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Explaining Brazil

Explaining Brazil

Hosted by The Brazilian Report

Episodes

401

Latest episode

Oct 2026

Language

EN

About the show

News from Brazil, by The Brazilian Report — an independent media outlet uniquely positioned to offer an insider’s view of current affairs in Brazil.

Listen to episodes

60 recent
October 8, 202644 min

Taking stock of an electoral shock

Lula finished Brazil's first round almost 2 points behind Flávio Bolsonaro, his weakest first-round result since 1998. Gustavo Ribeiro and historian James Green (Brown University) look at what went wrong for the president and what the October 25 runoff...

October 1, 202639 min

Brazil's economy is growing. So why isn't Lula polling better?

Brazilians vote on Sunday, October 4, and President Lula is asking for a fourth term on the strength of his economic record. Growth averaged 3% a year, unemployment is at a record low, and real wages are rising. His approval still sits barely above 40%...

September 30, 202627 min

Flávio Bolsonaro upsets the gods

Brazil votes on Sunday, and the final week of the campaign has turned on religion. A rumor that a Flávio Bolsonaro government would strip Our Lady of Aparecida of her title as Brazil's patron saint has spread through Catholic circles. The Bolsonaro cam...

September 23, 20261 hr 5 min

How to read Brazil's election polls

Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro are statistically tied less than two weeks before Brazil's first round, and a flood of contradictory polls is feeding claims that pollsters are rigging the race. Rafael Nishimura, director of sampling operations at the Univers...

September 17, 202641 min

Can Brazil's Supreme Court survive an election?

For years, Brazil's Supreme Court picked fights with Congress and the presidency. This month it turned on itself. On September 15, the full court sat for more than seven hours to answer a question it has dodged for 130 years, and walked away without an...

September 9, 202636 min

Civil war at the Brazilian Supreme Court

Brazil's Supreme Court is facing what may be the worst crisis in its history. Justice André Mendonça unsealed the Banco Master investigation, exposing messages between the bank's former CEO and Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Now two factions of the court...

September 1, 202638 min

The first surprise of the 2026 election

Two polls released Monday shook the political establishment. Augusto Cury, of the small Avante party, took third place in both: 11% in Nexus's survey, 7.8% in Atlas Intel's. The numbers force rivals and analysts to take Cury seriously for the first tim...

August 20, 202643 min

What's wrong with the Brazilian Congress

Brazil's 2026 campaign is officially underway, and almost all the attention will be on the presidential race. That's a problem, because power in Brazil is increasingly won and lost in Congress — where the budget is controlled and where any president's ...

August 10, 202634 min

A visa, a snub, and a reopened wound

The US State Department revoked the visa of Brazil's ambassador to Washington ( https://newsletters.brazilian.report/p/us-brazil-ambassador-viotti-argentina-russia-putin ) and said the quiet part out loud: it is retaliation for Brasília withholding agr...

August 4, 202627 min

Brazilian trade: Life after Washington

The US now takes less than 10% of Brazil's exports — the smallest share in decades — and Washington's tariff wall is accelerating a realignment that was already underway. Gustavo Ribeiro speaks with trade consultant Welber Barral, a former Brazilian fo...

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