This monologue doubles as a book review of a book that doubles as a weather forecast.

Confusing?

In Deaf Republic (2019) by Ilya Kaminsky, deafness becomes an act of collective resistance after a deaf boy is murdered by a soldier at a puppet show. It’s a book of some 60 poems that show us how love, tenderness and laughter can manifest as resistance, defiance, and insurgency.

This is not poetry for leisure.

This is poetry for when the streets fill with sirens.

This is an instruction manual for surviving cruelty while staying human.

And we desperately need it.

In this episode of This Time Tomorrow, Omri and Benni are joined by political scientist Angelos Chryssogelos to discuss the global rise of populism. From Donald Trump to Nigel Farage, from Yanis Varoufakis to Wolfgang Schäuble, from Brexit to Covid-19, from Viktor Orbán back to Trump again, the guys explore how populist movements distort our relationship with truth and facts, dismantle liberal democratic institutions, and destabilise the rules-based order…

…all while asking this rather crucial question: what can we do about it? And how do we know when we’ve passed a point of no return?

Tune in. Get involved. (Subscribe, leave a review!)

Angelos Chryssogelos is a Reader in Politics and International Relations at London Metropolitan University, with a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. His research specialises in international relations and foreign policy, particularly the global dimensions of populism and European politics. He has held fellowships at institutions such as LSE’s Hellenic Observatory, Harvard, SAIS-Johns Hopkins, and the Robert Schuman Centre.

In this episode of This Time Tomorrow, Omri and Benni are joined by political scientist Angelos Chryssogelos to discuss the global rise of populism. From Donald Trump to Nigel Farage, from Yanis Varoufakis to Wolfgang Schäuble, from Brexit to Covid-19, from Viktor Orbán back to Trump again, the guys explore how populist movements distort our relationship with truth and facts, dismantle liberal democratic institutions, and destabilise the rules-based order…

…all while asking this rather crucial question: what can we do about it? And how do we know when we’ve passed a point of no return?

Tune in. Get involved. (Subscribe, leave a review!)

Angelos Chryssogelos is a Reader in Politics and International Relations at London Metropolitan University, with a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. His research specialises in international relations and foreign policy, particularly the global dimensions of populism and European politics. He has held fellowships at institutions such as LSE’s Hellenic Observatory, Harvard, SAIS-Johns Hopkins, and the Robert Schuman Centre.

“For the vast majority of people, life is unlikely to get better in the next five years. If you belong to that group of people, then you already know that. Unfortunately, that’s not the worst of it.

The worst of it is that unless something changes, then life is also likely to get a lot more violent. And not just other people’s lives. Yours as well.

Do I want you to be afraid? No. But perhaps we should be.”

In his fourth Monologue for Democracy, Ted riffs on an old poem by W.B. Yeats, while contending that far-right ideas once seen as fringe have entered the political mainstream, reshaping culture and policy across the West.

As extremists push the limits of acceptability, centrists weaken, and violence becomes an increasingly plausible outcome.

History warns us that collapse is not inevitable, but silence and apathy make it more likely.

”What I’m concerned with here is the role of Germany in Ukrainian defence, and that’s really European defence,” says Benni at the top of this episode. ”Why the h*** aren’t the Germans doing more? Why isn’t Germany really leading Europe on this existential issue? What’s holding us back here?”

In the 25th episode of This Time Tomorrow, Benni and Omri talk to Nico Lange—former chief of staff at the German Ministry of Defense (2019–2022), and Senior Fellow at both the Center for European Policy Analysis and the Munich Security Conference—about the role of Germany in Europe’s efforts to defend Ukraine and the continent at large from Russian military aggression.

Since the end of WWII, Europe has been a peace project, and many Europeans will naturally feel queasy about increasing defence spending…

…but as we have said on this podcast before, the war against autocracy is coming for all of us, and we must act now if we want to preserve free and open democractic societies.

”The direct challenge to Europe by Putin’s war of aggression will only be solved if Germany finally comes around,” argues Nico Lange. ”So for me the question is: How long will it take and what will it take for Germany to do what is necessary to restore peace in Europe and to preserve peace in the long-term? […] There is a missing element in this, and that is Germany making a strategic decision, ’What is it that we want to achieve by helping Ukraine?’”

