Episodes
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S5 Ep6: A Fractured World: Reflections on Power, Polarity and Polycrisis (Nick Buxton in Conversation with Adam Tooze and Walden Bello)
We live in an age of empire and resistance - a shifting geography of global power. The military, political and financial support of one country, the US, above all others has allowed a small country - Israel - to commit genocide in Gaza, to the horror of the vast majority of people worldwide. The…
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S5 Ep1: History in Action Part 1: 1970-1990 - A counter history by the Transnational Institute
History in Action Part 1 delves into the founding of the Transnational Institute (TNI) and its origins with the Institute for Policy Studies. We look at the roots of TNI in opposition to the Vietnam War and other global liberation movements. We explore TNI's evolution and its sustained resistance...
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S5 Ep5: History in Action Part 5: 2020-onward! - A counter history by the Transnational Institute
History in Action Part 5 guides us through the multifaceted impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, underscored by increasing corporate power and social injustices—from healthcare privatization and vaccine disparities to the militarization of borders. We talk about green colonialism and the people...
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S5 Ep4: History in Action Part 4: 2008-2020 - A counter history by the Transnational Institute
History in Action Part 4 talks about the fallout of the financial crises, the rise of new forms of authoritarianism, the new movements that shook the world, and the work against transnational corporate impunity. Narrator: Shaun Matsheza Interviews conducted by: Denis Burke, Daria Gorshenina and...
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S5 Ep3: History in Action Part 3: 2000-2008 - A counter history by the Transnational Institute
History in Action Part 3 discusses the disastrous war on terror, the rise of China, and the convergence of social movements around the climate crisis, land, and essential public services. Narrator: Shaun Matsheza Interviews conducted by: Denis Burke, Daria Gorshenina and Shaun Matsheza Music:...
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S5 Ep2: History in Action Part 2: 1990-2000 - A counter history by the Transnational Institute
History in Action Part 2 dives into the 1990s, focusing on the impact of the Cold War's end, the rise of neoliberalism, the emergence of the Alter-Globalization Movement, and the history of TNI's drugs and democracy programme. Key figures and activists explore significant shifts in global…
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"The Divine Leaf of Immortality": A conversation on Coca, with Wade Davis.
Nearly 75 years after the United Nations called for the abolition of coca leaf chewing, the world will have an opportunity to correct this grave historic error. The World Health Organization (WHO), at the Plurinational State of Bolivia’s request, and supported by Colombia, will conduct a…
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S4 Ep7: Building a Just Energy Transition in an Age of Corporate and Imperial Power (Nick Buxton in Conversation with Thea Riofrancos, Ozzi Warwick, and Timothy Mitchell)
The fossil fuel based energy system has shaped capitalism and our geopolitical order. On the 50th year of TNI's existence, the State of Power report unveils the corporate and financial actors that underpin this order, the dangers of an unjust energy transition, lessons for movements of…
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Breaking Big Pharma and Big Tech, Global Debt and Race Politics, and the End of Borders: In Conversation with Arun Kundnani
Even a global crisis can provide opportunities for fairer, freer and better ways of organising our world. But too often they can simply become moments to further entrench power, hegemony and undue influence. Unfortunately, as history has demonstrated, global policy making has often shifted in...
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S4 Ep6: Ecofeminism 2: Towards an Ecofeminist Energy Future. (Lavinia Steinfort in Conversation with Shannon Bell, Cara Daggett, and Christine Labuski) )
Energy is currently produced and consumed based on sexist, racist and classist power relations that favour the pursuit of private profits at the expense of the common good. Extractivist oligopolies and corporatised politics have imposed humiliating austerity measures, privatisations of public...
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S4 Ep5: Ecofeminism 1: A Powerful Vision (Lavinia Steinfort in Conversation with Dr. Vandana Shiva)
In 1973, a group of women from Mandal village in the Himalayas in India “hugged” trees to prevent them from being felled. When the loggers came, the women, led by Gaura Devi, surrounded the trees and chanted: “This forest is our mother’s home; we will protect it with all our might”. This was the...
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S4 Ep4: Why We Need to Abolish Borders: Arun Kundnani in Conversation with Harsha Walia
Borders uphold a global system of apartheid—and we should demand nothing less than their abolition. In this interview, activist and writer Harsha Walia lays out how borders and citizenship maintain colonial axes of power. From Fortress Europe outsourcing border control far into the African...
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S4 Ep3: Why we need to break Big Pharma's Power before the next Pandemic hits (Arun Kundnani in Conversation with Mohga Kamal-Yanni)
How is it that drug companies can make huge profits from vaccines while people in the global south die from lack of access to medical care? How does the global regime of intellectual property rights enable this inequality? And what is the role of Bill Gates in defending this system? In this...
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S4 Ep2: Seizing the Means of Computation – How Popular Movements Can Topple Big Tech Monopolies: In Conversation with Cory Doctorow
An influential group of big technology corporations, commonly referred to as Big Tech has concentrated vast economic power with the collusion of states, which has resulted in expanded surveillance, spiraling disinformation and weakened workers' rights. TNI’s 11th flagship State of Power report...
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S4 Ep1: Will There Be Another Debt Crisis? Current Economic Challenges Facing the Global South: Arun Kundnani in Conversation with Jomo Kwame Sundaram
What are the economic challenges facing the Global South post-pandemic? What role have global financial institutions like the World Bank and the IMF played in worsening the economic situation for poorer countries? And what economic alternatives might exist? In this interview, Jomo Kwame Sundaram...
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S3 Ep15: How the World’s Tax Havens became the Data Centres for the Digital Economy (In conversation with Sofia Scassera)
As the various tax avoidance scandals such as the Panama papers, Paradise papers and Pandora papers have shown, tax havens are some of the most important instruments for reproducing social inequalities. The wealthy use countries with favourable laws to store their wealth, safely and away from...
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S3 Ep14: Just Transition in North Africa (In Conversation with Hamza Hamouchene)
The environmental and social effects of the industrial capitalist system have long been obvious to marginalised communities forced to live in the garbage dumps of production while their resources are pillaged for raw materials. However, today, the systemic effects are increasingly visible to all....
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S3 Ep13: The not so hidden cost to “Mega” Energy deals : the Energy charter Treaty in West Africa (Nigeria)
Nigeria has a terrible history with international oil companies like Shell, having a hard time getting compensation for environmental damage. Even with some legal wins, like when the Hague Court of Appeals found Shell Nigeria liable for damages from pipeline leaks in the villages of Oruma and…
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S3 Ep12: The not-so-hidden cost to “mega” energy deals : the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) in East Africa (in conversation with Olivia Costa and Brenda Akankunda)
Lack of access to modern energy services remains a major constraint to economic development in many regions, and perhaps in Africa most of all. According to the Africa development Bank, only 40 percent of the continent’s people have regular access to electricity. African governments are trying to...
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S3 Ep11: Why anti-Asian racism is on the rise in the US: Arun Kundnani in Conversation with Tobitha Chow
Why are US-China relations deteriorating? What are the impacts of growing anti-Asian racism on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) living in the US? Will the new Cold War with China replace the US War on Terror? In this interview, Tobita Chow argues that the rise of China as an economic...
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S3 Ep10: India - How the government's pandemic response caused more deaths: Arun Kundnani in Conversation with Sulakshana Nandi
Why did the pandemic spiral out of control in India? Why did some states see many more people dying than others? The central government's authoritarian measures, badly planned lockdowns, structural inequality and many forms of discrimination drastically increased the death toll, argues Sulakshana...
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S3 Ep9: How Powerful Pharmaceutical Companies Shaped the Response to the Pandemic: Arun Kundnani in Conversation with Harris Gleckman
During the pandemic, the World Health Organisation and governments took a back seat and power was centred on corporate interests. Health was viewed not as a right or a necessity, but as a product to be marketed and sold. Even in the midst of a global health emergency, companies treated the ill…
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S3 Ep8: The Case for Community Supported Fisheries (Mads Barbesgaard in Conversation with Thibault Josse)
New generations of technologically advanced, hyper efficient industrial vessels, have gotten too good at fishing. This limited number of vessels has a massive impact on the ocean. Fish stocks have largely declined since the 1980s, but not all fishers contribute to the problem to the same extent,...
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S3 Ep7: Capitalism and the Sea ( Mads Barbesgaard in Conversation with Liam Campling and Alex Colás)
Aside from occasionally popping up as a topic, for example in relation to plastics, oil-spills, or occasional references to melting glaciers, the oceans are often a "forgotten space" for many otherwise inspiring social movements. But the oceans have had a central and changing role across…
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S3 Ep6: How Big Tech captured our public health system: Arun Kundnani in Conversation with Seda Gürses
The privatisation of public services is a long-standing global trend. But in the wake of the pandemic and through the introduction of contact tracing apps, Big Tech has gone one step further: Large corporations like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are now set to control the very infrastructure that...
