In 1960, less than 1% of the Amazon was deforested. Today, that number exceeds 20%. Southeast Asian forests have suffered similar fates: Malaysia has lost roughly one-quarter of its absolute forest cover and Indonesia one-third. During the 21st century, accelerating deforestation hit the Congo River Basin, which has lost roughly 8.5% of its dense forest cover since 1990.

Those are extraordinary changes with extraordinary consequences, not just for the millions of people who live in the forests, but for the whole planet. The shift from carbon sink towards net carbon source warms the Earth; disruption of water cycles and the so-called flying rivers result in both excess rainfall and excess drought; severe flooding and landslides impact agricultural viability.

But how do we know what we know about the rainforests? How do we use that knowledge to govern these places? Indeed, how can increasingly detailed data potentially contribute to reversing deforestation and its consequences?

Tasso Azevedo, a Brazilian scientist, has some answers, and they all trace back to maps. He has spent his career so far building MapBiomas, a hugely influential collaborative network of NGOs, universities, and tech startups. Together, they are leveraging modern technology to map the Amazon as well as large parts of Africa, Asia, and the subcontinent. Listen as he explains how maps and information are the superpowers that could save the rainforests.

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You can also find New Thinking for a New World on your preferred platform, including Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. 

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Tasso Azevedo is founder and General Coordinator of MapBiomas, a collaborative network of 250+ organizations 26 countries that monitors land use to promote conservation and sustainable management of natural resources and Chair of the Board of the Initiative Connecting Forest People that is creating a network connecting 1 million people in 9000+ forest communities in the Amazon.

Forestry engineer Tasso was the founder and director IMAFLORA, director of the National Forest Program at Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment, and general secretary of the National Forest Commission.  He was the first chief and director general of the Brazilian Forest Service and one of the key designers and implementers of the National Plan to Combat Deforestation and the Amazon Fund. He was the Technical Coordinator of the Climate Observatory, creator and general coordinator of the SEEG – System to Estimate Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removals in Brazil (2012-2022).

Tasso Azevedo serves as a board member at IMAFLORA, Santander Brazil, the Institute of Energy and Environment (IEMA) and the Schwab Foundation. He is a TED Global speaker and a Brazil Lab Affiliated Scholar at Princeton University.

“Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently declared, as he announced American sanctions on the International Criminal Court. That extraordinary declaration might be dismissed as more over-the-top histrionics from the Trump administration.

However, it points to a growing tension between national and international law, between great powers and international organizations. On the one hand, President Trump earlier this year said, “I don’t need international law”; on the other, President Macron insisted, “Do we want to live under a state of affairs with a return to the law of the jungle—or do we want to live in a civilized international society?

Think of it as might-makes-right versus universal values.

Viviana Krsticevic and the Center for Justice and International Law are very much on the universal values side of the ledger. Under her leadership, CEJIL has helped bring more than 200 cases before the Inter-American human rights system on issues ranging from violence against women to climate, to human rights abuses and beyond.

Krsticevic’s work is about more than winning cases. Listen as she talks about using the law to change the systems that allowed those abuses to happen in the first place. Then tell us what you think in the comments below.

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You can also find New Thinking for a New World on your preferred platform, including Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. 

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Viviana Krsticevic is the Executive Director of the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL). She is a founder and member of the GQUAL Campaign. She currently also serves as an expert on the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran, established by the UN Human Rights Council. Through her litigation, advisory, and academic work, Ms. Krsticevic has contributed to the development of international human rights standards on key issues.

She has published in books and academic forums on topics including equality, women’s rights, democracy, international architecture, the climate emergency, and human rights defenders, among others. Viviana Krsticevic holds a law degree from the University of Buenos Aires, a master’s degree in Latin American Studies from Stanford University, and a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from Harvard Law School.

The World Health Organization says that 1 in 8 people worldwide suffer from a mental health disorder; Lancet’s 2026 Global Burden of Disease Study agrees, arguing that the affected population approaches 1.2 billion. And data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at Washington University in the United States show a 95% increase in mental health cases between 1990 and 2023. The impact is even more profound among youth: roughly 293 million children and young adults under 25 live with a mental health condition.

