Shows
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbBRIAN KLAAS ON HOW AMERICA WILL MAKE IT TO THE MIDTERMSProfessor 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 by the MAGA Republican party? Will the midterms even be held? Give us 56:41 to talk it out.
2025-10-1256 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbRay Suarez on Snatch Squads, Men In Masks & Trump's War on America's LatinosVeteran journalist and author Ray Suarez has some thoughts on the intense campaign being waged by Donald Trump and his officials on America's Latino population. Nearly 60,000 allegedly illegal "criminal" immigrants were detained in less than five months since Trump took office, the overwhelming majority have no criminal record. Suarez explains to FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb how this has overwhelmed America's large and complex Latino community -- 65 million + strong -- and analyzes what the political fallout will be for Trump and his MAGA Republican Party in the future. Give us 43:41 to explain
2025-07-2643 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH on the BBC, NATO: THEN, NOW, NOW WHAT?In this FRDH podcast first broadcast on BBC Radio 4, host Michael Goldfarb looks at the history of NATO since its founding in 1949 and asks Now What? Can NATO survive the second coming of the Trump regime. Using archive sound and interviews with former NATO ambassadors and national security and defense experts he tells the Alliance's story, goes on patrol with American soldiers on a NATO mission in the Balkans and looks at whether European nations will ever be able to breakaway from US dominance of the organization. A long listen.
2025-04-0657 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbPresidential Immunity 2024: the Founders vs Trump's Supreme CourtThe US Supreme Court is considering what Presidential immunity means in 2024 in the case of Donald J. Trump. In this wide-ranging conversation with constitutional law professor Frank Bowman FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb discusses the case, its merits, where political considerations enter Supreme Court discussions and whether Trump is just another guy, in the legal sense.
2024-04-2833 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbWhy They Still Fight: Ukraine Year 3The Ukraine war is now in year 3 and its people still want to fight. Why? We are witnessing the birth of a political nation. In this conversation with journalist and author Vladislav Davidzon who has lived in Ukraine on and off for the last 14 years, FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb looks at the tensions attending this birth to find the explanation for why, after 3 years of bloody, destructive conflict Ukrainians still fight.
2024-03-3124 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael Goldfarb25 Years Later: Mo Mowlam and the Price of Northern Ireland's Peace25 years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed this is the story of how Mo Mowlam accepted what the price of peace in Northern Ireland would be and heroically acted to make peace possible. FRDH podcast host Michael covered that story throughout the 1990s on the 25th anniversary remembers his encounters with Mo Mowlam and the twists and turns that led to Northern Ireland's peace after three decades of conflict as well as the key lesson of her brave work.
2023-04-0919 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbOne Iraqi’s War, Hopes and Ruins, A Sound HistoryThe voice missing from most US/UK histories of the Iraq war is that of Iraqis who saw their hopes raised and then ruined. This sound history was made by FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb who covered the Iraq War as an unembedded reporter. He followed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein through the eyes of someone who had suffered terribly under Saddam’s regime. This radio documentary first aired in 2003 a few weeks after Saddam’s statue in Baghdad came down, it contains essential Iraqi voices and stands as a sound history of that conflict.
2023-03-1753 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH In Ukraine: L'viv DiaryFRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb was in L'viv Ukraine recently and this is his diary. L'viv is a city he knows well and he explores how war has changed it and how different the courage of Ukrainians who are living through real war is to the enervated resignation of Britons and Americans to their own deteriorating democracies. Give him 13:30 precisely to explain it to you.
2022-10-2413 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbBill Russell: Wasn't That a Time?Bill Russell was one of the great figures of his time, and what a time it was. Russell was a man who transcended sport, a leader at the moment when athletes became leaders by example in the Civil Rights movement. In this FRDH podcast, host Michael Goldfarb talks with Michael Carlson, American ex-pat and long-time interpreter of American sport to British audiences, about Bill Russell's historic significance and what it was like to be young in a time when sporting Gods were heroes off the court as well.
2022-08-0728 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH on the BBC: Emancipation, Assimilation & Jewish IdentityThis 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 assimilate into societies where they are not completely welcome.
2022-05-1627 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbUkraine War: There Are No Simple Words, It's Time for PoetsWar 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 between how Central and Eastern Europeans experience history from those of us in the West. And also read poems, lots of poems.
2022-04-1330 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbWhat is the real Russia: Tolstoy or Putin? Culture or Cruelty?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 her insights into the country, the war with Ukraine and how the conflict might end.
2022-04-0436 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbUkraine-Russia, Riddle-Enigma: Draft History of A CrisisThe 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.
2022-02-1732 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbDeja Vu: Bosnia & Ukraine, Europe & the US ... & Britain2022 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.
2022-01-2614 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbBrian Klaas on Power and Why the Wrong People Keep Getting ItPower 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
2022-01-0542 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael Goldfarb2021: A Personal First Rough Draft of HistoryA 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.
2021-12-3019 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbThanksgiving 400: Facts, Legends, Poetry2021 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
2021-11-1122 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbHow Podcasting Became a Cultural PhenomenonA 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.
