The Final Service

As we spend time on social media, liking, clicking and scrolling, our behaviors are being monitored and sold.Corporations, governments, and advertisers are spending unprecedented sums of money to collect data about us. Social media algorithms are pushing us toward partisan and extremist views to keep us online as much as possible, and many major events happening around us, like protests and even acts of violence, are started in Facebook groups. How does this process affect democracy? Media Editor at BuzzFeed News Craig Silverman joins co-host Ray Suarez to talk about Facebook, fake news, and where we go from here.

Guest: 

Craig Silverman, Media Editor at BuzzFeed News

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Governments around the world are struggling to take power back from the world’s biggest tech companies. In the US, House Democrats want to overhaul antitrust laws and force Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google to break into smaller companies. These brands wield a remarkable amount of wealth and power, and Alexis Wichowski has coined a new term for them: “net-states,” or companies that operate as sovereign entities. She joins us for a conversation with Financial Times reporter Patrick McGee about this phenomenon and her new book Information Trade: How Big Tech Conquers Countries, Challenges Our Rights and Transforms Our World.

Guests: 

Alexis Wichowski, Deputy Chief Technology Officer, City of New York; Professor, Columbia University

Patrick McGee, San Francisco Correspondent, Financial Times

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The pandemic has seriously damaged the United States’ credibility abroad. Meanwhile, China is rising, climate change is getting worse, and an ongoing tech revolution is changing the world as we know it. How can the United States rebuild its global leadership in a world that’s changing this fast?  In this episode, Markos Kounalakis talks with academics Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper, authors of An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest For 21st Century Order, about a new global strategy that could reposition the US in a post-COVID—and possibly post-Trump—world.

Guests:

Rebecca Lissner, Assistant Professor, U.S. Naval War College, co-author of An Open World

Mira Rapp‑Hooper, Senior Fellow at the Yale Law School’s China Center, co-author of An Open World

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With just a few weeks to go before the election, the whole world is holding its collective breath to see what will happen next. Global dynamics have shifted, and American leadership is not what it used to be. Since taking office, President Trump has dramatically changed the country’s priorities, and the US's pandemic response has lowered its global standing considerably. In this episode, we examine two very different ideas for what US Global leadership should look like. Ben Rhodes, a former Obama advisor and the co-host of Pod Save the World, and Colin Dueck, a professor at George Mason University and author of Age of Iron: On Conservative Nationalism talk with Ray Suarez about the foreign policy issues at stake this election.

Guests: 

Ben Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor for President Obama and host of Missing America

Colin Dueck, Professor at George Mason University and author of Age of Iron: On Conservative Nationalism

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When Israel signed deals with two Gulf States earlier this month, Saudi Arabia was notably absent. The regional powerhouse recently opened its airspace to Israel for the very first time, but it still does not have any official diplomatic relations with them. In this episode, avid Rundell, former Chief of Mission at the American Embassy in Riyadh and author of Vision Or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads talks with NPR international correspondent Deborah Amos about the Kingdom, its political intrigues, and the crises it’s managing at home and abroad.

Guests: 

Deb Amos, NPR correspondent @deborahamos 

David Rundell, former Chief of Mission at the American Embassy in Riyadh and author of Vision Or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads

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This month, Israel signed deals with two Gulf States on the White House South Lawn. They’re the first Arab-Israel agreements in 25 years, known as the “Abraham Accords,” and President Trump hailed them as a major foreign policy achievement. So why were the Palestinians missing from the agreements? In this episode, we take a closer look at these deals and how they will affect the peace process in the region. 

Guests:

Daniel Estrin, NPR Correspondent in Jerusalem @DanielEstrin

Khaled Elgindy, Director of the Program on Palestinian - Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute and Author of Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, From Balfour to Trump  @elgindy_If you appreciate this episode and want to support the work we do, please consider making a donation to World Affairs. We cannot do this work without your help. Thank you.

