On Shifting Ground

As we trace the ongoing impact of 2015's emergent global issues in 2016, many stories jump out from speakers featured at World Affairs. In this episode of our podcast, you'll hear reflections from 22 world-class experts (including Ban Ki-moon, Thomas Friedman and Christine Fair). Join us in 2016 for more conversations that matter at worldaffairs.org.

The retrospective features:

General Lloyd J. Austin III, Commander, United States Central Command
Cindy Cohn, Executive Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Yves Daccord, Director-General, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
Christine Fair, Assistant Professor, Security Studies Program, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Nazila Fathi, journalist, translator and commentator
Dr. Jonathan Foley, Executive Director and William R. and Gretchen B. Kimball Chair, California Academy of Sciences
Thomas Friedman, author and journalist, The New York Times
Jason Furman, Chairman, White House Council of Economic Advisers
Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder, LinkedIn; Partner, Greylock Partners
Walter Isaacson, President and CEO, The Aspen Institute
Annie Jacobsen, investigative journalist and author
Joseph Kim, North Korean Defector; author
Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General, United Nations
Nancy Lindborg, President, United States Institute of Peace (USIP)
Abbas Milani, Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies, Stanford University
Dr. Vali Nasr, Dean, The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)
Ilya Ponomarev, Member, Russian State Duma
Congressman Adam Schiff, California's 28th Congressional District
Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Alphabet
Chris Woods, investigative journalist and author
Janine Zacharia, former Jerusalem bureau chief, The Washington Post; visiting lecturer, Stanford

Direct download: World_Affairs-Best_of_2015.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 12:00pm PDT

The Islamic State is one of the most lethal and successful jihadist groups in modern history, surpassing even al-Qaeda. Thousands of its followers have marched across Syria and Iraq, subjugating millions, enslaving women, beheading captives and daring anyone to stop them. Thousands more have spread terror beyond the Middle East under the Islamic State's black flag.

How did the Islamic State attract so many followers and conquer so much land? By being more ruthless, more apocalyptic and more devoted to state-building than its competitors. The shrewd leaders of the Islamic State combined two of the most powerful yet contradictory ideas in Islam - the return of the Islamic Empire and the end of the world - into a mission and a message that shapes its strategy and inspires its army of zealous fighters. They have defied conventional thinking about how to wage wars and win recruits. Even if the Islamic State is defeated, jihadist terrorism will never be the same.

William McCants discusses how religious fervor, strategic calculation and doomsday prophecy shaped the Islamic State's past and foreshadow its future.

Speaker William McCants is Fellow for the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/events/event/1555

Direct download: 12_10_15_William_McCants.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 10:07am PDT

The United States and China must play a central role in any meaningful global effort to address climate change. While both countries have recently revamped their commitments to jointly reduce carbon emissions and invest in a cleaner energy future, the challenge of catalyzing these commitments into concrete actions remains daunting. With this year’s landmark UN climate summit in Paris seeking to create an effective new climate regime, are the commitments made by the United States and China enough to strengthen the global push to confront the climate change challenge?

Join the Asia Society, in partnership with the World Affairs Council of Northern California, as we host The Honorable Kevin Rudd, President of the Asia Society Policy Institute, for a dialogue that looks critically at the current state of climate change collaboration between the United States and China. Days after returning from the UN climate summit, Mr. Rudd will reflect on his experience while attending the deliberations in Paris and share his insights into the future of the US-China partnership on climate change. Joining Rudd in the conversation will be Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director of Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations, who will likewise have just returned from Paris with new impressions about the trajectory of global climate change responses, and the role of the US and China within them.

Speakers Kevin Rudd, President, Asia Society Policy Institute; Former Prime Minister of Australia, and Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director, Center on US-China Relations, Asia Society, are in conversation with N. Bruce Pickering, Vice President, Global Programs and Executive Director, Northern California.

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/event-calendar/event/1556

Direct download: 12_18_15_US_China_Climate.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 12:47pm PDT

Affordability is one of the key barriers in expanding broadband and mobile around the world, with both the cost of connected devices and of digital services being prohibitively high for many of the unconnected. Nearly 4.2 billion people, many of whom represent the poor around the world, are being left behind in the technology revolution and cut off from the potential economic, social and civic benefits of the internet.

This program on mobile and wireless affordability will discuss how existing internet supply chain and infrastructure can be harnessed for greater affordability and what projects have proven successful in lowering broadband costs and how these can be scaled.

We'd like to thank our sponsoring partner: Vodafone Americas Foundation.

SPEAKERS

Sonia Jorge
Executive Director, Alliance for Affordable Internet

Mark Summer
Co-founder and CEO, EveryLayer

Amy Tucker
Co-founder and Chief Impact Officer, Sparrow

Ryan Wallace
Senior Manager, Connectivity Deployments Team, Facebook

MODERATOR:

Patrick Ryan
Strategy and Operations Principal, Google

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/event-calendar/event/1531

Direct download: 11_18_15_Mobile_Affordability.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 10:42am PDT

As populations gravitate to large cities throughout the world and are absorbed into the middle class, there are corresponding significant shifts in lifestyle; one of these is diet. While access to new food sources can certainly lead to a healthier lifestyle, it just as easily can cause serious health issues. Many of these communities and nations are ill-equipped to handle the exponential rise of certain illnesses traceable in part to diet and nutrition. Take for example the rate of Type II diabetes worldwide; it has almost doubled in the past decade. Much of this increase occurred in the Middle East, where affluence is directly correlated with changes in diet. Similar epidemics of obesity and hypertension, previously unheard of in certain parts of the world, are also on the rise. This discussion will focus not only on the causes of these illnesses in unexpected places, but also on prevention.

Speakers:

Jason Beaubien, Global Health and Development Correspondent, NPR

Gitanjali SinghResearch Assistant Professor, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University

Christopher GardnerDirector of Nutrition Studies, Stanford Prevention Research Center; Professor of Medicine, Stanford University

Bruce Y. Lee, Director, Global Obesity Prevention Center, Johns Hopkins; Bloomberg School of Public Health

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/media-library/event/1546

Direct download: 10_16_15_WA15_Changing_Diet.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 9:40am PDT

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