Those are huge numbers—and they raise a lot of questions. What is it about modern society that is so much more stressful than the past? Does the incidence of mental health disorders differ in the Global North versus the Global South? What was the impact of COVID? Is social media a driver; how and why?

Most importantly, what can be done?

If anyone might have answers, it is Vikram Patel, professor and chair of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a co-founder of Sangath in India. Listen as he unpacks the causes of the global mental health crisis and offers some ideas on solutions. Then tell us what you think should be done.

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You can also find New Thinking for a New World on your preferred platform, including Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. 

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Vikram Patel is the Paul Farmer Professor and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and holds honorary Professorships at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the Public Health Foundation of India. He co-leads the Mental Health for All lab and GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard initiative, and his research focuses on the global burden of mental health problems, their links to social disadvantage, and community-based solutions. He co-founded Sangath, an Indian NGO recognized with international awards, and several global mental health networks. A Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and member of the US National Academy of Medicine, Patel has served on India’s first National Mental Health Policy committee, co-led two Lancet Commissions on mental health, and received major honors including the Rhodes Scholarship, Sarnat Prize, Pardes Humanitarian Prize, an Honorary OBE, and the Canada Gairdner Award. He holds multiple Honorary Doctorates and was named to TIME Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in 2015.

One of the biggest challenges ordinary citizens face is the distance between policy and their everyday lives. The digitalization of almost everything complicates the problem, not least because of the so-called digital divide, which is arguably widening dramatically as AI transforms everyone’s ecosystems.

What is more of an inconvenience in some countries is potentially a matter of life and death in India. On the one hand, hundreds of millions of people need governmental programs to survive. On the other hand, India’s size and complexity have produced a massive array of social welfare programs delivered by a bureaucracy that is not known for its efficiency: India ranks 49th in bureaucratic efficiency globally, according to the IMD World Competitiveness Report.

That makes connecting people and services absolutely critical—which is where Aniket Doegar comes into the picture. As a young technologist, he started with a simple insight. Governmental programs only work if people know they exist, understand whether they qualify, and can actually navigate the process of accessing them. So he started building technology to help make that happen. In time, he realized that the tech by itself was insufficient. 

Listen as Doegar explains how he came to build a social enterprise employing more than 50,000 local agents providing the critical last mile between citizens and their government.  

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You can also find New Thinking for a New World on your preferred platform, including Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. 

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Aniket Doegar is the Founder and CEO of Haqdarshak, a social enterprise supporting individuals and micro-businesses in accessing government welfare schemes. He has been building Haqdarshak for 10 years and was named one of the Global Social Innovators of the Year 2023 by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Motsepe Foundation, and World Economic Forum. He was also a Rockefeller Bellagio summer resident fellow in July 2024 and has been selected as a Young Global Leader 2026 by the World Economic Forum.

An alumnus of SRCC, Aniket is a Teach for India, Acumen, and Unreasonable fellow. He served on Teach for India’s advisory board for two years, is a trustee of The YP Foundation, and was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in 2019.

Haqdarshak uses a mobile app and a field force of 67,000+ trained women agents to help citizens access government and private schemes and benefits. It has helped 93 lakh+ families and 1,30,500+ micro-businesses receive over INR 23,200 Cr+ in benefits. The organization also works with companies to help their workers access government welfare schemes.

Haqdarshak has launched the Yojana Card, a digitally enabled social security card combining government schemes, social security, financial services, and other welfare services for families and businesses through a single channel with last-mile support.

Haqdarshak aims to reach 100 million families by 2030 through an open-platform training approach for grassroots organizations in India and other countries.

In late June, the Tällberg Foundation joined with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) in Athens to celebrate the winners of the 2025 Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize as part of SNF’s 30th anniversary celebration. This special edition of New Thinking for a New World picks up where that celebration left off.

Tällberg Foundation board members Helena Nilsson Friberg and Tom Cummings sat down with the three 2025 laureates—Rhett Ayers Butler, founder and CEO of Mongabay; Bryan Doerries, artistic director of Theater of War Productions; and David Gruber, oceanographer and founder of Project CETI—for a conversation about what leadership demands of them.

