Tallberg Foundation Podcast

At least so far, what plagues Africa is less Covid-19, than its consequences: collapsed economies, an industrial world that is closing to Africa, severe climate change, and the urgent need to grow and develop faster to serve its young, demanding population. How can Africa cope? Are solutions—or, at least, possibilities—to be found at the local, national or regional level? Alan Stoga talks to Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, mayor of Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown, and Carole Wainaina, a leader of Africa50

Why do nations, rich and poor, tolerate widespread slavery, human trafficking and even the buying and selling of young children in the 21st century?  These abominations exist everywhere and at a scale that makes them one of the largest global criminal enterprises.  How is that possible? In this episode Alan Stoga explores the darkness of slavery—which consumes even very young children—with India’s Sunitha Krishnan.  Sunitha, leads a dangerous, discouraging fight to rescue the enslaved and stop t

Like everything in life, Covid is producing losers and winners, not the least from the global recession it has spawned. It’s even possible that the economic effects will linger long after the pandemic has faded—and that the winners will still be winners. That’s one of the issues explored in the conversation with German business leader Kurt Lauk and long-time top American central banker Terry Checki. What happens when the global economy collapses, but global financial markets boom?

Why has the US stopped investing in itself? Why do things—from cell phones to highways to schools to trains—work better in countries that used to look to the US as their model?  We speak with Christine Loh who is a Hong Kong-based academic, environmentalist, and former government official with deep ties to the United States. Her conversation with Alan Stoga raises questions about how and if the country can recover its dynamism.  Not to be trite or political but can America be great again?

Maybe this mess—a pandemic, collapsing economy and racial inequalities laid bare—is exactly what the US needs. Maybe the outcome will be a more normal country, instead of one that thinks it is exceptional. That might be better for Americans and the rest of the world, argues Jorge Castañeda, a Mexican educator, author and former Foreign Minister. In this episode, Castañeda talks about his latest book, “America Through Foreign Eyes” and explains why the US is headed in exactly the right direction.

Looking for silver linings may be an integral part of the human condition. Even during the bleakest moments—like during a global pandemic, leadership failures and profound social stress everywhere—we try to find bits and pieces of positive energy and new ideas. Juan Enriquez, one of the world’s leading authorities on the economic and political impact of life science technology, and Fio Omenetto, who works at the cutting edge of living materials engineering, on a search for the upside of the global mes

American Carnage or American Dream? It matters to everyone everywhere whether or not the US is in terminal decline or resetting the basis of its democracy and its society. If the former, the global order will change in incalculable ways. If the latter, life after the pandemic could actually be better. Three global thinkers—a Mexican journalist (Ana Paula Ordorica), a Kenyan poet (Sitawa Namwalie) and a Congolese choreographer (Faustin Linyekula)—what they think is happening in America now.

Like everywhere else, Morocco must cope with the potentially overwhelming health, economic and political consequences of the pandemic. But unlike most places, the country has a well-designed, focused strategy to mitigate the worst of what is happening and, possibly, to position itself—and the rest of Africa—for a better future. In this episode Ahmed Reda Chami—President of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council of Morocco—discussed the challenges facing his country as well as the rest of

In the midst of a global pandemic, leaders and people have turned local. That is not all bad: some people are working to strengthen their local communities, exploring new grassroots solutions and showing support for local businesses. Could these contribute to a new normal that is more people-oriented and more sustainable? Listen to Rosario Diaz Garavito, The Millennials Movement, Baiqu Gonkar, Art Represent and David Ross, Copia, discuss the different future that could emerge from the Covid crisis.

Tomas Anker Christensen, Denmark’s Climate Ambassador, and Daniel Martinez-Valle, CEO of Orbia, discusses both the need and opportunity for urgent, positive creative climate activism in the wake of the pandemic. Also the need to develop effective partnerships between government and corporations, to find a better balance between globalism and nationalism, and to innovate solutions that assure the transformation to a low carbon economy creates, rather than destroys, jobs, growth and economic opportunity.

