What is the real Russia? The Russia of great culture: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Akhmatova; or is it the country of dictators like Putin and Stalin and Ivan the Terrible? IN this wide ranging FRDH podcast, host Michael Goldfarb speaks with Professor Catriona Kelly of Cambridge University about the gargantuan contradiction at the heart of Russian society: it's deep cultural tradition and its almost medieval sense of cruelty. Kelly, who was in St. Petersburg just before the invasion, shares ...
Apr 04, 2022•37 min
Odesa, on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, is a fabled city of what historian Timothy Snyder calls the Bloodlands. Part of Odesa’s legend was created by Jewish author Isaac Babel’s story collection, Odessa Stories. Today the city is a prime objective for the current Russian invasion and while waiting for the assault to begin, FRDH host Michael Goldfarb, reads one of Babel’s stories written nearly 100 years ago that looks at incomprehensible violence through a child’s eyes. Think of the children’s eyes...
Mar 11, 2022•28 min
Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine is being fought with 21st century weapons for 19th century reasons. We know this because one of his news agencies published an article that is meant to show his thinking. Tom de Waal of Carnegie Europe joins Michael Goldfarb to look at the strange, hybrid 19th century Russian-nationalist-tsarist ideology behind Putin's 21st century war on Ukraine.
Mar 01, 2022•27 min
The Ukraine-Russia crisis really is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma. In this wide ranging FRDH podcast, strategic affairs analyst Michael Moran looks at the history leading up to Russia's seeming threat to invade Ukraine and explains to host Michael Goldfarb why, despite the predictions coming out of Washington, war did not start on February 16, 2022 ... and may not happen at all. Give us 32:30 to explain it to you.
Feb 17, 2022•33 min
2022 brings a feeling of deja vu:the response to the international crisis in Ukraine has echoes of Bosnia in Europe and the US and Britain. In this FRDH podcast, host Michael Goldfarb looks at the remarkable similarities between the international response to the current crisis in Ukraine and how it responded to the Bosnian war thirty years ago. He also explores the critical differences.
Jan 26, 2022•14 min
Power corrupts, we all know that, but according to Washington Post columnist Brian Klaas that's not why the wrong people keep getting it. In this wide ranging conversation with FRDH podcast host MIchael Goldfarb, Klaas, who has interviewed many dictators and strongman leaders talks about what makes some people seek out power and why too many of us are willing to let them have it, even though we know they shouldn't have it (think Donald Trump). Give us 42:16 to explain
Jan 05, 2022•42 min
A first rough draft of the history of 2021, a year that began with a Trump inspired mob assault on America's Capitol, and ends in genuine fear about the future of American democracy. FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb gives his own personal rough draft of a year when time slowed down and the weird disruptions of the covid pandemic and strange pathologies encouraged by social media made getting a handle on events more difficult. Give him 19:30 to tell you about it.
Dec 30, 2021•20 min
After spending a quarter of a century abroad as a foreign correspondent, Mark McDonald, came up with a novel way to rediscover America: he decide visit each and every one of the libraries funded by Andrew Carnegie in the first decades of the 20th century. In this FRDH podcast, McDonald and host Michael Goldfarb talk about the way local history is revealed when you stop in at a small town's Carnegie library
Dec 10, 2021•23 min
2021 marks the 400th Thanksgiving, no other American holiday is encircled by so many different facts and legends, nor celebrated with such famous poetry and lyrics. For this FRDH podcast, host Michael Goldfarb looks at Thanksgiving 400 and tries to separate facts from legend and looks at how the holiday has evolved over centuries to its central place in American life. A 22 minute long meditation on historical legend and historical fact ... with poetry
Nov 11, 2021•22 min
In this episode of Bible Study for Atheist FRDH host, Michael Goldfarb, looks at how the story of Esau selling his birthright has echoes today, as many Americans are selling their birthright: Democracy. Give him 14:53 seconds to explain the connection between the Bible and today.
Oct 10, 2021•15 min
People knew as they watched that 9/11 changed everything for the US but how it would change everything in Britain is a different story. In this FRDH podcast to mark the 20th anniversary of the WTC's destruction, host Michael Goldfarb looks back at his reporting in Britain since then to tell you about how Britain's Muslim minority has changed and also the big unintended consequence of 9/11 ... it will surprise you.
Sep 07, 2021•20 min
The fall of Kabul, journalist Lynne O'Donnell's eyewitness account, is the essence of what journalists mean when we say we are writing the First Rough Draft of History. O'Donnell has been writing the first rough draft of Afghanistan's history for much of the last two decades. Give her a half-hour to give her eyewitness testimony to what happened at the very end and what might happen next.
Aug 21, 2021•30 min
The Taliban's rapid takeover of Afghanistan has people all over asking how and why did it happen. Afghanistan was America’s forgotten war but now everyone remembers it especially those who have never been there. But for those who have been deeply, emotionally, physically connected to the country and can remember then and now, the promise of the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban and the dieadly decades long disintegration of the possiblities of that moment these days have been unbearable. Sarah chaye...
Aug 17, 2021•23 min
A podcast about how podcasting became the cultural phenomenon of the decade. There are literally millions of podcasts with tens of millions of episodes to listen to. In this FRDh podcast Michael Goldfarb looks at how and why some podcasts have become popular and why the BBC, NPR and the NY Times are all in on podcasting. Give him 15:07 to explain it all to you.
