New Thinking for a New World

This year is going to be memorable for all sorts of reasons, most of which already look to be depressing. The biggest offset to that is likely to be a global event that will distract much of the world from dismal headlines about war, climate, and tariffs. On June 11th, the FIFA World Cup kicks off, co-hosted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

For decades, environmentalists and climate scientists have warned about the catastrophic consequences of the shrinking and erosion of the Amazon and Congo rainforests. Politicians have echoed and amplified the warnings, but have done little of consequence to slow the actual pace at which the rainforests are moving towards tipping points.

The recent UN climate summit in Belem was supposed to change all that. However, it would take an unusually large dose of magical thinking to believe what happened at COP 30 will have much more impact than what happened at its twenty-nine predecessors, at least concerning the Amazon and Congo River Basins.

Maybe what's needed is new thinking. Protecting the Amazon and the Congo isn't just an environmental challenge but also a governance challenge, a justice challenge, and an economic development challenge. And stopping---or even slowing---the tipping probably requires bottom-up local action, not just top-down global declarations of intent.

To discuss potential new approaches, we gathered three people who have skin in the game: Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Ugandan wildlife veterinarian and founder of Conservation Through Public Health; Dr. Fernando Trujillo, Colombian marine biologist and world-leading expert on river dolphins; and Sam Muller, Dutch lawyer with extensive experience in global justice and environmental practices.

Listen as they explore how to define and execute new approaches to saving the rainforests.

Here's the link to the webinar on YouTube: https://youtu.be/RxbWsGUosyM

The number of active conflicts today is the highest since the end of World War II. The world has clearly entered a new, more violent, and fragmented era.

We can and should debate "why?" But we also need to focus on "so what?" What are the consequences, not only for warriors but also for the innocents caught up in spreading conflict? Is it possible that the impacts of traumatic violence could be transmitted across generations?

A group of scientists believes their work proves that war trauma can alter gene expression, thereby impacting the children and grandchildren of victims of war. Among the authors of a profoundly important scientific paper published last year was Rana Dajani, a Jordanian molecular biologist and long-time participant in the Tällberg network. Listen as she explains the science and its implications.

What do you think?

Read the paper: Epigenetic signatures of intergenerational exposure to violence in three generations of Syrian refugees

Podcast website: https://tallbergfoundation.org/podcasts/inheriting-trauma/ ‎

| "The whale has no voice," Herman Melville wrote in Moby Dick. "But then again," he went on, "What has the whale to say?"

Turns out he was wrong: not only do sperm whales have voices, but these massive, amazing mammals talk constantly to each other. They are humongous creatures: males can be 18 meters long and weigh 45 tons. Think something the weight of an industrial dump truck, but twice as long. Despite their massive size and the capacity to dive more than a mile into the depths of the ocean, they apparently are quite sociable.

How amazing would it be if we could decipher what they are saying? That's the passion of David Gruber, a marine biologist and technologist who organized and leads Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative). He has gathered a team of 50 global scientists and technicians dedicated to understanding what the sperm whales are saying to each other---not so we can talk to them, but so that we can understand how they think about the world we share.

David is also one of the recipients of the 2025 Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize, who was honored for his work with CETI and his underlying drive to help humans and nature co-exist.

Listen as he discusses what drives him and CETI here: https://tallbergfoundation.org/podcasts/what-has-the-whale-to-say/

Learn more about Project CETI here: https://www.projectceti.org/

The Greek classics are timeless because they provide insights into our souls, into how we think and why we do what we do. Of course, few of us regularly read or ponder the wisdom of those epic tragedies. But what if they could be made accessible in ways that shed light on the specific challenges of life in the 21st century?  

The results could be amazing, healing, entertaining, and educational---partly by stripping away what we think is so special about our time, focusing instead on what makes us human.

That's exactly what Theater of War Productions,** Bryan Doerries, and a host of actors have been doing with global audiences for almost two decades.  **

Six months ago, we recorded this podcast with Bryan, who co-founded Theater of War Productions and serves as its artistic director. We share it again in recognition that Bryan Doerries has recently been selected as a winner of the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize. The jury honored him for creating brave spaces where art, empathy, and dialogue aim to restore human connection, reimagining the role of culture in public life.

Listen again and let us know what you think. 

By almost every objective indicator, the process of dramatic climate change grinds on. However, the optimists are currently making a big deal out of the notion that warming might top out between 2.5 and 3°C over pre-industrial levels, compared to earlier and much higher scenarios. And Bill Gates now assures us that it is poverty, not climate change, that is potentially catastrophic.

No one should be reassured!

