Thinking in Dark Times

What if our fundamental understanding of power is flawed? Is violence truly its ultimate expression, or rather a sign of its absence? How can societies navigate the extremes of seeing power as inherently good or bad, and instead cultivate a nuanced perspective on what constitutes "enough" authority? These crucial questions, alongside the challenge of balancing individual rights with coll...

I read this book with absolute passion. While it is a novel, it is truly an epic—the story of a family told through the greatest upheavals and disasters of the 20th century. Although it is set in Greece, we Ukrainians can deeply relate to this story: a narrative where global events shape your life far more than your own plans. It is a novel about national conflicts and population displacements, fa...

In this podcast episode, I explore how wartime technologies can impact peaceful life, drawing parallels from historical conflicts.  Author: Volodymyr Yermalenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, editor in chief of UkraineWorld, president of PEN Ukraine Support this podcast: https://www.patreon.com/thinkinggg I use the example of the Rhodes piano, which originated from technologies developed during World W...

Since Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency, Russia has drastically escalated its missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian cities. In January 2026, launches exceeded 6,000—a sharp increase from approximately 2,000 in January 2025. The use of guided aerial bombs (KABs) also reached a record high of almost 6,000 per month. With the Trump administration significantly cutting military aid to Kyiv...

What can the deep past of Ukrainian lands reveal about the global story of humanity? Six thousand years ago, "mega-sites" flourished in what is now central Ukraine—but can these be considered the world’s first cities? How were they organized without central authorities, and how do they challenge everything we thought we knew about early social life? *** This is Thinking in Dark Times, a...

Ukraine has its own tradition of geopolitical thinking — a tradition that reaches deep into the past and continues to shape the country’s strategic imagination today. What are its key traits? Why was it developed more by writers than by statesmen? And how does it relate to Ukraine’s current reflection on its identity? *** Explaining Ukraine is a podcast by UkraineWorld, an English-language media p...

She is not only a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. She is not only one of the most visible human-rights defenders in Europe in recent decades. She is not only a tireless activist with profound empathy for others. She is also a thinker — someone who reflects deeply on the moral foundations of freedom and dignity.  Our guest today is Oleksandra Matviychuk, a prominent Ukrainian human-rights defender and...

Ukraine is not a burden for Europe — it’s a chance for Europe. Today, European security is unthinkable without Ukraine. Ukraine has the strongest army in Europe, a dynamic defense industry, and citizens with vast military experience. The real question is: to what extent does Europe itself understand the threat posed by the new authoritarianisms? And to what extent does it realise that helping Ukra...

In September 2025, in Kyiv, a prominent American historian Timothy Snyder received the Vasyl Stus Prize — a Ukrainian award honoring the name of Vasyl Stus, one of Ukraine’s greatest poets and dissidents of the 20th century, killed by the Soviet regime in 1985. Founded in 1989 by Yevhen Sverstiuk, another prominent Ukrainian dissident, the prize is now awarded by PEN Ukraine, the publishing house...

SUPPORT this podcast: https://www.patreon.com/c/thinkinggg  *** Are all empires equally bad? If some were better than others, what criteria can we use to make such judgments? Why must we study networks, not only hierarchies, to understand our past, present, and future? What happens to societies in times of catastrophe, and who has the best chances of survival? And finally — why is Ukraine so impor...

SUPPORT this podcast: https://www.patreon.com/c/thinkinggg  *** Nationalism, for many people, is a bad word. They associate it with xenophobia, a sense of superiority, and exclusion. Many believe that nationalism inevitably leads to fascism or Nazism. In this episode, I want to challenge these views. Yes, nationalism can lead to dangerous practices, but it can also be something very different — be...

Yaroslav Hrytsak is one of Ukraine’s leading historians and public intellectuals. His recent book in Ukrainian, "Overcoming the Past: A Global History of Ukraine", became a bestseller. His English-language book, "Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation", is now a key reference work on Ukrainian history. We met in Lviv to discuss the global dimension of Ukrainian history, and the featu...

