Leah VanWey is a sociologist and expert on the effects of deforestation in Brazil [https://www.brown.edu/academics/sociology/people/leah-vanwey]. On this episode she and Jim Green explore the history, politics, and science of Brazil’s forests. Because how they're managed will affect not just Brazil's economy and environment, but the world's.

Debora Diniz is an anthropologist, activist, and former University of Brasilia law professor. Her life was utterly transformed last year, when she helped bring a case to Brazil’s Supreme Court to decriminalize abortion. Death threats were made against her. She received police protection, and went into hiding prior to the case’s final hearings. Today she’s living in exile in the US. On this episode Debora and James talk about life in exile, how to combine scholarship with activism, and how to navigate the 'local flavors' of authoritarianism we're seeing around the world today.

On this episode of Brazil Unfiltered James Green talks with Ben Cowan, Associate Professor of History at UC San Diego and a leading expert on the history of Brazil’s military dictatorship. His 2016 book ‘Securing Sex: Morality and Repression in the Making of Cold War Brazil,’ looks at how cultural shifts in the 60s, 70s, and 80s -- especially changing attitudes towards sexuality and gender -- were held up by the dictatorship as dangers to the country. Green and Cowan discuss how this paranoia continues today on the far right, where everything from gender equality to gay rights is viewed as an existential political threat.

On December 1, 2018, a group of activists and scholars met in New York to talk about the political crisis in Brazil. What came out of that meeting was the creation of US Network for Democracy in Brazil. James Green is currently serving as the National Coordinator of the Network, and on this episode of Brazil Unfiltered he talked with colleague Merina Adams, the Network’s National Organizer. They discuss what spurred the creation of the US Network for Democracy in Brazil, how it has grown since December, and how they plan to make social progress in Brazil a priority here in the US.

It's impossible to understand contemporary Brazil without understanding life in the country's poorest and most marginalized communities. Watson Postdoctoral Fellow Nick Barnes lived in one such community -- a favela in Rio de Janeiro -- from 2012 to 2015. On this episode of Brazil Unfiltered, host James Green talks with Nick about life in Rio’s favelas: how they’re governed, how they were transformed by the World Cup and Olympics, and what the current political climate means for their future.

If you're in the Providence area be sure to visit 'Maré de Dentro: Race, Gender, and Life amid the Militarization of Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas,' an art exhibit on view at The Watson Institute through May 3. More information here: https://watson.brown.edu/events/2019/art-watson-presents-mar-de-dentro-race-gender-and-life-amid-militarization-rio-de

March 14 marked the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Marielle Franco, a politician and activist in Rio de Janeiro. Her assassination shook the city -- and the country. On this episode of Brazil Unfiltered, a new podcast from the Watson Institute at Brown University, host James Green [https://watson.brown.edu/people/faculty-fellows/green] talked with Keisha-Khan Perry, an Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University [https://vivo.brown.edu/display/kyperry] and author of 'Black Women against the Land Grab,' [https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/black-women-against-the-land-grab] about Franco’s life and work, and about how her assassination fits into a bigger story about Brazil’s shifting politics. They also looked at what Franco’s story can teach us about our political struggles back in the US.

To listen to the Watson Institutes other podcasts click here: [https://soundcloud.com/watsoninstitute/sets]