The global Covid-19 pandemic has exposed deep fissures in the global political and economic fabric. For democracy to survive, the social contract needs to be reimagined; economies needs to be re-engineered and climate change needs to be confronted. In this episode, Danish politician and former President of the UN General Assembly Mogens Lykketoft argues that these inter-related challenges demand urgent action—and that if humanity moves fast, we could find new paths to a new, shared prosperity.

What is the state of the union? Has the American dream become an American carnage? The Covid-19 epidemic has laid bare many pre-existing fissures and deep distress in American society. These are some of the questions Scott Miller, CEO of the Core Strategy Group and co-founder of Sawyer/ Miller Strategic Consulting Group, and Joshua Steiner, Chairman of Castleton Commodities and Senior Advisor to Bloomberg LP, address in this episode.

Christiana Figueres passionately believes that the pandemic offers a unique opportunity to focus on constructive climate action. She discusses the possibility of leveraging the massive political and economic resources that governments around the world are mobilizing to stimulate the global, regional, national, corporate, and individual actions needed to cut emissions in half by the end of the decade. Is it possible to overcome “politics as usual” to inject some green into massive recovery spending?

Democracy is under huge pressure everywhere, made worse by the global pandemic. Too many governments in too many places are failing to deliver on the basic social contract with their citizens. Celebrated photographer and human rights activist Shahidul Alam of Bangladesh discusses these issues from the perspective of a country which struggles to conduct fair elections, where inequality is extreme and poverty even more so, and where failures of democratic institutions are condoned by great powers.

Democracy and democratic institutions were under severe pressure well before the novel Coronavirus appeared. Could the added burden of the pandemic break the back of democracy as we have known it? Gabriela Cuevas, Mexican Congresswoman and Inter-Parliamentary Union President, and Paula DiPerna, strategic environmental advisor and former U.S. congressional candidate, discuss the risk that our democracies could be another casualty of Covid-19—and what we should do about it.

Anne Goldfeld, 2019 Tällberg/Eliasson Global Leadership Prize winner, is a clinician and a medical doctor with long experience—in the lab and on the front lines of care—with epidemics. Together with Alan Stoga, the Tällberg Foundation’s chairman, she discusses what we know about Covid19 and what we still need to learn--and why it is a global problem that needs a global response.

Rafael Yuste, a professor of biological sciences at Columbia University and a 2018 Tällberg Eliasson Global Leader speaks with Alan Stoga, the Tällberg Foundation’s chairman about recent and prospective progress in neuroscience.  Could our evolving understanding of the human brain lead to a new Renaissance?  What are the implications of this new knowledge?  How do we protect each individual’s neural identity?

The three 2019 Tällberg/Eliasson Global Leadership Prize winners, Anne Goldfield, Faustin Linyekula and Saul Griffith share their perspectives on the future and their relationship with it. Together they discover how their respective expertise - medicine, dance and fighting climate change - are all fueled by the mystery of the unknown and desire to explore it.

Are Western democracies the model for non-Western countries or do they need different models? Do democracies represent all their constituents? How are minorities protected? Kenneth Lusaka (Speaker of the Senate, Kenya), David Sperling (Senior Research Fellow, Strathmore Governance Centre; Kenya) and Ulrika Karlsson (Special Advisor on Global Health, Inter-Parliamentary Union) discussed these questions within the scope of “New Thinking for a New World.” Facilitated by Maarten Koets, Tällberg Foundat

After a Tällberg Workshop in Nairobi, three members of the Tällberg Foundation community gathered to reflect on the theme "New Thinking for a New World", what this looks like in Kenya and how identifying it is a matter of positionality - be it young or old, local or global. Alan Stoga, Chairman, Tällberg Foundation, Mark Abdollahian, (CEO, ACERTAS and Professor, Claremont Graduate University, US) , Vishakha Desai (Senior Advisor for Global Affairs to the President of Columbia University)