial Revolution, to clandestine migration and illegal drug trafficking today. 

His newest book, “The Illicit Global Economy: Everything You Need to Know,” is both a concise primer on this massive topic and a compelling argument for why you can’t understand...

In his new book “The Art of Coercion,” Watson political scientist Reid Pauly provides a seemingly straightforward definition of coercion: “The practice of convincing a target by the use of threats, to bend to your will.”

However, the simplicity of the definition belies the difficulty of doing it effectively – especially in the world of international security and relations. As Pauly explains to Dan Richards on this episode of “Trending Globally”:

“The history of coercive bargaining, coercive diplomacy is really a litany of mostly failures.”  

This is a problem not only for countries seeking to coerce others, wh...

What’s the role of a university in a democratic society? What responsibility do universities have to foster the public good, and what responsibilities does the public have to support centers of education and research? 

These have become some of the most fraught and pressing questions in our current moment. But of course, they’re also timeless questions — ones that are as old as the United States itself. 

In May, Watson political economist Mark Blyth explored these questions with literary scholar Kevin McLaughlin and historian Karin Wulf on the Rhodes Center Podcast, another podcast from the Wats...

On July 4th, President Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” into law. The bill cuts trillions of dollars in taxes, and allocates hundreds of billions in new spending. To offset all of this, it calls for over a trillion dollars in cuts to a range of domestic programs. 

On this episode, Dan Richards spoke with two experts from the Watson School about the bill: How it will shape American society, what its passage says about the Republican Party, and the role it might play in the 2026 midterms and beyond. 

Guests on this episode: 

On July 1st, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) officially closed its operations. It was the culmination of a months-long effort by the Trump administration to dismantle the agency, which had been in charge of administering U.S. foreign aid for over half a century. 

Why did President Trump make the dissolution  of USAID a priority? And what will it mean for the people and places around the world that have relied on foreign aid from the U.S.?

To answer these questions, Dan Richards spoke with Jennifer Hadden, a political scientist and as...

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with Mark Blyth about his new book, co-written with Nicoló Fraccaroli, called “Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers.” 

Mark and Dan discuss the competing theories for what causes inflation, the merits of each, and how they explain (or fail to explain) the inflation we saw post-pandemic. They also explore why inflation harms some parts of society more than others, and how to make sure that, the next time inflation rears its head, we fight it in a way that’s more effective and more fair.  

Learn more about and purcha...

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...

The World Press Freedom Index, which is issued by Reporters without Borders, measures the health of press freedom around the world. They do so along a number of axes, including the economic health of independent media, legal protections for the press and the physical security of journalists. In 2025, the global score on the index was the lowest it’s ever been.

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with three journalists and media thinkers who work in a part of the world where press freedom is, at times, a matter of life and death. Chernoh Bah is a Si...

Tuesday, April 29, marked the first 100 days of Trump’s second term. 

To help make sense of all that’s happened (and a lot has happened), Dan Richards spoke with political scientist and Interim Director of the Watson Institute, Wendy Schiller.

They discussed how Trump’s approach to governing has changed since his first term, and how the country, so far, has reacted to those changes. They also explore what’s been missing from mainstream coverage of this moment in U.S. politics, and the evolving relationship between national politics and institutions of higher education. 

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with Marc Dunkelman, Watson Institute fellow in International and Public Affairs and author of the new book “Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress―and How to Bring It Back.” In the book, Dunkelman explores how American progressives transformed from a movement dedicated to ambitious, effective, centralized government projects (think the New Deal or Medicaid) into a movement dedicated to limiting government power. 

As Marc explains, this wasn’t an intentional project but the result of overlapping, competing impulses within the progressive movement and a cultural shift with progressivism in the 20th century...

In 2022, OpenAI, Inc. launched a free version of its software ChatGPT, ushering in a new phase in the widespread use of artificial intelligence. Since then, a constant stream of breakthroughs in AI tech by a handful of companies has made clear that artificial intelligence will reshape our planet more profoundly and more quickly than many of us imagined.

Some of these promised changes are thrilling. Just as many, it seems, are terrifying. 

So, how should we think about the impact AI will have on us all, especially when it comes to the most fundamental questions o...

In the 19th century, about one in three Americans moved every year. In the 1960s, that figure had shrunk to one in five 

In 2023, it was one in 13. 

In other words, a smaller percentage of Americans are moving today than they have at any time in our history. As Yoni Appelbaum, historian and deputy executive editor at The Atlantic makes clear in his book, “Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity,” this change has played a devastating role in many of the most pressing issues Americans face, from income inequa...

On February 23, Germans went to the polls. While the establishment center-right CDU/CSU alliance won the largest share of votes, the results revealed a country experiencing profound political and social change. The far-right AfD party received an unprecedented 20% of the vote, while the incumbent center-left party, the SPD, suffered its worst loss in over 100 years. 

So, what does this election tell us about Europe’s largest economy? And as the Trump administration continues to upend U.S.-European relations, and the war in Ukraine challenges Europe’s own sense of security and stability, what will this new gover...

