Carnegie Council Audio Podcast

Celebrity and social media are changing the political game globally. Next year, 2024, will see more than 40 national elections from the U.S. to Mexico, India, Russia, and Taiwan; meanwhile 27 European Union nations will vote for 720 European Parliament seats. Seton Hall University's Dr. Brandon Valeriano joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev to discuss the resurgence of soft power and what that means on the global stage. How will Taylor Swift, BTS, and Bad Bunny reshape our discussion of international affairs and social issues? What cybersecurity threats do we need to address as Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok take over the information space? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

The world is due to exceed 1.5°C warming, and countries will face more extreme consequences in the near-term, warns Andy Reisinger in a C2GTalk. Significant levels of carbon dioxide removal will be required, and policies are needed to reduce adverse consequences. Solar radiation modification is more uncertain, and would reflect a failure of global governance to cut emissions. Andy Reisinger is an independent consultant specializing in the science-policy interface of climate change, with particular expertise in livestock agriculture and the role of methane as part of mitigation strategies. He was vice-chair of Working Group III (Mitigation) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) during its 6th Assessment cycle completed in 2023, and previously served as coordinating lead author in the IPCC focusing on impacts and adaptation for Australia and New Zealand. For more, please go to C2G's website.

In this discussion with Senior Fellow Arthur Holland Michel, researcher and author Stephanie Hare describes the fundamental dimensions of technology ethics. She explains the importance of keeping the AI ethics discourse grounded in the needs and rights of those who will ultimately be most affected by the technology, and offers a few thoughts on how to brace—and empower—ourselves for the work that lies ahead. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

While there are certainly benefits, the breadth of concerns that AI, and particularly generative AI, pose for consumers is broad. And beyond privacy, governments are not doing much in the way of consumer protection. Furthermore, real protections will require worldwide standards and enforceable regulations. In this far-reaching conversation, Helena Laurent, director general of Consumers International, and Senior Fellow Wendell Wallach outline the challenges. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this episode, host Hilary Sutcliffe explores . . . ethics from another angle, with Christian Hunt, author of Humanizing Rules: Bringing Behavioural Science to Ethics and Compliance. It's mind-boggling how many principles and guidelines are available on creating ethical cultures or delivering ethical technologies. But these are often high level and abstract, easy to talk about, and hard to do. Hunt’s book explores ethics not top down from the c-suite, but from the bottom up; using behavioral understanding and decades of hands-on experience to help organizations look at ethics from a human perspective, and design the rules and process that make ethics stick. For more, please go to: 

All eyes are on San Francisco today as U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet in a highly anticipated session during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit being held in the U.S. for the first time in 12 years. The tightly choreographed discussions are expected to lead to announcements on a diverse array of topics from re-starting climate talks to improving military to military communications and combating the fentanyl trade. Bethany Allen, China reporter for Axios and author of Beijing Rules, joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev to discuss what motivates Xi and how China continues to wield its authoritarian economic statecraft to expand its illiberal influence worldwide. What can governments do to counter this influence? And what can businesses expect as Xi sits down to a $2,000-a-plate dinner with executives, including Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Citigroup's Jane Fraser, and Tesla and SpaceX's Elon Musk? For more, please go to: https://www.carnegiecouncil.org

It is important for scientists from the Global South to be engaged in research and discussions around solar radiation modification (SRM) because its potential impacts would affect everyone, says Inés Camilloni from the University of Buenos Aires. Researchers need to consider the risks of SRM against the risks of a dangerously warming planet. More research is needed, because the world currently does not know enough to make informed decisions. Dr. Camilloni is currently associate professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires, senior researcher of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council at the Center for Atmosphere and Ocean Research (CIMA) in Argentina, and vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group 1. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this episode, host Hilary Sutcliffe explores . . . trustworthy tech development from another angle, investigating not just fresh thinking, but fresh doing. As part of her work on trust and technology governance, she seeks to understand the processes of those organizations who are taking trust and responsibility seriously from the start, and find out what they do and how they do it. Sutcliffe explores the practicalities of how a company can provide evidence of trustworthiness with Julie Dawson, the chief policy and regulatory officer of global digital identity company Yoti. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this discussion with Senior Fellow Arthur Holland Michel, Wired senior writer Will Knight reflects on a busy decade of reporting on artificial intelligence. Taking a step back from the hype (and a deep breath), Knight and Holland Michel discuss whether a true AI revolution is actually upon us, consider how the technology is and is not governable, and talk about the experience of coming face to face with a military robot. For more on this talk, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.  For more from Knight, check out his Wired archive.

