Explaining Brazil
by The Brazilian Report
Latest episode
How do the US midterms affect Brazil?
How do the US midterms affect Brazil?
About this podcast
News from Brazil, by The Brazilian Report — an independent media outlet uniquely positioned to offer an insider’s view of current affairs in Brazil.
Episodes
The newest 50 of 404 episodes
- How do the US midterms affect Brazil? · 37 minDemocrats won control of both the House and the Senate in Tuesday’s US midterms. They secured their largest House majority in nearly 20 years and flipped Senate seats in states…
- Lula re-elected, Flávio on the run · 42 minFlávio Bolsonaro refused to accept his defeat in Brazil’s presidential runoff and left the country within 24 hours of a Supreme Court order to surrender his passports. He landed…
- A coin-flip runoff · 37 minBrazil votes on Sunday, and the presidential runoff is now too close to call. A week and a half ago, Flávio Bolsonaro was the clear favorite. Since then, street mobilization and…
- Taking stock of an electoral shock · 45 minLula finished Brazil's first round almost 2 points behind Flávio Bolsonaro, his weakest first-round result since 1998. Gustavo Ribeiro and historian James Green (Brown…
- Brazil's economy is growing. So why isn't Lula polling better? · 40 minBrazilians vote on Sunday, October 4, and President Lula is asking for a fourth term on the strength of his economic record. Growth averaged 3% a year, unemployment is at a…
- Flávio Bolsonaro upsets the gods · 28 minBrazil votes on Sunday, and the final week of the campaign has turned on religion. A rumor that a Flávio Bolsonaro government would strip Our Lady of Aparecida of her title as…
- How to read Brazil's election polls · 1 h 5 minLula and Flávio Bolsonaro are statistically tied less than two weeks before Brazil's first round, and a flood of contradictory polls is feeding claims that pollsters are rigging…
- Can Brazil's Supreme Court survive an election? · 41 minFor years, Brazil's Supreme Court picked fights with Congress and the presidency. This month it turned on itself. On September 15, the full court sat for more than seven hours to…
- Civil war at the Brazilian Supreme Court · 36 minBrazil's Supreme Court is facing what may be the worst crisis in its history. Justice André Mendonça unsealed the Banco Master investigation, exposing messages between the bank's…
- The first surprise of the 2026 election · 38 minTwo polls released Monday shook the political establishment. Augusto Cury, of the small Avante party, took third place in both: 11% in Nexus's survey, 7.8% in Atlas Intel's. The…
- What's wrong with the Brazilian Congress · 44 minBrazil's 2026 campaign is officially underway, and almost all the attention will be on the presidential race. That's a problem, because power in Brazil is increasingly won and…
- A visa, a snub, and a reopened wound · 35 minThe US State Department revoked the visa of Brazil's ambassador to Washington ( https://newsletters.brazilian.report/p/us-brazil-ambassador-viotti-argentina-russia-putin ) and…
- Brazilian trade: Life after Washington · 27 minThe US now takes less than 10% of Brazil's exports — the smallest share in decades — and Washington's tariff wall is accelerating a realignment that was already underway. Gustavo…
- An imported playbook for Brazil's elections · 41 minSenator Flávio Bolsonaro used his turn at Debating Brazil — an event series in which Brazilian presidential candidates present their vision of the country to foreign ambassadors…
- Flávio Bolsonaro has a few problems to deal with · 46 minOn this episode of Explaining Brazil, Gustavo Ribeiro, editor-in-chief of The Brazilian Report, talks with James Green, a historian at Brown University, about the fracturing…
- Brazil's crime syndicates are now terrorist organizations · 42 minUS Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated the Comando Vermelho (Red Command, or CV) and the Primeiro Comando da Capital (First Command of the Capital, or PCC) as foreign…
- Lula meets Trump in Washington · 52 minEditor-in-chief Gustavo Ribeiro sat down with historian James N. Green to unpack Lula's recent meeting with Donald Trump. While the visit yielded no concrete trade breakthroughs…
- Trouble ahead for Brazil-US relations? · 48 minWhat role will the United States play in Brazil's high-stakes 2026 elections? Join editor-in-chief Gustavo Ribeiro and historian James N. Green of the Brazil Office Alliance as…
- Time to investigate Brazil's Supreme Court justices? (preview) · 8 minAmid deepening polarization and the judiciary’s growing role in the country’s political life, Brazil’s Supreme Court has become accustomed to being rated poorly by a significant…
- Brazil's water leverage. And its fault lines (preview) · 13 minHumanity has entered what scientists are calling an “era of water bankruptcy.” According to the United Nations University, many critical water systems around the world are so…
- An indigenous victory against Cargill on the Tapajós River (preview) · 10 minAdvances in oil exploration and the construction of railways and highways in recent years have shown that, when large infrastructure projects clash with matters of Amazon…
- Brazilian stocks’ record run (preview) · 7 min190,000 points. After a string of record highs that have been piling up since mid-January, the Ibovespa — the benchmark index of São Paulo’s stock exchange, the B3 — surpassed…
- Brasília enters an election year on edge (preview) · 11 minBrasília is back to work — and the new legislative year has opened with all the familiar rituals: lofty speeches about stability, institutional balance, and dialogue, plus…
- Banco Master and the Supreme Court: After the glory came the crisis (preview) · 10 minAs the saying goes, the calm comes before the storm. In Brazil’s Supreme Court, the current crisis came after a period of glory and renown. In September 2025, the Supreme Court…
- How the Mercosur-EU deal impacts Brazilian firms beyond exports (preview) · 12 minAmid a global context of eroding multilateralism and rising US trade wars, Mercosur and the European Union are trying to create a shared market for more than 700 million people…
