FRDH Podcast with Michael Goldfarb
Host FRDH podcast. Radio essayist and documentarist for the BBC and NPR. Historian and author of Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace and Emancipation.
Episodes
October 19, 2026 • 48 mins
In the 21st century, with climate change unleashed, the Arctic is the new geopolitical frontline, or is it the fault line? The arctic ocean is now navigable for months of the year, the more than 500 year search for a northern passage from Europe to Asia is over. This route cuts the time it takes to get goods from China to European markets in half. Who will control the Arctic ocean? In this podcast FRDH host talks to Humphrey Haw...
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October 11, 2026 • 39 mins
Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar is one of the most prescient films of that superlative cinema decade the 1970s. It was a film that foresaw the coming of the Rust Belt, post-Civil Rights era racial animosity, and extraordinary wealth inequality. "They pit the lifers against the new boy and the young against the old. The black against the white. Everything they do is to keep us in our place." Schrader wrote that in 1978. In this...
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August 5, 2026 • 55 mins
Resisting Hamas during the twenty years the group has governed Gaza has been a dangerous exercise and since Israel began its Vengeance War following the October 7th Hamas atrocity even fewer Gazan voices have been raised against them. Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is one person willing to speak up. Now he has written a short book detailing how Hamas maintains its power through its own ruthlessness and with the help of international organ...
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July 26, 2026 • 45 mins
In June 2014, when ISIS swept into Iraq's second city Mosul, historian Omar Mohammed immediately began documenting the terrorist occupation of his hometown as and act of Resistance and Defiance. Now Mohammed has written a book, Mosul Eye: A Scholar's Clandestine War Against ISIS about his life and harrowing escape from ISIS. In this FRDH conversation he details the risks he took to get the story of daily atrocities out to the wor...
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July 19, 2026 • 55 mins
Financial Times correspondent Sarah O'Connor talks about her new book We Are Not Machines: The Fight for the Future of Work which is about AI and the coming jobs apocalypse. In this wide ranging conversation with FRDH host Michael Goldfarb, O'Connor looks at ways machines have helped and hurt workers in the past and why people and their governments need to start planning now to avoid apocalyptic changes in society if AI's potenti...
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June 15, 2026 • 51 mins
In "And the Cello Came Too" former BBC news presenter Robin Lustig tells the story of his family and how fate determined who survived and who didn't the worst event of the twentieth century. But this conversation goes deeper, than just a family story of survival, we talk about how journalism inoculates those who practice it against the emotions we feel when observing and thinking about what history -- or fate -- can throw at us
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May 31, 2026 • 53 mins
The Anti-Vax movement is a morbid symptom of our time. Whoever writes the history of America's unraveling will have to pay attention to anti-vax and refer to Kira Kieffer's book Unvaccinated Under God a thorough study of its nearly 50 year history and its grounding in religion in the broadest sense of the word. In this FRDH podcast, Kieffer explains to anti-vax sceptic Michael Goldfarb how the movement went from legitimate concer...
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May 15, 2026 • 58 mins
Man Booker-prize winning novelist Howard Jacobson 's new novel is about how the Hamas massacre on October 7th, 2023 shattered illusions for diaspora Jews and enabled anti-Semitism to come out of the shadows. And because it is by Jacobson there are some dark laughs along the way. In this frank podcast discussion with host Michael Goldfarb, Jacobson talks about the book, shares reminiscences with him about the anti-Semitism he enc...
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May 4, 2026 • 46 mins
How does America look from the other side of the world? Nick Bryant, ex-BBC America correspondent who covered every president from Clinton to Trump joins FRDH podcast host Michaell Goldfarb from his home in Australia to talk about , well, everything: how Trump's "special military operation" is effecting the economy, as well as his ideas about how and why Americans sent Trump to the White House twice -- in spite of everything. Ill...
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April 5, 2026 • 54 mins
Jan Morris was one of the best known travel writers since World War 2, yet despite her fame she is an engima. The reason is simple. At the height of her success in the early 1970s she transitioned from male to female. The reasons for her going through what was still a fairly primitive risky procedure were clear to her but not to the world at large and other than one book of memoir Morris rarely spoke about it again. Sara Wheele...
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March 17, 2026 • 46 mins
As Trump's war on Iran enters its third week with the Strait of Hormuz blocked and the world economy facing a shock, Rob Macaire, British Ambassador to Iran 2018-2021 offers a diplomat's view of the how, why and what next to get out of the mess the President has created. In this wide ranging conversation, FRDH host Michael Goldfarb and Macaire look at the problems the US faces in achieving any of its ever-changing war aims and h...
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March 4, 2026 • 28 mins
Iran, the US and Israel have been in conflict for more than 40 years and too often the battles are fought in Lebanon. In this FRDH podcast journalist, author and Beirut native Kim Ghattas provides a snampshot of the current news and historical context of this war without end. We also talk about whether the current fighting will end things once and for all. Give us 28:55 to explain things
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February 1, 2026 • 57 mins
In this BBC radio documentary for the 50th anniversary of Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver, FRDH host Michael Goldfarb's look at New York as it was then , when Travis Bickle drove the night-shift, and as it is now.
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January 30, 2026 • 48 mins
In the maelstrom created by Trump's return to the presidency, events in Syria building to a crisis have gone unreported . Why? In this FRDH podcast, Carne Ross, former British diplomat who resigned over the Iraq War explains how Trump policies have yet again created a crisis -- this one involving the release of 100s, perhaps 1000s of ISIS jihadists from Syrian jails. He also talks about the threat to the remarkable experiment in...
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January 4, 2026 • 55 mins
2026 promises to be a year of peril and risk and the US attack on Venezuela is only just the beginning. Lingering conflicts in Ukraine, civil unrest in Iran and the US authoritarian turn combined with off the charts corruption of Trump regime makes the prospect of 2026 one to be treated with alarm. In this FRDH podcast, recorded as the news of the American operation in Venezuela to seize its president Nicolas Maduro brok...
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December 21, 2025 • 59 mins
30 years after the Dayton Agreement ended the war in Bosnia are there lessons for ending the war in Ukraine? In this far-reaching and deeply personal podcast FRDH host Michael Goldfarb and documentary filmmaker Fiona Lloyd-Davies who has been reporting on and off from Bosnia since the start of the war in 1992, look back at the conflict, the diplomacy that stopped the killing, and discuss how the Ukraine war can reach a negotiated ...
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November 30, 2025 • 50 mins
Britain in 2025 is in the grip of a malaise that has no single focus. What is behind it? Things have been much worse economically and politically but the mood in the country is sour edging towards bitter. In this FRDH podcast Michael Goldfarb looks at the malaise and Britain's deep discontent with former BBC news presenter Robin Lustig. They discuss recent history, the effect the growing together of the MAGA movement and Britain'...
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November 9, 2025 • 47 mins
27 years after the Good Friday Agreement what is Northern Ireland like, how much conflict still exists? In this wide ranging conversation, Declan Lawn who grew up during the Troubles, became a BBC news reporter and now is the co-creator of the internationally popular series, Blue Lights, briefs Michael Goldfarb on where Northern Ireland is in its post-conflict phase. Lawn also explains how he works on Blue Lights, keeping the show...
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October 16, 2025 • 45 mins
Across Western society, the hot topic of conversation is how young men -- boys, really -- seem lost, caught up in something called the manosphere where resentments are stoked against women and the existing political order. No wonder many of them vote for neo-fascists like Donald Trump. James Bloodworth, is a writer who practices immersive journalism. Bloodworth submerged himself in the manosphere beginning in 2018 and stayed in it...
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October 12, 2025 • 56 mins
Professor Brian Klaas , who has already written three books on the Trump epoch, wonders how America will make it to the midterms a year from now and what condition it will be in. Klaas, Professor of Global Politics at University College London and columnist for the Atlantic Magazine, and FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb discuss the current situation in America. Will the midterms be free and fair? Will the results be accepted b...
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