HEIST

"Once you've seen and felt the Islamophobia at that level, you can't unsee it. Which really sucks."

After 15 years, a 300-euro WG at Hermannplatz, deep roots in civil society, and even getting German citizenship, writer Zara Rahman packed up and left Berlin.

Why? What makes someone walk away from a city they once saw as a progressive sanctuary?

In this episode, HEIST founding editor Ruthie Weissmann sits down with Zara Rahman to unpack her widely discussed essay explaining why she decided to leave Berlin. Zara opens up about the "masks off" moment following October 7th, the hypocrisy of Berlin's faux-progressive left, and the stark divide in how people of different backgrounds experience the city's political realities.

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Music and sound by Patrick Nininger.

Die Linke won the Berlin state elections for the first time last week. In another historic first, their leader Elif Eralp could become the first mayor of Turkish descent.

But the backlash is here.

The impact of these kinds of electoral firsts can be hard to make out in the immediate aftermath, and the media cycles are spinning fast and heavy. So in this episode, HEIST founding editors Peter Matthews and Ruthie Weissmann join Ben Schuman-Stoler in breaking down what happened and how to make sense of the major storylines so far.

Keep following HEIST for more about the Berlin election.

And help us reach our fundraising goal of 500 paying subscribers here.

Keep up with HEIST on Instagram: @heistberlin.

Music and sound by Patrick Nininger.

How do the editors at HEIST choose what news and features we publish?

In this episode, founding editors Ruthie Weissmann and Peter Matthews talk to Ben Schuman-Stoler about how they run the editorial side of things at HEIST. They talk about some of their favorite Berlin animal stories, stories that went viral, and what happens on a very slow news day.

We recorded this extra episode also to promote our subscriber campaign which is going into its final weekend. We’ve already hit our first target of 200 paying subscribers and are approaching our main target: 500 paying subscribers to HEIST. If we hit that, we can raise our writers’ rates, launch new content initiatives, and, for the first time, start paying ourselves.

Help us keep HEIST independent and worker-owned by becoming an accomplice!

Keep up with HEIST on Instagram: @heistberlin_.

Music and sound by Patrick Nininger.

Germany is the biggest donor of Palestinian support organization UNRWA, a UN organization that supports healthcare, education, and infrastructure for Palestinians. Yet increasingly, this position has come under attack. Why?

Our guest this episode is researcher, filmmaker, and strategist Alon Sahar, who recently published the report “The Campaign against UNRWA and the Palestinian Right of Return in Germany; Israel-aligned Actors, Narratives, and Policy Uptake” with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

HEIST founding editor Peter Matthews and Alon talk about the historical 20th century geopolitical context here, and then hone in on Germany’s role, the evolution of the term Staatsräson, and then finally bring it home to Berlin, where we see the implications of this campaign in local political scandals.

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Music and sound by Patrick Nininger.

“National narratives tell you what you must not say.”

In this episode, Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah joins HEIST founding editor Peter

Gurnah challenges history from a European perspective. To him, the idea of European centers is not just an oversight, but a kind of blindness.

His work, novels with interwoven histories based on complex and surprising historical narratives, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. The Swedish Academy cited his "uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee."

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Would you keep your job if it meant switching to producing weapons? That’s the dilemma facing workers in Görlitz and Osnabrück, where factories that for generations proudly built trains and electric vehicles are being repurposed as armament factories.

Considering VW has said it will cut 100,000 jobs in the next years, the German economy is barely growing, and the current regime is committed more than ever to investing further in defense spending - what choice do workers have?

In this episode, HEIST founding editor Peter Matthews is joined by investigative reporter Lea Fauth. They discuss her reporting for Deutschlandfunk Kultur in two German cities where factories, unions, and workers are responding to the Zeitenwende, the new era of German investment in manufacturing arms.

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Music and sound by Patrick Nininger.

What happens when psychedelic drugs meet networking?

We sent writer Lily Johnston to TRYP Expo, Berlin's new festival for "human flourishing.” She explored the free samples, high-frequency strobe lights, vibrating rings and supplements - and watched someone implant a microchip into another man’s hand.⁠

In this episode, HEIST founding publisher Ben Schuman-Stoler talks to Lily about her experience at TRYP and together they reflect on if the Expo means something bigger for Berlin. They talk about new synthetic drugs, the surprising Nazi history of psychedelics, what happens when subculture is commercialized, and ask, is there such a thing as too much self-optimization?

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Music and sound by Patrick Nininger.

People always ask,”What happened to Elon? When did he go crazy?”

But maybe we have the wrong measure of madness. If Musk did go mad, he’s been rewarded massively for that madness by the market. His erratic, drug-fueled, anti-woke journey has led him to become the world’s first trillionaire. So what are the defining features of “Muskism,” this new state-funded, pathological system of capital that might be the Fordism of the 21st century?

A similar analysis could be made toward the AfD. At first glance, their conspiratorial, racist, and economically reckless plans seem impossible to rationalize. Yet what if those policies make perfect sense when you trace their lineage from neoliberal economists weaponizing "hard money, hard borders, and hardwired human nature."

In this episode, HEIST founding editor Peter Matthews is joined live at Chapters Bookshop in Berlin by historian Quinn Slobodian to discuss his latest book, Muskism, and ideas about the far-right and the AfD from his 2025 Hayek's Bastards.

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Music and sound by Patrick Nininger.

When an AfD candidate was criticized for referencing a concentration camp badge on a campaign billboard, the party’s defense was immediate: "How dare you accuse us of being homophobic? Our leader, Alice Weidel, is a lesbian." It’s a perfect, toxic blend of strategic provocation and plausible deniability. But it points to a much deeper, more disturbing mutation within European politics.

In this episode, founding HEIST editor Peter Matthews talks with Ben Miller, historian, writer, and co-host of the podcast Bad Gays to talk about right-wing queer politics.

They trace the lineage from the Netherlands' Pim Fortuyn to the AfD's current transphobia, exposing how by posing as moderate when it comes to queer topics, and blaming immigrants for homophobia, far-right parties win support - even from liberals.

Check out Miller’s feature for HEIST, “With Its Queer Rhetoric, the AfD Attempts to Swing Both Ways.”

This episode is part of the three-episode drop that properly kicks off the HEIST podcast. Check out our podcast feed for the other two conversations: with Hebh Jamal about life as a Palestinian in Berlin and Yossi Bartal about a faked murder on the U-Bahn.

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Music and sound by Patrick Nininger.

In November 2025, Hudhaifa Al-Mashhadani, the "Professor Doctor" director of a German-Arabic school in Neukölln, claimed he had been shoved toward a moving U-Bahn train by a keffiyeh-wearing attacker.

There was just one problem: CCTV footage showed he simply walked onto the train.

In this episode, HEIST founding editor Peter Matthews sits down with Berlin-based journalist Yossi Bartal to discuss the rise and fall of a seemingly pathological liar who became the German media and political establishments’ darling. But this isn't just a story about a single grifter. It’s an indictment of German media’s failures, a patriarchal style of inter-Neukölln governance, and a multi-million-euro antisemitism industry.

Check out Bartal’s feature for HEIST, “How to Stage a Political Assassination: The Neukölln Attack That Never Happened.”

This episode is part of the three-episode drop that properly kicks off the HEIST podcast. Check out our podcast feed for the other two conversations: with Hebh Jamal about life as a Palestinian in Berlin and Ben Miller about the AfD’s abuse of queer politics.

Links & Resources:

Music and sound by Patrick Nininger.