- What happened to Brazil-Venezuela relations? (preview) · 15 minLula did not recognize Maduro’s 2024 election win, but his first two terms in office in the 2000s saw him make South American integration a top priority of Brazil’s foreign…
- Trump’s Venezuela play: How it reshapes South America’s risk map (preview) · 13 minIn Latin America, 2026 quite literally got off to an explosive start. Just before sunrise on January 2, the city of Caracas was violently awoken by the sound of bombs, as US…
- Checks and balances turned into vendettas (preview) · 10 minIn any democratic republic, it’s normal for the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to clash. That’s a sign of mutual oversight. It’s also normal for politicians to…
- What needs repair in Brazil's public sector machine? (preview) · 12 minIn a country with 27 state governments, more than 5,000 city halls, and around 12 million people working in the public sector, calls to reform — or improve — Brazil’s civil…
- Good COP? Bad COP? (preview) · 11 minCarlos Nobre, head of the Planetary Science Pavilion at COP30 in the Amazon, talks to us about the conference’s results, the climate emergency we are living through, and what…
- Brazil’s Central Bank led a revolution (preview) · 10 minFive years ago, Brazil launched a public digital payment infrastructure — and its impact on the financial market and society has been immense. Send us your feedback Support the…
- Supreme Court to Brazilians: “Follow the money” (preview) · 11 minOver the past decade, Brazilian lawmakers have steadily built up procedures to expand their powers over the purse. That has included increasing the overall volume of…
- COP30: Will climate action take root? (preview) · 15 minEach passing year, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP) gains more urgency. More and more biomes around the world are approaching what scientists call tipping…
- Who will be Brazil's next Supreme Court justice? (preview) · 9 minJustice Luís Roberto Barroso is retiring. We unpack how factors such as trust, political ties, and electoral considerations may guide President Lula’s next choice for the court…
- 2026 election: A year away, what do polls say? (preview) · 5 minPresident Lula’s popularity has risen. We examine how this might impact the political landscape ahead of the next presidential election. Listen to the full episode on Apple…
- Brazil's tax system fuels income inequality (preview) · 8 minBrazil’s Congress is discussing a proposal for income tax reform. Backed by the Lula administration, the bill seeks to make the country’s system more progressive. But just how…
- Self-serving politics (preview) · 14 minCrowds on Sunday fanned out across Brazil’s 27 state capitals to denounce two measures moving through Congress: a constitutional amendment proposal that would essentially shield…
- The PCC’s sprawling presence in Brazil’s economy (Preview) · 10 minA massive police operation exposed how deep Brazil's largest criminal organization has penetrated the legitimate economy. Rafael Alcadipani, a professor at the FGV’s School of…
- Bolsonaro: from the barracks, to the presidency ... to prison? (preview) · 17 minThe Brazilian Supreme Court has reached a majority to convict former President Jair Bolsonaro of leading a conspiracy to overturn his 2022 electoral defeat. The trial is about to…
- Brazil's trial of the century (Preview) · 13 minThe final stage of Jair Bolsonaro’s coup trial kicked off on September 2 in Brasília. After months of evidence-gathering, arguments and testimonies, the justices are expected to…
- Can Brazil own its digital destiny? (Preview) · 13 minAt a time when US President Donald Trump is pressuring Brazil on both trade and military fronts, the country’s digital vulnerabilities have come into focus. The notion of…
- The battle for control over Brazil's Congress (Preview) · 10 minA political drama has unfolded inside Congress. It started with a show of force: after former President Jair Bolsonaro was placed on house arrest, lawmakers loyal to him occupied…
- Supreme Court places Bolsonaro under house arrest (Preview) · 8 minIn this edition of #InsiderTalks, we’ve invited experts on law, democracy and electoral trends to analyze the trial of Bolsonaro and his allies for an alleged coup plot…
- US tariffs: Brazil is negotiating with an “elected autocracy” (Preview) · 7 minProfessor Felipe Campante of Johns Hopkins sees little room for success in negotiations between Brazil and the US, as only the former is following the rule of law. Subscribe to…
- Trump declares (trade) war on Brazil (Preview) · 13 minIn this episode of Explaining Brazil Plus, we analyzed Donald Trump’s threat of a 50% tariff on Brazil and its possible impacts on the country's economy and politics. Subscribe…
- Social security scandals, Brazil's emissions beef and a papal funeral · 12 minA major social security scandal causes a government headache. Brazil’s beef sector needs major changes to hit emissions goals. And Lula is off to Rome for the pope’s funeral, but…
- COP 30: are locals ready to shape policies? (Preview) · 5 minIn this Explaining Brazil Plus episode, Lise Tupiassu of the Federal University of Pará gives us her on-the-ground perspective on what should be in the spotlight regarding COP30…
- Penal populism, agro jobs and Bolsonaro under the knife · 10 minRio’s mayor looks to El Salvador for inspiration on public security. Brazil’s agro jobs are less and less done on farms. And Bolsonaro goes under the knife again in a 12-hour…
- Trump’s decline, Embraer’s rise, and Lula in a gun fight · 10 minTrump and the US become less popular in Brazil. Embraer wades into the aerial arms race. And the pro-gun caucus wants to take firearms away from Lula’s security team Send us your…
- Brazil braces for Trump's tariffs (Preview) · 6 minUS President Donald Trump promises a significant tariff announcement on April 2. We gathered a team of experts to discuss how the looming threats of tariffs from the Trump…