2021-08-1115 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbMidsummer Meditation: England, Then And NowTo 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.
2021-06-2018 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbBible Study for Atheists: Jews, Christians and Jewish ChristiansThis 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 by the Roman Empire.
2021-05-0823 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH on the BBC: Rush Limbaugh, Voice of America's CalamityRush 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 unscrupulous political manipulation of the airwaves. It worked for a while then Limbaugh was allowed to use his...
2021-02-1857 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael Goldfarb21st Century Epistemology: How Do We Know What We Know Is True?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 place are amped up and corrupted by a million lies a minute on Twitter?
Take 23 minutes to find out.
2021-02-0923 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbRules For Starting a Civil WarWhat 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.
2021-02-0313 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbTrump's Capitol Building Riot: Insurrection, Coup d'Etat or Something Else?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 at the Capitol.
2021-01-0915 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbReality vs Twitter in the Year of the Pandemic with Robin LustigAs 2020 comes to an end veteran BBC journalist Robin Lustig talks about how reality was obscured by twitter as we all tried to understand what was happening in the pandemic. In this FRDH podcast, host Michael Goldfarb and Robin Lustig, who have been front line journalists for a combined 75 years, go through a year like no other and its effect on them. You think you know how the world works and then suddenly you find out you haven't a clue. But it's not all doom and gloom, promise. Give us 18 minutes to prove it.
2020-12-2218 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbElection 2020: Scranton Trump Feels the Love One Last TimeIn this Election 2020 podcast diary MIchael Goldfarb is in Scranton PA to feel the love for Donald Trump at one of his last campaign rallies. He also takes time to think about what the factors in American society that got Trump into the White House. Give him eight minutes to explain.
2020-11-0308 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbAll My Presidents: Carter and ReaganAs Election 2020 approaches, this All My Presidents episode of FRDH looks at Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Host Michael Goldfarb looks at America as it completed its transition from the New Deal/Civil Rights era of Democratic party dominance to the Reactionary Age of the Republicans. With a bit about the Supreme Court, as well.
2020-10-0616 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbQAnon: Who's In Charge, Here?Even before the election season, American society was being convulsed by new social/political movements but no one seemed to be in charge of them: QAnon and Black Lives Matter. In this FRDH podcast, host Michael Goldfarb looks at the 21st century history of activist political movements and wonders why so many have failed, except QAnon.
2020-09-2012 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbAll My Presidents: Eisenhower and KennedyIn this podcast originally broadcast on the BBC in 2016, FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb looks back at the first presidents whose terms in office he lived through; Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. He reflects on the president's role beyond politics in shaping American's sense of themselves. The stories he tells give a hint at the long downhill run American society has taken from the days of Eisenhower and Kennedy to a presidential choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
2020-09-0814 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbBiden/Harris: the Pandemic Campaign and Postal VotingThe Biden/Harris ticket has been announced, now how do the pair campaign in a pandemic? In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb speaks to Democratic party organizer Meg Ansara, veteran of the 2012 Obama Campaign and the 2016 Clinton campaign about how to overcome the challenges of getting out the vote when you can't just knock on somebody's front door and ask to come in. Give us 17:33 of your time to explain how to do it
2020-08-1517 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael Goldfarb100 Days Til the US Election: What Is The Reality?With a little under 100 Days til the US Election no one is sure what the reality of the race is. It is a measure of just how norm-shattering, traumatic, and, frankly, bizarre Donald Trump’s years in office have been that virtually no one feels confident that the previous history of US Presidential election is a guide to what will happen on November 3rd. In this FRDH Podcast Michael Goldfarb tries to see through the twitter induced paranoia engulfing American society to the historical precedents that should be providing the key to understanding the situation.
2020-07-2511 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbA Summer Story: Bastille Day 1970Forget about the misery of summer 2020 and let FRDH host Michael Goldfarb tell you a summer story about Bastille Day 1970 in Paris. This departure from the usual subjects of FRDH podcast will take your mind off our present troubles.
2020-07-1414 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbMississippi 1995: A Conversation About RaceA conversation about race from 1995 when FRDH host Michael Goldfarb traveled around Mississippi. Racial tensions are once again convulsing America and these two talks from a series made for the BBC a quarter of a century ago show much and how little has changed. The conversations about race Americans keep saying is necessary, Goldfarb had them in Mississippi 25 years ago, they are like nothing you expect.
2020-07-0329 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbPost-Pandemic: Making an Economics of BelongingAn interview with Martin Sandbu of the Financial Times about his new book, The Economics of Belonging. Even before coronavirus struck many people did not feel a sense of belonging to the economy. Sandbu's book is an analysis of the problem and some suggestions for how to address it post-pandemic. He explains just how to FRDH host Michael Goldfarb in this clear and direct economic discussion.
2020-06-2827 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbLook What's Happening Out In The Streets: Now and Then"Look what's happening out in the streets," sang the Jefferson Airplane half a century ago. Now, as then, the Airplane could sing, "Look what's happening out in the streets" about demonstrations sparked by the murder of George Floyd. In this FRDH podcast Michael Goldfarb looks at the differences and the similarities between two uprisings of people against the police and a government that has lost moral legitimacy in their eyes.
2020-06-0713 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbPost-Pandemic Lockdown: How Will We Travel?The pandemic lockdown is coming to an end, summer is beginning, how will we travel? Elizabeth Becker, author of Overbooked, the definitive investigation into the travel industry, talks with FRDH host Michael Goldfarb about an impossible situation: Airlines are still not operating, countries have not opened their borders, what happens now? The travel industry represents 10% of global gdp ... if it can't get up and running quickly can the world's economy avoid depression. And if does get up and running, can the planet stand the strain? Give us 17 minutes to explore the answers for you.
2020-05-2417 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbPandemic Poetry: Rivers, Roads and Realms of GoldForget being locked in during the coronavirus pandemic and listen to some poetry. Travel down rivers and roads into realms of Gold and everywhere from your local sidewalk to the Great Wall of China. FRDH host Michael Goldfarb reads work by John Keats, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Walt Whitman
2020-05-0210 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbThe Most Frightening Pandemic Number of AllThere are so many numbers being thrown around during the pandemic but only one is truly frighening: 26 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits. What does it mean when so many lose their jobs in just over a month? It's never happened before. In this FRDH podcast, nost MIchael Goldfarb looks at the frightening precedents of earlier eras of mass unemployment. Give him 11:18 to explain it all to you.
2020-04-2311 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbParsing the Pandemic NumbersIn any highly reported catastrophe like the coronavirus pandemic the numbers reported in the press need to be parsed with care. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb casts a veteran journalist's sceptical eye over the pandemic numbers and offers helpful hints for parsing them.
2020-04-0513 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbLambs and Mercy: Poems for a Worrying TimeWe need more poems in day to day life, especially now when everyone has time to contemplate the deep distillations of experience that poets create. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb reads poems by William Blake, John Clare and Philip Levine about lambs, springtime, mercy and love. Something we can all use in this time of self-isolation and disease.
2020-03-2116 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbBible Study for Atheists: Solomon’s Wisdom & A Divided SocietyAmerica is a divided society, what can the Bible story of Solomon's wisdom in deciding who the true mother of the child is teach us about healing this division. In this Bible Study for Atheists edition of FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb looks at the message of this well-known story and applies it to healing the rift between America's two sides. Give him 10 minutes of your time.
2020-03-0810 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbSanders ≠ Corbyn or Anyone Else, That May Be HIs SecretIn the latest attacks by the newsmedia on the Democratic frontrunner, Bernie Sanders, is being compared to Britain's Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, a loser by any definition. But does this comparison hold up? In this FRDH podcast MIchael Goldfarb takes the Sanders-Corbyn comparison apart and explores why the press hates Bernie and has failed to explore how he got to the front of the pack.
2020-02-1413 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbThe Paradox of Tolerance and the First AmendmentHow much tolerance should we give to people who put forward propaganda as journalism claiming the protections of the First Amendment? Look at America today, hopelessly divided, how much of that division is an example of the Paradox of Tolerance? Should a tolerant society turn its back on its intolerant members? In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb puzzles out the limits of a free press.
2020-01-3119 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbSuleimani Assassination pt 2: Iran's Vengeance? What Can It Realistically Do?Qassem Suleimani's funeral saw call after call for Iran to take vengeance on the US. But really what can Iran do? In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb talks with journalist, author and Russia/Iran expert David Patrikarakos about the Islamic Republic's options.
2020-01-0709 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbUK US Elections: What is the Center?Does the crushing of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK election hold a lesson for the US in 2020's election? Must the Dems nominate someone from the center? In this FRDH podcast Michael Goldfarb asks, just what is the center? Is it a fixed point? Must the center always hold
2019-12-1414 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbBible Study for Atheists: Don the RevelatorJohn the Revelator is an African-American hymn and Don the Revelator is the current President of the United States. In the latest edition of Bible Study for Atheists, FRDH host Michael Goldfarb goes on a roundabout journey to explain why Donald Trump is the Revelator of contemporary America and that's fine with evangelical Christians.
2019-12-0614 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH on the BBC: HIgh Crimes and MisdemeanoursIn this BBC programme, originally broadcast in the Archive on 4 slot, FRDH host Michael Goldfarb uses archive sound and historical readings to trace the history of American presidential impeachment. Using interviews with participants in the last two presidential imepachments and historians he explores what it's like to sit in judgment on a freely elected president and just what are High Crimes and Misdemeanours.
Those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it - listen to this important history and, please, share widely.
2019-11-2456 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbA Presidential Tweet>A Turkish Invasion = ISIS Reborn?A tweet by Donald Trump announcing the withdrawal of American troops assisting the Kurds in northeastern Syria opened the door for a Turkish invasion of the area raising the spectre that ISIS would be reborn in the chaos. In this FRDH podcast Michael Goldfarb speaks with someone from Mosul in Iraq who lived the full horror of ISIS the first time around, the man known on twitter as @mosuleye.
