Latest Interviews

Putin's games with the West

Putin, Garry Kasparov

Former chess grandmaster and exiled activist Garry Kasparov analyzes Vladimir Putin's geopolitical strategy as a deceptive game of poker rather than transparent chess, detailing how Western inaction during conflicts in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria has repeatedly emboldened the Russian leader. Kasparov critiques the failure of past engagement policies and argues that the West must now shift toward a rigorous strategy of isolation and deterrence to impose long-term strategic losses on Russia. He proposes concrete countermeasures including economic sanctions, visa restrictions, and asset seizures to counter Putin's use of blackmail and secrecy.

Can conservation save our ocean?

Patricia Gandolfo

Conservation initiatives ranging from the armed enforcement efforts by Sea Shepherd in Mexico's Gulf of California to community-led recovery in Cabo Pulmo and Madagascar demonstrate that locally managed marine areas can reverse biomass loss and boost local incomes. These regional successes are being scaled globally through satellite technology and port state controls, which track illegal fishing vessels to disrupt supply chains and secure the $23 billion annual economic value lost to overfishing. Despite these advancements, experts warn that current ocean protection covers only 3.6% of the global sea, necessitating urgent action to achieve the 30% target by 2030 and prevent irreversible ecological collapse.

Can horse taming prevent reoffending?

Anthony Garrison, Toby

The Wild Mustang rehabilitation program at Arizona State Prison pairs inmates with wild horses to manage overpopulated herds while teaching critical life skills like perseverance and patience. Participants who complete the curriculum have achieved a mere 4% recidivism rate, a drastic reduction from the national average of 77%, by fostering a symbiotic relationship that shifts their focus from self to the needs of the animals. Although the initiative remains resource-intensive and currently serves only a small fraction of the prison population, advocates argue that the resulting social and economic savings from keeping even a few hundred inmates out of prison justify the investment.

How to stop the ivory trade

Dr Sam Wasser

African elephant populations face imminent extinction due to poaching driven by a $4,000 black market for ivory that funds militant groups like Boko Haram and the Lord's Resistance Army. Scientific forensics confirm that recent large seizures consist almost entirely of newly poached tusks originating from East African hotspots, a trend exacerbated by the 2008 decision to allow limited legal sales which blurred the line between legitimate and illegal stockpiles. While the United States and China have recently implemented near-total or complete bans to stifle demand and lower prices, conservationists argue that closing remaining legal markets, such as those in Britain, is essential to fully eliminate the illicit trade's supply chain.

How did Kosovo become a country?

Slobodan Milosevic, Petric Salimi

Following a brutal 1999 NATO intervention triggered by Serbian crackdowns and the Racak massacre, Kosovo declared independence in 2008 to establish a fragile democracy with a 33% unemployment rate. The nation remains deeply divided along ethnic lines as tens of thousands of Serbs fled, while the remaining minority continues to reject statehood and align with Belgrade. Despite these persistent tensions, both Kosovo and Serbia are pursuing European Union membership, recognizing that resolving their shared violent history is a prerequisite for regional integration.

Winter sports are facing many challenges. Can they survive?

Rising temperatures and shifting consumer preferences are driving a decline in traditional European winter sports markets, threatening resorts that rely heavily on natural snow. In response, the industry is pivoting toward energy-intensive artificial snowmaking and seeking growth in Asia, where markets in China and South Korea are expanding despite their own climate challenges. This adaptation strategy aims to preserve mountain economies and secure future participation, though it risks increasing costs for consumers and creating a feedback loop that further accelerates environmental degradation.

Wooden skyscrapers could be the future for cities

Andrew

Amidst a projected global population of 10 billion, architects are replacing carbon-intensive concrete and steel with Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) to construct sustainable high-rises that can reduce carbon footprints by up to 75%. While firms like Witherington have already delivered over 55-meter wooden structures using this fire-resistant material, researchers are now conceptualizing the 300-meter Oakwood Tower to push current height limits significantly further. This architectural shift relies on prefabrication to lower costs and public education to dispel safety myths, positioning timber as a viable alternative for future dense urban living.

Bassem Youssef: Why we should laugh at leaders

Bassem Youssef, KAL

Former heart surgeon Dr. Bassem Youssef transformed Egyptian media by launching the satirical program *Al-Bernameg*, which reached 30 million viewers and critiqued the hypocrisy of the state during the Arab Spring. As the political landscape shifted from the ousting of Hosni Mubarak to the military coup led by General Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi, Youssef faced escalating state censorship, including broadcast jamming and arrests, which ultimately forced his show off the air in 2014. Now established in the United States, Youssef's legacy endures as a catalyst for breaking decades of silence on political discourse in Egypt, with his work demonstrating the inherent link between satire and genuine freedom of expression.

