On Freedom, Tyranny, and Resilience: Historian Timothy Snyder on The State of Belief Podcast
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On Freedom, Tyranny, and Resilience: Historian Timothy Snyder on The State of Belief Podcast

Ray Kirstein
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Ray Kirstein
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December 16, 2024

What a podcast episode for the times we are living in! This week on The State of Belief, host Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush is in conversation with renowned historian, best-selling author and impactful public intellectual Dr. Timothy Snyder. His latest book is titled, On Freedom.

Timothy hasn’t just written extensively about freedom and tyranny – he’s thought very deeply about these core principles. And he brings powerful ideas to the conversation in a way that’s easy to understand, and that inspires taking action. The contrasting ideas of positive freedom vs. negative freedom; the dangerous temptation to “obey in advance”; the importance of figuring out what “normal” is to each of us in terms of values and actions so as to retain internal freedom when it is imperiled in the world around us – Dr. Snyder introduces and clarifies these important ideas and many others, while directly taking on some of the policy proposals and cabinet nominees of the incoming administration.

History, politics, religion, human nature, and moral aggression are all parts of this complex but accessible conversation.

Timothy D. Snyder is a renowned historian and professor of history at Yale University, specializing in modern European history, with a focus on authoritarianism, Ukraine and the Holocaust. His many influential books include The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, and On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

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Hear this week’s episode below:

Ray Kirstein is the Producer of the State of Belief podcast.

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