Carnegie Council Podcasts

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, British philosopher A. C. Grayling discusses the crisis of democracy in the U.S. and UK and how we can fix it. In this excerpt, Grayling talks about some unfortunate traditions in British politics that are especially corrosive to the system of representative democracy.

We have made tremendous progress, but there's still a long way to go, says Melanne Verveer, head of Georgetown's Institute for Women, Peace and Security and former ambassador-at-large for global women's issues. She looks forward to the day when "women's issues" are no longer seen as marginal, but as a mainstream component of peace and prosperity.

The maximum penalty for blasphemy in Pakistan is death, and public protest is not allowed. Indonesia is nowhere near as bad as this--yet. "Indonesia is now going down the Pakistan route," says Andreas Harsono of Human Rights Watch. "There are more and more political manipulations using the blasphemy law, and there are more and more discriminatory regulations against minorities in Indonesia."

Rich and poor, we're all dependent on the global financial system and it can be a force for good, says human rights law professor David Kinley, but the incentive structures within banking encourage people to behave unethically. In other words, "finance does not attract cheats, it creates them." How can we change this? We have to start with education, says Kinley.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Climate Museum founder Miranda Massie discusses the need for all Americans to take an interest in the environment. In this excerpt, Massie tells journalist Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson how her previous career prepared her for environmental activism and alerted her to the social costs of global warming.

Can tyranny happen here? asks historian Timothy Snyder. His chilling answer is, "it can happen, it happens to people like us, and it is happening now." How can we fight back? Snyder offers 20 lessons; the first is the most important, as if we fail in this one it will be too late for the others: "Don't obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given." Have the courage to take a stand--easy to say, but difficult to do.

Satyagraha, one of Gandhi's most influential teachings, stresses "passive resistance" in the face of injustice. Qunnipiac's Gadkar-Wilcox saw a powerful example of this in regards to a debate in India over sanitary napkins and she also sees it as Florida high school students push legislators for stricter gun control. Why is this tactic or "disposition" so effective?

Today, many feel paralyzed by the constant stream of bad news. Yet as Gregg Easterbrook shows, statistics on crime, poverty, and longevity prove that things are actually getting better, both in the United States and most of the world. So why do we see the world in such a negative light? Is it a coincidence that this trend started in 2004, the same year that Facebook was created?

What are the real facts about fake news? Brendan Nyhan is co-author of an important new study on fake news consumption during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. He discovered that a staggering one in four Americans visited a fake news site in the month before the election. But what was the actual agenda for most of these sites and what effect did they have on voters? His findings may surprise you.