PODCAST · news
Explaining Brazil
by The Brazilian Report
News from Brazil, by The Brazilian Report — an independent media outlet uniquely positioned to offer an insider’s view of current affairs in Brazil.
Episodes
-
A coin-flip runoff
Brazil votes on Sunday, and the presidential runoff is now too close to call. A week and a half ago, Flávio Bolsonaro was the clear favorite. Since then, street mobilization and an unprecedented grassroots campaign have helped Lula close the gap. In ou...
-
Taking stock of an electoral shock
Lula finished Brazil's first round almost 2 points behind Flávio Bolsonaro, his weakest first-round result since 1998. Gustavo Ribeiro and historian James Green (Brown University) look at what went wrong for the president and what the October 25 runoff...
-
Brazil's economy is growing. So why isn't Lula polling better?
Brazilians vote on Sunday, October 4, and President Lula is asking for a fourth term on the strength of his economic record. Growth averaged 3% a year, unemployment is at a record low, and real wages are rising. His approval still sits barely above 40%...
-
Flávio Bolsonaro upsets the gods
Brazil votes on Sunday, and the final week of the campaign has turned on religion. A rumor that a Flávio Bolsonaro government would strip Our Lady of Aparecida of her title as Brazil's patron saint has spread through Catholic circles. The Bolsonaro cam...
-
How to read Brazil's election polls
Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro are statistically tied less than two weeks before Brazil's first round, and a flood of contradictory polls is feeding claims that pollsters are rigging the race. Rafael Nishimura, director of sampling operations at the Univers...
-
Can Brazil's Supreme Court survive an election?
For years, Brazil's Supreme Court picked fights with Congress and the presidency. This month it turned on itself. On September 15, the full court sat for more than seven hours to answer a question it has dodged for 130 years, and walked away without an...
-
Civil war at the Brazilian Supreme Court
Brazil's Supreme Court is facing what may be the worst crisis in its history. Justice André Mendonça unsealed the Banco Master investigation, exposing messages between the bank's former CEO and Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Now two factions of the court...
-
The first surprise of the 2026 election
Two polls released Monday shook the political establishment. Augusto Cury, of the small Avante party, took third place in both: 11% in Nexus's survey, 7.8% in Atlas Intel's. The numbers force rivals and analysts to take Cury seriously for the first tim...
-
What's wrong with the Brazilian Congress
Brazil's 2026 campaign is officially underway, and almost all the attention will be on the presidential race. That's a problem, because power in Brazil is increasingly won and lost in Congress — where the budget is controlled and where any president's ...
-
A visa, a snub, and a reopened wound
The US State Department revoked the visa of Brazil's ambassador to Washington ( https://newsletters.brazilian.report/p/us-brazil-ambassador-viotti-argentina-russia-putin ) and said the quiet part out loud: it is retaliation for Brasília withholding agr...
-
Brazilian trade: Life after Washington
The US now takes less than 10% of Brazil's exports — the smallest share in decades — and Washington's tariff wall is accelerating a realignment that was already underway. Gustavo Ribeiro speaks with trade consultant Welber Barral, a former Brazilian fo...
-
An imported playbook for Brazil's elections
Senator Flávio Bolsonaro used his turn at Debating Brazil — an event series in which Brazilian presidential candidates present their vision of the country to foreign ambassadors — to revive discredited claims about electronic voting fraud and to promis...
-
Flávio Bolsonaro has a few problems to deal with
On this episode of Explaining Brazil, Gustavo Ribeiro, editor-in-chief of The Brazilian Report, talks with James Green, a historian at Brown University, about the fracturing landscape of Brazil's 2026 presidential race. Much of the conversation turns o...
-
Brazil's crime syndicates are now terrorist organizations
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated the Comando Vermelho (Red Command, or CV) and the Primeiro Comando da Capital (First Command of the Capital, or PCC) as foreign terrorist organizations. The Brazilian Report's editor-in-chief, Gustavo Ribeir...
-
Lula meets Trump in Washington
Editor-in-chief Gustavo Ribeiro sat down with historian James N. Green to unpack Lula's recent meeting with Donald Trump. While the visit yielded no concrete trade breakthroughs, it has been cast as a diplomatic victory, bolstering Lula's domestic stan...
-
Trouble ahead for Brazil-US relations?
What role will the United States play in Brazil's high-stakes 2026 elections? Join editor-in-chief Gustavo Ribeiro and historian James N. Green of the Brazil Office Alliance as they unpack the escalating tensions and potential for US interference in Br...
-
Time to investigate Brazil's Supreme Court justices? (preview)
Amid deepening polarization and the judiciary’s growing role in the country’s political life, Brazil’s Supreme Court has become accustomed to being rated poorly by a significant share of the population. In recent years, most of that opposition has come...
