New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast

In 2015 the nations of the world—with much fanfare—agreed to achieve gender equality by 2030 as one of the U.N.’s “Sustainable Development Goals.” With the approach of the 10-year anniversary of that declaration, it’s obvious to even the UN statisticians that there is no possibility the goal will be realized. Indeed, if you want to be depressed (or, perhaps, angered) Google “gender inequality” and you will learn that the World Economic Forum has run the numbers and decided that “gender parity is 131 years away.”

It is trite, but true that youth are our future. Unfortunately, what is also true is that in most countries the mental health of young people has been declining over the past two decades, a decline that seems to have accelerated during and after COVID. Globally, one in seven 10 to 19-year-olds reportedly experience mental disorders. In turn, depression, anxiety, and behavioral issues are among the leading causes of illness, disability, and even suicide among adolescents. 

Over the last several years Palestinians felt abandoned and ignored by Arabs, Americans, and Europeans. The people in Gaza and the West Bank seemed to have become almost invisible to everyone except themselves and the Israelis with whom they engaged in a low-intensity, but deadly conflict.

The attacks on October 7th and the continuing brutal Israeli response changed that, perhaps forever. Now it's hard to imagine ever returning to the status quo ante as unpleasant and unstable as that was. But all wars end, and this one will as well. The people who survive, especially the almost 50% of Gazans under the age of 18, will surely be marked for life.

So what?

That’s a harsh question, and it demands honest answers. Could the tragedy of war somehow lead to better lives and even a sovereign state for millions of Palestinians? Are Palestinians condemned to remain stuck in whatever circle of Dante's hell they now inhabit? Or might they give up and leave, even if the rest of the world doesn’t seem to want them?

Our guest on New Thinking for a New World brings the sort of experience and insight that can at least give us a window into possibilities. Francesca Borri is an Italian journalist and war reporter who has lived in the West Bank since 2007. Her work and integrity are respected by Arabs as well as Israelis. Proof point: she was the first Western journalist to interview Yahya Sinwar in 2018 and that interview led to direct negotiations between Hamas and Israel.

Can you imagine a positive ending to the tragedy in Gaza? Please tell us what you think here.

Two hundred and fifty years ago the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote, "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn." He obviously wasn't talking about the tragedy of modern mass migration, but he could have been. Today thousands, indeed, millions of people are being driven from their homes by war, natural disasters, climate change, pestilence, poverty, or sometimes just a search for better opportunities. What could be more human? And what could be more inhuman than overcrowded camps, drownings, forced returns, desert dumps and other indignities that too often meet them?

It seems that much more effort goes into trying to stop or reverse the migrations than in either creating legal pathways to safe movement or addressing the root causes that compel people to flee in the first place. In light of the politics around migration in Europe and the United States, but also in important destination countries in the Global South, it is easy to imagine that the challenges facing would-be migrants will inevitably worsen. The resulting tragedies are becoming so commonplace that they seem to go mostly unnoticed.

Mostly is the keyword. There are legions of people who not only notice but are also looking for solutions. Today’s guest on New Thinking for a New World, Sasha Chanoff, founded RefugePoint, an organization dedicated to creating solutions for refugees in extreme danger. Listen as he explains some of his ideas that could change the future for migrants everywhere.

Once again, Americans are getting ready for a presidential election that is widely described as the most important in their lifetimes. That may or may not be true, but two things are certain: the two candidates, former President Trump and current Vice President Harris, are about as different as different could be, and many Americans wish they had other choices.

But they don’t; either Trump or Harris will be elected in November. With a little more than five weeks left to campaign (although early voting has already started in some states) both candidates are desperately trying to break what the pollsters insist is more or less a tie, both in the national polls and in the so-called swing states whose Electoral College votes will in effect select the winner.

How are the candidates trying to persuade voters who haven’t already made up their minds? How do they ensure that their core voters actually cast ballots, in a country where the highest turnout since 1990 saw 1/3 of registered voters decline to vote in the equally tight 2020 Biden/Trump contest? What do voters see in the candidates that attract or repel them?

Scott Miller, an accomplished political and corporate consultant based in the swing state of Georgia, has some answers or at least some well-informed intuitions. Scott, with a long history of advising successful (as well as the other kind) both Republican and Democrat candidates in national and state elections, continues to be a close observer of American politics; he is one of the “go-to” gurus of U.S. elections.

What do you think? Who would you vote for and why?

During the summer, Iranians elected a new president: Masoud Pezeshkian, a cardiac surgeon, who is considered to be a political reformer. His victory surprised at least many foreign observers who are skeptical about all things Iranian, not the least that anyone could win an election against so-called hardliners. But Pezeshkian did exactly that.

Did he win in spite of or with the support of Iran’s Supreme Leader and of the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guards? Can he cope with the profound challenges facing his country, domestically and internationally? Does he have the needed room to maneuver to reduce the crushing Western sanctions that make life so difficult for ordinary Iranians? What does “reformer” even mean in the complicated Iranian context?

