Carnegie Council Audio Podcast

For our final Women's History Month podcast, The Doorstep launches a special live event series traveling across the country over the next year. In collaboration with Marymount Manhattan College and their Social Justice Academy: Great Migrations, co-host Tatiana Serafin speaks with Sana Mustafa, CEO of Asylum Access, about the need to re-frame our discussion about forcibly displaced persons starting with understanding how language shapes rights. In 2022, over 100 million people suffered displacement with greatly divergent access to rights and resources. What more can we do to build intersectional alliances and bring refugees into decision-making? How can we counter decades of structural bias and bring more accountability to states and NGOs? What can we do at a local level local to increase the pace of change? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Climate tipping points are points of no return, beyond which the Earth's systems would reorganize beyond the capacity of socioeconomic and ecological systems to adapt, warns the OECD's Jo Tyndall, in a new C2GTalk. Policymakers need to do more to address these risks now, including through support for carbon dioxide removal technologies, accounting for both opportunities and challenges. While solar radiation modification is not currently feasible, more research is needed. Jo Tyndall is director of the Environment Directorate at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) where she oversees the implementation of the Directorate’s program of work, covering a broad range of environmental issues, including: green growth, climate change, biodiversity, quality of ecosystems, eco-innovation, circular economy, and resource productivity. Click here for more C2GTalk podcasts.

In the second conversation of our Women's History Month podcast series, Kristina Lunz, co-CEO and co-founder of the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss the need for a new mindset in foreign policy decision-making that advances global gender equality. To date, 11 countries have adopted a feminist foreign policy to challenge legacy power hierarchies and gendered institutions, with Germany leading the way. What can other states, including the U.S., learn from their example? What challenges remain to global acceptance of a new way of framing foreign policy debates? How can civil society alliances promote new narratives that close the global gender gap? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this first episode, host Hilary Sutcliffe explores . . . our freedom to think from another angle. We might feel that what goes on in our heads remains in our heads, but international human rights lawyer Susie Alegre explores the surprising ways that our innermost thoughts are being exposed and manipulated through the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI). She explains how what is often seen as the most fundamental human right, our freedom of thought, is being eroded; what this means in practice, and what we can do to protect what goes on in our minds. Alegre is the author of an award-winning book, Freedom to Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate Our Minds. You can read her article "Freedom of Thought is a Human Right" in Wired's "World in 2023" issue or browse her extensive broadcasting and writing on this subject on her website.

In this new Carnegie Council podcast series, Hilary Sutcliffe, a member of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality (AIEI) Board of Advisors, explores fresh perspectives from some of today's most innovative thinkers who challenge the foundational understanding of some familiar concepts—such as human nature, democracy, capitalism, innovation, regulation—and bring them to you . . . from another angle. In this introduction to the podcast, Sutcliffe, along with AIEI co-directors Anja Kaspersen and Wendell Wallach, discuss the series and its aspiration to challenge our basic assumptions and open up new possibilities and different ways of responding to the pressing issues or our age. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

For Women's History Month, The Doorstep is highlighting steps being taken for greater global gender equality—a proposition that United Nations Secretary General António Guterres recently stated is "300 years away." What can societies do to increase the pace of change? The first lady of Iceland, author and entrepreneur Eliza Reid, joins co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to speak about Iceland's successes in attaining equality for all women and what cultural and policy frameworks can be exported to other countries in order to promote gender equality. What does "infrastructure for families" (ascribed to Senator Elizabeth Warren) mean on the ground? What challenges are most pressing? How can the media be a better "window on the world"?

Now is the moment to extend human rights to encompass cognitive rights proposes Duke Law School's Professor Nita A. Farahany in her just-published book The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Clearly in the Age of Neurotechnologies. She introduces the vast array of devices already deployed that can sample various forms of brain activity. In her book and in this far-reaching Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast with Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow Wendell Wallach, Farahany outlines how even limited cognitive information collected by neurotechnologies can be combined with other data to enhance self-understanding or manipulate your attitudes or state of mind. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

New thinking is needed to ensure high-quality nature-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) offers genuine and long-lasting benefits to the climate and biodiversity, says Amy Luers, global director for sustainability science at Microsoft Corporation during a C2GTalk. Large-scale removal through CDR technologies lies further ahead, although most of the basic technologies already likely exist. While Luers is not in favor of pursuing solar radiation modification, she says "I am very much in favor of enhancing our understanding of the risks and opportunities it presents, the governance challenges, and how decisions are made around this." For more, please go to C2G's website.

