111 MHz: ‘Things Ain't What They Used to Be.’ Setting the time machine for 1957, and the album that epitomized the notion of cool electric guitar in West Coast jazz. Jim Hall began his long career with this record—and established the setup he’d use for decades: the simple guitar-piano-bass trio. Here, they play a 1942 standard written by Mercer Ellington, Duke Ellington’s son.

—Brendan Hasenstab

5 W Main: We May Dominate the World. During his inauguration last week, U.S. President Donald Trump said, “China is operating the Panama Canal, and we didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.” He was apparently referring to the fact that the Hong Kong-based company CK Hutchison Holdings operates two of the Panama Canal’s five ports. Meanwhile, Trump has recently mused about annexing Canada and Greenland.

All three countries have let the United States government know they’re not available for seizure. Fortunately for Canada, the U.S. is in no position even to try taking it, and Greenland is covered by the European Union’s security guarantees. But could Panama be different?

In international relations, Trump has exhibited a tendency to open with maximalist threats, later to settle through normal negotiations. But there’s at least a strategic through line between his invocation of the Chinese presence in Panama and America’s diplomatic past: Historically, great-power rivalries have, in moments, given Washington a rationale to threaten or even launch military interventions in nearby countries.

Sean Mirski’s We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus traces the history of how the United States pushed the European empires out of the Western hemisphere. It happened, Mirski writes, through a series of “security dilemmas,” in which the U.S. feared that European powers, if given the least foothold in the Americas, might potentially use it to strike America in the future. In essence, Washington faced the option either to let its rivals establish a presence in weak neighboring states or preemptively to do so itself through military intervention or outright conquest.

So, too, in Panama. In the late 1870s, when French engineers organized the Compagnie Universelle to build a canal through the country, the U.S. objected on the grounds that it’d give a foreign power control over one of America’s most vital maritime routes. “The politics of this country,” said President Rutherford B. Hayes, “is a canal under American control.”

By the turn of the century, the U.S. had ejected the European powers from the region altogether. And in 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt sponsored a revolution in Panama against Colombia in order to complete the canal under American control. But as Mirski notes, Roosevelt went for a far more aggressive course than what security considerations alone really needed. In other words, Trump’s rhetoric may be strange, but it isn’t new: Great-power rivalries have long afforded their rivaling great powers the pretext to play rough with smaller countries.

—Gustav Jönsson

111 MHz: ‘The Diviner’s Prayer to the Gods of the Night.’ You may not have asked for Belgian progressive doom metal, but here’s Wyatt E. with Lowen’s Nina Saeidi. This track scans less as heavy and more as something adjacent to Dead Can Dance, with swirling mysticism and propulsive acoustic guitars. And the liner notes offer some unexpected interpretive guidance: “Wyatt E. writes the soundtrack of the exile of the people from Bethlehem to Babylon in 587 B.C.” From the new album Zam​ā​ru Ultu Qereb Ziqquratu Part 1.

—Brendan Hasenstab

Europe talks the talk. One day after Donald Trump took office in Washington for a second time, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen appeared in Davos to give a speech at the World Economic Forum. She made a point of repeatedly describing Europe as an independent and powerful actor in global politics and economics, regardless of what happens in the U.S. Which seems about normal for a high-ranking official in Brussels.

She also called for a new era of EU integration and presented three major economic reforms that her office plans to roll out shortly: 1) to unify the bloc’s fragmented capital markets, to channel the billions of euros in EU savings accounts into investments; 2) to build world-beating companies by cutting bureaucratic burdens in favor of a single set of rules across the union; and 3) to create a new “energy union” that will permanently end Europe’s reliance on natural gas from Russia.

But if all is as well in the EU as she says, why does she think it needs these economic reforms?

Despite Von der Leyen’s assuring delivery, the EU is facing entrenched economic problems: The bloc’s economy is stagnant, and it’s falling farther behind the U.S. every year. In 1995, worker productivity in the U.S. and the EU was roughly the same. But today, European productivity is 20 percent below that of the U.S. America’s GDP is now 30 percent higher than the EU’s, and the gap has doubled over the past 20 years.

