I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Tuesday, January 5th.

If it's January, it must be Ian Bremmer time on the Brian Lairer show. Ian, as many of you

public television watches will know, as many of you public television

watches will know, is host of GZero World on PBS and president of the Eurasia Group,

which specializes in helping companies understand political risks to their businesses

in the U.S. and around the world. And every January, he releases a projection of the top political

risks for the year ahead. His number one risk for 2021 is Joe Biden taking office in such a

polarized country, followed by the long-term effects of COVID on society, then global cooperation

giving way to global competition on fighting

climate change. That's a really interesting one, I think, and little discussed, so we'll

discuss it, and others on the list that we'll get to. Ian also gives us three red herrings for

21, things that people are too concerned about, and some of those might surprise you too.

Hi, Ian, happy 2021, and welcome back to WNYC.

And to you, the pandemic can't keep us down, Brian.

Absolutely not.

Now, we will get to the risks flowing from Biden taking office in such a divided country.

But let's talk first about your risk number

three, which is also, I think, an opportunity, not just a risk, global competition to dominate

the clean energy market. Who's competing for what? Definitely is an opportunity. And it's in some

ways the best thing that's come out of this pandemic. I mean,

let's be clear, the biggest stimulus and relief in the world came out of Europe with Merkel

and Macron driving massive redistribution and overwhelmingly green and sustainable.

...