Nury Turkel, author of No Escape: The True Story of China’s Genocide of the Uyghurs, speaks to us today about China’s use of technology in the Uyghur genocide and the threat of such technologies to global democracy and freedom. Turkel highlights what the international community needs to do to support the Uyghur people and hold authoritarians to account.

Turkel is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and is Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He is the first U.S.-educated Uyghur-American lawyer, foreign policy expert, and human rights advocate. He was born in a re-education camp at the height of China’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution and spent the first several months of his life in detention with his mother.

Talkin’ in the Free World: Nury Turkel on the Uyghur Genocide

Independent Ukrainian journalist Olga Tokariuk joins us today to discuss her wartime journalism, stories coming from the frontline, the greater meaning of Ukraine’s fight for freedom and democracy, and to debunk Russia’s narratives about Ukraine.

Olga Tokariuk is a Non-resident Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and an independent journalist and researcher based in Ukraine. Olga has vast experience working with Ukrainian and international media, such as EFE news agency, RAI, ANSA, BuzzFeed News, NPR, ABC, and RSI. She is a former head of the foreign news desk at the independent Ukrainian Hromadske TV.

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Talkin’ in the Free World is a conversation series on the future of democracy and countering the threat from resurgent authoritarianism across the globe.

The series is hosted by MLI Senior Fellow Mariam Memarsadeghi and features prominent thinkers, practitioners and political leaders committed to safeguarding freedom.

Talkin’ in the Free World: Olga Tokariuk with Updates on the War in Ukraine

Was Russia’s most recent invasion of Ukraine an aberration, or a predictable phenomenon? Balkan Devlen sits down with author Thibault Muzergues to discuss his recently published book “War in Europe? From Impossible War to Improbable Peace” and how Russia’s attacks are changing European attitudes regarding continental security. 

They also discuss why some observers failed to identify the war as it loomed on the horizon, where the next wars could erupt, what must be done to prepare for such a future, and why all this matters to Canada.

Pod Bless Canada EP. 78 - From Impossible War to Improbable Peace with Devlen and Muzergues

Azar Nafisi, who is the critically acclaimed author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, a New York Times bestseller that is published in thirty-two languages. Nafisi reflects on the effect of education, ideology, and the corporate mentality on the preservation of democracy, focusing particularly on political divides in the US. Mariam and Azar dive into the philosophical underpinnings of freedom, democracy preservation in the US, and the fight for democracy in Iran.

Nafisi is also known for her other works including, Things I’ve Been Silent About, Republic of Imagination, That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile, and most recently The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times. She has held various teaching posts across the world including at Johns Hopkins University, Oxford University, and Free Islamic University and Allameh Tabatabai.

Talkin’ in the Free World Ep. 9 – Azar Nafisi on Freedom vs. Totalitarian Instincts

Home of Pod Bless Canada, Macdonald-Laurier Institute's premier public policy podcast, and Talkin' in the Free World, a conversation series on the future of democracy and countering the threat from resurgent authoritarianism across the globe.

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