2019-10-1111 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbHow Brexit Killed the Conservative PartyIn the first week of September 2019, Brexit killed Britain's Conservative Party stony dead. It was a self-inflicted event. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb looks at the quarter century long history that led to the week's fast moving events. A spoken First Rough Draft of History as an idea, and an account of the self-immolation of the Tories, as its loudest Brexiters cheered on and Boris Johnson watched his government disintegrate.
2019-09-0812 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbBrexit Britain Breaking Up? Are You Sure?Conventional wisdom in the UK says Brexit will cause Britain to break-up. Scotland and Northern Ireland both voted to remain in the EU. Both will now seek to leave the United Kingdom. But are the conventional wisdom mongers right about the break-up of Brexit Britain? In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb challenges the conventional wisdom about Northern Ireland, specifically.
2019-08-0709 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbTrump, Pelosi, the Squad and a Great American NovelThe infighting and race baiting surrounding Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi and the Squad is symptomatic of a political system dominated by truths learned 50 years ago. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb looks at what happens to people who cling to hard to the "truth", a lesson he learned from one the great American novels: Winesburg, Ohio.
2019-07-2113 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbBrexit and the British AmbassadorBrexit has cost the British Ambassador in Washington DC his job. In this FRDH podcast Michael Goldfarb talks to Bronwen Maddox about the effect British Ambassador Kim Darroch's resignation will have on the people who administer Britain's government: the civil service and what it means for Anglo-American relations and Brexit.
2019-07-1311 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbRepublic or Empire: Pax Americana?Pax Americana is a documentary essay about Republics vs empires and what it means to be a citizen of both. It is about America’s long argument with itself about what it should be: empire or republic. In the age of Donald Trump, republican values seem to be disappearing at an accelerated pace. Oligarchy has replaced republican democracy. Is it just repeating a process that went on 2000 years ago in in Rome at the time of Augustus and Tiberius, a republic that had become a global power changing inevitably into something far from its founding ethos? FRDH host Michael Goldfarb lo...
2019-05-0235 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbRemembering the Forgotten: Gabriel RiesserRemembrance lies at the heart of Judaism and Christianity. Every spring Jews and Christians remember the great events that shaped their faiths and cultures: the Passover and the Crucifixion. But in the millennia that have passed since those events there have been other great moments in the development of those faiths that have fallen out of historical memories. IN this FRDH, First Rough Draft of History, podcast Michael Goldfarb remembers Gabriel Riesser, a very important and interesting person
2019-04-1915 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbBrexit: a Ghost StoryIf you've been having a hard time understanding Brexit maybe it's because you don't get that it is a ghost story. Brexit is about how the ghost of Margaret Thatcher has come to haunt Britain's Conservative Party. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb looks back at the nearly 30 year story of how the Tory Party has tried to appease her ghost and atone for the sin of forcing her to resign by carrying forward what they think she would have wanted: Britain out of the EU ... Brexit.
2019-04-0218 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbThe Very, Very First Rough Draft of HIstory: What Assyria Can Teach UsFRDH stands for First Rough Draft of History and the very first drafts of history were written in cuneiform in the Akkadian language at the time of the Assyrian Empire, around 1,000 BCE. In this podcast, Michael Goldfarb talks to Assyriologist Dr. Moudhy al-Rashid, about the world described in the cuneiform covered fragments she works with. Her specialization is in medical texts. You think depression is a modern malady? It isn't. Listen to Dr. al-Rashid describe how the ancient people of Assyria and Babylon dealt with it.
2019-03-1415 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbVenezuela & the US: Everything Must ChangeVenezuela is back in the news along with its relationship to the US. Venezuelans have taken to the street to demand a change of government from the dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro but do they want US intervention? In this FRDH podcast, drawn from Michael Goldfarb's archive he looks back at a reporting trip to Caracas made in 2007 shortly after protests against Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez had been put down. What possibility for positive change is there in Venezuela so long as the US looms over the country.
2019-02-0316 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbThe Brexit Vote: A Report from Very English SceneOn the day of the Brexit Vote: a report from the scene outside Parliament as Brexiteers and Remainers demonstrate as MPs prepare to vote on the Withdrawal Agreement from the EU. FRDH stands for First Rough Draft of History and host Michael Goldfarb took his sound recorder down to the demonstration to write this very immediate draft of the historic Brexit Vote.
2019-01-1712 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbThe NHS at 70: Born From Crisis, Enduring StilOn the 70th anniversary of Britain’s NHS, this FRDH podcast looks at a personal level at how the NHS born out of crisis compares to the American health care system. Host Michael Goldfarb has experienced both systems intimately and explains the origins of the NHS and the challenges it faces today.
2018-12-0512 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbThe Midterms and the Democrats' DilemmaThe American midterm elections are over but the Democrats' Dilemma remains. How to harness its progressive grassroots energy and the real hatred of Donald Trump into a deeper political program that can be built on for 2020 and beyond. This podcast is based on reporting FRDH presenter Michael Goldfarb did for a BBC radio 4 documentary. He traveled for three weeks in October to Georgia, Texas and the Northeast making a documentary to report on the Democrats Dilemma. This is a true First Rough Draft of History. Listen and decide whether you think it will stand the test of time.
