The policies in the first 100 days of the Trump administration have resulted in an extraordinary time of uncertainty and change in the way the global economy works and how it will function in the future. The shock at the speed and scope of the undermining of the current system regulating global trade is real. When we feel disorientated by our current experience of chaos, it is often helpful to try to re-anchor ourselves in putting what we are experiencing into a historical context. In this way, United States’ actions can be seen as part of a semi-predictable, oscillating pattern of the rise and fall of market forces vis-a-vis assertions of state power.

In this episode, my guest is TRIUM’s own Robert Falkner, and we discuss his and Barry Buzan’s new book, The Market in Global International Society: An English School Approach to International Political Economy.

Robert Falkner is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and is the Academic Dean of the TRIUM Global EMBA. Robert has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University, Simone Veil Fellow at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and Associate Fellow of Chatham House. In addition to his role at the LSE, he is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.

In their new book, Buzon and Falkner argue that while adopting market rules in the international system creates more wealth and power than any alternative organising principles (e.g. mercantilism), it also necessarily undermines state power and sovereignty, which inevitably leads to a reassertion of power by strong state actors. The book is an amazing combination of original theoretical understandings and a staggeringly detailed and nuanced historical account of the oscillations between market and more statist international systems.

In this episode, Robert and I discuss the evidence for this pattern and whether the challenges of climate change and technological developments – particularly AI – may mean that the cycle will end and that we are headed into something unknown and unknowable.

Buzon, B. & Falkner, R. (2025) The Market in Global International Society: An English School Approach to International Political Economy. Oxford University Press

Bassani, Giorgio (2007) The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. Penguin Modern Classics, International Edition. First published in 1962.

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We are all born, become toddlers, teenagers, adults, mid-aged, late middle aged, and eventually die. Do company’s follow this same pattern? If so, can we use that pattern to better predict what they will do and compare that to what they should do at different stages of their life cycles?

My guest for this episode is Aswath Damodaran. Aswath is a Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University (Kerschner Family Chair in Finance Education). Aswath is a super star professor, considered both in and out of academia as the ‘Dean of Valuation’, and one of the best teachers I have ever had the privilege of working with together. We have been lucky to have him teaching on the TRIUM EMBA for the last 23 years!

In this episode we discuss his latest book, The Corporate Life Cycle: Business, investment, and Management Implications.

The work is an attempt to provide a unified theory of all of finance (with a bit of strategy, management and leadership). With clear, compelling and concise writing, Aswath views all of corporate finance, valuation, investment philosophy and management/leadership through the construct of the birth, aging and dying of firms. The scope and scale is vast, and in a less gifted writer, it would risk being reductionist and overly simplistic – the opposite of what we have here. I wish I would have read this book 20 years ago because it would have saved me a lot of time and effort!

In this conversation we cover the basics of the corporate life cycle and some of its implications. We get into a lively discussion about whether companies should strive to be ‘sustainable’, explore the leadership characteristic needed at different stages of a company’s life cycle, and outline the reasons why renewal and rebirth for company’s near the end of their life cycle is so difficult.

It is conversations with the likes of Aswath which make me feel so lucky to do what I do!

Citations

· Damodaran, Aswath (2024) The Corporate Life Cycle: Business, Investment, and Management Implications. Penguin Random House.

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My guest for this episode of Fawaz Gerges of the London School of Economics where he is the Emirates Professorship in Contemporary Middle East Studies. Fawaz earned his doctorate at Oxford and has taught there, as well as at Harvard and Columbia. He has been a research scholar at Princeton and is the author of 10 books on the Middle East and his articles and editorials have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian, The Baltimore Sun, The Independent (London), Al Hayat (London), Foreign Policy, Newsweek, The National Interest, Democracy: a Journal of Ideas, Middle East Journal, Survival, Al Mustqbal al-Arabi, Middle East Insight, and many others.

Gerges has given scores of interviews for various media outlets throughout the world, including ABC, CNN, BBC, PBS, CBS, NPR, CBC, Sky News, Al Jazeera, and LBC. He has been a guest on The Charlie Rose Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, ABC Nightline, World News Tonight, Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC), This Week, Good Morning America and other prominent shows. He was a senior ABC television news analyst from 2000 until 2007.

In this episode we first discuss Fawaz’s most recent book, What Really Went Wrong: The West and the Failure of Democracy in the Middle East. This is an excellent historical study of the impact of US interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East in the post-WW2 era. It shows how the pursuit of stability, open commodity markets and anti-communism led the US to support and ally with anti-democratic autocrats throughout the region who eliminated legitimate nationalistic (and largely secular and democratic) political leaders. We see the consequences of these interventions in the region today.

We then turn to a discussion of the current catastrophe in the Gaza, Israel and Lebanon.

Fawaz and I disagree on many issues. For example, he paraphrases towards the end of our conversation a school of thought which has come to see Israel as the last, ‘Settler Colonial’ state. I think this way of approaching the situation is an invitation to endless violence and despair. For a history of the evolution of this approach, I recommend On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice by Adam Kirsch. There are also many things Fawaz says with which I agree. For example, his historical analysis of the monumental failure of US foreign policy seems to be me to be compelling. But my role as the host of this podcast is not to be a judge of other’s views. In fact, what I agree with or do not agree with is not relevant. My job is to bring you views which may challenge your own; views which help us to understand the ways in which understandings and beliefs can be fundamentally different.

The only way forward is to start with a genuine curiosity of what others think, believe and feel. Just as importantly, curiosity does not imply agreement. Too many times we pretend to attempt to understand something by seeking out others to confirm what we want to, or already believe. It is much better to be challenged by difference. From that starting point, we can, perhaps, begin to be able to predict and influence the future for the better.

Fawaz is a thoughtful, careful, prolific and elegant scholar. While I may differ with him in some areas, I have never questioned his fundamental decency and humanity. I always learn and am challenged by our conversations together - which is a great gift. I hope you enjoy our conversation as well!

Citations

Gerges, F. (2024) What Really Went Wrong: The West and the Failure of Democracy in the Middle East. London: Yale University Press.

Kirsch, Adam (2024) On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice. WV Norton & Co.

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