We spend the hour looking at the environmental impact of the US military. How much does the US military pollute the environment? What is their role in climate change causing green house emissions? The military has taken some measures to reduce its impact on the environment and green gas emissions, but our guests say these measures do little to assuage the military’s bigger effects on climate change. What are these effects and what can be done about them?[ dur: 58mins. ]

• Benjamin Neimark is Senior Lecturer at the University of Lancaster, United Kingdom. He is the author of Speaking Power to ‘Post-Truth’: Critical Political Ecology and the New Authoritarianism and co-author of Hidden carbon costs of the “everywhere war” Logistics, geopolitical ecology, and the carbon boot‐print of the US military.
• Oliver Belcher is an Assistant Professor in Human Geography at Durham University, United Kingdom. He is the author of Anatomy of a village razing: Counterinsurgency, violence, and securing the intimate in Afghanistan, and co-author of Hidden carbon costs of the “everywhere war” Logistics, geopolitical ecology, and the carbon boot‐print of the US military.
• Neta C. Crawford is Professor of Political Science and Department Chair at Boston University. She is the author of the book Accountability for Killing: Moral Responsibility for Collateral Damage in America’s Post-9/11 Wars and the research paper Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change,and the Costs of War

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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First, how one man infiltrated the Nazi cells and foiled their plots to sow chaos in Los Angeles. Steven J. Ross is the author of Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America.[ dur: 33mins. ]

• Steven J. Ross is Professor of History at USC. He is the author of Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics and Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America.

Then, how have our ancestors dealt with earlier changes in the climate and environment? What does it tell us about our current situation? [ dur: 23mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

• Professor Simon Holdaway is the Head of School, School of Social Sciences, at the University of Auckland. He is the author of A Record in Stone: The Study of Australia’s Flaked Stone Artefacts and Geoarchaeology of Aboriginal Landscapes in Semi-arid Australia. His publications also includes, The Effects of Holocene Landscape Changes on the Formation of the Archaeological Record in the Fayum Basin, Egypt

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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Then, climate change is here. How does climate change affect conception? [ dur: 15 mins. ]

• Alan Barreca is Associate Professor at the Institute of the Environment & Sustainability at UCLA. He is the author of the research papers Does hot weather affect human fertility? He is the co-author of Maybe Next Month? Temperature Shocks, Climate Change, and Dynamic Adjustments in Birth Rates , and Adapting to Climate Change: The Remarkable Decline in the U.S. Temperature-Mortality Relationship over the 20th Century

Then, designing peace in divided societies. How do you make peace after fatal conflicts and loss of lands? What is the role of identity in conflict and peacemaking? [ dur: 43 mins. ]

• Neophytos Loizides is Professor and Chair in International Conflict Analysis in the School of Politics & International Relations (POLIR) at the University of Kent. He is the author of The Politics of Majority Nationalism: Framing Peace, Stalemates, and Crises and Designing Peace: Cyprus and Institutional Innovations in Divided Societies. He is also the co-editor (with Oded Haklai) of Settlers in Contested Lands: Territorial Disputes and Ethnic Conflicts.
• Dr. Madura Rasaratnam is a Lecturer in Comparative Politics in the Department of International Politics at City University of London. She is the author of Tamils and the Nation: India and Sri Lanka Compared.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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First, how is international law changing for human rights and for war? Our guest says we are moving from protecting state security to increasingly protecting individual security. The shifts are influenced by the human rights frame and are reshaping what she calls “humanity’s law.” [dur: 15mins. ]

• Ruti Teitel is Professor of Comparative Law at the New York Law School and Visiting Professor at London School of Economics. She is Chair of Global Law and Justice Colloquium and Founding Co-Director of the Institute for Global Law, Justice and Policy at New York Law School. She is the author of numerous publications including Humanity’s Law and Globalizing Transitional Justice.

Then, the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is the most broad sweeping attempt to ban nuclear weapons. Guest host Doug Becker looks at the motivations behind the treaty, its relative importance on nuclear states decisions, and its prospect for eventual adoption.[ dur: 42mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

• Ira Helfand, MD is co-chair of the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)’s Nuclear Abolition Committee. He is also a member of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)’s International Steering Committee. He has co-authored PSR’s “Nuclear Famine: 2 billion at Risk?“
• Wayne Glass is Professor Emeritus in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. He is the former Senior Defense Policy Advisor to Senator Jeff Bingaman on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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Is the age of privacy over? We spend the hour on technology, spying and privacy, exploring how privacy, and the lack of it, affects security, democracy and society. What exactly is at stake when we lose our privacy? [ dur: 58 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

• Helen Nissenbaum is Professor of Information Science at Cornell Tech. She is the author of Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life, and co-author of Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest and Values at Play in Digital Games.
• Michael Patrick Lynch is Professor of Philosophy & Director of the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data, True to LIfe: Why Truth Matters and In Praise of Reason.
• Bruce Schneier is Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He is the author of 14 books including the New York Times best-seller Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World, Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World, and The Electronic Privacy Papers: Documents on the Battle for Privacy in the Age of Surveillance. His blog is “Schneier on Security.”
• Joshua A.T. Fairfield is William Donald Bain Family Professor of Law at Washington and Lee School of Law. He is the author of Owned: Property, Privacy and the New Digital Serfdom, Privacy as a Public Good , and Smart Contracts, Bitcoin Bots, and Consumer Protection.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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Is the US State Department using its diplomatic efforts to push genetically modified foods into other countries? Our guest says yes. She traced US multi-pronged effort to persuade Mexico to allow genetically modified foods. [ dur: 22mins. ]

• Yadira Ixchel Martínez Pantoja, PhD candidate in Politics and International Relations at the University of Auckland. Her recent paper is titled, United States promotion of GM foods: the use of public diplomacy strategies and instruments to target government agencies in Mexico.

