New Thinking for a New World

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.

One of the many challenges facing the United States today is an education system that seems to be rotting from the bottom: while graduate and professional schools are still world-class, elementary, middle and high schools are widely criticized for failing to prepare American kids for the future.

Consider:

What are the problems and can they be fixed? Is it culture, politics, unions, resources? Too little money, too few teachers, too much social media, all or none of the above?

Today’s episode of New Thinking for a New World looks for answers in the Bay area of San Francisco, California. Shawn Benjamin has been the principal of a charter school since 2007, where she and her team have produced student successes instead of student failures. What is their magic?

Listen and tell us what you think about how to provide children the education they deserve and that we need them to have.

European politicians talk endlessly about the rule of law, justice, human dignity and freedom of movement. But those words fade fast when the issue of migration pops up, replaced by endless efforts to stop migrants and refugees at the border or, failing that, strand them in border countries or imagine ways to push them back across the EU borders.

Of course, this same dynamic exists in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and other destination countries where concerns about migration are being weaponized by politicians who recognize political opportunity when they see it. In a year when Europeans will choose a new EU Parliament, the Americans a new president, and scores of other countries new leaders, migration seems to be on the ballot as much as democracy itself.

How should migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers be treated? How to balance political forces and legal commitments. Can the obvious competition to harden borders, be reversed? And from where will the leadership come for better policy?

Sergio Carrera, a migration expert at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, thinks that much of what passes for European migration policy is deeply flawed not only because it violates basic European values, but also because it is ineffective.

What do you think: should Europe welcome more migrants and refugees?

During 2024 more than 50 countries, including seven of the world’s most populous nations, will vote in national elections. While many thousands of names will appear on ballots, what’s really at stake is the future of democracy itself.

Can democracy cope with the centrifugal forces of the radical right and radical left? Will “strong man” leaders continue to triumph with their often simplistic, sometimes hateful policy ideas? Will extreme partisanship continue to undermine national consensus?

Although not one of the countries holding elections this year, Chile potentially offers some insights into what might happen in other places where democracy is on the line. After violent political instability in 2019, Chileans tried to address underlying causes through a highly participatory process of constitutional reform. They failed: two different proposals were voted down in national referendums. What lessons for the rest of us?

Isabel Aninat is a Chilean jurist who was in the thick of the search for a new constitution. In this thought piece for New Thinking for a New World she offers her reflections on the implications of what happened on her country’s search for a more perfect democracy.

The United States seems to be on the verge of some kind of Judgement Day. Extreme partisanship, a past (and future?) president facing seemingly endless indictments and legal entanglements, a profound loss of trust in institutions and leaders, citizens who tell pollsters that their country is heading in the wrong direction and they fear the future—despite objective economic conditions that are better than almost anywhere else. What’s wrong? Why the deep unhappiness, even depression? Is the American dream becoming a nightmare?

Sometimes the best insights come from the outside. Our guest on New Thinking for a New World is an inside outsider with almost unique insight into how the United States works. Lars Trägårdh is a Swedish historian who has lived in the United States on and off for decades and has spent much of that time observing and thinking about the social contract between Americans and their government. Today he's a professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, but continues to spend considerable time traveling across the United States.

Listen as he does a deep dive into the social and political challenges confronting America.

Is the United States headed in the wrong direction?

This episode was originally published on Sep 28, 2023

"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.” Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies Financial Times.

Popper, an Austrian philosopher who had fled the Nazis, wrote those words as he came to grips with how the Nazis had infiltrated and overrun liberal European societies. Fast forward to today. Elisabeth Braw, writing in the

So Sweden finds itself in a double bind: it badly wants to stop Koran burnings, but to do so it would have to undermine a key aspect of its liberal democracy. Of course, that dilemma is not unique to Sweden in this era of violent hyper-partisanship.

Braw is senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Listen as she explores the potential consequences of being too tolerant in this episode of New Thinking for a New World.

What do you think? If Sweden could find a way to outlaw desecration of the Koran (and other holy books), would the terror threat disappear? And would that justify limiting freedom of expression?

