This is an episode that Joey recorded a few months ago. We're releasing it now to take a bit of a break from our exploration of Israel-Palestine and because Solarpunk is how at least one of us, Joey, tries to create hope where none exists.  This episode was recorded after the four of us - Joey, Ariel Kroon, Luka Dowell and Andre aka @HydroponicTrash took part in the Solarpunk conference.  Solarpunk has an eye to a better future, but how do we get there? What is necessary for us to do, and...

In this remastered release, Joey Ayoub is joined by Sumaya Awad and Shireen Akram-Boshar. Awad is a co-editor of the book Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, and Akram-Boshar is a contributor to the same book. Originally released on May 20th 2021, this episode has been remastered and re-released. Many of the topics discussed - including the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the growing solidarity movements around the globe, the Palestinian struggle for liberation - all resonate in today’s...

In episode 146, Joey Ayoub and Dana El-Kurd talk to Sally Abed, Orly Noy and Amjad Iraqi. Abed is a member of the national leadership of Standing Together (עומדים ביחד نقف معًا), a grassroots movement mobilizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel in pursuit of peace, equality, and social and climate justice. Orly Noy is the chair of B'Tselem, arguably Israel's most well-known human rights NGO, and editor of the Hebrew-language news magazine Local Call. Amjad Iraqi is a member of...

Daniel and Joey host a conversation between Hadar Cohen and Dahab Kashi, exploring the radical power of Arab Jewish perspectives. Often seen as mutually exclusive identities, the existence and experience of Arab Jews transcends the narrow, and violent, confines of both Zionism and Arab Nationalism. The artist Yossi Zabari spoke about the power of the 'hyphen connecting Arab and Jew', and in this episode we explore the potential that acknowledging that hyphen has in our current critical...

In light of the genocidal onslaught against Palestinians in Gaza following the October 7th Hamas attack, we've decided to re-release an old episode on Hamas, Gaza, and Palestine-Israel. In this episode from June 2021, Joey interviews Tareq Baconi, author of the book "Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance" published in 2018. Baconi meticulously outlines the nature of Israel's blockade on Gaza, the various aspects of Palestinian resistance to ongoing occupation,...

For episode 144, Daniel is joined by renowned Sudanese Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im for a wide-ranging conversation on human rights, spirituality, and inter-cultural justice. Professor An-Na’im is an internationally recognized scholar of Islam and human rights, specifically from cross-cultural perspectives, and teaches courses in international law, comparative law, human rights, and Islamic law. With intensifying human rights violations around the world, and longstanding failures from...

On October 7th, Hamas fighters breached the militarized fence separating the occupied Gaza strip from Israeli communities in the south, killing 1400 people and taking 200 hostages. Israel immediately retaliated with severe bombardment of the Gaza strip that, at the time of this writing, has killed 7000 people. In the West Bank, settler violence and army raids have also killed dozens of Palestinians, and Palestinian citizens of Israel as well as leftist Israelis have been arrested for speaking...

Ayman Makarem is joined by two Sudanese commentators, Raga Makawi and Dalia Abdelmoniem, to talk about the war in Sudan. Both guests talk at length about the situation as well as the political, economic, and revolutionary context it exists within. This intimate discussion explores the many ways Sudanese people are reflecting on and struggling against the current war situation. With little to no international attention, these voices are vital to listen to and learn from. You can support The...

Joey is joined by returning guests Karena Avedissian and Anna to talk about the recent crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh / Artsakh where the near entirety of the ethnic Armenian population was ethnically cleansed by Azerbaijan. The Aliyev dictatorship running Azerbaijan has met no challenges from the so-called international community - quite the contrary. What happened in Nagorno-Karabakh is a crime against humanity, the sort of crime that should never be normalized. You can support The Fire...

Joey is joined by Anas & Elena from the Border Violence Monitoring Network to talk about the way in which the European Union is criminalizing solidarity with migrants and how the EU has turned the Mediterranean into a giant graveyard for people who look like me. You can support The Fire These Times on ⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/firethesetimes⁠⁠⁠⁠ with a monthly or yearly donation and get a lot of perks including early access, exclusive videos, monthly hangouts, access to the book club, merch and...

Joey is joined by French economist and researcher Timothée Parrique and Lebanese researcher Yusra Bitar to talk about why tackling our world's most pressing challenges must include conversations around degrowth. Timothée Parrique is a researcher at the School of Economics and Management of Lund University (Sweden) and is the lead author of “Decoupling debunked – Evidence and arguments against green growth” (2019), a report published by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB). He is also...

Joey is joined by Leila Al-Shami, British-Syrian activist and co-author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, Romeo Kokriatski, Ukrainian-American managing editor of The New Voice of Ukraine and co-host of the Ukraine Without Hype podcast, and Dana El Kurd, Palestinian-American assistant professor in the department of political science at the University of Richmond to talk about an essay the four of us wrote. The essay, "A view of anti-imperialism from the periphery," was...

