In 2017, despite voter attitudes indicating the conservative National Party would retain control of the government, Jacinda Ardern became Prime Minister of New Zealand. We look at how she and the Labour Party defied certain campaigning conventions to deliver an unexpected win that made her the world’s youngest woman head of state.

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Advocates in Washington state, confronting one of the most permissive standards for justifiable use of deadly force in the country, brought police reform to the ballot and won. We explore the strategies behind their unorthodox coalition and how leaning into race, in defiance of conventional wisdom, proved pivotal to persuasion and mobilization.

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The Australian government has crafted and carried out an immigration policy so abusive that it earned President Trump’s praise. Yet, over the last few years, facing a conservative and openly xenophobic administration, human rights advocates mounted and won four campaigns challenging offshore detention of people seeking asylum.

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With abortion at a flashpoint in the U.S. and states practically or literally banning the procedure, we unpack how Ireland went from total ban to public acceptance. We learn how campaigners avoided a gauntlet of messaging missteps to deliver a decisive victory on an issue once considered too taboo to name.

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In Minnesota, GOP operatives read in Clinton’s slim victory an opportunity to gain ground with their racially coded, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic appeals. Yet in 2018, progressives in the state not only stalled these efforts, they won across races, defining what it means to be “Minnesotan” through an aspirational narrative of multi-racial populism.

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An early listen to some of the stories you'll hear on Brave New Words.

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