The Munk Debates Podcast

One of the most volatile regions in the world seems to be sitting on a tinder box. How can the international community avoid tensions between Israel and Iran from escalating further? Is it possible for Israel to achieve its war aims in Gaza without further inflaming the Middle East or jeopardizing the prospect of an enduring peace?

It’s hard to find someone more qualified to delve into these questions than our guest on this week's...

The Middle East, a region already mired in conflict due to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, just got a lot more dangerous. In response to a recent Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate building in Damascus, Iran sent hundreds of drones and missiles to attack Israel, setting the stage for a potential military escalation. The world is now watching closely as the long shadow war between Israel and Iran - which has played out...

We are in the midst of one of the most dangerous and unstable geopolitical moments in recent history. Wars are intensifying in Ukraine and the Middle East, the rise of China as a superpower is threatening the entire Asia-Pacific region, and an unprecedented migrant crisis in the US and Europe is paving the way for right wing populists who threaten to destabilize and destroy the international rules based order that has given us eigh...

TikTok is one of the most popular social media sites on the planet. But concerns have been growing over TikTok’s ability to collect massive amounts of information about its users, and its suspected ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Those fears recently prompted the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a bill that would force the Chinese company that controls TikTok to sell it to American interests. If not, TikTok would be block...

The US economy is booming. Public investments in infrastructure, education, clean energy, and more is accelerating labour productivity, growing wages, and spurring employment. Recent economic data shows that “Bidenomics” is working and just as a rising tide lifts all boats, the average American worker hasn’t had it so good in a generation or more. But critics are pointing to the high cost of living – from expensive groceries to hou...

If recent polls are to be believed, Donald Trump is poised to become the President, for the second time, of the United States of America. Yet some observers think most swing voters who end up deciding American elections will ultimately turn away from Trump 2.0. For proof, they point to the difficulty Trump has had winning over many voters in his own party during the Republican primaries.  

But other analysts insist the former pres...

Following the Cold War, the US and Russia entered into a series of arms control treaties that gave the world hope that, one day, nuclear weapons may be a thing of the past. But as tensions have risen between the two nuclear powers over Ukraine and other irritants, Russia has been abandoning these agreements. Most recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Moscow would walk away from the last major arms treaty with th...

For decades, the two-state solution has been held up as the best chance for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. But in the aftermath of October 7th, and the security risks posed by a potential Palestinian state in the West Bank, most Israelis are souring on the two-state vision.

A few Israeli leaders, however, still believe it is the only viable path forward.

On this Munk Dialogue, we’re joined by one of the country’s bigges...

“An elderly man with a poor memory”. That is how a special counsel report described Joe Biden, president of the United States. Public appearances of the President looking confused and forgetting important dates and names seem to support this finding. Some Democrats believe Biden’s cognitive decline is a major liability that can no longer be ignored. With so much at stake in the 2024 election, and polls that are favouring Trump to w...

Most geopolitical experts agree that we have entered into a new cold war. The rise of the China-Russia axis and its threat to the international rules-based order is of growing concern to western powers. On this Munk Dialogue, we’re speaking with Sarah Paine, University Professor of History and Grand Strategy at the US Naval War College. Sarah explains what is motivating leaders like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin to act aggressively...

14 countries, including Canada and the US, suspended funding to the U.N.’s Palestinian Refugee Agency in response to Israeli allegations that 12 employees were involved in the attack on Israel on October 7th, and roughly 10% of their employees in Gaza have links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Human rights workers argue that this is a form of collective punishment that will have dire consequences on a population already suff...

In May 2022, just a few months into the war between Russia and Ukraine, we convened a public debate in Toronto about whether the West needed to acknowledge Russia’s legitimate legitimate security interests in order to bring the conflict to a resolution.

John Mearsheimer, one of the world’s leading realist scholars in international relations, argued on stage that the West deserves some blame for Russian aggression. 

After almost t...

Despite international pressure and the threat of a wider regional conflict, Israel has made clear their intention to keep fighting until Hamas has been eradicated and no longer poses a security threat on their southern border. So how does the government’s military aim square up against growing civilian pressure to free the hostages? And what does this all mean for the future of Gaza?

On this Munk Dialogue, we’re joined by David Ho...

US airstrikes don’t appear to be deterring Houthi rebels in the Red Sea. The Yemen-based militant group has continued their attacks on commercial ships in retaliation to the Israeli offensive against Hamas in Gaza. These violent clashes risk escalating an already tense situation in the Middle East, which in recent weeks has moved beyond Gaza into southern Lebanon, Pakistan, and parts of Iran and Iraq. So what, exactly, do the Houth...

Teenagers are facing a mental health epidemic. The numbers are staggering: 30% of teenage girls and 10% of teenage boys are suffering from depression, reflecting a 150% increase since 2010. Rates of anxiety and ADHD are equally alarming.

On this Munk Dialogue we’re joined by Lenore Skenazy, the founder of the Free-Range Kids and Let Grow movements. Since 2008 she has been sounding the alarm about helicopter parenting and overly-su...

Claudine Gay, the first black female president of Harvard, faced intense scrutiny since her widely criticized congressional testimony on campus antisemitism in early December. Last week, President Gay resigned from her post after mounting allegations of plagiarism in her published articles.  In an op-ed in the New York Times, Gay argued that she was a victim of a right-wing political attack on academia and the diversity initiatives...

On this Munk Dialogue we are speaking to one of China’s leading experts on military strategy and security. Zhou Bo is a retired senior colonel of China's People's Liberation Army and a senior fellow of the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University. He was also a director at the Ministry of National Defence of China. In this wide-reaching conversation, Bo talks about why Taiwan is the biggest national sec...

On this special edition of the Munk Debates podcast, host Rudyard Griffiths is joined by senior content producer, Ricki Gurwitz, to discuss some of their favourite debates and dialogues from the over 50 podcast episodes published this year.

They also peel back the curtain to give listeners a glimpse into how these debates come together. How do they decide what debates to convene? What makes for a successful debate? And which debat...

Amid years of decline in news ad revenue and a rapidly changing media landscape, the Canadian government introduced Bill C-18, the Online News Act. This controversial piece of legislation requires Google and Meta - the company behind Facebook and Instagram – to pay Canadian news outlets for linking their content to these social media sites. Meta responded by blocking all Canadian news content from Facebook and Instagram, while Goog...