PRIO's Peace in a Pod

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PRIO's Peace in a Pod episodes

February 18, 2021 26- Afghan Peace Talks on Life Support
The Afghan Peace Talks started in September 2020, and with a second round having started in January it’s an interesting time to get an update on the process. PRIO Research Professor Kristian Berg Harpviken analyzes how the talks have gone thus far, and what can be expected moving forward.
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23 min
February 10, 2021 25- Coup in Myanmar: Protest, Art, Technology
On the morning of February 1, Myanmar awoke to a shock: the military had deposed the democratically elected party, the National League for Democracy. Leader Aung San Su Kyii is under arrest, and as citizens have taken to the streets and social media to express their emphatic dissent, police have begun ramping up the force used against protestors.
The country has a long and complicated history of protests, coups, and fights for control. To understand this latest development, three PRIO researchers. Marte Nilsen, Trude Stapnes, and Stein Tønnesson, share a multi-faceted look at the situation.
Listen to the full protest song "Kabar Ma Kyay Bu" by Naing Myanmar here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dsrm2DpoJwo
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50 min
February 04, 2021 24- Hong Kong's Uncertain Future
How did Hong Kong citizens wake up to the news of mass arrests on January 6, after such a long and engaging mass movement? Why wasn't that overwhelming support for democracy enough, and what will happen now? Marianne Dahl and Haakon Gjerløw have researched mass movements, autocracies, and democratization; they break down how the Hong Kong protests started, why it culminated in January 6, and what may be next.
To read more about mass movements around the world visit: https://blogs.prio.org/2020/01/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-twitter-revolution/
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28 min
January 28, 2021 23- Coronavirus in the Nordic Countries: Where Things Went Right, and Wrong
The Nordic countries, and especially Scandinavia – Norway, Sweden, and Denmark – are often viewed as relatively similar, with robust welfare states, high standards of living, gender equality, and of course beautiful nature. But the coronavirus pandemic has revealed how different they really are. Therese Sefton from PRIO and Amy Clotworthy from the Center for Healthy Aging at the University of Copenhagen have started to analyze what has happened over the last year, and share some of their impressions of how and why the countries' approaches have differed.
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35 min
January 21, 2021 22- Are We Sleepwalking Into New Technological Futures?
In his essay "Technologies as Forms of Life", Langdon Winner writes about "technological sonambulism", the idea that people's ability to consider technology's effects is much slower than the pace of technological development and implementation. Researcher Bruno Oliveira Martins and Research Assistant Neven Ahmad say the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating that problem — but there's still time to fix it.
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32 min
January 13, 202121- "Like watching a democracy die": Two Researchers Contextualize What Happened in the US on January 6
Was it the "last, horrible and violent, dying gasp of an old, white supremacist racial order in the US", or the death of democracy? Håvard Nygård was shocked and horrified on January 6, but he says that as a researcher he still has hope. That day a mob stormed the US Capitol just as Congress was formalizing Biden's presidential victory. Sirianne Dahlum (PRIO, UiO) and Håvard Nygård (PRIO) bring their expertise to a discussion of what this attack means for the US, and how we can define and interpret it (what is a coup anyway?).
Related material
Omar Wassow's Twitter thread referred to by Håvard
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32 min
January 07, 2021 Repost: 13- The Secret History of the Iranian Hostage Crisis and the PLO
November 4 marks the anniversary of the start of the Iranian hostage crisis. You might have learned about it as a major breakdown in the Iran-US relationship that persists today, or maybe you just watched Argo. Jørgen Jensehaugen highlights a different angle though in his article "A Palestinian window of opportunity? The PLO, the US and the Iranian hostage crisis". This aspect of the crisis has rarely been discussed, but can tell us a lot about the political dynamics at the time, and how those ripple effects are still being felt.
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29 min
December 31, 2020 Repost: 8- What's Tiktok Got to Do With It? US-China Relations and Security
If you’re over 18, it’s possible you’ve never touched TikTok. But this innocuous-seeming repository of amusing video has increasingly helped shape popular culture, as well as Chinese international relations. Senior Researcher Ilaria Carozza walks us through why it's important, and what else Chinese companies have been in hot water for lately.

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21 min
December 24, 2020 Repost: 2- Black Lives Matter and the Hope for a Positive Peace
The USA-based Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests which gained new momentum this spring and summer have sparked fervent discussions and mass demonstrations around the world. In this episode, researchers Christian Davenport (PRIO, University of Michigan) and Scott Gates (PRIO, University of Oslo) talk about their perspectives on state violence related to BLM, personal experiences as Americans, and the research that can shed some light on what is happening.

Christian's book talked about in the beginning of this episode is "Media Bias, Perspective, and State Repression: The Black Panther Party". He will release a new book on state repression this fall. This episode was also informed by the Washington Post article "It’s hard to hear ‘Minnesota Nice’ without undertones of irony and despair" by Michele L. Norris. Visit prio.org to find more related research.
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34 min
December 17, 2020 20- Drones, Security, and Surveillance
Drones seem to be everywhere in the news, but what do they actually mean for civilians in everyday life? And how do the military and police use and relate to them both as tools and as threats? Most importantly, what can they tell us about a wider security context? In this episode, Bruno Oliveira Martins and Andrea Silkoset also discuss how coronavirus has affected civilians lives from a security context, a surveillance context, and a technology context.
Side note: You can expect more research on this topic from Bruno with his newly-funded project RegulAIR: The integration of drones in the Norwegian and European Airspaces.
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32 min

About PRIO's Peace in a Pod

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How can we explain peace and conflict in the world? What do security and insecurity do to a region and its people? How do different kinds of violence affect people, and how do societies tackle crises…