Click here for the full episode, including the extended interview with Katrina vanden Heuvel on her friend Mikhail Gorbachev.
“We need to not treat the idea of peace as subversive.”
Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher and editorial director of The Nation, predicts a dark cold war ahead if our leaders continue their craven militarism. The first step, she says, is talking about it openly, which, sadly, the media won’t do.
“The crisis is on us. And there’s a lack not only of preparedness but of thinking about the crisis.”
Katrina, who was close with the late Mikhail Gorbachev, shares the leader’s personal thoughts on peace, nuclear weapons, and the worsening relationship between US and Russian presidents. She calls Gorbachev “a great reformer in his country’s tormented history.” And shares some private stories about him too. And she reflects on her late husband, scholar Stephen Cohen, when we react to a video of him offering a very prescient analysis of the new Cold War.
Plus, Biden does fascist Roger Waters, Liz Truss wants to nuke you, and the latest in terrible Trump-themed drinks.
It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out.
Katrina vanden Heuvel on Gorbachev’s legacy and the Ukraine proxy war