The Ballpark Podcast

In January 2025, the release of a new model and chatbot by Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company, DeepSeek, sent shockwaves through the tech industry in the US and elsewhere.

On the May 7th, 2025, India launched missile strikes on Pakistan in response to a terrorist attack in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir on April 22nd.

The US-led international order is under strain from without and within. Authoritarian powers such as Russia and China are challenging the core tenets of global cooperation and conflict management.

Many institutions are now using artificial intelligence (AI) models as tools to think about solutions to a variety of challenges, from the everyday to the global.

The Phelan US Centre spoke to Michael Latner, Professor of Political Science at California Polytechnic State University and Director of Research on Democratic Reform at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School

In March 2025 the Phelan US Centre spoke to John Minnich, Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at LSE about why semiconductors are so important in the global economy.

In February 2025 the Phelan US Centre spoke to spoke to Mukulika Banerjee, Professor in LSE’s Department of Anthropology.

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has brought the spectre of potential nuclear conflict back into the public consciousness for the first time in decades.

Donald Trump’s links to the right, including the far right and the alt-right date back to least to his 2016 presidential campaign and continued through his first term and then into his 2024 election campaign .

President Trump has made his feelings about US competition with China plain; one of the early acts of his second presidential term has been to place tariffs on Chinese imports.

In the past decade, many commentators have increasingly spoken of growing competition between the United States and China in areas like trade, industrial policy, but also on foreign policy and global influence more generally.

In December 2024 the Phelan US Centre spoke Dr Douglas Fuller, Associate Professor in the Department of International Economics, Government and Business at Copenhagen Business School.

In October 2024 the Phelan US Centre spoke to Professor Michael Mastanduno, Nelson A. Rockefeller Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, and Dr Jennifer Lind, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College.

In November 2024 the Phelan US Centre spoke to Professor Kishore Mahbubani, Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore.

In October 2024 the LSE Phelan US Centre spoke to Yeling Tan, Professor of Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. They spoke about how China understands economic security and its evolving economic strategy.

In October 2024 the Phelan US Centre spoke to spoke to Lawrence Lessig, the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School.

In October 2024 the Phelan US Centre spoke to Fawaz Gerges, Professor of International Relations at LSE, about his new book, “What Really Went Wrong: The West and the failure of democracy in the Middle East”.

In September 2024 the Phelan US Centre spoke to Nick Lewis, a PhD student in LSE’s Department of Government and a recipient of a Phelan US Centre PhD Summer Research Grant in 2022, about how social media creates bias in democratic deliberation.

In September 2024 the Phelan US Centre spoke to Peter Harris, Associate Professor of Political Science at Colorado State University about his new book, Why America Can’t Retrench (And How It Might).

In August 2024 the Phelan US Centre spoke to Evelyne Ong, an undergraduate research assistant with the Phelan US Centre for the 2023-24 academic year.