Rhett, Bryan, and David talked candidly about the choices that have shaped their leadership journeys as well as the challenges of the future.

Listen and tell us what you think makes great leaders great.

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You can also find New Thinking for a New World on your preferred platform, including Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. 

ABOUT OUR PRIZE WINNERS

Rhett Ayers Butler is a journalist, conservationist, and founder of Mongabay, a leading global environmental news platform producing original reporting in multiple languages. Under his leadership, Mongabay has grown into one of the world’s most widely read sources on forests, wildlife, oceans, and climate change, reaching tens of millions of readers annually and shaping public debate on biodiversity and conservation.

Rhett’s work bridges investigative journalism, conservation science, and storytelling, amplifying the voices of communities on the frontlines of environmental change. He has spearheaded initiatives to expand environmental journalism in tropical countries by building networks of local reporters and strengthening access to independent, fact-based information. His leadership has been recognized with awards from the Heinz Family Foundation and the Parker-Gentry Award for Conservation.

Born in the United States, Rhett studied economics and biology at the University of California, San Diego, before working across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Bryan Doerries is a writer, director, and translator serving as Artistic Director of Theater of War Productions. A self-described evangelist for ancient stories, Doerries uses age-old approaches to help individuals and communities heal from trauma and loss.

Under his leadership, Theater of War Productions has presented projects across the United States and internationally, using dramatic readings of seminal plays and community conversations to confront topics including combat-related psychological injury, end-of-life care, racialized violence, incarceration, gun violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, the refugee crisis, and addiction.

Doerries is the author of several books, including The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today and The Odyssey of Sergeant Jack Brennan. Among his honors, he has received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Kenyon College, was named Public Artist in Residence for the City of New York, and was elected a Hastings Center Fellow.

David Gruber is a marine biologist, explorer, and innovator whose work bridges biology, robotics, and artificial intelligence to reveal the hidden lives of ocean creatures. He is the Founder and President of Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), an effort to decode the communication of sperm whales using advanced machine learning and robotics. He is also a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences at the City University of New York and a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History.

David’s discoveries include the first biofluorescent sea turtle and more than 200 new fluorescent and bioluminescent marine species. Collaborating with engineers at Harvard, he has co-developed soft robotic devices to study fragile ocean life without harm. A National Geographic Explorer and TED Audacious grantee, he has received international recognition including the Lagrange Prize. He is also the author of Aglow in the Dark: The Revolutionary Science of Biofluorescence.

ABOUT OUR FACILITATORS 

Tom Cummings is a thought leader, entrepreneur and board member for the Tallberg Foundation serving as secretary of the jury, the Leaders Mentoring Leaders program and Rethinking How Non-profits can Fund Themselves.

Tom leads the CEO roundtable for the Global Alliance for Banking on Values where he He is a Co-Director of the Institute for Values Based Governance and Governance Academy. He is a full member of the Club of Rome and on the board of B-Corp Foundation.

He has served as an executive for Unilever NV, ABN AMRO bank and Shell NV, and has worked as a close adviser to public and family firms.

He is co-author of Leadership Landscapes (2008); Nine Visions of Capitalism (2015), Reference Handbook on Political and Civic Leadership (2010) and Leaders for Tomorrow (2009). His academic history includes University of London and IMD with visiting research and teaching assignments for more than 20 universities.

Helena Nilsson Friberg is an experienced People & Culture leader passionate about developing both Business & People. She always engages in the interdependencies of business development, culture, and organizational transformation and works with a Gestalt and systemic approach at the core. After 19 years at IKEA, she strives to always contribute to creating a better everyday life for the many people.

Helena is currently deputy CEO of MiL Institute. Before that, she headed up HR, Communication and Continuous Improvement at Electrolux, BA Europe. Prior to this, Helena was head of People & Culture at Inter IKEA Group, which included being the strategy owner of the IKEA People Strategy; creating, strategizing, and integrating a continued strong people focus across IKEA.

