On Shifting Ground

With record unemployment, increasing income inequality and soaring poverty, it’s hard to escape the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, but there is one group of people that have fared well. The world’s billionaires are 27% richer than they were last year. As of July, their wealth has soared to a record high of $10.2 trillion. In the absence of a strong social safety net --  these are the people our society turns to for help. But is this philanthropy model working?  For his 2018 book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, Anand Giridharadas spent three years embedded with the donor class. He found that many of the same people who are trying to save the planet, are actually responsible for making it worse, but he’s hopeful that our society is poised to turn a corner after 2020. “And so I think about this year as being obviously just one of unendurable pain for so many people, of a tremendous amount of loss. You know, we're getting to the level of one in a thousand Americans no longer being with us at the end of this year because of COVID alone. And yet also I think there is a way in which we're going to look back on this moment as generating not 2020 hindsight, but 2020 foresight where we might look back on this year as the year that freed us of certain illusions and, and compelled us to, to choose a different way. And what I hope is we're going to come out of this time exuberant, joyful, ready to celebrate, ready to enjoy physical space together again, but also politically galvanized to build the next chapter of the American story, because this one, this story is done.This chapter is bankrupted itself. We have learned very clearly from this year. And from these years that we have not been living, right. We just have not been living right. Our society was designed wrong and the immense pain and the immense loss of this year only confirms that. And so my hope is that we come out of this with an appetite, well, to enjoy, to celebrate, to live again fully but also to transform this country.”

 

Guest: 

Anand Giridharadas, Author and publisher of The.Ink

Host:

Markos Kounalakis, Visiting fellow, Hoover Institution 

 

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Direct download: 12_28_20_Anand_Giridharadas.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 10:12pm PDT

When the World Food Program was awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, executive director David Beasley warned that “famine is at humanity’s doorstep.”  He said that a “hunger pandemic,” worse than COVID-19, is a real possibility if the world does not address the problem. Hunger is not new, but the coronavirus pandemic and global recession has thrown millions of people into poverty. The good news is that there is enough food to feed everyone on earth; it’s just not always distributed fairly and affordably. Famines are man-made political problems and we have the power to end them. This week we’re looking at how to solve food insecurity around the world and right here in the United States. We’ll hear from nonprofit leaders working on the frontlines and a doctor in Yemen who treats malnourished children. 

 

Guests: 

Dr. Aida Alsadeeq, assistant professor at the University of Aden and former supervisor at the pediatric malnutrition ward at Aden's Al-Sadaqa Hospital 

Skye Fitzgerald, Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker and director of The Hunger Ward

Reverend Eugene Cho, President and CEO of Bread for the World and the Bread Institute

Laura Melo, Country Director at United Nations World Food Programme - WFP, Guatemala

 

If you appreciate this episode and want to support the work we do, please consider making a donation to World Affairs. We cannot do this work without your help. Thank you.​

Direct download: 12_21_20_World_Hunger.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 9:36pm PDT

Now that the process is beginning for distribution of a vaccine for COVID-19  -- and another is close behind -- it seems as though ending the pandemic is finally in sight. But with the world’s wealthy countries hoarding billions of vaccine doses, the majority of people living in developing countries likely won’t get vaccinated in more than a year.

Dr. Larry Brilliant, best known for eradicating Smallpox, says that’s a problem because the virus “will continue to ping pong back and forth among nations.” “We cannot solve the COVID problem nationally. This is really a time for global cooperation.” He and Dr. Peter Hotez, who is part of a team developing a low-cost COVID vaccine for global distribution, join Ray Suarez to discuss how we will be able to vaccinate our way out of the pandemic.

 

Guests: 

Dr. Larry Brilliant, MD, PhD, epidemiologist and CEO of Pandefense 

Dr. Peter Hotez,  MD, PhD, epidemiologist and author of Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-science

 

If you appreciate this episode and want to support the work we do, please consider making a donation to World Affairs. We cannot do this work without your help. Thank you.​

Direct download: 12_14_20_Brilliant_Hotez_Vaccines.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 5:29pm PDT

At 60 million people and counting, Latinos are the largest minority group in the United States. But if the 2020 election taught us anything, it’s that our political establishment does not understand this community, which is undergoing a transformation. Young Latinos across the country are redefining their identities, pushing boundaries, and awakening politically in powerful and surprising ways. Many of them are coming together in solidarity under the term "Latinx." Join co-host Ray Suarez and VICE's Paola Ramos for a conversation on how communities from New York to Texas and California are defining the controversial term "Latinx," and what it means to be Latino and American.

 

Guests: 

Paola Ramos, journalist and author of  Finding Latinx: In search of The Voices Redefining Latino Identity

Ray Suarez, co-host of WorldAffairs and author of Latino Americans: The 500 Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation

 

If you appreciate this episode and want to support the work we do, please consider making a donation to World Affairs. We cannot do this work without your help. Thank you.​

Direct download: 12_07_20_Redefining_Latino_Identity.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 2:00am PDT

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