The Middle East, a region already mired in conflict due to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, just got a lot more dangerous. In response to a recent Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate building in Damascus, Iran sent hundreds of drones and missiles to attack Israel, setting the stage for a potential military escalation. The world is now watching closely as the long shadow war between Israel and Iran - which has played out with proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen for years - threatens t...
Apr 15, 2024•36 min
We are in the midst of one of the most dangerous and unstable geopolitical moments in recent history. Wars are intensifying in Ukraine and the Middle East, the rise of China as a superpower is threatening the entire Asia-Pacific region, and an unprecedented migrant crisis in the US and Europe is paving the way for right wing populists who threaten to destabilize and destroy the international rules based order that has given us eight decades of relative peace and prosperity. And in the backdrop o...
Apr 09, 2024•44 min
TikTok is one of the most popular social media sites on the planet. But concerns have been growing over TikTok’s ability to collect massive amounts of information about its users, and its suspected ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Those fears recently prompted the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a bill that would force the Chinese company that controls TikTok to sell it to American interests. If not, TikTok would be blocked on the app stores that an estimated 170 million Americans have...
Apr 03, 2024•48 min
The US economy is booming. Public investments in infrastructure, education, clean energy, and more is accelerating labour productivity, growing wages, and spurring employment. Recent economic data shows that “Bidenomics” is working and just as a rising tide lifts all boats, the average American worker hasn’t had it so good in a generation or more. But critics are pointing to the high cost of living – from expensive groceries to housing to health care – to the rise of precarious work to exploding...
Mar 28, 2024•49 min
If recent polls are to be believed, Donald Trump is poised to become the President, for the second time, of the United States of America. Yet some observers think most swing voters who end up deciding American elections will ultimately turn away from Trump 2.0. For proof, they point to the difficulty Trump has had winning over many voters in his own party during the Republican primaries. But other analysts insist the former president remains a formidable political force: He has a large and loyal...
Mar 18, 2024•49 min
Following the Cold War, the US and Russia entered into a series of arms control treaties that gave the world hope that, one day, nuclear weapons may be a thing of the past. But as tensions have risen between the two nuclear powers over Ukraine and other irritants, Russia has been abandoning these agreements. Most recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Moscow would walk away from the last major arms treaty with the US, New START, in 2026. What does all this mean for the prospec...
Mar 13, 2024•40 min
For decades, the two-state solution has been held up as the best chance for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. But in the aftermath of October 7th, and the security risks posed by a potential Palestinian state in the West Bank, most Israelis are souring on the two-state vision. A few Israeli leaders, however, still believe it is the only viable path forward. On this Munk Dialogue, we’re joined by one of the country’s biggest proponents for peace. Gilead Sher was Chief of Staff to Israeli P...
Mar 06, 2024•36 min
“An elderly man with a poor memory”. That is how a special counsel report described Joe Biden, president of the United States. Public appearances of the President looking confused and forgetting important dates and names seem to support this finding. Some Democrats believe Biden’s cognitive decline is a major liability that can no longer be ignored. With so much at stake in the 2024 election, and polls that are favouring Trump to win, it’s time for Biden to step aside for a candidate that can ta...
Feb 27, 2024•39 min
Most geopolitical experts agree that we have entered into a new cold war. The rise of the China-Russia axis and its threat to the international rules-based order is of growing concern to western powers. On this Munk Dialogue, we’re speaking with Sarah Paine, University Professor of History and Grand Strategy at the US Naval War College. Sarah explains what is motivating leaders like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin to act aggressively towards their neighbours, and how western powers should respond ...
Feb 22, 2024•38 min
14 countries, including Canada and the US, suspended funding to the U.N.’s Palestinian Refugee Agency in response to Israeli allegations that 12 employees were involved in the attack on Israel on October 7th, and roughly 10% of their employees in Gaza have links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Human rights workers argue that this is a form of collective punishment that will have dire consequences on a population already suffering from widespread hunger, displacement, and disease. Furtherm...
Feb 12, 2024•51 min
In May 2022, just a few months into the war between Russia and Ukraine, we convened a public debate in Toronto about whether the West needed to acknowledge Russia’s legitimate legitimate security interests in order to bring the conflict to a resolution. John Mearsheimer, one of the world’s leading realist scholars in international relations, argued on stage that the West deserves some blame for Russian aggression. After almost two years of fighting, the war, as John predicted at that debate, is ...
