Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

Amy Israel is the global health thought leadership and policy director for the health and pharmaceutical company, Lilly. In that role, she's recently launched a new pilot project to combat high rates of diabetes in three neigbourhoods of the city of Indianapolis, Indiana. But this is a global health story, because the pilot project is using a model for health intervention that was pioneered in the developing world. This is often called the community health worker model, and global health nerds will be familiar with its basic outlines. But in short, it is the idea of training people of the community to be first points of contact between their neighbors and the health care system. In our conversation, Amy discusses how the pilot project will work with three poorer neighborhoods of Indianapolis, where rates of diabetes are exponentially higher than in wealthier parts of the city and state. We discuss the link between diabetes and poverty and also, more broadly, how health ideas created in the developing world are being applied here in the United States.

Kristine McDivitt Tompkins made history earlier this year when she completed what is said to be the largest ever transfer of land from a private entity to a government. In a ceremony in Chile with President Michelle Bachelet at her side, Kristine McDivitt Tompkins formally handed over 1 million acres of land of while President Bachelet designated 9 million more acres to create vast new national parks. This created areas of protected wilderness about the size of Switzerland. That ceremony was the culmination of decades of work by Kristine and her late husband Doug Tompkins. Kristine was the longtime CEO of the outdoor apparel company Patagonia. Doug, who died in a kayaking accident in 2015, was the co-founder of the clothing companies North Face and Espirit. Together, the created the non-profit Tompkins Conservation. In this conversation, Kristine Tompkins discusses the origins of her work as a conversationist and as a pioneer of corporate social responsibility. She also describes the process of creating wilderness areas in partnerships with governments. We caught up while she was in New York to receive an award from the United Nations Environment Program.

The ebola outbreak ongoing the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most severe ebola outbreak since the 2014 calamity in west Africa that killed over 11,000 people. Citing figures about this outbreak is a bit tricky because the situation remains extremely fluid. By the last week of May, there a have been over 20 deaths linked to this outbreak and over 50 suspected cases. But by the time you are listening to this that will inevitably change. So what I wanted to do with this episode is to offer you some broader context for understanding this particular outbreak and also explore how the international response to this outbreak is so profoundly different from the response back in 2014. I could have no better person discuss outbreak than my guest today Laurie Garret. She is a global health expert, pulitzer prize winning journalist and former fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. We kick off discussing the origins of this new outbreak. We then have a longer conversation examining how the response to this outbreak is so profoundly different than the devastating outbreak in West Africa four years ago. This conversation, I think provides you important context for understanding this ongoing emergency in the DRC and how it may evolve.

I was a bit skeptical when my guest today told me that every person on the planet, in any 24 hour period, is somehow impacted by the work of the UN and other international entities in Geneva. Still, Michael Møller would be in a position to know. He is the Director General of the UN Office in Geneva, which makes him a very senior UN official. And I must say, he was convincing. As the director general explains, the mundane routines of life -- everything from brushing my teeth in morning to calling my grandmother in Montreal -- is touched by work done in Geneva. We also discuss the work of the UN Conference on Disarmament, of which Moller is the titular hear. I will be seeing Michael Møller in Stockholm next week where he will be delivering a keynote address to the New Shape Forum. This is a conference and ideas festival convened by the Global Challenges Foundation. We kick off this conversation discussing what Michael Møller is looking forward to from the New Shape Forum and also he previews some of the remarks he'll be delivering at his keynote address. This episode is presented in partnership with the Global Challenges Foundation, whose aim is to contribute to reducing the main global problems and risks that threaten humanity. Last year, the Global Challenges Foundation held an open call to find new models of global cooperation better capable of handling the most pressing global risks. In May this year at the New Shape Forum in Stockholm, the top proposals will be presented publicly and further refined through discussions with key thought leaders and experts.

For this episode, I wanted to explore a different way to understand the crisis in Yemen. Yemen has two main ports, Hodeidah to the north, on the Red Sea and Aden to the south, on the Gulf of Aden. Of these two ports, Hodeidah is by far the bigger one. But Hodeidah is under the control of forces aligned with the Houthi rebels. Aden is controlled by forces aligned with the internationally recognized government of Yemen -- a government that is militarily backed by a Saudi-led coalition. Both the politics and the basic logistics of getting goods into these two ports offers key insights into the dynamics of the conflict in Yemen and why Yemen is experiencing such a profound humanitarian crisis--indeed it is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. My guest today, Scott Paul is the humanitarian policy lead at Oxfam America. He recently returned from a fact finding trip to the Port of Aden and some of its surrounding towns. He wrote about that experience in a piece on the website Just Security, which I will post a link to on the website.