2018-11-0931 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH on the BBC: Journey To AshkenazIn this BBC documentary, FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb, goes on a Journey to Ashkenaz. He visits what is today Ukraine which was once the heartland of Ashkenazic Jewry. It is where his father's family comes from. Excellent sound and music in this piece.
2018-10-2227 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbThe Democrats in the Midterms: with Brian KlaasThe Democrats in the upcoming Midterm elections face a dilemma. Beyond not being the party of Trump who are they? What does the party stand for? How do Democratic leaders square the circle between its urban base and the rural voters it still needs to win power. In a far ranging conversation with Washington Post columnist and political science professor Brian Klaas, FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb explores answers to the Democrats' Dilemma at the Midterms.
2018-10-0220 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbOn Being Cut Off From HistoryWhat happens when a group of people are cut off from their history? More specifically their family history. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb reflects on how children become aware of history and how the Holocaust has cut most of the world's Jews off from their family stories and so cut them off from the main channel of history.
2018-09-2611 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael Goldfarb50 Years After the Soviet Invasion: Czech Cinema Lives OnOn the 50th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, a look back at Czech Cinema. In a decade of tumultuous change in the arts and cultural expression this tiny country's filmmakers were as important to the youth revolution as artists in the West. In this podcast, originally broadcast on BBC Radio 3, FRDH host Michael Goldfarb tells the story of how a unique set of circumstances made Czechoslovakia in the 1960s one of the powerhouses of world cinema. These were films made by people who had the first rough draft of history burned onto them in childhood and were not...
2018-08-2014 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbIreland: Borders, Brexit & OmaghOn the twentieth anniversary of the Omagh bombing an FRDH meditation on Ireland, borders and how Brexit promises to undo the achievement of the Good Friday Agreement.
For five years in the 1990s FRDH host Michael Goldfarb covered the political process that led to the Good Friday Agreement. He recalls the politicians struggle to make the partition border on the island of Ireland meaningless, he also remembers how at the moment of success there was one final tragedy to mark the end of the Troubles: the Omagh bombing.
2018-08-1315 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbCivility And the Paradox of ToleranceAmerica is undergoing a crisis of civility - don't just take FRDH podcast's word for it - and this civility crisis is an example of the Paradox of Tolerance. In this FRDH, Michael Goldfarb traces the origins of the civility crisis thirty years to Newt Gingrich's declaration of a second Civil War using words instead of guns to conquer all those who disagree with the Republican party. He looks at how three decades of Republican unwillingness to tolerate other views of America has brought America face to face with philosopher Karl Popper's concept of the Paradox of Tolerance. Do you...
2018-07-1012 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbReality in the age of trumpWhat is Reality in the Age of Trump? In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb speaks with Luke Harding, former Moscow correspondent of the Guardian newspaper, and author of Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win, about the long, long history of official lying in Russia, how people in that country sort out reality from the propaganda, and how Putin's expertise in creating alternative "reality" influenced the 2016 US elections. Is reality an objective form of truth, or is it just relative. What did Lenin say about it? Do governments impose their version of reality, or do...
2018-06-2018 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbIran: Ignorance Is Not BlissWhen it comes to Iran, ignorance is not bliss. For the last 40 years, American policy makers have displayed astonishing ignorance about the day to day reality of life in Iran. This has led to one blunder after another in how the US deals with the country, most recently President Trump's withdrawing the US from the JCPOA or Iran nuclear deal. What makes this ignorance astonishing is just how much contact there is between ordinary Iranians and Iranian Americans. In this FRDH podcast Michael Goldfarb speaks with Iranian-American journalist and author Azadeh Moaveni who has reported from Iran and written two...
2018-05-2514 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbReality of Torture With No EuphemismsThe reality of torture is usually smothered in euphemism when it is discussed in Washington as it has been during the Senate hearings on Gina Haspel, Trump's nominee to run the CIA. It shouldn't be. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb, who has interviewed torture victims and torturers, and made the DuPont award winning documentary, "Surviving Torture: Inside Out" cuts through the euphemisms surrounding this barbaric practice. He explains why the official version of what happens in CIA blacksites is wrong. Torture is for punishment not to extract information.
2018-05-1113 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbWarsaw Ghetto Anniversary Meditation: What Would You Have Done?On the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, FRDH host Michael Goldfarb has a meditation on the uprising's meaning today. He tells the story of how the Jews of Warsaw, one-third of the population of the city were herded into a Ghetto and how slowly and then rapidly the Nazis tried to kill them all until, eventually, a group of fighters decided to die with a gun in their hands on teh street of the Warsaw Ghetto rather than to walk meekly into a gas chamber. He explains what effect this story continues to have on himself and his...
2018-04-1812 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbKing and Kennedy Assassinations: America's Repressed TraumaThe assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy in the spring of 1968 was a national trauma. Like most traumas people have repressed their memories of the event. Yet, half a century later, the twin decapitation of America's progressive leadership still has an effect on the country. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb traces the decline of broadcast journalism and political discourse to the murders. No politician today speaks as honestly to the American people as King and Kennedy. He also recalls what it was like to be young and hear the news that another American leader had been...
