Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

When Reccep Tayyep Erdogan party, the AKP, won a landslide victory in Turkey's 2002 general elections he became a very different kind of Turkish leader from his predecessors. The AKP is a religious party in what was an avowedly secular political tradition.  For a time, Erdogan presided over a booming economy and was hailed for being a modernizing muslim leader in a troubled region. His relations w...

Events are unfolding rapidly between the United States and Iran. At time of recording, it was reported that Trump ordered and then called off a military strike against Iran in retaliation for the downing of a US surveillance drone over the gulf of Oman. Meanwhile, Iran is threatening to take actions that would put it in direct violation of the nuclear deal, otherwise known as the JCPOA and Europe...

Congressman Mike Gallagher is a Republican representing the eighth district of Wisconsin, which includes the city of Green Bay. Congressman Gallagher has an interesting profile, which includes a PHD in International Relations. He's very thoughtful and I think this conversation offers listeners some key insights into how an emerging leader in Republican foreign policy circles considers the US role...

Donald Trump's pick to serve as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations is unlike any other previous nominee for the US-UN role. Kelly Knight Craft currently serves as the US Ambassador to Canada, a position she was conferred for the fact that her family are billionaire Republican donors. Her family owns a major coal company with deep roots in Kentucky.  It is not at all unusual at all...

According to the latest estimates from the World Health Organization, an outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed over 1400 people. This makes it the second worst ebola outbreak in history, following the 2014 outbreak in West Africa that killed over 11,000 people. The current outbreak in the DRC is so far confined to the eastern part of the country, which has long been bese...

The protests in Hong Kong represent a key turning point for China, Hong Kong, and the world. Hong Kong is in the midst of the most significant protest movement since China assumed sovereignty in 1997.  These protests were sparked by a proposed law that could permit people in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China to face trial. Protesters fear that this law could be used by authorities in Be...

Sudan is at a crossroads. In April, popular protests lead to the ouster of the country's longtime ruler, Omar al Bashir. He was toppled in a coup -- but the peaceful protests did not stop. Rather, the protesters held their ground and rallied outside the headquarters of the military junta demanding that civilians -- not military leaders -- lead the transition to democracy. The standoff between the...

In 2003, before the US invasion of Iraq, there were an estimated 1.2 million Christians living there. Today, that number is less than 250,000 -- an eighty percent drop in less than two decades.   If this trend continues, a religious minority that has been in Iraq for centuries will be gone entirely.    A recent article in The Atlantic by reporter Emma Green describes the plight of Iraq's Chaldean...

Over the course of six years of running this podcast, I have interviewed hundreds of astounding people who have lived fascinating lives and led storied careers in international affairs. This includes foreign ministers, diplomats, famous academics, journalists, social entrepreneurs and more. I've decided to collect the very best of these interviews and offer them exclusively to premium subscribers....

According to the latest data, over 41 million people were internally displaced last year due to conflict and violence, according to a new report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center. This is a record high and excludes an additional 17 million people who were internally displaced due to a natural disaster.     When we say "internally displaced" we mean people who are forced to flee thei...

In 2020 the West African Country of Ghana will conduct a census. This is a massive undertaking. Some 60,000 people will be deployed across the country in an effort to count every single person in Ghana.     Last week, in a reporting trip to Ghana, I got a sense of what this process entails. Along with a few other journalists, I shadowed census takers, known as enumerators, as they tested their sys...

Sherwin Bryce-Pease is the United Nations Bureau chief for South African Broadcast Corporation, SABC News. We have a wide ranging discussion about happenings at the United Nations, including debates and discussions at the Security Council about the deteriorating situation in Libya, why the dispute in Western Sahara is at a key inflection point, how the ongoing ebola outbreak in the Congo is being...

Air pollution results in the premature death of 7 million people around the world each year. It is a major global killer harming people in nearly every corner of the globe.  My guest today, Beth Gardiner is a journalist who traveled the world examining the impact of air pollution. Her new book is called C hoked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution.    In our conversation she shares stories...

