Épisodes

  • S2 Ep35: Myanmar's fight for democracy: In conversation with Sai Sam Kham

    S2 Ep35: Myanmar's fight for democracy: In conversation with Sai Sam Kham
    Dec 31 2025
    On Monday, 1 February, Myanmar’s military ended the country's decade-long experiment with democracy by launching a coup against the most popular political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), and its leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Now Myanmar’s people are on the streets, demanding the release of their leaders and the restoration of the 2020 election results. Many are also calling for the country’s 2008 constitution to be annulled and rewritten, as it explicitly acknowledges the military’s leading role in Myanmar’s politics. The military has responded with violence and used all means at its disposal to quash the protests, including the killing of protestors. But away from the news headlines what exactly is going on in Myanmar? How are we to understand the events that began when the military tanks rolled in front of the parliament on 1 February 2021?
    Myanmar’s political history is complex. There is no shortage of explainer videos, timelines and quick primers, but for those who have not been following the story closely over the years, it can be difficult to get a handle on what is going on. Here at the State of Power podcast we examine the ways coercive military power functions, how it mutates, how it is connected to other forms of power that shape the world around us. To help us understand events in Myanmar, we reached out to today’s guest on the program. Sai Sam Kham is an activist and scholar who left Myanmar in 2019 to begin his PHD studies in Land politics, food systems and climate change linked to Myanmar, at the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague. Before he left his home country, Sai Sam was the executive director of Metta Development Foundation, an NGO that focuses on assisting communities that have been ravaged by years of internal conflict.

    TNI Myanmar commentaries.

    Listen to our podcast on alternative drugs policy in Myanmar.

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    Image Source: Ninjastrikers/Wikimedia

    Music: Aztec Sun Band/ In the name of everyone.





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    45 min
  • S5 Ep6: A Fractured World: Reflections on Power, Polarity and Polycrisis (Nick Buxton in Conversation with Adam Tooze and Walden Bello)

    S5 Ep6: A Fractured World: Reflections on Power, Polarity and Polycrisis (Nick Buxton in Conversation with Adam Tooze and Walden Bello)
    Feb 6 2025
    We live in an age of empire and resistance - a shifting geography of global power. The military, political and financial support of one country, the US, above all others has allowed a small country - Israel - to commit genocide in Gaza, to the horror of the vast majority of people worldwide. The US military, its corporations, its digital giants, its banks, and its culture continue to dominate globally.

    Yet at the same time, US-led imperialism has never felt more fractured and resisted. The heavily-resourced US army has been forced out of Afghanistan and was recently expelled from Niger. Nations such as Nicaragua and South Africa are taking powerful former colonial countries to court. Other international institutions, long seen as vehicles for exporting or enforcing US-led neoliberalism, such as the World Trade Organisation have seemingly run out of steam. The US is also increasingly isolated globally: Brazil, China, India, Russia and other nations are directly challenging its hegemony, and the US' dysfunctional democracy is less and less cited as a model by other countries. There is a growing popular sense that the post-Cold War neoliberal globalised order is in crisis.

    Is US hegemony really fading? Does any other nation, including China, pose any real challenge to US power, let alone offer a political or economic alternative? Has the heralded hope of a BRICS bloc collapsed amidst its contradictions? What would it take to build a more equitable and just new international political and economic order?

    In this episode, to properly examine where geopolitical or geoeconomic power lies today – and how it is being exercised and how that might be changing, TNI's Nick Buxton speaks to Adam Tooze, and Walden Bello.
    Adam Tooze holds the Shelby Cullom Davis chair of History at Columbia University and serves as Director of the European Institute. In 2019, Foreign Policy Magazine named him one of the top Global Thinkers of the decade.
    Walden Bello is a TNI associate and author of more that 20 books, a human rights and peace campaigner, academic, environmentalist and journalist who has made a major contribution to the international case against corporate-driven globalization.
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    1 h et 15 min
  • S5 Ep1: History in Action Part 1: 1970-1990 - A counter history by the Transnational Institute

    S5 Ep1: History in Action Part 1: 1970-1990 - A counter history by the Transnational Institute
    Dec 12 2024
    History in Action Part 1 delves into the founding of the Transnational Institute (TNI) and its origins with the Institute for Policy Studies. We look at the roots of TNI in opposition to the Vietnam War and other global liberation movements. We explore TNI's evolution and its sustained resistance against neoliberal ideologies, its tragedy with the assassination of Orlando Letelier, and its early work on debt, food and alternatives.

    Narrator: Shaun Matsheza
    Interviews conducted by: Denis Burke, Daria Gorshenina and Shaun Matsheza
    Music: Aleksey Chistilin
    Interviews with: Susan George, Cora and Peter Weiss, John Cavanagh, Achin Vanaik, Anthony Barnett, Susan Buck-Morss, Ariane van Buren, Manuel Pérez-Rocha
    Archival audio with: John Berger, Isabel Letelier, Orlando Letelier, Eqbal Ahmad, Basker Vashee, Fred Halliday

    Find out more about TNI at tni.org
    Please consider making a contribution to support our vital work at tni.org/donate

    With thanks to the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam
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    1 h et 13 min
  • S5 Ep5: History in Action Part 5: 2020-onward! - A counter history by the Transnational Institute

    S5 Ep5: History in Action Part 5: 2020-onward! - A counter history by the Transnational Institute
    Dec 12 2024
    History in Action Part 5 guides us through the multifaceted impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, underscored by increasing corporate power and social injustices—from healthcare privatization and vaccine disparities to the militarization of borders. We talk about green colonialism and the people hijacking the transition to renewable energy for their own profits. We talk about Gaza. Insights from diverse activists and scholars emphasize the need for a collective, just transition and highlight the historical and ongoing struggles for social justice, for international solidarity and for systemic change.