Link to article in the Financial Times that is referred to in the podcast (the article is behind a paywall): https://www.ft.com/content/0ac9e1a9-2aad-47d9-83fb-4839e9b31b33

This episode was originally published on Aug 24, 2023

The Arctic is warming at least twice as fast as anywhere else on the planet. All the vital signs—sea and land surface temperatures, terrestrial snow cover, the melting rate of the Greenland Ice Sheet, the extent and timing of sea ice—are all flashing red. The Arctic is Ground Zero of a rapidly warming, changing planet.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA for short, recently issued its annual Arctic Report Card, which mostly makes for grim reading. At the same time, one of the storylines is that it’s not too late, that there is still time to slow and even to reverse the most pernicious changes that otherwise threaten all of us.

“What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic,” says Tero Mustonen, one of the authors of the report. He knows the Arctic as a scientist, as a fisherman, as a leader of the innovative Snowchange Cooperative, as the head of the village of Selkie in North Karelia, Finland. And, as worried as he is by what he sees happening around him, he and his colleagues have developed a solution: rewild spoiled lands in the Far North to turn them back into the massive carbon sinks badly needed by Earth.

Listen as he explains the problem as well as the solution, with some geopolitics thrown into the mix to make matters worse. Then tell us: do you think climate change can be slowed in your lifetime?

Why not? The country's inflation rate is approaching 150%. 40% of its people live in poverty. The currency is practically worthless. And Argentina is the IMF’s largest debtor because practically no one else will lend it money.

By any definition, the country is an economic basket case. However, unlike the rest of the world’s failed economies, Argentina has a well-educated population, innovative world-class tech sector, robust natural resources, and world-leading wheat, soybeans, and meat exports.

Arguably, Argentina isn’t a failed state, but it has mostly been run by failed politicians.

So it is not surprising that voters just opted to try something radically different, electing a president who describes himself as an "anarcho-capitalist" and promised to use a chainsaw (one of his favorite campaign props) to slash government spending. Can Javier Milei fix what’s broken? Will Argentina’s entrenched politicians get out of the way of his promised shock therapy?

Eduardo Amadeo is optimistic, as you will hear in this episode of New Thinking for a New World. That’s a good sign since Amadeo--economist, businessman, social entrepreneur, and politician—has spent much of his career trying to get his fellow countrymen headed in the right direction. Maybe a radical libertarian economist will finally get the job done.

Listen and tell us whether you think Argentina can finally escape the mess it has made for itself HERE.

On January 1st Ukraine’s President Zelensky welcomed 2023 with the words, "Happy New Year! The year of our victory!’ Instead, as we approach year’s end, the conflict seems to have settled into a war of attrition which neither side can win or lose. In spite of the bravery of Ukraine's troops and more support from the West than anyone expected, Ukraine's much-heralded summer offensive looks to have failed, or at least stalled.

What comes next? Rinse and repeat? Negotiation? Some kind of dramatic escalation that changes the rhythm of this horrible war?

Our guest on New Thinking for New World is Svitlana Morenets, a Ukrainian journalist who is now a staff writer at Britain’s Spectator magazine recently published an absolutely brilliant article titled “Zelensky Must Be Honest About the State of the War.” She ended her piece this way. "The real question is the extent of the sacrifice everyone is willing to make and what the most probable outcome will be if they choose not to pay that price anymore.”

Listen as we discuss what an honest assessment might mean. And join the conversation: “Do you think Ukraine can win?"

Winston Churchill famously said that Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. After the end of the Cold War, many in the West thought the puzzle was solved. The Soviet Union had collapsed. Russians would embrace free markets and even liberal democracy. And President Obama could dismiss Russia as merely a “regional," not a great power. Case closed; time to pivot to Asia.

But reality has a way of complicating simplistic thinking. First, President Putin consolidated his domestic control, then allied his country with China in starting to rewrite the rules of global order, and finally invaded Ukraine last year. Now Putin is a “war criminal,” his country’s financial assets seized and exports have been banned (more in theory than in practice), and sanctions imposed on Russian officials as well as on oligarchs thought to be Putin supporters.

The Great Power has become the Great Pariah—but remains a great enigma.

Getting Russia Right is both a national security imperative and the name of a recently published book by Thomas Graham, one of America’s foremost Russian analysts. Graham has spent much of the last 40 years trying to understand Russia, not as the United States wanted it to be, but as it was and now is. His book is an important contribution to thinking about how to cope with Russia today as well as tomorrow.

What do you think? Is Russia still a Great Power?