Baker Briefing

We’re in a new era of discovery in the history of artificial intelligence, but rapid advances in the technology are also bringing major risks. Moshe Vardi, a leading expert in computational engineering and Baker Institute fellow, joins the podcast to discuss the ethical and strategic choices on AI facing the U.S. amid its competition with China and the unintended consequences of outsourcing our thinking to machines.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Moshe Vardi, “Big Tech, You Need Academia. Speak Up!,” Communications of the ACM 68, no. 5 (2025): 5, https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3727870. 

This conversation was recorded in front of a live studio audience on April 17, 2025. Learn about future live recordings of the “Baker Briefing” podcast by subscribing to our “Events Digest” newsletter at https://www.bakerinstitute.org/newsletter.

You can follow @BakerInstitute on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Learn more about our data-driven, nonpartisan policy research and analysis at bakerinstitute.org.

With its aggressive mass deportation campaign, the Trump administration is attempting to reshape long-standing U.S. immigration policy — and increasingly defying constitutional guardrails in the process.

On this episode, experts examine the legal and social implications of the administration’s unconventional targeting of legal permanent and temporary residents, asylum seekers, and even foreign students, and well as the administration’s overt challenges to judicial authority and due process rights.

Host David Satterfield was joined by Tony Payan, director of the Baker Institute Center for the U.S. and Mexico; Luz Maria Garcini, assistant professor of psychological sciences at Rice University and director of the Center for Community and Public Health at Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research; and David Donatti, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas and lecturer at Rice.

This conversation was recorded on April 21, 2025, in front of a live studio audience. Learn about future live recordings of the “Baker Briefing” podcast by subscribing to our “Events Digest” newsletter at https://www.bakerinstitute.org/newsletter.

You can follow @BakerInstitute on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, and learn more about our data-driven, nonpartisan policy research and analysis at bakerinstitute.org.

Introducing “The Two-Handed Economist” — a new podcast with timely analysis of economic policy developments from John Diamond, director of the Center for Tax and Budget Policy.

Why a two-handed economist? President Harry Truman famously asked for a one-handed economist, tired of hearing, “On the one hand, this,” and “On the other hand, that.” On “The Two-Handed Economist,” we embrace the complexity that a one-handed economist might shy away from.

Our first episode dives deep into the economic fallout from the Trump administration’s sweeping new tariffs, unpacking the market turmoil, impacts for consumers, and global response. A transcript is available here.

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Mentioned:

“Innovation and Trade Policy in a Globalized World” by Ufuk Akcigit (University of Chicago, NBER, CEPR), Sina T. Ates (Federal Reserve Board), and Giammario Impullitti (University of Nottingham), 2021.

This episode was recorded on April 15, 2025.

You can follow @BakerInstitute on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, and learn more about our data-driven, nonpartisan policy research and analysis at bakerinstitute.org.

April 15 marked the second anniversary of the ongoing civil war in Sudan, a conflict that has resulted in 150,000 people killed, over 10 million displaced, and an estimated 25 million at risk of starvation.

Sudan has seen civil war before in its tumultuous postcolonial history — but this conflict is different. Susan Stigant, former director of the Africa Program at the U.S. Institute for Peace, and Salah Ben Hammou, a postdoctoral associate at the Baker Institute Edward P. Djerejian Center for the Middle East, explore the political and ethnic tensions fueling the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the impacts of aid budget cuts, and prospects for peace and rebuilding.

This episode was guest-hosted by Kelsey Norman, fellow for the Middle East and director of the Women’s Rights, Human Rights and Refugees Program. It was recorded on April 15, 2025.

Follow @BakerInstitute on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, and learn more about our data-driven, nonpartisan policy research and analysis at bakerinstitute.org.

The Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and aid budget cuts in the U.K., France, and other Western countries present a stark turning point for the international humanitarian aid system.

Sonali Korde, the Baker Institute’s MD Anderson Visiting Fellow and the former assistant to the administrator of the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance at USAID, joined Ambassador David M. Satterfield to explore the far-reaching implications of these shifts, as well as the past role of foreign aid in promoting U.S. interests — and the challenge of justifying such aid domestically.