Aug 11, 2021•15 min
Breaking up is hard to do and in this podcast former BBC news presenter Gavin Esler talks about the how and why of Britain's likely end. In a wide-ranging discussion with FRDH host Michael Goldfarb, Esler talks about the history of the UK and the political missteps of the last 25 years that have brought Britons and Britain to the brink of disintegration. Give us 27:37 to explain.
Jul 10, 2021•28 min
To mark Midsummer 2021, a meditation on England and being English, then and now. Fifty years ago, FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb thought he had found the key to Englishness. Eventually he moved to the country. This is a meditation on how the country has changed over half a century and what England meant then and now.
Jun 20, 2021•18 min
In this Bible Study for Atheists host Michael Goldfarb looks at the conflict between Israel, Palestine and asks where is Mercy? Mercy is the holiest and most noble attribute of humanity, at least according to the Bible and the Q'uran. Why is there so little of it to be found in round and after round of clashes between Israel and Hamas
May 21, 2021•9 min
This edition of Bible Study for Atheists looks at how Jews and Christians diverged a long time ago, but not at the time of Jesus when there were Jewish Christians. FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb talks with Anglican priest Giles Fraser about his book Chosen: Lost and Found between Christianity and Judaism, a personal exploration of where God is to be found in the conflict between Judaism and the new religion that emerged from one of Jews" greatest traumas: the destruction of the Second Temple...
May 08, 2021•23 min
Britain's Tories have become a case study of corruption in modern democracies for a simple reason: they govern what has become a one-party state. In this FRDH podcasthost Michael Goldfarb looks at how the Covid pandemic made it clear that the British political system has created a corrupt one-party state where political donations open the floodgates to government contracts.
May 01, 2021•17 min
An interview with author Elizabeth Becker about her book, You Don't Belong Here," the story of how three women reporters covering the Vietnam War changed how war was reported and so rewrote the way the first rough draft of history was compiled. What did it take for these three women to get to the battlefield, and observe war, something women were not allowed to do by the US military? What was the price they paid?
Apr 16, 2021•26 min
In the fifth and final episode of his series of Jewish Ghost Stories, FRDH host Michael Goldfarb goes to Vienna, to look not just for the city's famous Jewish ghosts, like Sigmund Freud and Gustav Mahler, but the much lesser known ones who fought in the revolution of 1848. He also meets people who have been moved by the stories of Jewish ghosts to convert to Judaism.
Apr 01, 2021•15 min
In the fourth of his series of Jewish Ghost Stories, FRDH host Michael Goldfarb goes to Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg, the largest cemetery in Europe, to look for the ghost of Gabriel Riesser. Lawyer, judge and publisher of the shortlived journal of the 1830s, Der Jude.
Mar 31, 2021•15 min
In the third of this series of Jewish Ghost Stories, FRDH host Michael Goldfarb tells the tale of Frankfurt and its famous ghetto street, the Judengasse, and the struggle of its brightest young Jews in the decades after they were allowed out of the ghetto. A ghost story of identity.
Mar 29, 2021•14 min
In this second in a series of five Jewish Ghost Stories told by FRDH host Michael Goldfarb goes to Berlins. He explores the identity crises of some of the city's most famous Jewish ghosts: philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, poet and essayist Heinrich Heine and salonniére extraordinary Rahel Varnhagen
Mar 28, 2021•14 min
The first in a series of five Jewish Ghost Stories told by FRDH host Michael Goldfarb is set in Amsterdam. He goes looking for the ghost of the city's most famous Jewish son: the 17th century philosopher, Baruch Spinoza.
Mar 26, 2021•16 min
The Bush administration seduced and abandoned Iraq, could the Pope's visit redeem it? In this podcast, FRDH host Michael Goldfarb plays psychoanalyst to explore how the Iraq War led to American withdrawal from global leadership and explore the impact of the Pope's visit on the people of Iraq.
Mar 09, 2021•15 min
Rush Limbaugh was the voice of those who led America into Calamity. But he was just a front man. In this podcast, first broadcast on the BBC, FRDH host Michael Goldfarb looks at how American broadcasting got to Limbaugh and his hate-filled, fact challenged propaganda. It places the story in its full historical context. From the beginning people understood broadcasting's unique power to sway and indoctrinate. IN America after World War 2 the Fairness doctrine was put in place to try and restrain ...
Feb 18, 2021•57 min
Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know - the theory of knowledge. But in the 21st century the objective basis of knowledge has been challenged as never before. In this FRDH special, Baroness Greenfield, Oxofrd University neuroscientist talks to FRDH hos Michael Goldfarb about 21st century epistemology. How can people recognize what is factual truth when bombarded all day long by online falsehoods that seem like facts? What happens when the usual processes by which learning take pl...
Feb 09, 2021•23 min
What are the historical rules for starting a civil war? What conditions have to be met, how far into irreconcilable hatred must a society fall before fighting becomes inevitable? Is the US close to meeting these conditions? In this FRDH podcast, host Michael Goldfarb looks back at civil wars he has covered and analyzes the current tensions in America against the lessons he learned in places like Bosnia and Northern Ireland.
Feb 03, 2021•14 min
On January 6, 2021 a mob incited by President Donald Trump broke into the US Capitol building in what has been called a riot, an insurrection, a coup d'État, a revolution. In this FRDH podcast, host Michael Goldfarb tries to find the best word to describe the event and wonders how ti can be stopped from happening again. He draws on his experience covering riots and insurrection in other parts of the world as well as his study of philosophy to find the word that most accurately sums up the riot a...
Jan 09, 2021•16 min