2018-03-2917 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbIraq War 15 Years On: What Might Have BeenThe Iraq War began 15 years ago. Seems like ancient history given where America is now. This FRDH podcast, made at the start of the war, shines a light on what might have been and foreshadows the disaster the Occupation became, a disaster Iraqis are still trying to crawl out from under. Was the failure of the Iraq War the American unipolar moment begin to unravel? Was the day Saddam Hussein’s regime disintegrated in Mosul, the day when the seeds were sown for the city to be overrun by ISIS? Did the Bush administration’s catastrophic lack of planning for the...
2018-03-1553 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbLiberal, Conservative: Can We Decide What These Words Mean?What do the words liberal and conservative mean any more? What about left and right? No one is sure. Certainly not the news media who throw the terms around without a thought to definitions that make sense. Conservatives in America are neo-liberals when it comes to the economy. Neo-conservatives call for liberal intervention.
In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb gives a potted history of the word liberal and calls for clarity and uniformity of usage by the mainstream news media. It's a confusing world, imprecise language doesn't make it easier to understand. Let's have a classification clarification conference so we...
2018-02-2011 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbRemembrance, Ritual, the Sacred and AuschwitzWhat is the historical process by which something becomes sacred? Is Auschwitz a sacred place?
In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb asks what is the historical process that leads to the creation of a religion, or changes in the practice of one that already exists.
Is it possible that events of modern history will someday take on religious significance, or are people today intellectually and emotionally incapable of understanding their experience as “awesome” in the sense that the great religions mean the term?
Using sound from his personal archive Goldfarb builds a case that the catastrophe of the Holocaust, like the...
2018-01-2509 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbYear 1 Trump report: Crazy or a member of the Club?The big question at the end of Donald Trump's first year in office is: Is he crazy or just typical of his social class? Anti-Trump forces constantly question his mental state in the hopes of provoking his cabinet into forcing him out via the 25th Amendment.
In this FRDH podcast, host Michael Goldfarb looks at whether Trump is crazy or is he just a typical country club kind of person. Are his words about shithole countries and immigrants any different than you would hear most Sundays at the country club?
Among people of a similar social caste and with the...
2018-01-1612 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael Goldfarb1968>2018: 50 Years On Time to Change the ParadigmIn 2018 There will be many stories marking the 50th anniversary of events from 1968.
1968 year of defeat, assassination, riots and treason in America.
There were near revolutions in France and Czechoslovakia. An early demonstration of the violence which would consume much of Latin America over the next quarter century in Mexico City.
We still live with the cosmic echo of those events.
It is good to remember 1968 via news media but what lessons people who didn’t live through these cataclysms will learn. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb looks back at one of the most dramatic years since the end of...
2018-01-0813 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbBosnia, Mladic: the Price of JusticeThe fact that we are in a new historical epoch was underscored recently in the response to the news that Robert Mugabe and Ratko Mladic, two men who ruined their countries and caused the deaths of thousands, got their comeuppance. 20 years ago this would have been enormous, front page a-segment news. it would have been the topic of gleeful conversation among the well-informed and politically aware. But In this era of Trump and harassment and Brexit, hardly a ripple. It's ancient history.
The Bosnian War, was a fascist temper tantrum that destroyed one of the most beautiful countries in Europe...
2017-11-2408 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbBible Study for Atheists 3: Judging Roy Moore a BlasphemerShare this Bible Study for Atheists, in which FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb looks at the controversy over Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. A self-proclaimed man of God whose behavior seems like blasphemy.
How is it that the most religious part of America is also home to the most blasphemers?
And Alabama really is the most religious state in the country, According to a 2016 survey by Pew research Alabama ranked first in the nation for religiosity. 82% of its people say they believe with “absolute certainty” in God, nearly tHree quarters of Alabamans say they pray to him every day.
Yet...
2017-11-1214 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH Bolshevik Revolution 100th Anniversary ThoughtsThe Bolshevik Revolution is to political change, what nuclear weapons are to warfare: the ultimate deterrent.
The question on this 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution is what happens to a society when you take violent overthrow of the government by the governed as a last resort out of the equation. How does it affect a society’s ability to respond to the inevitable changes wrought by the passage of time?
Economic, political, social pressure’s build up as decades pass. These pressures weaken and deform the political system, certainly it deforms the politicians who work in that system. What happ...
2017-10-2411 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH How Media Obscures Our Understanding of HistoryMedia obscures history. Not intentionally, but the effect of looking at images without a deeper understanding of the context in which the images were created will keep the viewer from knowledge of an historical event. In this FRDH podcast, host Michael Goldfarb looks at how this lack of full understanding is hampering efforts to create a coherent political strategy to oppose President Trump.
He explores the seminal research into how media obscures not just history but also other aspects of life by thinkers like:
George Gerbner: http://web.asc.upenn.edu/gerbner/Asset.aspx?assetID=2597
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...
2017-10-1813 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH Without Memory There is No History, Here’s whyIf an event happens and there is no one to witness and remember it, does it become part of history? If memory is eliminated is it possible to write or understand history? When FRDH host Michael Goldfarb researched his book Emancipation, about Europe’s Jews in the century and a half between being liberated from the ghetto and the Holocaust he came across stories of many interesting people in obscure places, completely forgotten because the community that might have remembered them had been eradicated. They were no longer part of history. Restoring them to the record became his obligation.