As climate change gets worse, it’s hard to imagine a world in which we achieve a fair and sustainable future, But there’s hope. Political leaders around the world are taking action. In this episode, we'll hear from activists and political leaders who discussed climate resiliency at World Affairs’ recent Global Philanthropy Forum. Environmentalist Wanjira Mathai talks to  former Irish President and UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson about climate resiliency in Africa, and their histories fighting for climate justice. Then we’ll hear from some of the next generation of activists, Vanessa Nakate from Kampala, Uganda and Isha Clarke from Oakland, California, who discuss what motivates them to continue the fight for justice with Jacqueline Patterson of the NAACP.

Guests: 

Mary Robinson, Trinity College Dublin, Professor and Former President of Ireland

Wanjira Mathai, World Resources Institute, Vice President and Regional Director for Africa @MathaiWanjira 

Jacqueline Patterson, Director of the Environmental and Climate Justice Program, NAACP @JacquiPatt

Isha Clarke, Youth vs Apocalypse, Co-Founder and Activist

Vanessa Nakate, First Fridays for Future, Climate Activist @vanessa_vash

If you appreciate this episode and want to support the work we do, please consider making a donation to World Affairs. We cannot do this work without your help. Thank you.

This week, we’re launching an ongoing series about our climate future. Climate change is making global inequality worse, hitting low income communities and communities of color harder than everyone else. Just look at California, where wildfires have burned to the edges of farm country and agricultural workers are still going to work, risking heat and smoke to pick our food. This is an essential workforce, mostly Latinx, that has spent decades fighting for better labor protections. In this episode, we hear from activists who are now raising concerns that 2020's wildfires, in the midst of a pandemic, are triggering unsafe working conditions. Fires and other natural disasters have also triggered a wave of climate refugees that will continue to grow. Environmental Justice Foundation’s Steve Trent and The Institute for Climate and Peace’s Maxine Burkett will also join us to talk about protecting human rights for climate refugees.

Guests: 

Steve Trent, Environmental Justice Foundation, Executive Director @steventrent 

Maxine Burke, The Institute for Climate and Peace, Co-Founder and Senior Advisor

Zeke Guzman, President of Latinos Unidos

Omar Paz, lead organizer for North Bay Jobs with Justice, @NorthBayJwJ

David Hornung, Senior Safety Engineer with California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) @CA_DIR

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Universal Basic Income is an idea that has long been studied by economists as a way to ensure a basic standard of living for all people. Most of the studies have taken place outside the United States, but this year, in the city of Stockton, California, 125 residents have been receiving $500 payments every month for the past year as part of a UBI pilot program. On this episode of the podcast, Ray Suarez talks with Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs and Nobel prize-winning economist Abhijit Banerjee about the viability of a Universal Basic Income. Then, Teresa Cotsirilos takes us to Alaska, where every resident gets an annual dividend from the government.

Guests: 

Michael Tubbs, Mayor of Stockton, California & founder of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income @MichaelDTubbs

Abhijit Banerjee, Nobel Prize winning economist at MIT & co-author of Good Economics for Hard Times

Rashah McChesney, Alaska's Energy Desk - Juneau, Alaska Public Media

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What if we could lower COVID-19 rates all over the world with one program? It’s not a medical innovation, but an economic one. If all the world’s countries distribute a temporary basic income, could we slow the spread of the coronavirus? The idea was recently floated by United Nations Development Program, and it’s. In its report, UNDP says many people are too poor to shelter in place even when they are sick.  Staying home can be a choice between hunger and exposure to the coronavirus...and the consequences of their decisions affect us all.

UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner makes the case for a temporary basic income that would enable nearly three billion of the world’s poorest people to stay home. The idea is built upon the concept of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), something economists have studied and debated for decades. Tech entrepreneurs like Andrew Yang are only making it more popular, something economists have studied for decades. Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang ran for president on a promise of a $1,000 per month UBI for every American adult. He called it the Freedom Dividend. On this episode, we explore a Basic Income project in Kenya.

Guest: 

Tavneet Suri, MIT Sloan School of Management & Editor in Chief of VoxDev @SuriTavneet

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