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New Books in World Affairs

New Books in World Affairs

By: New Books Network
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 Interviews with Scholars of Global Affairs about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairsNew Books Network Social Sciences World
Episodes
  • Can America Still Lead? Foreign Policy in an Age of Division with Joel Rubin

    Can America Still Lead? Foreign Policy in an Age of Division with Joel Rubin
    Nov 21 2025
    What happens when America loses its foreign-policy playbook? RBI acting director Eli Karetny talks with veteran diplomat and policy strategist Joel Rubin about the vacuum of strategic vision shaping U.S. decisions from Venezuela to Ukraine to Gaza. Rubin pulls back the curtain on factional battles inside both parties, the dangers of politicizing diplomacy, and why rebuilding a bipartisan foreign-policy consensus may be critical for American leadership in a volatile world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Can Feminism be African?: A Conversation with Minna Salami

    Can Feminism be African?: A Conversation with Minna Salami
    Nov 20 2025
    Transcript of the interview Minna Salami is a writer, social critic, and thought leader on feminism, knowledge production, and the aesthetics and structures of power. She formerly served as Programme Chair and Senior Fellow at THE NEW INSTITUTE, where she led the Black Feminism and the Polycrisis programme. Her work sits at the intersection of ideas, culture, and systems thinking, with a commitment to making complex theories accessible through books, essays, public speaking, and creative projects. She is the author of Can Feminism Be African? (Harper Collins, 2025) and Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone (Bloomsbury, 2020), which has been translated into multiple languages. Her writing also appears in numerous anthologies and educational publications exploring feminism, African philosophy, media, and cultural criticism. Her work has featured in The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Ideas Letter, Project Syndicate, and The Philosopher, and she has delivered talks at global institutions including TEDx, the Institute of Arts and Ideas, the European Commission, the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, Yale, and Singularity University at NASA. Salami was the creative director of the short film Black Feminism and the Polycrisis, which won the Silver Award for Public Service and Activism at the 2024 Lovie Awards. From 2019 to 2022, she co-directed Activate, an intersectional feminist movement that supported minoritised women in politics and community organising through visibility campaigns, mentoring, and fundraising. The initiative played a key role in shifting narratives and resources toward a more inclusive political landscape in the UK. She has also worked as a Research Associate and Editor at Perspectiva, advised governments on gender equality, developed national school curricula, and curated cultural events at institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Her blog, MsAfropolitan, launched in 2010, has reached over a million readers and remains a platform for exploring feminist and African-centred approaches to contemporary life. Salami is a Full Member of the Club of Rome, a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader, and serves on the advisory boards of the African Feminist Initiative at Penn State University and Public Humanities at Cambridge University Press, as well as the council of the British Royal Institute of Philosophy. Links to References:Apart Together – essay on Leopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire’s radical vision for the world Africa’s Populist Trap for The Ideas Letter The Niger River and the Dearth of History: Deconstructing the Myths of Mungo Park by Ezenwa E. Olumba Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
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    34 mins
  • Carl Benedikt Frey, "How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations" (Princeton UP, 2025)

    Carl Benedikt Frey, "How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations" (Princeton UP, 2025)
    Nov 19 2025
    In How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations (Princeton University Press, 2025), Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world's largest, most advanced economies--the United States and China--have fallen short of expectations. To appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change. By examining key historical moments--from the rise of the steam engine to the dawn of AI--Frey shows why technological shifts have shaped, and sometimes destabilized, entire civilizations. He explores why some leading technological powers of the past--such as Song China, the Dutch Republic, and Victorian Britain--ultimately lost their innovative edge, why some modern nations such as Japan had periods of rapid growth followed by stagnation, and why planned economies like the Soviet Union collapsed after brief surges of progress. Frey uncovers a recurring tension in history: while decentralization fosters the exploration of new technologies, bureaucracy is crucial for scaling them. When institutions fail to adapt to technological change, stagnation inevitably follows. Only by carefully balancing decentralization and bureaucracy can nations innovate and grow over the long term--findings that have worrying implications for the United States, Europe, China, and other economies today. Through a rich narrative that weaves together history, economics, and technology, How Progress Ends reveals that managing the future requires us to draw the right lessons from the past. Carl Benedikt Frey is the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI and Work at the Oxford Internet Institute and Oxford Martin Citi Fellow at the Oxford Martin School, both at the University of Oxford. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
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    54 mins
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