We are into the fourth month of the largest global vaccination programme in history with over 335 million COVID-19 jabs administered in 108 countries. Critics of the vaccine rollout are deeply concerned about the inequitable distribution of the life saving inoculations. They say the vast majority of vaccinations have taken place in wealthy countries with inoculation rates dramatically lower in Asia and almost non-existent in Africa. They argue that we are experiencing an...
Mar 17, 2021•46 min•Season 2Ep. 17
This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast . The program provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein , the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths , Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. This week’s Munk Members Podcast focuses on three big issues in the news: America’s mass...
Mar 12, 2021•11 min
Musician Ariel Pink is dropped by his label for attending a Trump rally. A top executive at Boeing loses his job because of an article he wrote decades ago opposing allowing women to serve as fighter pilots. JK Rowling is widely condemned for tweets her critics deem transphobic. All of the above were subject to social media ‘cancellation’ campaigns they experienced as attacks on their free speech rights and personal reputations. For cancel culture’s critics, shouting down a spe...
Mar 10, 2021•41 min•Season 2Ep. 16
This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast . The program provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein , the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths , Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. This episode provides insights into three big stories in the news: do Saudi Arabia and Russia care about ...
Mar 05, 2021•14 min
Zero emissions by 2050 and at the latest 2060. That has been the rallying cry for many of the world’s largest economies, including the US, UK, Japan, Canada, and most notably, China. But with almost 80% of carbon emissions coming from energy, demand for electricity continuing to grow by leaps and bounds, and storage batteries still in their infancy, it’s not clear how these countries will live up to their promises. The answer, say an increasing number of environmentalists and energy ...
Mar 03, 2021•46 min•Season 2Ep. 15
This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast . The program provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein , the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths , Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. This episode provides insights into three big stories in the news: how should the world respond to Iran&r...
Feb 26, 2021•11 min
By now most people are familiar with the GameStop saga: how a small video game retailer worth less than $1 billion, fuelled by day trader investors and Reddit message boards, went on the ride of its life – rocketing its share price from $20 to $400 dollars in the span of a few days. The company’s meteoric rise wiped out billions of dollars from institutional investors who had bet against GameStop. And then, as quickly as it rose, it began to fall again. The compan...
Feb 24, 2021•50 min•Season 2Ep. 14
This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast. The program provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. This episode digs into three big stories in the news: COVID case numbers plunge globally; why is this ha...
Feb 19, 2021•13 min
Bari Weiss, journalist and best selling author on the future of speech and open debate in contemporary society, and how we forge common understandings about the things that matter in times of extreme political and ideological polarization. The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg . To learn more about the episode, head to https://munkdebates.com/podcast . Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook pa...
Feb 17, 2021•36 min•Season 2Ep. 13
This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast. To access the full length episode consider becoming a Munk Member. Membership is free. Simply log on to www.munkdebates.com/membership to register. Under your membership profile page you will find a link to listen to the full length editions of Munk Members Podcast. The Munk Members Podcast provides a focused, half-hour masterclass on current events with Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselli...
Feb 12, 2021•12 min
B117, N501Y, P1 - these are the labels for new variants of the COVID-19 virus that have led to new waves of infection in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil and are now spreading around the world. Studies suggest that these variants could be substantially more infectious and possibly more lethal than the early COVID-Sars-2 strains. Most worrying, the mutations that characterize these variants may reduce the effectiveness of the long awaited vaccines leading to new surges in cases, more ...
Feb 11, 2021•40 min•Season 2Ep. 12
This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast. To access the full length episode consider becoming a Munk Member. Membership is free. Simply log on to www.munkdebates.com/membership to register. Under your membership profile page you will find a link to listen to the full length editions of Munk Members Podcast. The Munk Members Podcast provides a focused, half-hour masterclass on current events with Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselli...
Feb 05, 2021•14 min
A novel written by artificial intelligence is shortlisted for a literary prize. Google software beats a human opponent at Go, one of the most complex board games in the world. Self-driving cars recognize images and then make decisions. These are just some of the extraordinary accomplishments based on artificial intelligence that we have witnessed in the past few years. But there are many scientists who are pushing for a more cautious approach to how we move forward on machine intelligence. They ...
Feb 03, 2021•48 min•Season 2Ep. 11
This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast. To access the full length episode consider becoming a Munk Member. Membership is free. Simply log on to www.munkdebates.com/membership to register. Under your membership profile page you will find a link to listen to the full length editions of Munk Members Podcast. The Munk Members Podcast provides a focused, half-hour masterclass on current events with Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselli...
Jan 29, 2021•13 min
For almost a century now the international sporting community has grappled with the question of how to determine who gets to compete in the female sports category. Fifty years ago the question was answered with humiliating physical exams, but in more recent decades most international sporting federations have embraced a science focused approach. The International Olympic Committee, for example, uses testosterone levels considerably above the female range, not gender, as the main determinan...
Jan 27, 2021•46 min•Season 2Ep. 10
This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast. To access the full length episode consider becoming a Munk Member. Membership is free. Simply log on to www.munkdebates.com/membership to register. Under your membership profile page you will find a link to listen to the full length editions of Munk Members Podcast. The Munk Members Podcast provides a focused, half-hour masterclass on current events with Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselli...