In th...
2017-09-2815 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH Berkeley High Point Of The RevolutionThis episode of FRDH is about Berkeley and the high point of the revolution of the 1960's as host Michael Goldfarb remembers it. Revolution is a romantic word and a bloody practice.
This autumn "revolution" will be discussed a lot, as we mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution.
The word will also come into use as we move towards the 50th anniversary remembrances of 1968, the year of student revolution.
The University of California Berkeley, is where student revolution was effectively born in the US, during the Free Speech Movement. That was a movement of the left. Free Speech Week...
2017-09-1916 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbWhen Jews Met the BluesWhen Jews met African-Americans in the early part of the 20th century the collision created American popular music. Both groups were immigrants to the great cities of America's north - Jews came from Eastern Europe and Blacks from the American South. But their desire to get away from oppression to economic opportunity wasn't the only thing they had in common. Their cultures were deeply rooted in music and music of a particular kind: crying out and soulful and syncopated. In this cultural history from the FRDH archive, Michael Goldfarb traces out how talented people in both communities met, borrowed, occasionally...
2017-08-2147 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbMind of the SouthIf you want to know America, you have to understand the Mind of the South. If you want to understand the dynamics that drove events towards the Charlottesville Outrage, you have to understand the mind of the south, or specifically the "white" Southern mind. That mindset did not just pop up, the day Donald Trump took office. It has been the driving force in American politics … all the way back to the foundation of the Republic.
White Southerners are a powerful force in American politics. Not a majority - but the largest single political bloc - in the country. In th...
2017-08-1511 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH Crash Anniversary Thought: Work ≠ Employment:On the tenth anniversary of the start of the Financial Crash, MIchael Goldfarb looks at work and employment. Are they the same thing?
We are told we will have to work longer - in Britain last week it was announced that the age at which Britons in their 40’s could collect their state pensions - social security - would be going up to 68.
Work longer, but will we be employed longer?
It is all well and good if people are living longer that they stay in the work force longer but it would be jolly nice if the government told th...
2017-08-0811 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbBible Study for Atheists: America, One Nation Under Whose God?This Bible study for atheists looks at what Thomas Jefferson meant when he wrote about God in the Declaration of Independence. Many evangelical or political Christians argue that the US is a "Christian" country because Jefferson used the word. Michael Goldfarb challenges that idea which explores the Enlightenment use of God as Nature. Far from the scriptural understanding of the Judeo-Christian divinity. He traces Jefferson's ideas back to those of Enlightenment philosopher Benedict Spinoza. He uses Spinoza's own bible study as a way of explaining what the founding father's intentions were.
Spinoza, who wrote in Latin, coined the phrase Deus...
2017-07-2610 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH: Republican Party Is Now a Faction How it HappenedThe Republican Party has become the people James Madison warned us against: a Faction. In any country, the most dangerous thing that can happen is for a group and its political representatives to act as if their view alone represents the nation. That thinking leads to the view that they alone “are” the nation and that those who disagree with them are not of the nation - even if they are fellow citizens, born on the country’s soil. When this happens in a democratic republic, like the US, and the view takes over a political party, then the threat to the...
2017-07-1809 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbJuly 4, 2017: Hanging Together or SeparatelyJuly 4, 2017. America is not a happy place. It is splitting apart rhetorically and if only a fraction of the threats posted in social networks are acted on it will split apart in other ways. In this FRDH podcast Michael Goldfarb looks at how Americans have forgotten Benjamin Franklin's words on hanging together versus hanging separately. How can Americans rediscover their links to one another? Extremely violent rhetoric amplified by broadcast media always precedes violent acts. Nations, particularly multi-ethnic nations like the US, can disintegrate in months with a concentrated campaign of angry words against a particular group in the society...
2017-07-0312 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH Six Day War 50th Anniversary MeditationOn the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War, Michael Goldfarb has a meditation on how that event changed what it meant to be Jewish and Israeli. The Six-Day War was an epic victory for the young country of Israel and for Jews worldwide. Coming two decades after the Holocaust it restored a sense of pride but it also brought with it an onerous burden: the Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and rule over 1 million Palestinians. Over the last 50 years this has fundamentally altered Israeli society. It has also changed the way Jews of the diaspora see themselves. At...
2017-06-0711 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH: Bible Study for AtheistsBible Study for Atheists is an occasional feature of FRDH podcast. Michael Goldfarb looks at Bible stories and the Bible's poetic books and talks about their history and their meaning in contemporary life. In this first Bible Study for Atheists podcast he looks at psalm 52, which he read just after watching President Trump on TV: "Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? Thy tongue deviseth mischiefs; like a sharp razor working deceitfully. Thou lovest evil more than good; and lying rather than to speak righeousness." He explains how the bible is is a draft of the history of...