-
Brazil's water leverage. And its fault lines (preview)
Humanity has entered what scientists are calling an “era of water bankruptcy.” According to the United Nations University, many critical water systems around the world are so overused — through depletion, overallocation, land and soil degradation, defo...
-
An indigenous victory against Cargill on the Tapajós River (preview)
Advances in oil exploration and the construction of railways and highways in recent years have shown that, when large infrastructure projects clash with matters of Amazon preservation, the Brazilian government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva tends to favo...
-
Brazilian stocks’ record run (preview)
190,000 points. After a string of record highs that have been piling up since mid-January, the Ibovespa — the benchmark index of São Paulo’s stock exchange, the B3 — surpassed this historic threshold during Wednesday, February 11, closing the day just ...
-
Brasília enters an election year on edge (preview)
Brasília is back to work — and the new legislative year has opened with all the familiar rituals: lofty speeches about stability, institutional balance, and dialogue, plus promises of an ambitious agenda ahead. But this is no ordinary year. Brazil is h...
-
Banco Master and the Supreme Court: After the glory came the crisis (preview)
As the saying goes, the calm comes before the storm. In Brazil’s Supreme Court, the current crisis came after a period of glory and renown. In September 2025, the Supreme Court made history and became a global reference. Breaking with Brazil’s long tra...
-
How the Mercosur-EU deal impacts Brazilian firms beyond exports (preview)
Amid a global context of eroding multilateralism and rising US trade wars, Mercosur and the European Union are trying to create a shared market for more than 700 million people. The proposed free trade zone for goods and services encompasses 27 Europea...
-
What happened to Brazil-Venezuela relations? (preview)
Lula did not recognize Maduro’s 2024 election win, but his first two terms in office in the 2000s saw him make South American integration a top priority of Brazil’s foreign policy, and maintain close ties with the Hugo Chavez government of the time. Ve...
-
Trump’s Venezuela play: How it reshapes South America’s risk map (preview)
In Latin America, 2026 quite literally got off to an explosive start. Just before sunrise on January 2, the city of Caracas was violently awoken by the sound of bombs, as US forces launched a sudden, high-intensity strike on the Venezuelan capital. Wit...
-
Checks and balances turned into vendettas (preview)
In any democratic republic, it’s normal for the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to clash. That’s a sign of mutual oversight. It’s also normal for politicians to make concessions to their adversaries. That’s a sign of democracy. But the se...
-
What needs repair in Brazil's public sector machine? (preview)
In a country with 27 state governments, more than 5,000 city halls, and around 12 million people working in the public sector, calls to reform — or improve — Brazil’s civil service never really seem to go away. We talked to Brazil's special secretary f...
-
Good COP? Bad COP? (preview)
Carlos Nobre, head of the Planetary Science Pavilion at COP30 in the Amazon, talks to us about the conference’s results, the climate emergency we are living through, and what Brazil can still do. Send us your feedback Support the show
-
Brazil’s Central Bank led a revolution (preview)
Five years ago, Brazil launched a public digital payment infrastructure — and its impact on the financial market and society has been immense. Send us your feedback Support the show
-
Supreme Court to Brazilians: “Follow the money” (preview)
Over the past decade, Brazilian lawmakers have steadily built up procedures to expand their powers over the purse. That has included increasing the overall volume of congressional grants; making a large share of them mandatory spending; limiting the Ex...
-
COP30: Will climate action take root? (preview)
Each passing year, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP) gains more urgency. More and more biomes around the world are approaching what scientists call tipping points — the Amazon chief among them. Hosting the 30th edition of COP in Belém,...
-
Who will be Brazil's next Supreme Court justice? (preview)
Justice Luís Roberto Barroso is retiring. We unpack how factors such as trust, political ties, and electoral considerations may guide President Lula’s next choice for the court. Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or on The Brazilian ...
-
2026 election: A year away, what do polls say? (preview)
President Lula’s popularity has risen. We examine how this might impact the political landscape ahead of the next presidential election. Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or on The Brazilian Report. Send us your feedback Support the...
-
Brazil's tax system fuels income inequality (preview)
Brazil’s Congress is discussing a proposal for income tax reform. Backed by the Lula administration, the bill seeks to make the country’s system more progressive. But just how unequal are taxes in Brazil? This week, we host economist Davi Bhering, who ...
-
Self-serving politics (preview)
Crowds on Sunday fanned out across Brazil’s 27 state capitals to denounce two measures moving through Congress: a constitutional amendment proposal that would essentially shield lawmakers from prosecution, and a bill that could forgive or soften penalt...
-
The PCC’s sprawling presence in Brazil’s economy (Preview)
A massive police operation exposed how deep Brazil's largest criminal organization has penetrated the legitimate economy. Rafael Alcadipani, a professor at the FGV’s School of Public Administration and a member of the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety, ...
