Policy Prompt

Power over sports is power over people, power over passion. Worldwide, there is no stronger sports phenomenon than football. So when you see your team, your favourite player, sporting a brand name on their uniform, particularly a brand associated with a world power (such as Arsenal and Real Madrid united by partnerships with Emirates), or with addictive products like gambling, that’s not neutral m...

Dominance on the global stage doesn’t look the same as it once did, and some nations are only figuring that out as others are rewriting the rules out from under them. Global trade has suffered under tariffs, but not always in the expected ways. China has locked down its emergent technology, but nations around the globe rely on its resources still. The Strait of Hormuz remains a very real structura...

AI governance is not a one-note issue. It spans geopolitics, science, philosophy, sociology, and as it grows and impacts more aspects of human governance and decision making, so does its span. Unlike the Space Race, there’s little reason for international actors to limit collaboration, given the intangible nature of this progress and its broad reach into so many aspects of our lives across the glo...

It’s easy to forget that everything in our lives that’s not strictly natural has been manufactured. That manufacturing incorporates elements from around the world, elements that had been designed, harvested, synthesized, shipped, assembled, shipped again to meet you. This system is remarkably efficient and ridiculously cheap, but that’s come at a cost. Our highly convenient world stands on toothpi...

Today’s world is more convenient than it has ever been in history. It can take fewer than five discrete actions to have most anything delivered right to your door, and you don’t even have to get up from your chair. But in our world becoming so comfortable, so convenient, we must ask the question: What are we losing? In this special episode, Vass is joined by Tim Wu, a preeminent legal scholar and...

Ever since the ancient Athenians first attempted a democratic approach to governance, nations worldwide have been attempting to perfect it. Some things we’ve gotten right; for instance, many nations have decided that the Athenians’ exclusion of many groups of people was not conducive to democracy, and instead have elected to include all people, not just men who owned land. But we’ve oftentimes got...

The playing field for modern scams is bigger than ever. Entire guarded compounds are dedicated to online and phone fraud, and the network of influence and intimidation these organizations hold grows daily, facilitated by emerging technology such as artificial intelligence and mass automation. An epicentre has emerged in East and Southeast Asia; Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, China and more are...

Neurotechnology is a dual-use technology transforming lives — from implantable devices that use deep brain stimulation to ease tremors from Parkinson’s disease to commercial wearables that promise more effective meditation. But without the necessary legal, ethical, and regulatory safeguards, the misuse and abuse of neurotechnology and the data it collects becomes inevitable. In this episode, hosts...

Artificial intelligence (AI) has had a profound impact on science, from data analysis to scenario simulation and predicting protein structure — its full potential is still unknown. Today, many scientists are dedicated to better understanding AI and how to integrate it into research to accelerate the pace of scientific discoveries without compromising rigour and principle. Is there a future where A...

Often compared to ocean shipping lanes, Earth’s orbital layers act as channels to almost 14,000 satellites moving at around 7 km/second. These orbital pathways are becoming increasingly congested as a rapidly growing number of commercial actors enter what was once a predominantly state-run domain. Can the 1967 Outer Space Treaty hold up against this space revolution? Can international structures q...

For centuries, the power to create money was isolated to traditional issuers, who built trust over the ages. But now stablecoins are starting to pull at that monopoly, rising up in relevance as a massive innovation on infrastructure. Some jurisdictions are turning things upside down with digital asset adoption, while others are holding back, with important geopolitical implications.  On season two...

In episode 16, hosts Vass and Paul talk to Marc Levinson — economist, historian and author of The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger , published in 2016, and the follow-up, Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas (both Princeton University Press) .  Marc brings to life a topic freighted with importance but oft...

How do you discover music? College radio, word of mouth, serendipity — or your very own AI DJ? In 2006, Spotify’s founders discovered music as “a traffic source” for an advertising model, and have since transformed the music industry. But what are their goals or values when it comes to music and culture beyond the pursuit of profit, and what does it mean for musicians and music lovers? And why are...

