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Hello and welcome to Behind the News. My name is Doug Henrywood. That was a special version

of the theme, a cover version I found on Instagram a while back performed by my fellow Brooklyn

ite Christian Kale. I was flattered and charmed, and there it was with his permission.

The original, by the way, is, well, Shisha Jay, our beginning, by Obo Addie from the

album Pieces of Africa by the Chronos Portet. A non-standard theme, but a standard pair

of guests today. Harris's stettler will explore the causes of the riots in France and

late June or July. And the complexity scientist Peter Turchin will deploy some models to explain

why the U.S. is heading for a crisis and possible collapse.

First France. I'm a bit late getting to this, but that's one of the challenges of a weekly

show. In what sounds like a very American story on June 27th, a French cop shot and killed

a 17-year-old named Nahel Merzou after a routine traffic stop in the Paris suburb of

Nonteur. Unlike the U.S., however, the word suburbs or banlieues in French is used to

describe zones of deprivation located outside central cities that are home to the country's

poorest, mostly immigrants from France's former colonies in Africa and their descendants.

Not all the suburbs are poor should be pointed out, some are quite rich, in fact. But

banlieues, as nonetheless, come to signify those places of isolation and impoverishment.

The shooting led to days of riots across the country in a vicious crackdown by the cops

and courts. Why? What social conditions prompted the violence? Here to answer that is

Harrison Stettler, a Paris-based journalist who's written for Jacobin, the nation, and

the New York Times. He teaches at the University of Nonteur, the suburb where Nahel Merzou was

killed. Harrison Stettler, he's right, a response to a very long-standing set of grievances.

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