Earlier this month, Martin Wolf looked at the reasons why Europe has fallen so far behind the U.S.—and the weaknesses he sees track with the targets of Von der Leyen’s plans. For example, European companies have failed to innovate in the way that U.S. companies have, which is why so few of the world’s biggest tech firms are headquartered in the EU. Innovation in America, Wolf says, is largely fueled by massively higher investment, which is mostly mediated through dynamic capital markets and venture capital—whereas in Europe, most business funding comes from banks, which are much more cautious about where they invest depositors’ money. Europe can take some important steps to increase its firms’ competitiveness, Wolf says—but even so, it’s not likely to catch up to America anytime soon.

—Michael Bluhm

111 MHz: ‘8th Deadly Sin’ The former Lush front woman Miki Berenyi is back with a sleek trio that includes her husband on bass. Some dream pop with an indie tilt and lyrics expressing a matured sense of urgency about the world. From the album Tripla, due out April 4.

—Brendan Hasenstab

5 W Main: Generation Gap. Donald Trump, 78, is now the oldest person ever to assume the presidency of the United States. His predecessor, Joe Biden, 82, was the oldest president ever—and became so infirm in office that his own party forced him to drop his reelection campaign. Last month, the former House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, 84—who by all accounts orchestrated Biden’s ouster—fell and broke her hip. Also last month, someone leaked photographs of the Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, 82, being pushed in a wheelchair. The trend line behind these scenes: In 2002, 8 percent of lawmakers in Congress were over the age of 70; by 2022, that share had risen to 23 percent. Why is Congress so old?

There might be several reason. America itself is getting older: In 1980, the average age was 30; today it’s above 38. And older vote at far higher rates than the young. What’s more, running for office takes time and money, which the old typically have and the young typically don’t. Nevertheless, Congress sometimes gets marginally younger.

But as Kevin Munger explores in Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture, America’s gerontocracy is also a product of the country’s political institutions. European populations have gotten older too, but their political leaders have stayed relatively spry. That, says Munger, is partly because they have proportional representation, which means youthful insurgent parties can credibly contest elections. In the U.S., though, the old guard has its hands on the two parties—and longtime incumbents, if they manage to ward off unknown and underfunded challengers in the primaries, can then breeze to victory in safe seats.

—Gustav Jönsson

111 MHz: ‘VFS.’ Some liminal, spooky music, from the debut record of the London artist who goes by Partial Defrag. You’ll hear a lot of layered sounds and moods. Something else you mightn’t have known you were hearing: a game engine he used in the composition. The result? A track that sounds very nighttime-on-the-streets-of-London.

—Brendan Hasenstab

The price of China’s trade success. In 2024, China posted a trade surplus of almost US$1 trillion, according to data published by Beijing this week. It’s the biggest annual surplus any country has ever recorded, even adjusting for inflation.

This dominance is largely from manufactured goods: China is the largest exporter of cars globally, for example, and makes almost all the world’s solar panels. The country now produces about a third of the total of all manufactured goods—more than the U.S., Japan, Germany, South Korea, and the U.K. combined. How is Beijing doing it?

The governments of countries around the world share an answer they don’t like: They accuse China of intentionally producing vastly more than its own economy can buy and then selling the excess at cut-rate prices abroad, pushing local manufacturers out of their markets. Hence a rise in anger with Beijing in these countries—and the accompanying rise in tariffs on Chinese imports. Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Turkey have all imposed them, in an attempt to protect domestic manufacturers. The EU and U.S. meanwhile raised tariffs last year on Chinese car imports—and incoming U.S. President Donald Trump has long said he plans to raise tariffs on Chinese goods drastically.

In May, Alice Han looked at the causes and consequences of China’s export surge. What might appear as an unprecedented success, Han says, is also a sign of fundamental weakness. Despite decades of attempted incentives from the central government, household consumption in China remains relatively low. And with other problems in the economy, the Chinese Communist Party has only one way to generate economic growth—and jobs—that citizens have come to expect: exports. That’s why Beijing has been making its massive investments in manufacturing—and why massive trade surpluses, increasing tensions, and tariffs have come with them.

—Michael Bluhm

111 MHz: ‘Aey Nehin.’ From the Pakistani singer and musician Arooj Aftab’s May 2024 album Night Reign, a beguiling track, with poetic lyrics by the actress and writer Yasra Rizvi. Here, Arooj makes it all her own in a live-in-studio version for the Mahogany Sessions channel on YouTube.

—Brendan Hasenstab