Jan 22, 2021•12 min
The Matrix, The Truman Show, and now more recently Westworld. Popular culture has long been captivated by the notion that our lives and the world we inhabit in are nothing more than an advanced computer simulation. But it’s also an argument that is being given more credence by world renowned philosophers and scientists. The leading proponents of the “simulation hypothesis” believe that the mathematical nature of the universe is itself the strongest proof we exist in an artifici...
Jan 20, 2021•48 min•Season 2Ep. 9
This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast. To access the full length episode consider becoming a Munk Member. Membership is free. Simply log on to www.munkdebates.com/membership to register. Under your membership profile page you will find a link to listen to the full length editions of Munk Members Podcast. The Munk Members Podcast provides a focused, half-hour masterclass on current events with Janice Gross Stein , the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestsell...
Jan 15, 2021•12 min
Refusing to concede his loss to Joe Biden in November’s Presidential election. Pressuring the Secretary of State to invalidate Georgia’s votes. The President’s supporters storming the Capitol during the certification of electoral college votes. You can’t say that he didn’t warn us but the lengths to which President Donald Trump has been prepared to go to prevent a peaceful, post-election handover to the Joe Biden administration has convulsed the final days of his pr...
Jan 14, 2021•46 min•Season 2Ep. 8
This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast. The Munk Members Pod provides a focused, half-hour masterclass on current events with Janice Gross Stein , the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author. Rudyard Griffiths , Chair of the Munk Debates, is the podcast moderator. Janice and Rudyard unpack the big issues in the news and drill down into the people, events and trends that are shaping our lives in this extraordinary moment. The inaugural episode of t...
Jan 10, 2021•12 min
It was a nail-biter, but just days before the UK formally severed its forty-seven-year long membership with the European Union, negotiators finally landed a trade deal that takes some of the sting out of Brexit. But critics of Prime Minister Boris Johnson say that Britain will never recover from its decision to go it alone, even with an EU trade deal to soften the impact. The loss of seamless access to the world’s single largest trading bloc is bound to lead to declining exports and foreig...
Jan 06, 2021•44 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer-prize winning author and staff writer at The Atlantic, on the future of democracy in an era of populist politics and rising authoritarianism. The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg . For detailed show notes on the episode, head to https://munkdebates.com/podcast . Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly em...
Dec 30, 2020•42 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Ian Morris, archaeologist, historian, bestselling author and big thinker, joins us to discuss the past and future of human civilization in an era of rapid social and technological change. The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg . For detailed show notes on the episode, head to https://munkdebates.com/podcast . Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/...
Dec 23, 2020•41 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Tough talk on China helped Trump win the presidency in 2016 and over the last four years the US has taken a markedly more assertive approach to confronting the rise of its first major geopolitical competitor since the Soviet Union. Critics of Trump’s approach say his China policy is based on flawed assumptions - the key one being the jingoistic assumption that China aspires to be an expansionist power rather than a regional broker primarily focused on protecting its sphere of influence. Th...
Dec 16, 2020•55 min•Season 2Ep. 4
When COVID-19 shut down schools around the world last March, it launched an unprecedented experiment in education with a billion students as participants. At the heart of this experiment is the home computer, the new conduit to teachers, classmates and learning. Supporters of digital education say that the pandemic offers a much-needed opportunity to rethink our approach to learning for the first time in over a century. They argue that digital learning is the wave of the...
Dec 09, 2020•42 min•Season 2Ep. 3
The lowest oil prices in history thanks to stalled economies in lockdown. A President Elect and a Green New Deal that promises a carbon neutral America in a decade. Governments pledging to make the internal combustion engines illegal within a decade. It seems like the way we have powered our civilization for two plus centuries, using hydrocarbons, is on the way out as we welcome an energy revolution to combat climate change and environmental degradation. Fossil fuel proponents say that this is w...
Dec 02, 2020•47 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Some proponents of liberal democracy are interpreting the US election results - and Donald Trump’s near win - as a warning sign that the pulse of populist politics still beats strong in the American body politic, an ill tiding for other liberal democracies currently trying to fend off populist insurgencies. Critics of populism say it is not inconceivable, if action isn’t taken to strengthen liberal democratic institutions and values, that the politics of Spain, Fr...
Nov 25, 2020•50 min•Season 2Ep. 1
We’re heading into the twelfth month of a global pandemic and in many places the spread of COVID-19 shows no signs of slowing down. As infections continue to surge, countries in the northern hemisphere have started to reimpose lockdowns restricting people's movement and social interactions and closing portions of their economies. Many political leaders and their public health advisors argue that these kinds of restrictions are necessary as a crisis measure when infections spiral out of con...
Nov 18, 2020•46 min•Season 1Ep. 52
The election wasn’t supposed to turn out this way, according to months of American election polling. Survey after survey and breathless media commentary predicted that Joe Biden would beat Donald Trump in popular vote by upwards of 6, 8, even 10 percent. The same polls and media commentators projected the Democrats with winning margins in the key battleground states of Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Idaho. Bullish predictions included a Democratic sweep of Senate, mo...
Nov 10, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 51
On this episode of the Munk Debates Podcast, James Carville, U.S. Democratic Party political strategist and bestselling author, on the likely outcomes of the November 3rd U.S. Presidential election.
Nov 02, 2020•41 min•Season 1Ep. 50
