PODCAST · technology
Whose Century Is It?
by Whose Century Is It?
Ideas, Trends and Twists Shaping the 21st Century.
Episodes
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How trust eroded within America's democracy
Trust in government and journalism has plummeted in recent decades, particularly among conservatives. This wasn't a coincidence, nor strictly a result of bad behavior on the part of elected officials or the press, says Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of…
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China, the US and the lessons of history
Talk about epic love/hate relationships. From the birth of the United States, China has loomed large in the American imagination, and America in China's, for better and for worse, often with surprising twists. Build a wall across the Mexican border? That was first proposed to stop Chinese...
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A newsroom looks at future past
As Americans wonder what changes a new year and a new President will bring, here's a case study of how much things can change, in unexpected ways, in a relatively short time. Host Mary Kay Magistad sits down with some of the early staff of PRI and BBC co-production PRI's The World to chat about...
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Black Lives Rising (in STEM)
Great ideas come from diverse minds, and efforts to get more African Americans into cutting edge fields — science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine — are gaining ground, but with considerable challenges. How might efforts to increase this kind of diversity fare under a Trump...
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Trust, Faith & Trump
Trust and faith help any relationship, including the relationship between citizens and their government. What happens when trust is at a record low, and faith seems to be in mutually incompatible beliefs in a polarized society? Garry Wills, professor emeritus at Northwestern University, and an...
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How do US elections stack up?
What could America learn from emerging democracies around the globe? More than you might think. David Carroll, who heads the Carter Center's Democracy Program and has worked for decades helping to monitor elections and strengthen democracies worldwide, weighs in.
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Borders and belonging
Few issues hit more of an emotional chord, or an emotional nerve than those around borders and belonging, immigration and identity. Bringing it home in this third of a three-episode series on these issues, host Mary Kay Magistad visits the lands of her ancestors — Ireland and Germany — and…
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Rule Britannia
Britain long ruled the waves, and many of its citizens have now voted for it to control its own borders, and make its own decisions, free of EU control. Is this about sovereignty, or identity, or something else entirely? It's complicated, and often not in the ways you'd expect.
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Who are 'we'?
People have been moving around, and borders have been shifting around, for as long as there have been people. Who gets to say who belongs, and who doesn't? Chandran Kukathas, who heads the London School of Economics' department of government, argues that a free society should tolerate difference,...
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Propaganda primer for post-War on Terror America
Emotional events are opportunities for people in power with an agenda, and Nina Khrushcheva, great-granddaughter of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, now a US citizen and New School professor who teaches propaganda, says the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks was such a time. She talks here…
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Fab Labs, Fab Cities, & an Indian dream of becoming an Internet of Things hub
Aiming to help everyone make almost anything, Fab Labs have opened around the world, and Fab Cities are taking the movement big-scale. Featuring Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT's Center of Bits and Atoms, talking about the movement he started, and a visit to Kochi, formerly Cochin, a former...
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Maker Movement meets China
The Maker Movement started to reconnect Americans with the creativity and joy that comes from making things with your hands, after years of outsourcing manufacturing jobs. It's now been embraced by dozens of countries, including China. And in China, factory of the world for decades, what does the...
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Conspiracy theories, China & the real John Birch
Conspiracy theories thrive amidst distrust — distrust of power, distrust of the "other," distrust of the unknown. They can limit what's possible, and create conflict when none is necessary. One story, about a young Baptist missionary-turned-US military intelligence officer in China during World…
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The precarious American Dream
Living the "American Dream" is getting harder, as prices rise faster than average wages, and work itself shifts toward a gig economy. How and why did this happen, and how might things change from here? Economic historian Louis Hyman, an associate professor at Cornell University, and author of...
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Virtual beer and Brexit chat with European friends
When big things happen, there's nothing like sitting down with smart friends over a beer (or coffee, or whatever), and kicking around ideas about what it all means, and where it's all going. In this episode, host Mary Kay Magistad checks in with old friends in Dublin, London and Berlin, to see…
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Blood Oil: Why what you put in your gas tank may be funding terrorism
Can a full tank of gas be linked to terrorism? It might be, if you connect the dots. Leif Wenar, author of "Blood Oil: Tyranny, Resources & the Rules that Run the World," explains how it happens, why it affects you, and what you can do about it.
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Behind the Panama Papers
The largest document leak in recent history, the Panama Papers, was facilitated by 400 journalists at 107 news organizations in some 80 countries, working for a year, in secret, without word getting out. Smari McCarthy, who helped process the Panama Papers, as chief technology officer for the...
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History, memory & Hiroshima: Why President Obama's visit matters
President Barack Obama's visit to Hiroshima in Japan will be the first ever by a sitting US president, remembering the hundreds of thousands of lives lost and scarred when the United States became the first and (thus far) only power to use nuclear weapons, dropping two in August 1945 to force...
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Prepare to be Bangalore-d: India's rising challenger to Silicon Valley
Heads up, Silicon Valley, Bangalore's not just for outsourcing anymore. It's rising fast as a world-class hub of tech and biotech innovation, pulling successful Indian entrepreneurs back from Silicon Valley, and from around India. It's part of the story of how the other Asian giant, India, with...