After some 12 years on the site, I've finally deleted my Twitter account. Its takeover by a profoundly narcissistic, mediocre and insecure bigot gave me that extra excuse I'd been looking for all these years. But why does any of that matter? After all, isn't it 'just a website'? Yes. And no. Whether you are an activist or a scholar or a journalist or a policy-maker, Twitter has had an undeniable influence over your life - even if you've never been on it. I was a very active user of that...

The Fire These Times is fundraising for Queer Mutual Aid Lebanon! Here to talk to us about their work, queer mutual aid in Lebanon and why they started working after the October 2019 uprising and the 2020 crises (Covid-19, August 4 explosion, economic crisis and more) is repeated guest and buddy-in-chief Ayman Makarem. To support them: ● Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/qmalebanon ● Paypal: @qmalebanon About Queer Mutual Aid Lebanon: We are a small grassroots group of queer/trans...

I'm joined again by friend of the pod Dana El Kurd, a Palestinian researcher who specializes in Comparative Politics and International Relations. We talked about Nakba Day (May 15), about the importance of reflecting on the past while also trying to plan for the future, and how we can commemorate the Nakba by building bonds across nations and struggles. This is also the first episode released on a Tuesday! Episodes will from now on be released on Tuesdays and/or Thursday with the long-term...

I'm joined again by friends of the pod Ukrainian researcher Mariam Naiem and journalist Romeo Kokriatski to talk about why Ukrainians understood very quickly what's at stake, how war leads to frozen temporalities, and why Russia is so obsessed with kidnapping Ukrainian children (which, by the way, is a war crime). Slava Ukraini! You can support The Fire These Times on ⁠patreon.com/firethesetimes⁠ with a monthly or yearly donation and get a lot of perks including early access, exclusive...

I'm very excited to share with you this conversation I had with Christina Heatherton, the author of "Arise! Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution", alongside friend of the pod Daniel Macmillen Voskoboynik who joined us as co-host.  The Mexican Revolution was a global event that catalyzed international radicals in unexpected sites and struggles. Tracing the paths of figures like Black American artist Elizabeth Catlett, Indian anti-colonial activist M.N. Roy, Mexican...

In which I sat down with friend of the pod Lebanese writer Ayman Makarem for the first ever premium episode. This was first recorded for Patreons in February 2023 and I'm now releasing it to the wider public. What made Seinfeld so special to Ayman as a queer kid from Lebanon? And what is it like to watch shows that don't have you in mind as their target audience? You can support The Fire These Times on ⁠patreon.com/firethesetimes⁠ with a monthly or yearly donation and get a lot of perks...

In which I sat down with my buds Leila Al-Shami and Shon Meckfessel to talk about how and why a bunch of fascists became fans of everyone's favorite genocidal mass murdering dictator, Bashar (يلعن روحك يا) Assad, who was recently voted most likely to end up like Mussolini by I-just-made-it-up magazine. Leila, a recurring guest, is the co-author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War and, together with Shon, she co-wrote the chapter of No Pasarán: Antifascist Dispatches from a...

This is a conversation with Thenmozhi Soundararajan, the author of 'The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing and Abolution'. She is a Dalit American commentator on religion, race, caste, gender, technology and justice. She is also the Executive Director of Equality Labs. We were joined by my friends Rhythima Shinde (who is also Dalit) and Vivek Ramachandran. They both read the book and helped me greatly in the research for this episode, so during one of our...

This is a conversation with carla joy bergman, the editor of the excellent book "Trust Kids!: Stories on Youth Autonomy and Confronting Adult Supremacy" and co-author of the equally excellent book "Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times", both published by AK Press. She's also the co-host of the Grounded Futures podcast alongside her son Uilliam Joy. Make sure to check them out! As the title suggests, we focused on youth autonomy. What does it mean? How is it integral...

This is a conversation with Yafa El Masri, a Palestinian refugee researcher who grew up in Burj El Barajneh in Beirut, Lebanon. She's currently finishing her PhD at the University of Padova in Italy. We primarily spoke about her paper "72 Years of Homemaking in Waiting Zones: Lebanon's “Permanently Temporary” Palestinian Refugee Camps" which she presented at the 2022 Pluriverse of Eco-social Justice summer school in Coimbra, Portugal, where we met. ---- We spoke about: what it's like to...

This is a conversation with Karena Avedissian and Anna, and a collaboration with their podcast Obscuristan. The main thread of our conversation was about Armenian-ness and how complicated of an identity it is due to the old and transnational history of Armenians. Some have ancestry in the Ottoman empire and therefore feel closer to the Levant, especially after the genocide which also exiled so many to my part of the world. Others lived under the Russian empire and then the USSR. There are of...

This is a conversation with Morgan Govin and Molly Hagan. This is how Morgan introduces herself on her website: "I spent five years addicted to heroin and four years incarcerated as a direct result of my addiction. I lost my mom and four close friends to  overdose. I found a system of injustice within the US justice system. Now, I work to change the systems that harmed us. I strive for safer, healthier communities." Morgan is also JSTOR Daily’s engagement editor for the American Prison...