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Dipali Mukhopadhyay (Columbia University) describes her journey between New York City, Kabul and back to NYC again in the early weeks of the pandemic, what similarities she found between the two cities, and how the pandemic solidarity spilled over into the anti-racism protests in the summer.

Omar Sharifi, the director of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies in Kabul, describes how Kabul faced a constitutional crisis, a public health emergency, and delicate peace talks all at once in spring 2020. The pandemic also led to widespread economic hardship in the city, which was confronted by residents who organised food aid for the neediest neighbors through localised campaigns.

While the world has its attention fixated on the prospects of a vaccine other health crises lie waiting in the wings. So, on this week’s show we dump the Political Scientists and go in search of Pharmacist Jason Bower. We find him holed up, Skywalker style, on his ranch in Shropshire. Jason tells us to start focussing on the massive lag in pharmaceutical production and the whole range of other treatment problems looming as a result of the shortfall of supply, including pirate medicine, price gouging and nationalist hoarding.

As the United States lurches its way through the pandemic, protests against racial injustice emerged to reshape the political landscape even further. Last week we spoke to Shana Gadarian and Tom Pepinsky, two scholars who live and breathe crisis. They tell us how party affiliation now determines whether people wear masks or wash their hands in the US and warn of the dangers of constitutional disorder in the coming US elections.

25 May 2020 - What do Kangaroos and Sex buddies have in common? Almost nothing, but find the answer to that question that and a whole lot more about Australia's troubled COVID-19 response towards migrant workers on this week's episode. As Sanushka Mudaliar reveals, Australia may have flattened the curve on covid but it faces a steep climb if it is to reconcile itself with this core and neglected part of its workforce.

South Korea has been held up as the leading example of how to respond to COVID-19. Yet, recent flare-ups in night clubs have reminded us all that the virus is not going away any time soon. We check in with our former colleague, Sijeong Lim to hear about how the LGBTQ community is responding to the crisis, the use of electric bracelets to enforce quarantine, and why her students voted not to come back to class.

May 1 2020 - How do you enforce a lockdown when nobody trusts the government? That's the dilemma confronting the COVID-19 response in Chile, where the government entered the crisis with historically low approval ratings after introducing a 30 peso rate hike on public transport in the Spring. Abbey and Darshan chat with Carla Alberti of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica Chile about Santiago's diverse array of lockdown laws (one for every borough), the strangely enduring beef between Chile and Bolivia, and of course, the cacerolazo.

April 24 2020 - In countries like the Netherlands, stereotypes of 'authoritarian' and 'obedient' Asian societies have been used to explain why Europeans need more 'liberal' responses to COVID-19. In this podcast Kyohei Yamada helps us untangle some of these ideas, detailing Japan's peculiarly non-intrusive measures, and pointing to the unique historical and constitutional factors that explain their approach. In addition, Kyohei chats yakuza, pachinko- and of course: mascots!

10 April 2020 - Jia Ye - Singapore has been hailed as a 'model' response to COVID-19, but in recent days its cramped and crowded migrant worker dormitories, were been the site of a surge of cases. In this podcast we ask Jia Ye - Geographer at Nanyang Technical University - tells us about the impossibility of social distancing for workers - who remain in the dorms, in the trucks and on their work sites. She also gives us an insider's look into Singapore's state led response, and the unique codes of self-policing and 'civility' that hold it in place.

3 April 2020 - Francesca Grandi & Antonio Barroso - This week Abbey introduces us to two of her pals from London. Francesca has her fingers on the pulse of the UN response to COVID-19 and Antonio is a risk analyst guiding governments and businesses on how to address uncertainty in a time of 'assumptions undone'. Unsurprisingly, the conversation plumbs the depths of terror and shock that accompany the crisis, but at the same time reveals some surprises about different groups and actors advocating for and achieving progressive change in these odd days.

As country after country adopts stricter measures to combat the spread of COVID-19, we want to know more about what to expect in a lockdown. Abbey and Darshan speak to Oxford scholar, Andrea Ruggeri about his experiences, the impact on Italian democracy and daily life. And yes, Andrea advises buying some hand creme and getting a haircut before lockdown.

As Europe shuts down in response to the spread of COVID-19, other African countries are just beginning to grapple with the early signs of the pandemic. In this show, we discuss the COVID-19 response in South Africa, where an impending winter, a long history of the HIV-AIDS pandemic, and xenophobic attitudes are combining to generate some surprising and unexpected responses to the crisis. Leading Anthropologist of health and migration, Professor Jo Vearey chats to Abbey and Darshan.

