Global Get Down - A Global Affairs Podcast by IRSA

Join us for a conversation with Travis Misurell, the founder and leader of the non-profit Future is Now Coalition (FiNC) with a passion for amplifying the voices of everyday Americans and helping to promote grassroots movements and candidates. In this 45-minute interview, Misurell speaks on the outsized influence of party bosses and moneyed interests in American electoral politics, the importance of directly connecting voters to their elected officials with as few intermediaries as possible, and how his organization hopes to assist in the building of that political bridge.

Join us with a conversation with Nigel Fischer, an Officer of the Order of Canada, the former President and CEO of UNICEF Canada, and a former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations with experience in post-conflict and post-genocide negotiations in nations like Rwanda, Afghanistan, and Syria. In this 45-minute conversation, Fischer lays out the inner workings of post-conflict UN missions, as well as his personal philosophy on humanitarian assistance and the key episodes in his life that led him to a lifetime of international service.

Join us for an in-depth conversation with Jason Grillo, founder of the Super Pollutant Education and Credit Transaction Alliance (SPECTRA). In this half-hour conversation, Grillo lays out what super pollutants are, what measures are being taken to curb them, and what both international institutions and concerned consumers can do to help fight pollution, as well as his motivation for founding SPECTRA and hopes for the future of climate finance / action.

Join us for an interview with James Reeves, the founder and managing director of Challenger Research leading a multidisciplinary team in the creation of tailored insights on complex international situations. In this half-hour sit-down, our host Raza picks his brain on the evolving role of minerals, drones, and academic studies thereof in international analyses, as well as the benefits of approaching international crises from a plurality of perspectives and disciplines.

Join us for a conversation with Karen Mathiasen and Nico Martinez, a project director and research assistant both working at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C. on stablecoins and their use cases for international financial institutions. For the next half hour, our guests break down the definition of a stablecoin, the dangers of their adoption, the extent of existing regulation around them, and how they might be useful in the realm of development finance despite those risks.

Join us for an in-depth interview with Julian Lam and Nancy Luo, two ex-presidents of UBC's International Relations Student Association who have gone on to lead successful careers in in geopolitical risk-analysis and national economic development. Together with our hosts, Julian and Nancy provide a fresh perspective on the politics of AI governance and risk-negation, as well as some possible pathways for IR students after graduation and the day-to-day occupations of UBC law students.

Join us for a conversation with Charley Ward, a research assistant working on IMF reform, sovereign debt, and climate finance at the Center for Global Development. Together with hosts Raza and Guarav, Ward maps out the likely future of international trade and collaboration, and sheds some light on what it takes to work in a think tank and make a career for oneself in international development.

In this episode of Global Getdown, host Raza Sidhu sits down with special guest Sachiko Akashi, a longtime educator and scholar whose journey from studying English literature in Japan to researching international relations in the U.S. offers a unique lens on global politics and peacebuilding.

Together, they unpack the big question: what exactly is international relations? Listeners get a clear and approachable guide to IR.

In an era where multilateralism is fragmenting, defining the Global South has never been more complicated. As new challenges like climate change, the concentration of technology and AI and increasing inequality emerge, older threats like militarism and even nuclear tensions are making a comeback. Every country today is moving towards strategic autonomy - charting their own paths through geopolitical uncertainty and being forced to view everything through the lens of individualism. And yet, as this happens, the global challenges we were supposed to be addressing loom closer.

Talking specifically about the Global South, how can such a diverse group of nations, from rising global powers like China, India and Brazil to debt-ridden economies or small island states, find common ground? And what does global cooperation look like when the foundations of the world order, are shifting?

Join us today with special guest Aude Darnal, an International Policy Researcher and Program Manager of the Global South in the World Order Project at the Stimson Center to explore multilateralism today on the Global Get Down podcast.

The Montreal Protocol from 1987 banned gases and refrigerants that deplete the ozone layer. This is something that even a backbencher in an elementary school science class could tell you. But what is less commonly known today in 2025, is that there are still millions of gas canisters all over the world containing dangerous and banned ozone refrigerants like R-12, either sitting around in warehouses, lying around in remote farms or being illegally traded. These gases are both ozone depleting substances and greenhouse gases, so they’re absolute environmental stinkers.

But Tradewater’s work, essentially making them an agent of the Montreal Protocol, often involves shipping rotting refrigerant gasses halfway across the world to their secure destruction facilities. And when customs agencies and port authorities that they encounter midway, well-versed in the Basel Convention (the treaty moderating the shipment of waste), see what they are trying to ship, it looks an awful lot to them like waste being shipped across the world.

Ana Fernandez, a Logistics Associate at Tradewater, joins us today to talk about how her work places her right in between two environmental treaties, and how one of them, the Basel Convention, ends up blocking her efforts to achieve the aims of the Montreal Protocol.

Join us as we unpack a journey involving tense international negotiations, complex bureaucracy at security checkpoints and how in this odd instance, one race to save the world is being blocked by another.