Podcasts / Future Discontinuous: Smart Talk with Smart People

Ultra-Processed Foods lie at the heart of a global increase in a variety of chronic and fatal diseases from cancer to Type 2 Diabetes. The food industry has been pouring billions into convincing governments not to regulate these additives which make everything from baby food to burgers addictive, persuading customers to return for more. Rosie Boycott, a highly respected British publisher and journalist, has been studying the politics and science of food since she started farming two decades ago. In a revealing conversation with Eva Konzett and Misha Glenny, Boycott explains why Ultra-Processed Foods are so catastrophic for health and environment, about how the food industry borrowed its lobbying strategy from tobacco, and how we can change our eating habits for the planet to survive.

Rosie Boycott is a member of the House of Lords and has a distinguished career as a journalist, publisher, and author. She served as the editor-in-chief of several British newspapers and co-founded the feminist magazine Spare Rib. Beyond her media career, Boycott is a well-known food activist, specialising in food and environmental politics and legislation. She was also chair of the London Food Board and advised the city's government on sustainable food policy.

The flood of headlines about the war in Israel and Gaza can feel overwhelming. Season two of Future Discontinuous kicks off with an episode examining the current state of the conflict, highlighting geopolitical dynamics and influential players. In conversation with Dahlia Scheindlin, hosts Eva Konzett and Misha Glenny explore Israeli public opinion, Netanyahu’s grip on power, Trump’s agenda for the region, and perspectives of the neighboring countries in the Middle East.
 
Dahlia Scheindlin is a political and strategic consultant, and policy analyst at Century International. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, and other publications. Scheindlin is also the author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled (2023).

It is no news that humanity will have to extract enormous amounts of rare earths and other critical raw materials to move away from carbon-based economies. In episode four of Future Discontinuous, hosts Misha Glenny and Eva Konzett invite Julie Klinger, who studies the geopolitics of resource usage, to discuss the pitfalls of the green energy transition, whether we see the emergence of a new resource colonialism, and why states and mining companies alike are turning their gaze to outer space in the global race for rare minerals.

Julie Klinger is an associate professor of geography and spatial sciences at the University of Delaware. She publishes on rare earth elements, natural resource use, the energy transition, and outer space, and is the author of the award-winning book Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes (Cornell University Press, 2018).

Making sense of the current geopolitical moment is no easy undertaking. In the third episode of Future Discontinuous, hosts Misha Glenny and Eva Konzett invite prolific author, historian, and Russia expert Mark Galeotti on the podcast. Together with their guest, they try to illuminate the murky waters of Russia’s foreign policy, the repercussions of the power shifts in the Middle East on Putin’s strategy, and the broader security implications of Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership.

Mark Galeotti is the director of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence and an Honorary Professor at University College London. A specialist in Russian politics and security, he has worked for the British Foreign Office, headed the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, and studied at Cambridge University and the LSE. A prolific author, he has some 30 books to his credit, most recently Forged in War: A Military History of Russia from its Beginnings to Today (Osprey Bloomsbury, 2024).

In the second episode of Future Discontinuous, hosts Misha Glenny and Eva Konzett are joined by historian Nils Gilman, COO of the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles. Together with their guest, they take a deep dive into the national, the global, and the planetary, and discuss how the outbreak of the Black Death in the 1300s differed from COVID-19, whether a world state could work, and what kind of institutions we need to tackle humanity’s many predicaments in the 21^st century.

Nils Gilman is a historian and currently the Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of the Berggruen Institute, an LA-based think tank developing ideas to shape future institutions. He is the author of Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (2004), Deviant Globalization: Black Market Economy in the 21st Century (2011), and, most recently, Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises (2024).

In the first episode of Future Discontinuous, hosts Eva Konzett and Misha Glenny welcome international relations scholar and Harvard professor Stephen Walt. In a wide-ranging conversation, they discuss the US elections and their implications for the international stage. Against the backdrop of heightened global tensions, what does the second presidency of Donald Trump mean for trade relations with China, Europe’s engagement in Ukraine, and the deepening conflict in the Middle East? Listen in as Walt gives his take on this time of monsters, as Antonio Gramsci has famously termed the moment when the old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born.

Stephen Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. He previously taught at Princeton University and the University of Chicago and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005. Walt is a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, commenting regularly on global affairs. His most recent book is The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy (2018). From September to December 2024, he is a Guest of the Institute at the IWM Vienna.