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S3 Ep5: The Problem with Global Trade 3. Investment Protection (In conversation with Luciana Ghiotto)
Many poor countries sign trade agreements with the desperate hope of attracting investment from their wealthy counterparts. However, these agreements, or treaties, tend to have some very problematic clauses, which often lead to trouble down the road. Investors have used these treaties to sue...
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S3 Ep4: The Problem with Global Trade 2. The World Trade Organization (In conversation with Alexandra Strickner)
For a while now, the mantra “trade not aid” has dictated how the overdeveloped countries of the Global North engage with their less wealthy counterparts. The logic being that trade is more dignified than aid, and leads to longer lasting change. However, to anyone who has been paying attention…
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S3 Ep3: The Problem with Global Trade 1. Entrenching Inequality (in conversation with Grieve Chelwa)
For a while now, the mantra “trade not aid” has dictated how the overdeveloped countries of the Global North engage with their less wealthy counterparts. The logic being that trade is more dignified than aid, and leads to longer lasting change. However, to anyone who has been paying attention…
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S3 Ep2: Ukraine: A Call for Solidarity (In Conversation with Denys Gorbach and Denis Pilash)
On 24 February 2022, to considerable shock, Russia launched a large scale invasion of Ukraine. This was a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict that has been ongoing, particularly since 2014. In this podcast we want to find out what Ukrainians involved in its social movements are...
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S3 Ep1: How elites use the pandemic to secure their power: Arun Kundnani in Conversation with Eda Seyhan
Governments around the world have used the pandemic as an excuse to expand their powers. Populations have been divided on the basis of race and class into those deserving of protection and those perceived as risky and to be controlled. Migrants, refugees, precarious workers, and racialized groups...
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S2 Ep51: Who feels secure? Racial capitalism and global security: Arun Kundnani in conversation with Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
When the word security is mentioned, images of men in uniform, perhaps carrying guns and in armoured cars, come to mind. How did we end up in a place where security is understood in the narrow terms of policing, and inevitably leads to racism? Why does this kind of security fail to make a large...
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S2 Ep50: A Few Ideas That Could Save the Planet. (In Conversation with TNI)
We are in a climate crisis. About this there seems to be broad consensus. But, there is more and more divergence around what must be done to stop it. As COP26 came around, we’ve seen more and more supposed solutions to the Climate crisis gaining attention. But a closer look reveals that many of…
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S2 Ep49: Geo-politics and Revolutionary Change: The Case of Lebanon (In Conversation with Hicham Safieddine)
For the last two years, Lebanon has been witnessing an acute multi-dimensional crisis that has left more than half the population living below the poverty line. Many families are struggling to survive. Some say that the massive economic crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, the August 2020 Beirut...
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S2 Ep48: Resisting the Sengwa Coal Power Plant in Zimbabwe: In Conversation with Melania Chiponda
The Tonga people of Zimbabwe and Zambia, who call themselves the river people, speak of the pain of being separated from their relatives, who all of a sudden were made foreigners, stuck on the opposite side of a dam, in another country. All this, so that a massive dam, the largest man-made lake…
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S2 Ep47: The Racist Roots of the War on Terror: Arun Kundnani in conversation with Deepa Kumar
Twenty years on, America has chaotically pulled out of the war in Afghanistan with nothing much to show for it, and the war on terror appears to have achieved very little, except to cause more terror and to bring America’s violence to more parts of the world. In this fascinating conversation…
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S2 Ep46: Tunisia's "Coup not Coup": In Conversation with Heythem Guesmi
About a decade ago, Tunisia was the birthplace of the so-called Arab spring, when Tunisians toppled the decades long dictator Ben Ali, heralding momentous changes across North Africa and beyond. To some extent, the Tunisian experience seems to be an exception in the region, because the country…
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S2 Ep45: What makes a Revolution? The Arab Uprisings a Decade on: In Conversation with Jamie Allinson.
About a decade ago, parts of the Arab world experienced great upheaval. The events that took place, and which continue to unfold to the present day, are not easily explained. In fact, to this day, and in light of subsequent uprisings, there is an ongoing attempt to fully understand what it is...
