Robin Lustig’s Story: Fate, Family, and Survival

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 organizations set up in theory to help Gazans. Alkhatib is the rare Gazan voice in public life and in this wide ranging conversation with FRDH host Michael Goldfarb he talks about his boyhood in Gaza, his family -- 30 of whom have been killed in the war -- Palestinian agency and the way forward out of the catastrophe of Oct 7th and the utter destruction of what was his home. Give us 52:51 to tell you about it.

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 world. The city was shut off by the throat slitters of ISIS yet Mohammed successfully defied them with his dispatches. This is a compelling conversation about true resistance, as well as the implications for the United States in the future over its failed campaign in Iraq, a war most Americans would like to forget, but that people everywhere from Tehran to Beirut remember vividly. Give us 45:15 to tell you all about it.

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 potential to make many jobs obsolete is anywhere near fulfilled.

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

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 concerns over flaws in a single vaccine to becoming a political cause exploited by Trump and Bobby Kennedy Jr. Give us 53 minutes to explain it all to you.

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 encountered growing up and talks about the lies that underlie so much discourse on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

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. Illustration ©David Rowe ABC Australia

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 Wheeler is herself a successful travel writer and biographer and in this FRDH podcast she speaks with host Michael Goldfarb about her authorized biography of Morris and the complicated and stupendously productive life she led. Give us 54 minutes to tell you all about it.

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 how diplomacy might rescue the situation -- but without Trump. Give us 46:22 to help you understand

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