This conversation was recorded in front of a live studio audience on April 8, 2025.

Follow @BakerInstitute on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, and learn more about our data-driven, nonpartisan policy research and analysis at bakerinstitute.org.

Measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, meaning it was stopped from spreading freely. But that’s no longer the case. By April 2, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had reported more than 480 cases nationwide and one death in 2025.

Meanwhile, social media and podcasting platforms are rife with misinformation about the severity of the virus and the development, efficacy, and side effects of vaccines, helping drive vaccination rates in the U.S. ever lower. The result: a rapidly spreading measles outbreak and a threat to the hard-won public health gains made possible from decades of vaccination.

So how exactly did we get here, and what do we do now?

Dr. Peter Hotez, a Baker Institute fellow, vaccine scientist, physician, and public health advocate, joined Director David M. Satterfield to discuss the causes and consequences of the West Texas outbreak at a March 26 Baker Institute event. Their conversation has been condensed for this episode of “Baker Briefing.”

(You can watch the full conversation here: https://bit.ly/3R7iVJi.)

Follow @BakerInstitute on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, and learn more about our data-driven, nonpartisan policy research and analysis at bakerinstitute.org.

Debates around gain-of-function research, which genetically alters an organism to give it new functions, became highly visible during the COVID-19 pandemic, when public figures began to speculate that the virus responsible was created through gain-of-function experiments in Wuhan, China.

But many scientists maintain that this kind of research helps us to understand and respond to emerging viral threats, like the H5N1 virus, or bird flu. So just how important is gain-of-function research, and what oversight mechanisms are in place to reduce the hazards that yet other scientists say make these experiments too risky?

The Baker Institute Science and Technology Policy Program’s Kirstin R.W. Matthews and Alicia L. Johnson and Rice University biosciences professor Yousif Shamoo joined the “Baker Briefing” podcast to discuss the risks, benefits, and guardrails surrounding gain-of-function research — and why federal budget cuts and layoffs will make the endeavor less secure.

This episode was recorded on March 20, 2025.

Follow @BakerInstitute on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, and learn more about our data-driven, nonpartisan policy research and analysis at bakerinstitute.org.

Like other urban districts around the country, Houston Independent School District (HISD) has seen enrollment drop significantly over the past decade. But while the district’s schools are under capacity overall, with an average campus utilization rate of 77%, some of its campuses are meanwhile facing a paradoxical challenge: overcrowding.

Bill King, co-author of a recent Center for Tax and Budget Policy report on disparities in HISD campus utilization, and Erin Baumgartner, director of the Houston Education Research Consortium at Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Policy, joined the “Baker Briefing” podcast to explore what’s causing the imbalance, how the state’s proposed school voucher legislation could factor in, and paths forward for HISD.

This conversation was recorded on March 18, 2025. Read the report from King and co-authors Joyce Beebe and John Diamond:

https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/disparities-houston-school-campus-utilization

The climate crisis is driving more and more people around the world to leave their homes and communities, often permanently. This isn’t an issue for the distant future: 26.4 million displacements related to natural disasters and slow-onset events like drought and sea-level rise were recorded around the world in 2023 alone.

Julia Blocher, a project lead at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a visiting scholar at the Baker Institute this spring, joined the “Baker Briefing” podcast to discuss the phenomenon of climate migration around the world and in the United States. Together, Blocher and David M. Satterfield explore the relationship between climate change and migration, the disproportionate impacts for disadvantaged people and marginalized groups, and why it’s important to understand migration as a possible adaptation to the climate crisis.

This conversation was recorded on Feb. 18, 2025.

School voucher programs — also known as education savings accounts or school choice — allow families to use public funds to pay for private school tuition. They have swept across the U.S. over the past decade, and now the Texas Legislature looks poised to enact a school voucher program of its own. 

In this episode of “Baker Briefing,” Ed Emmett sits down with Christopher Kulesza, a scholar in child health policy at the Baker Institute, to break down what a Texas school voucher program might look like and what it could mean for schools and families across the state.

For more, read Kulesza’s recent brief: “How to Design a Fiscally Responsible School Choice Program in Texas.”