Then, guest host Sam Smith examines the flourishing of conspiracy theories. What are they? How dangerous are they? [ dur: 35mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

• Matthew R. X. Dentith has a PhD from the University of Auckland and is an expert in the epistemology of conspiracy theories. He is the author of The Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories.
• Patrick Stokes is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Deakin University. He is an expert in the ethics of conspiracy theories. He is the author of the book chapters Conspiracy Theory and Perils of Particularism, On some moral costs of conspiracy theory, and his blog article, Why Conspiracy Theories Aren’t Harmless Fun.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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First, why are the numbers of insects in fast decline? What does it mean for our food supply and our long term survival? Scientists say climate change is not the only reason.[dur: 11 min. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

• Andrew Dopheide is Researcher at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland. He is the co-author of “Estimating the biodiversity of terrestrial invertebrates on a forested island using DNA barcodes and metabarcoding data.”

Then, how much does the president truly matter for the direction of the United States and for the rest of the world. [ dur: 46 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

• William F. Grover is Professor of Political Science at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont. He is the author of The President as Prisoner: A Structural Critique of the Carter and Reagan Years, co-editor of Voices of Dissent: Critical Readings in American Politics, and The Unsustainable Presidency: Clinton, Bush, Obama and Beyond.
• Joseph G. Peschek is Professor of Political Science at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is the author of Policy-Planning Organizations: Elite Agendas and America’s Rightward Turn, co-editor of Voices of Dissent: Critical Readings in American Politics, and The Unsustainable Presidency: Clinton, Bush, Obama and Beyond.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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First, how emigration could lead to greater democratization in the world. [dur: 11 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

• Margaret Peters is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at UCLA. She is the author of Trading Barriers: Immigration and the Remaking of Globalization, and the co-author of the research paper Restraining the Huddled Masses: Migration Policy and Autocratic Survival.

Then, today’s panel hosted by Professor Doug Becker, International Studies at University of Southern California (USC), lays the foundations of public diplomacy, its techniques, and its effectiveness. It then examines the role of new technologies in the digital age and how it poses new challenges and opportunities. [ dur: 45 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

• Daniel Aguirre Azócar is Assistant Professor at Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago, Chile. He is the author of the book chapters Propaganda and Populist Communication in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela (forthcoming in the SAGE Handbook of Propaganda) and Public Diplomacy in Latin America: An Emerging Field of Practice? (forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, 2nd Edition).
• Nicholas J. Cull is Professor of Public Diplomacy and is the founding director of the Master of Public Diplomacy program at USC. He is the author of many books including The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945-1989, The Decline and Fall of the United States Information Agency: American Public Diplomacy, 1989-2001, and his latest Public Diplomacy: Foundations for the Global Engagement in the Digital Age.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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First, the intersection of music, art and politics. Our guest producer Sam Smith explores how modern artists like Childish Gambino use music and video for political communication. [ dur: 15 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

• Patrycja Rozbick is Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Aston University. She is the author of Childish Gambino shows, pop music can be powerfully political – despite censorship, this article can be found here and Crisis in the Eye of Beholder: Contingency and Perplexity Along the Balkan Migration Route.

Then, the toll of trauma, its aftermath and how to heal after traumatic experiences. We speak with three renowned experts. [ dur: 43 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

• Charles R. Figley is Distinguished Chair, Professor in Disaster Mental Health and Director of the Tulane University Traumatology Institute and School of Social Work. He’s Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the author of Mapping the Wake of Trauma: Autobiographical Essays by the Pioneers of Trauma Research; the Encyclopedia of Trauma: An Interdisciplinary Guide; and Beyond Trauma: Cultural and Societal Dynamics, and Death and Trauma.
• Richard A. Chefetz is a psychiatrist in Washington, D.C. and past President of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. Richard Chefetz is Founder and Chair of their Dissociative Disorders Psychotherapy Training Program, a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology and a faculty member at the Washington School of Psychiatry, the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis, and the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis. He is the author of Intensive Psychotherapy for Persistent Dissociative Processes: The Fear of Feeling Real.
• Dr. Daniel Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. He is Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, the author of books, including The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being, and co-author of books including The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience in YourChild and Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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First, from broken heart to suicide bomber we explore the various drives that fuel deadly terror. [dur: 17mins. ]

Ken Ballen, author of Terrorist in Love.

Then, is the transmission of trauma multi-generational? Do the children of survivors of mass atrocities have higher risk of developing psychological disorders? What are the social and behavioral factors that result in the trauma of successive generations? We look at the impact of survivors’ post-trauma adaptational style in their children’s eyes. [ dur: 40mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

• Andrei Novac is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California at Irvine, School of Medicine, and Founding Director of the Traumatic Stress Program. He is the author of the research papers Traumatic Stress and Human Behavior, Special Treatment Issues in Children of Holocaust Survivors and Free Artistic Expression: A Clinical Exploration of Resiliency and Healing After Trauma.
• Yael Danieli is Director of the Group Project for Holocaust Survivors and their Children. She is the Founding Co-President of the International Network of Holocaust and Genocide Survivors and their Friends, and a Founding Director of The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. She is the author of the pubications International Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma, International Responses to Traumatic Stress and the research papers Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma: Modeling the What and How of Transmission, and Differing Adaptational Styles in Families of Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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