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Can Southeast Asia become an economic hub to rival (or at least balance) China?
China's rise has thrown new challenges at Southeast Asia — how to find strength in numbers to counter China's economic clout, and political and military muscle. One solution? The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has started a new ASEAN Economic Community, with the goal of turning it...
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Alive and (pretty) well after lost decades, Japan has lessons for China
Japan's economic growth is anemic, its population is aging and shrinking, and some Japanese wonder if Japan will still matter, as the century moves ahead. One way it does is as an example to China of what works and what doesn't, in managing an economy at home and power projection abroad. Japan…
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From segregation to social change, how the Rosie the Riveter era fit into a century's arc
If the arc of history bends toward justice, the needs of the nation during World War II sped the process — not by design, but by necessity. With men off at war, US shipyards and factories started recruiting women and African Americans, who previously couldn't get such jobs. The story of how the...
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Are authoritarians gaining ground globally? (Hint: It's complicated.)
Is the world facing an ebb in democracy and a rise of authoritarianism? Seems so when you look at some countries, but it all depends on your frame and expectations. Listen in and challenge your assumptions, with two guys who study this for a living: Harvard's Steven Levitsky and Northwestern...
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American authoritarians for Trump
What polling data best indicates whether someone will support Donald Trump? It's whether they skew authoritarian on a set of questions pollsters ask about child-rearing. (Hint: If you'd rather have an obedient, well-mannered child than a curious, independent one — you're skewing authoritarian, as...
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Identity, adoption and China's one-child policy
Identity can be a tricky thing, especially if you're adopted from a country and culture that sees ethnic identity as immutable, to one where people reinvent themselves and their identities all the time. So it's been for many of the Chinese kids adopted into the United States, after landing in...
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Protecting internet rights in an age of anxiety
How are we, and the rest of the world, doing in striking the right balance between protecting Internet rights and serving national security concerns? How much should citizens in democracies get a say in what that balance is? Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN correspondent in China and now director…
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Connecting Myanmar
In a few short years, Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has gone from being one of the world's most isolated countries, to one most rapidly embracing change and connection with the outside world. Speeding the process has been the swift adoption of mobile phones, and especially smart phones. Just...
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Bonus: Teaching China's next generation of journalists to question everything
Journalists love to ask why, and authoritarian governments don't much like to be questioned. So how to teach China's future journalists to do good work despite the censors and other pressures? Former CBS veteran Peter Herford talks about his decade teaching his craft to China's next generation of...
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And That's the Way It Was: A CBS veteran talks journalism, past & future
The past century brought a revolution in journalism — radio, television, Internet. How did it feel to riding that wave, as a writer for Walter Cronkite, a producer for 60 Minutes, and an executive of an influential network? CBS veteran and journalism teacher Peter Herford reflects, and says why...
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Know yourself (genes and all)
How much privacy would you give up for a shot at better health and a longer life? How about pooling data from your genome? And if your genome could tell you what might be coming — cancer, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis — would you want to know? Might you go so far as to seek to get that gene...
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Episode 7: Ending global poverty through new tech (high and low)
Will the poor always be with us? The global poverty rate is dropping fast, and the UN and other groups are working, together and apart, to come up with creative ways to help the world's poorest pull themselves into a better life. Shashi Buluswar, who leads the Institute for Globally…
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Kicking China's Coal Habit
After decades of dirty development, is China now on a path that could help save the planet? In important ways, it has started to move in the right direction.
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Episode 5: Magna Carta in China
The Magna Carta celebrates its 800th anniversary with a swing through China. But is the Magna Carta's core principle, that rulers aren't above the law, relevant to today's China? China's leaders say no; more and more Chinese citizens say yes.
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Seeing into the Future: A Practitioner's View
The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed, science fiction writer William Gibson has famously said. But how do you separate the signal from the noise? It helps to ask someone who does it for a living. Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute for the Future, shares the...
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Is the American Century Over?
Americans have been worrying that their country's best days are behind it since before the American century began. And now? China's economic rise has persuaded many that China will supplant the US, if it hasn't already. But China's challenges are bigger than they look, and the US still has an…
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China's Online Future
There's much we don't know about what the 21st Century will bring. But we’re not just flying blind. We know that certain things matter more now than they used, and others matter less. One thing that matters a lot is the Internet. It has transformed how we learn and how we connect, and how we come...
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Empires of Time
Whose century is it? Depends on whose calendar you're using. Anthony Aveni, author of "Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks & Cultures," and a professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, kicks off this new podcast with a discussion of how and why different cultures structure time...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Ideas, Trends and Twists Shaping the 21st Century.
HOSTED BY
Whose Century Is It?
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Whose Century Is It? have?
Whose Century Is It? currently has 63 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Whose Century Is It? about?
Ideas, Trends and Twists Shaping the 21st Century.
How often does Whose Century Is It? release new episodes?
Whose Century Is It? has 63 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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Who hosts Whose Century Is It??
Whose Century Is It? is created and hosted by Whose Century Is It?.
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