What’s the difference between colonialism and imperialism? What types of colonialism can we identify — and which of them are playing out in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other countries? This conversation is not purely academic. It helps us better understand what’s happening today — and what might happen tomorrow. Russian colonial and imperial practices sometimes resemble those of other empires...

In this episode, I pose a question about evil. I argue that while the relativization of the concept of evil may once have been necessary, it has now swung to the opposite extreme—one in which we often fail to ask moral questions at all. I suggest that we must return to the question of evil—again and again—if we are to remain moral beings capable of ethical action. This question is not isolated. It...

Joseph Stiglitz is a world-renowned economist and thinker who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001. I met him in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, in June 2025 during the inspiring Zeg Festival in which we both participated. In this podcast episode, we spoke about his latest book, "The Road to Freedom", published last year, and about how flawed ideas of freedom can ult...

Some might argue that the concept of evil is outdated in our relativistic age. And yet—how can we speak of war crimes, cruelty, or the neglect of human dignity without invoking the word evil? Perhaps it’s time to take it seriously again, to revisit the thinkers who have grappled with its meaning. One of them, of course, is Hannah Arendt. This is a conversation about Hannah Arendt and the concept o...

We need a fresh perspective on propaganda. The old strategies for combating misinformation are no longer effective. Simply offering fact-checks isn’t enough—those ensnared by propaganda aren’t searching for facts. They’re searching for something deeper: identity, belonging, and meaning. This is the central argument of a new book by Peter Pomerantsev, a renowned scholar of propaganda and informatio...

Democracy is fragile today. Yet it is not confined to a single place, a specific country, or a particular political system. The democratic promise remains far from fully realized. Still, we can find hope in the idea that when democracy retreats in one part of the world, it may grow stronger in another. This is “Thinking in Dark Times”, a podcast series by UkraineWorld, an English-language media ou...

SUPPORT "Thinking in Dark Times" podcast: https://www.patreon.com/c/thinkinggg We had a conversation with Anne Applebaum a few months ago on this podcast about her book "Autocracy, Inc".—be sure to check it out:  ukraineworld.org/en/podcasts//ep-332 The current episode features a public conversation on similar themes: the crisis of democracy, the rise of new autocracies, Trump’...

SUPPORT THIS PODCAST: https://patreon.com/thinkinggg What lessons can we draw from the Ukrainian experience? Why is Ukraine not only a place of suffering and fight, but also a place of thinking and creation? Why is the cultural renaissance so strong during the war? What does it mean to think in dark times? Lecture by Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, the chief editor of UkraineWorld,...

Do dictators rule by death and nihilism? Do they want to make us powerless - and do they succeed? Is today’s crisis also our chance? This is an online conversation between Polish philosopher Krzysztof Czyzewski, American historian Marci Shore, Georgian writer Iva Pezuashvili, and Ukrainian philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko. The event was held under the aegis of the Dilemma project implemented by th...

Margaret Atwood is perhaps one of the greatest living writers today. Her novel "The Handmaid’s Tale" and its continuation, "The Testaments," are seen by many as prophetic. This is a conversation about dangers and hopes, about human nature, the classics, and the challenges of dark times. Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, the chief editor of UkraineWorld, and the president of PEN...

Which 20th-century ideas should we carry with us into the 21st century? And which of them have become obsolete? We discuss these topics during a live event with David Rieff, a prominent American writer and journalist. The discussion was held on March 1st at PEN Ukraine space in Kyiv, and was organized by UkraineWorld, PEN Ukraine and Thinking in Dark Times podcast. Hosts: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a U...

In this episode, I offer a critical perspective on communism. I will argue three main points: First, while the idea of communism is built on certain commendable foundations, its Marxist and later Leninist iterations lead it down a misguided and immoral path. Second, unlike Nazism, totalitarian communism has never been fully condemned, resulting in a legacy of unpunished crimes—crimes that, without...

In this episode, I argue that a healthy polity is an equilibrium between the values of agora (conversation, dialogue, exchange) and the values of agon (warrior ethos, capacity to fight when needed). The absolutization of one of these values weakens the state and society. I also refer to classics of political philosophy and history, particularly the Greek historian Polybius and his account of the R...