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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host David Axelrod.

Jacinda Ardern is a political phenomenon.

He elected Prime Minister of New Zealand four years ago at the age of 37. She's governed her country through natural disasters, a terrorist attack on mosques and Christchurch, and a global pandemic.

She's promoted progressive change in her country, strengthening the social compact and combating child poverty, really reversing decades of conservative policies.

And though she governs a tiny nation, she's also become an eloquent and respected global voice on issues from climate change to human rights.

I spoke with her yesterday from Auckland before an audience of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. Here's that conversation.

Prime Minister, it's so good to be with you today. We're speaking from halfway across the world, but we share this small planet and a lot of urgent challenges.

And I wonder if you could just start by talking about those and what the change in leadership in the United States might mean to your thinking on meeting those challenges.

Well, firstly, can I say, I'm, thank you very much for the opportunity to be with you today.

And you'll see that I'm obviously the other side of the world, I'm in Auckland, presently, even though I'm throwing you a little bit with my backdrop being a beautiful illustration of 1970 star architecture.

That's our beehive. And I sit just a couple of levels from the top that you can see there on any given day.

And it's a seat that I feel very, very privileged to hold, particularly during these, these trouble times.

You know, I have many, many people who frequently choose to point out to me that in the past four years, New Zealand that indeed the world has had some extraordinary experiences.

It actually tracks back to a biosecurity incursion was our first. We had a horrific terrorist attack, an eruption of a volcano in New Zealand called Fakare White Island.

And of course, the global pandemic were all experiencing it present.

But one of the things that we were discussing, David, before we began this session today was despite all of that New Zealand is still a nation that is very, very focused on what's happening globally in the international political environment.

Now, I'm part, I would say that's a little bit cultural. We're a small nation. We consider ourselves to be in a particular place in the peaking water as a nation of five million people.

We like to think that we punch above our weight, but we never, we assume nothing. And we, we, we, we don't act above our station is probably what I would, what I would say.

But we always act on principle and we always act on values. But it does matter to us what's happening in global politics, because we inherently know how much that can affect us.

Part, I think some of that's born out by our history. As I've said, we're a trading nation, but we've also been a nation that in the past has been gravely and disproportionately affected by global events.

We lost a significant number of our people during the during the Great Wars. We're a nation that during the 1980s took a very strong stance, for instance, on the issue of nuclear testing because that nuclear testing was occurring in our backyard.

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