When it comes to the environment, what people around the world need is reliable, fact-based information about how the places in which they live are actually changing. They need to be empowered with accessible science, and the voices and knowledge of those directly impacted by environmental change amplified in ways that could actually produce positive outcomes.

Thank God for something called Mongabay. Rhett Ayers Butler founded and built Mongabay as a global digital platform for high-quality journalism about the environment. He and they have deservedly won endless journalism awards. Far more importantly, Mongabay is practically the only reliable source for consistently objective reporting on conservation and the environment on a global basis.

Butler is a world-class conservationist and journalist. He is also one of the recipients of the 2025 Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize Winners. 

Listen as Rhett talks about the world as he reports on it….

“May you live in interesting times,” the saying goes—and for Colombia, these are truly that. Rising violence, political divisions, and economic uncertainty test the limits of leadership. Paula Moreno—former Minister of Culture and the first Afro-Colombian woman to hold a cabinet position—joins this episode to explore how leadership grounded in purpose and empathy can meet the challenges of our era.

Paula Moreno served as Minister of Culture under President Álvaro Uribe, becoming the first Afro-Colombian woman minister in her country's history. She is the founder and president of Manos Visibles, a Colombian NGO dedicated to strengthening local leadership, fostering inclusion, and empowering communities to drive sustainable change.

Podcast webpage → https://tallbergfoundation.org/podcasts/interesting-times-colombia-edition/

Thirty years ago, the United Nations challenged the political leaders of the world to do something about global warming. The politicians responded as politicians always do: they convened meeting after meeting, talked endlessly and---of course---agreed to keep on meeting. Rinse and repeat, year after year, even as the warming and its impacts became more obvious and more consequential.

Why? Effective global governance is largely a joke in a world organized around nation-states and characterized by dramatic inequality of power and by great power tension. Sweeping, top-down proposed solutions to global challenges inevitably fail. Sadly, there is no reason to expect a different outcome from the upcoming COP 30 in Belém, Brazil…but the beat goes on.

Like frogs in slowly boiling water, are we condemned to a future of cascading ecological disasters? Is there a better approach?

Linwood Pendleton, founding executive director of the Ocean Knowledge Network, thinks there might be. Although he has spent more than his share of time trying to make the global system produce better outcomes, he is increasingly persuaded that the better possibilities come from indigenous knowledge, wisdom, and science. There are solutions, he insists; we are just looking for them in the wrong places.

One of the most amazing animals on the planet is the snow leopard. The smallest of the big cats is indigenous to the twelve countries sharing the High Himalayas including China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal. Those countries disagree on most things: borders, values, economics, religion---but amazingly agree that the survival of the snow leopard is in their national and collective interests.

The High Himalayas are a microcosm of the problems confronting the planet. Because it is cold, high, and glaciated, even small increases in temperature cascade into large ecological and societal impacts. Border conflicts are always bubbling---and often boiling over---while internal conflicts are rife in much of the region. And economic development, in many parts of the Himalayas is aspirational at best.

How can such a complicated group of countries, peoples, and leaders ignore their differences when it comes to protecting the snow leopard? Even more, how to agree that protecting the snow leopard should be done in ways that are in concert with, not at the expense of, the needs of the people who live in the High Himalayas?

Dr. Charu Mishra is Executive Director of the Snow Leopard Trust and one of the prime movers in an ongoing, but increasingly successful conservation campaign that defies geopolitical gravity. Listen as he describes how he and his colleagues have persuaded countries that are sometimes literally at war with each other to act together for a common purpose.

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What do you get when you merge a failed War on Drugs with an archaic War on Terror? We may be about to find out as President Donald Trump unleashes a legal, political, and military campaign against drug cartels, whom he has re-labelled as terrorist organizations. The tactics include blowing up small "go-fast" boats in the Caribbean, labeling Venezuelan President Maduro a cartel leader and then placing a $50 million bounty on him, and pushing a massive air, naval, and land military force into the Caribbean.

Is U.S. national security really threatened by the Mexican and Venezuelan cartels, including the bête noire of the moment, Tren de Aragua? If this is a "war" can it be won---and, if so, how would we know (one of the many problems with both the War on Drugs and the War on Terror framing)? Is the man who campaigned against forever wars starting a new forever war?

In this episode, host Alan Stoga explores these and other questions with Chris Dalby, Director and Founder of World of Crime and author of Tren de Aragua: The Guide to America's Growing Criminal Threat, and Professor Clionadh Raleigh, President and CEO of ACLED and an expert on political violence and conflict data.

What do you think?  Is it war or performance art?```