She has a BSc in Business, Marketing and Management from Växjö University/Kansai Gaidai and an MSc in Gestalt in organizations from the University of Derby/Gestalt Academy in Scandinavia.

In late June, the Tällberg Foundation joined the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) in Athens to celebrate the winners of the 2025 Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize as part of SNF’s week-long, 30th anniversary celebration.

On this episode of New Thinking for a New World, Vishakha Desai, vice chair of the Tällberg Foundation Board of Directors, introduces the three 2025 laureates—Rhett Ayers Butler, founder and CEO of Mongabay; Bryan Doerries, artistic director of Theater of War Productions; and David Gruber, oceanographer, founder and president of Project CETI. Listen as they reflect on how they built their leadership, what they have accomplished, and—most importantly—what they hope to do into the future.

Their work spans environmental journalism, theater and public dialogue, and interspecies communications. What they have in common is a determination to challenge conventional thinking, deep ethical commitment, and a belief that the world can be made a better place if people of good will work together to do so.

These three leaders join the extraordinary cadre who have been honored with the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize since its inception a decade ago. And the beat goes on: this year’s process, during which 2,058 leaders from 144 countries were nominated. The 2026 Prize Jury will meet soon to select leaders whose courage, creativity, persistence, ethics, and commitment to a global worldview exemplify the kind of leadership the world urgently needs.

You can also find New Thinking for a New World on your preferred platform, including Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. 

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Rhett Ayers Butler is a journalist, conservationist, and founder of Mongabay, a leading global environmental news platform producing original reporting in multiple languages. Under his leadership, Mongabay has grown into one of the world’s most widely read sources on forests, wildlife, oceans, and climate change, reaching tens of millions of readers annually and shaping public debate on biodiversity and conservation.

Rhett’s work bridges investigative journalism, conservation science, and storytelling, amplifying the voices of communities on the frontlines of environmental change. He has spearheaded initiatives to expand environmental journalism in tropical countries by building networks of local reporters and strengthening access to independent, fact-based information. His leadership has been recognized with awards from the Heinz Family Foundation and the Parker-Gentry Award for Conservation.

Born in the United States, Rhett studied economics and biology at the University of California, San Diego, before working across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Bryan Doerries is a writer, director, and translator serving as Artistic Director of Theater of War Productions. A self-described evangelist for ancient stories, Doerries uses age-old approaches to help individuals and communities heal from trauma and loss.

Under his leadership, Theater of War Productions has presented projects across the United States and internationally, using dramatic readings of seminal plays and community conversations to confront topics including combat-related psychological injury, end-of-life care, racialized violence, incarceration, gun violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, the refugee crisis, and addiction.

Doerries is the author of several books, including The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today and The Odyssey of Sergeant Jack Brennan. Among his honors, he has received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Kenyon College, was named Public Artist in Residence for the City of New York, and was elected a Hastings Center Fellow.

David Gruber is a marine biologist, explorer, and innovator whose work bridges biology, robotics, and artificial intelligence to reveal the hidden lives of ocean creatures. He is the Founder and President of Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), an effort to decode the communication of sperm whales using advanced machine learning and robotics. He is also a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences at the City University of New York and a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History.

David’s discoveries include the first biofluorescent sea turtle and more than 200 new fluorescent and bioluminescent marine species. Collaborating with engineers at Harvard, he has co-developed soft robotic devices to study fragile ocean life without harm. A National Geographic Explorer and TED Audacious grantee, he has received international recognition including the Lagrange Prize. He is also the author of Aglow in the Dark: The Revolutionary Science of Biofluorescence.

Is it money or music that “makes the world go round?” The answer, probably, is both, or to be more precise, musicians need money to make their music. Unfortunately, the economics of music—especially classical and experimental music, but other genres as well—are daunting for most people who aim to be professional musicians.

Meet Ye Jin Min. She’s a violinist, a composer, a singer, and a conductor. She is as comfortable and proficient performing classical Western repertoire as she is creating experimental music that defies categorization.