Does a "national interest" articulated largely from a Washington, DC perspective connect with the "doorstep" interests and concerns of citizens across a large and diverse country? As we come to the end of several important cycles in world affairs—the close of the post-Cold War era and the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution—how might a new generation of Americans redefine the goals and purpose of U.S. global engagement? This special Doorstep episode was recorded live at The Ohio State University on Global Ethics Day. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

At Carnegie Council, we believe that cooperation is an essential virtue in the pursuit of an ethical life. And yet, it seems that cooperation is often absent from public life today. If we don’t take steps to enhance cooperation—both in our personal lives and collectively as a society—there is little hope of addressing shared global challenges such as climate change, AI, political violence, and more. In this keynote event for Global Ethics Day 2023, Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal led a conversation with MIT's Erez Yoeli and Tufts University's Abiodun Williams on the psychology behind cooperation; ways that states, institutions, NGOs, and businesses can work together; and how we can all create the conditions for enhanced cooperation. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this episode, host Hilary Sutcliffe explores . . . technological progress from another angle. Does technology increase prosperity, make our lives better and create lots of new jobs? Or in reality does it promote greater inequality, more badly paid jobs and exploited workers, with the prosperity going to the few and not the many? Sutcliffe explores with Professor Simon Johnson the lessons of over a thousand years of technological progress and they discuss the practicalities of what he calls a more "human complementary" approach to what technology may be. Professor Johnson is an economist at MIT and co-author with colleague Daron Acemoglu of a new book, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this Ethical Article, Visiting Fellow Zhanna Malekos Smith discusses China's effort in space and lunar exploration. As Xi Jinping tries to soften China's "wolf warrior" style of diplomacy, how is this reflected in its space policy? To read this article, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

For ethics to be truly global, voices from all around the world need to be part of the international affairs discourse. And as these discussions still often begin in Western publishing houses and take shape in Global North classrooms, the academic world must make sure Global South perspectives are welcomed.  Ahead of Global Ethics Day 2023, scholars from the Global South and North will come together to discuss the barriers to knowledge production in the academic world and how to bring new voices into the classroom, library, and bookstore. What are the structures and systems that need to be re-examined or broken? What does a more diverse and inclusive approach to knowledge production look like? For more on this issue, please check out Joy Gordon and Anthony Lang's essay "Making Global Ethics More Global" which appeared in January 2023 as an Online Exclusive for Ethics & International Affairs. Fore more on this podcast, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Does a "national interest" articulated largely from a Washington, DC perspective connect with the "doorstep" interests and concerns of citizens across a large and diverse country? As we come to the end of several important cycles in world affairs—the close of the post-Cold War era and the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution—Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin look at a new generation of Americans, who are working to redefine the goals and purpose of U.S. global engagement. What are the ripple effects of the simultaneous challenges related to the “polycrises” (environmental shifts, including extreme weather, food and water shortages, and pandemics)? As the U.S. undergoes demographic change, what sorts of shifts in U.S. foreign policy might we expect? This live episode of The Doorstep was recorded on September 28, 2023 at Metropolitan State University of Denver, with collaboration from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. For more, please go to c

Young people need to learn more about solar radiation modification, and provide their inputs to governments, think tanks, and policymakers, says Brazilian climate activist Clara Botto, in this C2GTalk. “We need to have global conversations to address something that might have global impacts,” she adds. That is why she and her colleagues have launched SRM Youth Watch, a global platform aimed at informing and bringing new communities into the debate. Clara Botto has been engaged with sustainable development at a grassroots and international level, from arts to politics, for the past eight years. She is currently one of C2G’s Youth Climate Voices. For more, please go to C2G's website. During this interview at 17:22, Botto acknowledges that she says “micro hollow sphere glasses” instead of the correct term "hollow glass microspheres."

Cities around the world are facing numerous climate-related challenges such as rising sea levels, flooding, and extreme heat. These challenges place significant strain on local economies and disproportionately impact the most vulnerable residents. The severity of the situation is further compounded by population growth within cities, with the UN projecting that nearly 70 percent of all people will reside in urban areas by 2050. In order to support safe and sustainable urban environments, city leaders must urgently prioritize decarbonization and climate resiliency policies. However, there are complex ethical questions and tradeoffs that lawmakers must confront when planning for and implementing such policies. This in-depth panel discussion and Q&A looks at how to address urban-specific climate challenges in an ethical manner. What are the latest climate policy innovations for cities? What are some ethical approaches that balance the needs of current residents while ensuring sustainable urban environments f

In this Ethical Article, Visiting Fellow Arta Moeini analyzes the ongoing "Great Transition" in international affairs. With the U.S.-led "rules-based" world order seemingly at its endpoint, how can Western nations adapt? To read this article, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

What does "foreign policy for the middle class" look like on the ground three years into President Biden's policy to integrate global and local concerns? Foreign Policy for America Foundation's Kristina Biyad joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev to discuss her new report "Intermestic Policy Initiative: Local Perspectives on U.S. Foreign Policy." Biyad spent two years traveling, visiting five cities across the U.S. to speak with a diverse array of community leaders about what issues keep them up at night and how their concerns resonate globally. Her key takeaway: Local participants are eager to partner in developing outcome-driven and locally informed foreign policy recommendations. How will this movement reshape the way foreign policy decisions get made in the future? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

As world leaders gather in New Delhi for the G20 summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi takes India center stage. Jawaharlal Nehru University's Dr. Happymon Jacob joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev to assess what to expect from India's leadership on a vast array of global challenges from climate to green energy initiatives to the Ukraine-Russia war. With China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin missing from the table, will India take the lead in representing the voices of the Global South? What opportunities are there for India and the U.S. to jointly shift the geopolitical order? How can India leverage its economic and military strength to take the global spotlight? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.