Why Globalization Can't Stop War Anymore (with Pascal Lamy and Lorenzo Marsili)
For decades, world leaders told us that global trade would keep the peace. Markets would bind nations together, and economic interdependence would make conflict too costly to pursue. That logic shaped the global institutions of the late twentieth century and defined the worldview of Pascal Lamy, former head of the World Trade Organization.
In this episode, Lamy sits down with Lorenzo Marsili, the director of the Berggruen Institute-Europe to reflect on why that promise can't be kept. From the collapse of the WTO consensus to the rise of U.S.–China rivalry, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the splintering of the internet, he explains why globalization can no longer guarantee harmony and what a world order governed by “precautionism” that prioritizes a Planetary commons might offer instead.
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The Making of Ideas That Matter (with Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels)
The Berggruen Institute began with a simple conviction: ideas shape the world. Out of the wreckage of the 2008 financial crisis,the Institute's co-founders – Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels – set out to build an independent think tank that would imagine bold, new futures, bridge cultures, and redesign institutions to match the pace of the 21st century. Beyond just thinking about these ideas, today the Institute works to make them real.
In this episode, Berggruen and Gardels reflect on their unlikely partnership and the projects that shaped their vision. From bipartisan reform efforts in California to high-level dialogues in Beijing, they chart the emergence of some of the Institute’s most innovative frameworks: participation without populism, pre-distribution of wealth, and planetary realism. Along the way, they discuss why philosophy still matters and how nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
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1:05:24
A Breakdown in Global Governance (with Nathan Gardels and Anne-Marie Slaughter)
The liberal world order was built for a different era — more centralized, more hierarchical, more predictable. In the 21st century, power has gone fluid. It flows through supply chains and satellites, networks and platforms, alliances that shift issue by issue.
In this episode, policy thinker Anne-Marie Slaughter joins Nathan Gardels to map a world no longer defined by blocs, but by webs. From climate cooperation to civilizational conflict, from multipolar diplomacy to local democratic renewal, they explore what comes after the end of the nation-state’s monopoly on the future.
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The Cyborg Watershed of the American West (with Lauren Bon and Grant Slater)
The ever-branching network of lakes, rivers, and streams that flow west from the Rockies enable human life to flourish in one of the hottest places on Earth. This is a “cyborg watershed” – part natural, part machine, and wholly entangled with the myths and machinery of the region.
In this episode, LA-based artist Lauren Bon joins Futurology producer Grant Slater to trace the path of her large-scale artworks that intervene in that system, blurring the lines between art, engineering, and activism. The conversation moves through buried waterways, the choreography of permits and politics, and the search for a civic identity grounded in the flow of water rather than the lines on a map.
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The Death Knell of the Nation-State (with Rana Dasgupta and Jonathan Blake)
The modern nation-state wasn’t just a conglomeration of laws and armies. It was a belief in borders, in belonging, in the promise that citizenship could ground identity in a chaotic world. That belief is faltering.
In this episode, writer and thinker Rana Dasgupta joins Jonathan Blake to explore the spiritual and political collapse of state power.They unearth sovereignty's theological roots, assess its crumbling currency regimes, and reckon with the return of nomadism in a world of climate migration and digital drift.
The future never arrives all at once. It ripples through society long before we know what to call it.
At the Berggruen Institute, we know that we need more than prediction to name what’s next; we need invention. Each week, Institute President Dawn Nakagawa introduces us to scientists and philosophers recalibrating our cosmologies, technologists coming to terms with alien intelligence, and policymakers scrambling to design systems for a world in flux.
Join thinkers and doers from the Berggruen-verse as we imagine a future that we can accomplish together, instead of one that we’re all working to prevent.
USA