Ye Jin is also an entrepreneur. She wants musicians to be rewarded not just by the cheers of happy audiences, but also by the opportunity to earn a living making music. In that spirit, she has launched Unboxed Musicians, which aims at creating sustainable, creative ecosystems for musicians and composers. Although still in its early days, it’s possible that her imaginative new business model could have a huge impact on how music is made globally.

In this episode of New Thinking for a New World, Ye Jin shares her thoughts about making music as well as about making musical business.

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The best way to understand and appreciate music is to listen to it. In a companion episode, Ye Jin Min — The Music, hear three pieces imagined, composed, and played by Ye Jin Min with help from some of her friends: Vinyl Road, Honey, and Four Moons with Koriobots.

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ABOUT OUR GUEST
Ye Jin Min is a South Korean violinist, composer, and multi-disciplinary artist who has appeared globally as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player. Deeply engaged with contemporary music, she focuses on interdisciplinary collaborations and creating novel concert experiences. She brings this vision to life through her creative venture, Unboxed Musicians, which aims to make contemporary-classical music more accessible to diverse audiences.

Current projects Ye Jin is undertaking include producing Mini Music Box, a children’s contemporary music series, and contributing as a singer, violinist, and composer to Red Helicopter: An American Rock Opera. Her innovative work with Unboxed Musicians won the 2025 Yale Creative Entrepreneurship Prize. Beyond the classical realm, she continuously expands her artistic boundaries as a singer-songwriter and producer.

It is not news that democracy is in trouble almost everywhere. Poll after poll shows that people in most countries—especially in the West and throughout the Americas—are disappointed with democracy as it exists today. This is particularly true among young people, many of whom seem to prefer a strong leader to the apparent impotence of their democratic leaders.

Of course, there are exceptions, and we should celebrate them. Top of that list is Bangladesh, with a history of autocratic leaders, some of whom used elections to hang on to power for years. However, during the summer of 2024, a student-led revolution succeeded in expelling the government of Sheikh Hasina, who had ruled for 15 years.

Fast-forward to February 2026, and Bangladesh has just conducted an election that, by all accounts, was mostly free, fair, and peaceful. The result was that the interim government, led by Nobel Prize-winning Muhammad Yunus, has now been replaced by a democratically elected government. From start to finish, the entire transformation took less than 20 months.

Score one for democracy!

Our guests on New Thinking for a New World were in the front ranks of that revolution. Aysha Siddiqua Tithi and Umama Fatema were both leaders of Students Against Discrimination, the organization that drove the revolution. Listen as they discuss their experiences and hopes for their country’s future.

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You can also find the New Thinking for a New World on your preferred platform, including Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. 

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Aysha Siddiqua Tithi is a Computer Science student at Brac University and an internationally recognized Bangladeshi youth activist. She emerged as a leader of the 2024 anti-discrimination student movement and represented youth voices at the 79th UN General Assembly alongside Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus.

She co-founded She Leads to empower women and works with the Zero Missing Children Foundation to protect children’s rights. Aysha has held leadership roles at Brac University and contributes to civic training initiatives. Blending technology and activism, she focuses on innovation, human rights, and climate justice, aiming to advance equity and sustainability through tech-driven solutions.

Umama Fatema is a Bangladeshi student activist and youth leader committed to social justice and education reform. A graduate of the University of Dhaka, she rose to national prominence during the 2024 July Uprising, advocating for quota reform and greater transparency in public institutions. As a coordinator and spokesperson for Students Against Discrimination, she mobilized thousands of students and championed the rights of marginalized groups. Known for her clear, inclusive leadership, she previously served as General Secretary of the Dhaka University branch of the Bangladesh Chhatra Federation and remains active in youth empowerment and women’s rights advocacy.

What does global leadership look like in a fractured, uncertain world?

The Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize was created to recognize leaders from any discipline, any country, who are working to make the world better. Leadership that is global in perspective, innovative and persistent, and grounded in universal values.

This episode is a recording of a special webinar celebrating the 2025 Prize laureates: Rhett Ayers Butler, founder of Mongabay; Bryan Doerries, founder of Theater of War Productions; and David Gruber, founder of Project CETI.