Welcome to the startup jungle

Janos Amstutz, Sandro, Isabel, Vinicius Guzmão, Chris Haley, Corrie Vu

Entrepreneurs in the UK and Brazil navigate a high-risk environment where intense competition and a scarcity of venture capital force rapid pivots, as exemplified by HoloMe founder Janos Amstutz securing commercial traction through strategic partnerships after failing to secure immediate investment. Simultaneously, the Medroom team in Brazil overcame a last-minute technical crisis to successfully demonstrate their VR medical training tool to major university partners, proving the viability of their solution for reducing patient errors. These divergent case studies highlight how founders must combine technical iteration, market validation, and sheer determination to survive the transition from self-funded prototypes to commercially sustainable businesses.

Returning ISIS fighters: How should governments deal with them?

James Mattis, Usama Hasan, Bashar al-Assad, Vera Mironova

With the territorial collapse of the Caliphate, approximately 6,000 European nationals have returned from Syria, creating urgent security challenges for Western governments that must balance due process against the high risks of prison-based radicalization and unmonitored reintegration. While nations like the United Kingdom and France utilize citizenship deprivation and incarceration, pilot programs in Denmark attempt to mitigate threat levels through rehabilitation and social support, a strategy critics argue lacks sufficient evidence given the severe potential for lone-wolf atrocities. Governments now face a resource-constrained dilemma in allocating limited surveillance manpower to specific high-risk individuals versus preparing for a strategic shift by ISIS toward increased global terrorism.

The Balfour Declaration's impact, 100 years on

Jeremy Berkovits, Ahmad Shakarneh, Ahmed Shikane

The 1917 Balfour Declaration established a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine while promising to protect the rights of existing non-Jewish communities, yet British policy reversals and subsequent conflicts failed to satisfy either side. Following the 1948 establishment of Israel and the 1949 armistice, the resulting displacement of 700,000 Palestinians, known as the Nakba, initiated a century of wars, occupation, and diplomatic impasses. Despite the coexistence efforts of dual-national staff at the American Colony Hotel, the Declaration's original promise remains unfulfilled for Palestinians, leaving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict intractable with no Palestinian state established.

Facial recognition technology will change the way we live

In 2018, advancements in machine learning and the integration of biometrics into consumer smartphones propelled facial recognition from niche development to mainstream adoption. While commercial applications expanded globally from tracking retail habits in the West to managing a 700 million-person database in China, researchers warned that the technology's ability to covertly identify individuals and infer personal attributes poses significant threats to privacy and civil liberties. Consequently, the year emerged as a critical juncture for establishing regulatory frameworks to balance security benefits against the risks of non-consensual surveillance.

Transforming cities with technology

Fabio Duarte, Caitlin Dolkaert, Nick Mokua

With global urbanization driving 900 million people into slums and cities consuming three-quarters of world energy, the smart city sector is surging toward a $1.5 trillion valuation by leveraging real-time data networks. Innovators in Seoul, Nairobi, and Boston demonstrate this shift by deploying integrated sensor systems to optimize transportation, coordinate emergency services, and detect public health crises through sewage and infrastructure monitoring. These initiatives prioritize using data to "make people smarter," directly addressing affordability, traffic gridlock, and opioid surges without relying solely on hardware deployment.

Electric cars will come of age in 2018

The 2018 automotive landscape marked a global tipping point where electric vehicle costs fell below those of fossil fuel models, driven by halved battery prices, doubled driving ranges, and government mandates from nations like Britain and France to ban internal combustion engines by 2040. China's dominance in production and sales, combined with corporate commitments to fully electrify fleets, aims to disrupt global oil demand while introducing ethical supply chain challenges regarding cobalt extraction in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Experts characterize this transition as an inevitable momentum that will eventually phase out the 1880s-era internal combustion engine, despite the trillions of dollars required to upgrade power grids and stabilize regions reliant on oil revenue.

The Impact Investing Summit

Matthew Bishop, Lisa Ashford, Mark Campanale, Mark Goldring, Lutfey Siddiqi, Matthew Spencer, Tristram Stewart, Rod Schwartz, Arthur Wood, Mel Tam

In an Oxford-style debate regarding the primary agent for climate action, Lisa Ashford and Mark Campanali argued that investors and bankers can bypass political inertia to drive rapid decarbonization, while Matthew Spencer and colleagues contended that social movements and government policy are essential to establish the regulatory frameworks that make green investment viable. Despite pro-market arguments citing market failures and capital efficiency, the opposition team successfully countered by highlighting historical precedents where moral pressure and state intervention preceded financial shifts. Ultimately, the side opposing the motion won by persuading the audience to view political and social activism as the necessary "generals" that guide the "cavalry" of private capital.