Explaining Brazil

Explaining Brazil

News from Brazil, by The Brazilian Report — an independent media outlet uniquely positioned to offer an insider’s view of current affairs in Brazil.

Episodes

A visa, a snub, and a reopened wound

August 10, 2026 • 34 mins
The US State Department revoked the visa of Brazil's ambassador to Washington ( https://newsletters.brazilian.report/p/us-brazil-ambassador-viotti-argentina-russia-putin ) and said the quiet part out loud: it is retaliation for Brasília withholding agr...
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Brazilian trade: Life after Washington

August 4, 2026 • 27 mins
The US now takes less than 10% of Brazil's exports — the smallest share in decades — and Washington's tariff wall is accelerating a realignment that was already underway. Gustavo Ribeiro speaks with trade consultant Welber Barral, a former Brazilian fo...
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An imported playbook for Brazil's elections

July 24, 2026 • 40 mins
Senator Flávio Bolsonaro used his turn at Debating Brazil — an event series in which Brazilian presidential candidates present their vision of the country to foreign ambassadors — to revive discredited claims about electronic voting fraud and to promis...
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Flávio Bolsonaro has a few problems to deal with

July 13, 2026 • 46 mins
On this episode of Explaining Brazil, Gustavo Ribeiro, editor-in-chief of The Brazilian Report, talks with James Green, a historian at Brown University, about the fracturing landscape of Brazil's 2026 presidential race. Much of the conversation turns o...
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Brazil's crime syndicates are now terrorist organizations

June 2, 2026 • 41 mins
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated the Comando Vermelho (Red Command, or CV) and the Primeiro Comando da Capital (First Command of the Capital, or PCC) as foreign terrorist organizations. The Brazilian Report's editor-in-chief, Gustavo Ribeir...
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Lula meets Trump in Washington

May 8, 2026 • 52 mins
Editor-in-chief Gustavo Ribeiro sat down with historian James N. Green to unpack Lula's recent meeting with Donald Trump. While the visit yielded no concrete trade breakthroughs, it has been cast as a diplomatic victory, bolstering Lula's domestic stan...
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Trouble ahead for Brazil-US relations?

April 23, 2026 • 48 mins
What role will the United States play in Brazil's high-stakes 2026 elections? Join editor-in-chief Gustavo Ribeiro and historian James N. Green of the Brazil Office Alliance as they unpack the escalating tensions and potential for US interference in Br...
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Time to investigate Brazil's Supreme Court justices? (preview)

March 19, 2026 • 8 mins
Amid deepening polarization and the judiciary’s growing role in the country’s political life, Brazil’s Supreme Court has become accustomed to being rated poorly by a significant share of the population. In recent years, most of that opposition has come...
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Brazil's water leverage. And its fault lines (preview)

March 5, 2026 • 12 mins
Humanity has entered what scientists are calling an “era of water bankruptcy.” According to the United Nations University, many critical water systems around the world are so overused — through depletion, overallocation, land and soil degradation, defo...
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An indigenous victory against Cargill on the Tapajós River (preview)

February 27, 2026 • 10 mins
Advances in oil exploration and the construction of railways and highways in recent years have shown that, when large infrastructure projects clash with matters of Amazon preservation, the Brazilian government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva tends to favo...
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Brazilian stocks’ record run (preview)

February 13, 2026 • 6 mins
190,000 points. After a string of record highs that have been piling up since mid-January, the Ibovespa — the benchmark index of São Paulo’s stock exchange, the B3 — surpassed this historic threshold during Wednesday, February 11, closing the day just ...
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Brasília enters an election year on edge (preview)

February 5, 2026 • 11 mins
Brasília is back to work — and the new legislative year has opened with all the familiar rituals: lofty speeches about stability, institutional balance, and dialogue, plus promises of an ambitious agenda ahead. But this is no ordinary year. Brazil is h...
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Banco Master and the Supreme Court: After the glory came the crisis (preview)

January 29, 2026 • 10 mins
As the saying goes, the calm comes before the storm. In Brazil’s Supreme Court, the current crisis came after a period of glory and renown. In September 2025, the Supreme Court made history and became a global reference. Breaking with Brazil’s long tra...
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How the Mercosur-EU deal impacts Brazilian firms beyond exports (preview)

January 21, 2026 • 11 mins
Amid a global context of eroding multilateralism and rising US trade wars, Mercosur and the European Union are trying to create a shared market for more than 700 million people. The proposed free trade zone for goods and services encompasses 27 Europea...
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What happened to Brazil-Venezuela relations? (preview)

January 16, 2026 • 15 mins
Lula did not recognize Maduro’s 2024 election win, but his first two terms in office in the 2000s saw him make South American integration a top priority of Brazil’s foreign policy, and maintain close ties with the Hugo Chavez government of the time. Ve...
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Trump’s Venezuela play: How it reshapes South America’s risk map (preview)

January 5, 2026 • 12 mins
In Latin America, 2026 quite literally got off to an explosive start. Just before sunrise on January 2, the city of Caracas was violently awoken by the sound of bombs, as US forces launched a sudden, high-intensity strike on the Venezuelan capital. Wit...
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Checks and balances turned into vendettas (preview)

December 17, 2025 • 10 mins
In any democratic republic, it’s normal for the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to clash. That’s a sign of mutual oversight. It’s also normal for politicians to make concessions to their adversaries. That’s a sign of democracy. But the se...
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What needs repair in Brazil's public sector machine? (preview)

December 10, 2025 • 11 mins
In a country with 27 state governments, more than 5,000 city halls, and around 12 million people working in the public sector, calls to reform — or improve — Brazil’s civil service never really seem to go away. We talked to Brazil's special secretary f...
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Good COP? Bad COP? (preview)

November 27, 2025 • 11 mins
Carlos Nobre, head of the Planetary Science Pavilion at COP30 in the Amazon, talks to us about the conference’s results, the climate emergency we are living through, and what Brazil can still do. Send us your feedback Support the show
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Brazil’s Central Bank led a revolution (preview)

November 17, 2025 • 9 mins
Five years ago, Brazil launched a public digital payment infrastructure — and its impact on the financial market and society has been immense. Send us your feedback Support the show
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