Best of the week - 27 May 2020

Each week BISA Director, Juliet Dryden, scours the internet for COVID-19 content that might interest you. Here she brings you this week's best readings and podcasts. She finishes with 'In other news', giving you a moment's break from the pandemic.

Readings

• From the Economist - The American Way: how is the US handling the crisis
• The Atlantic’s David A Graham on the Karen in Chief: Trumps way of calling the cops on those who challenge him
• Thomas Wright from the Brookings Institution writing for the Atlantic: How should Biden handle China
• Kathy Gilsinan on whether China is planning to win back the world
• Politico’s Charles Dunst looks at how China is flexing its trade muscles
• Winston Morgan for The Conversation on how COVID can’t be explained through the prism of race.
• Universities in Crisis – an Interesting look from Chris Cook writing for Tortoise Media
• Rachel Connolly on reversing the brain drain: why the virus could stop graduates moving to London.

Podcasts

• Why do so many of us no longer trust experts, facts and statistics? Listen to 'Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over the World', with Will Davies and Carl Miller from Intelligence Squared
• Reopening the NHS from the London Review of Books Podcast. Sonia Gandhi and Rupert Beale, scientists at the Francis Crick Institute, talk to Thomas Jones about the ways COVID-19 can affect the nervous system, the steps required to re-open the NHS after lockdown, the state of testing, and reasons to be optimistic about a vaccine
• Mobilising a Zero Carbon Army: green jobs for young people from Reasons to be Cheerful with Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd
• Cornell economist Robert Frank’s radical idea -  social pressure is a fundamental economic force. Listen to the Ezra Klein Show
• A History of Ideas – Fanon on Colonialism, Mackinnon on Patriarchy and Fukuyama on History

In other news

Hong Kong and China

• China paints a target on Hong Kong but abandons one for growth
• The EU won’t follow Trump into a trade war over China
• Fear by Rule in Hong Kong from the Economist.

Watching the China and India dispute

• Saif Khalid for Al Jazeera on the China-India border dispute
• India and China square up on their Himalayan border.

Middle East

• Hassan Hassan in the Guardian argues that Islamic State is back and the West is ill prepared
• Martin Patience on the chaos of Lebanon for the BBC
• Laith Abu Zeyad writes on lockdown in the West Bank for Al Jazeera.

Climate Change

• Leading climate scientist Dr Tamsin Edwards joins David Spiegelhalter to explore uncertainty in different aspects of her life as a statistician and mathematical modeller, and as a communicator about possible climate futures. Listen to Risky Talk.
• The US has withdrawn from the Open Skies Treaty so The Diplomat discusses the implications.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash