Episodes
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Trump, Putin and the Betrayal of Ukraine
In this episode Sian Norris speaks with The Guardian’s Luke Harding about his book Betrayal: Putin, Trump and the New Age of Conquest (https://uk.bookshop.org/a/8711/9781783353378), covering Harding’s 2007–2011 Moscow posting, FSB harassment and his expulsion while investigating Litvinenko and...
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Can Burnham 'Unbreak' Britain?
How do progressive movements defeat the far right without adopting their doom-laden narrative? In this episode of In Solidarity, Aman is joined by fellow openDemocracy investigative journalists Sian Norris and Ethan Shone to break down the recent Labour conference and how it fits into the rapidly...
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Palantir and the art of Tax Avoidance
Governments hand out billions in lucrative contracts to tech corporations to build surveillance systems, track migrants, and process public health data. Yet those same companies use every legal loophole available to avoid paying tax on their profits. In this episode of In Solidarity…
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The Great Venezuelan Oil Steal
Nine months after the US abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a highly unusual oil deal has surfaced. The US claims to have struck an agreement to take control of about a fifth of Venezuela's oil reserves. But this isn't a standard international trade agreement; it’s structured through a...
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How the UK Establishment Normalised Reform
Is Reform fascist, far-right or merely right wing? And do we really need to get into this? Our guest on this episode, thinks we should: Daniel Trilling is a journalist, a long-time openDemocracy contributor, and the author of a new Book: If We Tolerate This: How the British Establishment Made the...
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The Climate Wars: How Superpowers Are Carving Up the Earth
The climate crisis is changing the way nations think about food, energy, resources, war and peace. Melting ice caps are opening up new trade routes fought over by the world's great powers, conflicts are waged over food and mineral resources, shifting climates are fuelling migration – and Donald...
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The AI Panopticon: How Big Tech and the State are Watching You
"My ultimate vision... was to achieve by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his panopticon." — UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. When the state openly admits it wants its eyes on you at all times, how do citizens fight back? In this episode of In Solidarity, Matthew...
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Iran, Oil, Inflation, Unrest: The Global Fallout of the US-Israeli War in the Gulf
As the US-Israeli war on Iran continues to escalate, the effects of the conflict are spiralling outwards across a world already whiplashed by cross-border violence, global tariffs, and the unravelling of regional alliances. There is much that we do not know: How will spiking energy prices affect...
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The "Danish Model" of Asylum Explained: Cruelty by Design?
Why are British and European politicians obsessed with Denmark's immigration strategy? We uncover the dark reality of the "Danish Model" and how it punishes asylum seekers by design. Politicians across Europe - including the UK government - increasingly point to the so-called "Danish Model" as…
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The Secret Pipeline: How the Far-Right is Radicalising Gen Z
Are anti-rights movements infiltrating high schools? We uncover the deliberate, decades-old strategy the far-right is using to target young people, weaponise their insecurities, and build a pipeline of extremist power. In this episode of In Solidarity, openDemocracy’s Senior Investigations…
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Gaza's Illusionary Ceasefire
Over 71,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the war began on Oct 7 2023, in what a UN inquiry has described as a “genocide”. When a US-brokered ceasefire was declared in October last year, the world's attention moved on to the next crisis. Since then at least 463 Palestinians had…
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After Maduro: Storm Warnings in Venezuela
If the US once claimed it was “defending Democracy” to justify attacking countries without pretext, the current administration has made no such excuses. Last week US security forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife from a compound in Caracas in an operation that killed 70...
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Democracy from the ashes: Inside the Your Party conference
Waring factions have dominated the headlines, but inside the Your Party conference the embers of hope for a different kind of politics were still burning. Investigative reporter Ethan Shone tells what the mood was like among the party members following months of public spats and PR disasters....
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End Times: What Post-Socialist Societies Teach Us About Today
We’ve normalised the idea that the world is ending, that society is tearing itself apart, that our countries — wherever we live — are falling apart. But what does that really look like? What does it feel like? What emerges in the aftermath? In this episode host Aman Sethi speaks to Renata Salecl…
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Abortion decriminalisation now
Earlier this year, Labour overwhelmingly voted in favour of an amendment that would end the criminalisation of women and pregnant people seeking abortions outside the 1967 Abortion Act exemptions. As the debate went through the Lords, we sat down with MSI Reproductive Choices’ Louise McCudden to...
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Labour puts capital over consumers
What can we learn about the future of consumer rights from the merger between Microsoft and Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard? When Labour came into power in 2024, they accused regulators like Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of inhibiting growth and appointed influential figures...
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Now that we have to say 'genocide'
Did Western media manufacture consent for Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza? In the last two years since Hamas' attack on Israel, and the latter's bombardment of the territories of Palestine it partially occupies, mainstream media particularly in the U.S. and Europe have broken...
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Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal: Is This A South Asia Spring?
In early September, Nepal witnessed massive protests under the banner of GenZ protests to demonstrate against what they viewed as a hopelessly corrupt and sclerotic regime. The immediate trigger was a government ban on social media apps, but as the protestors themselves have made clear – their...
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Worse Than Trump: India is Deporting Its Own People
The world is rightly horrified by how US President Trump is deporting people, including minors, without due process. Something similar is underway in India, but worse and under the radar. Even since the border skirmishes between India and Pakistan this year, Indian authorities have been rounding…
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What has Labour done for women?
As Labour marked a year in government, Fawcett Society's Penny East asks: what has Labour done for women? And what needs to happen next? — https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/newsletters/ In Solidarity is openDemocracy’s podcast about people, power, and politics. Support the show by visiting...
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Planet Patriarchy
Patriarchy refuses to die. In every country of the world, women are oppressed by male violence, patriarchal religions, and ideas of the family. But women are resisting, as Rahila Gupta explains, in a fascinating analysis that takes us from Riyadh and Russia, to Rojava. Buy Planet Patriarchy…
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The tech start-up targeting sexual assault survivors
Content warning: This episode discusses sexual assault, rape and trauma. When our investigative reporter Sian Norris heard worrying claims about a Silicon Valley-style start-up targeting rape survivors at universities in Bristol, she knew she needed to uncover what exactly was going on. Over the...
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Who is funding Nigel Farage’s Reform party - and why?
This is the first episode of our new mini-series exploring the financial interests of political parties in England and Wales. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has banked almost £5m from wealthy donors since 2023, including those with links to fossil fuels, the financial services industry and tax havens.…
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A momentous day for reproductive rights
On 17 June 2025 UK Parliament voted to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales, reversing a Victorian-era law. The amendment will prevent women from being prosecuted for ending a pregnancy after 24 weeks or without approval from two doctors. We spoke to our senior investigative reporter Sian...
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Locked up: protesters in prison
Earlier this year, openDemocracy explored how successive governments had cracked down on protest rights. Now, with Just Stop Oil activists facing lengthy sentences for "conspiring" to commit protest offences, the impact of these laws is being felt more than ever. We sat down with human rights...
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Generation Crisis: Why generational labels miss the mark
Boomers ruined everything, Millennials are work-shy and Gen Z can’t comprehend anything that isn’t a TikTok dance. Generational language defines the way we think about broad cohorts of society, but is this way of viewing the world dividing us further at a time when solidarity has never been more...
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How Protest Became a Crime in the UK: "We’re All Arrestables Now"
This week on In Solidarity, we're in discussion with openDemocracy's senior investigative reporter and feminist activist, Sian Norris. Sian joins us on the podcast to reveal how recent laws are quietly dismantling the right to protest in the UK. Drawing on six months of in-depth reporting, Sian...
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Women, life, freedom: resistance and protest in Iran
As a young woman in 1980s Iran, Nasrin Parvaz was arrested, imprisoned and tortured by the Iranian regime. In this moving interview, she shares her experience of torture and incarceration, reflects on the successive women's revolutions in Iran, questions the West's ideas of regime change, and...
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Companies are making billions from anti-immigration fears
For many years, politicians have sold the public a simple story: The answer to undocumented immigration is a strong, fortified border. This story has a seductive, common-sense reasoning — but it is also wrong. Decades of research has shown that people determined to move, find a way to move. And...
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Why organising locally matters
Community organisers around the world have long argued that to change a country, canvas a community. But is that really true? In this episode, we catch up with someone who literally wrote the book on the subject. Our guest George Goehl started organising in a soup kitchen in Southern Indiana 30...
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Palestine, Musk and BRICS: the issues dividing US and South Africa
The already fraught relationship between the United States and South Africa has been put under even more strain with Donald Trump's decision to cut foreign aid, not to mention South Africa's case against Israel at the ICJ. Menzi Ndhlovu, a political economist and risk analyst at Signal Risk a…
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Populism's Silver Lining
Danny Sriskandarajah is the author of Power to the People: Use your voice, change the world Sriskandarajah discusses the shift from a positive phase of civic engagement to a reversal over the past decade, emphasising the importance of community networks beyond state and market fixations. He...
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Escaping The Alt-Right Pipeline
Jimmy The Giant is a popular YouTuber who did what many would consider to be beyond the pale - he changed his mind about politics. Jimmy went from heading down the right wing pipeline of self improvement gurus to U-turning and becoming, dare we say, ‘woke’. In today’s episode Aman Sethi talks to...
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Migration, AI and The Rise of the Machines
Borders patrolled by AI-powered robotic dogs once seemed like something purely in the realm of dystopian sci-fi novels. But the border industrial complex is working hard to make them a part of our (still dystopian) reality. Petra Molnar, author of The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the…
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What Germany's Rightwing Voters Are Telling Us
Something strange is happening in Germany. Last year, the Alternative for Germany or AFD, as it scored, became the first far right party to win a state election in Germany since World War Two. Then in February this year, the AfD came second in Germany's national elections, with 20% of the votes....
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Ukraine and the return of Empire
What do the Ukrainians at the heart of the conflict with Russia feel about being used as a bargaining chip by countries like the United States? In this episode we speak to Volydomyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, academic, and editor of Ukraine World. Volydomyr lives in Kyiv and is also the...
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What's actually behind the Far Right's anti-women agenda?
The rising global far right is violent, racist and misogynistic – and depends on exploiting women. While many of us associate attacks on women’s bodily autonomy with ultra-religious groups, openDemocracy’s Sian Norris argues that the stripping away of abortion rights is a political issue, rooted…
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Misdiagnosing Donald: Trumpism is Religion not Politics
Have we all been looking at Donald Trump’s success in the wrong way? Jeff Sharlet, journalist and author of The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, makes a compelling case for examining his rise not as a political figure, but as a religious one. After all, Trump himself would surely be the...
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Syria’s future lies in its past
Since al-Assad’s regime fell from power in December 2024, much of the reporting on Syria has focussed on geopolitics in the region. More concern has been paid to the reactions of neighbouring nations than the ordinary Syrians whose lives have been uprooted by years of violence. But Syria is so…
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Trump 2.0: Is This the Inauguration of A New Era of the Strongman?
Trump 2.0: Is This the Inauguration of A New Era of the Strongman? Professor Wendy Brown is an American political theorist, UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and an author. Professor Brown’s bibliography includes what we…
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