What does innovation actually mean, and how should we be thinking about it? In this episode, Vass and Paul welcome Joel Blit, an expert in innovation and innovation policy. Joel is a senior fellow at CIGI, and an associate professor of economics at the University of Waterloo, where he chairs the Council for Innovation Policy and Strategy. They discuss the mix of art and science that comprises inno...

AI is going to affect us all and everyone has opinions about it. But what does the data say? In this episode of Policy Prompt, Vass and Paul welcome Nestor Maslej from Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, where he is the research manager of the AI Index and the Global AI Vibrancy Tool. In developing tools that track the advancement of AI, Nestor hopes to make...

In episode 12, artist and thinker Amanda Wasielewski joins hosts Vass and Paul to discuss the crossover and interplay between digital and capital-A art. Amanda, an associate senior lecturer of digital humanities and associate professor (docent) of art history in the Department of Archives, Libraries, and Museums at Uppsala University in Sweden, has exhibited her artwork internationally and recentl...

Warren Buffett once said he would rather trust his money to monkeys throwing darts than financial advisers. So how do the monkeys’ chances of hitting the target stack up against those of, say, pollsters, Magic 8 Balls or star charts? Maybe the monkeys have practised. Meet Robert de Neufville, who is super at forecasting: someone whose predictions have proved far more accurate than regular forecast...

Join hosts Vass and Paul for their fascinating conversation with Michael Richardson, associate professor of media and culture at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, about the ideas in his book Nonhuman Witnessing: War, Data, and Ecology after the End of the World (Duke University Press, 2024). Michael explores the ethical and political implications of witnessing in an age of pr...

Copyright has become a tool for privatizing everything — the opposite of what it was designed to do when it was invented in the eighteenth century to protect published works. In their book Who Owns This Sentence? A History of Copyrights and Wrongs (Penguin Random House, 2024), Princeton professors David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu provide a lively account of that turnaround, to the point where “t...

Join the Policy Prompt crew for a different kind of episode: recorded with a live audience at Perfect Books in Ottawa, host Paul Samson interviews Denise Hearn (resident senior fellow at the  Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment , author, applied researcher and adviser) and Vass Bednar (CIGI senior fellow, Public Policy Forum fellow and executive director of the Master of Public Policy in Dig...

Is refrigeration really that revolutionary? In this episode of Policy Prompt , the hosts are joined by Nicola Twilley, author of Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves (Penguin Press, 2024) and co-host of the award-winning Gastropod podcast. They explore the “modern marvel” of enjoying fresh foods from around the globe year-round, and the science that makes it all...

Before Google and Meta dominated the digital landscape, the news agencies and technologies of the early twentieth century captured unprecedented influence. Join hosts Vass Bednar and Paul Samson in conversation with Heidi Tworek, a leading expert in international history and public policy from the University of British Columbia, as she explains the historic prevalence, power and manipulation of me...

 Amid the geopolitical tensions of the Cold War, the Chinese computer emerged. Despite the complexity of formatting tens of thousands of characters for digital use, the race for ingenuity resulted in the revolutionary computing of non-Latin script and unprecedented typing speeds — feats that continue to shape the devices we use today. Join Policy Prompt hosts for a deep dive into the history of di...

In this episode, Policy Prompt hosts chat with CIGI Senior Fellow and international human rights lawyer Susie Alegre, to unpack her latest book, Human Rights, Robot Wrongs: Being Human in the Age of AI (Atlantic Books, 2024). Listen to find out if Susie has ever been fooled by artificial intelligence, what the challenges and the tensions of rights for machines are, and why there is a palpable lack...

Do emerging technologies inherently serve the greater good? Join Policy Prompt hosts Vass and Paul in a discussion with world-renowned economist Daron Acemoglu, on his recent book Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, co-authored with Simon Johnson (PublicAffairs, 2023). Following the launch of this episode, the announcement was made that Acemoglu, Johnson...