Since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, Eastern Ukraine has been a site of conflict. Russophones in Ukraine, armed by Russia and joined by Russian nationals, launched a revolt to break from Kyiv. Following months of fighting, the area became a frozen conflict. Each week brings new casualties but little territory has changed hands. We spend the hour discussing the causes of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, the impact of the internationalization of the war, and potential pathways to peace. Doug Becker hosts. [ dur: 58 mins. ]

• Robert English is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals and the End of the Cold War and The Other Side: How Soviets and Americans Perceive Each Other.
• Oxana Shevel, Associate Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science at Tufts University. She is the author of Migration, Refugee Policy, and State Building in Postcommunist Europe and the book chapter Memory of the Past and Visions of the Future: Remembering the Soviet Era and its End in Ukraine.
• Dr. Tor Bukkvoll is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment. His publications include, Tools of Future Wars – Russia is Entering the Precision-Strike Regime and Fighting on behalf of the state – the issue of pro-government militia autonomy in the Donbas war.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Why do sustainable business initiatives so often fail? What fundamental changes we need from societies and the economic system to stem a climate change induced collapsed? What economic systems might work on a planet with a finite capacity to sustain life? [ dur: 58 mins.]

• Christopher Wright is Professor of Organisational Studies, Discipline of Strategy, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney Business School.
• Daniel Nyberg is Professor of Management at Newcastle Business School and an Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney. Together they have co-authored Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations: Processes of Creative Self-destruction.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

We spend the hour on good food politics, the food revolution, and the movements to build equitable and sustainable food systems. First, we’re joined by Will Allen author of Good Food Revolution. [ dur: 25 mins. ]

• Will Allen is the author of Good Food Revolution and the founder of the non-profit Growing Power.

Then, our guests have studied the food system and what it means to have an equitable and sustainable system. What are the problems in the system and what are the solutions? [ dur: 33 mins. ]

• Saru Jayaraman is Director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley . She is the co-founder and co-director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United) which has more than 18,000 worker members, 200 employer partners, and several thousand consumer members in a dozen states nationwide. She is the author of Behind the Kitchen Door and her latest Forked: A New Standard for American Dining.
• Raj Patel is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy – a New York Times and international best-seller – and his latest, co-written with Jason W. Moore, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. He co-hosts the fortnightly food politics podcast The Secret Ingredient .

Raj Patel and Saru Jayaraman are contributors to The Nation magazine’s special issue, “The Future of Food: Setting the table for the next generation“.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Since March, 2014, Ukraine has been in the grips of a bloody civil war in the Eastern part of its country. Forces loyal to Kyiv fight forces loyal to Moscow, with international interference a primary feature of this conflict. How has the Trump Administration’s foreign policy complicated ongoing peace efforts in Ukraine? We examine the causes of this conflict. Hosted by Professor Doug Becker. [ dur: 27mins. ]

• Robert English is Associate Professor of International Relations, Slavic Languages and Literature and Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals and the End of the Cold War and The Other Side: How Soviets and Americans Perceive Each Other.

Then, scholars note that the world is waging fewer wars, but that the wars that are waged are more brutal and intractable.[ dur: 30mins. ]

• George A. Lopez is the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Professor Emeritus of Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He is the editor of The Sanctions Enterprise: Assessing a Quarter-Century of UN Action for Peace, Security and Human Rights.
• Ervin Staub is Professor of Psychology at the University of Massettuces, Amherst. He is the author of The Psychology of Good and Evil: Why Children, Adults, and Groups Help and Harm Others.
• Norrin M. Ripsman is Monroe J. Rathbone Professor in the International Relations Department at Lehigh University. He is the author of Peacemaking from Above, Peace from Below: States, Societies, and Peace Between Regional Rivals and the co-editor of The Political Economy of Regional Peacemaking.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Does Trump use Nazi-Style rhetoric? Our guest says yes. [ dur: 17 mins. ]

• David Livingstone Smith is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England. He is the author of Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War, How Biology Shapes Philosophy and Why We Lie: Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind.

Then, what are the causes of the rapid rate of species extinction and what can be done. [ dur: 41 mins. ]

• Anthony Barnosky is Executive Director of Stanford University’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, and an Emeritus Professor of Integrative Biology at University of California Berkeley. He is the author of Dodging Extinction—Power, Food, Money and the Future of Life on Earth and co-author of Tipping Point for Planet Earth—How Close Are We To The Edge (with Elizabeth Hadly).
• Stuart Pimm is Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University. He is the author of A Scientist Audits the Earth, The Balance of Nature? Ecological Issues in the Conservation of Species and Communities, and Patterns in Nature: The Analysis of Species Co-Occurences.
• David Wilkie is Director of Conservation Measures for the Wildlife Conservation Society. He is the author of Hunting for consensus: reconciling bushmeat harvest, conservation, and development policy in West and Central Africa, Valuation of consumption and sale of forest goods from a Central American rain forest, and Impacts of protected areas on local livelihoods in Cambodia.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Why were CIA agents reading French philosophy? [ dur: 22mins. ]

• Gabriel Rockhill is a philosopher, cultural critic and political theorist. He is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University and Founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop at the Sorbonne. In this interview, we ask about his published paper The CIA Reads French Theory: On The Intellectual Labor of Dismantling The Cultural Left. In it, he focused on the reasoning behind why the CIA wanted to dismantle cultural left in France soon after the end of World War II. He is the author of Counter-History of the Present: Untimely Interrogations into Globalization, Technology, Democracy, Interventions in Contemporary Thought: History, Politics, Aesthetics and Radical History and the Politics of Art.