-
Bolsonaro: from the barracks, to the presidency ... to prison? (preview)
The Brazilian Supreme Court has reached a majority to convict former President Jair Bolsonaro of leading a conspiracy to overturn his 2022 electoral defeat. The trial is about to bring an end to a political career long marked by authoritarian views and...
-
Brazil's trial of the century (Preview)
The final stage of Jair Bolsonaro’s coup trial kicked off on September 2 in Brasília. After months of evidence-gathering, arguments and testimonies, the justices are expected to deliver their ruling by September 12, in what is arguably the most consequ...
-
Can Brazil own its digital destiny? (Preview)
At a time when US President Donald Trump is pressuring Brazil on both trade and military fronts, the country’s digital vulnerabilities have come into focus. The notion of sovereignty now extends beyond borders to the infrastructure, systems and data th...
-
The battle for control over Brazil's Congress (Preview)
A political drama has unfolded inside Congress. It started with a show of force: after former President Jair Bolsonaro was placed on house arrest, lawmakers loyal to him occupied both chambers, bringing the legislature to a halt. But beneath the theatr...
-
Supreme Court places Bolsonaro under house arrest (Preview)
In this edition of #InsiderTalks, we’ve invited experts on law, democracy and electoral trends to analyze the trial of Bolsonaro and his allies for an alleged coup plot. Subscribe to Explaining Brazil Plus on Apple Podcasts for the full episode or go t...
-
US tariffs: Brazil is negotiating with an “elected autocracy” (Preview)
Professor Felipe Campante of Johns Hopkins sees little room for success in negotiations between Brazil and the US, as only the former is following the rule of law. Subscribe to Explaining Brazil Plus on Apple Podcasts for the full episode or go to The ...
-
Trump declares (trade) war on Brazil (Preview)
In this episode of Explaining Brazil Plus, we analyzed Donald Trump’s threat of a 50% tariff on Brazil and its possible impacts on the country's economy and politics. Subscribe to Explaining Brazil Plus on Apple Podcasts for the full episode or go to T...
-
Social security scandals, Brazil's emissions beef and a papal funeral
A major social security scandal causes a government headache. Brazil’s beef sector needs major changes to hit emissions goals. And Lula is off to Rome for the pope’s funeral, but who’s going with him? Send us your feedback Support the show
-
COP 30: are locals ready to shape policies? (Preview)
In this Explaining Brazil Plus episode, Lise Tupiassu of the Federal University of Pará gives us her on-the-ground perspective on what should be in the spotlight regarding COP30 in the Amazon Send us your feedback Support the show
-
Penal populism, agro jobs and Bolsonaro under the knife
Rio’s mayor looks to El Salvador for inspiration on public security. Brazil’s agro jobs are less and less done on farms. And Bolsonaro goes under the knife again in a 12-hour surgery. Send us your feedback Support the show
-
Trump’s decline, Embraer’s rise, and Lula in a gun fight
Trump and the US become less popular in Brazil. Embraer wades into the aerial arms race. And the pro-gun caucus wants to take firearms away from Lula’s security team Send us your feedback Support the show
-
Brazil braces for Trump's tariffs (Preview)
US President Donald Trump promises a significant tariff announcement on April 2. We gathered a team of experts to discuss how the looming threats of tariffs from the Trump administration may affect Brazil and reshape relations between the United States...
-
Bolsonaro charged, egg exports rise, Brazil rethinks defense ties
The Supreme Court decides that Jair Bolsonaro will face trial over coup-plotting allegations. Brazilian producers are exporting eggs to the bird flu-hit US. And Brazil wants to chart its own course in purchasing defense tech. This episode refers to the...
-
Tax exemptions, rate hikes and voluntary exile
Lula announces major income tax exemptions. The Central Bank hikes interest rates once more. And one of Bolsonaro’s sons flees to the US. This episode refers to the newsletters: 🎰 Lula goes all in (Mar. 19) 📈 Different in form, not content (Mar. 20) Se...
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
News from Brazil, by The Brazilian Report — an independent media outlet uniquely positioned to offer an insider’s view of current affairs in Brazil.
HOSTED BY
The Brazilian Report
CATEGORIES
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Explaining Brazil have?
Explaining Brazil currently has 389 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Explaining Brazil about?
News from Brazil, by The Brazilian Report — an independent media outlet uniquely positioned to offer an insider’s view of current affairs in Brazil.
How often does Explaining Brazil release new episodes?
Explaining Brazil publishes regularly with 389 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Explaining Brazil?
You can listen to Explaining Brazil on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Explaining Brazil?
Explaining Brazil is created and hosted by The Brazilian Report.
URL copied to clipboard!