This week, the journalist Lauren Wolfe published an article in Foreign Policy about how Russian leadership is afraid of “psychic attacks” from the West. Lauren spoke to me for the article and it...
Years ago, when I was in college, a couple of friends of mine ran into Volodymyr Zelensky when buying alcohol for one of our parties, outside of a big supermarket in downtown Kyiv, not far from where...
“The whole universe. Alive. And me, a part of it.” So says a dying old man right before he draws his final breath. There are many things to be said about the adaptation of Sarah Perry’s “The...
It’s Thanksgiving week in the United States again, and this year I’m really grateful to be thoroughly in love with this country. It’s not the world’s most ideal relationship and, as the man...
Studying the Apocalypse in history and literature is an integral part of staying sane. We are worlds unto ourselves, which is why the world is always ending. The Quran probably explains it best when...
A friend who was forced to flee the city of Kharkiv — a city of Russian-speakers that fascist Russian Vladimir Putin has sought to “liberate” by bombing civilians — recently said, “It’s...
Driven by revenge for a strike against his expensive Crimean bridge, Putin unleashed a barrage of attacks on Ukraine this week. Many of the people I love were caught up in it. The first words I heard...
Russia is mobilizing as Putin continues to lose his “three-day war” in Ukraine — and as someone who lived and worked in Russia for years, I must beg everyone else to do the following: Stop...
The Lord of the Rings is back and, in the first episode of the Rings of Power, it’s hard to tear your eyes from the massive pile of elven helmets left on the battlefield, as crows caw in the...
Mikhail Gorbachev was my first introduction to politics. I was very small, in a car being driven by my father, squashed in the backseat between relatives. Everyone was loudly arguing about Gorbachev...
