Departures Podcast featuring Karen Friedman Agnifilo

By Editor | Published: June 2, 2023

There is no historical precedent for a former US president who is facing a more complicated web of both civil and criminal liabilities than Donald Trump, let alone for a former president who again intends to run in the upcoming election. To help sort through this mess and understand what the cases mean and what […]

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Departures Podcast with Samuel Ramani, author of ‘Russia in Africa’

By Editor | Published: May 30, 2023

Amid a slew of headlines highlighting Vladimir Putin’s efforts to expand Russia’s footprint in Africa since the beginning of the Ukraine war, a certain narrative is emerging regarding Moscow’s aims, tactics, and results in this crucial but often neglected region. Is Russia’s presence in Africa a threatening menace or merely an empty gesture? As it […]

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Departures Podcast featuring Charles Dunst, author of ‘Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman’

By Editor | Published: April 24, 2023

Democracy, in terms of its branding, has had a fairly rough decade. Numerous authors we have had on this podcast have highlighted and explained its global decline, discussed the expansion of nationalist movements which have eaten away at rule of law and institutional integrity, and the frustrating resilience of some of the world’s most established […]

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Departures Podcast featuring Henry Hale, co-author of ‘The Zelensky Effect’

By Editor | Published: April 13, 2023

Before becoming one of the world’s most recognizable heads of state, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was a comic actor and entertainer, whose most famous show, “Servant of the People,” imagined him in a role he would one day, unbelievably, come to hold in real life. But how was it possible for someone with so little […]

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Departures Podcast featuring Dan Stone, author of ‘The Holocaust: An Unfinished History’

By Editor | Published: March 31, 2023

The gradual breakdown of the prevailing geopolitical order has brought to the fore numerous far right parties and politicians across Western democracy, bringing with them some very old (and very dangerous) tropes of anti-Semitism. In light of these frightening trends, it is more important than ever for us to confront the often difficult and challenging […]

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Departures Podcast featuring Paul Preston, author of ‘Architects of Terror: Paranoia, Conspiracy, and Anti-Semitism in Franco’s Spain’

By Robert Amsterdam | Published: March 17, 2023

The story of the rise of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in 1936 is often overshadowed by that of the country’s civil war and its entanglement across the other major developments in Europe at the time. But Spanish fascism was also driven by an enduring set of beliefs – which were so thoroughly odious and absurd […]

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