April 24 2017 - Francois Bonnet. Emmanuel Macron has emerged as the frontrunner in the first round of elections for the French Presidency. Though, the leading story of the night was the success of Marine Le Pen of the National Front Party in securing second place and an opportunity to participate in the run off election with Macron in two weeks time. The French results are being read as part of a wave of populist electoral successes – in what appears to be a radically redrawn political landscape in Europe and North America. In this week’s podcast Francois Bonnet of the CNRS in France joins us to pick through these results arguing that the National Front may have seriously underperformed.

April 3 2017 – Michael Onyebuchi Eze. Three weeks ago, Loren Landau conversed with us on how poor, black South Africans use violence to demand the attention of political elites. In this week’s rejoinder Michael Onyebuchi Eze argues that it is more a symptom of a nation much too stuck in its frozen transition to democracy for it to be able to tackle socioeconomic issues of the poor black population. Race still determines one’s access to capital and resources, and because white nationals and foreigners alike may potentially provide jobs, the violent attacks are mostly directed towards poor black immigrants, for they represent the latest threat to the black South Africans’ social livelihood.

March 27 2017 – Sarah de Lange Whereas the international media has been mostly concentrating on the perceived electoral rivalry between Rutte and Wilders during the last Dutch elections, a more interesting note might be the rise of parties – along with new radical right-wing initiatives – that represent the ‘migrant vote’. Though this signifies the increasing tendency of governmental fragmentation in Europe at large, it could also be seen as a sign of emancipation, for migrants, particularly within the Dutch style of proportional representation, are mobilizing themselves to represent their interests in politics.

13 March 2017 - Loren Landau South Africans have been rioting against, attacking and murdering foreign nationals since the end of Apartheid. The past month has seen another upsurge of this type of violence. While most have attributed this violence to a deep-seated South African nativism, in this week’s podcast we speak to Loren Landau in Johannesburg about the attacks' political motives. He tells us that poor, black South Africans use this violence to demand the attention of political elites. Increasingly, and disturbingly, their appeal is being heard.

November 14 2016 – Austin Kocher In this episode we come back to the conversation we had last March with Austin Kocher – PhD student at the Department of Geography of the Ohio State University – on how a possible Trump Presidency would affect US immigration policy. As we all know, against all odds Trump was indeed elected as the new President of the United States. And as becomes apparent now that he will most likely (be able to) come through on his anti-immigration ‘promises’, Kocher concludes that the silver lining in all this is that people are showing up and standing up against xenophobic, racist and sexist immigration issues; and that eventually our only true hope against such forces is a new internationalism: a solidarity movement across borders.

November 7 2016 – Claudio Minca As the authorities have recently fulfilled their mission in clearing the infamous Calais Jungle Camp, once home to some seven thousand migrants and asylum seekers, we in this week’s talk speak with Claudio Minca – Professor and Head of the Cultural Geography chair group at Wageningen University (WUR). Instead of focusing on the internal politics and political symbolism surrounding the jungle camp, this conversation deals with the spatiality and the constant interplay between inclusion and abandonment of the arriving migrants in contemporary refugee camps. These camps have a functional logic of their own, which leads to the construction of a new geography within Europe in which these camps will probably have a permanent presence.

September 26 2016 - Sandrino Smeets European leaders recently met in Bratislava to sift through the ashes of Brexit and chart the organization's way forward. Migration and asylum dominated the agenda with their Declaration vowing "[n]ever to allow return to uncontrolled flows of last year". This week we asked Sandrino Smeets - an expert on EU Council deliberations, to tell us how European countries came to this position and what this Declaration will mean. He explores the inter-governmental jockeying taking place behind the show of unity, and offers the sobering thought that the document may shape EU migration policy for years to come.

Responding to recent attacks in Ansbach and Wuerzburg, German CDU Minister for the Interior, Thomas de Maiziere recently tabled a proposal for wide ranging changes to Germany’s security and anti-terror policy. The 16 page proposal calls for increases in police numbers, changes to data protection laws and protocols, new methods of popular surveillance and further changes to the country’s already strict laws on dual citizenship. This week we ask Matthias Leese, a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Security Studies in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology whether immigrants are being scapegoated in the CDU's attempt to get tough on terror.