Feb 07, 2024•49 min
Despite international pressure and the threat of a wider regional conflict, Israel has made clear their intention to keep fighting until Hamas has been eradicated and no longer poses a security threat on their southern border. So how does the government’s military aim square up against growing civilian pressure to free the hostages? And what does this all mean for the future of Gaza? On this Munk Dialogue, we’re joined by David Horovitz, the founding editor of The Times of Israel , which since O...
Jan 30, 2024•46 min
US airstrikes don’t appear to be deterring Houthi rebels in the Red Sea. The Yemen-based militant group has continued their attacks on commercial ships in retaliation to the Israeli offensive against Hamas in Gaza. These violent clashes risk escalating an already tense situation in the Middle East, which in recent weeks has moved beyond Gaza into southern Lebanon, Pakistan, and parts of Iran and Iraq. So what, exactly, do the Houthis want? And how can the US and its allies successfully defend ag...
Jan 24, 2024•37 min
Teenagers are facing a mental health epidemic. The numbers are staggering: 30% of teenage girls and 10% of teenage boys are suffering from depression, reflecting a 150% increase since 2010. Rates of anxiety and ADHD are equally alarming. On this Munk Dialogue we’re joined by Lenore Skenazy, the founder of the Free-Range Kids and Let Grow movements. Since 2008 she has been sounding the alarm about helicopter parenting and overly-supervised play, which, she claims, is robbing children of their ind...
Jan 18, 2024•41 min
Claudine Gay, the first black female president of Harvard, faced intense scrutiny since her widely criticized congressional testimony on campus antisemitism in early December. Last week, President Gay resigned from her post after mounting allegations of plagiarism in her published articles. In an op-ed in the New York Times, Gay argued that she was a victim of a right-wing political attack on academia and the diversity initiatives that she both championed and represented. On this Munk Dialogue w...
Jan 10, 2024•41 min
On this Munk Dialogue we are speaking to one of China’s leading experts on military strategy and security. Zhou Bo is a retired senior colonel of China's People's Liberation Army and a senior fellow of the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University. He was also a director at the Ministry of National Defence of China. In this wide-reaching conversation, Bo talks about why Taiwan is the biggest national security concern for China, regional disputes over the South China S...
Jan 02, 2024•35 min
On this special edition of the Munk Debates podcast, host Rudyard Griffiths is joined by senior content producer, Ricki Gurwitz, to discuss some of their favourite debates and dialogues from the over 50 podcast episodes published this year. They also peel back the curtain to give listeners a glimpse into how these debates come together. How do they decide what debates to convene? What makes for a successful debate? And which debate topics are the hardest to book? The answers may surprise you. Th...
Dec 27, 2023•40 min
Amid years of decline in news ad revenue and a rapidly changing media landscape, the Canadian government introduced Bill C-18, the Online News Act. This controversial piece of legislation requires Google and Meta - the company behind Facebook and Instagram – to pay Canadian news outlets for linking their content to these social media sites. Meta responded by blocking all Canadian news content from Facebook and Instagram, while Google has recently agreed to pay $100 million to Canadian publishers...
Dec 19, 2023•43 min
Henry Kissinger, the former US Secretary of State who helped shape Cold War history, is a man both revered and reviled. To his supporters, he was a brilliant statesman whose realpolitik approach to foreign affairs helped maintain international world order and contain Soviet aggression. Kissinger’s skilled diplomacy produced an opening to Beijing, a détente with the Soviet Union, and the eventual peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. As present-day conflict threatens to engulf the Middle East...
Dec 12, 2023•56 min
It’s been two months since Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel that killed 1200 people, took 240 hostage, and shook the country to its core. October 7th was a day that not only altered the course of Israeli history, but also has forced Israelis to re-examine their relationship to their Palestinian neighbours, and their ability to rebuild a thriving democracy in one of the most hostile regions in the world. To understand the story of Israel post October 7th, we’re joined by Yossi Klein Halevi. Yoss...