Will Germany step up its efforts to lead Europe towards peace?

*Apologies for the poor sound quality at the very end of the episode. Technical issues led to an abrupt interruption in the conversation, after which a proper connection was difficult to restore.

Democracy is not just elections, says Andreas Poléo in this monologue for democracy.

It is about you.

You have privilege. You see injustice. You feel anger. You see corruption.

Change is hard.

Even when you try, nothing moves.

And yet you must take responsibility.

Live with intention.

Act on your values.

Society wants you passive. They want you obedient.

But you can choose. You can wake up.

You can live.

Start now.

Andreas Poléo is a Norwegian former municipal politician and a This Time Tomorrow contributing editor.

Political campaigns are not what they used to be.

Once it was about speeches, tabloids, and TV spots. Now it is behavioural experiments, voter modelling, and psychological targeting happening quietly behind the scenes. This is not just campaigning. It is science for sole purpose of securing power. It’s Moneyball applied to the War Room.

Sacha Issenberg called it the Victory Lab — the conceptual space in which strategists test what makes you act, click, donate, and vote. But the question today is bigger. What was revolutionary back when Barack Obama was winning landslides has become… basic.

So how do you rebuild that lab in an era of changing media, AI persuasion, and voters who know they are being played?

In this episode of This Time Tomorrow, Omri and Benni chat to Sacha to find out what comes after the Victory Lab and what it means for the future of democracy…

…and honestly, the answer might surprise you. Are we returning to the café?

Sacha Issenberg is a journalist and author known for his reporting on politics, business, and culture, including The Victory Lab, which revealed how data and behavioural science transformed modern campaigning.

Where do we even start with this one?

The thing about the constitutional collapse in the US is that it’s unfolding before our very eyes, on our screens, all of the time. It’s not a single event. It is an ongoing erosion playing out in public view. This is not your everyday partisan struggle.

So let’s call it what it is.

From the January 6th Capitol insurrection to repeated threats of government shutdown to challenging the legitimacy of the Supreme Court…

… from executive and judicial overreach to crises of electoral legitimacy to constant brinkmanship…

… this is what an authoritarian takeover looks like.

What can defenders of democracy learn from Trump 45 and 47? Because let’s be clear: European democracies, too, face institutional strains, and the warning signs from across the pound are not subtle...

Join Omri, Benjamin and Daniela as they seek to understand what the US experience teaches Europe today.

Where do we even start with this one?

The thing about the constitutional collapse in the US is that it’s unfolding before our very eyes, on our screens, all of the time. It’s not a single event. It is an ongoing erosion playing out in public view. This is not your everyday partisan struggle.

So let’s call it what it is.

From the January 6th Capitol insurrection to repeated threats of government shutdown to challenging the legitimacy of the Supreme Court…

… from executive and judicial overreach to crises of electoral legitimacy to constant brinkmanship…

… this is what an authoritarian takeover looks like.

What can defenders of democracy learn from Trump 45 and 47? Because let’s be clear: European democracies, too, face institutional strains, and the warning signs from across the pound are not subtle...

Join Omri, Benjamin and Daniela as they seek to understand what the US experience teaches Europe today.

Bother! Benni’s gone holidaying… So what do we do?

In the 21st episode of This Time Tomorrow, Omri calls Ted on his rotary dial phone (you’ll get it if you listen to the episode) to discuss media ethics in the era of Joe Rogan… and it’s all because of something BBC journalist Nick Robinson told The Guardian last month.

As trust in traditional journalism crumbles and podcasts rise to fill the gap, a new media battle is underway… and this one may just be reshaping democracy itself.

Are values-driven platforms holding power to account, or do they just feed polarisation? With unchallenged interviews, partisan narratives, and collapsing editorial norms, the line between informing and influencing is vanishing fast. Can modern media still serve the public good, or have they become tools for ideological warfare? Is This Time Tomorrow ’creepy’ and ’partisan’…? Whether yes or no, how do we know how to make the distinction?

Join us as we debate whether media today can be partisan, popular, and still serve the democratic good.