Several countries have laws on the books that enables governments to freeze the assets of corrupt foreign officials. Canada is one of those countries, and now one Canadian Senator is trying to take that law one step further by redistributing the frozen assets to those harmed by the actions of the corrupt official.   Ratna Omidvar is an independent Senator from Ontario to the Senate of Canada. She...

Over the last several weeks an estimated 140,000 people have been displaced by escalating fighting in Idlib, Syria.  Syrian regime forces, backed by Russia, have scaled up their attacks in what is the last part of Syria controlled by rebel forces.    Idlib is the only remaining rebel held territory. As regime forces re-captured parts of Syria under rebel control, rebels and their families fled to...

The spread of child sexual abuse material on the internet has grown at an exponential pace in the last fifteen years, since the advent of social media.  This is truly a global problem, affecting every country on earth. The tools of technology can be harnessed to combat the spread of images and videos depicting child abuse and one non-profit is leading the way. Thorn is a technology driver non-prof...

There is an escalating humanitarian crisis in Cameroon where more than half a million people have been displaced by conflict.  This conflict erupted in earnest in late 2017 and early 2018 in a series of attacks and reprisals between Anglophone separatists and the French dominated government. In international affairs circles, this is known as the "Anglophone Crisis" in Cameroon.   As my guest today...

My guest today Supriya Vani interviewed every living female Nobel Peace Prize winner for her 2018 book Battling Injustice: 16 Nobel Peace Prize Laureates.  In this conversation we discuss some common traits that she found across these women and she tells some stories from her interviews and reporting across the globe.   Supriya Vani is a journalist and activist in India, and I caught up with her f...

Today's episode is a cross over promotion with the new podcast: How to Fix Democracy. How to Fix Democracy is an interview series in which prominent thinkers, writers, politicians, technologists, and business leaders discuss some fundamental questions about the fate and trajectory of democracy today.  This episode features an interview with Michael Ignatieff by the host of the show, Andrew Keen. M...

According to the World Health Organization 800,000 people die due to suicide every year. My guest today, Bob Filbin is helping to pioneer a way to sharply reduce that number.  Bob Filbin is the Chief Data Scientist of Crisis Text line. This is a text based mental health crisis intervention platform, operational in the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Individuals in crisis are able to text train...

Battles are raging in Tripoli between forces aligned with the UN-backed government and a renegade general named Khalifa Haftar. Haftar and his militias had controlled eastern parts of the country, including the city of Benghazi, but in recent weeks he has marched his troops westward, toward the capitol Tripoli, in an effort to oust the Libya's internationally recognized government.     Several hun...

In mid march, Cyclone Idai struck southern Africa, ravaging parts of Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. Of these countries, Mozambique was hardest hit. The storm struck the port city Beira and surrounding areas, creating a massive inland flood plane. At the time, the World Meteorological Organization called it one of the worst weather related disasters to ever strike the southern hemisphere.   One m...

Some truly remarkable events are unfolding in Sudan, where protesters have secured the ouster of longtime ruler Omar al Bashir. After nearly thirty years as an authoritarian president and dictator, he was deposed in coup on April 11. But the protesters have not dispersed and are rallying against the cadre of military officials who have assumed control.   On the line with me to discuss these events...

Among the many barriers to quality healthcare in the developing world is the high cost of medicine. This is due, in part, to frequent disruptions in the supply chain. Customers who visit a pharmacy to purchase medicine can't be guaranteed that the medicine will be something they can afford-- or even if the medicine will be there at all. My podcast guest today, Gregory Rockson, is a social entrepre...

South Africa is experiencing what demographers call a "youth bulge." This occurs when young people make up a very large percentage of the entire population. There are youth bulges similar in many countries in the developing world, including in Africa and Asia. One key challenge facing societies experiencing a youth bulge large is what happens when these young people become of working age, and ther...