At the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in December, President Joe Biden signaled that "Africa's success is the world's success" and promised visits by his senior leadership, including most recently First Lady Jill Biden, who traveled to Namibia and Kenya on a five-day trip. With 1.4 billion people, 43 percent living in urban centers, and a median age of 19, Africa is host to rising investment, growing private wealth and innovative tech and service sectors. The New School’s Sean Jacobs, founder and editor of Africa is a Country, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to break down what is happening on the ground and the importance of the U.S. re-engaging Africa as the role of BRICS is re-imagined over the next decade. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In the last few years, democracies around the world have experienced dangerous brushes with authoritarianism. Countries such as the U.S., Brazil, and Sri Lanka saw their institutions bend but not break under the weight of illiberal forces. This virtual panel builds upon a special roundtable of essays on healing and reimagining liberal constitutional democracy published in the most recent issue of Ethics & International Affairs, the quarterly journal of Carnegie Council. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Building on a recent article from Anja Kaspersen and Wendell Wallach, Chatham House's Kate Jones says in this Ethics Article that human rights need to be central to a reset of technology and artificial intelligence governance. To read this full article, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Alex S. Vindman, former director for European affairs at the National Security Council, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to assess how the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war has affected U.S. global and domestic priorities. Will President Biden's historic visit to Ukraine's capital and meeting with President Zelenskyy further strengthen the Western alliance and consolidate U.S. policy towards Ukraine? What more can Ukraine expect from its allies? And in the end, what does victory for Ukraine—and the U.S.—look like? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

With India now at helm of the G20 and a summit set for New Delhi in September, the South Asian nation is stepping up its star power on the international stage. Harvard Business School's Prof. Tarun Khanna, also director of Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, speaks with Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin about why the world needs to recognize this Indian moment—and how this time it will stick. Khanna also explores American's doorstep connection to India and why this will continue to be a source of strength in the U.S.-India relationship. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Now that HIMAR and Patriot missiles as well as Leopard and Abrams tanks are on the way to Ukraine, NATO unity is at a high point, says Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal in this Ethics Article. But amid this historic and heroic resolve, and Russia's catastrophic war of aggression, something is missing—a concurrent offensive of diplomacy. To read the article, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this AIEI podcast Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow Wendell Wallach and Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen are joined by Ambassador Amandeep Singh Gill, UN Secretary-General Guterres' envoy on technology. During this engrossing conversation, they cover some of the most critical political, security, technical and ethical issues in the current, global discourse on technology governance and the need for new normative frameworks to mitigate against harmful technological applications and secure what the UN refers to as "Digital Commons." Gill also shares his unique insights from a long career as a multilateral diplomat and leader in digital governance and arms control. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Research on solar radiation modification is needed, especially in the Global South, to understand whether it could be an option for reducing climate risk, says University of São Paulo's Professor Paulo Artaxo during a C2GTalk. The planet is currently headed for 3°C global warming, yet the world is still not doing enough to phase out fossil fuels and net zero goals look extremely difficult to achieve. Paulo Artaxo is a professor at the Institute of Physics at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He is a member of the IPCC, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC), the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), and he is vice president of the Academy of Sciences of the State of São Paulo (ACIESP). For more, please go to C2G's website.

What does it mean precisely when German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock says that the Euro-Atlantic community finds itself at "war” with Russia in Ukraine. In this Ethics Article, Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev discusses the technicalities of the West sending aid to Ukraine, the ever-growing risk of escalation, and the oddities of a conflict where all sides are economically connected. To read the article, go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Leading up to the one-year anniversary of Russia's second invasion of Ukraine, Rachel Ziemba, head of Ziemba Insights and adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, returns to The Doorstep to discuss how the balance of power has shifted across the globe with co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin. How has Russia managed to work sanctions to its advantage and grow its economy in 2022 according to the recent data from the IMF? Which countries are emerging as strategic partners with new supply routes? And if we can't we quit Russia, what does that mean for ending the war in Ukraine? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

How can we ensure that the technologies currently being developed are used for the common good, rather than for the benefit of a select few? In this Ethics Article, Senior Fellows Anja Kaspersen and Wendell Wallach write that for effective technology governance to truly materialize, a systemic reset directed at improving the human condition is required. To read the article, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

C2G is pleased to announce the launch of its first youth C2GDiscuss, which explores youth perspectives on solar radiation modification (SRM) and its governance in the face of the increasing likelihood that global warming temporarily exceeds (overshoots) the 1.5-2C Paris Agreement limits. Moderated by C2G’s Executive Director Janos Pasztor, a diverse all-youth panel of speakers discuss their perspectives about the risk of overshooting 1.5-2C or even higher levels of global warming and whether they think young people are aware of SRM and the governance challenges it raises. Speakers included: Ineza Grace, global coordinator of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition and CEO of The Green Protector; Lydia Dai, student in environmental sciences at University College London, Adaptation Working Group facilitator of YOUNGO and regional youth focal point of the United International Federation of Youth (UN1FY); and, John Ferguson, U.S. 2023 Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China For more, please go to