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S2 Ep44: Defending the Right to Food Sovereignty: In Conversation with Paula Gioia
The Covid-19 crisis has exacerbated the already existing deep structural problems of corporate and increasingly globalized food systems. A radical, human rights-based and agroecological transformation of food systems is more urgent than ever. As the United Nations gears itself to hold the 2021...
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S2 Ep43: The Energy Transition Myth: In conversation with Sean Sweeney
If you listen to the news and read the papers, it would be easy to be convinced that the transition to a sustainable, low-carbon future energy system is “already underway”. Advocates say that renewable energy is already cost-competitive - with costs of generation falling below that of fossil…
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S2 Ep42: The problem with COVAX: In conversation with Harris Gleckman.
From a human rights perspective, the global vaccine distribution problem would for example aim to get the COVID vaccine to communities and peoples in the Global South quickly, safely, at low or no cost without political-, class- or gender-discrimination. It would lead toward a solution that...
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S2 Ep41: Becoming Black: Coercive power, the state and racism in a time of crisis (In conversation with Olúfémi Táíwò and Achille Mbembe)
The unprecedented movement to #defundthepolice has brought a critical debate about the role of a powerful coercive state agency into the mainstream of political discussion. It has raised the question about how the police functions everywhere and whose interests they serve. But the police are not...
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S2 Ep40: Africa's Last Colonial Currency : In conversation with Ndongo Samba Sylla
Despite the political and institutional changes that occurred with Africa's decolonisation process in the second half of the 20th century, many colonial constructs remain to this very day. One of the most obvious and egregious symbols of these continuities is no doubt the CFA franc. The acronym…
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S2 Ep39: Wealth and Power 3. The New Connected World (with Roger Van Zwanenberg)
The present reeks of the past. The world we live in is not the result of some natural law. It was created by people, like you and I, humans who walked, breathed, ate and drank. The contemporary world is a result of people making decisions, decisions that would give them more power, access to more...
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S2 Ep38: Forward to the land: A conversation with European Peasant Farmers.
17 April is the “International Day of Peasant Struggles”. One may be inclined to think that such a day has very little significance for places like Europe and other parts of the developed world, but one would be mistaken. Struggles over farmland are a very real reality in Europe, although the...
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S2 Ep37: Algeria's popular movement - the Hirak: A Conversation with Brahim Rouabah
Since February 2019 (2 years ago), the people of Algeria have waged an inspiring and historic revolt. Millions took to the streets united in their rejection of the ruling system, demanding radical democratic change. They chanted ‘They must all go!’ and ‘The country is ours and we’ll do what we...
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S2 Ep36: Wealth and Power 2. Colonialism (with Roger Van Zwanenberg)
This is the second episode of our three part series in which we look at how Europe came to be the dominant global power. In the first episode we looked at Racism and how it was used to justify European imperialism. As the world seeks a decolonial future, it is good to remind ourselves of what...
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S2 Ep34: Choosing to Challenge the Patriarchy in Indonesia: In conversation with Arieska Kurniawaty
Societies the world over are under extreme stress and we are only beginning to guess the long term social and economic effects of the Covid19 pandemic. However, it is already clear that there is a gendered dimension to Covid’s direct and indirect socioeconomic impacts. Here at the State of power...
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S2 Ep33: Wealth and Power 1. Racism (with Roger Van Zwanenberg)
Here at the State of power podcast we are interested in how power functions, how it mutates, and how it shapes the world around us. We believe that, if we are to understand the present, we need to put it in its proper historical context and try to understand the historical processes that have led...
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S2 Ep32: The Case for Apartheid Studies: In conversation with Nyasha Mboti
Here at the State of Power Podcast we are concerned with how power functions, how it mutates, and how it reproduces itself, and our guest on this episode deals explicitly with this. Nyasha Mboti is an Associate Professor at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein South Africa, and is the...
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S1 Ep31: People-Powered Movements versus Shell: In conversation with Chihiro Geuzenbroek and Anna Bissila
Chihiro Geuzenbroek and Anna Bissila are both climate activists, and the co-organizers for the expo: People-Powered Movements versus Shell. An exhibition that explores the fight for justice that has been fought from Indonesia to Nigeria, from Curaçao to South Africa, and from Alaska to Groningen....