The Chatterbox

This week, the largest-ever World Cup will commence. Across the three host countries—Canada, Mexico, and the United States—48 teams will play 104 matches in 16 cities. But it also comes amid a particularly fraught geopolitical backdrop. Not only have the three hosts spent the last year sparring over immigration, trade, and even national sovereignty, but one of them, the United States, is at war with fellow participant Iran. Top soccer expert and Times economics editor Mehreen Khan joins FP Live to explore just how exceptional this World Cup is. 

Plus, Ravi shares his read on troubles for China’s solar industry. 

Financial Times: Adam Tooze: Wasting China’s solar panel surplus is madness

The Economist: China’s world-beating solar industry is in turmoil

FP Coverage of the World Cup

Bobby Ghosh: Sleeping in Mexico, Playing in America

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For as long as humans have been able to write, they’ve made maps. 

Sometimes maps show paths to the sacred. More often, they depict borders and boundaries, becoming tools of exclusion and control. 

Not so for Sandy Rodriguez, a third-generation Chicana artist based in Los Angeles. 

Her work, made with traditional indigenous paper and pigments, offers a pointed alternative to the map of the United States of America as we know it.

On this episode, Rodriguez speaks with Commonweal’s Claudia Avila Cosnahan and Griffin Oleynick.

She shows how the land—la tierra insurgente—can rise up and resist the violence carried out by ICE and the Trump administration against our immigrant neighbors. 

Plus, Commonweal Senior Correspondent Heidi Schlumpf delivers a roundup of the latest Catholic news. 

For further reading:

In this episode of the Podcast for Social Research Anna Kornbluh and Kate Wagner consider the aesthetics of contemporary American fascism in a conversation moderated by BISR's Audrey Nicolaides. The fascism of the moment merges violent delight in destruction with nouveau riche vulgarity, middle class mediocrity, and internet meme culture. Despite incessant callbacks to the 1930s and continued deployment of classic fascist themes, contemporary fascism distinguishes itself from its historical predecessors by its speed, virulence, sites of production, and mode of distribution: the big, beautiful slop machine, hyper-capitalized, decentralized, and algorithmically determined. How does the aesthetic regime of contemporary fascism function? How is it rewiring the libidinal economy of the present, and stacking the deck for capital? What's specific to fascism in the age of polycrisis? What does it mean now to resist by "politicizing aesthetics," as Walter Benjamin once enjoined us to?

You can download the episode by right-clicking here and selecting "save as." Or, look us up on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

This episode was produced by Gil Morejon from live audio recorded at Chicago's Twelve Ten Gallery.

If you like what you've heard, consider supporting the podcast by becoming a BISR member or subscribing to Brooklyn Institute's Patreon page, where you can enjoy access to all past and future episodes of the Podcast for Social Research.

This week, our host Solarina Ho is joined by writer, podcaster and consultant Kate McKenzie to discuss the business of climate change amid geopolitical competition and the global energy transition.

In this episode, Kate McKenzie shares her insights into the latest trend of climate collaboration, renewable energy development, and how we could save our planet at a time of geopolitical uncertainty.

This week on Burning Platforms we dive deep into Pope Leo’s XIV’s  encyclical with Dr Michael Walker from the Justice and Peace Office at the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney .

Our panellists Digital Rights Watch Chair Lizzie O’Shea, ABC AI reporter Cam Wilson and Per Capita’s Peter Lewis also delve into:

AI’s Trust Deficit 

Amnesty International’s new report: Unlawful by Design

and Greenpeace’s new research on data centres ‘Energy Vampires’

For background notes on these discussions go to Burning Platforms on Substack: https://burningplatforms.substack.com/

In this episode, I’m joined by Ashwin Shantha, PhD student in politics at York University and host of the International Solidarity Podcast, to discuss their recent article “China’s Green Development is Both Anti-Imperialist and Socialist.” We explore the history and current state of China’s green industrialization, its implications for energy sovereignty in China and across the Global South, and why such a development path is only possible because of the socialist nature of China’s political and economic system.

About the show:

Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.

Support Return to Bandung:

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! If you’re able, please also consider supporting my work—which encompasses both my writing and this podcast, as well as various other political education projects by signing up as a paid subscriber to my Substack or making a one-off contribution:

• Become a paid Substack subscriber

• Buy Me a Coffee

Sources and helpful links:

• Ashwin Shantha — China’s Green Development is Both Anti-Imperialist and Socialist (Journal of International Solidarity, February 2026)

• International Solidarity Podcast episode on ecological civilization in China (May 2026)

• International Solidarity Podcast episode with India and Global Left on China and India’s development paths (April 2025)

• Return to Bandung episode with Tings Chak on China’s role in the global order (March 2025)

• International Solidarity Podcast episode with Ken Hammond on culture and politics in the Chinese Revolution (November 2025)

• Torkil Lauesen — The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism (Iskra Books, 2024)

• International Solidarity Podcast episode with Torkil Lauesen on The Long Transition (August 2025)

• Return to Bandung episode with David Ramírez Álvarez on defending the Cuban Revolution (May 2026)

• Chen Yiwen — Marxist Ecology in China: From Marx’s Ecology to Socialist Eco-Civilization Theory (Monthly Review, October 2024)

• State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China — China’s Green Development in the New Era (January 2023)

• Xi Jinping — Speech at the Leaders’ Summit of the 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (October 2021)

Social links:

Return to Bandung:

• Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/returntobandung⁠

• Instagram: instagram.com/returntobandung/⁠

Pranay Somayajula:

• Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/p_somayajula⁠

• Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/pranay.somayajula/⁠

• Website: pranaysomayajula.com/⁠

• Substack: ⁠culture-shock.xyz/⁠

Journal of International Solidarity:

• Substack: intlsolidarity.substack.com/

• Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/6pbGw76EukzP0xPisBS9Sj

• YouTube: youtube.com/@JournalofIntlSolidarity

• Instagram: instagram.com/journalofintlsolidarity

• Twitter: twitter.com/revintlist

We talk about the commodity supply chain all the time. We talk about the ports and the trucks and the ships and all of that. But there's another dimension to moving commodities all around the world, which is actually paying for it. Who funds the oil tanker and what happens when that tanker is, say, stuck in the Strait of Hormuz? Commodity finance underpins production, transportation and storage of a wide variety of the things that make the modern world, but you tend to only hear about it when things go wrong. Today we speak with Lewis Hart, head of corporate advisory and banking at Brown Brothers Harriman. We discuss how the business of commodity finance actually works, how risk is priced, what makes for a good or bad warehouse, and the difference between financing a commodity you can hedge (like oil) versus one where's there's no futures market (like cashews).

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