Bryce Steinberg is a development economist, which means she studies how lower-income countries grow into more prosperous ones.

More specifically, she studies how to help people in low-income countries build their “human capital” — a phrase social scientists use to describe things like getting more formal education, more professional training, or improving your health.

As she tells Dan Richards on this episode of Trending Globally, part of the answer is well-understood.

“We have to build the schools, we have to build the clinics, we have to get the roads, get the infrastructure in place so that people can access these things,” Steinberg explains.

However, decades of development policy has made clear that access alone doesn’t solve the problem, and supplying communities with such resources doesn’t necessarily mean people will use them.

Why not?

That’s what Steinberg studies.

On this episode, Richards talks with Steinberg about her research, which seeks to better understand what she calls the “demand-side” of development policy: What makes people actually use the services that are available to them, and how to remove the barriers that stand in their way. They also discuss how development policy has evolved over the last few decades and how, with the dismantling of USAID, it may be poised to change once again.

Transcript coming soon to our website.

Watson School political scientist Peter Andreas has spent decades studying the global economy — but not the one you read about in the business section, or are taught in Econ 101.

His focus is on the illicit global economy.

He’s written about everything from piracy in colonial America to the smuggling of technology during the Industrial Revolution, to clandestine migration and illegal drug trafficking today.

His newest book, “The Illicit Global Economy: Everything You Need to Know,” is both a concise primer on this massive topic and a compelling argument for why you can’t understand our global economy today without understanding how it operates on both sides of the law.

On this episode of “Trending Globally,” he talks with Dan Richards about how the illicit global economy works, the surprising nuances within it, and how it intersects with some of the most pressing issues in our politics today.

Learn more about and purchase “The Illicit Global Economy: Everything You Need to Know.”

In his new book “The Art of Coercion,” Watson political scientist Reid Pauly provides a seemingly straightforward definition of coercion: “The practice of convincing a target by the use of threats, to bend to your will.”

However, the simplicity of the definition belies the difficulty of doing it effectively – especially in the world of international security and relations. As Pauly explains to Dan Richards on this episode of “Trending Globally”:

“The history of coercive bargaining, coercive diplomacy is really a litany of mostly failures.”

This is a problem not only for countries seeking to coerce others, whether it’s through tariffs, sanctions, or threats of military action. It’s also a problem because when coercion fails, countries usually find themselves one step closer to war.

Why do so many attempts at coercive diplomacy fail, and why do some succeed? The answer may surprise you.

Learn more about and purchase “The Art of Coercion”

Read Pauly’s July article in MIT’s International Security

Transcript coming soon to our website.

What’s the role of a university in a democratic society? What responsibility do universities have to foster the public good, and what responsibilities does the public have to support centers of education and research?

These have become some of the most fraught and pressing questions in our current moment. But of course, they’re also timeless questions — ones that are as old as the United States itself.

In May, Watson political economist Mark Blyth explored these questions with literary scholar Kevin McLaughlin and historian Karin Wulf on the Rhodes Center Podcast, another podcast from the Watson School. In addition to having thought deeply on just these types of issues, Kevin and Karin are also the co-chairs of “Brown 2026,” an initiative marking the 250th anniversary of the U.S. and exploring the past and future role of universities in a democratic society.

Their conversation has only become more salient since it was originally recorded, which is why we’re sharing it with Trending Globally listeners today.

Guests on this episode:

• Kevin McLaughlin is a literary scholar and director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study at Brown.
• Karin Wulf is a historian and director and librarian of the John Carter Brown Library.

Learn more about Brown 2026.

Transcript coming soon to our website.

On July 4th, President Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” into law. The bill cuts trillions of dollars in taxes, and allocates hundreds of billions in new spending. To offset all of this, it calls for over a trillion dollars in cuts to a range of domestic programs.

On this episode, Dan Richards spoke with two experts from the Watson School about the bill: How it will shape American society, what its passage says about the Republican Party, and the role it might play in the 2026 midterms and beyond.

Guests on this episode:

• Eric Patashnik is a professor of public policy and political science and author, most recently, of “Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age.”
• Margaret Weir is a political scientist, professor of international and public affairs and political science, and co-editor, most recently, of the 2021 book “Who Gets What? The New Politics of Insecurity.”

Transcript coming soon to our website

On July 1st, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) officially closed its operations. It was the culmination of a months-long effort by the Trump administration to dismantle the agency, which had been in charge of administering U.S. foreign aid for over half a century.

Why did President Trump make the dissolution of USAID a priority? And what will it mean for the people and places around the world that have relied on foreign aid from the U.S.?

To answer these questions, Dan Richards spoke with Jennifer Hadden, a political scientist and associate professor at the Watson School, as well as co-author, with Sarah Sunn Bush, of the new book “Crowded Out: The Competitive Landscape of Contemporary International NGOs.”

On this episode, they discuss the fate of USAID in the context of the broader international aid ecosystem. Specifically, they explore the evolving roles of international non-governmental organizations (INGO’s) in the foreign landscape, which have long worked with government agencies like USAID to deliver aid and assistance around the world.

To many, it was surprising that USAID became such a target of the Trump administration. But as Hadden makes clear, Trump’s moves are part of a larger shift in the world of foreign aid — one with truly global implications.

Learn more about and purchase “Crowded Out The Competitive Landscape of Contemporary International NGOs.”

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with Mark Blyth about his new book, co-written with Nicoló Fraccaroli, called “Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers.”

Mark and Dan discuss the competing theories for what causes inflation, the merits of each, and how they explain (or fail to explain) the inflation we saw post-pandemic. They also explore why inflation harms some parts of society more than others, and how to make sure that, the next time inflation rears its head, we fight it in a way that’s more effective and more fair.

Learn more about and purchase “Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers”

Mexico, like the United States, has a gun violence problem. It has one of the highest murder rates in the world, and most of those murders come from firearms. In 2019, for example, almost 70% of the country's 35,000 murders involved firearms.

But unlike the U.S., Mexico doesn’t have tens of thousands of licensed firearms dealers.

It has two.

So how do so many guns make their way into Mexico? And how do these guns shape Mexican society?

These are two of the questions Ieva Jusionyte explores in her new book “Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence across the Border.” Jusionyte is an anthropologist at the Watson Institute and spent much of the last few years following people whose lives are shaped by guns in Mexico. Guns, which, by and large, come from the United States.

On this episode, which was originally broadcast in May 2024, Jusionyte discusses the impact of American firearms on Mexican society and the role they play in spreading violence and trauma on both sides of the border.

Learn more about and purchase "Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence across the Border."