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Hello and welcome to Behind the News.

My name is Doug Henrywood.

Another two-top today.

We'll hear from the political economist Alfredo Sodfilo on the election in Brazil.

And then we'll hear from a couple of artist activists, Muhammad Salome and Minakani on the uprising in Iran.

Brazil held a two-round presidential election in October.

Luis Ignacio Lula de Silva, universally known as Lula,

148% of the vote, beating the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, affectionately known as Bozo by five percentage points.

But since Lula fell short of the 50% of the vote required,

a runoff between the top two candidates was held in October 29th.

Lula, who was president from 2003 to 2010, beat Bolsonaro in the second round, but just barely.

That's good news because Bolsonaro is a corrupt reactionary authoritarian

of a deeply vile Trump-like sort, but the narrowness of the victory is disturbing.

Why was Lula's victory so narrow?

Why does a ghoul like Bolsonaro have such broad support?

To address these questions, we're joined by Alfredo Sodfilo.

He's a Brazilian political economist who teaches at King's College London.

Alfredo Sodfilo.

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