Moderated by Helena Nilsson, Prize jury member and Deputy CEO of the MiL Institute, the wide-ranging conversation explores how journalism, art, and science can reshape how we understand truth, trauma, and our relationship with the natural world.

Listen as they reflect on their work, their motivations, and what leadership requires at this moment in history. Then NOMINATE someone for the 2026 version of the Prize.

Watch the full conversation with the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize winners here:

You can also find the New Thinking for a New World on your preferred platform, including Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. 

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Rhett Ayers Butler is a journalist, conservationist, and the founder of Mongabay, a leading global environmental news platform producing original reporting in multiple languages. His work bridges investigative journalism, conservation science, and storytelling, amplifying the voices of communities on the frontlines of environmental change. His reporting and leadership have been recognized with awards from organizations such as the Heinz Family Foundation and the Parker-Gentry Award for Conservation. Born in the United States, Rhett studied economics and biology at UC San Diego before working across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Bryan Doerries is a writer, director, and translator serving as Artistic Director of Theater of War Productions. Using dramatic readings of seminal plays and community conversations, he helps individuals and communities heal from trauma and loss by exploring the relevance of ancient stories to contemporary issues. His books include The Theater of War and The Odyssey of Sergeant Jack Brennan, and among his honors he has received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Kenyon College and was named Public Artist in Residence for the City of New York.

David Gruber is a marine biologist, explorer, and innovator whose work bridges biology, robotics, and artificial intelligence to reveal the hidden lives of ocean creatures. He is the Founder and President of Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), an effort to decode the communication of sperm whales using machine learning and robotics, and a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences at the City University of New York. A National Geographic Explorer and TED Audacious grantee, his discoveries include the first biofluorescent sea turtle and over 200 new fluorescent and bioluminescent marine species, and he is the author of Aglow in the Dark: The Revolutionary Science of Biofluorescence.

Helena Nilsson is an experienced People & Culture leader passionate about developing business and people together, working with a Gestalt and systemic approach at the core. She is currently Deputy CEO of the MiL Institute. Before that she headed up HR, Communication and Continuous Improvement at Electrolux, BA Europe, and prior to that was head of People & Culture at Inter IKEA Group, where she owned the IKEA People Strategy, driving a continued strong people focus across the organization after 19 years at IKEA. She holds a BSc in Business, Marketing and Management from Växjö University and an MSc in Gestalt in Organisations from the University of Derby and Gestalt Academy in Scandinavia.

No, not Iranians and Israelis on the brink of war. And, no, not the seemingly endless search for a Palestinian state. Rather, the implications of the newest rivalry that is defining Middle Eastern politics: Saudi Arabia vs. United Arab Emirates.

These two countries are rapidly passing through the geopolitical equivalent of the five stages of grief: from allies to collaborators to competitors to adversaries and—possibly—to enemies.

Why? What’s at stake? Is it personal or just business? What are the potential consequences?

It is probably too soon for answers, but not for informed speculation. Professor Rob Geist Pinfold is a close observer of the Arab Gulf and the Levant. Listen as he explores how the Saudis and the Emiratis—and their leaders, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed—are maneuvering for power in a region that is critical to all of us.

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You can also find the New Thinking for a New World on your preferred platform, including Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. 

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dr Rob Geist Pinfold is a Lecturer in International Security at King’s College London. He is also a Research Fellow at the Peace Research Center Prague and an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Rob is a scholar of grand strategy, with a regional focus on war and contemporary conflict in the Middle East. His work has been published in numerous academic journals, such as the European Journal of International Security, the Journal of Global Security Studies, Survival, International Studies Perspectives, the Journal of Strategic Studies and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. His full-length book manuscript, Understanding Territorial Withdrawal: Israeli Occupations and Exits, was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. He has written for Foreign Policy, War on the Rocks, Haaretz, The New Arab, The Middle East Council on Global Affairs and the Royal United Services Institute, and provided commentary for Al Jazeera, France 24, RTE News, CNBC, the BBC and many others.