It's been a tumultuous week in Israel and Palestine. On the same day that the United States formally opened its embassy in Jerusalem, dozens of Palestinians were shot to death by Israeli soldiers along the border between Gaza and Israel. That incident along the border fence was part of a broader Palestinian protest movement that has gained steam in recent months. The movement is known as the Great Return March. In it, Gazan protesters approach and seek to breach the border fence that separates Gaza from Israel -- ostensibly to return to lands that were expropriated by Israel during the country's founding as a jewish state. Clashes have ensued, including the shooting deaths of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers. On the line with me to help put this latest protest movement in context is Yousef Munuyyer. Yousef brings a unique perspective to this issue. He is the executive director of the US Campaign Palestinian rights. He is also and Israeli citizen, and American citizen and a Palestinian. Yousef explains why this protest movement is unique and resonates deeply beyond Gaza. We also discuss the complex issue of the the "Right to Return" before turning to a conversation about how the Israel-Palestine issue is interpreted through domestic American politics. This conversation is a helpful explanation of what these Gaza protests are all about--and how they may evolve.

No journalist covered the ins and outs of the negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal as closely as Laura Rozen. She is a reporter with the middle east news website Al Monitor and in the negotiations that lead up to the July 2015 deal, her reporting and high volume Twitter feed were an essential resource to anyone wanted to know the pulse of these negotiations. Now that the pulse may be turning to a flatline after Donald Trump's announcement that the United States is withdrawing from the nuclear deal, I wanted to reach out to Laura to get a sense of what happened and what comes next? In this conversation we discuss the demise of the JCPOA, how Iran and Europe are reacting to this development and how diplomacy on this issue may evolve. This was not terribly unsurprising that the Trump administration would pull out of the agreement. But it is still a shock to the international system for reasons that Laura and I discuss.

Dr. Tom Frieden lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2009 to 2017. He now has a new role: President and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies. And in this role he has an audacious goal: to save 100 million lives. In our conversation, Dr. Frieden explains why he believes that he can achieve that goal by focusing on two health issues: cardiovascular disease in the developing work and shoring up our global defenses against pandemics. To those ends, he has some major backers including the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies. In this episode, Dr. Frieden discusses these two issues in depth and some strategies his organization is using to confront them. He also explains why, of all the issues in global health, he chose to focus on these two.

My guest today, Elizabeth Economy, is the author of the new book The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State. The book examines the transformative changes ongoing in China today under the leadership of Xi Jinping. Xi Jingping has consolidated power in a fairly unprecedented way, and as Elizabeth Economy explains he is fundamentally shifting China's domestic and foreign policies. We spend the bulk of our conversation focusing on Chinese foreign policy, including China's massive foreign development program called the Belt and Road initiative, it's attempt to create an ostensible rival to the World Bank and its assertive policies in the South China Sea. This is a great conversation about a newly emerging force in international affairs.

In the hierarchy of the State Department the Secretary of State, of course, sits on top. Below the Secretary of State is the Deputy Secretary of State and below the Deputy Secretary is the number three post at the state department, the Under-secretary of State for Political Affairs. According to a recent report in Bloomberg by the journalist Nick Wadhams, Paula Dobriansky has be tapped to serve in that number 3 spot. Wadhams cites three sources "familiar with the decision," though neither Dobriansky nor the white house have commented at time I'm recording this. If, indeed, Paula Dobriansky becomes the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs she will be the highest ranking official in the Trump administration who has appeared on this very podcast, so I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit my conversation with her. We spoke in June 2015. At the time, Dobriansky was at Harvard having having served in the George W. Bush administration as Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs. In our conversation, we spend a good deal of time discussing her background, her academic interests, and her career serving in four administrations. She is of Ukrainian descent and entered college interested in studying the Soviet Union. She earned her PHD writing about Soviet foreign policy and was a well regarded Sovietologist and later Russia expert. We kicked off discussing what at the time was an escalating situation in Ukraine before having a longer conversation about her career. What I find interesting looking back at this interview in the context of her possibly joining the Trump administration is that she comes from a fairly traditional Republican foreign policy background. She's consistently opposed Russian aggression and has embraced the value of spreading democracy and human rights as in the national interests of the United States. She could probably be fairly considered to a neo-conservative. She certainly is very thoughtful and was very gracious with this interview.