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with Tyler Jost, a political scientist and assistant professor at the Watson Institute. 

Tyler is an expert on international security and Chinese foreign policy, and his new book “Bureaucracies at War: The Institutional Origins of Miscalculation,” explores how leaders (in China and beyond) make decisions about when and how to engage in military conflict. Are there open channels of communication between a country’s leaders and security advisors? Are there forums for debate and disagreement? And what can be done to actually help leaders make better decisions?

In one sense...

The Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol is a stately room just off the Great Rotunda, whose walls are lined with — you guessed it — statues. The statues celebrate notable figures from all 50 states.

For most of its existence, there wasn’t a single statue of a Black American in this hall. But that changed in 2022 when a statue of Mary McCleod Bethune was delivered to the Hall from Florida.

Bethune, who was born in 1875 and died in 1955, might not be the first name you would have guessed to break this racial barrier. But as Noliwe...

On Monday, January 20, Donald Trump was once again sworn in as President of the United States. The ceremony was moved indoors due to the cold, where Trump declared in his inaugural address that no president has ever been tested like he has, and that “the new golden age for America starts now.” 

However, it wasn’t all speeches and ceremonies on Monday — Trump also signed dozens of executive orders, affecting U.S. policies on a range of issues, including climate change, public health, immigration and transgender rights. And while his administration is only days old, last week, we also s...

While there are many hurdles to addressing the climate crisis in a meaningful way, there’s been one consistent bright spot in climate news over the last decade: the price of renewable energy — particularly solar and wind power — has dropped dramatically. By many measures, they’re now cheaper to produce than fossil fuels. 

So does that mean that when it comes to a “green transition,” the hardest part is behind us? With wind and solar now cheaper than fossil fuel, can simply let “the market” take care of the rest? 

According to Brett Christophers, a professor at the I...

In the last two presidential elections in the United States, one issue has entered our political debates in a way we haven’t seen in recent history: the health and future of American democracy itself. And as Rob Blair, a political scientist at the Watson Institute and co-founder of the Democratic Erosion Consortium, explains, this isn’t without reason. 

“I am not especially bullish on the future of American democracy. I think it has deteriorated quite a bit in recent years, and I suspect we will see continued deterioration in the years to come,” Blair explained to Dan Richa...

In January of 2019, journalist Elizabeth Rush joined 56 scientists and crew people aboard an ice-breaking research vessel to study the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica. The glacier, which is about the size of the state of Florida, has been nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier” for the effect its disintegration would likely play in the rise of global sea levels. 

“If we lose Thwaites, there's great concern that we will lose the entirety or big portions of the West Antarctic ice sheet and that those glaciers combined contain enough ice to raise global sea levels 10 feet or more,” Rush told Dan Richards...

On November 5, Americans went to the polls and once again elected Donald Trump president of the United States. By this point, you probably know the broad strokes of his victory: He won every swing state and, unlike in 2016, the popular vote as well. 

It also seems clear that a key part of the Democratic Party’s message — that another Trump term would threaten democracy and push the nation toward authoritarianism — didn’t resonate with voters like they hoped it would. 

However, as Financial Times U.S. National Editor and Watson Institute Senior Fellow Edward Luce explains o...

On November 5, all eyes will be on the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump for the White House. But no matter who wins the presidency, there’s another close competition that will have a huge impact on U.S. politics: the fight for control of Congress. In fact, next year’s Congress will play a role in our politics even before the next president is sworn in; they’ll be responsible for certifying election results on January 6, 2025.  

Republicans appear very likely to regain control of the Senate, while control of the House of Repre...

Remember the supply chain problems of 2020 and 2021? The story we were told was that COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the world’s ability to make and transport goods, leaving us with shortages of everything from surgical masks to infant formula (not to mention seven dollar eggs).

However, it turns out that the real story behind those shortages is more complicated, and has less to do with the pandemic than with transformations to our economy that have been taking place over decades. 

On this episode (originally broadcast on the Rhodes Center Podcast), political economist Mark Blyth talks with Pet...

While no one knows how this November’s election is going to go in the U.S., there’s one thing most experts agree on: It’s likely going to be close. Very close. Poll after poll suggests that, especially in a few key states, support for the two candidates is evenly split in a way we haven’t seen in decades. 

So, with just about four weeks to go before election day, Dan Richards spoke with two experts about the key factors shaping this race. They discuss why neither Biden’s winning coalition in 2020 nor Trump’s coalition i...

Even for an election year, the last few months have seen a head-spinning amount of political news in the United States.

So, on this episode, Dan Richards spoke with someone uniquely suited to help make sense of the race as it enters the homestretch. Isaac Dovere is a senior reporter for CNN based in Washington covering Democratic politics. He’s also a senior fellow at the Watson Institute and teaches a class on political journalism. Prior to working at CNN, he was a staff writer at The Atlantic, and before that, he served as Politico’s chief Wash...