New Thinking for a New World

The start of 2025 is burdened with no shortage of things to worry about. The war in Ukraine; conflicts throughout the Middle East; tensions around Taiwan; the Los Angeles inferno; the possibility of Chinese and Russian financial or economic collapse. And, of course, the biggest known unknown that preoccupies the whole world: what will Donald Trump actually do when he's president after all of the noise he’s made on his way to the White House?  

When Donald Trump becomes the 49th President of the United States, the whole world will be watching, with people holding their breath in expectation of almost Biblical levels of chaos and confusion. Ironically, it seems that his return to power may be seen as less dramatic by many Americans: after all, he made his way back to the White House by somewhat unexpectedly (at least at the time) winning the Republican primaries, gaining complete control of the Republican Party, and then winning a majority of the national presidential vote.  

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 podcast episode was originally published on May 23, 2024, and has been re-released.

That the Arctic is warming is not exactly breaking news on a planet where almost everywhere is warming. But it is critical news that the Arctic is warming almost four times faster than the rest of the globe since the polar regions are essentially the planet’s air conditioners. Last year's Arctic Report Card documented that 2023 was the Arctic's hottest summer in centuries, with all the attendant consequences: massive wildfires, late June Greenland ice sheet melt, sea surface temperatures 7ºC above normal, etc.

The list of firsts, or maybe better put, worst was a long one—and the early evidence is that those were trends, not anomalies, that continue in 2024.

Are we as a planet now locked into ever more warming? Are there potential tipping points that might produce even faster change? Are there actions that can be taken on a timescale that's relevant to people living today?

Even if the answers are "Yes, Yes, No" are there initiatives at scale that are worth pursuing if only to adapt to the massive changes clearly underway? If that question elicits even a tentative "Yes", then the places to start are at the epicenters: the Arctic and Antarctica.

Tero Mustonen— Finnish environmental leader, scientist, fisherman and past recipient of the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize—is spending his life working to make that last “Yes” more muscular. More immediately, he recently returned from traveling across the Arctic, which gives us a rare opportunity for a firsthand debrief.

Please tell us what you think.

This podcast episode was originally published on June 27, 2024, and has been re-released.

Politics in Mexico has long been a blood sport: not only “winner takes all,” but also incredibly violent. Last month’s national elections—when the country's first female president won with a record number of votes and by a record margin of victory—demonstrated both trends. President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum’s Morena party (founded and still controlled by outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador) won huge national and state legislative victories. But the electoral campaign was punctuated by more than 100 political assassinations, as well as widespread kidnappings, forced disappearances, attempted murders, and attacks on family members and campaign staff—all by drug cartels competing for turf, control of markets, and quiescent politicians.

Even worse, this kind of political violence seems to be on the upswing in other parts of Latin America from Central America through the Andean countries and even into Chile. Why? The simple answer seems to be that controlling local, state, and national politicians is good for business—even if that sometimes requires killing those who have other ideas.

Can the cartels be stopped? Is Mexico becoming a narco-state? Is the infection spreading too fast in too many places to be contained?

Answers require a deep understanding of the cartels. That’s where Chris Dalby, an expert on cartel violence, comes in. He is a journalist and founder of World of Crime, which investigates and documents how the cartels operate. Listen as he explains what the Mexican cartels want and how they are getting it.

What do you think: Can Mexico beat the cartels or will the cartels beat Mexico?

*This podcast episode was originally published on July 11, 2024, and has been re-released.

What happens in the Amazon is of planetary consequence. Its rainforests influence weather and rainfall around the world. Its rivers account for 1/4 of the available fresh water on earth. Its drainage basin is more than twice as large as that of the Congo River in Africa, which is the world's second-biggest. It harbors an estimated 10% of the planet's known lifeforms.

Winston Churchill is alleged to have written that "A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny.” Thus, it should be no surprise that at a time when clear majorities of people in most democracies don’t trust their governments or their politicians, they also don’t trust their media or the journalists that produce it. Literally, you can’t have one without the other—and today most of us have too little of both.

Healthcare is intensely personal. Even when national statistics show improvement—which has been the case for most countries over recent decades—what matters is whether my baby in rural Uganda is having trouble breathing or whether my aging father in New York who went into the hospital with a broken hip will now die from the MERS he contracted there or whether why my wife in Buenos Aries can access the drugs she needs to survive cancer. 

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.