Economist Radio

America’s withdrawal from northern Syria and the subsequent Turkish invasion have overturned the power balance in the region, displacing tens of thousands of America’s former allies, the Kurds. Ash Carter helped build that alliance as US secretary of defence. John Prideaux, The Economist’s US editor, asks him how America’s actions in Syria will affect its ability to deal with future threats. Also, why Secretary Carter believes some American companies are too quick to abandon American values....

Britain’s prime minister Boris Johnson has a newly struck European Union divorce deal in hand. He has defied the expectations of many, but he still faces a tricky vote in Britain’s parliament. Turkey’s pummelling of the Syrian border area will pause for five days, but the decline of America’s role and image in the region has not been halted. And the burgeoning business of therapeutic psychedelics. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, Donald Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds is a blow to America’s credibility. (09:40) The proposed Brexit agreement is different to anything advertised during the referendum. (14:40) And the Japanese royal family has little room to make itself more relevant. Zanny Minton Beddoes hosts For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Our journalists interview Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, about his efforts to clean up his country and his African National Congress party. He’s the right man for the job, but the clock is ticking. The markets are rife with funds run by computers, but handing decisions to the machines comes with plenty of risk. And how political polarisation is driving a new dictionary of discourtesy. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Over the past two decades the Global Fund has fought the spread of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, but now many in the field fear its progress is under threat. The founder and CEO of language-learning app Duolingo, Luis von Ahn, on his plans to help the 750m illiterate adults in the world learn to read. And, why net-zero carbon emissions targets are measuring the wrong thing. Kenneth Cukier hosts For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Amid the growing disquiet in Hong Kong are a few survivors of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. These once-moderate voices are changing their minds about whether the protesters should keep provoking the Chinese government. Even as a currency crisis unfolds, Lebanon’s central bank is keeping things stable—so far. The bank has a solid history, in part because of one man who guarded a pile of Ottoman gold. And an effort to wrangle the dialects of the Canadian Arctic. For information...

What causes poverty? Rachana Shanbhogue interviews this year’s winners of the Nobel prize for economics—Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer. Their pioneering work has changed the understanding of one of the hardest problems in economics: why do some countries grow rich while others stay poor? Plus, Europe’s Nordic banks are embroiled in money-laundering scandals. What do regulators need to do to restore confidence? For information regarding your data privacy, visit...

Twelve candidates take to the stage again tonight, with two clear front-runners. We ask how the winnowing field reflects the mood of the party. We also examine an unlikely candidate in a lesser-watched race: that for the Republican nomination. And, why the shattering of the two-hour-marathon mark has much to do with snazzy footwear. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Turkey’s violent strikes on north-eastern Syria came as swiftly as America’s withdrawal. The overwhelmed Kurds, once America’s staunch allies against Islamic State, now want protection from Syria’s Russian-backed forces. “Microfinance” experiments are intended to alleviate poverty, but in Sri Lanka one trial has gone badly wrong. And, why China’s 30m truckers aren’t the folk heroes they might be elsewhere. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

In his trilogy of documentaries the filmmaker Asif Kapadia rejected the traditional tools of the trade. Instead, he painstakingly reconstructed the lives of Formula One champion Ayrton Senna, acclaimed singer Amy Winehouse and legendary footballer Diego Maradona almost entirely from archival footage. Anne McElvoy asks Kapadia whether this forensic approach reaches closer to the real person behind the myth. They talk about the difficulty of interviewing a champion of deceit and whether it...

It is at once a story of post-communist success and of populist threats to the rule of law by the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party. What direction will Poles choose for their country? Gay rights are few and far between in China, but couples have found protection in a little loophole in guardianship law. And, how Elvis Presley’s last flash in Las Vegas changed the city forever. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, the strange new rules of the world economy. (9:40) A long-feared clash between Turkey and Syria’s Kurds will have consequences across the Middle East. (17:00) And, a tale of adventure in a library of ice For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

The White House is stonewalling the impeachment inquiry. Could that hinder the Democrats’ ability to build a strong public case? We look at this year’s crop of Nobel prizes in the sciences and ask why, once again, all the winners are men. And, Japan’s government-led efforts to match lonely urbanites with rural folk. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Artificial intelligence—the technique of using data and algorithms to make decisions as well as (or better) than humans—is on track to become a mainstream technology, on a par with electricity or computing. But in order to flourish it needs to overcome several challenges. From privacy and market concentration, to safety and explainability. In this week’s show Kenneth Cukier speaks to some of the leading experts in the field about the benefits and risks of AI, and why it is so important that...

Two months after India’s Hindu-nationalist government stripped the state of Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomy, 7m people are still in limbo. How will it end? Could America’s angrily partisan politics be explained by a rise in loneliness? We visit the Midwest to find out. And, companies are going big on “financial wellness” initiatives for their employees. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Our economics editor, Henry Curr, explores why the global economy is behaving weirdly and how governments and central banks should respond. Also, can freer trade help address climate change? The Economist’s editor-in-chief, Zanny Minton-Beddoes, asks Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, Cecilia Malmström, the EU’s trade commissioner, Michael Corbat, CEO of Citigroup, and Tidjane Thiam, CEO of Credit Suisse, at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum. And, how the economics of...

The president’s sudden talk of departure from a contested strip of the Turkey-Syria border betrays the Kurds who helped beat back Islamic State—and risks throwing the region into chaos. A look at the cashew industry in Mozambique reveals the tricky trade-offs between agriculture and development. And, an unusual opera outlining the life and letters of birth-control pioneer Marie Stopes. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Chinese and American trade negotiators will again be trying to avoid more eye-watering tariffs this week; meanwhile a years-long dispute with the European Union has sparked yet more levies. Where does it all end? We describe the recent “quantum supremacy” result, and what it realistically means for computing’s future. And, the coming submersion of 12,000 years of human history in Turkey. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Britain’s relationship with Europe dominated the last years of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. Anne McElvoy asks Charles Moore, a Conservative columnist and her authorised biographer, whether the roots of Brexit can be traced back to the Iron Lady’s fierce tussles over British sovereignty. They talk about the machinations of her inner circle during her final years in power and her pioneering climate advocacy. Also, the “nightmare” of managing Boris Johnson, and what really happened at those...

A phone call between the presidents has sparked an impeachment inquiry in America. But how do the people of Ukraine view the kerfuffle? Massive student protests put Indonesia’s president in a bind, balancing his programme of reforms and growth against uncomfortable social pressures. And, a revealing read through the Democratic presidential contenders’ autobiographies. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy