FRDH Podcast with Michael Goldfarb

As Queen Elizabeth the Second celebrates her Platinum Jubilee, 70 years on the throne, this First Rough Draft of History podcast looks at how the Queen intersects with many lives, including that of host Michael Goldfarb. The Jubilee marks the end of an era and is a time for a bit of reminiscence about the Queen, her family and what reporting on them over the decades has taught him about the place...

To mark three months since Russia's invasion of Ukraine a conversation with the Economist's Wendell Steavenson who has been an eyewitness writing the first rough draft of the history of the war. Steavenson, a veteran reporter and author of books about the 21st century's major conflicts has fresh impressions to share with FRDH host Michael Goldfarb about Ukraine and the extraordinary mobilization o...

This FRDH podcast originally broadcast on the BBC World Service looks at the story of Jewish Emancipation and how it changed Jewish identity through attempts at assimilation. This is done through conversations with three prominent Jews each representing a very different strand of post-war Jewish experience ... plus lots of music. A podcast that has resonance for all minority groups trying to assim...

War defies simple words, it's the time when we turn to poets to make sense of the incomprehensible. In this FRDH podcast, host Michael Goldfarb speaks with award-winning British poet George Szirtes who has written more than two dozen poems so far trying to make sense of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In this wide ranging half-hour conversation they talk about poetry, form, and the difference betwee...

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...

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 ye...

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.

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...

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.

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 kn...

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 h...

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 Carnegi...

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 o...

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.

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 w...

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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

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 th...

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.

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...

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.