What is the Code Economy and what does it have to do with the future of work. Some people argue that machines will take over jobs. But our guest argues that perhaps humanity will reinvent work in a way that’s more aligned with what it means to be human. [ dur: 36mins. ]

• Philip Auerswald is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow at the Kauffman Foundation. He is the author of The Code Economy: A Forty-Thousand Year History, The Coming Prosperity: How Entrepreneurs Are Transforming the Global Economy and he is the editor of Iraq, 1990-2006 3 Volume Set: A Diplomatic History Through Documents.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

First, we speak with Steven Weisman, editor of the book “Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary” which weaves compelling read of carefully selected from a 10,000 page collection of Senator Moynahan’s correspondence, housed at the Library of Congress. [ dur: 18 mins. ]

• Steven Weisman is a vice president for publications and communications at Peterson Institute for International Economics and formerly served as chief international economics correspondent of the New York Times. He is the editor of the book Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary.

As California burns, oceans rise, storms intensify, and Greenland’s glacier’s melts, we explore solutions to the climate change problem with Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson. He is the author of the just released study The health and climate impacts of carbon capture and direct air capture.

• Mark Jacobson is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University. He’s also the Co-Founder of The Solutions Project, 100.org, and the 100% Clean, Renewable Energy Movement. He is the author of A path to sustainable energy by 2030 (Scientific American, 2009); 100% clean and renewable wind, water, sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for the 50 United States (Energy & Environmental Sciences, 2015; 100% clean and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for 139 countries of the world (Joule, 2017); and 100% clean, and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for 53 towns and cities in North America (Sustainable Cities and Society, 2018)

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

First, what are the life chances of children of incarcerated parents? [ dur: 10mins. ]

• Christopher Wildeman is Associate Vice Provost for the Social Sciences, Director of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, and Director of the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect at Cornell University. He is the co-author of Children of the Prison Boom: Mass Incarceration and the Future of American Inequality.

Then, Canadians have spoken with their ballots. What does Canada’s election mean for climate change, for the future of the Arctic, for LGTBQ rights, for ethics, and for Canada’s role in the world? What does the election mean for Canada’s future? Contributing host Doug Becker explores. [ dur: 48mins. ]

• Steven Lamy is a Professor of International Relations, Environmental Studies, and Spatial Science a the University of Southern California. He is the author of the book chapter The U.S. Arctic Policy Agenda: The State Trumps Other Interests.
• Marc O’Reilly is Jane Frost Kalnow Professor of the Humanities at Heidelberg College. He is the author of Unexceptional:America’s Empire in the Persian Gulf, 1941-2007 and co-editor of Handbook of Canadian Foreign Policy.
• Lisa Burke is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Denver. She is the author of Natural Disasters in the book Rethinking 21st Century Security.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

First, a look inside the arms trade and its effects on politics and society.[ dur: 33mins. ]

• Suzette Grillot is a Professor of International Studies at University of Oklahoma. She is the co-author of the book The International Arms Trade.

Then, we speak with Erwin Staub about his latest book, The ​R​oots of ​G​ood​nes​s​ and ​R​e​s​ist​ance to ​Evil: Inclusive ​C​aring, ​M​oral ​C​ou​r​age, ​Altruism ​B​o​r​n of ​S​uffering, ​A​c​t​ive ​B​ystandership and ​H​e​r​oism. [ dur: 25 mins. ]

• Ervin Staub is a Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Founding Director of its ​Ph.D. concentration in the Psychology of Peace and Violence.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Contributing host Doug Becker spends the hour exploring the politics of memory and alterations of history. How is memory shaped to influence the politics of war and post-war, in the post-war of former Yugoslavia. What can we learn about how our memories of the past are manipulated to change current and future politics? What can we learn from “memory entrepreneurs” in the former Yugoslavia? How did they try to change understandings about the past to influence the future? [ dur: 53mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

• Jelena Subotic is Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University. She is the author of Hijacked Justice: Dealing with the Past in the Balkans and the forthcoming Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism.
• Brent Steele is Francis D. Wormuth Presidential Chair of Political Science and Professor of Political Science at University of Utah. He is the author of
  Ontological Security in International Relations and the research paper Maintaining (US) collective memory: from Hiroshima to a critical study of security history.
• Brent Sasley is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas, Arlington. He is the author of the book Politics in Israel: Governing a Complex Society and the journal article Theorizing States’ Emotions.

This program is produced with contributions from the following volunteers: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download