Carnegie Council Podcasts

Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal and host Alex Woodson discuss the ethical failures of the first 18 months of Trump's presidency, but also why they both see hope for the future. In the face of the daily assault on basic values, where can Americans look for leadership?

What's the difference between "influence" and "interference" when it comes to China's propaganda operations? How are these efforts structured? War on the Rocks contributing editor Peter Mattis breaks it down in this fascinating conversation. Plus, he warns against "McCarthyism" in regards to Chinese-American relations.

"In both political debates and academic debates on migration the question of class is often missed," says London School of Economics' Lea Ypi. "When we reduce migration to a problem of open-versus-closed borders, of accepting or under what terms we accept or exclude migrants, we forget that borders are and have always been and will continue to be, at least under the current regimes, open for some people and closed for other people."

The July 16 summit and press conference in Helsinki brought the words "treason" and "blackmail" into mainstream conversations about the Trump White House and put an unwanted spotlight back on Ambassador Michael McFaul and other Americans with Russian connections. But the most lasting effects of this meeting could be on America's alliances. Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev looks beyond the emotional and personal aspects of the Trump-Russia story and details why a small Balkan nation has become a test for American foreign policy.

Columbia Journalism School's Mark Hansen, along with his students and "New York Times" journalists, conducted deep, firsthand research into Twitter, buying followers and charting networks, but he was left with even more questions. What does "trending" really mean? How does someone become an influencer, and how is influence wielded? Plus, Hansen describes his innovative art installations, one of which is currently on display at the "New York Times" building in Manhattan.

Today's discussions about immigrants and refugees are focused on the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy on the U.S.-Mexico border and the "migration crisis" in the Mediterranean. Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan explores the history of these debates, what it means to be undocumented in Europe versus the United States, and why many still view immigration through the prisms of terrorism and crime.

"I think it's important to contrast what China is doing with what Russia is doing," says Asia Society's Isaac Stone Fish. "Russia influence operations and Russia influence is much more about sowing chaos, it's about destabilization, it's about making America weaker. China is much more about making China stronger. The United States is a vector and a way for China to become stronger." Elon Musk, Alibaba, and China's internal power structures are also discussed in this wide-ranging talk.

As China's middle class grows, Hollywood is making films with this audience in mind, says the Wilson Center's Robert Daly, previously a producer for the Chinese version of "Sesame Street." How is this different from filmmaking in the World War II and Cold War eras? And why did the Chinese government have a problem with Cookie Monster and Grover?

In this new podcast series, we'll be connecting current events to Carnegie Council resources through conversations with our Senior Fellows. This week, Devin Stewart discusses how his essay defending the Singapore Summit holds up a month later. Plus, he and host Alex Woodson speak about Mike Pompeo's strange and unproductive trip to Pyongyang, what a "peace regime" could look like, and the prospects for a unified Korean Peninsula.

As part of our new Information Warfare podcast series, University of Connecticut historian Alexis Dudden looks at the propaganda efforts coming out of Northeast Asia, with a focus on China's Confucius Institutes at American universities. Is China trying to spread its communist ideology through these centers or just teach its language to college students? Are the U.S. and Japan "guilty" of similar efforts?