The best answers to those questions should probably come from an Iranian. Hossein Mousavian, a scholar and author at Princeton University, was a long-serving Iranian diplomat who worked on his country’s nuclear negotiations with the West, among other assignments. Listen as he describes the new President and assesses the possibility for new directions in Iran’s trajectory.

Tell us what you think: should the West restart negotiations with Iran over its nuclear arms policies and reduce or even eliminate sanctions?

The Greek philosopher, Epicurus, wrote “The art of living well and dying well are one.” However, most of us spend our lives desperately trying to avoid even thinking about dying, never mind preparing for it.

An exception is Dr. Christian Ntizimira, a Rwandan surgeon, who founded the African Center for Research on End-of-Life Care. He has thought long and hard about the social, psychological, cultural, and spiritual factors, as well as the physiological ones, that shape the final days of someone who is dying. Of course, it's not just the patient about whom he is thinking, but also family, friends, and community.

Admittedly, death is not one of those topics that make for a comfortable conversation or a comfortable listening experience. But as Shakespeare wrote for Julius Caesar, “Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” So listen to this episode of New Thinking for a New World and tell us if it helps you think a bit differently about your own inevitable demise.

This episode was originally published on February 1, 2024.

We live in a world where facts are everywhere, recorded and shared ubiquitously. That ought to make this an era where arguments, journalism, and politics are routinely rooted in fact; unfortunately, it is more a world where too many people insist not only their own opinions, but on their own “facts.”

The problem is technology running amok, a bit like the broom in Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice (or the perhaps more familiar versions starring Mickey Mouse or Nicolas Cage). Wouldn’t it be a better world if endless open-source information and smart, widely distributed technology shed light instead of heat?

The good news is that there are people trying to do exactly that, starting with Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, an investigative collective focused on online open-source investigation. Listen to this episode of New Thinking for a New World, as he discusses how he and Bellingcat separate fact from fiction.

This episode was originally published on May 23, 2024.

Israel is at war, and not just with Hamas, Iran, the Houthis, and their fellow travelers. Israeli’s most dangerous war may be with itself.

That was certainly true before October 7th, and it’s still true. Back then the streets were full of protesters opposing Prime Minister Netanyahu, his government, and their policies; the country seemed split down the middle. That split has not disappeared: today more than three quarters of Israelis reportedly worry about the “strong or very strong" conflicts between the political right and left, while more than half worry about conflict between religious and secular Jews. Shockingly, in the midst of war, extremists recently breached an army base—the Israel Defense Forces are still the most trusted national institution—attempting to free soldiers accused of abusing Palestinian prisoners.

Arguably Netanyahu's declaration in June that “There will be no civil war” was an explicit acknowledgment of the deep, dangerous currents coursing through Israeli society.

October 7th and the subsequent war against Hamas have been catastrophic for Israelis and even more for Palestinians. It is not possible to imagine what the morning after might look like for anyone until the war ends. But it is possible to begin to understand how the past year has affected ordinary people: their daily lives, their hopes, and their fears for the future—Israeli as well as Palestinian. Any hope for a different future necessarily must start with such an understanding.

In that spirit, this is the first of what we hope will be a series of conversations with Israelis and with Palestinians, not about big-picture politics or strategy or the war, but about the human impact and implications of all the hatred and fighting and destruction of the past 10 months.

The first two voices are Israelis Leora Hadar and Naty Barak. Liora lives in a West Bank settlement and is a mother, a bibliotherapist, and an activist in the grassroots peace movement, Women Wage Peace. Naty is a retired businessman, sustainability expert farmer, and a longtime resident of Kibbutz Hatzerim in the Negev desert.

Listen as they talk about the tragedy of Israel's wars and tell us what you think.

The Middle East is a war zone with Gaza as ground zero. But barely a day goes by when there isn't also fighting in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Israel, the Red Sea, or elsewhere. The danger is that one of these battles could suddenly ignite a bigger conflict with global consequences.

Perhaps surprisingly, Yemen may be a prime candidate for that honor. For years the Iranian-backed Shia Houthis have been fighting, more or less successfully, the Saudi and Emirati-backed Sunni government; today the Houthis control a majority of Yemen's population, but not the country’s hydrocarbons. And—suddenly—they matter, far beyond Yemen’s borders.

Why? First, the Houthis are an integral part of Iran's coalition of regional militias who could become significant players in a regional conflict. Second, for months the Houthis have been attacking container ships going through the Red Sea, diverting substantial traffic away from the Suez Canal. Third, a recent Houthi drone attack on Tel Aviv led Israel to launch a disproportionately devastating assault on the Yemeni port of Hodeida which was clearly aimed more at the Iranians than at the Houthis.

That’s exactly how a local conflict could become something much bigger.

Our guest on this episode is an expert in all things Yemen. Allison Minor is an American Middle East expert, at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Although she recently served as Deputy Special Envoy for Yemen at the U.S. State Department, the views she shared with New Thinking for a New World are her own, and not those of the American government.

What do you think: can a general war in the Middle East be avoided?