    Narrator: Shaun Matsheza
    Interviews conducted by: Denis Burke, Daria Gorshenina and Shaun Matsheza
    Music: Aleksey Chistilin
    Interviews with: Arun Kundnani, Niamh Ni Bhriain, Katie Sandwell, Lucía Bárcena, Walden Bello, Sol Trumbo Vila , Achin Vanaik, Dorothy Guerrero, John Cavanagh, Achin Vanaik, Lyda Fernanda Forero, Manuel Pérez-Rocha, Fiona Dove
    Archival audio with: Abir Kopty, Hamza Hamouchene, Susan George

    Find out more about TNI at tni.org
    Please consider making a contribution to support our vital work at tni.org/donate

    With thanks to the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam
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    1 h et 11 min
  • S5 Ep4: History in Action Part 4: 2008-2020 - A counter history by the Transnational Institute

    S5 Ep4: History in Action Part 4: 2008-2020 - A counter history by the Transnational Institute
    Dec 12 2024
    History in Action Part 4 talks about the fallout of the financial crises, the rise of new forms of authoritarianism, the new movements that shook the world, and the work against transnational corporate impunity. 

    Narrator: Shaun Matsheza
    Interviews conducted by: Denis Burke, Daria Gorshenina and Shaun Matsheza
    Music: Aleksey Chistilin
    Interviews with: Walden Bello, Sol Trumbo Vila , Niamh Ni Bhriain, Achin Vanaik, Dorothy Guerrero, Lucía Bárcena, Martin Jelsma
    Archival audio with: Susan George, Howard Wachtel, Brid Brennan

    Find out more about TNI at tni.org
    Please consider making a contribution to support our vital work at tni.org/donate

    With thanks to the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam
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    1 h et 11 min
  • S5 Ep3: History in Action Part 3: 2000-2008 - A counter history by the Transnational Institute

    S5 Ep3: History in Action Part 3: 2000-2008 - A counter history by the Transnational Institute
    Dec 12 2024
    History in Action Part 3 discusses the disastrous war on terror, the rise of China, and the convergence of social movements around the climate crisis, land, and essential public services.

    Narrator: Shaun Matsheza
    Interviews conducted by: Denis Burke, Daria Gorshenina and Shaun Matsheza
    Music: Aleksey Chistilin
    Interviews with: Arun Kundnani, Lyda Fernanda Forero, Jun Borras, Walden Bello, Dorothy Guerrero, Fiona Dove
    Archival audio with: Howard Wachtel, Brid Brennan, Satoko Kishimoto, Fred Halliday

    Find out more about TNI at tni.org
    Please consider making a contribution to support our vital work at tni.org/donate

    With thanks to the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam
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    54 min
  • S5 Ep2: History in Action Part 2: 1990-2000 - A counter history by the Transnational Institute

    S5 Ep2: History in Action Part 2: 1990-2000 - A counter history by the Transnational Institute
    Dec 12 2024
    History in Action Part 2 dives into the 1990s, focusing on the impact of the Cold War's end, the rise of neoliberalism, the emergence of the Alter-Globalization Movement, and the history of TNI's drugs and democracy programme. Key figures and activists explore significant shifts in global politics, the consolidation of U.S. imperial power, and the resistance of social movements: from the rise of progressive alternatives to the struggle against corporate power and neoliberal trade regimes.

    Narrator: Shaun Matsheza
    Interviews conducted by: Denis Burke, Daria Gorshenina and Shaun Matsheza
    Music: Aleksey Chistilin
    Interviews with: Susan George, Hilary Wainwright, Walden Bello, Martin Jelsma, Gonzalo Berrón, John Cavanagh, Achin Vanaik, Lyda Fernanda Forero, Manuel Pérez-Rocha, Jun Borras, Fiona Dove
    Archival audio with: John Berger, Isabel Letelier, Orlando Letelier, Eqbal Ahmad, Basker Vashee, Fred Halliday

    Find out more about TNI at tni.org
    Please consider making a contribution to support our vital work at tni.org/donate

    With thanks to the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam
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    1 h et 9 min
  • "The Divine Leaf of Immortality": A conversation on Coca, with Wade Davis.

    "The Divine Leaf of Immortality": A conversation on Coca, with Wade Davis.
    Jul 9 2024
    Nearly 75 years after the United Nations called for the abolition of coca leaf chewing, the world will have an opportunity to correct this grave historic error. The World Health Organization (WHO), at the Plurinational State of Bolivia’s request, and supported by Colombia, will conduct a ‘critical review’ of the coca leaf over the next year.

    Based on its findings, the WHO may recommend changes in coca’s classification under the UN drug control treaties. The WHO recommendations would be submitted for approval by the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), with voting likely in 2026. The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Transnational Institute (TNI) will be monitoring the coca review process closely and examining key aspects of the debate. As part of this we are producing a series called “Coca Chronicles”.

    The first issue of the Coca Chronicles discussed the current classification of the coca leaf in Schedule I of the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (or its effective ban) and Bolivia’s initiation of the WHO critical review process.

    The second issue highlighted three developments during the March 2024 CND session: (1) support for the coca review from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; (2) Bolivia’s call to protect the coca leaf as a genetic resource; and (3) an update on the WHO’s preparations for the review.

    In this third issue, Anthropologist Wade Davis gives us a deep dive into the history and significance of the coca leaf in the Andean Amazon region.

    Wade Davis is a Canadian cultural anthropologist, ethnobotanist, photographer, and writer. He is professor of anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. He is a multiple award-winning author of more than 25 books, and has done extensive research into coca leaf, among many other ethnobotanic explorations.


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    59 min
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