GZERO World with Ian Bremmer
The surprising history of disaster

Predictable Disaster and the Surprising History of Shocks | Historian Niall Ferguson | GZERO World

COVID-19 was a global catastrophe that blindsided the world's wealthiest nations, and it's far from over. But as disasters go, it was hardly unprecedented. Humanity has a long history of failing to prepare for the worst, from volcanic eruptions to earthquakes to famines to shipwrecks to airplane crashes to financial depressions. But how do we get better at preventing such calamities from happening, and how many seemingly unavoidable "natural" disasters are actually caused by humans? On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer talks about all that and more with Stanford historian Niall Ferguson, who is just out with the perfect book for the topic, "Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe." Plus, a look at how one young Ugandan activist was literally cropped out of the global climate fight.
The Iran war just proved Kim Jong Un right. His grandfather wanted the bomb, his father built it, and now the world has stopped pretending it can take it away. Ian Bremmer explains how North Korea got here, and what comes next.
Think you know what's going on around the world? Here's your chance to prove it.
At the 2026 World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings, World Bank Managing Director and Chief Knowledge Officer Paschal Donohoe joined GZERO’s Tony Maciulis to discuss how development institutions balance immediate crises with long-term goals.
At the 2026 World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed says that diplomacy remains the UN’s primary tool for mitigating conflict as tensions escalate in Iran and across the Middle East.