Dec 07, 2023•45 min
Within one week of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, the BBC received more than 1,500 complaints relating to its coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Criticisms were split almost evenly between those claiming its reporting had been biased against Israel and those saying it was biased in favour of Israel. These disparate interpretations of the media’s coverage of the war are not limited to the BBC. Other mainstream media outlets like the New York Times, CNN, and the CBC have faced simila...
Nov 28, 2023•50 min
On this episode of the Munk Debate podcast we’re talking about one of the biggest challenges facing the Israeli army in Gaza: Hamas tunnels. These tunnels, some of which stretch for miles and reach depths as low as 230 feet underground, offer Hamas fighters protection and allow them to launch attacks against the IDF before returning underground to safety. How can Israel hope to dismantle this underground web of labyrinths, while trying to rescue over 200 hostages that are suspected of being held...
Nov 20, 2023•41 min
This is the podcast version of our public debate on the Crisis of Liberalism that took place in front of an audience of 3,000 people in Toronto on November 3rd, 2023. For the better part of three centuries, through wars, revolutions, and sweeping social change, liberalism has endured as the defining ideology of the West. Its championing of individual rights, free trade and capitalism, and liberal democracy has long been equated with the West’s economic development, social tolerance, personal fre...
Nov 14, 2023•2 hr 30 min
The last two decades have seen the world economy cascade from crisis to crisis: from the global financial crisis of 2008, to increasing economic inequality and the devastating effects of climate change, to the COVID supply chain crisis and rise in inflation, we are living in a period of heightened instability. It is this economic unpredictability which is the subject of a new book by world famous investor Mohamed El Erian. Permacrisis : A Plan to Fix a Fractured World , written together with for...
Nov 09, 2023•46 min
On this Munk Dialogue we’re speaking to American billionaire investor Leon Cooperman. Leon is as famous for his candid conversations as his success on the stock market, and in this dialogue he doesn’t hold back. Leon tells us why he welcomes the recent rise in interest rates, why he thinks Bidenomics has been a disaster for the US economy, and what stocks he’s investing in right now. We also get his response to the current war between Israel and Hamas, the rise of anti-semitism on campus, and wh...
Nov 02, 2023•34 min
On November 3rd four debaters will take to the stage at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall to debate the crisis of liberalism. The motion is Be it Resolved, liberalism gets the big questions right. On this Munk Dialogue, we are speaking with each of the debaters who are taking part in this important and timely debate, to get a sense of their arguments and what we can expect from them on stage at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall on November 3rd. Arguing for the motion is the controversial British M.P. and form...
Oct 30, 2023•1 hr 10 min
Israel has launched intense strikes on Gaza and shut off water and electricity to the territory as they prepare for a ground invasion in response to Hamas’s terror attacks on October 7th. Thousands of Gazans have been killed in the bombardment, with hundreds of thousands displaced and millions going without basic supplies like fuel and medicine. Human rights groups and left-wing politicians are highly critical of Israel’s response. They argue that a human catastrophe is unfolding in real time as...
Oct 27, 2023•1 hr 4 min
Israel is facing a wartime challenge unlike anything we have witnessed in modern history. The IDF is planning to invade Gaza in order to - in the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - “crush and destroy” Hamas after their devastating terrorist attack on Israel last week. This type of dense urban warfare, where the targets are insurgents hiding behind civilians and residential buildings, has rarely been successful for the invading armies. One need no look further than the Battle of...
Oct 17, 2023•47 min
On Saturday morning, Israelis woke up to their world forever changed. The numbers are staggering: over 1000 civilians killed by Hamas and 150 taken hostage, including children and the elderly. The brutality of these crimes are even more shocking - dead bodies desecrated and paraded down the streets of Gaza to the applause of onlookers. This was Israel’s 9/11, and its response will be severe. So, what comes next? How many more countries could be pulled into this war? And how should the US and the...
Oct 11, 2023•42 min
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the protests that followed in the summer of 2020, offices across North America began introducing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training programs with the objective of reducing racial bias and discrimination in the workplace. Lately, however, this multi-billion dollar industry is facing scrutiny by critics who believe these are unproven and expensive programs which are not only ineffective, but counterproductive. DEI training, they argue, often reinforc...
Oct 04, 2023•41 min