2017-05-3012 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH Episode 15: Trump's First Hundred Days: How to Survive the Next 100 and the nextTrump's First Hundred Days in office have been like no other presidents. There is no deep channel you can follow in trying to write the First Rough Draft of History for this man’s presidency you are constantly going this way and that on jagged currents. This FRDH podcast rambles looking at Trump as an avatar of a new society which emulates what it watches on TV unable to distinguish between reality and reality TV programs. “It’s a Kardashian world and he’s the Kardashian candidate.”
It also analyzes the precedents for Trump and the resistance to him. Ronald Reagan was...
2017-04-2917 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH Episode 14 Trump & Security: What's the Policy?President Trump's foreign and security policy: What is it? Does the military know? As American war ships steam towards the Korean peninsula and American diplomats argue with Russian leaders about Syria this FRDH podcast is a conversation with historian Robert Batement, Lt. Col (ret) of the US Army. Bateman, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq is currently a fellow at the New America think tank and a contributing columnist for Esquire magazine. He gives a nuanced analysis that non-specialists can understand explaining Trump's doctrine ... or lack of it. He also comes up with some surprising historical analogs for the chaos...
2017-04-1316 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH Episode 12: episode 12: Statistics>Facts>News>Truth>HistoryFacts are the building blocks of journalism leading, hopefully, to the truth, and the FRDH, First Rough Draft of History. In a world overwhelmed by data and statistics facts are easy to come by, but can numbers alone tell a story?
In 2016, the bulk of institutional journalism missed the rise of Donald Trump because the numbers said his victory wasn’t possible … then it was.
In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb says journalism’s increasing reliance on data is behind this failure. Lies, damned lies and statistics have led reporters down a blind alley. He argues for a different approach to rep...
2017-03-1318 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH Episode 11 Resistance Is Not Futile, But It Ain't EasyResistance is a beautiful word. It is a Romantic word. It is the word of the moment. But what does resistance really mean? Are you a resister if you simply say you are? Anyone can call themselves a resister and put a hashtag in front of it. Does that make them part of the “#resistance?”
Real resistance has an objective and it comes at a price.
This FRDH podcast tells several stories of resistance from recent history to see if they have something to teach those who want to resist President Trump.
French resistance: Almost from the moment the German Army...
2017-02-2815 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH Podcast Episode 10: PTSD, Donald Trump, and Civil WarThis is a meditation on PTSD and Donald Trump and does the shock from PTSD make it impossible to see Trump and his actions clearly. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb analyzes whether his experience of war and reporting from societies that slipped from stability to civil war affect his judgment about the state of America in the Age of Trump.
He asks whether committing journalism in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Iraq has left him with PTSD. Does his knowledge of how quickly well-established societies can disintegrate into Civil War render it impossible to see the Trump effect clearly.
What...
2017-02-1509 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH Special Trump's Travel BanPresident Trump's travel ban has now seen more than 100,000 people lose visas to travel to the US. In this FRDH special, Michael Goldfarb discusses the ban with Iranian, Syrian and Iraqi journalists who have long experience of living and working in the US.
Today, thanks to the Executive Order issued January 27th by President Donald Trump: "PROTECTING THE UNITED STATES FROM FOREIGN TERRORIST ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES" these three journalists cannot visit the country because Iran, Syria and Iraq are among the seven countries from which travel is banned.
In a wide ranging conversation, MIna al-Oraibi, columnist for Asharq...
2017-02-0347 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH podcast Episode8: America, I Ain't Marchin AnymoreAmerica is undergoing historic political change as Donald Trump is sworn in as President. It is an "un President ed" break with history. No one, not even Ronald Reagan has represented such a dramatic break with the past since the days of Franklin Roosevelt and maybe ever. People are finding it hard to make sense of the impending new era and so is Michael Goldfarb, host of FRDH Podcast. In this episode he free associates his way through his own and America's history for the last half century looking for some pattern that might explain how Donald Trump was elected...
2017-01-1715 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH Special: How America Got This Way2016 was by any measure an historic year. A different America revealed itself to its own people and to the rest of the world. Donald Trump was unlike any Presidential candidate in history and now is set to be President. This FRDH podcast special explores How America Got This Way. FRDH stands for First Rough Draft of History, which is what journalists like to say they are writing and in this FRDH special four London-based journalists with a cumulative century of reporting on America and the way America effects the world talk about their own rough drafts of American history.
Robin...
2016-12-1647 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH Podcast Ep 1: The First Rough Draft Mission StatementHistory keeps happening to me. This first episode is a mission statement for a podcast about all kinds of history. the history I've reported and the history I have lived.
2016-09-2011 min
FRDH Podcast with Michael GoldfarbFRDH podcast, Episode 7: King's College ChoirA Christmas treat from the FRDH archive. A musical feature about the boy choristers of King's College Choir at Cambridge University. The piece is a backstage look at the boys' daily schedule of academics and rehearsal in the great Chapel of King's College. The King in question was Henry VI. Built in phases between 1446 and 1515, the chapel is one of the monuments of late Gothic architecture and possesses unique acoustics. There has been a choir associated with the building since its founding. Director Stephen Cleobury explains the history of the choir and the practical demands of the chorister's life.
2014-12-2309 min